Katherine

I would have to disagree with this. My mother's generation grew up serving two or more vegetables with every cooked meal, she followed this custom, and I still do. Clearly this tradition has generally been lost if the current perception is that it never existed. When did this happen? And I have never been served the "fresh vegetable medley" in the title of this thread, although I have been served many overcooked vegetables while traveling in the Southeast. Is it regional (ie, not served in the Northeast), or is it only served in the expensive type of restaurant I never eat in?

I can't recall where I read this, and I'm not a lemon curd person myself, but I did read once that an unthinking person made the recipe by creaming together the butter and sugar, then beating in egg yolks, followed by addition of the rest of the ingredients. It came out completely smooth very easily, to the surprise of the author of the article.

Hey, I know that guy! Another advantage of this flexitarianism is that you can be santimonious about your dietary choices and tell other people what changes they should make in their diet, yet still be able to eat unlimited amounts of meat when it suits you. Like a boss I used to have always did. Grrrr...

I make an omuraisu-inspired dish by filling an omelet (standard or rolled) with plain or buttered rice. Yum. I think they call it fusion.

I always do it for (I'm guessing here) about an hour at 350º, but I usually serve it slightly before it becomes totally shatterable. I've never run into bacon that's too tough to eat like this. Did you change bacon brands? It sounds like yours is too lean. If so, you should buy a fattier brand. Otherwise, it's just pork jerky.

The hostess at a party I once attended offered me wine, which turned out to be Arbor Mist pink zinfandel. Gack.

It seems Häagen-Dazs is big on discontinuing good flavors. In addition to the two you have listed, others have mentioned Elberta Peach, plus my favorite chocolate gelato which I posted previously (they say they still make the chocolate gelato, but I haven't seen it anywhere in quite awhile). I also find it annoying that I can only find their Belgian chocolate in a few of their ice cream shops, I have never seen it in the stores.I think it's part of the marketing plan, not just for one super-premium ice cream maker, but for all. They think most people are always cruising for new flavors (they may be right), so they continually churn their product line. It's the exception rather than the rule when a flavor becomes permanent.

Please remember that not everyone who opens a restaurant or food store is talented. It is like everything else in life...... There's only one bakery in my town. Everything they make is overcooked or just plain dry. At one point I wanted to open a coffeeshop, but the town is too far from the nearest metropolis to get fresh baked goods delivered, so it would have to have been me doing the baking or Sysco. So I didn't do it.

When I made corned beef, I just used some sort of generic mixed pickling spices I got in a bulk pack at the local Vietnamese grocery. It worked great, the only thing it was missing was peppercorns. Whoops, I'd better thaw a hunk now if I'm going to eat it this week.

A local farm here in Maine collects their sap in special plastic bags, which are closed except for the spigot port. More sanitary that way, with less chance of debris entering the container. In case anybody is thinking of trying to boil their sap down in a kettle over a wood fire outdoors, forget it! My ex-husband did this one year. We had a year's worth of syrup that was full of smoke and wood ash. Eeeuuww.

I have wide feet, too, and I've never found a pair of clogs that was remotely shaped like my feet. Me, too. Some people's feet were not meant to wear shoes. You just learn to jump back really quickly after dropping something.

Impressive work, ronnie. I am also impressed by your collection of paprikas.

As near as I can see in my reading of this page, what he's trying to tell us is that HE's not going to be the one writing the Random Thoughts column anymore. If you read the snippet at the end, it says You subscribe, right? Back up a page to where it says They're trying to get us to join the Chocolatier Gold Club for $199 and get a lifetime subscription. Doesn't sound like a magazine about to fold to me. So wipe away those tears, and read it again. You'll feel lots better.

Like an antimet fish, only not.

My daughter and I were sitting in a Brazilian buffet. Picking some small round nuggets out of a brown gravy, she said, "This is really good. What is it?" "Chicken hearts," I said. A shadow crossed her face as she realized how far what she was eating had pushed her into the unknown. She pushed it away, unable to savor another bite.

Eating in the car is precariously close to refueling the body, and less like enjoying a meal.

Bacon bits in caesar salad? Doesn't that make it...something else?

It did appear that you liked what you were eating until you found it had Miracle Whip in it, which is a decidedly downscale ingredient. In the same way, he used to like pasta, but only recently realized not that he tired of it and no longer likes it (were he still able to eat it, that is), but that it never was any good. Often the reputation of an oft-denigrated product is based on its routine misuse or overuse. I recently started using a touch of MSG in my seitan, and I find this takes the edge off the bready flavor. Yet previously I would not have dreamed of having any in my house, and for that reason had never purchased it before. Perhaps this is a different issue than the one you intended to discuss. My bad.

You seem to be framing the argument as follows: I liked X until I heard somthing that made me realize that X contains something that is too downscale/not expensive enough for me, therefore... I now realize that I never liked X. It's been argued before. Click here to read eight pages about the horrors of pasta.

The only "Mexican" or "Chinese" food that most of the country has accepted is the type which is so watered down that no native would even recognize it.

Now we're getting closer. I would define "picky" entirely differently than the article. I think a picky person is one who limits their diet severely, and refuses to eat if their favorite brand or type of food is not available, not a person who wants more shapes of baloney available in lunchables, and certainly not a person who demands dozens of types of lettuce in top condition. That Applebee's quote is a real winner: the people in the kitchens at Applebee's have no flexibility whatever. They are limited to switching sauces, or omitting items from the plates.

Try banana chocolate chip pancakes. Hallucinogenically good. You don't sound like you've traveled abroad much. I think that getting a proper breakfast like this abroad would be a rare and wondrous thing. I'm in a hurry on a workday, so it's usually grapefruit or juice and fried eggs or an omelet with leftover vegetables, toast only on the rare occasions I have bread. No time for potatoes. On Sunday, the only day when I'm sure to be home at brunch time, or any other day it turns out I don't need to go into work in the AM, I might cook meat, such as ham, bacon, or sausage (true breakfast sausage meat, so common here, is but so poorly understood abroad), homefries, scrambled eggs with cream, cooked over simmering water. Or homefries smothered in onions, bacon, and cheese. Or hashbrowns, thinly crispy, rolled with or smothered with onions and cheese (bacon would be pushing the grease threshold here). Grits good, but only when homemade, where you can properly salt them during the cooking process. Tea. Always.

I just made a kabocha squash stew with spicy seitan (cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, and nutmeg), sweet and hot red peppers, onions, and garlic, in a creamy gravy made from a pumpkin seed milk. Lunch for the week. Kabocha is the dry kind of squash I prefer, but I only see it about once a year. Maybe this is a good sign?

Can you give us an ingredients list for the buttercream that didn't thicken up properly? I didn't find it on their website? Alternatively, what are you looking for in a buttercream? The filling recipe from the time/life series Foods of the World The Cooking of Vienna's Empire, Copyright 1968 & 1974) calls for the following: 1½ cups sugar ¼ teaspoon cream of tarter 2/3 cup water 8 egg yolks 1/2 cup dark unsweetened cocoa 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 cups unsalted butter, softened To summarize, you boil the first three ingredients to 238ºF, whip the egg yolks until thick and light, slowly pour in the syrup and beat until thick and cool (I recommend a stand mixer here), about 15 minutes. Then beat in cocoa, vanilla, and finally the butter, which you have beaten to the consistency of mayonnaise. As long as you wait for the egg yolks to cool completely to room temperature, this recipe will work great. Otherwise, it could be severely messed up if you let the butter melt by rushing it.

You mean the same old boring winner ? I never tire of a great dish. I'm probably not unique in that I've never thrown away a recipe I really like and cook well. Might only prepare it once or twice a year - but I won't throw it away because it's not trendy anymore. Why do some people think we have to throw away restaurants (not that I was particularly impressed with this one - I'm just talking in general)? Robyn This argument has been done to death, but that was before your time here, Robyn. It's all a matter of worldview: how does a person view the term 'evolution' - merely a series of changes, or as progress towards some assumed goal of 'perfection' - and where do food, cooking, cuisine, and restaurants fit into the picture? Clearly food in general is in a state of flux in our culture. In many other cultures and culinary traditions, your view - that a dish, once perfected, is always perfect - is predominant. I have not traveled as much as you, but I have observed this more than not. Go to Quebec City and see small restaurants striving to duplicate classics of French cooking. Go to Spain and enjoy the simplicity of traditional foods in their glory in small everyday venues. Unfortunately, we have no "national cuisine" of our own, as this country has been in the "throw the bathwater out, damn the baby - progress must be made" mode for at least a century. So we fixate on change - is it changing? No? Then it's old, tired, yesterday, sooo nineties. Do something, even if it's wrong! The moneyed cognoscenti have set their own jaded palates as the only criteria for goodness in food. Expensive restaurants are where food is happening, and anthing else is barely edible, doesn't count. To this type of eater, the goal of "home cooking" is not to feed the family with healthy, economical, soul-satisfying food, but to precisely duplicate specific restaurant meals. So when these diners travel, they spend all or almost all their time and money visiting culinary "theme parks", leaving little or no time to explore the culture of the places they passed through. At the bottom of the ladder, people seek merely the newest junk food and fast food - they don't have the kind I liked last time, but this one's new, so it must be better.