Smithy

What gorgeous cocktails, Marlene! We don't hang out in a cocktail crowd, as the gang sticks pretty much to wine and beer and after-dinner liqueurs. I'd forgotten how pretty cocktails can be. This blog is great fun. Mystery basket: I propose pheasant ramps tamarind If pheasant isn't available, then what about duck?

Gyaah! Take it back! Ayieee! It looks terrible. I'll be interested to hear what the suppliers say about it. It looks to me like it fails the "yecho" test, even if some expert does crop up to say it's the latest and greatest.

You came to the right place! However, you may get more help over on the Cooking Forum, where we've been discussing tagines a lot. I'll post a pointer in one of those threads to this thread, so some of the others are more likely to see it. What type of tagine did you get? There are specific instructions about how to cure a Rifi tagine in this post, which is part of a very long and informative thread titled Moroccan Tagine Cooking (Admin: threads merged.). If you keep reading along in that thread, you'll find pointers to recipes, a lot of do's and don'ts, success stories, and information on some other types of tagines. Here's a thread with some posts on tagine do's and don'ts, and curing Now, for Questions and Answers: (1) What you describe in the instructions sounds right, if that's what your tagine instructions say. As I understand it, you really only need to do the soak once, then the oil and bake once. You do need to add more oil after the baking, from what I understand. I'm not sure when you'll know to stop. Maybe you stop when the clay stops soaking up oil. If you want to "age" your tagine, you can then start oiling with a mix of olive oil and wood ash and baking that. It will turn your tagine quite a bit darker and make it look like it's been in the family for several generations. However, that's strictly a cosmetic thing and it apparently works better on some types of tagine than others. I'm hedging here, because I'm in the process of curing my (Rifi) tagine for its first use. Until now I've been cooking with an entirely different kind of clay that gets cured differently. I'd hate to give you bad advice because I misunderstood the curing instructions. (2) Someone else will have to answer this one; I cook on electric coil. I use the second type of heat diffuser you describe. Someday I'm going to spring for a SimmerMat, but right now I'm just delighted to have the new tagine! (3) You can add water. You should add water that's roughly the same temperature as the tagine...so, if the tagine is cold you can add cool water, but if the tagine is warm you should add warm water. I'm afraid to trying adding water to a HOT tagine. You didn't ask but I'll tell you anyway: along the lines of not adding cold water to a hot tagine, or vice-versa, watch out for setting a hot tagine onto a cold counter or putting a cold tagine into a hot oven. The key is to make gradual temperature changes. (4) I had great luck starting out with Paula Wolfert's Moroccan Lamb Tagine Smothered with Lemon and Olives. It may look scary to you if you're a new cook because it looks like a lot of ingredients, but really it goes together pretty easily. Another source of recipes is Sackville, who has a bunch on a separate web site. Three of the recipes are referenced in this post still farther down the tagine thread. As I said, I'm still curing my own tagine so I'm afraid of giving you too much advice yet - but I'm sure the experts will chime in soon! Enjoy, and welcome to eGullet!

I'd like to know that one for sure! Is it Yeer-ows?

For us non-native speakers, it's an easy one to mangle. I've been amazed at people mangling "hummus", of all things - it seemed so easy, and why anyone would pronounce it "HYOOMus" or "HOOmus" was beyond me. Recently I realized that I've been mangling the initial H and final S sounds, so I probably don't sound much better.

The Duluth Farmers' Market has opened for the season. As yet there's precious little produce, but there are wonderfully started plants (herbs, flowers, vegetables), and the cheese people and an egg guy are back.

With the exception of tomatoes and - this year - peppers, I stick to herbs and flowers. My sorrel, chives, and burnet survived the winter and are coming along nicely, and I think I see cilantro seedlings starting up. Meanwhile, in the house or the commercial nursery kindly awaiting better weather I have basil, thyme, patio tomatoes, a larger tomato whose name escapes me, some kind of mini bell pepper (a new thing for me), more sorrel (one cannot have enough sorrel), sage, 3 kinds of rosemary, 2 kinds of parsley, tarragon, bay, horseradish and mint. I am amazed to see that our outside mint died off this winter. Fortunately, I have some Persian mint inside that's about to go out for the season. The mandarin orange needs a bigger pot, but I can't claim to be growing it for the garden. Its pot is just too small, and the winters here too harsh. When it flowers, though, it perfumes the house. Hmm, nasturtiums. They did brilliantly last year. I'll have to do those again. Oh, and dill...but I need to find one that gives lots of greens for the flowers. A slow-bolting kind? Any ideas? For the rest, I'll count on the local farmer's markets. I can hardly wait!

Fifi, this has been a great blog: a fun read, and terrific tour. I'm sorry it's already over. I haven't really given the Texas coast much thought before now. One thing that strikes me is, I can't believe your wild roses are almost gone! Ours haven't even budded yet! But then, it hasn't hit 60F here yet, either. I'm surprised at the whiteness of your roses. Ours are (that is, will be) quite pink. You have me looking around for more potential "edibles" as I'm driving around, and I think I'll have to give choke cherries a whirl this year. Berries are no-brainers, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more. Thank you!

I got the same story about Moët's pronunciation during a tour in 1992, for what that's worth. I don't recall the family origin, but I do remember the pronunciation.

Warning! Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Lupines are lovely, but if you ever get them established you'll find they're very agressive and invasive. I enjoyed having them in my old flower garden, but when I realized they'd crowded everything else out despite my best efforts at control, I wasn't so sure. (You should see how far the seeds pop!) I don't have them at my new place; I enjoy them along the roadside instead. From time to time I've toyed with the idea of planting lupine, mint and horseradish together, far from my house, and seeing who wins the battle for domination. The many, very valid comments in this thread about containing mint all seem to be missing a couple of critical pieces of information. The suggestions about placing a barrier around the mint, several inches deep and a couple of inches high, neglect to warn you that some mint spreads by putting out shoots that root where they land. I've never seen that mentioned in a book, either, but I promise you, mine does. Make sure those barriers are higher than a couple of inches. I don't know how high they need to be. Alternatively, check from time to time to watch for shoots. The mint that I've kept in pots has almost invariably become rootbound and died. Last year my English mint overcrowded itself in a 20" pot, and died. My solution has been to plant it around a deck post, where the lawnmower keeps it in check. I hadn't heard about the wood ash before. I'll give that a whirl. I gave up trying to start plants from seed a couple of years ago. For just a few bucks more, along about June I can go to a local greenhouse and pick up basil, tomatoes, parsley and coriander, all much farther along than my own seed-started stuff. The farmer's market folks here sell good seedlings, too. For the more exotic herbs I go to Papa Geno's Herb Farm. Their web page is informative, they take care to ship when and only when your plants have a prayer of surviving in your area, and their customer service is great. Papa Geno himself told me how to overwinter French sorrel up here a couple of years ago, and my bush is on its 3rd or 4th season. Marlene, I don't think you've mentioned dill. It's a great grower too, easy to grow, delicious, and you can use the seeds as well as the feathers. Dilled potatoes are a summer favorite for us.

Fifi, sorry if I missed this, but are those grapes ripe? They look quite unripe to me, and I've never thought about trying to do something with unripe grapes. Are you going for a tart jelly? There's some refence over in the Middle Eastern forum about sour grapes. I wonder if your grapes would lend themselves to some Middle-Eastern cookery.

...and you managed to wait until they reached the end of the driveway? Lady farmer, you have the self-control of a samurai.

That does sound "funny" to my Rhode Island ears, Michael -- "funny" like totally wicked weird. Cuz everyone knows ya don't gedda glassa waddah from the waitah; ya get wadda from the bubbla. Jeez louise. ← I've been there. I traveled a bit in the South for a while and at one time was able to mimic a range of dialects. I don't have much trouble understanding different dialects even the UK ones. But a woman from Oklahoma just floored me with how much twang she put into every word. ← My aunt used to be a librarian in central California, where a lot of Dust Bowl refugees had settled. One day a little boy came to her desk and asked her, "how do you spell rat?" She kindly replied, "r - a - t", to which he responded, "no, I don't mean like a mousey rat, I mean rat like rat now." Getting back to food, my Georgia-born grandmother went to the Bahamas on a vacation one time. She later related this conversation with a hotel waiter: She: "Do you have any peyahs?" He: "Excuse me, any what?" She: "Peyahs. Peyahs." Seeing his nonplussed look, she spelled it out: "P - e - a - r - s" He: "Oh, you mean peers! Peers!" (She got her pears.)

Yes, that's it! and no, it isn't poisonous, unless one needs to take a lot more than we ever did! By the way, in case you decide to try it, I think the nectar comes away with the base, so you have to suck that part instead of the red petal. Isn't that funny about the fingers? I don't think we ever did that. We certainly never associated them with witches, but then we don't have poison ivy. We associate them with hummingbirds. I used to sit atop our propane tank, very quietly, half-hidden in the trumpet vine, until a local hummer would come perch by my foot. We were nearly friends one summer. Very cool. Interesting about the lantana and its height. I remember being just as surprised when I went to the Caribbean for the first time and saw poinsettias in their natural glory. It took a long time to recognize those house-sized shrubs as the same thing we got in teeny pots at Christmas!

The Cute Guy signed up for Home Economics, lo these many years ago, to the fascination and deep joy of the Girls Who Worshiped Him who happened to be enrolled in that class. Cute Guy experience the fishbowl effect in that classroom, I'm quite sure, based on the reports that came out every day at lunch. One day, the Girls Who Worshiped Him tumbled out of class hollering with glee. Cute Guy had reached into the oven to pull out his beautiful pan of muffins. Cute Guy had forgotten about a potholder. After he'd grabbed his pan, his nervous system had taken over as the "HOT!" message hit. He'd yanked back his hands, the pan had gone flying across the room and landed muffin-side down on the floor. Not one muffin came out. The muffins were rock-hard. Cute Guy went on to lead a fine life anyway, to the best of my knowledge, but he was a long time living that one down.

Hmph. OK, let's take a poll. How do you pronounce the name of the herb 'basil', and where are you from? The choices are "BAZZel", "BAYZel", "BASSel" or "BAYSel". I find it difficult to believe my broad circle of friends is so, erm, uneducated about this particular item! And please, let's not have any of that arrant pedantism about ending sentences with prepositions, or starting them with conjunctions.

I never tried the nectar of honeysuckle! Too bad! However, the trumpet vines (which have larger flowers) were a joy to treat the same way. Remove the red trumpet-shaped flower and suck the nectar from the interior parts. I could understand why hummingbirds hung around there. As an added bonus, the flower bell could then become a "doll's skirt" for 15 minutes or so. It looks like the elderberry and lantana are about the same size. The tallest lantana I've ever seen was around 3' high. Is that the size of the elderberry plant? Or do you have Texas-sized lantanas? Finally - hate to say it, but I'm not sure which 3-leaved plant was the poison ivy! (We had poison oak in the California hills). The ones at the right of the photo looked more like strawberry leaves. Is that what you were talking about?

Which brings me to one of my pet food-pronunciation peeves. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, virtually every English speaker pronounced the name of that herb BAZZEL, which is how it should be pronounced. If you look in any older American dictionary (like Webster's Second) or any modern British dictionary (if I'm not mistaken--I'm going by the OED 2nd edition), this is the only pronunciation you'll find (represented in their proprietary notational systems). Somewhere along the line, though, Americans got it into their minds to pronounce it BAYZEL, which is a silliness that drives me to distraction. Would they say Bayzel Rathbone, or Bayzel Faulty? The herbal name and the male proper name are exactly the same word, and should be pronounced BAZZEL. Please join my campaign to restore this word. ← Well actually, I always pronounced the male actor's name the way I pronounce the herb, until I heard an English person discuss him! My Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, which is not new at all (printed 1979) lists 4 pronunciations of the word 'basil', in this order: "BAZel", "BAYSel", "BASel" and "BAYZel". I'm surpised, because I've always only heard the 4th pronunciation when discussing the herb and thought it was the preferred American pronunciation. At any rate, this is not new. Sorry, not going to join you on this one. Sha-lot, however, and marinahd really stick in my craw. A favorite radio food host, whom I otherwise adore, uses those pronunciations. Oh, dear.

Oh, I'd forgotten those quicksand films. They went into the 60's in California. Our local river was reputed to have quicksand beds, though I never was able to find them. Between the supposed quicksand, the fear of contracting polio from local ditches and ponds, and a reputed abandoned (but not closed) well back of my grandmother's place, we grandchildren never left the house without a full burden of do's, don'ts and worries. Fortunately, none of the fears came to pass (see how effective worrying is? ) and, even more fortunately, we all grew up unafraid anyway.

Those look like satellite photos. They always cheat. It's called "signal processing". Edited to add: still, they show the flow of sediments beautifully.

← Your foraging stories so far are not only amusing but inspiring. I'm going to have to point my sister to this thread so she'll stop feeling like a borderline thief on our excursions. Since my parents moved off the ranch and into town, whenever we visit we're off doing our morning walk through town instead of ranchland. It's hardly the same, but we've discovered a number of buildings with Meyer lemons and rosemary and various other herbs planted for ornament's sake. We deduced that they were intended for ornamentation because nobody was collecting those Meyers this winter. We came back with a dozen each, and barely dented the crop. I hadn't thought of a good story, though. I'll have to work on that for the next trip.

Oh, this is going to be a fun blog! You've picked a terrifically interesting theme! I didn't realize Galveston Bay was so big, nor that Houston had so many undeveloped areas, as it were. In addition to the other questions already posted, I have a couple: Those look almost like sand spits at the mouth of Galveston Bay. Which way does the longshore current go, and how (if at all) does that affect where you'll find good sea creatures? What, if anything, is the City of Houston doing to preserve the large land tracts involved in estates? It's a natural progression up here: * people who have dozens or hundreds of acres start cashing in on their land wealth; *the property gets subdivided; *more people move onto smaller lots. The result is a lot more crowding for the same infrastructure as before - more difficulty with water, sewer, roads, emergency services, and so on. Getting back to food and foraging, it makes the foraging harder for humans and the local wildlife. In my township they've set a minimum lot size to try to control the population density - but then, of course, they're encouraging sprawl as a result. Finally (for the moment): congratulations on your retirement! I'd missed it before. Enjoy, enjoy!

even more primitive, i usually make vinaigrette just by tossing some oil/acid/salt right onto the greens and giving them a vigorous tossing. works just fine for dinner. ← That's what I grew up with, but I love rubbing the garlic all over the bowl - I feel somehow like I'm missing out if I don't get that extra flavor. ← Someplace I read that the best way to dress a salad with a vinaigrette is to toss the greens with the oil (after rubbing garlic in the bowl), then start adding the vinegar and spices. The oil coating helps the rest of it to stick to the leaves and distribute more evenly. I confess, I rarely do it that way (or by mixing it all in the bowl before adding greens) because I'm prone to making large batches in a bottle so I'll have some later. The two-stage tossing seems to work, though. Any comments? Does anyone else do it this way?

This was a lot of fun. Thank you, thank you, and best wishes!

Turmeric, garlic, saffron, salt and cumin, with the ubiquitous onions under and around the chicken. I didn't use lemon, and next time I think I will. There was some fresh cilantro thrown in with the whole thing, but since it wasn't under the skin I doubt it was the culprit. Maybe the can was "off" at the outset. I think this may be the same flavor I dislike in my husband's chili, when he dumps half a jar of old cheapo chili powder into the mix. Still... I wouldn't have expected it with this brand of paprika, and I don't think it was very long ago that I used it with great success. Edited to correct the seasonings. (If only it were so easy to do so with the cookery!)