MarketStEl

I use the super-thin model to slice potatoes for hash browns, and I julienne carrots for my tossed salads all the time. The julienne slices are very thin, which I like.

I need to get a maneki neko for my apartment! Anyone know why the Japanese supermarket chain chose the famous Cervantes character for its name? Do they mean to suggest that shopping there is an exercise in futility? I assume that there are no windmills to be seen anywhere in or near the stores. So tell me a little of how limu is used in cooking or as a garnish. One of the jurors on my panel (see my 2d foodblog) was an IT guy for a small local manufacturer who also sold this nutritional supplement derived from limu, for which he had literature (which I still have) claiming that the seaweed had all sorts of interesting compounds in it that could help stave off diseases and improve your body's defenses, or stuff like that. I think the supplement was a beverage with the limu mixed in with fruits. It sounded intriguing, but I haven't followed up on contacting the guy about trying some. Should I? A recurring lament on the Pennsylvania board concerns the generally low quality of sushi and sashimi to be found in Philadelphia restaurants. With a very few exceptions (the now-closed Fuji Mountain in Cinnaminson, Raw near me), most of the restaurants that serve it serve only average quality fare, or so those who know tell me. I love the stuff, although I apparently make a very common American error in the way I eat it. I can only begin to imagine how much better the sushi and sashimi are in Hawaii. I like these Hawaiian concepts of family, with their expansive qualities -- sort of like the "play aunts" and "play uncles" that many African-American (and white Southern) children have in their extended families growing up.

Dave: AFAIK, there is no model that cuts ridges. The three slicers I described are three separate items, all different colors: The julienne model is green, the super-thin straight slicer is yellow and the variable-thickness slicer is red. Williams-Sonoma told me that they no longer carried the julienne model in their stores, but they don't carry the variable-thickness model either (I bought mine at Kitchen Kapers), so that doesn't mean it's not in production. I was told that they could back-order a julienne slicer to replace my damaged one under their lifetime guarantee.

I just added this to my other two Kyocera ceramic slicers -- a straight slicer that slices finer than the finest setting (0.5 mm, IIRC) on the adjustable model and a julienne slicer that I took back to Williams-Sonoma this week because one of the julienne teeth got chipped and the plate cracked. They told me it would probably be about a week before a replacement arrived. These are easier to use, more convenient and less expensive than regular mandolines, and they slice beautifully.

A T-shirt that I wished I owned, which I spied on a homeless person nestled between the columns of the (former) Beneficial Savings Bank on 12th Street this past June, read: "Those who cannot handle winter don't deserve summer." That said, I think that having Santa and Mrs. Claus hang loose in the fountain in front of City Hall might be a forgivable excuse for not dealing with winter. You weren't kidding, Suzy, when you said that Honolulu goes all-out at Christmastime! Edited to add: And a Merry Christmas to all of you!

Aloha, Suzy, and welcome to the foodblogger ranks! I'd love it if you could show us what your neighborhood looks like as well as your fridge. The one brush I have had with Hawaiian food (and no, those sweet dinner rolls don't count, IMO) is poi, which my grandfather loved for reasons I cannot fathom. I have this vague childhood memory of stopping by some roadside produce stand somewhere between Kansas City, Kansas, and Leavenworth, with Granddad and Grandma, who picked up a package and let me taste some when I got home. All I remember is that it tasted very bland and that I didn't care for it much. Maybe you can tell me a little more about this foodstuff? As for Christmas traditions: It's now 7:41 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in the Gayborhood. I'm up, but my partner isn't. I'm taking a break in editing the Manuscript from Hell, which I've been doing in between running around getting presents and picking up more last-minute items for our Christmas Eve open house, which we have every year. We invite some of our close friends and a handful of acquaintances over for conversation and food. I usually serve a crudite platter, deli sandwich meats and cheeses, vegetarian chili (with veggie burger crumbles), meatballs and/or cocktail sausages in barbecue sauce, shrimp with cocktail sauce, and cheese. Tons of cheese. This year, our open house will be alcohol-free. The rest of the day (my partner just woke up) will be spent cleaning up and decorating the apartment and preparing the food. Pardon me for bogarting your blog. Carry on; I'm looking forward to it.

Kon...ichi...wa... one last time, Jeremy! Thanks for sharing with us your love of Japanese cuisine and showing us around the Rainy City. I hope to have time to look you up when I come out that way. Till then, sayonara.

Things have changed a great deal since (1) you were a kid (2) you left Philadelphia. Pat's is still good, but other places have eclipsed it. Tony Luke's at Front and Oregon, to name just one. Steve's Prince of Steaks in the Northeast also produces a sandwich that now puts Pat's to shame. I'm sure others will chime in with more examples.

I take it that you haven't seen the printed paper then? The scoring for the printed quiz was 1 to 3 per question. So you may be correct about the intention, but I suspect that Jay really didn't expect anyone to take it that seriously... ← Indeed I hadn't -- there's not a newsstand near me that carries The Observer. And your suspicion is proabaly also correct, but then, that begs the question: How could one possibly score 0 on a quiz where no answer is worth less than one point? The only way I can see is by not taking the quiz at all.

Can't answer that question yet. Quite likely at random. On the platter: Baked Brie, Rofumo, Pennsylvania Noble (a cave-aged cheddar-style cheese that is absolutely the best cheddar I've ever had), Five Counties, Borough Market Stilton, La Serena, Idiazabal, DiBruno Brothers' "Abruzzeze" and "Alouette" cheese spreads, smoked salmon cream cheese spread. Photos tomorrow. Open house starts at 6:30 p.m.

First off, you have excellent taste in cheese. Then again, for you, Tillamook is local. The co-op must have expanded production greatly, though, for it's now easy to find Tillamook cheese here in Philadelphia. Can you get Cabot cheese (the best mass-marketed Vermont cheddar) in Seattle? (FWIW, I'm a big ol' cheesehead--so much so, I ought to live in Wisconsin.) Those packages don't look too large, though. How big are they? Eight ounces? Smaller? Larger? And what's cheese doing in a Japanese dish? I usually don't associate dairy products of any kind with Asian cuisines.

Which reminds me: The "Best of Philly Review Tour" still has some stops left on it. We have Center City west of Broad to cover as well as some more places in West Philly, South Philly, the Northeast and the 'burbs. (It might be instructive to compare Apollo Pizza in its native habitat in Media, for instance, to its city cousin.) Seconded! (And I wonder if Woody's new owners will continue Bill Wood's tradition of making Mummers welcome on New Year's Day. Not that Woody's attracts drag queens in any significant numbers, but New Year's is somewhat unusual in that it's the only day where, if you walk into Woody's and encounter a man in a dress, he's probably straight.)

The Reading Terminal Market is wheelchair accessible, but the aisles are extremely crowded on Saturdays, to the point where anyone in a wheelchair would have great difficulty maneuvering through the market. Lots of tasty options once you're inside, though. Salumeria or Carmen's for hoagies, Dienner's for rotisserie chicken, DiNic's for roast pork, Mezze for Mediterranean fare, By George for pizza...the list goes on and on. The seating area in the center court of the market can accommodate your friend in the wheelchair, but I refer you to my comment about Saturdays above. Coming on a Sunday would be better.

Reasonable people may disagree, but IMO Facebook's design is far more elegant, and its servers are far more reliable -- no mysterious errors when you execute routine requests. (I suspect that's because its code is better.) BTW, Jeremy: <MySpace>Thanks for the add!</MySpace> The food so far looks lovely, and the pizzeria where you work looks like it's been around a while. Which leads me to ask: What kind of oven does it have?

Bad, bad FoodBabe, bringing back images of Mrs. Olsen like that! Folger Coffee still has its plant in the 800 (700) block of Broadway in downtown Kansas City, no? One of the unfortunate casualties, at least for the time being, of the recent E. coli outbreak in Mid-Atlantic region Taco Bells is the chain's advertising slogan, a somewhat clever parody of a management cliche that might have been cute when it was first uttered but has long since curdled into something annoying: "Think outside the bun."

You should be able to find smoked turkey parts at Giordano's at 9th and Washington, very near you. There are other Italian Market merchants who carry them as well. As for palm butter, can't help you there. I haven't seen this anywhere close to Center City. My guess is that you might have better luck looking in the vicinity of 47th and Baltimore in University City, where there is a small but visible African immigrant community. As some of these are West African, there's a chance you might find a small grocery store that stocks West African foodstuffs. Edited to add: And welcome to eGullet, strutter billy! You came to the right place to ask your question. Stick around for the conversations; they're quite stimulating.

I thought at the time that there should have been an extra category: ← The discrepancy in the score scales can be explained simply: The point range per answer for each question in the print quiz was 0 to 2, and in the online quiz, 1 to 3. Thus, the lowest score for the print quiz was 0, and for the online quiz (assuming every question was answered) 10. The one question where I scored 2 points was the one about modeling (I chose "be very, very pretty"). Otherwise, I got them all right (score: 44). Obviously, this was a humorous quiz, but many of the correct answers were dead serious. Edited to add: Besides "minging" and the correct answer to the model question, what I didn't know was that The Observer and The Guardian were now commonly owned. (The latter is Britain's leading left-leaning daily newspaper, nee The Manchester Guardian. I thought The Observer was more centrist, or maybe I'm confusing it with The Independent.) "Take-up," BTW, means "purchase." At least I'm inferring that from the context.

1) the last two pictures didn't load when I viewed this post; 2) don't forget to open that fridge and show us what's inside...

Inasmuch as distilled spirits are less differentiated than wine, even after many successful efforts to increase differentiation among products in categories like vodka, where the taste isn't really that much different from brand to brand (I mean, c'mon, vodka by definition is not supposed to have a characteristic taste or scent), you're probably right, but a bunch of factors unique to Pennsylvania prevent this from working according to theory. One of them is the special taxes that are now rolled into the shelf price, the most infamous being the Johnstown Flood Tax. Another may have something to do with the PLCB's status as a cash cow for Harrisburg. Reducing the margins on the products it sells, I suspect the CW in Harrisburg goes, would reduce the state's take. (I guess they haven't heard about making it up in volume.) There are probably others you or others could name.

Well, while you're at it, let's discuss how "biscuit" fell into disuse in the United States in favor of "cracker," while the term is still used in Britain to describe an unleavened crispy snack bread. (And what do they call the baking-soda rolls we still call biscuits?)

It's not just students on Facebook anymore. Several members of the administrative staff at Widener University have Facebook profiles. --Sandy ("Sandy"), who falls into this category

I know hhlodesign showed us bits of Seattle in his foodblog, but I for one am eager to see more. If it's possible for you to do a bit of the Chamber-of-Commercey shtick you see in my blogs, I'd appreciate it. Besides, I need to know what I can expect when I visit. And I will visit: My only sibling (brother, nine years younger than me) lives there with his wife and my newborn (October 2006) niece, Stella Rose Smith. (Her first name is my mother's; her middle name was Mom's favorite flower.) I'd like to see her soon.

That's not waste, that's recycling! You'll get either more food or beautiful flowers in the end. Edited to add: I've been accumulating shrimp shells all year. A stock will come from all this soon. I don't consider making stock out of bones, skin or shells waste.

I don't buy refrigerated biscuit dough any more. I may not be able to make a flaky layered biscuit like the ones in the cans, but my drop biscuits beat them all hands down on taste. I've stopped buying Hot Pockets mainly because I find the tossed salads, leftovers and things like sardines in tins are as convenient and better tasting (not to mention better for me). Except for blue cheese dressing, I don't buy bottled salad dressing any more. Blue cheese I buy because I haven't figured out yet how to get a from-scratch dressing to emulsify properly. I don't buy as much Hamburger Helper as I used to, but I still buy it, because sometimes it's the taste I (and my partner) want. I can't buy canned soups any more. Partner has to watch his sodium intake, and canned soups have sodium coming out the wazoo. I'm sure I can think of more, and if I do, I'll post again.

Thank you for the culinary tour of Istanbul. It's certainly worth a visit, and I think you'd make a most gracious host.