Lindacakes

Hmmmm . . . you could have done a combo. I made a recipe, I think from the Brass sisters cookbook, that was a gooey sort of butterscotch brownie with a merengue topping. Very big hit at the poker party.

Complete lack of engineering: Buy a simple, standard wastebasket (metal, black, round, about knee height) from Staples. Line this with the plastic bag they put your groceries in, two handled type. Empty this every morning or night as it does not hold much.

I vote for a square of date nut bread with a piped-on flourish of cream cheese.

I vote for fish sticks. I like the McDonald's Filet O Fish sandwich. I haven't done this for years, but you started and now I will: Gorton's on an egg roll (meaning egg in the batter, they're yellowy) with tartar sauce and sprouts. The fish stick itself has to have a batter composed of tiny grains, a la McDonald's. Batter is okay, but the tiny grains of fried goodness are best. Yes, it reminds me of childhood and young adulthood when one could eat unlimited fish sandwiches in the college cafeteria. I'm off to Istanbul soon and I'm looking forward to a fish sandwich served from the side of a boat, caught there cooked there eaten there. This would have no batter, and the best fish sandwich of my life had no batter (eaten in Key West, very thick fish). Fish sticks. Yes!

I was just at Delmonico's for restaurant week. It depends on what you're after. I went for the Old New York of it, I wasn't expecting much, and I enjoyed it for what I was after. I had Lobster Newburg, Chicken a la Keene, and Baked Alaska. My partner had the scallops and bacon thingy, the beef and cabbage thingy and Baked Alaska. The food was meh. My favorite thing was the bread that included cranberry and walnuts from the bread basket . . . Those who had steaks looked like they had ordered more wisely. I loved the dining room and the murals. It was last Thursday's snow storm and it was lovely. That was what I was after and that was very satisfying. Since you said you also like that, and you have a price break, why not give it a try? I did go on a little Baked Alaska nut afterward, because it had it's merits (I'd not had one before) but I thought I could do much, much better. I would do it with a brownie on the bottom . . .

This woman is begging you to set boundaries for her.

I never thought of it as a New York problem as much as a cultural problem, at least as far as the liqueur question goes. I drink a lot of liqueur and I make a lot of it, otherwise I buy it at Astor. There seems to be almost a taboo on drinking a light drink or a sweet drink. Too effeminate, not educated enough of a palette, whatever. Bitters are considered a food, it has something to do with Prohibition. Prohibition gave us a variety of odd cocktail culture hangovers, the most odious of which is the maraschino cherry.

Gallo pinto (rice and beans) plate breakfast (which would include eggs, cheese, fruit, etc.) in Costa Rica is very tasty. I'm a real sucker for the nutella served in Italian hotel breakfast rooms, slathered on bread, croissants, whatever you have available, and polished off with apricot yogurt. Italian nutella is different from American nutella. Any breakfast must include the local coffee and the darker, stronger, blacker, richer, racier, the local coffee, well, the better.

I would agree that there are two threads of distaste. One is that you've somehow changed, either physically or in your tastes and the other is that the food itself has changed. Most of the foods we are saying we no longer like are packaged foods. The final chapter of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is about flavor factories in Elizabeth, New Jersey. (There's an interesting scent counterpart in Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, and we know that smell and taste are closely related . . . ) The formulations change with tastes and economics. I don't believe that many, if not most, of the foods of our childhood bear any resemblance to what they were back then. Fig Newtons are a good case in point. I used to like Fig Newtons and I can't imagine swallowing a bite of one, let alone eating the whole thing. i don't think my rarefied taste in food accounts for that. Children have more tastebuds than we do, our tastebuds die throughout our lifetime and we will have fewer as we age. Broccoli actually tastes bad to children. (I know that there are exceptions to this and that some children love sushi, etc.) Subtle tastes are lost on kids. I think it's true that we have changed at the same time the food has changed.

What a sweet topic. New year's food dreams. Upthread made me vow that this will be the year that I finally make an avocado pie. I will open and eat the bottle of preserved lemons that I have in the cupboard. And I promise to make something from salt cod at home. I've been going to the farmer's market each week and selecting something I've never prepared, and preparing it. Turnips were a revelation, cooked in butter and brown sugar.

DarcieB, I find your comments very interesting. I'm in agreement, although I confess I don't have a lot of experience with the book. Probably because I haven't been thrilled with the recipes I've tried. I'd be curious to know where you go for pie recipes, as someone on the pie side.

A knob of butter.

Two fingers of bourbon.

That is absolutely stunning.

Thanks for the tips. I noticed that several of Nick Malgieri's recipes are in Julia Child's Baking with Julia.

My mother-in-law once asked me to dredge parsnips in flour before she roasted them. I really must try them again. NY Times reporter must be lurking here, because there's an article on rutabagas . . .

Cookies. I don't think there is a packaged cookie I can tolerate.

I know you like Nick Malgieri recipes, because if you search his name, there are many references to his recipes here . . .

I vote for brownies. I don't disagree on the cute kid food, but I am completely sympathetic to kids who want cute food. When I was a kid, about the best you could do was a box of animal crackers. My mother bribed me to keep quiet with boxes of those, and I loved them. Sure, you can put some cookies in a plastic bag, but that box! That string!

I realized that several of my all time favorite recipes are Nick Malgieri's -- I regularly crave his Browned Butter Hazelnut Financier, Date Walnut Bread, and Supernatural Brownies. Curious to know if others have a favorite recipe and greedy to save the time of discovering them by myself. What do you love?

A. It would be interesting to know exactly how many silver dragees it would take to put someone in danger of turning grey . . . Extrapolated by dividing how many silver dragees per cookie and how many Italian weddings you would have to attend to reach critical dragee mass? B. It's interesting that dragees get outlawed just as the use of cunning gold embellishment on chocolates rises. C. I have got a bottle of French dragees I'm willing to let go . . . for an undisclosed sum.

I may be the only person in New York to say this, but I didn't like these. I tried at least six flavors. There was no taste of ricotta, certainly no taste of ewe's milk ricotta to me, all "flavor".

Barbara Davis Hyman wrote a biography of her mother, Bette Davis, called My Mother's Keeper. She tries to do a sort of Mommy Dearest number on Bette, but somehow, Bette's personality is too entertaining to take it seriously. Your poking the butter story reminds me of an extremely funny passage in which the daughter is describing how Bette Davis would make macaroni and cheese, which meant heating up some frozen macaroni and cheese, but the ritual was elaborate and involved poking the macaroni at regular intervals, while keeping watch over it, cigarette in hand. This rates as superior food writing, if anyone cares to seek it out. For me, procrastibaking is about the incredible care with which every ingredient is measured, each one stowed back in its rightful place before the next one is approached. Exquisite care with the mise en place, checking it twice. The screech of the stainless steel spatula against the stainless steel measuring cup. To me, very calming. Puts the whole world right. That perfect one cup of sparkling sugar, what could be wrong?

Personally, I can't navigate one of those silicone spoonula things. Cannot possibly use it. I am a big fan of the Oxo, too. And I hate Oxo implements in general. I also like a bamboo spoon with a deep bowl that I got in Chinatown -- use it for a ladle.

I bought one recently, at an antique store, because I've been haunted by the image of a friend's kitchen for a very long time. She has a wall of antique mezzalunas and they are beautiful, beautiful. It makes a decent bench knife for pastry. Sometimes art is what you are after, rather than efficiency.