MarketStEl

BTW, this isn't the first time The New York Times has weighed in on the apparently dubious link between eating fat and getting fat. In fact, IIRC, the Times' previous widely publicized effort -- a Times Magazine cover story in 2002 suggesting that Dr. Atkins was right after all -- triggered a boomlet in low-carb products. A few of those remain with us today. Although rancho gordo's experience stands as a cautionary tale, I also suspect that keeping the proportion of highly refined, processed food in your diet to a minimum and especially consuming alcohol and beverages containing sugars in moderation will probably matter more than anything else you do in avoiding obesity. Anything, that is, but exercise. If you're not doing that, that should be the first change you make before any other -- unless you're obese enough that you should see a doctor first before starting an exercise routine.

"Gravy Master" is a rival to "Kitchen Bouquet." It's a caramel coloring and flavoring used most often in making brown gravies. I find that I prefer brown gravy to ketchup as a topping for meatloaf, but the pan drippings from the ground beef and Italian sausage produce a gravy that's not quite strong enough and dark enough for my taste. Add a little of this and it's just right. Two cats, one male (KK), one female (Miss Curiosity). You met them in my first foodblog. They can't stand Iams dry but love Purina One. Miss C functions as my natural alarm clock, clamoring for breakfast 30 minutes before I want to get up in the morning. I rise at 6 a.m., hence the mild annoyance. I also think that Miss C harbors a secret urge to go grocery shopping with me. She always hops up on the bed beside me when I clip my coupons.

Consider this an invitation to visit Delilah's at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Don't have time for a full visit? Hop off the train at 30th Street Station, go to Delilah's in the food court in the south concourse, and catch the next train to where you're going. You may have heard of proprietor Delilah Winder's fabulous seven-cheese orgy -- the mac 'n' cheese pronounced the best by none other than Oprah Winfrey, but which nonetheless got whipped by a five-cheese Bobby Flay number on an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

The moment has come at last! I will be headed up there with a passel of Phillybloggers in about 30 minutes. Of course, I'm taking my camera. Full report afterwards.

My shopping lists are two-parters. Part One is a semi-permanent week-to-week list on the fridge door: On this list I write down things I run out of that I know I don't always check for when I do my run of the kitchen prior to grocery shopping on Saturday. Often these are pantry and under-the-sink staples that I buy lots of on sale, so I have to remind myself to add these to the Part Two list when I go shopping. I cross items off and add them to this list as needed. Then there's the Part Two list, the one I use for shopping. Every reporter carries a notebook (don't they?), and I'm no exception -- this isn't a reporter's notebook, though; it's a pocket notebook on which go random things and all my shopping lists, like this one: If an item is in parentheses on the list, that means that it's something I should get if I have enough in the budget, but it's not something that I have to get this trip. Here's one from after a trip is done. As you can see, I don't necessarily get everything on the list -- and invariably, some off-list items find their way into my shopping cart, most often cheese. I don't usually plan meals in advance of heading to the store, so there's no listing of specific ingredients and quantities. Should I end up making a meal for which I don't have all the ingredients, I usually pick up what I need on the way home from work.

I miss the Nifty Fifty's that once occupied that spot even more. It's now a Rita's Water Ice -- well, half of it is; some sort of takeout eatery is going in the other half of the space. What was even more unfortunate was the logo Fat Daddies chose. The two "d's" in the middle of "Daddies" were capital letters rendered so they formed the bellies of two stick figures. The way the stick figures looked and were positioned in the logo, you could read the name as "Fat Dappies", and some (mockingly) did. Another item from the "Typography Matters" file: Across the street from me is an outpost of the Newark, Del.-based coffee house chain Brew Ha Ha! The company logo, since revised, featured a quasi-script typeface with the cross stroke of the capital H's curved slightly and extending beyond the vertical strokes, a bit further beyond them to the left than to the right. This caused my partner to call the place "Brew Hatta" until I corrected him. The new logo uses serif capitals. Nobody could make this mistake now. --Sandy "see you at the Ak-a-me, perhaps?" Smith

I've got a direct Cheddarvision feed on my Facebook profile. You'll have to scroll down through some stuff to get to it. As of now (10 am EDT 10/06/07), "Wedginald" is a rugby fan.

<HomerSimpson> Mmmmmm...Tillamook. </HomerSimpson> Personally, I prefer sharp Cheddars for snacking, though I have had some very good milder Cheddars from Wisconsin. Maybe I should give Tillamook's medium Cheddars a try -- their Vintage White is excellent. They're up there with (okay, okay, a notch above) Cabot as the best Cheddar in the supermarket dairy case. I sense that we can state that it is the consensus of this group that cranberries-and-cheese combinations are an abomination.

(emphasis added) You just had to go there, didn't you? Those are imprinted in my brain as reversion-to-childhood food, like Life cereal. Brick cheese and Kaukana spreadable -- the stuff that used to, but no longer does, come in that cute little clay crock -- are as close as I get to this on the cheese side. Neither of those have stuff in them.

Re: smoked cheese vs. cheese flavored with liquid smoke: I'm definitely with you on that one. The difference is like night and day. I discovered this after purchasing some naturally smoked Gouda at Whole Foods one week and comparing it to the industrial-grade variety found just about everywhere. Of course, as much of the flavor in many liquid smoke flavorings comes not from any captured smoke but from the molasses or other similar stuff added to it, this should come as no surprise. Re: flavored Triscuits: I'm not completely with you on that one. I might rethink this if I read the ingredients list closely, but just as I like flavored potato chips knowing full well that the flavors are often powdered or otherwise processed substances, I find some of the new Triscuit flavors interesting. Of course, plain Triscuits are still best to serve with cheese, but the herb and rosemary/olive oil flavors can complement several good cheeses.

I can offer some firsthand observations to back up this story in today's Delaware County Daily Times touting a "delicious golden age for Media restaurants," having stumbled out of a University Advancement Division happy hour at Brodeur's on State Street recently to catch the 101 back into town. Even though the headline refers to how the restaurants are doing as businesses, maybe what's equally noteworthy is what the restaurants are doing for "America's Hometown": Put another way, a sleepy suburban downtown has become an evening destination thanks to enterprising restaurateurs. I can tell you that State Street today is vastly improved over the State Street I saw when I took the 101 out to Media for the first time shortly after moving here in 1983. This is a big reason why, though judging from the article, a wise move on the part of Media Borough Council helped too. It probably doesn't hurt that the restaurants serve good food too -- though frankly, Iron Hill is worth visiting mainly for the beer; its food, while it doesn't suck, is nothing to write home about either.

American Dietetic Association, perchance? I work with Connie Holt, the registered dietitian on our School of Hospitality Management faculty at Widener. (Edited to add: I'm not on the faculty; my job is to get our faculty in the press.) If my assumption is correct, you all must have been in your element in the RTM! So I guess the conventioneers are in the mood for much more than sandwiches after all!

(emphasis added) Substitute "cheese" for "bacon" in the boldface sentence above and you have my exact opinion on cheese as an ingredient in or additive to dishes. Which is why I don't quite get the purism on cheese with added ingredients (though I agree with you wholeheartedly on the inappropriateness of cranberries as an add-in -- I got a horribly incorrect impression of Wensleydale, which is a wonderful crumbly cheese, by first being exposed to some with cranberries in it). One of my favorite cheeses to serve guests is a cheese that by definition has non-cheese stuff in it -- Cotswold, which is Cheshire with onion and chives. The three tastes together are IMO better than the components eaten separately (I think the common cliche for this is "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"). And, I would suggest, that sensation -- not the add-in itself -- is what leads people to say that a particular cheese-and-something-else mixture (whether that something else is herbs, fruit, or Guinness) is so good.

Want a Kansas City sauce to serve with those St. Louis ribs? Forget KC Masterpiece. Make your own clone of a Kansas City original.

Maple syrup and hot sauce -- an excellent combination! Sweet heat is always interesting. May I inquire: --what kind of hot sauce you put on your eggs? --how many hot sauces you have in your collection? --when we can expect the fridge shot? --what your opinion is of Pocky? --what of Montréal itself we might see in this blog? This is a city on my must-visit list -- besides, I need to add it to my subway collection -- so tips and advice on how to make the most of a visit there are also welcome. Including, of course, places to eat.

Paul told me Saturday that Amy's Place is moving into the former Foster's space and expanding its merchandise lines. No cookware, but Paul tells me that didn't sell well at Foster's. Plenty of kitchen gadgets and related items, though. A propos of nothing else, I remain pleased with the meats I get from Charlie Giunta. I'm price-conscious enough that I still buy at the supermarket, but when I want good stuff, he's become my go-to butcher. I told a friend I wanted to commandeer his grill two Saturdays hence, and I have a new Crock-Pot to christen. I see Giunta's has spare ribs for $1.99/lb. Guess where I'm getting spareribs for both purposes.

I don't use the Skytrain in Vancouver much (we're on a Kitsilano-Downtown- North Shore routing when we're home), but they struck me as very similar.....except I don't remember video screens incessantlyl screaming at me in the trains when I rode in Vancouver. (although I liked the low-fat milk commercials they were running last week....well, maybe only for the first 100 times) The BTS link doesn't say much about equipment, but something in the back of my head remembers seeing Bombardier's name in the Post back in the late 90's when the BTS came on line. However, Siemens is in on this, and I'm seeing a lot of Siemens/Bombardier in the googles, so it may be a joint venture between the two. Trains run well, though. And they're air conditioned! ← Warning: tangent. It being the end of a wonderful foodblog, I hope you all will permit an indulgence from eG's resident transit geek, the guy who insists on providing transit directions in his restaurant writeups. That vehicle that gets you to the ice fishing house is more correctly referred to as a "Ski-Doo," which Bombardier has made since at least the 1980s, I think (it bought the company from its founder, IIRC). Bombardier (say it as a Frenchman might: bom-BAR-dee-AY -- it's headquartered in Québec) is now the sole passenger railcar manufacturer remaining in North America. Most cities that have rapid transit or commuter rail in North America have some Bombardier equipment on their property. The company also makes a popular small jet plane, the Canadair Regional Jet. Judging from the photos on the Web site of the Bangkok Mass Transit Public Company Limited (guess they don't believe in acronyms in Thailand?), Bangkok Skytrain differs from Vancouver Skytrain in two respects: Its trains can carry more people than Vancouver's, and they don't have the unique "linear induction motors" that distinguish the Canadian ICTS (Intermediate Capacity Transit System) design from most electric rail transit. (In a LIM, part of the "motor" lies between the rails -- a metal band that creates an electromagnetic field that propels the train.) Raw prawns? How do they taste compared to cooked? Have there ever been safety concerns connected with eating them? Objects falling out of freezers I understand. I think you'd have to work at it to have a pestle fall on your toes, and when that happens, not even those cute furry slippers you have will save you. Pray that day doesn't come soon. Your suggestion of maladroitness above is surpassed only by the dexterity with which you handle the English language. And, for that matter, Thai cuisine. This has been a most enjoyable blog. I look forward to your next installment, should you decide one is worth it.

Get distracted for a couple of days (I may live to regret having run for VP of Marketing for my chorus and won [what chorus? I refer you to my own foodblogs]. Naaaah), and the party just rolls on, and then you have to run hard to catch up. Okay, I'm catching up, but before I comment further, I must commend you on your "Weird Al" Yankovic reference to start your epic "horror" pic, It Came from Inside the Fridge: "daen jang" = Thai for "miso"? Actually, I could use some help here for the next time I venture into Hung Vuong or the H-Mart. There seem to be numerous varieties of soybean paste, but I haven't yet been able to figure out what distinguishes one from another other than color and degree of saltiness (or mild vs. strong soy flavor), nor which varieties should be used in what dishes. (I've yet to make my own miso soup, but I like it in salad dressing, which is where I usually use it. I'll entertain other suggestions.) Get yourself a pair of slippers and put them on before rummaging. They may not be compatible with the climate in Thailand, but sheepskin- or fleece-lined ones would probably be ideal for this purpose. They may not eliminate all pain, but they will blunt the force of the falling UFOs (unidentified frozen objects). If you haven't read it already, I think you would get a big kick from the title essay in this collection of humorous essays by Umberto Eco (the brilliant semiotician who wrote the best-selling novel The Name of the Rose). Eco gets in touch with his inner crumudgeon in this and most of the other essays in this book. One hilarious phrase from this essay stuck in my brain: "I asked for a lawyer and he handed me an avocado." (I suspect this sentence works every bit as well in the original Italian.) Just one note on the second installment of your fridge tour: Exercise extreme caution before traveling into certain U.S. cities bearing foie. That's all I will say on that subject. (Except that I plan on trying some for $5 next week. I think this event has been noted on the Pennsylvania board.) I was going to comment on the presence of ShopRite products in your kitchen, too, but another poster has already covered that territory. My only question is: Were these products that "fell off the truck" somewhere between the warehouse in New Jersey and an actual ShopRite, or has some enterprising member of the Wakefern cooperative developed a lucrative business as a reseller abroad? That's nice, but what about its antioxidant value? Well, this certainly explains how you came to take the concept of "condiment creep" to a level unimaginable to us mere mortals. Compared to you, the rest of us collectors are pikers. Except for my fellow Pennsylvanian, Lori, who keeps an entire supermarket in her basement. (If you didn't catch her foodblog when it ran, you might also want to check out the grocery shopping in her area, posted a couple of pages earlier in her blog. Confidential to the Foodblog Czarina: The index was a big help in my finding the post for reference, but I see it hasn't been added to since May.)

Here I was, feeling all happy because I had bought a brand-new Crock-Pot yesterday -- the Hamilton Beach Crock Watcher that served me, and my partner before he met me, faithfully for almost 30 years died Sunday before last as I was cooking tomato sauce; a guy seated near me on the 109 bus in from Target at Springfield Park (on the way home from work for me) told me I had chosen a very good model -- this one -- and now you trot out this prize. Now I feel all inadequate. And curious at the same time. It looks a little like a tandoori oven. How's it work?

Things look mighty delicious after three days of posts, especially that tenderloin you've got marinating just upthread from this post. So far, this is a very interesting trip. I do know a little more about Thailand than I do Estonia, and a good bit more about its cuisine, thanks to the presence of Thai restaurants on this side of the Pacific, but any visuals you can provide of Bangkok the city by day would be greatly appreciated. I'd kill for a kitchen the size of yours -- though it does look like it's somewhat underendowed in the counter-space department, or maybe I'm just confusing stuff on your counters for lack of counter space. My experience has been that urbanites simply don't have huge kitchens unless they have equally huge bank accounts. Don't hold off too long. We can take it; we're a tough crowd -- very little scares us. My eyeball estimate is that your pantry would take the prize in the "Condiment Creep" derby begun in this forum in July. I'm not surprised to hear that the quality of the public water supply leaves something to be desired -- why Americans seem to think the same thing about their public water supply is a bit more mystifying, aside from the fact that in many cities, it runs through decades-old unlined cast iron pipes -- but I am surprised to find out that the quality of bottled waters could also stand improvement. Sounds to me like it's far safer to avoid water entirely and stick with disinfectant beverages like wine or beer. Carry on, blogger!

Maybe so, but I can think of some intimate encounters that were clearly inferior to a fine cheese! Of course, we tend to put such encounters out of our minds. Often, we do so by indulging in something more comforting or stimulating. A good cheese can be either, or both.

[...] Dejah - thank you! I think Tallinn's beautiful indeed (though as all towns, there are pockets which aren't exactly visually pleasing. Some of the Soviet residential areas are downright horrid!!! ) I use the word "Soviet" as an adjective meaning "drab Brutalist architecture showing visible signs of decay." The University of Pennsylvania campus had several very Soviet housing towers dating to around 1970. Most of these have been repaired and remodeled; they now look much less Soviet, thanks in part to window treatments that resemble Piet Mondrian paintings. But if you go to this site, you can see a (small) picture of an international student residence near Penn that still looks awfully Soviet. Such a good question, Dasha, thank you. First of all, I was still rather young when the Soviet occupation ended – 17, to be more precise. This means I don’t know much about putting food on the table, and coping with food shortages. I do remember empty, absolutely empty grocery stores, however. Food rationing (for sugar, for flour, for bread, you name it). Queueing for food every single time we were shopping. Not having a banana or a hamburger until I was 18 (though why either one of them would be bad, I don’t understand now Luckily, most of us would have grandparents with big farms or summer cottages with a vegetable plots, so this provided plenty of fresh vegetables, dairy and meat. The popularity for forageing for wild mushrooms and berries also dates back to this period. And as freezers were not available back then, Estonian mothers became very skilled in canning and jamming and preserving the summer bounty, which is still popular nowadays. And of course, there was a huge under-the-counter economy. My grandmother worked as an accountant in one of the food trusts (a central food provision office), so we’d occasional get rarities from there (olive oil and mango juice during the Moscow olympics, and canned cod liver later). My mum worked (and still does) in the Registry, and as an employee of Tallinn City Government, she could use a special shop occasionally selling coffee etc. There was even an under-the-counter economy in that special shop!!! One of my aunts worked in a kolhoos/collective farm that was specialising in poultry, and she'd often bring us chicken gizzards and chicken necks. My mum would make a delicious stew from the former, but I used to hate the chicken neck soup - there were far too many bones, and too little meat - yet, as a rare source of meat protein, we were eating it quite often.. I should ask my mum how we always had food on the table (and apart from chicken neck soup, it was all very delicious) in circumstances where the shops were selling nothing for most of the time As far as restaurants go, the better ones were mainly for the privileged classes - Communist party apparatchiki and such like - and only became open for general public during Perestroika. There was no market economy to speak of, so the restaurant receptionist (or any of the employees) didn't have any incentive to let you in and feed you as it didn't influence anybody's income whether the restaurant was full or not. Definitely not an era any sober-minded Estonian would want to return, food- or otherwise ← I recall hearing about a joke told in the USSR that went, "When Communism comes to the Sahara Desert, there will be a shortage of sand." It looks as if post-Soviet Estonia no longer has that problem -- you've shown us plenty of delicious -- and delicious-looking -- food in this blog. A thousand thanks for showing us around town and introducing us to Estonian foodways. I will check out your non-eG foodblog.

I added Cheddarvision to my Facebook profile. Another PGMC party, another cheese platter, for which I am gaining a reputation. (The cheese notes probably help.) And another opportunity to turn folks on to Roaring Forties Blue, which, I suggested to several fellow members, is even better than sex. One member disagreed strenuously with me, insisting that only Locatelli Romano was better than sex, to which assertion I suggested that he substitute Parmigiano-Reggiano. He did agree with me that Roaring Forties Blue was a mind-blowingly great blue, though. There was another Aussie cheese on the platter: Seal Bay Triple Cream, a wonderfully runny soft-ripened cheese that is similar to Brie but with a less pronounced bite. Rounding out the platter were Gruyere cheese from Switzerland and a Tomme from Birchrun Hills Farm, in Birchrunville, Chester County. (Yes, I like to showcase local products where I can. Birchrun Hills Farm makes only a few varieties of cheese; it's gotten some notice for its Birchrun Blue. All are raw cow's milk cheeses.) And there was a tub of DiBruno's Gorgonzola spread with Buffalo-wing pretzel chips. (Back when DiBruno's was better known as a cheap cheese emporium rather than a fine cheese emporium, its homemade cheese spreads won raves and fans. They're every bit as good now as they were then.) I promise all of you I will get a photo of the next cheese platter I assemble for a Chorus party.

I'm not sure I'd put even Le Bar Lyonnais in the "affordable" category -- Brasserie Perrier in the next block of Walnut comes closer to that, IMO, and it's still not a place I'd think of when someone asks for affordable food experiences in Philly -- but I'm glad you did get to sample what remains the ne plus ultra of haute cuisine in this city. Come back soon; there's way more to explore!

Tallinn is very pretty! Thanks for the tour! Can we who won't be traveling to Estonia anytime soon see more? I also have to second the comment made way upthread about Tallinn's modern architecture. It does strike me as strongly influenced by Finnish modernism. (And while we're on the subject of your next-door neighbor, I've long thought that the Finnish and Japanese languages were separated at birth -- even before I ever heard of Marimekko. I have some Marimekko dinnerware in my randomly accumulated collection.) As for national flora and fauna, I don't think that's unique to Estonia or the Baltics: All 50 US states have a state bird, a state flower and a state tree; many of them have a slew of other official state items (for instance, I believe that milk is the official state beverage of Pennsylvania, and repeated efforts to declare the tomato the official state fruit -- or vegetable -- of New Jersey have failed; instead, the blueberry is the official state fruit). The US as a whole has a national bird; unfortunately, Benjamin Franklin's choice for the honor -- the turkey, which is native to the country -- was ignored in favor of the bald eagle.