Carrot Top

Depends, depends. I'm thinking the lady from Cork posting might have been having a bit of a laugh. But it got me to thinking about other things that one culture might not eat that another one will. Before having this fine little bunny for a pet, my son used to have lizards.

Ferret Recipes

Amazing, what one can do with one single product like a grain of wheat. What you describe sounds like a rich almost-molasses- taste. Maybe like Indian Pudding but made with wheat . . .

Wow. Yes, I'd forgotten about that addition to the Bunny Hall of Fame. I enjoyed your links very much, Diane. And I'm still musing on that last line you wrote. I'm being careful and carrying both my carrot and my big stick, Dignan. I used to be that macho. I really don't know what has happened to me, Kent. Funny how one is either too old or too young, throughout life. I do have a rural perspective on rabbits, but this may change. I believe it's all due to the fact that when we had to give my son a middle name (his father is Catholic so you have to choose a saint's name) I chose "Francis" as in the guy with the animals. Sigh. Mistake, for culinary purposes. Hassenpfeffer is still my favorite bunny . . .er . . .rabbit dish. It is a thing unto itself, a thing with a name that is strong and a taste that is itself. Rabbit dishes cooked with cheese are very good too, LindsayAnn. .............................................. Here's a site with a lot of rabbit recipes. It's a ferret site, which reminds me that ferrets are used to hunt rabbits. Anybody ever eaten a ferret?

Now that's the sort of thing I like to read. The author should submit to The Daily Gullet perhaps.

Mmm. It was roast chicken.

It's from the site on Afghan food posted here. Everything sounded so delicious. But when I stopped to really focus on the two "puddings" I realized that of course they would not be the same because wheat that is only fifteen or twenty days old is *not* likely to have such big mature kernels.

And this is how great recipes are invented. The potato recipe worked great for me the three times I tried it. Maybe someone sold you some wierd potatoes . . .but now that you have to make the bread again you'll have to make the original recipe again, I guess, to find out.

I sure hope you weren't understanding anyone to be self-righteous: I don't think anyone is considering this type of response defensive. ← Perhaps self-righteous was the wrong word.

Nope, but it's child-centric which too many people believe means "kids rule," all the time, every place. There are places they don't belong, period. And there are times that having a staff cater to their every need as demanded by themselves and their parents, affects the other customers. ← The concept of "child-centric" that you are describing is *not* child-friendly. The actions engaged in within the concept make it, finally, a falsity as being "about" the child in the final analysis. It also offers up the supplemental value of creating an atmosphere that sets people at each other's throats. How and why it has happened to such an extent, creating the sort of overwrought restaurant scenes that "we" do have here more than perhaps in other cultures, is a tangled web that somehow maybe someday "we" (as a culture)can climb out of. I also think, however, that it is interesting to consider how and where we as distinct individuals might edge towards our own ways of being ethnocentric in terms of these things, even if perhaps only for the mental exercise of it.

Twilight Zone time. Walden Pond and those elegant prewar apartments on Lower Fifth are in alternate universes from each other. (But I admit I always find it amusing when the wealthy force themselves to stumble and bumble and struggle for no really good purpose except one they make up, for the purposes of getting book deals. )

Certainly it was not my intention to hint that behaving at restaurants did. Naturally, it's always nice when mass murderers have good table manners. Civilized-like.

Funny you should say that. When I first posted the topic I was thinking specifically of these sorts of "power foods". I was really surprised the posts started pouring in with almost everything *but*. Some very creative people around here. Power, apparently, comes from different sources for different people. (Why are Pokemon coming to my mind? )

Wow. That's really wierd. I'm having deja-vu. Do you know that you just succinctly described like . . .the best meal my mother ever made? Delightful. I'm glad to know that people will drive hundreds of miles for this.

Hey, yeah. Or the same with being a chef.

The Greenbrier Hotel does (or did, last I heard). Seasonal, of course, as West Virginia is not a year-round growing climate for lots of stuff. The formalized specs that were developed as part of the contractural agreement between vendor and hotel were not easy for the smaller-size local farmers to meet - I know several who simply gave up on the idea after trying it for several years. They went back to selling by the roadside from truckbeds.

Oh, I agree. She should do what she believes is right. Particularly where morality comes into play. My question is, how do I get to be this guy below, if I have a terrible and unyielding urge for bottled water on a visit to Chez Panisse?

Simply put, bottled water has been "86'd" from the Chez Panisse menu. Except for cases like this: Interesting.

I can also think of people I've met who have been brought up in the most excellent way you describe above, Maggie - people who can exhibit beautiful manners at table, who were taught all these things as children - yet who somehow turned out to absolutely psychopathic horrors in other parts of their lives. And I can also think of the children I knew in a rather poverty-stricken rural area I lived in. They will not be dining at restaurants as children. Likely they will be sitting in front of televisions while they eat, often. Yet these children can and do grow up to move other places, to learn how to dine at fancy tables, and even if they don't they can grow up to be the sort of person one says is the "salt of the earth". .................................... Our culture is not particularly child-friendly. As others have mentioned above, some of the most effective ways of making children comfortable in restaurants is shown in restaurants run and staffed by those from other cultures. ..................................... I prefer the concept of compassion rather than the concept of self-righteousness when I see a child misbehaving in a restaurant. Life goes on, and this, too, will change, and another chance to dine more pleasantly will arrive soon enough.

I remember reading Clementine Paddleford in old Gourmet magazines. What a name! Who could dare say nay to a woman with a name like that? In my own experience, the most common Thanksgiving pies are pumpkin, apple, and pecan. They are sometimes added to (at the dessert table) by various cakes or cookies. It's not just pie, anymore, baby. Our Thanksgiving traditions have altered, I believe, including the pie part, since Clementine wrote that. You might find more information about our status of current and past pie-dom from one of the food history groups such as The Culinary Historians of New York or maybe even additional information about sorts of pies and amounts of each type sold/served currently at Thanksgiving at the site of an industry journal such as Restaurants and Institutions. As far as photos go, there are some gorgeous ones to be found of all varieties if you surf the food sections of stock photo sites, of course. It *would* be nice to get a real, home-made one, though, wouldn't it.

This may be the ideal, Maggie. It's not the norm in a lot of our society today. What I read (because I know you a bit) that you are writing is a caring imperative to love your children as best you can (sometimes better than you can), to take the time, to do the "right" things in terms of raising them (and most particularly in this area of dining). Nonetheless, different people have different levels of skills and desires in the world, and not all will want to be this way or *can* even be this way. To paraphrase an old saw, "Not everyone can dance to the beat of the same drummer." Yet somehow there are families and children that make it through life to learn how to dine and how to love, and how to show manners and care towards food and towards the world and each other, without having experienced the sort of situation you describe above. My own mother (a single mother, never married) could barely find enough within herself to keep a roof over my head and a simple meal at suppertime. There was not joy, there was not discussion, there was not offerings of interest or love. She did, however, gain what she finally wanted which was a Ph.D. in Special Education. She did, also, however, give me up by offering me to foster care when I was turning fourteen years old (whereupon I ran away to The Big City and raised myself)(and am still raising myself, probably. ). I turned out able to know how to dine (because I taught myself) and able to be an executive chef in a place where the care and quality shown in the food placed in front of the diners (and knowledge of highly finessed etiquette of many varieties at the dining table) was massively paramount. How do I know I succeeded? Because I have a collection of letters from heads of state, top dogs of business, and just plain folk, that tells me so. My mother could not do what you describe. It was not within her. Plus, she had nobody to help her, as is the ideal. Two parents on the scene raising children are a barricade against difficulties or an enclosure of support for each other in raising children that the single parent simply does not have. I don't resent my mother for not being able to do what you describe. I feel very sad that somehow, the strength, the ability, the support system was not there either within her or outside her. Yet, I learned. And I somehow learned or somehow know how to love my own children in a different way, a stronger way, than she was able to, me. But I won't meet your goals as stated above, probably. "That's why I am the parent," is right, yes. My way of being a parent does not include all of the specifics you detail above. It just doesn't. And yet, somehow, I feel that my children will grow up okay, knowing how to dine and how to love - how to live in a way that works for them as we all must, with the differing strengths, support systems (or lack of support systems) that we each have. One pattern does not fit all. Perfect as that pattern might sound.

Is snainiya similar to samanak, Elie? (And congrats on cute little tooth. )

As a single parent with two children (that's two against one on the manipulation scale )(and sometimes one against the other as siblings close in age, too ) who dines out fairly often, I learned a long time ago that if trouble is brewing the best thing to do is to ask to have the food packed up "to go". Quickly packed up to go at certain times, particularly when the day has been long and the sugar levels low. I take the kids out to the car while handing my credit card to the host while saying "Be right back." This does not happen often, but it does happen. One of my children has a high sensitivity to noise and crowds, and many restaurants seem to try to develop the sense of both these things in their atmosphere. Personally in my situation (i.e. solo) I would not risk taking the children to a haute level sort of place, feeling the potential challenge not worth the eagle-eye soldierly rigor of demeanor I'd have to develop in order to sally forth into it. I am sure they will learn to dine well at the "hautest" of spots, as I have learned myself, without being taught as children, but as part of being young adults on their own. Plus then they can pay for it themselves.

Interesting, very. For if the way we see our realities is shaped (as experts claim) not only by the factual reality itself but by what we *think* the reality is, a higher knowledge level can only enrich an experience. A surface level directive of "you can use a cheaper wine" without any more or less knowledge will leave that subtle perceptive sense upon the taste of the food, the feel of the food perhaps, to the one who made it and who knows - by extension to the ones who eat it? It's not just about romance, in other words, it's about developing a knowledge that enrichens each experience. It's not just about knowing the "facts" it's about taking the time to be exposed to the wisdom. It's not about buying because it's cheap enough - it's about buying and using because it is something that makes your mind or heart happy in some way as well as your pocketbook. Beautifully said, Marc. .................................................... I hasten to add that I thought the article excellent and yes, myth-exploding. I've generally cooked with wine the way the article advises. But here in Marc's post, is even more (at least for me) to muse on.

I almost wish this thread had not been revived. You know what's really good? Warm Spinach Salad with Chicken Cracklings. Sigh.