Chris Amirault

I find that grabbing the bottle of wine before it's fully drained and stowing it under the sink for later, dish-doing consumption greatly improves my mood during dinner.

This is astonishing to me. Coming from a country where farm subsidies are the norm, I can imagine some answers to this question, but why such astonishing overproduction worldwide? Has this production/consumption gap been this wide for a while, or is it recent? edited to add: Should've clicked on the article link to get more information -- thanks, JohnL. But I'm still wondering if anyone has information about the history and extent of this gap.

Carrot Top, this Proxemics stuff is cool!! It seems related to some of the stuff I've read about gesture, gait, and so on: a really fascinating way to think about how we embody culture. To wit: Do you know ratings for other cultures that have been mentioned here? It might be interesting to add that information to this thread if you've got access to it.

Two quick thoughts: This was discussed at length here in the garlic whooped my ass thread. Much confusion ensued! What? How in the world does that happen? Is this heirloom garlic? Or what? I know that China has flooded the US garlic market with inexpensive product, driving up the prices for California garlic, but that is shocking to me.

I wrote a bit about this in the fried chicken cook-off during a visit to a live poultry shop here in Providence, and though it's a bit narcissistic, I'll quote myself, since I seem to have figured out what I thought back then with more insight than usual: So, Elie, I do think that one should be able to slaughter one's meat, at least now and then. I'm not sure that one should slaughter an animal in order to feel better; rather, I think that one should shorten that distance between chicken coop and dinner table now and then. Of course, my grandfather (who liked to tell stories about snapping chickens' heads off to watch them flap around before plucking and gutting them) would throw back his afternoon shot of Wild Turkey and tell me in his best Maine accent that I wasn't the one doing the slaughterin' heah....

Go to LA, study In n Out, and replicate it on the east coast.

Klary, can you give us rough ratios in your filling? I was thinking about making something along those lines, but I always fear wet fillings with fresh mushrooms.

Bumping this up a bit, with a few new thoughts.... I've been realizing that I'm dreading Thanksgiving and Christmas this coming year, in part because I don't know quite how to approach the intersection of traditional expectations with the sorts of hopes I have for meals to which I devote a large amount of energy and time. I can't imagine that I'm alone -- and from conversations with Jewish and Muslim friends I can imagine that the coming holidays present similar concerns for other folks who weren't raised in Christian households. So how are you going to handle this problem this coming year? Are you accepting dry brisket, turkey, or lamb as something you'll have to accept without comment? Or are you hoping to promote some discussion about those dry striated muscle cells?

Just had to ask: given the recent devastating events in the southeast, has anyone had a gumbo ritual in honor of NOLA? I've been thinking that I need to do this in the coming week....

I wanted to provide an update on this: We've recently cleared space off on the bottom shelf of our kitchen thingamajiggie, which we use to store pots, bowls, steamers, a breadbox, mortars and pestles, and a few other things. This space is designated specifically for Andrea's stuff. Any takers on whether it'll get used or not?

Vaguely recollected anecdote: in response to a question about the home-cook problem that she most often saw and that could be most easily solved, Julia said that you can learn a lot about a cook's skills (or lack thereof) by what size bowl is chosen for a given task. She talked about batter flying out of bowls that were too small and single egg whites puddling at the bottom of cavernous bowls that weren't gonna make it to lumps much less peaks. Of course, as an owner of several dozen bowls who happens also to be utterly impartial concerning this issue, I definitely think that she was 100% correct.

I agree very much with Linda about Mae Ploy curry pastes. Just used the panang one tonight to make a fine and very untraditional chicken curry with some of the zucchini that has taken over our CSA farm.... Of course, the go-to convenience food in this house is sriracha.

Yeah, that's right. I want to be a Katz's sandwich too.

I think that we're all trying to think of an answer that's a little less transparent than a really long, thick summer sausage.

I wish I could provide good answers, but I think I mainly have more not-quite-rights... I'll toss my hat into the IKEA ring, at least for quick fixes. We're very happy with our cheap-o four-spot fixture (which replaced a hideous ceiling fan) as a temporary solution, along with another four-spot that's drilled into the cabinet to the upper right of the sink. Between the two, we get pretty decent coverage. However, it isn't perfect, and there are definitely dark spots here and there, most egregiously over the stove and in one corner. I think part of the problem is that bodies create shadows that spot ceiling lights make even more annoying; meanwhile, the cabinet four-spot shines its light somewhat horizontally onto the stove, creating shadows in high-sided pots. Surely there must be some better ways to think about this. Anyone a lighting designer out there? Daddy-A?

Anna, do you have a good recipe for a beer batter?

Hmmm.... Maybe we need a fish and chips cook-off....

I hate to say this because I really try to keep costs down, but there's another way that it got easier for me: that KitchenAid pasta attachment. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to use that Atlas hand-cranked machine with only two hands. Indeed, I needed four in my house: one to stabilize the machine (the clamp didn't work with any of the surfaces in my kitchen), one to crank, one to feed the dough, and one to remove the pressed dough or cut pasta. Now I only need two hands -- and that machine can roll far more quickly than I ever could with that crank. [Pasta traditionalists committed to fork-blended eggs slowly incorporating a mound of flour atop the clean counter should turn away now.] I also find that the KA works very nicely for the initial dough blending and kneading. Plunk down your two cups of flour with a pinch or two of salt and blend for a bit. It'll make a slight well in the center, into which you break the three eggs. Then turn the paddle on low to beat the eggs and then incorporate flour into them. As they start to bind and create little nodules of dough, turn the speed up; when it's starts to ball, switch to the dough hook and knead it for a few minutes. I always take it out for some hand kneading before letting it rest, but it works like a charm. I have found that I make this more often, and thus practice more, thanks to the KA attachment; screwing up and starting over isn't as big a pain in the butt as with the hand-crank machines.

And cash-register unjammer, cigarette-break ender, spill sopper-upper, server-who-hasn't-shown-up-on-time-again caller...

I feel like Whole Foods is the anti-Walmart, in that it's the store I hate to love. I just love it, love it, love it... and feel like it's catering precisely to the little foodie id that runs a direct neural link to my debit card. Makes me feel so damned annoyed to know I'm so easy to read -- well, at least until I find some really perfect shiitake mushrooms to go with that strip steak on sale for $9.99....

Chufi, looks great! What would one now do with that basil-pressed pasta? Cut it? Into... papardelle?

Maltex seems to have gone the way of the dodo, or, more accurately, the piping plover; we can only find it now and then on grocery shelves.

Yeah, our seventeen-person service staff was taking the week off for Labor Day, so our Swarovski crystal cheese bowl and serving shovel hadn't been cleaned and buffed. Thus: wax paper!

Well, lessee.... Adam wrote this in his eGCI course:

At my local source I was told a few weeks ago that they're currently out of season -- though this site would suggest otherwise.