viva

Eden, that peach ice cream sounds really nice. And Chufi, I love the blackberry crumble idea. It looks delicious. I'm thinking you could pretty much take any of your favorite baked cobbler/crumble recipes and turn it into ice cream. I wonder if you could add baked pie crust pieces to ice cream? You know, something flaky with a bit of sugar baked on top? The crust might get soggy...

Cream of mushroom, kraft mac-n-cheese, tuna. Total staple.

A jubilant ice cream success today. Apricot-Raspberry ice cream. Inspired by one of my favorite pies - I saw some very pretty apricots at the grocery, and I figured if the apricot and raspberry flavors worked well together in the pie, they'd work well together in the ice cream. I used the epicurious strawberry ice cream a few pages back as the starting point, but used half & half in lieu of heavy cream. Made the base custard as outlined in the directions, but I left the microplaned zest in the custard. Let the custard chill overnight. For fruit, sliced up about 7-8 apricots, 1/4 cup or so of sugar, a couple of squeezes of lemon for juice, and a couple of glops of Cointreau. Same treatment for the raspberries. Let the fruits macerate overnight. Pureed the apricots in the morning and mixed with the custard, then poured into my ice cream maker. Meanwhile mashed the raspberries with a fork so they'd be a bit chunky and mixed in near the end, just enough to distribute evenly. The whole thing was a lovely peachy pink with small flecks of apricot gold and larger chunks of berry fuschia. Nice smooth creamy apricot flavor offset with the berry tartness. I ate a big bowl while sitting in the sun on the top step of my pool. Summer.

I haven't found any worth buying, so I just head down to the local mexican carniceria and get a few pounds of pork back fat - which they sell to me for about $1 - and render up my own. That way I get my precious cracklings! Yum. Love pie crusts with lard. They are indeed flakier. Very nice for apple-based pies.

I defy anyone to come up with an item on a typical bar menu that would not go well with "...and a side of ranch". And bergerka, I just innocently e-mailed my friend. who I can always count on for a pizza/wings/ranch/beer lunch.... "Oh, are you in town? Do you want to do lunch this week? I've missed seeing you." Well yeah that, and I want to sate the cravings brought on by this thread.

This thread is like HBO's Taxicab Confessions, but for eGulleteers. Condiment Confessions: The Ranch Dressing Affair. (ETA for bergerka that if the mayo at the restaurant were crap, ranch probably would have been perfect on that bacon cheeseburger. In fact, there's really no bar food that ranch dressing can't accompany - fries, check. pizza crust, check. wings, check. onion rings, check. jalapeno poppers, check. It's unhealthy crap anyway, what the hell.)

I've got no problem with making money off ranch dressing.

Excellent Chris - thanks. Although since I've discovered how reasonably priced the Lodge Logic stuff is, the glamour of buying my own vintage cast iron has worn off a bit. Another junk heap glory: cookie cutters. I love these guys. I have a bunnies, a penguin, snowmen, trees... soooo much cooler and cheaper than the standard Williams-Sonoma sets (of which I have several as well - I'm an addict).

Yet another use for ranch dressing... I was eating some lovely skirt steak & poblano tacos tonight - needed something creamy but was out of sour cream - ranch dressing to the rescue. It's like a universal condiment.

I was just in a flea market in France and bought an old cutting board with a nice pestle-shaped indent. They also had some beautiful old copper pots that I just didn't have room for in my suitcase. I've often wondered about the slightly beat up cast iron skillets you see everywhere. Is it fairly straightforward to restore one to it's former glory? I'm still kicking myself for passing up Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen for $3.

I like fries dipped in ranch.

I bought the shiny Cuisinart and made a batch of strawberry-orange sorbet with a little Grand Marnier mixed in. I love the pour-spout in the center of the lid, as basically it allows me to reach my spoon in while the sorbet was being made. You know, for quality control. While I'm on the sorbet subject, there was a dessert that I had at several different restaurants in Paris wherein sorbet was served with a dose of vodka, limoncello, or champagne on top. Anyone know what this might be called? Is this served States-side and I've missed it for 30 years? Not knowing any French, I only ordered it thinking "sorbet...good. liquor...good."

Only if you grow up with a decent family. I learned a fair amount of negative social behavior at our dinner table. We put the fun in dysfunctional.

Smell is important for me to enjoy food - I hate having colds or allergies when nothing tastes right because I can't smell it. But to truly revile a food, it's all about the tactile/touch. Slimy, mushy, mealy - nothing invokes horror like a nasty texture.

Pickled watermelon rind? **with prosciutto or salmon**

I don't think it's a black/white "eat pre-packaged food"/"don't eat pre-packaged food" issue. There's the time factor - during the week, I travel and am away from home - there's no food that I consume being prepared by me at all! (Although I feel I can give you a very fair assessment of almost every American restaurant chain!!) If I am working in my home town, I'm working 12-15 hour days. Sometimes there's no scenario in which preparing a dinner myself is possible, so yes - stopping at the grocery or the fast food establishment on the way home looks like a very attractive option in order to let my head hit the pillow as quickly as possible. Hell, sometimes I've eaten Lunchables out of the vending machine for dinner. I don't want the Lunchables. I don't like the Lunchables. But they were there and were pretty much the option. Now, on the weekend when my time is my own?? I cook up a storm. I even try to make enough so that, if I'm at home, there's leftovers during the week and I don't have to resort to the pre-prepared foods. But I don't always succeed. Also about marginal value vs. additional effort... I pick up ham salad at my gourmet grocery - I'm sure I could make my own, but theirs is pretty tasty. The marginal value I would get out of making my own is pretty small. The marginal value is much bigger for me on other items. There's also a matter of degree... while most who have posted here won't buy pre-made fried chicken, I'd bet that many will pick up a box of crackers rather than spending the whole day rolling out cracker dough and baking it. Just some thoughts for those who might make a very large, very general, and fairly negative stereotype about "those people who eat pre-prepared foods."

Just did Coba Saigon in the 8th. Great rolls (Nems?), barbeque spare ribs were okay but a bit dry.

I enjoy a bit of regular pomegranate POM with club soda, or for something sweeter a little lemon-lime soda. I love the ideas for pomegranate margaritas and mojitos on the previous page...

I respectfully disagree. To me, Diet Coke with Splenda tastes like Pepsi or RC, while Coke Zero tastes like... Coke. I still like Diet Coke (particularly Lime and Cherry), but I'll add Coke Zero to the rotation.

Your mother and my grandmother (who raised me) were clearly from the same mold. I appreciated grandma's processed food skills, because it was harder for her to...shall we say...mess them up. Grandma's best meals were both processed: - Kraft mac n' cheese, hot dogs, and jello chocolate pudding. - Tuna casserole: tuna, Campbells cream of mushroom, Kraft shredded cheddar cheese, Creamette elbow macaroni, and packaged bread crumbs on top. I still crave this, actually. Actually, to give Grandma credit, she made Swedish-style pancakes fairly well (from a mix) with raspberry sauce (from frozen raspberries).

I'm not sure if this has any basis in fact, but my old Mexican produce guy used to insist that the jalapenos with what I call "stretch marks" on them are hotter. The "stretch marks" look like short light brown lines on the skin of the pepper, rather than the usual smooth shiny surface like the picture above. True or not, I've always followed this rule in selecting my jalapenos, and have never been disappointed with the level of heat.

Is Porfidio making tequila again? I thought they lost their license or had some serious plant problems.

<cough> uh, I didn't think it got that big. Oh my. It's only about 2 feet tall right now (and mama agave has little offshoot baby agaves next to it). Well, it'll be big enough to tap.

Really... I just purchased an Agave Weberii for my backyard... wonder if that's the same thing... and I wonder if I can make tequila if I ever get tired of looking at it...

also when you see a steak frites, a moules frites, a fish and chips, and about half the foods of northwestern Europe. while i admire the French fry to no end, i think its provenance is a bit too global to hand credit fully to the USA. Freedom fries, otoh ... ← I can personally attest to this, having spent the last 3 weeks in Belgium and France, where I've had pretty much every "-frites" combination possible. And they were generally a damn sight tastier than our freedom-frites. Especially with mayo! Ketchup has nothing on mayo as a fry condiment. I'll give this one up to the Europeans.