munchymom

Yup. I can't face food first thing in the morning, and neither can he. I've never been one to insist that he eat when he's not hungry, and he gets a well-balanced diet over the course of the rest of the day. He gets snack at 9:00 and lunch at 11:00, so I'm not going to shove food down his throat at 7:00. As for me, I can't eat until I've been awake at least 2 hours, so my first food of the day is usually mid-morning, and it's almost never "breakfast food", more likely leftovers from last night's dinner or a turkey sandwich. I love breakfast food out at a restaurant on a weekend late morning, though.

Oh my dear goodness yes. What a restaurant website should have: Hours Address Phone number Menu (HTML, not PDF) That is all. Flash intro? Music? Animation? PDFs? DO. NOT. WANT.

Pour it over a block of cream cheese and serve with crackers.

I don't really mind the "18% tip included", I usually tip 20% or more anyway. What really ticks me off is when they include the 18%, then have a blank line to add the tip. It feels like they're trying to trick me into tipping twice.

If you're having trouble deciding which chain restaurant to visit, you can consult this handy flowchart to help with your decision. Note the restaurant in the center which has no way to get to it. (My personal opinion - chain restaurants are handy when on the road, or in the middle of a shopping mall trip, but are otherwise not so great. Except for Five Guys, which is awesome.)

It hurts my local pride to say it, but don't come to Charlotte for barbecue. Mac's is a fine place if you live here, but I wouldn't make it part of a time-limited trip.

Banana pudding isn't dessert, it's a vegetable, just like macaroni-and-cheese.

You wonder why doesn't it taste like a salt lick? ← It probably does. Ever since I started cutting back on salt in my own cooking (high blood pressure), I can hardly eat at fast-food and low-end chains - the dominant flavor is nothing but salt. It makes the food nearly inedible. Even at high-end restaurants, I find myself saying, "This tastes pretty good, but it's too salty." All the same, I'd make the choice to stay out of Denny's rather than sue them. It's not like less salt would make their food taste good.

The most recent issue of Wine Spectator rated the Wine Cube brand 2007 California Chardonnay at 88 points. So of course I had to try some. I don't know that I'd give it all that high of a rating, but it was certainly very drinkable, and at $10/1.5 L it's a great deal. It did have a stamp on the bottom saying "best before 11/09", so there might be some concern with the plastic breaking down in the long term.

I do scrambled eggs (two whites and one yolk) and a slice of American cheese, on whatever kind of bread we have (usually Trader Joe's Tuscan Pane.) You do have to sit down and eat this over a plate, it's not as portable as the fried-egg sandwich.

Not exactly the same thing, but I've noticed when eating with my husband that restaurant servers tend to make assumptions based on gender norms. My husband was a vegetarian for many years and still will choose vegetarian or seafood dishes at restaurants, and he rarely drinks alcohol. I usually order wine with meals, and tend to order beef or pork dishes. In restaurants where the server who brings the food is not the same person who took the order, inevitably they place the steak and Cabernet in front of him, and the shrimp salad and diet Coke in front of me. Every single time. Ordinarily I don't welcome the "who had the shrimp salad" inquiry, but if you can't get it right, ask!

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, published in 1974: "We retreat from the parked cycles into an enormous, high-ceilinged old place. To go with the beer this time I order every kind of snack they've got, and we have a late lunch on peanuts, popcorn, pretzels, potato chips, dried anchovies, dried smoked fish of some other kind with a lot of little fine bones in it, Slim Jims, Long Johns, pepperoni, Fritos, Beer Nuts, ham-sausage spread, fried pork rind, and some sesame crackers with an extra taste I'm unable to identify."

Does anyone have up to date info on restaurants in the Sarasota area? My parents are spending February in Sarasota and I'd like to give them a gift certificate for dinner at a good restaurant. Price range is about $150.

Sport Peppers They're small, medium-hot peppers, packed in brine.

Are you sure no (un-pickled) cucumbers? It's been 8 long years since I lived near enough to Chicago to get a Chicago dog, but I could've sworn they had cucumbers.

Wikipedia on Chicago hot dogs A Chicago hot dog should be all-beef with mustard, onions, pickle spear, sweet relish, cucumbers, tomatoes, sport peppers and celery salt. No ketchup!

My mom used to make English muffins spread with cream cheese and topped with deviled ham, cooked under the broiler. I used to love it, but I haven't had it in decades.

Maple syrup!

Mozzarella success! The revival of this thread inspired me to try 30-minute mozzarella again. Based on the linked site upthread, I decided to use non-organic milk rather than organic milk from the grocery store (on the theory that it would have traveled less to get here.) The changes I made - I only microwaved the curds once, and I was very gentle with the heating and kneading parts, rather than pushing it hard to get out all the whey. I didn't stretch or pull it, just kneaded until it came together in a ball and was getting slightly stretchy. Result - squishy goodness! and a pound of fresh mozzarella for $3.29! I may have to do this every week.

Blackberry Farm Cheese (edited to make it clear why I posted the link)

Just three - appetizer, main, dessert (we each had mushroom gnocchi as appetizer.) The food came in such rapid succession that I was physically uncomfortable eating the dessert... it was just too much, too fast. (Which is a shame because it was *really good* food for the most part.)

My husband and I went to Mix in December. The food was very good, but the experience as a whole wasn't that great. They really rushed us through... our $300-plus dinner lasted just over an hour. The mac-n-cheese was stellar, as was my main course (veal tenderloin). My husband had lobster in curry sauce and thought it was pretty good.

"How is your food tasting?" doesn't even sound like something a native English speaker would say. "How does your food taste?" would be a more normal sounding phrase, unless you were served a dish that was called a "food tasting" (not so far-fetched, with so many places having "tasting menus"-- I've seen menus that offer a "dessert tasting", i.e. small portions of multiple desserts-- if I ordered one of those, I wouldn't look twice at the question "How is your dessert tasting?") Also, I bet they serve the salad dressing in little plastic cups because so many people ask for the dressing "on the side"... at some point that becomes the default.

Pop Rocks! Exploding candy... what's not to love?

IM IN UR FOODBLOG COVETING UR DINNER Er, that is to say, I'm enjoying your blog, and those potatoes in particular look awesome. NOM!