jetsie

Interesting article. I'd been wondering how square plates had caught on in the past ten years. Maybe it's my groovy generation, but the big square plates still make me think, "Ugh, food served in ashtrays!" On the other hand, I always liked the very small square dishes and plates used in Japan.

My five year old took this picture of the peanut butter and honey sandwiches he made himself today. <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/33/57238281_d4c08a3751.jpg" width="500" height="335" alt="sandwiches" /></a>

Peaches, toast, peanut butter, baby soap, air conditioning: little kids in the summer.

There's always the burnt marshmallow, which some have patience to make into a s'more.

Sometimes I wonder if there's a secret, addictive ingredient in Slurpees. So many people crave them. I don't like the whipped, airy ice and chemical flavor. (Though I do otherwise like the flavor "blue" and cheap popsicles.) Pass me a Del's Lemonade--heavy slush and lemony goodness.

Since water is pretty much all I drink, I buy bottled water (usually Poland Spring or Volvic). I'd prefer to drink tap water, but the local tap water tastes like chloramine and swamp goo, dredged from the banks of two nearby rivers. Filters cannot remove the off flavors.

Phew. So it's not just me. I hadn't heard anything about the show, but happened to watch it tonight, and was amazed at how drearily obvious and dull it was.

My parents were both decent cooks, so we had nothing to complain about. The only bad food memories involve my mother's brief love affair with Salmon Wiggle, and my father's experimental phase, where he would make things for us like scrambled eggs with mouth-numbing amounts of dried spices and powdered garlic, which he'd color green or puce. Yeah, real funny, Dad.

I like mayo with sandwiches, burgers, and potato salad. Can't stand the weird flavor of soy oil, so I use Hain's safflower mayo. I tried Hain's canola mayo a few times, but it's oversweetened. I don't see the point of "lite" mayo. One of these days I'll make a nice aioli and wallow in it.

I'm not Asian, but lived in Japan for a few years as a kid, so I was comfortable using chopsticks from an early age. The Japanese make colorful chopsticks with kids' cartoon characters on them, so we kids were utterly in love with them, using them for everything. In the Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese restaurants I've been to in the U.S., chopsticks and Chinese spoons almost always seem to be the default utensils. Sometimes forks are offered or set out in addition, especially if the diners are not Asian. I usually prefer to use the utensils, dishes and glasses/cups that are traditional to specific foods. It's purely psychological for the most part, for me. My SO and in-laws are Vietnamese and use the long, square-edged chopsticks (and Chinese spoons). This type of chopstick is held very differently from the tapered, pointy Japanese-style chopstick, so I had to relearn my technique. My SO thinks Japanese-style chopsticks are hard to use! My in-laws always use chopstick holders on the table. At family gatherings I notice these days that the over-50 people are always given chopsticks, while the younger people often eat with forks, which they tend to use like chopsticks, in the sense that they pick up relatively big pieces of food and gnaw bites off them. When I amusedly pointed this out to my SO one day, he got offended, though I wasn't trying to criticize at all. I know I look awkward eating with chopsticks (even after thirty-some years), because I sit up straight and bring the food all the way up to my mouth, very Western style. As seen in this thread, it's hard to talk about cultural etiquette differences without offending.

Growing up, I remember being fed lumpy oatmeal, lumpy cream of wheat, and lumpy cream of rice. (Not surprisingly, I really like lumpy food.) My kids eat oatmeal almost daily. I eat it a couple of times a week, to boost milk production. Sad to say, oatmeal gives me heartburn and makes me feel really hungry all the rest of the day. I used to have a friend whose husband (from Scotland or Ireland--can't remember) insisted on cooking and letting his oatmeal ferment for days before he'd consider it edible.

I never want waiters kneeling or attempting to cuddle me unless I'm at a chic preschool-themed restaurant. If this does not describe your place, you can just tell your waiter it's a little too informal for your style.

I can never find those heavenly little menthol licorice pellets. Lakerol menthol licorice pastilles (sugarfree!) are pretty good, though I don't find them often.

Though I didn't grow up in New England, most of my family's been there since the 1600s. I used to go back most years for the holidays, and we did always have pumpkin, apple, and mincemeat pies, with other fruit pies for variety. (Plus Indian pudding!) Never saw a cranberry pie that I can remember. The first time I went to a friend's for Thanksgiving and they had dark, rich, chocolate creme pie . . . HALLELUJAH! This year I only had pumpkin pie. Kids and SO are not big pie eaters.

I know people who fall into this category. Whether it's institutional cafeteria food, 7-11 microwave sludge, or the cooking of a good chef, they fall on it with the same gusto and raves. I don't get it, but at least they're easy to please.

I'm wild about Japanese candy. There's a tasty cantaloupe-flavored chocolate candy that looks like miniature halved melons. I buy Botan candy every so often, having fallen in love with its rice paper wrapping and nifty little sticker prizes as a kid when we were stationed in Japan. It seems as if it's changed in the past year or so. It used to be made with millet, and the last few boxes I've bought tasted different, had a different texture, and contained no millet. Bleh. I didn't know there were two types.

At my house, we call it "noodles," because I cannot speak Vietnamese to save my life. Any time I've tried, people have stared at me in confused horror. ("Why is she ordering kitten in red corset?") For the editor in us all, I asked my SO, who is Vietnamese, about the correct pronunciation of "pho." It sounds like "fuh." I won't attempt to describe the tonal aspect. You could probably say "fuh" without sounding overly continental. Girls just want to have fuh. Everybody have fuh tonight. For the sake of a peaceful home life, I will just keep saying "noodles."

I keep multiple lists going, since I shop for different things at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, farmers' markets, and various other grocery and specialty stores. We have five people in the family, three of whom are technically adults, but I'm the only one who keeps up the lists. I love lists. They keep me sane. The only thing that ever trips me up is Teenboy, who tends to put empty containers back. He also haunts the kitchen late at night, randomly devouring key ingredients to planned meals.

Here are a few I found after a quick Web search: Italian Olive Oil of the Month Club, Mushroom of the Month Club, Salsa/Hot Sauce of the Month Clubs, Cheese of the Month Club, Vegan Cookie of the Month Club, and Chowder and Soup of the Month Club. ("Give the gift of chowder!")

Same here. They were a component of a Vietnamese salad. That crunch is an important part of their allure.

Three kids here, and each pregnancy I had very different foods/smells that either eased nausea or made me hurl. I became a human bloodhound during my pregnancies, too, which didn't help. I had 24-hour-a-day morning sickness for the entirety of two of my pregnancies. Whee. Don't take it personally if your wife runs retching from the room when you're cooking something any non-pregnant person would find delectable. If you're lucky she won't tell you YOU stink, too. The one thing that always helped me with nausea was to eat a deli-type dill pickle.

Congratulations. You made them look tasty! What a before and after picture --perfect for an extreme food makeover show. I asked my SO (Vietnamese) if he had ever encountered vegetarian intestines, and he hadn't, but he came up with a theory that maybe it's something you might cook on certain holy days when meat was not allowed, but you had a fierce hankering for intestines. I bet that it's something you would eat mainly for the texture.

What was the Vietnamese name of this on the package? I can ask my in-laws about it. And was the thought of "vegetarian intestines" just so enticing and delicious sounding you couldn't resist?

I rarely eat them, but tend to go for the original and the cranberry flavors. Now I've got the Big Fig Newton jingle stuck in my head.

I once worked as a server in a restaurant that pooled tips. It was horrible, because the place was pretty large, there were a lot of lazy servers with seniority and family connections, and I never got back a fifth of my actual earned tips. I quickly escaped. Otherwise, most of my server days were spent at places where service was set up in multiple small teams which consisted of some combination of a captain, front waiter, back waiter, and busperson, depending on how formal service needed to be. Each captain would divide up tips for his/her team, and also tip out to the bar and any food runners. This system worked well, encouraging good teamwork and service. Captains had to divide tips fairly or no one would work with them, but they could use some discretion in rewarding really good work. I don't remember ever sharing tips with back of the house. They would have been offended, in a way, since they considered themselves creative professionals, while we were performing monkeys.