munchymom

The Ben & Jerry's product I miss most is the Brownie Bar - it was sort of like an ice cream sandwich, except that instead of cardboard cookies, you got...brownies. Real, chewy, nut-filled brownies that went perfectly with a center of good old B & J Vanilla. I got addicted to them in the mid-80's, then went to the Midwest for college at a time when nobody out there had even heard of Ben & Jerry's, then came back to New Hampshire and they were gone. I guess maybe they weren't profitable enough without my mass consumption to support them.

All our romantic dinners take place at home - that way we don't have to deal with that pesky drive home, and paying and taking home the babysitter, before moving on with the rest of the evening. We just wait to have dinner until after the little one's in bed, light some candles, put on some music and eat. As for the food, I like small plates, food you can eat with your hands, nothing too heavy. Dishes that can be made ahead of time - it's less romantic when the cook has to keep hopping up to get the next course ready. Cheese and chocolate are musts. And of course good wine!

I participate in a local "mommies" website, and there was recently a thread there about not being able to cook. Tons of women posted about how they couldn't get near the stove without burning something, one said that she was afraid to try boiling an ear of corn(!), lots of people said they rely on prepared stuff from Costco. So the sentiment is definitely out there. When I was in college, I subsisted on Ramen, Taco Bell, beer and cigarettes. I didn't start cooking much until I moved in with my husband, when I was 24. Now I love to cook, but he's a vegetarian and we eat only vegetarian food at home, so there are huge yawning gaps in my cooking knowledge. I can boil an ear of corn, but ask me to make a pot roast and I'd be running for the cookbooks for sure.

It may be true that all Jews would choose the bagel, but I can serve as a counterexample to the proposition that all non-Jews would choose the Danish. I like bagels way more than Danish, and I'm not Jewish.

Is the 10 oz. before or after reducing?

It's funny to revisit this thread, as my omnivorous 2-year-old has transformed into a picky 3-year-old despite my best efforts. Now when I ask him what he wants to eat, he replies with what he doesn't want. "No chicken or burger or soup." He is now *very specific* in his food requests - he asks not for juice, but for "A juice cup with three ice cubes in it please."

This week it's been all about the basil and tomatoes...summer's last hurrah. I know I have to load up now because once the frost hits, it'll be months before I get any more.

My son, who turns three on Saturday, has requested "Vanilla cake with raspberry frosting" for his birthday. I think I can handle the cake, but raspberry frosting? Do I just make up a batch of buttercream and add raspberry...puree? Jam? Extract? I bake a cake about once a year, so I don't have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. Can anyone give me an idea of what would work best?

But was it ever? I think it's a priority for more than it used to be, and the small minority is getting bigger. Looking at what was available in my hometown supermarket when I was growing up in the '70s compared to what is there now... there's just no comparison. When I was a kid iceberg lettuce and frozen or canned vegetables ruled the day (I remember my folks getting "B-in-B" canned mushrooms, ick). Now in that same town where my parents still live, the supermarket has a wonderfully diverse selection (and this is a town of 3,000 in rural New Hampshire that does NOT have a diverse population.) And there's an amazing organic farmstand three miles from their house (Owens Truck Farm in Ashland, NH.) On the whole, I think things are getting better, not worse, when it comes to people's taste. My parents were brought up with Midwestern cooking in the '50s - solid meat and potatoes (and their parents were brought up to be happy to have anything at all.) My food upbringing in the '70s was sort of Midwestern with a '70s influence - fondue pots, quiche, Beef Bourguignon made with Gallo Hearty Burgundy. Both my and my parents' taste evolved through the '80s and '90s and now we're all people who care about food and go out of our way to get things that taste good. And, the things that taste good - from heirloom tomatoes to imported cheese to Sriracha sauce - are more widely available then ever. I don't think we're out of the mainstream - if we were, the supermarkets still wouldn't have the good stuff.

Sigh...I'm from New Hampshire and this thread is making me homesick. What I wouldn't give for a nice drive through the mountains on a crisp fall day at peak foliage, screeching off the road at every sign that says "CIDER DONUTS". I'm afraid I don't have any places to add to the thread as I am now an exile to the land of Krispy Kreme.

What's in the tomato tart? Does it have eggs or cheese? If not, consider adding a protein to your meal - I would do a bean salad as a side. You could also do deviled eggs. (I'm assuming eggs and dairy are okay here.) Another option would be to have hummus as an appetizer (if you're having something to munch before sitting down to table.) I wouldn't add another starch with the main course, I think you're right about that. Maybe have one tomato tart, bean salad, and a green vegetable or a leafy green salad. (I like to make a bean salad with green beans, cannellini beans, and red kidney beans in a vinaigrette dressing - it's tasty and pretty.) You didn't mention dessert - of course, most desserts are vegetarian. Just don't make anything with gelatin in it.

I don't like being touched by strangers at all. Don't know why - but I'm just not a "touchy" person. Having a waitperson touch me would freak me out for sure. My waiter might get a 14.7 percent tip if he touches me...but he'll get 20 if he doesn't!

Lipton Cup-A-Soup, as I found out some 3 1/2 years ago in the throes of a pregnancy craving, is almost unavailable in Charlotte, NC. (Though still alive and well in New Hampshire where I grew up.) I finally found some at the seventh grocery store I visited. If I hadn't found it, I was going to ask my parents to Fedex me a few boxes.

I enjoyed the book very much, but this core message didn't resonate with me. For me and I suspect for many other people, dining in a top-level restaurant is a once-a-year, if not a once-in-a-lifetime proposition. I'm not going to become a regular at any of these places, so I think that the kind of treatment an unknown, first-time visitor gets is useful information to have in a review. I recently read Ruth Reichl's "Garlic and Sapphires", and what comes to mind in this context is her review of Le Cirque, where she goes as a dumpy, middle-aged woman and gets treated terribly, and then goes as herself and gets fawned all over. It's fine with me that regulars get extra stuff. But my money's as good as anyone else's, even if I'm coming from out of town and I've never been to the restaurant before. If I'm paying $400 for a meal, I want them to at least be nice to me. I can understand that some restaurants don't really care about the dumpy, middle-aged tourists. Should critics ignore us too?

Better yet, imagine not offering tap water, too. Shocking! If it doesn't bother you, it does bother many other people, especially in localities with decent tap water like New York. ← Do you mean by "not offering tap water" that if you ask for it, they won't bring it to you? Or just that they don't verbally offer it when they're doing the "still or sparkling" thing? The first would seriously tick me off, but the second is pretty easy to take care of. "I'd like tap water, please." I've never yet had a server refuse to bring it.

Calvin Trillin wrote more than once about his friend Fats Goldberg's idea for a pizza cone. From Alice, Let's Eat: "In fact, I at least mentioned to Fats that a better name for Goldberg's Pizza Cone might be Goldberg's Pizza Cohen, before telling him that it was, by whatever name, one of the truly dreadful ideas of the decade." Looking at the photos on the company website, I can only agree.

Substitute Vegetarian Vegetable for Tomato soup, water for milk, and leave out the Parmesan cheese, and I ate that at least three times a week when I was in college. My other specialty was Mexican Pizza - take a pita bread, spread with Ortega taco sauce, top with canned refried beans and grated cheddar, and heat under the broiler. I can't imagine any circumstances that would get me to make either one now.

Really dreadful. We sometimes go to bar/restaurant places that have lots of TV's visible, and I always try to place myself so that no TV is in my field of vision, because I find that if I can see a TV, I start looking at it. It draws my attention, even if it's not something I want to watch, just because it's there. I can't imagine having one on the table. Before my husband and I had a child, we used to eat dinner on the couch in front of the TV - now we have the TV in a different room and everyone sits at the table to eat. And we actually talk to each other - imagine that! No TV with my dinner, please.

I cut it into small cubes, steam for 20 minutes, let cool and use it as a substitute for chicken in chicken salad recipes - my favorite is curry mayonnaise with apples and raisins.

In Kankakee, IL there's a restaurant called Sam 'n' Ella's. In a supermarket in Kankakee, I once saw a display of banana hangers next to the bananas, and posted next to the banana hangers was some promotional material that must have come from the distributor - "Display these banana hangers next to the bananas and enjoy the results of high profit impulse buying!"

I swear this really happened. McDonald's, mid-'80s, table next to us, burly father to crying little girl: "Shut up and eat your Happy Meal!"

I scoop flour out of the canister with a measuring cup instead of spooning it into the cup and leveling off.

Daniel, I love reading all your threads. If you look like the picture in your avatar, there must be a painting of a guy who weighs 500 pounds stashed in your attic. I think I gained 5 pounds just looking at this stuff...

I had a serious craving for a BLT today. I thought about going to a restaurant for one, but I realized that the sandwich places would be using the same Styrofoam tomatoes they use all year round. I had to take matters into my own hands. I went to the farmstand for heirloom tomatoes, to the natural food store for Niman Ranch bacon, to the grocery store for some squishy white bread (the ONLY kind for a proper BLT in my opinion) and some Duke's Mayonnaise (don't normally keep the stuff in the house.) Put it all together and it looks like this: Oh my, it was good. And the best part is, I have enough of everything left to have another one tomorrow.

What is canned tofu like? I've never seen it before.