Behemoth

Guilty, I'm afriad. Well, actually it depends on where I'm having it. A good restuarant will generally get the proportion right and I always order it as is. And don't get me wrong, I tend to favor a good deal of dressing on my salad when I make it at home. But here in the midwest you tend to get more dressing than salad. It's like eating a bowl of spackle with little lettuce bits thrown in...

Ours starts on the 15th -- Yay! I will be out of town -- Boo! But I am having a bunch of people over for "Market Dinner" (aka I cook whatever I find) on the 22nd -- Yay! Seriously though, I really can barely stand waiting any longer. I hope that guy with the amazing fennel is here this year. A little too early for tomatoes I suppose. It's like having christmas once a week! Yes, I am a dork.

I love to drink tamarind in the summer -- melt tamarind paste and sugar in boiling water to get a syrup, which I later dilute with water and a lot of crushed ice. You can get a tamarind soft drink at mexican places but it has too much sugar for my taste. But you have to be careful with it, right? Part of the reason it is so cooling, I am told, is that it thins the blood, or lowers blood pressure or something like thatl. Does anyone know exaclty? I just know from my dad that ingesting too much tamarind or too many fava beans were two tricks people would use to get out of the army.

Seriously! Holly, I have a confession to make. I think I may have stolen your photo of the menu at George's. When I got married last year, I had about 30+ guests coming in from Germany & elsewhere and made a wedding journal of our favorite places around town so they could find their way around. Anyway, all the other pics were our own, but I didn't have a nice one of the Italian Market. Can share the journal if people want, though it is in German... I love your website. How cool that I get to tell you in "person".

I can't claim to be an expert on either cuisine, but it might be fun to explore the common ground between venetian-style recipes (that include raisins, cinnamon) with eastern cuisines. Venice did a lot of trade with spice-producing countries and I think you can see some influences there. I have always been fascinated by the continuum of recipes from India, through Iran, the Mediterranian and into Turkey and Greece. Yoghurt, lentils, rice and eggplant bear a good deal of similarity, as does the use of certain spices. There is also a bit of a continuum going from north africa through spain, which can be fun to think about. Has anyone else tried to play with this?

Just a thought -- is anyone else driven completely nuts by the American obsession with anti-bacterial soaps? Just what I need to be ingesting on a daily basis, something that will kill my stomach bacteria.

The first fight my german bf (now husband) and I ever had was about this very issue. I was horrified the first time I saw him do it but I have to say I have never experienced food poisoning with him or his family. Still, when I wash the dishes I really feel the need to rinse. By the way, there is a great MFK Fisher essay about this: How to Lure a Wolf. MFK is of the rinse-with-hot-water-no-soap school. The inverse-European method, so zu sagen.

Dammit I miss out on all the fun... If anyone reading this spends time in West Philly I would recommend the Green Line Cafe on 43rd and Baltimore. The coffee is good and they have nice baked goods but the real selling point is the space itself. Light, airy room with big windows on tree-lined street, nice quiet place to read for a few hours. Not packed with penn students. And you can watch the 34 trolly go by

I thought the point of the movie was the same as the point of "fastfood nation": Make the author/film star more famous and wealthy. I have to disagree with your take on Fast Food Nation. I haven't seen "Supersize Me" so I have no comment on that, apart from finding the premise a bit artificial. (Not to mention fairly obvious, in that performance art kind of way.) Fast Food Nation, on the other hand, is an excellent piece of research journalism, and a fascinating read. On the whole I found it to be quite fair. Schlosser does not dismiss the fast food industry categorically, but looks at the bigger picture: how the fast food industry affects food production, children's health, worker safety etc., as well as how it is itself affected by, for example, the increase in highways and two career familes, and so on. He appreciates the very american-style inginuity of the founders of these places, and in some cases even says that these places can turn out a high-quality product. But he makes the nice observation (to this econ nerd's mind, anyways) that successes which we assume to be result of fair market capitalism are in fact often helped along by extensive government subsidies. It is one thing to feel guilty when you read a book that disparages (I don't even think it is that strong -- reproaches?) something you like, but it is another thing to simply dismiss it for that reason. I did not get the sense Eric Schlosser was interested in self promotion, he just seemed like someone who was interested in studying how and why things are the way they are. I would compare him more to a combination of Upton Sinclair & Studs Terkel, or Kenneth Jackson. Have you read the book? (Edited because, while Sinclair Lewis wrote many good books, The Jungle wasn't one of them.)

Ugh... I will try to never again turn on the wrong burner by mistake then wonder why my pasta water is taking so long to boil. Or worse yet, realize my empty pan that I left on the" other" burner is turning blue from the heat. Which reminds me. I will try to remember to grab a pot-holder before I rush in to save it. Double ugh. I just can"t get used to electric stoves...

Presumably because you're a rancher...? Or is this some form of wierd Nebraskan hobby? I just have this mental image of you wrestling a beast to the ground and taking a giant bite out of it, al la Homer Simpson daydream.

Can I use that? I have actually been invited to dinners where the appetizer, main and dessert were all some form of casserol.

According to Madhur Jaffrey's "Vegetarian Cooking", Haak is collard greens. Oh, I bet that's good with paneer...

Yeah, what is that? I moved to the midwest a year ago and I have to say I was unprepared for that culture. I figured it would be hard to get certain things, like seafood etc, but judging from the supermarkets I really think people just don't cook, period. It's all convenience foods, meat counter is all pre-seasonned pre-prepped, really sad produce. I don't mind "plain" food but given what's in the average processed cheese slice I wouln't consider that particularly simple. You'd think with all the farms people would have at least figured out vegetables...interesting point to tie it in to canning... The other thing that surprised me is how much locals complain about developement and farms getting bought up but don't seem to tie those huge ADM trucks going back & forth on I-74 to what they buy in the supermarket. I think your "covering up" statement is true, but not in reference to the food so much as the person. Maybe it is a religion thing -- not wanting to look like you're trying to be "fancy"? Too bad it has gotten to the point that buying your vegetables from farmers is considered fancy. Sorry about the rant, this is a sore spot. Some things I do like though -- big skies, farms, I've met really nice farmers, crazy wildlife all over the place, cheap rents and also I like cows.

Amen to that. I will take a moment and fondly remember the stove in my last apartment. It had to be from the 1930s, pre-safety issues, about a foot square footprint and you had to light the oven with a match "whoosh!". Damn, that thing could get hot. Our new place has a fancy schmancy stove with grill tops and stuff but it is nowhere near as fun to use. My fellow grad students ate very well those years...

Today's was noteworthy: BBQ ribs, my first attempt. Nice hot/tangy/slightly sweet sauce success though getting the fire right was a bitch. ember-roasted sweet potatoes w/ cinnamon butter wilted arugula salad with slightly salty queso fresco crumbled in Negra Modelo beer Making a run for Rum Raisin ice cream any minute now...

Ha, I actually forgot about spam. I was thinking more of Dinty Moore products when I wrote that. I can't believe I am admitting this, but I have never actually eaten spam. Though I think one of the first things I ever made as a kid was corned beef hash, and I remember feeling very proud of it. A fine vehicle for ketchup, that dish.

Yeah, it's called procrastination -- search random ingredients in eGullet so I don't have to face my end-of-semester mountain for work I have some round steak in my freezer now, that sweep steak method sounds good. I'm thinking maybe I'll try it with some variation on a mexican-style chili typa paste instead of onion soup and use it for carnitas... Okay, I go work now.

Oh seductive bitch godess Caipirinha, how you lure with with your siren song and tart-sweet wiles and then toss me aside, leaving me to wake up dazed on the livingroom floor the next day. Surprisingly hangover free, though, in your favor... For one Caipi, I muddle a whole lime, in 1/8ths, with demerara sugar until the sigar dissolves. The granules help scratch up the lime peel, plus brown sugar tastes nicer, IMO. Once I did it with key-lime lookin' things someone brought back with them from mexico. That was even better, if one could imagine such a thing were possible.

Any form of meat or pasta that arrives in a little plastic microwaveable container. The food is awful and the container is not recyclable...it's like laughing at mother nature and then kicking her in the teeth! Canned meats in general. If you're gona eat the animal, at least make it feel like it died for a decent cause. Sheesh.

Ah top round! I shred at against grain while it is still frozen and fry it up wit' onions & provolone for philly cheese steaks. Good use for cheap cut of meat. (I joined a beef CSA so I would have to learn how to cook whatever's given to me, not just steaks or burgers. I'm getting pretty creative these days. ) Edited to mask my appallingly tenuous grasp of the English language.

This isn't a web version of a print magazine, per se, but I personally really like the food section of the BBC website. There is tons of content, you can easily waste many hours in there. And then when you have worked your way through all the BBC stuff, you can click on "webguide" to find links to all sorts of other useful food sites. I use Epicurious mainly if I have a specific ingredient and am looking for some ideas. The search function on recipes is pretty nice and ocassionally the little comments on the bottom of the page can be amusing. (aka "I used kraft singles instead of the chevre, crisco instead of butter and onions instead of the fennel and gosh, the recipe really wasn't any good!) I wonder how frustrating that must be to the writers? Anyway, bbc food!

I hope it happens soon! I came across his website about a year ago when doing a search on Lebanese wine reviews, and it has been bookmarked and frequently visited ever since. eGullet rocks.

Okay, I really have to get on my high horse about this one. Mixing good arak with anything but water is like drinking lephroaig with coke. The proper way to drink it is this: 1/3 arak, 2/3 cold water. If you want ice in there be sure to put it in after the water, otherwise the arak with curdle. Arak is always consumed with meals. (Pretty much unsurpassed as an accompaniment to kibbe nayeh, olives, salty goat cheeses). "Arak" means sweat, which refers to condensation during the distillation process. It is not like Pastis, as it properly contains only two ingredients, grapes and native anisseed. The best kinds are made with obeidi grapes (ancestor of chardonnay, I've read...), distilled 4 times, and aged in clay jars for a year. It is expensive to produce, so if you are buying something cheap it is probably just ethanol infused with anisseed -- a common trick, and the reason why this drink gets its bad rep. Ksara or Fakhra are acceptable commonly found brands, but if you can get your hands on it, Massaya (in the blue bottle) is probably the best commerical brand available, and is worth the price. I have one bottle left and I ain't sharing. I'm not militant about most things, but Arak is the exception. I really think it is a misunderstood beverage and in my experience when people have it done right they become converts. eGulleteers will allow me this one pedantic moment, right? It's for your own good! Oh, the clouding comes from the emulsification of the anise oils suspended in alcohol. If you really want to know more, you could always read this paper on small angle neutron scattering. Actually, this is why arak curdles when you add the ice first: the anise oils seize up instead of dispersing evenly throughout the drink.

I was considering that for my next purchase...My lovely wine store in Urbana carries it. I love after-dinner "digestifs" & have only recently discovered the northwest US aquavitae/grappas. Here's a tip: Ransom Guwurtztraminner Grappa was my most recent "big success" discovery and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a postprandial digestiv. (I came across it at the above-mentioned wine store and was intrigued enough to plonk down $30). It is lovely and complicated -- more on the order of cognac than anything, very smooth. At the risk of completely embarassing myself, I will admit that sometimes I just open the bottle for a little whiff. It's that good. He also does a pinot noir and a muscat version, both of which I am planning to try. Oh yeah, "he" is a guy named Tad Seestedt and he lives somewhere in Oregon. Here is the website: Ransom