takomabaker
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Posts posted by takomabaker
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Noodles & Co. is pretty edible. It's really the only fast food that I eat. (Desperation food at Roy Rogers on the Jersey Turnpike at 1 AM doesn't count.) Some things are quite good. Their Thai noodle soup is BALM when you are sick or on a really cold night when you just want to grab something on the way home. And I also like their Pasta Fresca. I have discovered that I don't care for a few of their menu items. Their pad thai is pretty mediocre, and their Indonesian Peanut Noodles are a little high on heat and short on flavor in my book. But I give them the benefit of the doubt on most new items on their menu. For fast food, they hit the mark most of the time.
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I think that Southern food is as regional as the rest of the food in US so it's hard to say who can be an authority on "Southern" cuisine. I am a 7th generation Floridian who had never had real BBQ until I went off to college in Virginia where I gorged myself silly on it for the next four years and then the gorging continued into my first post-graduation habitat in Richmond where I continued to live with my college roommate from North Carolina for whom BBQ was a religion. I know that most people who live in the Richmond area will freak out when I say this because I know that it isn't considered haute BBQ, but I will drive 90 miles on a Tuesday night down I-95 in a damn snow storm for a family pack of Bill's BBQ and a lemon chess pie. GEEZ, it's GOOD, and I'm not going to be ashamed over my love affair with Bill's BBQ!!!
And "Yankee" is subjective as well. For years, after I moved to Richmond, my grandfather greeted me when I visited my hometown with, "So, you still living with those Yankees?" The fact that Richmond was the seat of the Confederacy didn't matter much in my grandfather's geography, where I think anything north of Charleston was classified as "Yankee". He took the "North" in North Carolina literally. I will not repeat what he said when I moved to DC in polite company.
The other day, I got into a conversation with an African American co-worker who was telling me about her experience at Gladys Knight's new soul food restaurant a DC suburb about the difference between soul food and Southern food. We never really figured it out. My co-worker is from Mississippi, so for her it's all one big bowl of collards -- the difference is a non-issue. And considering the fact that much of what we consider Southern cuisine was introduced to our great-great-great grandparents by African immigrants anyway makes me wonder who can really lay claim to it.
So, does it really matter who writes it if it's a good book? I hate to say it, but most Southerners (myself included for most of my life) take the food on which they were weaned for granted. When I was first out on my own and bought my first set of Revereware (yes, that was what I bought when I was 22), the LAST thing I wanted to cook was the stuff I grew up on. How plebeian! How uninteresting! How unsophisticated! I was 22, had a galley kitchen with a new set of cookware and a Silver Palate cookbook. No way was I eating anything chicken fried and smothered in gravy. I didn't gain an appreciation for the foods of my youth until I was in my mid-thirties! Maybe it took some Yankee "discovering" it to garner some appreciation for it.
Geez, I feel a trip to Richmond coming on...
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This might have been discussed previously, but I kept getting results about photography OF cakes.
What I want to know about is photography ON cakes. I've seen it done on cheapo grocery store cakes, but would love to play with it on a high quality homemade cake. My daughter's birthday is coming up, and she wants a princess cake. I thought it would be fun to have her actual face on the cake, and then I could decorate around it with a princess dress and crown, etc. etc.
I saw the transfers advertised in one of the pastry catalogues -- I want to say Sweet Celebrations. You send them the photo and they do the transfer for you. I don't remember how much it was.
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Food Lion has White Lily flour and Duke's mayo. That's pretty much the only stuff I buy there.
Where is there a Food Lion in Rockville? Or do you drive to Virginia?
Currently, I stock up on White Lily and Duke's when I visit my old college buddies in Richmond about once a month. I'd love it if I could get it closer to home (Mont. Co.).
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The Tavern rules. I haven't been there since college. Jessica Lang used to own a house outside of Charlottesville, and the rumor was that she frequented the Tavern, so we used to keep our hung over eyes peeled over our grits for a Jessica siting. Never happened, though. Also, a few miles further (now you are REALLY far from DC), Rowe's in Staunton is awesome... definitely responsible for the first 10 of the "freshman 15". (I was SHOCKED when Rowe's was featured in Gourmet a few years back.)
Also, on Rt. 11 right outside of Lexington is the best truck stop breakfast breakfast in this hemisphere, the Lee-Hi. But not I'm taking you WAY WAY WAY outside of DC. It's worth the drive, though.
It's been SO LONG...
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WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!
My paternal great-grandparents were Lithuanian immigrants. But I grew up around my mother's Southern family and ate more fried chicken than kugelis -- although my grandmother made some mean kugelis. I've been trying to learn more about Lithuanian cuisine lately. I'm completely blown away by your pictures and I am hoping to make my own visit to Lithuania in the near future.
I grew up watching my dad and my grandmother eat pickled pigs' feet and creamed herring. It was pretty nasty. My mother quarantined a place in the fridge for my dad's "treats". But the women who fed you honey are correct. There isn't a man on my father's side of the family shorter than 6'4" and I'm the oldest of five children. Lithuanians are a formidable lot.
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Parents weekend this weekend-looking for good food for Saturday evening-would prefer not to go into DC. We like all food but will pass on Chinese this time. PLease help!!
The hamburgers at Franklin's in Hyattsville are fabulous and it is just a few miles up Route 1, but other than that we just usually just grab fast food when we are in College Park -- Noodles and Co., Chipolte, Boston Market, etc.
I'd venture into Silver Spring if you don't want to go into Washington and check out the SS restaurant postings. I could be proven wrong by others who live in the area, but the only thing I've found in College Park is typical student food -- fast and cheap.
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Flushing? Are you sure? Maybe Kew Garden Hills or Forest Hills, but Flushing doesn't have kosher stores that i know of. What si the name and where is it?
Yes, it is in Flushing. My s.o. lives in Kew Gardens/Forest Hills so even though I don't know Queens really well I KNOW it isn't in that neighborhood (well, we live together in Takoma Park now, but her home is still in Kew Gardens). It was a little kosher spice store next to an Amazing Savings. I'll try to find the name of it. I'm an Irish Catholic Floridian who only knows Queens from weekend visits from DC so I don't know the street names or Jewish business community very well, but I googled the Amazing Savings store in Queens and I found out it is on Main Street in Flushing if that helps. There's a restaurant on the other side of the spice store that we used to like but it burned down. The new one that replaced it is fancier, more expensive and, in my opinion, not as good. I can't remember the name of the restaurant either. Sorry, I'm not much help.
Edited to say that I found the restaurant. It is called Grill Point. Its address is 69-54 Main Street in Flushing. So the spice store is between Grill Point and Amazing Savings. It is worth seeking out. They had some very neat stuff. I also bought some rose hip tea there, and this really yummy tahini-honey spread. MMMM....
Pretty good sleuth work from someone who has never actually lived in Queens, if I may say so!
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OOOOOH! Thanks for the tip.
Look out, you annoying little flying bastards!
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Another noteworthy pear pie is the pear cardamon custard pie from Four Star Desserts. It was the most popular pie on my Thanksgiving table last year.
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Those damn fruit flies!!! The only way I got them under control was to hang one of those ugly, tacky strip of death things from the ceiling. I'm not talking about the sticky fly paper. I buy those white things with the yellow center that emit some sort of toxin in the air that kills flying things. It works. I don't know exactly where you are in DC, but I buy them at Strosniders, although I'm sure other hardware stores probably have them.
I tried EVERYTHING. Martha Stewart's tip of putting vinegar in a jar and covering the jar with perforated plastic wrap was a bomb. It trapped some of them, but not nearly enough to put a dent in the population. I put bleach in my drain and taped a bag over my garbage disposal (because I read that they hang out in there) and that didn't work. As much as I despise the idea of having an ugly thing emitting toxins hanging in the middle of my kitchen, during fruit fly season it is a necessity. When guests come over, I hide it on top of my cupboards.
As for my tomatoes. I leave them out in a bowl, but I cover the bowl with a dishtowel and put a plate on top of the dishtowel if there are undesirables in my kitchen.
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Has anyone tried the kneading mat made by Silpat? I bought one, but I never seem to remember to pull it out when I am working with dough. I'm kind of a creature of habit and don't remember to change my routine. Does it help when working with sticky doughs?
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As a new age neolithic I have always felt proud about being ablbe to hunt, catch or gather my own food. Nothing better than chowing down to what nature has to offer or on what you have raised yourself. Anthropomorphism (sp?) is a modern affectation.
It's not being anthropomorphic to farm with a conscious. I agree with Mahatma Ghandi's statement, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." I have nothing against hunting. It is actually the most responsible way, in my opinion, of being a carnivore. I grew up in a hunting family. The turkey on the table at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the pork on the table at New Year's for most of my life had been hunted by my grandfather and uncles. And it was a heck of a lot better than anything you can buy at Giant. Nor am I a vegetarian. I simply believe in being responsible for, and aware of, the origins of our food.
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We had a mouse problem in our apartment in New York. We tried humane traps and they worked for the most part, but one mouse was seriously injured in the trap and I ended up with a pet mouse for awhile. She actually lived in a hamster cage for about a year. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of winter and we knew we couldn't let the successfully trapped mice go in a park in January in New York, so we let them go in the building's heated garage which at any given time has more fast food containers on the ground and in the trash cans than a high school cafeteria.
Somewhere in Queens, there is a colony of mice living happily in a parking garage. It is my opinion that those glue traps are 100% inhumane and should be illegal. Even if the goal is to kill the mouse and not just trap it, there are much more humane ways to do it.
And as far as meat is concerned, when I first graduated from college I lived in a vegetarian group house (I was a theatrical costumer) and I stayed vegetarian for many years after that. I gradually started to eat meat again, but I do make a conscious effort -- when finances allow -- to buy responsibly farmed meat. It is unfortunate that the stores that sell responsibly farmed meat, such as Whole Foods, feel the need to mark chicken breasts up so that you need to take out a second mortgage to afford them. I know that it is more expensive to farm responsibly, and I am willing to pay more because of that, but I don't think that Whole Paycheck scrimps on their mark-up either. My local food co-op is selling Bell & Evans chicken breasts for a whopping $11 a pound. OUCH! I do think that there should be more stringent legislation on how farm animals are raised.
And I keep hearing rumors here and there about the possibility of genetically engineered meat in our near future. It would eliminate a lot of the farming cruelty issues, but who wants to make a choice between genetic food or slaughtered food? I make cheese, and have started using genetically engineered rennet. When I found out how rennet was obtained I made the choice to use either vegetarian "rennet" or genetically engineered rennet. I liked the genetically engineered better. It isn't a very far leap at all from genetically engineering rennet to genetically engineering veal.
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takomabaker:
re: #3---I understand the garden tools and shoe wipes, etc., but how far is your bathroom from the kitchen? I wash my hands many times during the course of preparing a meal, and cannot fathom how washing off flour or butter or scrubbing after handling chicken would besmirch your kitchen sink. How's that worse than washing stuff down the disposal? Don't you always sanitize your sink while/after cooking anyway?
That's a lotta steps to travel, when you could just wash your food-touched hands in the kitchen.
I agree with you. I wasn't talking about washing hands while cooking. I was talking about coming in from checking the oil in the car or fertilizing the tomatoes and washing hands in the kitchen sink. I don't like non-food related dirt in the kitchen sink, although I SUPPOSE that there isn't much difference between rinsing off a chicken and washing hands after gardening. It's just my take it on I guess.
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I LOVE this!!! A place to vent. The kitchen is SO volatile.
1. Hates fish and the smell of fish and seafood. Before we were together it was the mainstay of my diet (I grew up on the Gulf). Now I can only eat it if I cook it on the grill and eat it outside.
2. Wants to eat the same thing over and over and over again. Variety is NOT the spice of life. Same thing with restaurants. We eat at the same one over and over again until the thought of going back makes me gag.
3. Has to buy everything in bulk. If one is good, then 15 is better. There are only 2 of us, but we have 2 refrigerators full of food. Like, I get my cinnamon from Penzey's, but she insisted on buying a 1/4 pound food service bulk pack of McCormick's cinnamon at Costco. WHY? I don't like cheap cinnamon, we could never use that much even if I did like it before it went stale, and I have to find a place to store it until it gets too old and I can finally throw it out. It drives me CRAZY!! However...
4. She's a 6th generation New Yorker, so for her all surfaces are for storage. No such thing as clear surfaces. If you don't have to sit on it, sleep on it, or eat off of it, it's storage. And the car trunk is an extension of the apartment. I thought it was funny when we were dating and she used her car for storage of things she bought in bulk, especially at 2 AM in January when we had to go to the car to get toilet paper. Nothing like carrying 4 rolls of Charmin down a street in Queens half-dressed on a Friday night. Now that we have a house in the burbs, it's not amusing to have enough canned peaches for the Apocalypse in the trunk of the Honda.
5. The thing that drives me MOST crazy... she washes her hands and other dirty items in the kitchen sink. You wash dishes in the sink. You wash dirt off of your hands and clean garden tools in the bathroom or under the hose. Likewise for dishtowels and dish sponges. They are only to be used on dishes. Not for drying off the dog, or wiping something off your shoe, or cleaning up a spill from the floor. And if they are used for a non-dish purchase, they are discarded or washed before being used again. She acts like I'm an obsessive-compulsive about this, but it's just common sense!
Whoo! I feel SO much better now!!!
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I have a question that has been bothering me forever...
My grandmother was Lithuanian. She passed away a few years ago (sadly, I still miss her desperately), but she made pierogis but she called them piroshkis. They seemed like basically the same thing that I eat in New York at Polish restaurants. Is there a difference a pierogi and a piroshki, or is it a regional pronunciation? Someone told me it was the Russian pronunciation and asked me if my grandmother could have been of Russian descent, but she was 100% Lithuanian.
She also made a meat dumpling that had thinner dough and was rounder. It had ground beef, bacon, and onions in it and I know she used LOTS of bacon grease and sour cream for the sauce. Does anyone know that this is? It was SSSOOOO good!!!
Edited to add that I saw the post about Piroshkies vs. Pierogi (I missed it in my first scan), but can I assume then that the only "true" difference is if the dumplings are boiled or fried? I had a Polish friend tell me that it would not be appreciated in a Polish retaurant to order Piroshkies. Why, if the terms are almost interchangable?
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11.5? 14.7? Are these acceptable tips, whether your waiter "touches" you or not?
I am firmly in the camp of DO NOT touch me, or sit down at my table to take my order. I don't go to a restaurant to socialize with wait staff nor, do I think, most wait staff goes to work to find a new best friend. Treat me professionally and I'll treat you professionally and leave a correct 20% tip.
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Don't throw anything at me because this is an "Emeril" recipe. I found it while desperately searching for new ideas for the cherry tomatoes from my garden which are threatening to take over my life and it was serendipitous that I also had both ricotta salata and pecorina left over from another dinner in my fridge. So I tried it, and it was awesome. I make it with just cherry tomatoes, omitting the heirloom. I've been making it so much lately I'm getting sick of it.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_20256,00.html
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There's a new vendor that sells cheddar cheese curds at the Takoma Park Farmer's Market. I bought some last Sunday. Yummy! The vendor suggested putting them on a baked potato, but I'm thinking about the squash blossoms from another vendor, and some tempura batter....
I also thought they would be great in risotto.
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Hello, I live in Takoma Park and have started exploring cheese making (I'm an unemployed baker). Is anyone familiar with a place in metro DC where I could find cheese making supplies? There must be a way to support a local buisness without resorting to the web.
Thanks to all, Woods
Hi Woods,
I live in Takoma Park as well and I like to make my own cheese. I have looked locally for cheesemaking products and finally gave up. I tried our own co-op for vegetarian "rennet" as well as Trader Joe's and Rodman's. Apparently, Trader Joe's sells it on the West coast, but not over here. I ended up buying soursalt/citric acid at a kosher spice store in Flushing (my s.o. is from Queens so I am up there about once a month). I started mail ordering from cheesemaking.com for everything else.
I do buy my milk from the TPSS co-op. They don't have non-pasteurized, but they do have organic milk that is not ultra-pasteurized that they sell by the gallon. I spoke to a dairy vendor at the Farmer's market on Sunday about getting non-pasteurized milk. He told me that it is illegal to sell in Maryland, but not in Pennsylvania if you can make "arrangements" with local dairies.
Maybe someone else knows something that I don't...
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OK, I finally watched this woman. I had the misfortune of catching the episode in which she made potato salad with canned potatoes.
She kept making references throughout the show to her "entertaining" and the various and sundry friends from whom she picked up her "tips" and "recipes", and how much her guests at her parties loved this or that.
So I gotta know... who are these people who eat this food and sing its praises? Are they too polite to tell her that her food sucks? Are they just as clueless as she is? Does her rich husband pay people off to be her friend? Does she clone herself for dinner parties? I mean, exactly what would you do if you went to a dinner party and someone put potato salad made with canned potatoes in front of you?
I guess that's what all the booze is for.
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I LOVE my Silestone (Tea Leaf). LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT. I got it a few years back when it was fairly new -- at least in my market of the DC area. I had tile countertops and didn't like them because of the regrouting and cleaning issues, and rolling out pastry on my countertop was important to me.
First, although I have never put a "red hot" pan onto it, I put hot pans on it all the time with no ill effect.
Second, I clamp my pasta maker to it all the time. I purposely did not request a rounded or beveled edge when I placed my order (they give you a choice of edging) specifically because I wanted to be able to clamp things easily to the sides.
Third, I knead dough on it with great success.
Fourth, I roll out pastry on it with great success. In the winter, I open a window over my counter and it stays REALLY COLD, and in the summer I put a full sheet pan filled with ice on for about 15 minutes before I roll out my pastry. It holds the cold incredibly well which is, of course, important if you are into pastry.
And Fifth, it is really easy to clean. Before I use it for pastry, pasta, or bread I run a Clorox Clean-up over it followed by a damp paper towel if I was, say, pounding chicken breasts a few hours earlier. No special cleansers or care needed.
And also important to me, it doesn't look like a laminate countertop. It looks like natural stone. That was important to me when I was remodeling my kitchen. I have a 1930's bungalow and didn't want anything that looked too "modern".
I would say, honestly, the only downside that I have found with Silestone is that you must be very careful with glass. The other night I took down a glass for iced tea and just BARELY tapped the edge of the glass on the side of the countertop when I turned to open the fridge and it SHATTERED in my hand. You learn very quickly to NEVER leave a wineglass next to the sink to be washed the next day if you have cats, kids, or you live with a klutz.
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I work in Penn Quarter and have occassional work functions at the surrounding restaurants like Cafe Atlantico, Poste, Rosa Mexicano, Jaleo, Ginger Cove, etc. Bummer because I sample the lunch menus and cocktail food, but never eat dinner because I don't want to socialize at restaurants I associate with "work". However, we had a cocktail function at Cafe Atlantico a few months ago, and just the "cocktail" food my company had them serve was wonderful. The conch fritters with liquid centers were amazing, and the tuna and coconut ceviche was a close second. Even the guacamole that they put out for us was completely addictive. So, maybe I'll just get off at a different Metro stop so I don't have to pass my building on the way to dinner and explore the menu some more. It sounds fabulous.
Fall/Halloween party ideas
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
I got a 50 pound bucket of raspberry marmalade from Albert Uster (don't ask). In my desperation to use it all, I decided to try choux puff eyeballs for Halloween. Basic choux puffs filled with -- you guessed it -- raspberry marmalade and decorated like eyeballs. I'm thinking about dipping the tops in white chocolate and piping the rest.
That's one way to put a dent in 50 lbs. of raspberry marmalade.