Carrot Top

Even with computer systems, training systems, limited menu choices, and short point-to-point time from order to hopeful delivery, I find that in general three times out of four something is incorrect on any fast-food order from some places. It does not seem to be geographically based but widespread. If it is not that they forgot the ketchup asked for, it is that they did not provide napkins. If it is not that they ignored the request for a "plain, with nothing on it but the burger and bun" burger and instead loaded it with every limp tomato slice warm lettuce leaf and brightly colored sauce available in the Western world, it is that they do not know which drink is which that they just topped off and handed to you. If it is not that, then the drinks are watery. If it is not that, then they do not have what is on the menu or need time to prep it. Is it just me this happens to?

A story in the LA Times describes a method of reducing debt within the school system from parents who have not paid their children's lunch bills: Gosh, I really do not know *how* I feel about this. Any thoughts?

I bet he was disappointed. The only way to have enough meat from a roast pig is to fill everyone else up on other stuff first. I'm sorry that Charles only took the heart and the liver, though. That would have made a nice pictorial - dealing with *all* the innards creatively. Especially if he wore that nice pink shirt while doing it.

I'm curious about what people cook at home, here in the US and in other places. Do you tend to mostly cook foods or recipes that spring from your home culture, or do you tend to mostly cook things from other cultures? Where are you from and what is it that attracts you to the things you choose to cook? How long have you been cooking, and has your cooking shifted from that of one culture to another over time? How did you learn to cook - from a person, from books, from television, from (?) What direction would you like to see your cooking go in the future - do you have a "plan" or any ideas as to what focus you would like to take?

Did you guys save the innards for anything?

Crystallized ginger slices. Which I am nibbling on right now. Which are very good. They are staving off the hunger as I stare in admiration at the coppery-glaze over deep forest green Umbrian terra-cotta bean pot I also got there today for the grand price of fourteen dollars and ninety nine cents. It is going to be filled with veggies and beans and onions and garlic and maybe even some cinnamon and crystallized ginger* for a medieval tasting sort of thing (if there's any left by the time it hits the oven ). Grazie, TJ Maxx.

I ran across "How to Pick a Peach" in the bookstore today (B&N). It was in the "celebrity chef/food scholar/fancy new books" section ( ), cover prominently displayed, and the cover drew my eyes right to it. Gorgeous-looking colors. The contents were quite satisying. Good information, well-laid out and easy to find and use, just long enough to not overwhelm, and the tone (personality of the writer) was individual enough to attract a reader who dislikes either the rampant pomposity or formal (zzzzzzz) teaching tones that can often be found in books of this sort. Really good recipes, too. Very nice. A worthy book.

I keep clicking on this photo to see if it as funny to me every time I click on it, and it is, each time. These photos would made the basis of a great chldren's book. Really, I don't *know* why it's humorous, but it is. "La Piggie en Deshabille". (She needs some clothes!)

Now *that's* art. It looks sort of like a bomb that's getting ready to be sent somewhere, though. A Happy Bomb. One to make friends with.

My blase attitude towards not scheduling family dinners is not only because I see the kids so much but also just because I prefer the sense of having the day unfold as it will, to a point. Schedules are such demanding and difficult things, with one thing arguing against another for each time slot, when one tries to use them. I *can* use schedules, and naturally did at various times in life - not only for personal/business things but also in terms of scheduling everything it takes BOH and sometimes FOH to make hundreds of meals come out of the kitchen each day - but I don't like to "schedule" unless it's really required. Plus I'd rather cook a bit here and there, nibble a bit here and there, rather than have a whole bunch of stuff landing on the table at the same time (which is sort of part of the family dinner thing - the expanse of food provided). Cooking is just plain too much like "work" to me when approached this way. I'd rather have a sort of organic (not the food but the mood) flow to the both the day and the foods we eat (or the foods we dine upon, again depending on what happens. We do both. ). But I have discovered a latent ambivalency to the idea of the Family Dinner in myself, and this is core, of course. For those who have had good experiences with the thing will most naturally want to try to continue it, of course . . .and those who have not will either try to continue it out of still trying to find the things it provides when it is good, or will just sort of say "You don't fit me well, Family Dinner" as I have done. Both my two best friends when I was growing up had Family Dinners. They happened when the fathers came home from work, and lots of times I was there. The food was to be ready at a certain time, the mothers prepared it. Everything was set, and the family convened (I say convened because at both places it had that sense rather than a sense of gathering) to the table. Everyone ate, there was not much conversation of any sort really though the feeling was not terrible, the father sat at the head of the table and was usually a bit distant, and everyone tried to say "May I be excused" as soon as possible. It was sort of wierd. My own mother served our family (myself and her) our Family Dinner at a regular hour each evening. She would cook something because she knew she was supposed to, not out of any love of cooking, and we would sit there - her silent as usual and me with a book in front of my face as usual. It was a nonenity of a Family Dinner, though it was scheduled and food was there. But worst of all in my memory, and this is what might be at the back of some hints of my distaste at this concept of "Family Dinner" is that often, when I was growing up, I would hear women saying "Yes, I have to have dinner on the table when my husband gets home from work. He likes it to be ready then." And they would be rushing to be sure this scheduled thing was met, they would not be mostly too happy about it. It was like a job they did not like but had to do "or else". And then of course I finally met one of these women who made Family Dinners for husband "on time or else" when he was due home from work. She was one of the unlucky ones, for this husband would beat her if the dinner was not set and ready on the table, and as he liked it, when he arrived home. It was not all that many years ago that I met her - she lived in a rural area and had set her life to do this thing of being married and having children, which she had done when very young. Why she didn't have dinner as he liked it when he liked it is an interesting question to pose, but sometimes she didn't. And I would see her black and blue face and hear her say " He didn't get his dinner on time" and my insides would just crumple right up with thinking of this thing of family dinner being used in such a way, but knowing that I'd heard of this before, too often before, but had simply never come face to face with it. The notion of "Family Dinner" had allowed this to happen in these two lives in some odd way. It *could* have been anything else, of course, but this is one traditional thing used. And having seen this with my own eyes, I can never feel the same about The Family Dinner. It is simply not always what it says it is, and forevermore I question it. If it's worked for you, you are blessed. I imagine that it was one of many tools used in the family structure that worked, because of the underlying strengths of the family. If it's worked for you, if it were me, I'd give it a big kiss and consider myself lucky. But I think it is a thing of many faces, not just the one face that looks out benignly upon the world that says "I am Family Dinner. Schedule me into your life and things will be as they should be."

We actually are face to face often, on an ongoing basis, day to day. Our conversation is an all-day long thing, only interrupted by school or chosen activities. It can range from the bright red extensions that my daughter wants to clip in her hair, to how to cook tripe (and what it is, to start off with), to books or politics. We don't need a table or food for this, for our own dinnertable of conversation is an all-day long buffet with breaks taken as required. Tables and food are wonderful things, and the sharing of them can be one of the best things in life, of course, but the set-piece displayed in a subtle sense of it being something that can save civilization as we know it seems to me to be false. I have nothing at all against the tradition of Family Dinner (when it is good) being passed along in families. But it's not the only way, for everyone. There are other ways to reach towards the same thing and to obtain it. Unless the goal *is* the Family Dinner, to knowing it as Family Dinner and to practice it, the ritual. That is a thing unto itself, but the promises inherent in it do need to be looked at in a general overall sense to see if the Thing is delivering on its promise (as some of the posts above have shown). Rituals can take on sensibilities of their own that can be true and truth-ful or not, depending on the instance and practicioners involved.

When does munchkin become three? I wish you best of luck with your plan.

It must have been a long-term plot by the cat in the first place to have this happen. Nice story.

Ah, Sir Charles. I am glad you've chimed in. Do you really talk like that? Sounds good to me.

So, the Family Dinner is the Family Dinner with someone always jumping up and down from the table at your house. You. That leads to the question of whether there is such a thing as a Family Dinner without somebody being subliminally the servant. I used to know a woman who got so tired of things being like this that instead of putting the kids in time-out she used to say she was going to time-out and would go climb in the baby's crib for a rest.

Here's another thing I wonder about, that touches upon The Family Dinner. It will be Thing Two. I see many children lately who spend lots of time with their grandparents. The grandparents have replaced the parents in terms of spending time with the children as the parents work. When hearing discussions of this here and there, often I hear "Better for the kids to spend time having a decent Family Dinner (at the grandparents) than to be at home eating whatever the parent(s) might be able to feed them with the time they have." I wonder about that, too.

*Time* dedicated to a thing shows results. I have an argument with the "demands our society puts on the time of both adults and children", probably. It is, to me, the time given that matters, not the thing. The thing being, in this case, the Family Dinner. If the focus is on the Thing, it is not on the time. Time is capable of being shaped in so many ways that can fit and fill people better than any Thing. Plus, I do not like this Thing being made into a Results-Driven act. ..................................................... I am beginning to sound like Dr. Seuss. Thing One is The Family Dinner. Thing Two will be . . .(will have to think about it. )

Oh yes. I agree with that. I spend hours and hours each day with my kids. If they are not at school, and not doing something else that is one of their chosen activities, they are with me. *But* there are often times that we do not sit down at a table and eat together. We might set out food in the kitchen and wander through the house nibbling on it. We might choose to eat different things at different times. We might eat fast food, driving somewhere in the car. We even *want* to go out a lot, for often we are at home, together, the three of us. And surprisingly (or maybe not, to those who have experienced this) a brother and a sister with an eighteen-month age difference and vastly different personalities just plain don't want to eat together. Not now. Someday, when they are older, based on what I have seen with others in this situation, they will. Do they gain some sort of moral advantage from being forced to do this now? I'm not so sure about that. Do we have to want to eat together all the time, as a family? Does this one single thing make a family a family, or is it the sum parts of all things that make a family a family? I know people who were forced to sit at table while growing up, eating dinner, nightly - who have terrible family relationships/situations. The function of eating together did not create the domestic bliss that it promised, but rather created a sense of shoving things under the tablecloth in fear and formalcy, the polite veneer of masks pasted on with the intention of many of those who sat at table, food together at dinner, politeness or not - to get up from that table when "excused" then to go as quickly as possible on to other things that might not be so palatable to the Mother and Father who created the Fine Dinner Table - to go on to these things without telling Mom and Dad, for the very rigidity of the family structure would forbid communication of what was "really" going on in these kids' lives. I know kids right now who are dining with their families at the dinner table who are doing other things behind their parent's backs - things that might prove not-so-great in the long run but that is not the point. The point is that the Dinner Meal Together does not create magical communication. It is a nice thing if it works. But if it does not, given the fact that our lives are very different than they were in terms of timing and structure (work and the traditional family being two things that have altered drastically in past years) there are other ways to create the bond. Dinner at Table With Children each day (to my mind) is not a panacea. It is an action that can be taken, among others, to ease communication, if done in a way that works. But it is not the only way, and the world does not and will not end if the structure of it is altered. ................................. Edited, SB, to add my own ( stern visage).

Mmm. But you will admit that university studies make wheels turn when they come from well-respected names. People often get hired for "good jobs" or not based on university affiliation and people look to these places for guidance as how to do their best in the world. Journalism follows along behind university studies in terms of stories presented in the mass media, which then affects how we look at the world and what we consider our best choices to be, within the choices presented and vouched for by our paid and sanctioned intellectual leaders (who would be the university people ). There are people worrying at this very moment that their children will become drug addicts or failures in life (getting bad grades and being unable to get *into* "the better" universities therefore, well. . . the saga of worries could continue endlessly here ending in dissolution of character and other losses) because they do not eat dinner together at a table on an ongoing basis with aforementioned kinder. You, with stern visage, obviously do not worry about these things. But some of the rest of us do.

An article in the New York Times discusses the subject. Well well. Columbia vs. NYU on parenting and particularly on how we raise our children, and most particularly on how we eat and with whom. Which university will get your dollars for further studies?

What struck me as odd is that someone who paid that much for a bottle of wine is telling stories about it. Generally people who are accustomed to that sort of thing don't talk about it.

Last year I got pissed off at my kids for not wanting to eat the things I wanted to cook so when I was at the grocery store I saw this book. "Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish". I decided they were going to have to eat from it for the rest of their lives, as long as I was cooking. The recipes have three to five ingredients each. Most are canned or frozen. There are even little pictures of the ingredients in their little cans and packages, right below the recipes. But really, this one is not embarrassing. It is more like "frightening". I wish I had the discipline to use it. Tough love, you know. Supposed to do wonders with kids.

From Wildfoods- Trees, Uses

There are two really good recipes that include sumac in Claudia Roden's "Arabesque": Bread Salad with Sumac (Fattoush) and Chicken Pie with Onions and Sumac (Musakhan). There is advice that the chicken pie filling (which includes lots of caramelized onions, sumac, cinnamon, cardmom and lemon) can also be put in a pita and eaten.

Here's a link to a bit more on the book (Hungry Planet) from NPR. I remember something being on eG about this before, including the NPR link, posted by Pontormo but can not find it. Excellent essay. One of those wake-up calls.