Lindacakes

The Doorbell Rings. Food Arrives. A Poem, by Henry Gibson The day is long. Exhaustion descends. A call is made. From the Williamsburg bridge. The doorbells rings. Food arrives. From the wonderful Italian restaurant around the corner. All is right with the world. This restaurant is a locus for the locals. A womb for the wounded. A place for old-school Catholics to eat seafood on Friday. It’s a wonderful place to be. And also a wonderful place from which to order carry out. You can call and ask what the specials are. Someone will tell you about five dishes that are not available on the regular menu, but only available on a rotating basis. You have to wait for the pork chops to come around again. This is what you’ll find in the bag: Linguini with clam sauce. Eggplant rollatini. Chicken soup with tiny shells. Salad with lots of vinegar. Thick wheat bread slices. After plating: Note that Ernie is standing on a T-stand. I trained him to do this as a baby, and bless his heart, he’s really good about it. For the most part, he eats his dinner from the T-stand and does not wander around taking food from plates. I feed him. This behavior is reinforced by not feeding him if he wanders, especially when he wanders up my arm and onto my shoulder. Don't think I'm superior -- my last parrot would walk across the pizza. Normally, he eats soup from a soup spoon and he relishes it, but this is more entertaining: You noticed the bread that was in the first picture of the food, fresh out of the bag? I don’t keep bread in the house. So when there’s carry out Italian food, I keep the bread as a treat. This showed up on the breakfast table this morning. Toasted. Buttered. And embellished with cow/sheep/goat robiola.

Thanks for the notes on Holly. You are the second person to tell me he is a he. I'm anxious to send this link to a friend of mine who has a son named Hollister (part of a twin set known as Hollister and Porter). I'm also anxious to see Sandwiches You Will Like. I have had this in the NetFlix cue for some time due to a thread on food movies. Other half laughed at me. Now, of course, she wants to see it. She's the one who cleans the grease stains out of my shirts. A saint. I am behind in my blogging due to full time job. I was just going to take a picture of my desk after I whacked the crumbs out of my keyboard for you, but I apparently did that not long ago because the result wasn't photogenic. Coming later today: Last night's dinner, also served on Fiestaware. We have other dishes. Those are the everyday dishes. Ernie gets to use it too, but he does have his own bird crocks. This morning's breakfast, which is a derivative of last night's dinner. What I just ate for lunch, which involved tuna. Which I pay eleven dollars a jar for. Tuna belly. The vegetable box. It's Thursday, it comes on Thursday. The process of doing this is really pointing out to me how much of my life is influenced by the information I absorb about food. Mostly from eGullet and The Splendid Table and Good Food podcasts. Daisy sour cream is a new discovery of mine and I am determined to get the word out. Everyone please go out and buy some and then make a dish you really like to have sour cream on. You will be so happy.

Geez, it was an accident that I posted an ode to the Cake Dance after Melkor's post. How awkward . . . But, I have to say, American culture is filled to the gills with food guilt and diet advice. And I think it's a fabulous thing that we're having this discussion. And I think we should be talking about vegetables and health and even exercise. And especially cultural issues and political issues related to food. But I also think we're here to celebrate the joy of food, the amazing net that holds us together as a planet, the vast vast world that implies. And there aren't too many places you can honestly do that. Hence, I think, the magnet that eGullet is.

Quel idea! First, you serve the cake. Everyone thoroughly enjoys the cake. Then the rug is rolled back. The ritual cake dance begins. The guests cover in sweat. The gods are appeased.

It is the lunchbox I mostly use -- it's lightweight, if you're careful with it it won't leak. I read all sorts of frightening information about the off-gassing of plastic and stopped using Tupperware-type containers. I still use the disposable ZipLoc containers, as the off-gassing is supposed to be worse over time. The right name for the chemical problem is Bisphenol-A. I did a lot of research into the lunchbox! There's a lot of people trying to deal with that challenge. I like this one because I don't have to carry an extra bag, I can slip it in my shoulder bag. I imagine there are many clever Japanese solutions to this problem. Hummingbirdkiss, doll, has anyone over in Fat Pack mentioned high fructose corn syrup? Your post (especially the part about skin folds) made me very sad. Sharing, yes. Sharing was recommended by a Weight Watchers leader and it's a good idea. All of the fun of making it and then more fun when you share it. I usually bake once a week, on Sunday, and then share it. There will be sharing this week.

An Announcement. Girl Scout cookies are in season. A box arrived from our niece in Atlanta. With orders for the office. The cookies have been dispensed, the money has been collected, it's safe to bring our boxes home. You will hear more about them this evening. Last night we ordered in. Italian. More about this later, too. Although I reveal this sugar/pasta/bread display with some dismay. Note Fat Pack thread. A dark cloud has passed over the party. The F word is being used. The head hangs. But I do not eat offal.

I heard about the article on NPR this morning and I couldn't believe it. Just finished reading it. And I am absolutely amazed. It's an article about food and cooking and dieting and weight management. And it is, with some small exception, an article about men. Well, welcome to the pressure, guys! Come on in, we've been waiting for ya!

Thank you for pointing out that it is my fourth anniversary today. When I look at my time/post ration, it would seem as though I lurk a lot.

In Which Questions are Answered and Confessions are Made. Thank you everyone who is responding to my posts! I love this community and I’m really happy to see that so many of us are bird owners. Face it, birds are cool, and it’s fun to eat with birds. When I was heart-brokenly between parrots, I did a lot of eating out so that I didn’t have to go home to the emptiness and I really missed eating with a parrot. I earlier made a sweeping statement about poisonous foods, thinking no one out there would really know what I was talking about. You’re right, not all of those foods are “poisonous” to birds, although I am of the understanding that chocolate and avocado are. Caffeine and alcohol are just bad ideas. Kouign Aman (geez, I love those things, the pastry, I mean) conjectured on the concept of a wired parrot and I’d have to agree with that. Ernie is non-stop, practically even when he is sleeping, and the very idea of a hepped-up conure winging his way about the house sends a shiver down my spine. CaliPoutine asked if Ernie flys. Ernie’s wings are clipped and sometimes when he gets shaggy, he can take a little soar, especially if he’s scared. Which is why many a bird owner clips her bird’s wings, for the bird’s own safety. This way, he can’t fly into a boiling pot or some other ghastly place. There are different schools of thought on this, but I believe the convention is to clip for safety. It also keeps the bird tamer. Kim asked for some pictures of the neighborhood. This is my street. It is a lot prettier when there are leaves on the trees. These are the enemy condos. Two of them anyway. I can answer Margo’s question about art as business or pleasure by talking about the condos. 9/11 focused people’s interest on New York, and a lot of young people moved here afterwards. And since then, there has been a lot of construction of new “luxury” housing in New York. Which is taller, and with much bigger windows, and more ammenities (think washers, dryers, dish washers) that I’m not sure the physical infrastructure of a city as old as New York can handle, but that’s another blog. The condos block my view of the city now, but I watched the World Trade Center fall from my roof. That morning, Lynn had left for work, and she came back in saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center; that it was on fire. So we went up there to take a look, and saw that indeed there was a fire and we thought (like everyone) that a small plane had hit the building. We tried to get in the car and go to work, and in that time, the first tower fell. We turned around and went back home and up to the roof with a pair of binoculars, a radio and a camera and held vigil. Within minutes, we saw the second tower fall. And my life changed in a very interesting way at that moment. Watching a building melt presented me with the concept that buildings were ephemeral, which was a brand new way of looking at things. And I read a book by the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci which I found disappointingly reactionary, but she presented a European viewpoint, a viewpoint formed by the destruction of cities in World War II. That architecture, and the artwork it often protects, is also vulnerable. So I decided it was important to see those buildings and that artwork with my own eyes, as soon as possible. Which brings me to the question Heidih asked, about espresso and the other revelations of Italy. I went to Italy to see artwork, I took several trips and saw as much as I could, and fell in love with the food. A girl has got to eat in between museums. She can’t just pass out in a gallery. It isn’t nice. The one food that I think was most revelatory to me was white truffles. I didn’t know anything about them, and in the little town of San Gimignano where not much has changed since the plague of 1348, I ordered a risotto that came with white truffles shaved on top. When I got back from Italy, I went to all sorts of fancy shmancy Italian restaurants trying to replicate that. And it wasn’t possible. Another revelation: food actually tastes best near the soil in which it is grown, prepared by the people who have been living there all their lives. Which is why we cannot get a Shank's and Evelyn’s chicken cutlet sandwich in Paris. This link just in: Holly Eats. She’s apparently an eGulleter. God bless you, Holly, for making the grease stains on our shirts respectable. On topic: today’s lunch. Packed in my Sigg lunchbox. Available at Reusable Bags. These are excellent, but if you get one, be careful with the rubber gasket. Too hot water loosens it and then the tomato juice from your lunch leaks all over your handbag. Actual vegetable matter. A nice chickpea/tomato/onion/ginger salad with cooked kale and some fruit on the side.

Katie, I am sorry I missed you, truly sorry. I'm glad I stumbled on some good stuff all the same. My favorite detail on the ladies behind the counter was the average fingernail length. I was in awe. What is that sandwich with what looks like a nice long, breaded and fried slice of eggplant, a cereal bowl of green spinachy looking stuff (chard?), some cheese, and etc.? The guy at the counter next to me had one of those and I was seriously jealous. I could not figure out what it was based on the menu. There were no traffic problems in or out of either of the cities, some sort of miracle. Next time I'm around, I'll drop you a line and perhaps we can meet up. I'm always prepared to sit at the knee of an imbibification expert. I extend the same invitation to you, and anyone who knows Lindacakes from eGullet and is in the city: PM me and we shall eat and drink together. I enter the shower filled with fresh mozzarella regrets.

A Little Road Trip to Philadelphia. Today we have tickets to the Frida Kahlo show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This exhibit is in honor of the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Lynn is a printmaker and I am a hand bookbinder, and we travel for art. We have been to the Blue House outside Mexico City and have stood in Frida Kahlo’s kitchen. I thought about this, of course, in this crossroads of food and art and Frida. We left the house in a bit of a rush after having drunk another of those Green Vibrance shakes, same ingredients as yesterday. I asked Lynn to grab some fruit as the fruit is in her kitchen. She forgot. This is one of the problems of having two kitchens – the food is sort of scattered in the house and it takes some coordinating. I remembered to grab a candy bar. A Daim bar. This is a Swedish Heath bar, and supposedly better, at least according to the Top 100 issue of Saveur. I am a hunter/gatherer when it comes to food. I enjoy seeking and following leads, and trying something new. Since I love Heath bars, I tracked the Daim bar to a candy store on the Lower East Side of New York called The Sweet Life. Which was an interesting candy store to visit. I bought my mother some beautiful chocolate eggs wrapped in foil printed with a traditional Ukranian easter egg pattern. And I bought a half dozen Daim bars, thinking I would make coffee ice cream and throw some pieces in. Well, I was disappointed. I like Heath much better. It’s thicker, it’s toffee-er. I managed to choke them down all the same, as this particular Daim bar was the last one of the batch. So we ate it in the car. And then, pretty soon, long about the time we passed the Molly Pitcher rest stop (all of the rest stops on the run through New Jersey between New York and Philly have names) I had to pee and I had to have something to eat. And it has finally happened. I have eaten something I am afraid to shoow you. People, I give you: The Cinnabon. So I stopped. And we each got a Cinnabon and a cup of coffee. This is the tray of Cinnabons, lying in wait. This basket of capsules that appear to be filled with sugar sauce caught my eye. I neglected to ask, but I wondered what was up with that? Were those capsules free, as in just take some extra sugar sauce if you want it? Or were they for sale? And how much were they? The Molly Pitcher rest area has a dining room, but it smelled like they had recently applied a cleaning product to the floors, so we opted to do the American thing and eat in the car. This is the Cinnabon, in case you haven’t seen one or if you forgot what they look like. It wasn’t very good. Normally I like eating these. It would seem as though they’ve toned down the sugar sauce and poured it in the capsules for you to take. Some damn fool must have complained that there was too much sugar sauce dripping down inside the beating heart of a Cinnabon. I vowed never to eat another. So, in between meals, we drove to the museum and enjoyed the Frida Kahlo show. Her paintings are small, so they don’t really do well in a large show, and there were a lot of small photographs, so there were many times in which we had to wait in small lines to view photographs or paintings. I had my iPod, which I cannot visit a museum without, and I listened to Chavela Vargas, a Mexican singer, and looked at these wonderful paintings. The exhibit presented Frida as a cultural rebel, but not as a political rebel or a sexual rebel, so that was disappointing. We were seriously hungry when we left the museum, and we drove over to the Italian market section on 9th Street. This is about a six block stretch of old town, with mostly Italian food stores lining both sides. I really enjoy this sort of alternative market style shopping, so it was great fun. I was surprised to happen on Fantes. I love Fantes as a mail order source for kitchenware, but I hadn’t realized it would be right here! Even though we were practically skeletal from starvation, we went right in and had a really good time shopping. Remember upthread I said I had everything I could possibly want for my kitchen. Ho ho, grasshopper. I found a nice cherry red colander I’d been looking for, some demitasse spoons for the espresso, some silicone ice cube trays that are supposed to make perfectly square ice cubes (which everybody, especially Felix, needs) and a Polder clock timer. The sweet kitchen has one of these fabu timers, and the savory kitchen sorely needs one. If you are a nerd, like I am sometimes, or if you are growing old, like I am sometimes, you can hang it around your neck so you don’t forget you have something in the oven. It has a magnet so you can put it on the fridge. Which is what I want to do with it, because we don’t have a kitchen clock. While we were checking out, I asked the manager-type guy sitting there if he knew where a certain restaurant that had been recommended to us was. And he didn’t know, no one knew. So I asked him where to eat. And he asked me what sort of place I was looking for. And I said I wanted a place I could write home about. So he sent us to Shank’s and Evelyn’s. Lynn ordered a roast beef sandwich, which came on a nice soft bun dripping with gravy and I ordered a chicken cutlet parmesean which came on a nice soft bun dripping with tomato sauce. They came with a side dish of pickles and peppers. I didn’t eat any of this, but my dad would have loved it. These were really good sandwiches and the man in Fantes was right. After lunch, of course, we needed to do some food shopping. We went into Claudio King of Cheese. They have these giant provolone logs hanging inside the door. They make you want to punch them. I didn’t punch them. Lynn found some cracker type things she’d been given at a friend’s house that she was really excited about – Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas. These are individually wrapped in wax paper and imported from Spain. Naturally, we needed some cheese to go with those, so we tasted and decided on Saint Andre and Delice de Bourgone. While Lynn was yakking it up with the guy behind the counter who wanted to swap tasting notes on the Sweet Olive Oil Tortas, I picked out some really nice soft dried figs and some green olives stuffed with gorgonzola. I cannot wait until we eat these on Saturday night. After all of this heavy shopping, we needed a little pick-me-up. With all that Italiana around, naturally there was a coffee bar. Cappucino and cookies. Cookies filled with chocolate and hazelnut. I’m Italian, so I can say this: Italian sweets rarely taste as good as they look, unless you are eating them in Italy. That being eaten, we were free to get in the car and drive home, which we did. And after we put our loot away we made dinner. I made a crab pie on Sunday – a potato crust filled with crab meat and pepper jack. I’d also made beets. So I heated up the crab pie, and left the beets cold and mixed freshly grated horseradish into some sour cream to make a little dip for the beets. I bought the horseradish at the farmer’s market this fall. I peeled it, cut it into small pieces, and froze it. Came out fine. Hot tips: The idea for beets with horseradish and sour cream came from Dolores Casella’s The Complete Vegetable Cookbook. Which you can get used from Amazon or half.com, when it comes around. Daisy sour cream is the best. Try it. Ernie had some sweet potatoes and kiwi.

St. Patrick’s Day. Well, lunch was a disappointment. In fact, lunch tasted like a--. I hate it when I have a bad lunch. I met my friends Vanessa and Elisabeth in the Village, at the Elephant and Castle. The E & C has been on Greenwich Avenue since before God was born, but I’ve never eaten there. It’s just one of those places, one of those places very close to where both Vanessa and Elisabeth work. Normally, in a place like this, I would order a burger, but since that beef debacle, I don’t eat beef anymore. Certainly not ground beef. I ended up ordering a salad, because bacon and avocado sounded good. I asked the waitress to throw some chicken on my salad. I got a bowl of iceberg lettuce soaking in a cream sauce. Somehow, I was confused, because there was no avocado. I ate the bacon, the two gumballs of chicken, a couple of slimy cherry tomatoes and an unfortunate slice of pear. Once this petty crime was over, while we were waiting for Elisabeth to show, we ordered dessert. What I wanted was carrot cake, but you know how bad carrot cake can be when it’s bad and I had a feeling the E & C had no pastry pride. If I can pause here to whine, this is the lament of the baker. You absolutely cannot eat a baked good, any sort of dessert, really, outside of the confines of your own home. Why? Because it all sucks. It is not made with organic flour, butter, eggs and milk like it is in my house. It’s not made in a small, careful batch. I admit, sometimes the desserts are divine, but mostly, I could do much, much better. So, what do I do? I order the Viennese crepe! I kid you not. I’m thinking chocolate, hazelnuts, okay, that will take the taste of the salad bowl out of my mouth. WRONG. Just look at it. It doesn’t even look like a crepe, it looks like a burrito. Well, it was a burrito. Stuffed with Hersey’s syrup interrupted by two or three chewable pieces that were likely the hazelnuts. Enough said. After that, I had time to kill before my next meal. I checked the movie schedules, and nothing within walking distance was of interest, so I wandered around. I wandered up town and of course, I wandered into Williams Sonoma. It’s sad, and yet a relief that I’ve gotten to that point where there’s nothing I want from a kitchen store. And Williams Sonoma has gone down hill, hasn’t it? They’ve gotten way too far into holidays and packaged foods. I continued my wanderings and wandered right into New York Cake and Baking. I like NYCB, I find it a peaceful place to poke around, and I thought you might like to see it. It’s an enormous baking supply store. They have a huge stock of baking pans, cookie cutters, flavors, sanding sugars, paste flowers, you name it. This is the store window, inviting you to come inside and revel in the wonders of sugar. This is Oz for you bakers. Close up on some of the merch – bulk chocolate and paste flowers: It was tough for me to be idle. I went to Barnes and Noble for a while and looked through Martha Stewart Living. Nothing there, really. But I’m not making this up. I am really thinking about food all the time. So, I’m off to Peter McManus, an Irish bar in Chelsea where they have a pretty good corned beef sandwich. I eat a corned beef sandwich once a year, and for a very long time this single corned beef sandwich was consumed in a Jewish deli somewhere downtown, usually the Second Avenue Deli. (Which recently got chased out of the space they’d had since before God was born and are now up on 33rd Street.) Then one year, just for the heck of it, I decided to try the Irish version for a change, oafish clientele in the bar or not. This particular St. Paddy’s day was on a Saturday, and the folks in the bar had been in there drinking all day, or, at least since the parade was over. And it was kind of fun. I inquired, and was invited to look under a police officer’s kilt. I decked a guy. And then I decided that it was sort of more fun than the Second Avenue Deli. This is the supply of liquor ready and waiting. This one of New York’s finest. Many Irish police officers are members of the Emerald Society, and have their own bagpipe band that plays in parades and at the funerals of fallen officers. On St. Paddy’s day they march down Fifth Avenue and into various places like McManus. Here, they add a lot of color to the old watering hole and now and again get behind the bar to play some welcome music to the pleasure of the patrons. I’m including this shot because it shows you the beautiful tartan. The material is very fine, and the colors are exquisite. We flagged down a nice waitress with a shamrock stuck on her face and asked for our corned beef. It was a mighty fine corned beef sandwich, well worth waiting a year for, just enough fat on rye bread. Washed down with warming Irish whiskey. There is a god. Come here, baby, kiss me on the lips! When we left, it was still light out, and this guy was looking for a cab.

On the neighborhood: I live in Williamsburg. Williamsburg is the hot, hot, hot section of Brooklyn. I have lived here for twelve years and I like it cold, cold, cold. So I am a curmudgeon on these matters. Williamsburg is equal parts Polish, Jewish, Spanish, Italian, and Hip. My quiet little street is turning into the Valley of the Condos. They surround us, and soon, new tennants who know no one will look down on us. Us being people who have lived here for a long time, who speak to each other, who look out for each other. I live amongst old people and I like that. I like the give and take, the comfortableness of it all. If you come home on a summer evening, and by the time you hit the block, you know that your car has a ticket, everyone you pass says, "Hey, I rang your bell to tell you to move the car, but you weren't home." And then the hecklers say, "The mayor would like you to send him a present," you know you belong. On the kitchens and the cleanliness: Cue the Odd Couple song. I am Felix, she is Oscar. There are fights. You have seen the Oscar kitchen. After Felix went through it with Soft Scrub. Picking little bits of strawberry off the walls, sweeping up the seeds, lining up the grapefruits. Doo doo doo dooooo . . . It is sometimes a drag to have to clean two apartments. Often, the apartments go uncleaned. We are being watched right now.

Well, the parrot owners have come out of the bushes! Maybe we should start a thread about what you feed your parrot(s). All of your questions will be answered in due time -- I have begun writing for today and realize that I have to stop now because I need to drive to Philadelphia for the Frida Kahlo show. I've seen many Frida Kahlo exhibits, including her house in Mexico City, but this is a retrospective. I need to shower and hit the road. This evening I will fill in yesterday as well as report on today -- I think we're going to hit the Italian market. Let me give you this summary report in the meantime: Lunch was horrible. Bad, bad food. I did have that corned beef sandwich, sitting at the bar, and you will see NYPD in kilts. Right now, it is difficult for me to think about because a large, lumbering, drunken, styrofoam leprechaun-earred oaf FARTED the most, well, present fart I have ever had the misfortune to witness. It traveled down the bar about five people wide, it caused the bartender to light not one but two matches and wave them about furiously and it made at least four of us blatantly cover our faces with our clothing. It was that tremendous. This man spent a half hour trying to text an incomprehensible message to a friend, in between nearly passing out on my back. The only thing I could think to do was order more Jameson's, drink it, and flee. Interesting food-and-drink-related fact: When ladies are drinking at the bar, they are served their shots of Jameson's in glass shot glasses. When oafs in styrofoam leprechaun ears are served their shots of Jameson's, and really, any man I witnessed getting served, they drank out of plastic cups. Sexism? You decide.

Breakfast You may have noticed the chorus line of grapefruits in the photographs of the kitchen. This is the Lucy-and-Viv-in-the-Candy-Shop factor of my food life. You may recall the episode where Lucy and Viv got a job working in a candy shop, the climax of which was a berserk assembly belt that caused them to jam candies in their mouths, under their hats, etc., to keep up. I mentioned a certain vegetable box, which comes on Thursday. I signed up for a weekly delivery of organic fruits and vegetables several years ago. Every single Thursday, unless I call and cancel (which I do only when on vacation), a box shows up and it is our goal to eat said fruits and vegetables before the next box arrives. This is a challenge I take up willingly, because otherwise, I would subsist entirely on foods composed of various forms of refined carbohydrate. Sometimes, the line backs up and we end up with something like the grapefruits you see. They no longer fit in the antique Tanglefoot Flypaper box on the same shelf, and are readied for consumption. However, this morning I opt to use up four Granny Smith apples for breakfast. Once cooked until they are soft, to these I add dark brown sugar and cinnamon and blend them with a Bamix immersion blender. This is the one electrical appliance used daily in the kitchen. The yield is the most delicious applesauce -- very smooth, warm, and with a nice bite. Ernie is offered a variety of bird foods in his cage including pellets, seeds, fresh fruit, various dried fruits and vegetables, and water. Birds are flock animals, of course, and they like to eat with the rest of the flock. They cannot eat chocolate, avocado, caffeine, or alcohol, foods which are poisonous to birds. Ernie is enjoying his apples post cooking, but before sugar and spice have been added. Nearly every morning we drink a smoothie composed of non-fat yogurt, various juices, and a foul green powder called Green Vibrance. The Green Vibrance turns everything the same shade of dank green, but the shakes taste good and I carry the belief that the Green Vibrance is more healthful than vitamin pills. I wash down two Omega 3 capsules with it. In this particular shake I’ve put bananas, pomegranate juice and carrot juice. The juice I buy at Costco. Now that I’ve had some vitamins, I’m going to shower and go into the City, which is how we Brooklynites talk about Manhattan. I’ve taken today and tomorrow as vacation days from my leftover 2007 vacation. Today I’m going to go have lunch with a friend who is a psychotherapist. Sometimes we grab lunch between her appointments. Later in the day I’ll meet Lynn and we’ll go have a corned beef sandwich at an Irish police bar.

Hello! Nakji, we have regular recycling in New York, so I put the cans out for recycling. They are really nice cans. If I was to save them, I think I'd put hardware (nails and such) in them. But you can't see inside, which is a drawback. I've already eaten enough Marshmallow Fluff (nice jars with red lids) to take care of this problem. They'd make nice drums and shaking instruments for kid's band. Lucylou, do you know the artist Liza Lou? She makes entire environments out of beads and she once did a kitchen, just fabulous. What we're going to be eating this week is corned beef for St. Paddy's Day, likely some Italian carry out, organic fruits and vegetables, and something I haven't decided for Easter. It's a big holiday week! Linda

The Kitchens. We have two kitchens, by virtue of having two apartments, which happens when you are two artists who require studio space. These kitchens have separated into a savory kitchen and a sweet kitchen, or an everyday kitchen and an entertaining kitchen, or your kitchen and my kitchen, however you choose to look at it. It took a variety of strategic moves, concluded by the death of our upstairs neighbor, to achieve two apartments on the top floor of our building. We can prop the doors open and pass from one apartment to the other. This assists greatly when complicated cooking, particularly for guests, must be achieved. My common pattern is to serve hors d'oevres from the front kitchen while drinks are being made, enjoy drinks and hors d'oevres in the living room, pass to the back kitchen (which has a larger table) for dinner, and then return to the front living room for dessert, which has been laid out in the front kitchen. It sometimes confuses the guests, but if I remain sober enough, I can remember the configuration of table changes and get them fed in the proper order. One of the advantages to this is that if something goes wrong (case in point: the Christmas in which my Yorkshire pudding was not rising properly) the guests can sip their drinks in the front apartment, oblivious to the panic and swearing in the back apartment. What follows are photographs of the front kitchen, which is painted the color of cantaloup. Several pints of Benjamin Moore were bought and demo'd on the walls before this color was settled on. Unbelievably, it seems to tone down the pinkish linoleum and the cheap particle board cabinets. Note that Ernie's cage is kept in the kitchen. This is against common wisdom for bird cages, as cooking fumes can damage a delicate avian respiratory system. For this reason, I own no non-stick cookware -- the fumes from non-stick cookware can be fatal. I'm also very careful about having Ernie out of the kitchen if there's fumes, and the windows near to the stove are opened. Later in the week we will visit the back kitchen, when sweets are prepared.

That’s real estate talk for an eat-in kitchen in a pre-war building, and it is from this cultural locus in Brooklyn that I am reporting on my Epicurean exploits. Which are influenced by: My parents, who loved to play with food. The changing face of New York City, my beloved melting pot. The vegetable box, which comes on Thursdays. Julia Child at 3:00 a.m., and food as succour. My name is Linda, and I am an Italian-American living in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn with my partner, Lynn, and our parrot, Ernie. The building I live in has a bakery on the ground floor, which was once a bakery of some renown in our neighborhood. My landlady’s father built it in 1930, and bread and pastry were sold at the front of the house. That’s bricked over now, and the coal oven is in the back where the landlady’s nephew still bakes bread for commercial bakeries and one food store on our block that has a sign reading “We sell Caruso bread on Tuesdays.” Now you wouldn’t know there’s a bakery here unless you witness the weekly coal or flour delivery. This is us, our only formal portrait. We have been together a long time. I am on your right. Every morning I am served espresso in bed. This is made in a Bialetti Moka Express pot. The reason why I am served is that I am incapable of movement before my daily injection. At any given point in my adult life, I am in some state of addiction/withdrawal from some form of caffeinated beverage. Right now, I am in withdrawal. This tidy espresso cup, rather large by European standards, and is likely a double, is half my usual dosage. I’m doing well and can sometimes actually get out of bed to make my own espresso if the pot has been prepared the night before and I have to pee really bad. I use Illy canned coffee in this pot, and I believe that learning how to make it is what got me started on eGullet. I wanted to be able to replicate the espresso I had in Italy, I did some research, and ended up with this. This espresso does not, by any means, taste as good as the espresso in Italy, but it’s low tech and I try to live a simple life, a philosophy often expressed through food.

With apologies to Janet, who I love, I think of Foodie as a term Rachel Ray would apply to herself. Someone upthread mentioned the fashion factor to the word. There is an explanation on the Chowhound web site as to why they eschewed foodie. It's because a Chowhound is not a fashion eater. At a recent demonstration of Rose Levy Bernbaum's in New York, everyone went around the room introducing themselves, I'm a this, I'm a that, and they got to me and I said, "I bake." Everyone laughed, and it was funny, but I hadn't meant it to be. Maniac eat freak would describe me.

Won ton soup.

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? My father is Italian, my mother is a Scottish/English mix. My mother is an excellent cook and baker, and one of the most wonderful gifts she has given me is an early education in baking. My mother did the cooking, and now that they are divorced, my father does the cooking for Christmas eve in particular, which is an Italian thing. I grew up in Ohio. All the vegetables were canned and I didn't meet broccoli and cauliflower until I went to college. But my parents were in love together with food, and food was a great project and entertainment for them and it is for me, too. I am bound to both of my parents in individual ways through this factor. Was meal time important? Yes, my father was a carpenter, and we he came home, he was hungry and we ate. As mentioned in the previous post, we ate at the same time of day at the same place at the table each day. If we hadn't, today I don't think any of us would know each other. Was cooking important? Maybe shopping was more important. I shop now like my mother shopped then. In Ohio, in the 60's, she went for her groceries in niche places: the Polish butcher (he would give me a big handful of penny candy with his big sausagey hands), the farm wife who sold us the eggs that we resting in a basket on her piano -- we would knock and step in to the parlor and wait for her. I would go to the Pick N Pay with her every Friday, and I sat in the front of the cart and I got a Jack and Jill magazine and a box of animal crackers. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? We had to observe table manners, but neither of my parents were particularly strict about it. Personally, I find chewing with the mouth open to be one of the more disgusting human postures. Who cooked in the family? My mother, who was very anxious for me to learn to do it and take over. Some of this was accomplished during the pre-divorce years, but once they split, my father came into my room one night and told me to remember to eat vegetables. I lived with my father after that, for a short time before I went to college, and I don't particularly remember our reduced family having meals together. I cooked, then, and I do now, when I'm visiting my father. I insist that he not take his plate on his stomach in front of the TV, but sit down at the table with me. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? I went to my first restaurant as a celebration for graduating from high school. We went to McGarvey's On the Lake and I ordered escargot. I might have also ordered a lobster tail, as my mother had a penchant for them. We had McDonald's once or twice, and a sack of burgers was brought into the house. The pizza was also delivered to the house. I still do not think it's particularly appropriate for children to be in restaurants, certainly not crying and running in restaurants. My parents went out now and again, for weddings and special events, and I usually got some sort of gift in the morning -- a net bag of Jordan almonds if the occassion was an Italian wedding, or a drink stirrer if the occassion was romance. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Only on Thanksgiving. A padded just off white card table with bronzy edges. One of the chairs is still at my dad's house. When did you get that first sip of wine? It's likely I stole a sip of Cold Duck when my parent's friends were visiting, but I remember a good deal of Mateuse and apricot brandy got siphoned out of the liquor cabinet. I'm sure my parents thought my brothers were responsible, as I started rather early. Was there a pre-meal prayer? Only on Thanksgiving, thank God. I don't like public prayer, and I'm always uncomfortable at other people's houses while this is going on. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? Not a formal one, as in It's Wednesday! It's Ronzoni spaghetti night in Brooklyn!" (Do you remember that commercial on WCBS?) But a regular rotation hit the table. Breaded pork chops was my favorite and I completely dreaded okra-and- tomato-stew-on-Minute-Rice night. My mother found some recipe for chicken breasts on a bed of chipped beef with a mushroom soup sauce poured over top. That made a regular appearance. We had Bisquick pancakes for supper. In the last year I have made a salmon loaf from canned salmon a couple of times out of nostalgia for it. Her choices may have been mundane, but the technique and execution was always excellent. My mother's food spoiled me for life and made a cook out of me for necessity. An awful lot of not good food is passed off as good food, particularly in restaurants. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? More than I would have ever thought. My partner and I make food together, and take on challenging food projects together like my parents did. I use quite a few of my mother's recipes for holidays and would find the day rather empty without them. Shopping is as much fun to me as any other aspect of food, and I go to a regular rotation of stores for my supplies. We have our set places at the table. I'm generous with my food and overfeed guests and send them home with leftovers. We will split a pie together, like my parents did. Here's a nice little story to end with: Before the VCR and the DVD, the Wizard of Oz would play on TV once a year, during tornado season. And every time it was on, coincidentally, my mother would have baked a cake and we would be allowed to eat the cake in front of the TV. And it wasn't until I was grown up, many years later, that I realized my mother had planned it that way. She would make the cake for us, to sort of celebrate the Wizard of Oz. And I try to do that to, use food to brighten the colors in Kansas.

I have a theory of personality based on where you sat at the family table. We had a round table, and my father sat at the position that would be considered "the head" (i.e., he could most easily arrive and depart). My mother sat at the position most accessible to the kitchen (i.e., the one who did the work). I sat next to my father, farthest from my mother, and I believe doing so forged an alliance between us. My father, sitting at the head in every way, was allowed to do things at the table that us kids were not allowed to do. For instance, remove big fat chalky kidney beans from his chili and cast them aside. I would add my chili beans to his pile, and therefore escape detection and punishment. This would work in my positive favor, as no one liked potato skins except the two of us. We would place a pile of cast off skins between us and sit there, buttering them and eating them after the others had left. My favorite brother sat on the other side of me, and to this day, I am closest to my table side-by-sides and farthest from those on the other side of the table. It was my job to sweep after dinner -- my brothers never had kitchen chores. The unfairness of sweeping the filth around farthest brother's chair made me the feminist I am today.

I think there's an important distinction between the chicken finger and the Chicken McNugget. A chicken finger is a strip of breast meat, breaded and fried. A Chicken McNugget and his bretheren are shreds of processed chicken product held together with meat glue. My guess is that the McNugget came first -- because McDonald's has to adapt food to a form that can be eaten while driving. The chicken finger came after, once people realized that fried chicken taste without fried chicken bones was not a bad idea, when one is too inebriated to know the difference between meat and bone.

I think that when this discussion has hit on socio-economic factors, it's been the closest to the truth of the matter. I think the subject could fill a very interesting book and I wish someone would write it, because I would love to read it. I'm a woman over forty, and I've cooked and baked all my life, but only in the last decade very seriously. And I took it up to fill the emptiness that grief brought into my life. Cooking, for me, was in every way, an act of survival. I think all people should be able to cook at a certain level, it's a life skill. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a complex relationship with food are very lucky indeed. Reading this thread made me solidify some thoughts about myself as a woman and food: there was a time when I would bring food in to work to share. I often bake on a Sunday and then disperse that food on a Monday. If it can't be mailed, it goes downstairs to my landlord. If it can be mailed, I send it to family and friends. This has made me very happy. So, my love and joy would spill over and sometimes I'd bring things I'd made into the office, and pass them out to my co-workers: brownies, florentines, cupcakes. And I had to stop doing it. Because I realized that by baking and sharing I was contributing to a decline in my own status. I work in technology, and technology is a male-dominated industry, and women who bring cookies to the table don't get thought of as having Big Ideas. In addition to be gender-biased, the technology industry is age-biased. I also realized that I was losing some face amongst the young women I worked with. Baking and sharing made me a fuddy duddy. Definitely not fresh and sexy. Personally, I find big thick men who cook very sexy. I like to watch Robert Irvine cook and I like to watch Mario Batali cook -- in a visceral way, I like the confidence, the loomingness, the mastery that the size of the person has over this small area filled with small things and infinite detail. It's a juxtaposition, a tension. I don't think it's because men aren't supposed to cook and how sweet the big hairy man is all nurturing . . . I also realized, while thinking about this, that my foodie friends are men. About half gay men and half straight men. One of them doesn't cook at all, his stay-at-home wife does the cooking. But he loves to eat and he travels to eat and we're both Italian and love Italy and we go food for a long time. Then I have male friends who will discuss with me preserving things from their gardens and the very best way to build a drink. With my female cooking buddies, we talk four sugar and butter. Never with men. It's like a Rubic's Cube, the slide between our minds and our culture, every way you turn it it keeps realigning itself. There's no one right answer, but many possible ways to try to find an answer.

Interesting to see this topic today because last night I found myself eating in front of the T.V. (done often, the coffee table is cleared of books and set, the bird likes eating there, it works) watching Alton Brown, eating a plate of thinnish spaghetti and meatballs ordered in from the Italian restaurant down the street and covered with freshly grated cheese, and reading the latest issue of Saveur, which is all about butter. At some point, I said Stop the Madness, turned off the T.V., closed the magazine and finished my dinner. In Weight Watchers this would be laughed at and then seriously discussed for behavior modification. However, I do accept it as part of a beautiful obsession that has brought me hours of fun, education, expanded political consciousness, improved relationships with others, and quick friends. Does it get better?