MomOfLittleFoodies

IIRC, in CA, the minimum wage for waitstaff in restaurants is the same as the minimum wage anywhere else in the state, and the employer can not count tips as part of what it's supposed to be paying an employee. Here's a blurb from the CA state department of industrial relations website (www.dir.ca.gov) "5. Q. I work in a restaurant as a waitperson. Can my employer use my tips as a credit toward its obligation to pay me the minimum wage? A. No. An employer may not use an employee's tips as a credit toward its obligation to pay the minimum wage." Now, seeing as I rarely travel outside of CA, I don't have the guilt thing driving me to tip a certain amount regardless of service. Typically I tip whatever double the sales tax is... so 16.5%-17.5%, above that for extraordinary service or if my kids make a huge mess. If the service is terrible, I leave a lot less (but rarely nothing).

I guess I'm a purist with the sushi then. I only made the mistake of buying that brown rice sushi once.

Sushi... I don't care how granola crunchie, hippy health food things get. NO brown rice for sushi!

I have a dairy allergic child. I do most of my baking with margarine. Not my first choice (I prefer baking with butter) but it works out ok.

I go to the West Covina Marukai every time I visit my parents. I'd be thrilled if one opened in the Bay Area.

I was reading something, I think it was on the Monterey Bay Aquarium website, saying that the larger tuna are more of a risk mercury wise because they've had longer to accumulate methyl mercury in their tissues.

Looks like shredded daikon to me.

I found something interesting at the local Asian market today. A Kabaya knock off of Pocky, in a "gogo no koucha" flavor. It looked interesting enough for me to buy a box. It's oddly appealing, reminds me very much of a Thai Iced Tea kind of flavor.

My son has multiple, life-threatening food allergies. The only place I would ask for someone to not eat the things that he's extremely sensitive to would be on a plane. While he does fine in a restaurant, movie theater or sports venue with people eating peanuts, shellfish or nuts around him (as long as he's not touching/inhaling lots of debris from the food), I'm not terribly comfortable with the same thing in a flying tin can full of recycled air. I wouldn't equate asking for a peanut/tree nut free plane flight with eating in a restaurant. In a restaurant, if you don't feel "safe", you can leave, you can get fairly prompt medical treatment via 911, and you don't have to breathe the same recycled air as 100 people who opened their nut packages simultaneously. My son dreams of travelling some day. I'd hate to tell him that he's going to be limited to places he can get to only on trains, buses or by car. On a day to day basis, yes, it's my job to keep him safe, but it would be nice to know that he'd be able to safely take a trip on an airliner.

Like people choose to have such severe allergies?

I have 4 kids, two of which are preteen boys. Can I afford to do much of my shopping at Whole Foods? Nope! I go once a month to stock up on soy milk, soy cheese and a couple of other products I can't get at regular grocery stores. I buy myself little rewards for having survived a shopping trip with 4 kids in tow.

Just because it's uncommon to be allergic to something, doesn't mean that it's impossible to be allergic to it. One another foodie board, one poster told me that my son couldn't possibly be allergic to soy, because that's what they give people who are milk allergic. My 10 year old used to have this laundry list of food allergies... wheat, soy, oats, egg, milk, rice, white potato, fish, shellfish, peanut, tree nuts (I'll spare you that laundry list), squid, sesame and coconut. Now he's just allergic to the last 6. We go through allergy testing every 2 years to monitor this stuff. My 5 year old daughter is allergic to milk and shellfish. They both also have dander, pollen and drug allergies. I don't have any crazy theories on why they have allergies. For them, it's a hereditary tendency. This is what happens when 2 people with allergies, eczema and asthma decide to procreate. For my kids, for me personally, the food allergy thing isn't a big deal. I take my kids to the allergist as needed, we avoid the things we need to avoid, carry antihistamines and epi-pens around, and we go on with life. If anything, it's been a mixed blessing. Yeah, trying to cook around the allergies is a challenge, but at the same time, my children eat a lot of things that most kids their age wouldn't eat because we couldn't rely on the usual "kid friendly" foods.

Yum! Not far from where I live, grows some of the best sweet corn I've ever tasted. When corn is in season, I make frequent trips to the farmers market to buy it. My husband and second born son have been known to shuck it, rinse it, and eat it raw.

Food costs are dropping? That's news to me, as I'm watching prices rise at my local grocery store. I'm not always cooking out of boxes and bags, but I'm not cooking entirely from scratch either. Depends on how hectic things get (with 4 kids it does, trust me) and how tired I am come time to make dinner. I don't have the luxury of eating out frequently, and I can't use a lot of convenience foods due to food allergies, so not only am I cooking at home a lot, I'm having to be creative as far as technique goes. I enjoy cooking from scratch, and hope to do more of it. Eating out gets kind of stressful for me.

I craved things with bold flavors, junk food and sweets. Nothing truly notable except that when I was pregnant with my youngest, I craved salads, which I normally don't go out of my way to eat. Aversions... when I was pregnant with my second son 9 years ago, I made an appetizer for a potluck that used homemade teriyaki sauce. There was something about the smell of that had me running to the nearest receptacle. To this day, I can't make my own teriyaki sauce without that urge to upchuck.

Just a word of warning, those iron supplements will probably constipate you, so drink lots of water, and any dried fruit will help keep your from any trouble.

Expensive chocolate only matters if you like dark chocolate. If you only like milk chocolate, don't go breaking the bank buying a spendy bar of dark chocolate. I'm usually eating my chocolate in a hurry, so I don't bother with the expensive stuff very often.

I shop at the West Coast translation of Safeway (Vons or Pavilions) pretty regularly, and have purchased quite a few of the Prim9o Taglio products and I usually find them to be excellent. Prosciutto, pancetta, sliced and grated cheeses (asiago, swiss, bleus come to mind) have all been regulars in my fridge. No, its not prosciutto de Parma, nor Parmigiano Reggiano, but they're still pretty darn good. Good selections of salamis as well. ← It's Safeway in Northern California, and Vons/Pavillions in Southern California. The Primo Taglio turkey products are very good. I love the pan roasted turkey, and my 10 year old could live on the pepper turkey.

Amy's Roasted Veggie pizzas are a life-saver when my milk allergic daughter wants pizza and I don't have the energy to make one from scratch.

I'm terrible... I gave into my cravings today Seasoned chicken ramen, dry, straight from the package melon pan arare a bar of dark chocolate chicken mcnuggets (yup, from McDonalds) a venti Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks

I saw some at a Nijiya in Southern California, and I thought about this thread.

I wear whatever, and just fold sleeves as need be.

I would have a custom card made... I'd want to make sure that everything was on it just as I liked it, in a font/print size large enough to be easy to read.

When I'm baking for the whole family, I have no choice but to use margarine or shortening. Darned milk allergy. I've made reasonably good chocolate chip cookies using margarine. I've found that it's easier to make a chewy choco chip cookie using margarine than it is with butter.

My mom always sent unpeeled fuyu persimmons off my grandfather's tree in our lunches. Nana always peeled them though. I'll eat them either way, but I tend to peel them for my kids... the skins are pretty thick. In the current edition of Cooking Light, there are some persimmon recipes. Typically when I've baked with the fuyu variety, I treat them like an apple.