jgm

I've had some of my herbs planted for two to three weeks now, and they are doing well. They're all in containers, clustered in my 'little red wagon', so that they can be taken into the garage if a freeze is forecast, but so far I've only had to worry about that a couple of nights. I persuaded my husband to break out the yard toys yesterday, and we accomplished quite a bit. A small plot has now been tilled, and will soon have peas and arugula. Some tomatoes will go in containers; others will go directly in the ground. I did find some heirloom tomato seeds this weekend, so tonight I will start them in a miniature greenhouse-type thing I bought. It will hold 12 peat pots, so if all grow successfully, I'll have some to give away. I may even raise a tomato plant or two for our next door neighbors, who had a baby on December 31 and have their hands full with her and their two adolescent boys. This year I'm trying those "Wall O Water" things with some of the tomatoes, to see if they make much difference. The instructions say to set them up a week ahead of planting, so that they can warm the ground. So two of them are now set up, and the two tomato plants I have so far, will go in them next Saturday. The local greenhouse indicates they'll have more tomato plants and the arugula I want, next weekend. When we drove around yesterday, we noticed that the pear trees, forsythia, and flowering quince are all in bloom, making for quite a show. We had a really nasty ice storm in January, and many of us were kind of holding our breath to see how much damage would show up once flowering began. Some of the pear trees, which usually do not do well in ice storms, indeed do have chunks missing, but the damage seems not to have been too extensive, and I think we can look for the blank spots to start filling in, within the next couple of years. Combine that with my co-worker's happy news that her cat, who had been on the lam for a week, has returned, craving food and affection, and it's shaping up to be a pretty nice spring!

I think there's more to it than that. My husband and I dine out at least once a weekend, many times two or three times. No way am I going to eat dessert all of those times, and I usually don't order it at all. One reason is that there's usually just too much there. When I'd just love a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and some fruit, the restaurant is offering "Triple Brownie Hot Fudge Chocolate Mousse Overload." This, after a dinner with huge portions. Honestly, it seems like I'm trying so hard to eat reasonably and get my weight down, and restaurants are working against me! Give me a smaller portion of steak, with some thoughtfully prepared vegetables (and not that godawful carrot/broccoli/cauliflower steamed medley), a baked potato, a salad consisting of something more interesting than the same old lettuce and bottled dressing, and yeah, I'll order dessert. Or let me order half a slice of really good cheesecake or pie, and I'll do it. Better yet, how about a sorbet? I would LOVE to order dessert. But what I want is something wonderful and sweet to end a lovely meal, not something I'm going to have to atone for.

It's definitely eGullet that makes any exuberance at all, possible. I have resources... wonderful cookbooks, magazine subscriptions, cooking shows, etc. But eGullet is what bridges my knowledge and experience gap, and gives me information and inspiration to attempt projects I would seldom otherwise take on. I'm going to make Beef Bourguignon (for the first time ever) this weekend from the Les Halles cookbook. I would never have attempted a dish like this before eGullet. This particular recipe was highly recommended on one thread; I initiated a discussion about cooking with wine on another thread. Without this information, no way would I try something so involved, and with the expense of an entire bottle of wine. But I'm going into it fearlessly, knowing that if I hit any snags, I can search eGullet or initiate a discussion, and have my problem solved quickly, and by people whose knowledge I can rely on. That's invaluable!

Number of minutes one is willing to wait on a chronically late friend: 5 Number of his keys in your possession: 34 -? Number of weeks in possession of his keys: 10 Making him suffer for his rudeness: priceless I've been thinking about this ever since you posted it, and I applaud you. How satisfying it must have been! I probably would have wimped out after a couple of weeks, and made it easy on him. I love it that you just hung in there, as long as it took for him to figure it out.

From the interview with Kathleen Finch: I suppose she says that because that's what their market research shows, but I wonder who their research subjects are. An awful lot of "real" cooks are people who have full-time jobs. Most of the people who are at home in the daytime that I know, are stay-at-home moms who are either extremely busy people and don't have time or energy to cook. For example, I recently attended a cooking class at Williams-Sonoma (at $40 for a two-hour opportunity to watch a chef cook) were all employed full time, except for one, who was an elderly woman attending with her daughter... who holds a full-time job. All of the people I know who are passionate about cooking, are people who aren't around in the daytime to see the instructional shows, and are bored by Food TV's nighttime offerings... at least until the Iron Chef reruns come on.

This blog is mesmerizing. It makes me want to change my life. It probably will change my life. Thanks, Lucy.

Nobody's that wonderful. People are my friends because they treat me well; in turn, I treat them well. This is very poor treatment, and I can't imagine putting up with it. After getting kicked in the teeth a few times by "friends" I've developed a policy that there are a lot of truly wonderful people in the world, and I'm going to create more time to spend with them by not spending time with jerks. If something like this happened to me, I'd be so incredibly pissed that I'd be in a horrible mood and would be the devil to get along with. The friendship would likely end at that point. As Safran pointed out, these people are on time when they need to be. They will continue to do this to you as long as you put up with it.

It's a tough call, and the answer depends on the extent of your desire to solve the problem. I love the idea of meeting at home, or elsewhere, and then proceeding to the restaurant together. Perhaps the mildest way of handling it otherwise, is to be nicely confrontational, and explain to the late parties, the hardship they're placing on others. And I recommend that if you choose to do this, you look them square in the eye and tell them their rudeness to you is not only irritating, but is disrespectful to you, and you expect them to start showing up on time in the future. Habitually being late can be a passive-agressive form of bullying for some people, and the best way to put a stop to it is to nicely confront them about it. Another way of handling it, is to (with the cooperation of other on-timers), pleasantly penalize them. "Aunt Sophie, since you were 20 minutes late and kept us all waiting, you can buy the first round of drinks." Another, more aggressive possibility, is one that may not be acceptable to you. It is to explain to the group that you will be joining them only from time to time, because you've had it. And then cut your participation back to about 25% to 30% of what it has been. Alternately, you can tell the latecomers you've decided to exclude them from your plans. These habitual late-comers will continue to exhibit this behavior as long as they're allowed to. It's up to you to decide where to draw the line, and whether to draw the line, or to just put up with them.

The worst bagel I've ever had, I bought at a local grocery a couple of weeks ago. They had obviously taken their regular white bread recipe, shaped it somewhat bagel-like, baked it, and passed it off as a bagel. Absolutely horrible.

I sense that this problem has been aggravated, at least in part, by Creeping Bagel Growth Syndrome. Caveat: I have been told by my Jewish friends that we live in the Land of the Pseudobagel, and that if I haven't had a bagel made in New York (or at least a location considerably east of Kansas), I haven't actually had a bagel. Apparently these pseudobagels are passed off in the Midwest as actual bagels. But I wouldn't know, since I seldom leave home and the closest thing I have had to an actual bagel is one purchased in a local shop called the New York Bagel Company, now defunct, locally at least. Having made the aforementioned disclaimer, I would like to point out that locally, bagels are growing. Currently, the only edible bagels or pseudobagels, as the case may be, are found at Panera, and those suckers are huge. The (pseudo)bagels of my youth were nowhere near the size of the Panera bagels. This phenomenon, coupled with Creeping Fanny Girth Syndrome and Balloon Thigh Syndrome, often leads to incidents involving bagel halving. Local authorities were investigating, but then they figured out who our serial killer is, and we've kinda forgotten about everything else. In about a year, the investigation will likely recommence.

I had a feeling this was a marital issue.

I haven't tried using this as a cake filling, but here's what I know: I usually open the can, set it in a pan of water, and bake at about 400. After about an hour, the stuff is pale in the center, but more thickened and darker in color near the outside edges. If you bake a little longer, it will become more uniformly dark and thicker. I'm thinking this would probably be the stage at which you'd want to use it. I've never taken it beyond this stage, so I don't know what's next. It's thick enough at this stage that I wouldn't think it would soak into the cake. Let us know how it turns out. Sounds wonderful!

Try looking for a county extension service. If there's one nearby, they'll have good information. Otherwise, try local garden centers and/or your local library. Keep your eyes open as you drive around this summer, for people who are doing the kind of gardening you want to do. Stop and talk to them. Most gardeners are pretty generous people, and will share information with you.

OMG. I am sick. I am so, so, so sick. With grief. I work in a small law office. One of the attorneys helped one of his clients get a large parcel of land in a rural area, untangled from a difficult estate, so that he could buy it. A few months ago, he proudly showed me pictures of it, and pointed out the many cherry, apricot, peach, and plum trees. When he saw my eyes light up, he promised he'd call me this spring/summer when the fruit ripened, so that I could drive down there and pick. I promised to make him pies in return for the opportunity. He's back in the office this morning, with much different pictures. Seems one of his neighbors was trying to do a controlled burn on a field recently, when it was too windy. Things quickly got out of hand, and most of his land, including all of the fruit trees, is blackened. The trees are probably gone, at least for this year, anyhow. He won't know for awhile whether any of them will recover, but he's not at all optimistic. At least his home was saved. It took fire departments from several communities to do it, but they did save the structure. The last picture he showed me was of cattails in the middle of the pond, singed by fire burning so violently that the flames whipped 25 feet out over the water.

Two things: 1. Liquor (as in tequila shots) is not a good idea. You probably already know that. Ask your doctor if necessary. 2. Start a remodeling project. Buy paint and supplies, move all of the furniture out into the center of the room, and drape with a tarp. Midway through painting the first wall, labor will begin. Especially if the new paint is a sharp contrast with the old paint.

This probably isn't necessary, but I just wanted to point out that I'm not after "perfect" cookies so much as I'm after a more uniform appearance that will make them look nicer on the tray. I don't doubt there are people out there who are after "perfect", however. It's simply a presentation issue for me. As I improve my cooking skills, I'm trying to pay attention to presentation issues, also. I think we can all point to times in the past when we or others have made cookies which had great flavor but extremely irregular appearance, and were piled in a container for transport to our destination, and arrived stuck together and somewhat smashed. I'm trying to avoid that. The cookies I'm getting ready to make, have both semi sweet chocolate chips as well as milk chocolate chunks. My philosophy is that if I'm going to spend $ on a good grade of chocolate to go in them, I want them to look as nice as possible, too.

Mmmmmmmmm this sounds wonderful. Do you have a recipe?

I attended a cooking class a couple of weeks ago, held by a local chef. Although it's often been said that you should not cook with a wine you would not drink, he has a slightly different opinion on that. He maintained that if he made beef burgundy with a cheap wine (say about $6 to $7 per bottle) and a somewhat more expensive wine (say about $15 to $20 per bottle), we really wouldn't be able to tell the difference, because the cooking process and the other ingredients will mask the subtleties that can differentiate a cheap wine from a better wine. And he said that making such a dish with a really good wine would be a waste of the wine. To an extent, what he said made sense. But many, many years ago, when I was in college and didn't know better, not to mention not old enough to purchase wine, I used a supermarket "cooking wine" in a recipe, and ended up with the most godawful concoction I'd ever tasted. Obviously, there's a line somewhere. I would never again purchase a supermarket "cooking" wine. I'm talking about the "cooking wine" that is found in the condiment section. (In Kansas, alcoholic beverages, except for 3.2% beer, must be purchased at a liquor store.) And I would never cook with a "high school" wine (such as Boone's Farm), which would probably be too sweet anyway. So where do you draw the line? In a fully cooked, long-simmered dish, can you tell the difference between a cheap wine and a more expensive wine? Do you have personal guidelines that you follow?

Oh yes, I do need them! That sounds wonderful.

I'm a Diet Rite fan. No sugar, no caffeine, no sodium. It must be the carbonation that does it, because there's not much else in it. I will also drink Canada Dry diet ginger ale. Pretty good stuff. The secret to being satisfied with diet drinks, is to drink them exclusively. Switching back and forth between diet and regular is not a good idea, taste wise. If you get used to a certain taste, and stick to it, it's fine. I used to like diet lemon-lime Slice, and would squeeze half a lemon into it, and have a very nice carbonated lemonade. But I can't find the lemon-lime flavor anymore.

Anna and emsny, both of those suggestions are great! They are exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!

I need to know where to get... um, I don't know what it's called, but I believe it exists. It would be, basically, a large tea ball, to hold about 1 to 1 1/2 cups. I have some ingredients I need to segregate in a soup; the rest of the soup will be pureed in a blender, but I want to save a few pieces of the main vegetable for texture in the soup. I know I can use cheesecloth, but I'd rather have something in stainless steel, if I can. I live in the U.S., so an American supplier would be the most convenient.

A scoop, it is! Oh, boy, an excuse to buy a new toy! And tomorrow's payday.

Okay, I'll plant some spearmint, too! I have uses for both. The chives are perennial here (zone 6) but I don't know about the rest, except for basil. It is not. I plan on trying to extend the life of all of these herbs by bringing them in and putting them under grow lights. The one basil plant is a warm-up. I have 2 more packets of seeds (different varieties) that will be planted in large containers. That's probably a good suggestion about the thyme. I'll check into some seeds, since I have two plants already. Also, can anyone suggest a good heirloom tomato? I'm going to grow a few hybrids... the nursery carries only hybrids because of their disease resistance. They'll have one they haven't carried before, "Mountain Spring", so I'm looking forward to trying that. But I'd like to try 1 or 2 heirloom varieties, too. Any suggestions?

I like to bake cookies, but I'm not very good at getting a consistent, attractive appearance. I'm making some drop cookies this weekend; I'll be using an oatmeal chocolate chip recipe. What can I do to make these look uniform, for a good presentation? I do have a digital scale and can weigh each piece of dough, if that's what it takes. Do I need to roll each piece in my hands to get a spherical shape? I'd appreciate any tips for any kind of cookie. A few weeks ago, I saw Alton Brown making cookies that he cut out with a cookie cutter; he moved the cookie, cutter and all, onto the baking sheet and then removed the cutter. Although I don't often make this type of cookie, maybe I would do so more often if I could get them to look really professional.