Emily Kaiser

Here's a link to tom sietsema's review of Galileo and Lepic's bars, nicely titled Counter Intelligence.

The only thing about Sunnyside is, it's a kind of johnny-come-lately-but-hugely to the organic farms around DC. It was bought in 1996 by David Cole, a big cheese at AOL, and transformed into an organic farming behemoth of sorts in just a few years (for a quick write-up on him, there's an article here in Pacific Business News about a Hawaii venture of his). Not to knock them at all; they probably are the people you've heard about, they've launched a program to get other farmers to go organic, etc., and certainly active spokesmen for organic food, they just haven't been around a long time. If you're interested in tracking the longer history, you might also wish to speak with some DC chefs who've been around a while - Nora Pouillion, of course (who sits on Sunnyside's board), also Ann Cashion, Frank Ruta, Peter Pastan, Todd Grey, Umbi Singh at New Heights, to name a few. This isn't very helpful for your Rappahannock angle, but the late great Ward Sinclair, a former Washington Post reporter who left the Post to farm organically way back in the dark ages of 1989, wrote a wonderful book about his Flickerville Farm in Pennsylvania (and selling to the DC market), called Truck Patch, now OP but available on Amazon here.

You might try contacting the folks at American Farmland Trust, www.farmland.org. Can you say more about what this is for, what you're after? By "respected farmers," respected by organic community, or restaurant chefs, or their local sheriffs? From what little I know, there are a few rappahannock guys who supply to DC restaurants who aren't the most politically organic ones out there, but do farm organically ...

I just had a yummy lunch at Han Sung Oak and wanted to revive this thread to know if anyone else has other Korean favorites, not just in NVA ... ? Nice, fresh kimchi with my scrumptious bul gogi, though I'm no expert on this cuisine.

Yes, I think I came across a line somewhere, "corned beef and cabbage is about as Irish as spaghetti bolognese." Tasty all the same, with apologies to your husband's family. Anyone else out there 'corn' their own?

What a cool idea! You could go really nuts and set a little pot of herbs de provence growing behind those fans ... or in front of ... to perfume your spaghetti carbonara. :)

Erica Marcus has a nice article in last week's NY Newsday on the history of the not-so-very-Irish dish here "How the Irish in America came to eat corned beef is a question that scholars have thus far failed to answer with certainty ... "Although they ate corned beef at one time," said James O'Donnell, president of the Irish Food Board, "by the time the Irish started coming to America, beef would have been a luxury that only the very well-off could afford." Most who emigrated never would have tasted corned beef; their celebratory meal would've been based on bacon ..."

Extra MSG, If you're already comfortable barefoot, forgive me if "hawaiian style" flip flops already means this, but I love Teva flip flops, the ones with thick rubber soles that mold to your feet. I learned about them from a chef, 6 feet plus, who had terrible back problems until he started wearing them. They are for me little parties on my soles. They wear out after about 4-6 months, but at $20 a pop, easy to replace, unlike Danskos which I wear out in about the same amount of time.

Hanging raw meat for weeks on end does seem like an incredibly dangerous business, doesn't it. And food safety is such a touchy topic now, I can fully understand your concerns and precautions. But it's a safer thing than the current climate might have us think. Just be sure to coat the thing heavily with lots of salt - make a bin filled with a whole box of kosher stuff and just toss it all around, if you want to be absolutely sure about it, because the salt will kill bacteria, and meat left open and unsalted will spoil. Don't refrigerate it - you don't want it to be refrigerator-cold, and you don't want the moisture and condensation of a fridge. Fresh dry air is so important, legend has it that the best parma hams are hung on particular hillsides where the breezes blow in a particular direction, etc., etc., so some even make a fuss about having a window pried open to maximize drying, or just hang meats on their porches in winter. Certain eating establishments are known to dry theirs inside working kitchens where temps exceed 80 degrees, and everything goes fine. So you have some flexibility. A cellar, even with the occasional fly, should be fine. If you have small animals visiting, I'd suspend it (if it doesn't have one already, pull apart the flesh at a corner and thread some good twine through it, then hang it from a coat hanger or ceiling pipe, what have you). But small animals are much like us - they dont like to eat massive quanitites of salt, either, so they'll most likely stay away. dlc, any chance of finding a local small butcher whom you can order pig jowls from ahead of time? That's the only way I've found mine here in DC, where butchers are scarce.

In DC, we have many kinds of tasty mushrooms growing in the woods near creeks in West Virginia. At an overnight camp one summer, we took a "survival trip" where we had only a bag of trail mix to go on for four days, and one expert botanist, who chanced upon a massive grove of chanterelle mushrooms. We ate nothing but chanterelles and sunfish for four days, but the saddest thing happened (too much of a good thing, I suppose): some of us couldn't stomach the mushrooms again for four or five years afterwards. Luckily we've all recovered. :) Berries here often grow near powerlines, which makes one a little nervous about pesticides. But can't be worse than, say, farmed salmon, for suspicious mineral content ...

Hi Diner, Have fun! The nitrites in 'curing salt' just preserve pink color, they don't do any added bacteria-killing. Normal salt will take care of that (pardon the self promotion, but there's a nice article about salt and curing on this great website, www.emilykaiser.com). Guanciale air dries with the salt on it, and that's how I air dry my pancettas, too. When it comes time to use it, I just brush off any excess. A place I worked as a cook, we had a wall of guanciale and pancetta drying right next to the walk-in refrigerator, and we all had deposits of salt on our shoulders from brushing up against them all day. Be sure to hang it to air dry with a bucket underneath it for the first couple of weeks - some juice will drip. (or set it on a rack over a pan - hanging it in the air is not required, either). Hope this helps! Happy cheek drying!

MMmm, scrumptious. So you corn yours for a month? Can you describe more of your corning process? What spices, what ratio of saltpeter to water, how do you cook it at the end? I've only done it once, and was frustrated at the saltiness, and was thinking of shortening my 5 days and/or using less salt. Will you serve cabbage, too, for St. Pat's? And what goes on your corned beef sandwich?

Her closing was long rumoured, but I'm still sad to see today's Asimov piece, to think of New York without her. I had one of my first real French meals there, lunch, right before Muller took over. I couldn't afford it so I went all out and ordered the foie gras appetizer, and I think black sea bass with lentils. I was amazed. I couldn't finish the foie gras, and the captain himself came up and asked, "mademoiselle, is it alright?" I said it was fantastic, it was just more than I could finish. He said "I'll tell the chef." I was beyond embarrassed, to think Andre Soltner was going to be told on my account that his tranches of foie gras were too big. Perhaps they'd had words before. Anyone else have memories, objections, thoughts?

Would it also make sense to compare brands of yogurt? Monica, if you are still here, can you add a few words on why floating tomatoes are a sin? I presume they should be mixed in, like yogurt? :)

Thanks, Malawry! Heller's are my favorite straight-up yeasted glazeds, after Amernick's, of course. KK's are so rich and sweet I feel like my teeth are about to fall straight off, and I can only handle that about once every couple of months. Personally I like to imagine KK invented their own brand of extra-high fructose corn syrup to ice theirs. But that's just imagination, no grounding in fact.

Don't forget Bread Line, and Heller's in Mt. Pleasant. And an RIP to Montgomery Donuts. :( Thanks for bringing back the donut song!