munchymom

I went today to a new restaurant I had been eager to try, and the food was great. The only disconcerting thing was, right on top of the host stand was a plaque about 5 x 7 inches emblazoned with a Bible verse. It was Philippians 4:6, "Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart." (Good News translation). If it had been hanging on the wall I wouldn't have given it a second thought; if it had said something like "God Bless You" or a verse like "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" I might have rolled my eyes but wouldn't have reacted otherwise. This particular verse - an instruction to pray - was the very first thing one sees as one walks in, the first impression the owner wants to give. As a non-Christian, it bugged the heck out of me. Obviously, it's the restaurant owner's choice to make, and if he doesn't want my custom oh well, but doesn't it seem if not hostile, at least unwelcoming?

Piggybacking on this question: I will be in Seattle for a few days this July (on either side of an Alaska cruise) and would love to have some good cocktails while there. But since I will have the family in tow, I can't really go to bars. Are there any restaurants in Seattle which both serve excellent cocktails and will welcome a well-behaved, seafood-loving 8-year-old?

Necco wafers. Especially those weird purple ones.

Well, that's as may be, but even a server (at a fancy hotel in Florida, really?) who doesn't think that "fresh" orange juice means "freshly squeezed" orange juice should have the common sense to not argue with the customer and try to prove his case. I really didn't have any beef with him until he brought the jug out to the table.

Last December we were having breakfast at a Hilton hotel in Orlando. My husband asked, "Is the orange juice fresh?" The server said it was, so he ordered a glass. When it came, he tasted it and it was obviously not fresh. The server insisted that it was. My husband said, "Well, I don't want it, it doesn't taste like fresh orange juice." The server took the glass away, then came out of the kitchen carrying the plastic gallon jug, brought it to our table, pointed at the label and said "Look, it says right here it's fresh!" It was at that point my husband saw a manager and asked for a new server.

This may be more a function of how ridiculously expensive the grocery stores are around here, but in season the farmers' market is way cheaper on vegetables and fruits. In summer a baseline price at the farmers' market is $0.79 a pound for things like peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, squash. My grocery store had a special this week of bell peppers 2 for $5.00. Things like limes and lemons are ten for a dollar at the market instead of two for a dollar (or in the case of large lemons, 79 cents each!) at the store. Of course there are specialty items available at the farmers' market like grass-fed, pasture-raised meat and eggs that cost more than the industrial stuff at the grocery store, but I'm happy to pay extra for that.

I've never had a problem taking my kid into a liquor store, but I was really embarrased going into a liquor store when I was 7 months pregnant. (My parents were coming to visit, and they like their gin and tonics.) I wished I had a big sign to wear saying "IT'S NOT FOR ME".

1/4 cup popcorn in a brown paper lunch bag, microwaved for 2 minutes, makes a portion suitable for a kid-size snack. I make it every day. I'm sure you could scale up with bigger portions/bags but would probably have to experiment with microwave time.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Much like Jack Sprat and his wife, my husband and I are perfectly matched in this respect. He doesn't eat poultry skin - loathes the very idea of it - and I consider the good crisp skin of a roasted bird pretty much the best part. When I roast a chicken or turkey, I get that delicious skin all to myself.

Heh. Our trips to Las Vegas have always been child-free as we see that as an adult destination (and the kid gets to be spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa!) But still, we've eaten there in buffets, cafes, mid-range places, high-end places, and I don't recall having even one meal ruined by a disruptive child. Poorly dressed and ill-mannered grownups, that's another story. ETA a Las Vegas-specific peeve: Fine dining restaurants that open onto the casino floor. Where people smoke. A lot. Ew, ew, ew.

Seriously, 90 percent? I think you might be suffering from a bit of confirmation bias (i.e. the well-behaved kids are out there, but you don't notice them, because they're well-behaved.) Around here everyone takes their kids to restaurants, and I can think of literally one time in the past ten years that my meal was significantly disrupted by a child. For the record, my kid has eaten in restaurants of (almost) every level, and we don't let him run around, shout, or disrupt anyone's experience. When we go to restaurants, the vast majority of the time nobody is running around, shouting, or being disruptive. (Except for that table full of drunken sales guys in town for a corporate junket who think it's funny to sexually harass the waitress, of course.) My peeve is when I order a glass of wine to be served with my main course, and it doesn't show up until I remind the waiter, by which time half the course has been eaten.

Glad you made it to Diamond - it's a real gem . Golden Corral would have been my 8-year-old's recommendation for you, it's his favorite restaurant.

So, where'd you go (besides Subway)? Anything good?

This was Calvin Trillin in Alice, Let's Eat.

Some of my favorites in Charlotte: 521 BBQ (Don't listen to anyone who tells you that Mac's is the best barbecue in Charlotte - would you trust a barbecue place that serves spinach salad and quesadillas?) Dish Bistro La Bon Harvest Moon Grille Ilios Noche Roosters

Excellent toaster, Chris. My parents have one like it that they received as a wedding present and have been using several times a week for the past 43 years. I love how the toast sinks into the toaster and then rises slowly up when it's done. Meanwhile I've bought probably 10 crappy plastic toasters in my adult life. Maybe I'll just wait to inherit theirs.

What drives me up a wall are the foods that are labeled as having two servings in a package, despite the fact that they are the kind of thing that nobody in their right mind would share, like a frozen burrito or a styrofoam cup of ramen noodles.

My family (me, husband, and 8-year-old) is going to the Atlantis resort next week. I'm trying to decide where if anywhere to make dining reservations. Most of the reviews I've seen by googling around are focused on how expensive everything is. As luck would have it, someone else is paying, so money isn't quite no object (it would be unseemly to order bottles of Dom Perignon every night) but isn't our primary concern. I have eaten some truly terrible food in Caribbean resorts, even at places that were said to be good. Is anything at this resort actually good (especially the "fine dining" places) or are we better off sticking to the buffets and eating whatever is most difficult to screw up?

It's probably because I came of age in the early '90s, but the most battered, stained, ripped-up book in my kitchen is The New Basics by Rosso and Lukins. This was the book my parents gave me when I moved into my first off-campus apartment in college. I promptly made myself popular by bringing Chocolate Scotch Truffles to parties. It's not an all-time classic like Joy of Cooking or Julia Child's books, but it's very exemplary of its time. Tons of the recipes in there have become staples in our house.

Wine is full of those... leather, graphite, barnyard, and the aforementioned cat pee. In my entire adult life, during which I have consumed several thousand bottles of wine, I can only think of one that was truly undrinkable. It was a Sauvignon Blanc that tasted exactly like a litterbox smells. I am very wary of Sauvignon Blancs now, and steer far clear of any that have "cat pee" in the tasting notes.

I'm pretty extravagant when I buy food, and I just did the math. $9.50/day/person. Of course that doesn't count restaurants, wine and liquor, which would roughly double it. Yikes.

But...but...but... that's how you make Frito Pie. It's supposed to be like that. Dish name that makes me run away: "rabbit". I've lived with pet rabbits, and I just... just can't. ETA: I've never darkened the door of an Outback Steakhouse, but "Chocolate Thunder from Down Under"?! It just makes me think of intestinal distress.

Shame on you, you should always tell those chickens the whole truth. The usage that always annoys me is appending the word "off" to whatever cooking method one is using: "Okay, now I'm going to bake off these cookies" or "fry off these potatoes." What does it add?

I clicked through to the recipes, and three out of the four I clicked on didn't seem that bad. (Huevos Rancheros, Sesame Chicken, and Chicken and Waffles. The outlier was a quesadilla containing a veggie burger.) It's not the way I like to "eat healthy" - I'd rather have one tablespoon of real maple syrup than half a cup of sugar-free pancake syrup. But for someone who's actually looking to recreate that delicious processed-food taste they love... I've seen a lot worse.