I_call_the_duck

I absolutely love gow choi dan, which I guess is egg foo young. Don't know how traditional this is, but we ate it a lot when we were growing up. It's easy to make.I'm sorry that the description isn't as eloquent as Ah Leung's recipes, and I don't usually measure, but here goes: gow choi (flat, flowerless variety), cut into about 2" pieces roast pork, cut into slivers eggs, beaten with a bit of dark soy sauce and sesame oil one clove garlic, flattened. Heat up the pork, set aside. Saute the gow choi in the same pan until just wilted (if the pork is fatty enough, I don't add extra oil), adding a bit of water if needed. Mix both pork and chives in egg mixture. Heat a bit of oil in your pan, add garlic until brown. Add egg mixture and cook until brown. (I like my eggs just a bit runny, so I cook it a little less.) Yum!

I almost laughed when my niece said broccoli. And to clarify something, I did say she had to cook. I figured that ordering or going out may be too vague (and a last resort type of thing). But she did express an interest in cooking real Thai food. Good kid. To answer your second question, I don't think some kids do grow out of it. I went to college with someone who pretty much only ate beige food!

I'd say that the only thing I didn't realize was that manufacturers inject saline in meat to give it flavor. Very disturbing on so many levels, primarily because one is paying for water, and that fat has become so taboo that they have to add so much salt into it to make it even remotely palatable. The turkey we had on Thursday was "cage free", which I suppose is what "free range" was a few years ago. Now that the definition of free-range can mean that the bird spent from one minute to 24 hours of the day outside, I guess they created this new terminology to ensure customers that the bird indeed spent its life happily running around the barnyard. Or at least outside. It could have spent its life crammed in a barnyard with hundreds of other birds like a NYC subway during rush hour. What next? A certificate from a personal trainer? OK, I'm getting silly now. But the point I'm trying to make is that this terminology is confusing.

Percyn, that is one good lookin' hunka meat. The sides look good too.

Thanksgiving with my side of the family is a loud and chaotic event. We didn't play at the table, but I managed to pull some of the kids aside afterwards. Here's what I learned: 15 year-old niece breakfast - no time for the most important meal of the day. lunch - sandwich on whole wheat (either turkey or other deli meat) dinner - broiled chicken or fish, steamed broccoli if she knew how to cook it, Thai food (her words) backup - sushi, or Chinese take-out 10 year-old nephew breakfast - egg white omelet on bagel, milk lunch - turkey sandwich w/ lettuce on a baguette dinner - pasta w/ pesto, grilled vegetables What was intertesting about this was that these two are siblings. I interviewed them separately, and they planned very similar meals. I could see that they are greatly influenced by my sister. six year-old nephew breakfast - pancakes lunch - ramen noodles (orange bag) dinner - Chinese food (take-out) Not surprising here. His parents are workaholics who generally have little time to cook a real meal. And there were no surprises at the Thanksgiving table. The 15 and 10 year-olds ate pretty much everything. Their parents are a bit health conscious and also love to eat at ethnic restaurants. The other set of kids (a nine year-old and two six year-old twins) are picky eaters and mainly chose beige food--white meat, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, zucchini...and stayed away from the sweet potatoes, onions, cranberry chutney, and sticky rice. (I don't know what exactly they actually ate, but I'd guess just turkey and potatoes.) The only exception was the gravy.

I have two. Well, it happened in previous years, but it's funny anyway. Years ago, before my time, my dad made my mom throw out a Thanksgiving turkey that mom got for free from the store where she worked. Mind you, it is VERY unusual for my parents to waste food--particularly free food. Apparently, his brother got sick the year before from eating a turkey, so my dad, who was very old world and very superstitious, got it into his head that turkeys are bad for you. So in the garbage it went. OK, more sad than funny, but here's another one. Dad must have changed his mind a few years later, because we've had turkeys since that incident. I must have been five when I looked at the turkey in the oven and I said in a loud voice "TURKEY DEAD!" Dad was furious--he didn't like us to mention death in the house, even when we were referring to our dinner. (I don't think we had turkey the year after that either.)

Articles such as these come out every year around this time, so it's nothing new. I've never tried this myself, nor am I sure how true this is, but I've read that if you stuff the bird right before it goes in the oven and remove the stuffing immediately after it comes out of the oven (a stuffed bird does take longer than one that is unstuffed), you lessen the risk of harmful bacteria growing. Maybe you can drizzle some of the turkey juices on top of the stuffing?

Empanadas, Jamaican beef patties, char sui baos (roast pork buns).

Ah Leung, That looks so much better than the flourescent-yellow variety one sees in many restaurants. I think it's interesting that you use lemonade for your sauce. Haven't tried making this at home, but I have made Chicken Francese with Lemon and Pecorino, which has a nice lemon sauce. I think I'm going to do a side-by-side comparison one day. Of course, we're talking two different cuisines, but the preparations are somewhat similar, so it'd be intersting to see what my "offical taster" thinks.

I know what you mean. Someone in my household thinks there is nothing wrong with the $10 knife that has "As Seen on TV" on the box.

Jamaican Jerk Hut is a BYO. But it's more beer than wine.

My friend has a saying regarding eating a good meal. “Wheelchair, IV, gurney, remote.” Ditto. Absolutely beautiful job, Daniel (and girlfriend). Now are you going to post these recipes, or tell us where they came from? I was a little apprehensive about pork-based desserts, but these looked delicious. I'll have to take an extra dose of Lipitor tonight just from looking at those photos!

BYO places are my personal favorites, since very few good ones exist in NYC. The places mentioned above are all great. My favs are Django, Matyson, and Pumpkin. I'd also recommend Chole in Old City. Aside from Rangoon in Chinatown, I don't know if there are other places that would be a lot better or more interesting than what you'd get in NY. That said, I like Vietnam, Sang Kee, and Pho Xe Lua.

Thanks, Megan. (Actually it was chicken. It was clean out the freezer night for me too!) Daniel, where are those pics of the rest of the pig?

Everything here sounds so good. I've been lurking alot on this forum, and here's my first stab at posting pictures here. On Sunday, our second pumpkin was doomed. Last week, it was pumpkin soup. This week, about 2/3 of this guy went to the freezer for future use, while the remainder went into this lamb pumpkin stew: Today, it was chicken with broccoli and baby corn.

I've never heard of that procedure for eggplant, but maybe the mechanisms are different. I'm guessing that the pineapple enzyme cells are destroyed by osmosis, but somehow this does not affect many of the other cells in the fruit. ← It sounds like pretty much the same concept. Now that I think about it, I used to not like eggplant because it gave me that exact feeling on my tongue (not so with pineapple). And to think all these years I blamed it on the shrimp sauce!

Suzi, I think that's because your pineapples are at least 1000x better than the ones we get on the mainland. They aren't picked when they're underripe so they can travel hundreds of miles to your grocery store. The pineapples I've had in Hawaii, Maui Golds in particular, were the best I've ever had. Ono indeed! So would brining a pineapple be similar to putting salt on eggplant to leach out the bitterness?

Sorry about your situation. Thanksgiving has become so commercial, but nonetheless it's hard to spend such a day alone. If you can't possibly stand the thought of being by yourself, I'd try to wrangle an invite from my favorite person. I'm sure someone will be sympathetic to your plight. Last year, my sister's best friend of 40+ years was a "Thanksgiving orphan" as I called it, and it felt very nice to share it with someone who would otherwise be by herself. And I can tell she appreciated it as well. If that fails, then I'd take that as an opportunity to have a nice evening by myself. The pressure is off, but you can still have fun by cooking a great meal. Buy your favorite part of the turkey instead of the whole bird (in my case, it'd be the wings and drumstick), make a small batch of fixin's and a sinful dessert. Put on some nice music, open a nice glass of wine or champagne, and just enjoy myself. I treated myself to such a meal one or two lonely Valentine's Days, and that seemed to take the edge off. Oh, and I took a nice bubble bath too. I hope you have a nice holiday whatever you decide to do.

Oooh...We are not worthy. (salaaming) Can't wait to see the rest of it. Hail to the pig!

They’re all going to be there. It’ll make an interesting game. There are five of them between two very different sets of parents, and I can sort of guess what their choices will be. The fifteen year-old is a great kid, and not at all rebellious. (OK, she isn’t a kid anymore, and she is taller than me—which actually isn’t that hard). She and her 10 year-old brother come from parents who are semi-health conscious and love ethnic food, esp. Asian cuisine. These kids eat almost anything. They had Malaysian for newphew's birthday dinner last week. Their meals may include dim sum (nephew can eat an entire plate of har gao if he could), sushi, pizza, turkey sandwich, and ice cream. The other three, a nine year-old niece and a set of six year-old twins (boy and girl) have workaholic parents who are, to put it nicely, extremely indulgent. Their idea of a hot meal for the kids are mac n’ cheese (from a box) or chicken nuggets. Needless to say, their kids are really picky eaters, thus they’re in a way the meal planners anyway. One morning when I was staying at their house, my sister was a short order cook. One wanted scrambled eggs, one wanted pancakes, the other wanted cereal. And my sister appeased them all. But to give the 10 year-old credit, she does love my mom’s steamed ginger-scallion fish. She won’t eat the ginger-scallion part, but she’ll devour the fish and sauce on white rice, so that will most likely be her dinner choice. Other than that, her food preferences are pretty blah. And she hates broccoli. Choices may include aforementioned breakfast choices, pizza, paw-paw's fish, noodles and butter.

Jason, did you take a picture of that stuffing? I'm still morbidly curious about it, but can't bring myself to try it. I did have a perverse pleasure in mentioning it to my friends, who were appropriately horrified at the concept. Can't wait to mention it to my family. Just the look on their faces, esp. my health-conscious sister, will be priceless! We'll stick with Mom's sticky rice, thank you.

My parents have that same set-up. Dejah - I saw a knife block in a magazine that was basically a rectangular box that was stuffed with bamboo skewers. This allowed knives of various sizes and shapes to fit in. Do you have wall space? You can also use one of those strip magnets like this one.

Two Thanksgivings this year. Wohoo! On Thursday, we’re off to my cousins in-law. Don’t know what will be on the menu, but judging from previous dinners we’ve had there, it’ll be less traditional. Since my BIL has to work on Thursday, he, my sister, and their kids are coming in on Friday, my side of the family are getting together on Saturday. On the menu so far: turkey (Mom usually gets a fresh-killed kosher turkey) sticky rice mashed potatoes and gravy pureed cauliflower zucchini gratin string beans sweet potatoes/yams pearl onions with maple syrup cranberry chutney apple pie other various desserts There's also THIS perspective on being a turkey too. (be patient) ← Too funny. Reminds me of a Warner Brothers Cartoon. Daffy Duck is living on a farm. He overhears the farmer assure his wife that the turkey will be big enough by Thanksgiving. Daffy, seeing this as an opportunity to gain more food, proceeds to inform the turkey of his impending fate. The turkey freaks out, and Daffy graciously offers to "help" him, by eating the extra food meant for the turkey and making sure the turkey exercises the extra weight off. Come Thanksgiving, the turkey is still scrawny, while Daffy is very well-fed. Axe in hand, the farmer looks at the turkey, then at Daffy, and well...you can guess what happens.

rjwong, that looks delicious. I wasn't sure if you could cook it in a rice cooker, since when my mom makes it, she uses the big old rice pot. Mom finally wrote down her recipe. It's pretty straightforward, but I wanted to get it right. She also uses a regular/sticky rice combo. She says she does it more because she had to stretch the sticky rice out to feed six on a tight budget. This is so hilerious! It's hard being a waiter in Chinese restaurants. They have to carefully examine the plate, over some torn lotus leaves, to determine whether it's okay to remove the plate. And the last thing that they would do is to ask the customer. ← I've had overzealous waiters take away my plates at many different types of restaurants. My friend told me a story that his mother stabbed the waiter with her fork because he was trying to take away her salad before she was done eating it! My method now is less violent. If I see a waiter approaching, I discretley (?) hold onto my plate so they're not able to take it. It may be rude, but then they won't have a chance to take those last tidbits away.

Yah.. In my fridge I have about 40 pounds of various pork products.. Its almost overwhelming. ← Not as bad as having a pig head stare at you when you're reaching for a beer. Mmmm...pork.