YWalker

Here's what I do when I'm making meat pies: I use 16 oz frozen bread dough to make 8 meat pies. Divide the bread dough into 8 portions. Roll each out into a 6" circle. Spoon about 1/2 cup meat mixture onto half of each circle. Brush the edges with egg white wash, and then fold dough over and seal edges with a fork. Place on greased baking sheets. (Reynold’s wrap Release aluminum foil works fine here.) Cover and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. Brush the tops with egg white, and cut slits in the top of each. (I’m thinking that if you wanted to toss some sesame seeds on top before you do the egg white wash, this would go well here, but haven’t tried it yet.) Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until golden brown

Choclava --- a baklava with chocolate. It has a bit of a chocolate hit to it and a nice chocolate drizzle on top, but it's not all about the chocolate. Very tasty, but it is quite sticky. I normally place individual servings in pretty muffin tin liners to make it less messy, or little doilies would be nice. I also use a good quality chocolate, chopped, rather than the chocolate chips called for in the recipe.

Add me to the list of folks who would've been going after what you brought. I'll add to the chorus of those who say you never really know what's going to go over well. I've gotten my feelings hurt when I brought back over half a tray of some gorgeous Chocklava that I brought to a neighborhood party, while the Slice-and-Bake holiday sugar cookies went like gangbusters. The potlucks at work are far more more gratifying. I have a small band of groupies who swoop in and ask "What did you bring?" and are sure to stock up on that before it disappears.

Lance to the rescue! I saw Archway cookies back in my grocery store again last week.

Though I'm not much of a soft drink drinker these days, I think that glass gives a much better beverage than cans or plastic bottles. I'm basing my opinion mostly on my experience with cheerwine, a regional beverage. Cheerwine the in the glass bottles was wonderfully effervescent, with bright red bubbles sparkling out of the bottle at you. It's still sweet and fizzy in the can or plastic bottle, but it's just not quite the same. Cheerwine nirvana is when you find an old country store that sells Cheerwine in the glass bottles and keeps them in an older cooler with the temp set low enough that the cheerwine has started to ice up into a cheerwine slushy inside.

They have several frozen items I like to keep on hand so that my 11 and 15 year old sons can be responsible for fixing dinner from time to time. We all like the barbecue teriyaki chicken and the orange chicken. Usually one of the boys will fix one or the other of those, along with the Asian veggies and some steamed rice once a week. I also like the turkey sausage stromboli --- I keep some in the freezer, either to take to work for lunch, or as a quick grab a meal at home.

Actually, before even reading your post, my response was going to be that there is a kick-ass deli there. It is a couple of doors down from Callahans (the great big beach and Christmas kitsch shop.) Great little deli with some wonderful pastries.

Google "Starlight Double Delight" to find a recipe. It's an old Pillsbury bake-off winner. You make the icing first. It has lots of cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter, chocolate, and mint flavoring. You then use 2 cups of this to make the batter for the cake, and reserve the rest to frost it. It is a delicious cake.

I like the Blueberry Pecan Cake from Cooking Light magazine. It is more of a coffee-cake. I frequently make a couple and go ahead and slice it them into individually wrapped pieces. I then give blueberry pecan cake and cherry-almond scones to a couple of friends on Christmas Eve for them to have for breakfast Christmas morning. (Leaving enough for our family to have the same.) I prefer making it with fresh berries if at all possible. When I use frozen ones, it comes out an ugly purplish color (although the taste is still good.)

I like this Coconut Cream Pie recipe from Bon Appetit. However, in my opinion, the ratio of cream topping to filling is too high in the original recipe. The last time I made it, I tripled the filling recipe and doubled the cream recipe, and made two pies. (In other words, use one and a half times the filling recipe for a single pie.) Not that there's anything wrong with the cream topping --- that was tasty, too. I just felt short-changed on the custardy filling with the original. It sounds like your tastes may be in line with mine.

I think that another factor in the speedy rise and current success of Starbucks is the sale of the frou-frou coffee drinks. I've been to many a Starbucks, but have never bought a straight cup of coffee. It's a Frappucino Light or a Mocha for me. Doctor it up with a nice mix of chocolate and flavored syrups, and you could start with a mixture of brewed twigs. I wonder what percentage of their sales is straight coffee?

Gourmet had this recipe for Apricot Almond Scones a few years ago. I'm not a fan of apricots, so I make it with dried cherries instead. They're very nice.

Add miniature m&m's to your list of toppings. I just had a caramel apple topped with these at the NC State fair this week, and it's a wonderful combination. It looks festive and saves you a lot of chopping as well. They also offered one topped with crushed heath bar that looked very tempting.

I was there for a couple of days last year doing an energy audit, and I went to the Tamarack for dinner. They have a cafeteria there which I believe is operated by the Green Briar. The selections were pretty limited, but it was pretty good. Ambience-wise, it's sort of like eating in a food court, but with a better class of food. The Tamarack is worth going to for itself, though. There's a lot of really neat craft stuff in there. In addition to selling a variety of crafts, they have various "artists in residence" there, and I saw, for instance, some incredible stained glass work in progress there.

You've probably already had your meeting, but I'll throw out another option for next time. I'm very fond of Babymoon Cafe. It's closer to your Raleigh crowd than the Chapel Hill group since it's just off the Airport Blvd exit from I-40. It's casual, but has a very interesting menu.

When my oldest was a baby, my child care provider had a daughter who was in kindergarten. She referred to Parmesan cheese as "Farmer John cheese." She came home from school one day with a notice to the parents of kindergarteners that the school was going to be having a severe weather drill the next day. Sarah had come home and announced "They're having a tomato drill tomorrow!"

I don't think this is what you're after, because it's definitely got a lot more going on than a sugar cookie, but here is a darned good cookie with coconut: Ranger cookies.

When we have office meetings during lunch hour, my boss provides pizza, a bag of mini carrots, soft drinks, and ice. Lately, rather than delivery, he has his wife pick it up and bring it by the office. He has her order it, too. We now get 4 Domino's pizzas, each with the same topping combo: Veggie plus pineapple. Last time we did this, she had to be somewhere at noon. She dropped off our pizzas around 11:15. Lunch was served at around 12:30 or so. Yum.

I just made some of the Chocolate Crackles from the Martha Stewart cookie book (recipe posted above). They are lovely, and really very rich and chocolatey --- almost brownie-like. Rolling it in sugar gives it a nice outer crust. My boys liked them a lot, especially since they don't contain nuts (which they consider to be poisonous.) My usual favorite chocolate cookie is the Death by Chocolate cookie recipe that is shown on the Baker's chocolate wrapper. It is a chocolate cookie with chocolate chunks and nuts. I usually use Baker's chocolate for the cookie itself, and get a really nice chocolate to use for the chunks. It's a very simple drop cookie recipe that always gets ooohs and aaahs.

I had a wonderful child-care provider when my kids were younger. She always made nutritious lunches. Realizing that not everything she made would be to their tastes, she had just a couple of ground rules: They were required to take one bite of new foods. If they didn't like it, they didn't have to eat the rest. Also, if they couldn't say anything nice, they were not allowed to say "Oooh, yuck!" or make other negative comments. I am not a fan of re-fried beans, so they're never served in our household. One day, when I went to pick up the kids, my child care provider came out laughing so hard she was almost in tears. That day, she had served Mexican food, complete with refried beans, for lunch. She had seen "the look" in my 5 year old son's eyes, and reminded him that if he couldn't say anything nice, he shouldn't say anything at all. He replied that "That looks like really nice dog poop." ***** And, another kid-ism from my own childhood. I was the 4th of 5 kids, so it was very common for my Mom to be kept busy baking things for school bake sales, sending stuff in for our classrooms, etc. [unlike today, when NC schools say that parent-baked goods are forbidden because they might carry food poisoning.] One time when Mom was baking cookies and was surrounded by kids who wanted a sample, she said "Hands off! Those are for the bake sale." My sister Cathy replied "Can I just have this big ugly one over here?" Forever after that, when my Mom was baking, there were always a few "Big Uglies" left for us to sample.

I know where it is, but I haven't been in there yet. It's on Chapel Hill Street. If you take the Durham Freeway north from I-40, take the Chapel Hill Street exit. Make a right onto Chapel Hill Street at the top of the ramp. Go through a stoplight on the other side of the overpass; go up another block and go through a second stoplight, and it will be on about the second block on your left (before you get to the third stoplight.)

I love Sawasdee Thai Restaurant off Capital Boulevard in Raleigh. The pad khing chicken is wonderful --- the vegetables are fresh, and the sauce has a crisp, bright, hot flavor. I'd tell you how the other dishes are, but I love the pad khing chicken so much, I haven't been able to bring myself to try something else. Daniel's Pizza Pasta Cafe in Apex is very nice, too. I generally go for the shrimp fra diavolo. The seafood fra diavolo has mussels, shrimp, and calamari done just right --- not rubbery. If you like it hot, though, you need to ask for them to make it hot. (Apparently this is a backlash to a bunch of patrons complaining that their shrimp fra diavolo was too hot.) I love their decadent brownie for dessert --- a rich brownie, with chocolate chips, and ganache, with a white chocolate swirl, served on a rich chocolate sauce. You wouldn't go here for the atmosphere --- but it's a nice place to take the family and eat very well. Don't be surprised to see a line out the door. Another favorite place is Babymoon Cafe in RTP. I haven't had anything there that I didn't like. One of my favorites is the Italian Quesadilla appetizer (with Andouille sausage, chicken, roasted peppers, caramelized onions and mozzarella). It's made a little bit differently every time I've been there, but it's always good.