slyaspie

I am a nut freak. I really love raw almonds, where the outer hull is still green and the skins are white and you peel them right off. That's my favorite and comes but once a year. Raw peanuts are good too. I'm a sucker for salty nuts too, particularly pistachios, cashews and pecans. I'm slightly allergic to walnuts however, they make the roof of my mouth all tingly and then it swells up a bit, but I don't mind cuz I find walnuts bitter anyway. In cyprus when i was growing up we always had these very hard, salty crunchy dried up chickpeas. I didn't realize until i was older that they are not nuts, but they might as well be. They are delicious, and I always smuggle a ton when i come back from a visit.

That sounds like it but I don't recall the squeak. Then again... the International Foods Warehouse offers such sensory overload to begin with that I may just not have noticed the sound. What you had was definitely halloumi. And the thing is you can get halloumi a couple of different ways. The one you had sounds like it was probably the hard, really salty one, which is the one usually given to people in restaurants, and yes they usually fry it. The hard halloumi is basically aged halloumi that is put into huge containers of its own juice and is given more salt so that it hardens over time. I haven't seen it in the states, but the softer fresh halloumi that is sealed in plastic and kept in the fridge or the freezer if you have a lot of them is actually the better of the two. You can tear a slice up into strips really easily and put it on your bread, and the way it is made, they fold it over so there's one big crease going down the whole length of the halloumi and in this crease they stuff it with a bunch of chopped up mint so that it ends up perfuming the whole loaf. I bring many kilos of it back from cyprus when i can, and it is this fresher, softer, less salty halloumi that is used in everyday cypriot eating; from frying it up in the morning or for lunch (it gets a little mushy, but like the hard one doesn't really melt). When fried for breakfast it is usually accompanied by a couple of sunny side up eggs and a cypriot sausage made of roughly chopped up pork, spices i don't know how to say in english and red wine, called loukaniko, or a couple of pieces of pork that has been soaked in red wine and then smoked/cured and then preserved in a jar of lard. Both kinds of halloumi are amazing thrown on the grill, whoever has some, grill it, put on a squeeze of lemon, put it on top of a nicely charred pita and top it with tomato, some olive oil and cilantro and you'll just die. Halloumi is pretty much the main cheese the cypriots eat and you can usually find it at the table for every meal. A typical light meal in the summer is a plate of sliced halloumi, a dish of olives, a loaf of bread and a plate of lengthwise sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, lightly salted. And watermelon. You just sit with your family at the table and pick. There's usually another cheese at the table along with the halloumi called anari and that is made from the leftovers of the halloumi milk. It's really light and creamy and salty. This is good in a hot pressed sandwich with fresh cucumber and tomato, maybe some ham. If anyone has any questions about halloumi I can answer them for you. Oh and when you buy it, make sure you get the goat milk one, not the sheep cuz it's not as good. As for things I love that are made badly, I'll have to give a mention to this baked macaroni and cheese that my mother and aunts found one day in the newspaper thirty years ago after they came to this country. It's made with velveeta, cream of mushroom soup, sauteed, diced onions, bellpepper and ham, and a touch of curry powder. They inexplicably attatched themselves to this recipe and you can find it at most family gatherings on the buffet table surrounded by all the greek dishes. But you know, I just love it, although I don't think i'm ever going to make it myself. I also really love tater tots that have been left in the over for extra time so they get extra crispy.

So I've been trying tons of different diet sodas lately, because I'm addicted to the carbonation but can't take the syrupy sweetness of regular soda anymore. The other day I picked up A&W's Diet Cream Soda "Sparkling Vanilla", and it is really, really good, especially if you put a squeeze of lemon in it. It foams really nicely and the yucky aspartame aftertaste is zero, or pretty damn near. I'm so excited about it that I had to share...yes I'm a nerd...:) I know that you guys have been talking about the mid calorie sodas in another thread, but i haven't seen one for favorite diet sodas, so if I'm not repeating the topic, which ones do you like? Hansen's diet sodas are really good (not all of them though), as is Schweppes. also, on another note, have any of you had R.W. Knudsen sodas? They are my favorite (along with S. Pellegrino), and they have two really good flavors, tangerine, and Jamaican Lemonade, they are wonderful and more natural than most sodas.

I grew up eating purslane which we called glisteria in my house. It was one of the many things that my parents brought seeds for from our native Cyprus, and one of the many things whose name I didn't learn in english until i was an adult, just because i knew no one who ate it here. I remember clearly about four, five years ago when suddenly purslane came into the media and many people were touting its incredible health benefits. My huge Greek family went crazy. First of all they were like, "oh, it has a name in english?" and second of all they were so proud and smug at the same time, my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins all loving to point out endless (at endless family gatherings and endless phone calls) times how we Cypriots had been eating this for time immemorial and we must be so much healthier (filled to the brim with omega 3 fatty acids you know) than all the Americans who didn't even know that they had this excellent plant growing in all their back yards. This of course led to the discussion that all the americans have loquat trees in their yards and don't know that the fruit is edible (we live in california). So like Zora mentioned the greek lady gathering purslane from people's yards, the greeks around here always do it with the loquats...but I digress. Purslane is a very delicious, lemony plant and the best way to eat it is when you have fresh tomatoes and cucumbers in season, so you can make a tomato/cucumber salad. Make sure to use lemon instead of vinegar for the dressing and to cut small, rough chunks of your tomatoes straight from the fruit into the bowl so that all their juice runs into the salad bowl because that is truly an integral part of the salad dressing. It makes the perfect meal on hot summer nights along with bread, olives, a hard goat cheese, and watermelon.

Thin, well-seasoned patty with a very nice grill flavor, a big smear of smushed up avocado and two slices tomato on the bottom, on the top: havarti cheese, pickle slices, and either dijon or sweet n' hot mustard, sprinkle on some pepper. The bun should be toasted. never lettuce, never onions, never jalapenos. I will however accept in other combinations, yellow mustard, ketchup, sauteed mushrooms, almost any kind of cheese, and bacon. NO MAYO EVER

Cherries (Utah Giants and Bing) Cherries are the end all and be all for me. I wait with bated breath for the all too short cherry season each year. loquats apricots fresh figs really tiny perfectly round mandarins

I loved Laura Scudder's and Granny Goose's Barbecue cornchips. They both don't make them anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure if Laura Scudder's still exists. And I really really hate Frito's barbecue cornchips.

deep, dark red rose flavored icecream of course, made from the dark rose syrup i bring back with me by the bottle from cyprus (it's usually used for an iced rose drink or as syrup for warm milk for children, much as chocolate syrup is used here). over there, the main flavor in the icream man's van is rose, sorbet-like cosistency. I've also made it with the rose water that you can flavor desserts with, but i don't like it as much.

Hey Ondine, I haven't posted here very much, but his thread hit a nerve considering that i'm only four weeks out of a horrible breakup myself. Believe me i know how terrible it feels and i too are sending you healing vibes. i've been eating strangely the last few weeks as well. i have access to in season mandarin trees and i think because it is such a mind numbing activity, i sit on the couch and peel them for hours eating wedge by wedge as i go while listening to "When you were my baby" by the Magnetic Fields. the Magnetic Fields song is great cuz it has a line in it that goes "everybody began to hate you when you were my baby" and that is so true my friends hate him now. anyway, back to food. well the first two days i didn't eat, i just closed the blinds, got in bed and subsisted on pain medication i still had from injuring my knee. yes i know it's terrible, but it was either that or Cypriot brandy, and i wasn't really prepared to puke, so...plus it made me sleep like a baby, which besides a rebound as stated in this thread, sleep is the best medicine. besides the mandarins, also nectarines cuz they take a long time to eat while i stare off into space thinking (i carve pieces off with a knife and transfer them to my mouth), and also for some reason Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal in raisin, date and walnut flavor. Another staring off into space thing i guess. Then of course there are the gigantic bags of potato chips with dip while reading brain candy type magazines from the corner store. Or eating cream of broccoli soup in a bread bowl. Also taking out my snoopy sno cone machine and making rose flavored icees so that i could feel like i am in cyprus again (my island). anyway, i've been getting out a lot more now, i'm a grad student and i've been spending time at my coffee place again, lo and behold, he "stopped" by, and of course an interesting (read, horrible) discussion ensued about the new ho in his life (he left me for her on a whim). let's just say the rose flavored icees and the brandy (and cigarettes this time...i don't recommend this) made a return for another day and a half after that. but my sister and friends have helped immensely. they are the funniest bunch of people ever and have made me bust a gut laughing, even in the middle of a crying fit. also going to my parents house and having my mother fuss over me while making me avgolemono soup and mushroom and caramelized onion filled pita type pockets on the grill (manitaropites) was lovely medicine. so my advice is eat, girl, cuz food is too good to pass up for such a loser.

Hi, this is my second post (my first was just a minute ago in the one word favorite food thread...I love those cherries by the bucketful) But back to the topic at hand. My mother makes the BEST yogurt EVER. She learned to make it from her mother as a girl in her village in Cyprus growing up and I must say that anything but really thick and really sour (and I mean sour) Greek yogurt usually doesn't satisfy me. I try to visit her as often as possible so I can bring big gigantic tupperwares full of it back with me...yes I know I should just make it myself. But the best way to eat it (we traditionally eat this for saturday lunch) is to make a pot of bulgur wheat. Saute up some onion and crushed fideo noodles until brown, pour in the bulgur, pour in the water, some salt, cook it up, pile it hot and steaming onto your plate and top with gobs of the yogurt, mix, and eat. Sooooooo good. Then after you eat the bulgur, eat some more big dollops of the yogurt with greek bread, yum. As for store bought brands, I really like full fat Mountain High or Clover for plain and Berkeley Farms or Clover for fruit yogurt.

CHERRIES (preferably Utah Giants)