ghostrider

Curlz, I gather you're in the Montclair area now. So their Farmers' Market is even more convenient, as you've found. But I was going to mention that Matarazzo's has their own farm stand over in North Caldwell at 216 Mountain Ave., just a little ways north of Bloomfield Ave. It's a really quick drive from Montclair, unless the bridge in Verona is still washed out, though the Saturday traffic on the detour route was nil when I went. They're supposed to be open 9-6, 7 days a week, thru December, but when I was there a couple weeks ago, they had a sign out announcing reduced hours for November. I didn't take note of the details, so call first (973) 226-3289. I found them on the Jersey Fresh site (they also do a stand at the Rutherford mkt), dunno why they didn't show in the above list.

Swell-looking place, & they have coffees, but no tea. Unfathomable.

There's a new place in Montclair (Le Carousel) that has a similar menu, except they don't even bother with the hyphen, it's simply a Prefixed Menu. I keep wondering whether it's an uber-menu or an ur-menu.

What parking lot would that be?

I used to butter my french fries, one by one. (Or, if they were large steak fries, bite by bite.) The trick is to slap a properly sized dab of butter onto the end of the fry & then eat it while the butter is only partially melted, so that you get that little spectrum of melted-thru-unmelted butter texture with each bite. I eventually outgrew this as a regular habit. But sometimes, when I have fries and there's an unfinished pat or crock of butter on the table, I'll revisit this little ritual for nostalgia's sake. And dagnabbit but it's still good!

In NYC, on 8th Ave. just below Madison Sq Garden, there's a Chinese place called the Dinersty Restaurant.

If that is not a typo, that's an excessive amount of sodium, at least for anyone with heart disease &/or high blood pressure. I realize that this may be an atypical dish, due to the soy & Hoisin sauces here, but that sodium content is the kind of thing that makes me steer clear of foods that I don't prepare myself as often as I can. It also raises the question of just how healthy these EMPs are, tasty & convenient though they may be. I guess that depends on the preparer. THere was a brief discussion of this topic (EMP not sodium) a couple of months ago here in the Food Media & News forum, also a link to an earlier brief discussion of the concept.

THese things take much longer to come & go with me. I've been on a pancetta bender for about 4 months now, attempting to perfect my rendition of bucatini / rigatoni / elicoidali amatriciana with a new effort every week or two. Actually it's that combined pancetta + onion flavor that I find so perpetually appealing, with just the right amount of tomato to throw it into relief.....

In Montclair, Danny's Pizza Deli, corner of Forest & Chestnut, is now officially out of business. I drive by this place couple times a week, was wondering about its status, whether they just kept odd hours. Today was the first day I saw the windows papered over & a prominent CLOSED sign on the door. Place is in a residential area, 2 blocks from Montclair High, more or less across the street from a lower-grade school or two. Drive thru around lunchtime, you'll find a hot dog truck parked at Chestnut & Park. Place seems ideal for the school trade, hard to imagine why they folded, unless they just lost touch with what kids want these days.

Hear, hear. Use of oil can speak volumes about the talent of any given chef. It's not about quantity.

Where does Steve Foster think he's living? Kentucky?

I was also going to mention the Taste of Asia space, though it may be a bit larger than what eric is looking for, and yes, daytime parking in that area can be tricky, unless your business has arranged use of the Museum lot.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!!!

A photographic piece de resistance! Beautiful!

Ha! Kate's has become my everyday butter, for as long as I'm working across the street from a Whole Foods. I wonder if Kate's is nationwide now, thanx to WF, or still a regional delicacy.

Can I assume that you folks who don't refrigerate tomatoes & fruits like peaches don't patronize farmers' markets, or if you do, you're able to buy precisely what you need? I tend to overbuy at this time of year, but if I don't refrigerate these things after a certain point, they rot. (Refrigerated ripe tomatoes are returned to ambient temps before consumption of course.) Or is there some rot-prevention trick I've missed?

A bit OT, but there are those who think that, had the same logic been applied to cod catch rules, there might still be a viable Grand Banks cod fishery.

I went through graduate school with a hot plate & my Boy Scout mess kit. No joke. These simple instruments gave me my first self-taught lessons in cooking. Everything was trial & error. My idea of a good meal was to sautee a chopped onion, minced garlic & some ground beef, put the skillet aside while I boiled some spaghetti, then add the cooked spaghetti to the skillet & reheat the mess. Greasy (I eventually learned to spoon off much of the grease) & not very nuanced (salt & pepper may have been involved), but unwittingly Italian in approach. Once in a while I would add tomato sauce to the skillet mixture but for the most part that seemed excessive to me. 30 years later I'm making rigatoni amatriciana every week. Who'd have thunk it!

You're right, I meant guar gum. I guess guano gum reflects how I think of it.

Precisely. If your PB doesn't separate at room temp, then it's got more than peanuts in it. (Probably some form of bean gum or guano gum. Yummy stuff.) I refrigerate my peaches after a certain amount of windowsill ripening because I buy them once a week at the greenmarket, & otherwise they'd rot towards the end of the week.

Camp! It's a Camp! I never shoulda put my 2 cents in....

In Maine the stores sell 2 kinds of salad made from potatoes. One is labeled Potato Salad and the other is labeled Potato Salad With Egg. This seems to be a pragmatic recognition that they are different things, and the ur-Potato Salad has no egg.

Loving this blog! I'll be at the PPM next week, en route to points further north. Timing couldn't be better to whet my appetite. (For any folks from away who may not get this, "camp" is a peculiarly Maineish bit of vernacular, referring to what the rest of the country knows as a "cabin.")

Ah Wondee's. I've been too busy cooking to dine out much, but once the summer produce has run its course, keep your eyes on the ISO thread. Sorry I guess this is a social posting that doesn't advance the cause of culinary belles lettres. Maybe no one will notice. P.S. Intriguing that the Brazilian steakhouse is Korean owned. The cooks are probably Chinese. Does any of this matter? Aha, the linked thread details more about the schizoid nature of this place. Most interesting.

100 years ago, the #1 killer disease was tuberculosis. Heart disease and the like became the #1 killer in part because public health improved to the point where people weren't dying so much of tb, pneumonia, childbirth, farm accidents, and instead were living long enough to have heart attacks, cancer, and so on. I wonder what effect the state would have on public eating habits if they just said, well, eat what you like, but we're not going to pay for the results. ← Then there's the power of taxation, which has surely had some impact on smoking rates. Why don't we tax Big Macs as if they were cigarettes & dedicate the revenue to treating obesity-related conditions? Maybe there'll be a little left over for the helmetless bikers.