ghostrider

Funny, I'd never heard of Honeycrisps until this afternoon, when I saw some at a local produce stand. Didn't buy, I was suspicious of the name. And now here's this thread which I didn't see last month. Synchronicity strikes yet again! Faves - I love Macouns early on, but they seem to get mushier as the months wear on. After they go, Mutsu and Melrose become my top choices, though I've never been able to find them outside of the NYC Union Sq Greenmarket. Here is a nice page on apple varieties that I stumbled upon.

I originally thought that it was an even more complex three-step code. D'oh! Occam's Razor still rules.

Thanks for unwittingly filling in some details I've long wondered about. Growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, virtually every comic book I read had a coupon to Palisades Amusement Park in back. It always seemed like it must be such a magical place. WHen I moved to New York (ironically, in 1971), though I was busy with much else, I found it a bit odd that I never heard anything about Palisades Park. Eventually I made some local friends who were able to tell me that it had closed down, but I never really knew much else about it, or exactly where it was. Now I do. I think a trip to Callahan's is in order.

I have a friend who currently works for Vons....She said the newly overhauled "lifestyle" stores are dedicating a larger portion of the interior towards the pre-made, pre-packaged meals for those consumers who don't have time to cook. ← Sorry, tangential to the main topic, but the language here raises an issue for me: Have "pre-made" and "pre-packaged" now made it into the lexicon? These terms still make me grate what's left of my teeth. What's wrong with "prepared" and "packaged"? I'm somewhat heartened to see that the Safeway website is "pre-free," as far as I can find, but the easy journalistic usage is depressing.

All I know is that, on nights when I'm too tired too cook, I can feed the two of us with prepared foods from my local Whole Foods (Montclair NJ) for the same price as a meal from my local Chinese takeout eatery. Each has its own set of nutritional drawbacks, but the variety is nice. I think that WF is onto something if they can continue to compete economically in this vein. (Assuming that this isn't part of a Walmart-like strategy to kill off the competition.)

My problem is that I live 8 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel, so any search of no more than 10 miles, or greater, starts bringing in the NYC places. Yes I could search town by town, but there are a lot of towns out here. When I searched on Indian restaurants within 15 miles, superpages left out 3 places I know that are within 9 miles of my house. I don't know how to explain that. These are not new places - 2 of them I've dined at for 10 years. Superpages seems to have separate paid/unpaid sections so these places should have shown up in the latter. Sorry for the somewwat OT commentary.

The label on Whole Foods' 365 brand of milk carries three prominent bullet points that leap out at the eye: + Vitamin A&D + Good source of protein + Dairy not treated with rBGH* The asterisk leads to a fine-print statement that (I paraphrase) the FDA has said there's no significant difference between milk from treated & untreated cows, and no test can now distinguish between the two. Whatever the scientific debate, rBGH clearly has entered the realm of marketing.

How big is this gizmo? It looks handy if it's the right size.

Almost, but this is why there are coffee tables. Saves the balancing act. Folks often wonder why we keep the EVOO & vinegar on the living room coffee table. Seems self-evident to me. We tend to be late diners so this is the most efficient way of keeping up with The Simpsons / Lost / Globetrekker etc. I also spend approximately an hour preparing dinner every night that I cook. No microwaves or convenience foods in my home.

I am getting really tired of finding diver scallops and day boat scallops everywhere I go. Is there any place these days that aspires to be something more than Red Lobster that doesn't have diver/day boat scallops? Do these terms have any meaning at this point? I don't take them seriously; they are simply excess verbiage. I love scallops and may well order yours, but not because you've put one of those "d" words on the menu. I have found myself wondering whether all diver scallops are by definition day boat scallops, or whether there are cruel boat owners who make the divers stay out there on the water day after day after day, until they've met their quota. (I'd thought that this general topic must have been raised before on eG, but several searches on various terms yielded nothing. If I've missed it, I'm sure that someone will merge this.)

Superpages is woefully incomplete. It's also irritating if you live in NJ because there is no way to filter out NYC listings when you aren't interested in a night in the City. But I digress. When I'm deciding where to dine out, I usually look at the online menus of several places to make the final decision. So if you don't have a website with a menu - given that, as far as I know, there's no NJ equivalent of the NYC Menupages site - you won't have a chance at getting my business. Since I still have a dialup connection, I also appreciate simple & straightforward sites that load quickly at 52K. I'm after information, not dazzle.

I regret that I haven't cooked Indian food in almost 10 years and my spices (and probably my technique) have gone decidedly stale. I've got to find my Indian muse again.

I am one of the oddballs who never found that to be true, as much as my smoker friends always talked about it. For me, the most satisfying time to smoke was with a pot of tea (which wasn't always immediately post-prandial) in recent years, & before that, when I was quaffing pints of ale. I quit 2 years ago after 32 years of a 2-packs-daily habit. No post-gustation desire at all. The urge to smoke comes back strongest when I'm walking down an NYC sidewalk; I have no idea why. My senses of smell & taste were always hyper-sensitive. And I smoked Gauloises for most of those years. (And still miss the taste. I couldn't abide the taste of US cigs; if I hadn't been able to get Gauloises, I'd probably have quit decades earlier.) Even then I could always smell aromas - food, garbage, a gas leak, skunk spray - a mile off that no one else in my crowd, smoker or not, picked up until we were virtually on top of the source. I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in sensitivity since I quit. I do notice the aroma of smoke on smokers more readily now, but it was always evident to me when I smoked (as was my own Gauloise-infused aroma). I'm sure there are statistical patterns to smoking & sensitivities, but there are also great differences between individuals. BTW I am not a food professional, but a fairly serious home cook.

Since I last posted on this thread, I've discovered the Mainely Maple Granola made by Grandy's Oats. A little high in sodium at 109 mg, which makes it a once/twice-a-week treat for me, but a treat it is! Needless to say, I found this up in Maine, & was pleasantly surprised to find it in bulk at my local Whole Foods here in NJ. Watch these Grandy's guys, they could become the Ben & Jerry's of the granola world.

Wow, was eveyrthing as good as it looks? I'm particularly interested in any comments on the risotto, lemon sole & the last-pictured pasta dish.

Glad it worked out! I will stop in if I'm still working in the area when you open.

Actually, according to Zagat's (please note correct use of apostrophe) own website, it's Zagat Survey, not Zagat Guide. But I wouldn't really know because, guide or survey, I don't own one. However, I shall now never forget: rhymes with "the cat," not with "the cats." EDIT: according to a page deeper inside Zagat's (please note further correct use of apostrophe) own website, it's Survey in the northeast, but Guide if you're on the West Coast or in London. At least that's the pattern I think I've discerned from quick glance. And I'm not inclined to pursue the distinction further.

This is correct! I went on a student trip to France with one of the Zagats' sons (many moons ago)..."Zuh-GAT" is the correct pronunciation, from the horse's (or the cat's?) mouth. ← That seems to be a pretty darned authoritative answer. Thanks, one less niggling thing to keep me up nights. That's how they say it on 1010 WINS too, as I noticed yesterday. Synchronicity strikes again.

Thanks for the heads-up! 12/12 is on the calendar.

I've always thought of Zagat's as a New York thing, though I have some inkling that they're a nationwide empire. Anyway, if this question needs to be moved, please do so. Today I heard a TV newshead pronounce it Zaah-GAATZ (both "a"s rhyming with the "a" in "Gatling", accent on second syllable). That startled me, since I'd never heard that pronounciation before. I have always said ZOG-otts, because that's the way it looks to me. I have friends who say ZAY-gotts because they think it should be pronounced sort of like Zabar's. Clearly none of us really knows. So, does anyone have a definitive answer, preferably with a citation? EDIT: d'oh, I thought to google eGullet before posting, but not the Web itself. Zagat's own website says: That seems to imply that one should say Zuh-GAAT. However the #1 Google hit is Barry Popik's website, which gives us: I think I've got the second syllable down now, but none of this seems precise about the first. However, I can't argue with Zagat's own website, so from now on it's Zuh-GATZ.

Please specify the sides. Were they the brown rice & the squash? Admittedly, they are very good, but after the first half dozen times one does grow a bit weary of them. Just curious to know if they've changed their sides.

Not all that close, they're down on Baldwin just off Glenridge Ave., several blocks below Grove. But yes, they do have the goods.

Good luck with the Verona slot! I drive by there almost daily, and it looks ideal to pull in a lot of traffic. Plus it's got parking. The Bloomfield spot has a large area of municipal parking behind the block of buildings across the street, but if you're driving down Broad, you have to be alert to those little signs on the street corner or you won't know it's there.

My suggestion above seems to have been ignored but I'll try one more time with a new one. The other afternoon, a place called Stuffed Breads, in Bloomfield on Broad St., corner of Pitt, certainly had the look of a place that has recently gone out of business. They should have been open according to their posted hours. No signs to indicate why they were closed. Interior looked half-stripped & abandoned. This seems to be a thriving little area, with Brookside Thai, the Remedy Cafe & a few other places all in the same block. I am in this area only very sporadically so cannot keep an eye on it.

And here I must apologize to Gina's. It was not Gina's that had no tea, but the little bakery/cafe across the street. I didn't realize that there were 2 somewhat similar places in the same block till yesterday.