Smithy

I found an listing for The New Christy Minstrels but no date. ← That's who I had in mind!

I think #2 is "Today" perfromed by John Denver. I'm shaky on the title but it was on his live album from the universal ampitheater in the mid-70s. ← You got the title right. I'd forgotten John Denver recorded that song, but I may still have it around somewhere! At least one group recorded it in the, erm, early (I think) 60's. Anyone?

OK, three more: (1) and you've just had some kind of mushroom (2) I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine (again with the strawberries! ) OK, those two are easy. This one is more obscure, and may be the shortest song of the game: (3) a little piece o' cheese, and a little piece o' meat

It was a one-eyed, one-armed flying purple people eater I thought it was a One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater ? Now: remember this? "Raspberries, Strawberries, the good wine we brew; Here's to the girls of the countryside..." Same guys did: "Scotch and soda, Jigger of gin; oh, what a spell you've got me in..." ← Kingston Trio. Ahhh.

*bump* Thank heaven for the search engine, so I could find this thread fast. I just got back from a lovely weekend in coastal California, where I had The.Best.Artichoke.I've.EVER.Had. It was at a restaurant in Carmel*. I think the artichoke had been steamed. I know it had been grilled, and that it had had olive oil and garlic drizzled among the leaves, with balsamic vinegar under (and for all I know within) the lovely flower. On the side were a fresh sauce of chopped tomato/basil/garlic, and a little dish of chipotle aioli. My mother, sister and I were nearly stabbing each other in our eagerness to get the bits and pieces. Wow, what a revelation to this artichoke lover. So now I'm eager to try cooking artichokes myself again, after somewhat of a hiatus due to unsatisfactory results. My question to y'all is: how do you decide when to steam, when to braise, and when to boil an artichoke? What will be the resulting differences in texture and flavor? *Little Napoli. Highly recommended by our hotel clerk, and with good justification.

The Prince's Panties, Mason Williams I frequently call my dogs 'panties' ! ← It's nice to know there's another Mason Williams fan out there!

Here are some more: 1) He didn't know why he hated tomatoes, they were just ugly as far as ugly goes 2) He liked butter for its color; he would order toast in color Waitresses, confused, would utter "sir I've never heard of toast in color"

"Peaches" The Presidents of the United States of America (thats a lot of typing, how about U2 next time) ← Well, I'm pretty sure they sampled/stole it from the fellow I'm thinking of...... Anyone else? ← John Prine wrote it, John Denver may have recorded it first. "Blow up the TV, throw away the papers, build you a garden, find you a home Plant a little garden, eat a lotta peaches Try to find Jeeesus on your own." Spanish Pipe Dream, was that the actual name? Great fun for a jam session... Edited for clarity.

(1) "Junk Food Junkie", by (Mac Davis?? Ray Stevens?) I can't remember the singer, but my best friend, her father and I still enjoy banging out that song from time to time. Seems like that song hit the big time on Dr. Dimento. (2) Judiu beat me to "Strawberry Wine", but the singers were Nancy Sinatra and, erm, I think maybe Kris Kristopherson...no, maybe some other rugged-voiced man of the era...Lee somebody.... T'others have already been identified. Wish I'd spotted this thread earlier, although I still wouldn't own the Internet. ETA Lee's first name. Too bad the last name didn't come to me in the night as well...

Amen...and the bonus is that you don't necessarily have to pay much more. In Visalia (Central California town) the strawberry fields are grown on the small lots you describe. You have to get the berries fairly early in the day before the day's picking runs out, but they are fabulous - and about the same price as the strawberry-colored styrofoam one would find in a grocery store. I hadn't thought about the mechanics of why a small field would be more likely to produce high-quality strawberries. That's very enlightening. The local small Visalia growers have found a cultivar that's as flavorful as any we've ever known but that have a growing season that lasts well into October. We have been delighted at the extended growing season, even though the ripe fruit is still as ephemeral as a politician's promise. Someone told us that it's a new variety. ? Really? Aren't they the ripe ovaries of a plant? You may be right about the opportunism. I'd like to note, however, that it wasn't universal. I learned a few years ago that when some of our resident Japanese citrus ranchers were shipped out to the camps during WWII, their fellow citrus growers tended the groves, oversaw the packout, and saw to it that the land and funds were kept in trust until the Japanese owners returned. I don't know that it happened for all the growers in our area, but I'm proud and touched to know that at least some received justice from their neighbors when none was forthcoming from the government. Russ, thank you for the interesting and thought-provoking preview. I'll be off to the bookstore soon.

Thank you so much for the street market photos! Oh, I feel like I'm traveling! And I actually see a few fruits I recognize! Those strawberries look luscious, as do the watermelon. The colors are so intense - either you're getting good with Photoshop or everything is being picked at its ripest, as it should be. The cost of bringing in ingredients for baked goods makes me wonder: where is wheat grown? I think of wheat as not being an Asian grain, and I can imagine that flour would be expensive. From how far away must these ingredients come to make the European-style pastries? Oh, and sugar cane juice, freshly pressed, has to be one of the world's nicest street treats. Tell FarmBoy that he absolutely has to try it. Thanks again! I'm loving this blog!

This food looks so good, and so totally foreign. I'm fascinated! One thing strikes me is that it all seems to take some sort of assembly: making several components and then putting them together, and doing that with a whole lot of different "dishes" to make a multi-faceted meal. It's more interesting, but looks like a lot more work than what I still think of as a typical American meal (with my apologies to all the many, many North American residents who eat differently than this): cook up a pot of vegetables, a starch, and a hunk of meat, and call it done. Maybe throw those things all together in the same pot. Maybe add some fruit or a salad on the side. Although there is a lot of room for making sauces or slow cooking or chopping things up and wrapping them around each other, it still seems exotic to a lot of folks I know who'd be perfectly happy with fried chicken or pork chops every night. Those folks crank meals out in a hurry. What do people do in Malaysia if they're in a hurry to eat? Go down the street to the nearest food stall?How long would you say it takes to prepare a "typical" meal, if there is such a thing? Your photos are wonderful.

Well, ultimate, who knows? I don't think their goal is to save all the world's seed. But they do want to save certain heirloom varieties that are in danger or are failing but represent a food tradition worth preserving. But do they physically have a seed bank somewhere? ← There is a physical seed bank, tucked away someplace deep in Scandanavia - possibly Norway - that is a sort of ark of plants. I'm not sure they're simply focusing on rare or endangered or heirloom varieties, but it's been a while since I read about it. I do not recall hearing it discussed in connection with the Slow Foods movement. I really don't think they're connected. This is a very interesting thread. I'm afraid I'm just sitting back and taking it in without having anything to contribute, but I'm glad to be reading the discussion. Edited: gaah. Ark. The word is "ark", not "arc".

"Zen and the Art of Claypot Cooking". I love it! Last night I used my rifi tagine to cook up a chicken that has been lurking in the freezer since last fall's close of the local Farmer's Market. I've been saving the bird until I had time to give it the coq au vin treatment, considering how tough its siblings have been. (Husband thinks I've been buying roosters.) Yesterday I decided to give the bird a Moroccan treatment instead. By the time the tagine was done cooking, that bird was falling-apart tender, all over, with not a hint of toughness nor of breast meat drying out. Sorry, no photos this time, but if anyone doubts that you can cook in unglazed clay, let me know and I'll post some photos the next time around.

Of course the joke is that at least one good study I've seen concluded that you don't derive any greater health benefits from green tea than from black. Just because green tea contains more antioxidants doesn't mean that the human physiology will absorb them. ← And it's a pity that much of the industry are taking advantage of the white tea hype and marketing its supposed cure-all wonder tonic to the general public. Of course, that's not to say there aren't any good white teas, just that the good stuff doesn't come in a bottle, or powder, or teabag. Ok, I'm getting off my soapbox now.... ← I'm glad to see others sharing my soap box. I get tired of the marketing hype - anything to separate a gullible public from its bucks - but then, I suppose that's called "keeping the economy going". Thanks for the info on white tea, folks. At least now I know it's a real thing, possibly worth checking out for my tea-drinking friends!

This will be a fascinating blog! You're off to a good start with interesting and pretty photos, and there isn't a single thing there that I recognize! Any and all explanations as you go along will be welcome. My questions will be so basic as to be laughable to anyone who knows Malay food. I'll start with one right now: what do you mean by alkaline water? I love the fridge shot. I may not recognize anything in there, but I certainly recognize the impulse...my fridge looks about the same. Hamsters, eh?

I love Circassian Chicken. The recipe I've generally used comes from The Sultan's Table. I'll have to try the Wolfert version for comparison's sake. That treatment of eggplant is one I've done often, but your presentation is sooo much prettier than mine! All of it looks wonderful. At my best I don't turn out spreads as lovely as yours. This weekend, with nothing worse than seasonal allergies to slow me down, I'm especially impressed with your work. You've done more than I could in a normal week, and you've been feeling miserable besides! So, no apologies! Thank you for a lovely blog, and for being such a stalward trooper in the midst of the cold! Thanks also for some fabulous demonstrations! I've been telling myself that I do NOT need any more cookbooks for a while, but now I'm thinking "well...maybe it wouldn't hurt to get the Dorie Greenspan book..."

It's almost inevitable that when the dog and I go out for our walk I'll be compelled to pick up litter that some slob found too difficult to take home once the contents had been emptied. Today's find was a plastic bottle that had originally held Diet Lipton White Tea, Raspberry with other natural flavors. (Some entertaining notes on the label were "74mg of flavonoid antioxidants per serving" and, elsewhere, "Contains 0% juice".) Perhaps I should thank the nameless litterbug instead of wishing to track down his or her car and fill it with the ooziest, most odorous refuse the dog and I could find. If it hadn't been for this bottom feeder's contribution to the countryside, I might not have known that such a drink exists and is manufactured for profit. Thus does education come from unlikely sources. This drink seems wrong on many levels to me, trash issues aside, but I was puzzled. I read the label in search of enlightenment, wondering what sort of "tea" this is. The ingredient list starts with "water, citric acid, white and green tea". Green tea I understand. Black tea I drink often. White tea is a new one on me. What is white tea? I'm posting this question on the Ready to Eat subforum because I suspect the true tea cogniscenti on that forum won't know either.

Nettle cheese! I really must round up some nettles sometime and try the tea, and try tasting nettles. What is the cheese around the nettle like (gouda, cheddar, whatever), what does the nettle taste like, and what's the combination like? One of my favorite cheeses, unfortunately from an artisan dairy that's changed hands and operating methods, used to be cumin cheddar. Wow, that was good cheese. Chufi, would tonight's Middle Eastern chicken be cooked in a tagine?

I've been wondering about this point myself. I've been away from gas so long that I'd forgotten all about how long it too me to get used to the time lag. Our stove is a GE Spectra coil top range and oven together, electric, that cost $500 - 600 delivered and installed maybe 8 years ago. While there are things it won't do - as my cooking improves I can tell that - it's adequate for our simple home use. I might opt for gas again if it were a choice, but I have issues below that I'd like to hear addressed. One thing I've never seen discussed here is the mess that I remember from gas, or at least propane. I clearly remember small gooey spots developing on the outside of the pans used over our gas stoves. If you didn't take the trouble to scrub those spots off during the pan-washing (and it took a lot of scrubbing), they eventually became a permanant feature of the pan. Mom was relieved when they went to electric and her new pans didn't get those spots. At least one of my houses has been on propane, and I've had the same experience with the stove. It's possible that the other of my "gas" stoves was really on natural gas, but I can't swear to it; this may be strictly a propane issue. Has anyone else experienced that spotting from a gas flame? It wasn't a regional thing, unless you count California and Minnesota as one region. I'd love to find out that it's a thing of the past.

Last night I had slow-cooked ramps with asparagus and prosciutto, tossed over lettuce to wilt and dressed with an oil/lemon juice/balsamic vinaigrette. I was pretty darned pleased with it, but Maggie, you've just changed my dinner plans. No confit of duck around here, but I think I'll stop collecting the duck fat to make confit, and use it on the rest of the ramps and potatoes instead. Wowza.

Ha! I just went out, camera in hand, to my new bag of charcoal so I could photograph that string and the pulling of it. Then I learned that it has a glued tab. No string, anywhere! So where did I get that little frisson of string pulling lately? Cat litter bag? Sunflower seed bulk bag? Hmm. ChefCrash, that is a great drawing. The funny thing is, now I can't figure out how the quick-pull strings must be threaded.

I'm just taking it all in: the gorgeous photos, the fine writing, the interesting glimpses into another world. This blog is as wonderful as its predecessors, Chufi. Be well soon, and thank you!

I bought my first batch of ramps last night and grilled them, along with asparagus, as an accompaniment for my steak. (I drizzled the asparagus and ramps with olive oil before grilling.) After grilling I cut the asparagus and the ramps into bite-sized pieces, tossed them with a vinaigrette and drizzled a bit of balsamic vinegar as a finishing touch. Pretty darned good.

That's the spirit! It happens that there's one for sale on eBay so I could see what this little beauty looks like. It's a pretty specialized piece of equipment, hey? But for 6 bucks I'd probably snap it up too, and figure out where to put it or what to do with it later. She who dies with the most toys wins.