rosebud

Don't forget the used silver dealers. If you choose a pattern that's still being made, you can get a much better deal. Of course, used patterns which have been discontinued will cost more than getting something new. Anyone dealing in antiques, consignment shops, etc., usually carry sterling silver (most of them won't take silverplate). Try googling Beverly Bremer Silver in Atlanta. Then there is the Silver Queen and Replacements, Inc. They have pretty good prices on new pieces, but not the discontinued patterns or pieces. I have my mother's silver from when I had to clean out her house a couple of years ago and sell everything we didn't want. I couldn't bring myself to sell the only set of sterling silver in the family, so I am using it now and will give to one of my mother's grandchildren when they get older. The pattern is from a defunct maker and isn't one I would have chosen, but let me tell ya, nobody turns his nose up at eating with silver, used or not. (Except for the ignorati--and they never get invited to my place )

When we went to Italy as a wedding trip, my very observant DH decided that the Italians were different from the French in that the Italians would serve you bad food, if you wanted it. The French resist that notion. As a consequence, there are many "touristy" places in Italy which will gladly serve you bad food. It didn't take much knowledge to avoid those places. In Venice, we stayed in a hotel recommended in Fodor's guide. Fodor's also highly recommended the restaurant attached to it. When I wrote to make reservations for New Year's Eve, I was told that the hotel wasn't connected to the restaurant. By the time we got there, we found out the much-vaunted restaurance had been converted into a WENDY'S That was were we had to go for our morning "continental breakfast." Had the worst cup of capuccino in all of Italy. We didn't go back again. To say we were "floored" is an understatement.

I think this is all in how food was viewed and/or prepared in your parents' home. I remember an interview with Sally Ride's mother, before her first trip into space, where her mother stated that she never cooked--just left everyone to his/her own devices food-wise. Sally actually thought the "space" food wasn't too bad! Then there's the classic restaurant review: "The food wasn't very good and there wasn't enough of it." I, too, try to watch my weight by not eating food that NWTC.

I use one of those Cameron stove-top smokers for ribs. Just keep it on very low for about an hour, take out, sauce them and stick them in the oven to finish or finish on the grill.

I bought a large LC Dutch Oven in my building's yard sale for $10. It looked like it had never been used. The only caveat is the weight. This is a very heavy pot and, since I am middle-aged, I figured I only have a few years in which I can use this. But it works fabulously for stews and braising.

Years ago I read Margery Kinnan Rawlings' "Cross Creek," her memoir of living on an orange grove in central Florida. She mentioned that she boiled whole okra pods and ate them with Hollandaise Sauce (!) with her fingers, just like she ate asparagus in New York. I went to the Farmers' market and picked out the smallest pods I could find (they were freshly-picked) and tried it. I found that boiling them for the recommended 7 minutes made them too slimy, so I steam them for less than 5 minutes. It's something we eat a couple of times in the summer as an appetizer. The only problem is that the caps sometimes have little spikes on them, which makes eating them this way an adventure.

I'll bite. The problem, you get me and DH. Are you looking for just ONE more person?

I've done most of the things on this thread, except for those which require a pressure cooker or microwave oven (except at my mother's house regarding heating up mugs of milk for Tom and Jerry's--she never did understand how I could use up so much T&J batter! ). Exploding potatoes and eggplant...and the only time I've ever had to go to the Emergency Room was when I cut the palm of my hand open trying to get the backbone out of a duck (this was for a dinner party, of course!). I have Tiramasu stories--I make a killer Tiramasu and it is always a requested dish at large gatherings. The E-E-E-W-W-W-W factor: While I was cooking for a dinner party I noticed that I had lost a fingernail somewhere along the line. Do you know that I got the prize? Yup, noticed something crunchy in my portion of Tiramasu. I knew exactly what it was and could not imagine how I got lucky enough to get my own body part and no one was the wiser. I just looked to heavens and said, "THANK YOU!" Last Christmas I was going to make Tiramisu for the large crowd of people who always gather together for Christmas Day. Now, this is a dish which has raw eggs and no one has ever gotten salmonella poisoning from what I have made. But, THIS time I decided to spring for the "pasteurized" raw eggs. I found out that pasteurized eggs white DO NOT WHIP. So, there I was on Christmas Day when even the local Safeway was closed and the 7-11 was entirely out of eggs, and had no usable eggwhites. Fortunately, after several desperate phone calls, one of the local foodies who was going to attend the same gathering had some extra eggs which he dropped off at my place. I have not set my kitchen on fire yet, but there is still time.

Thank you both. I figured simpler was probably better and I particularly like the "make your own" appetizer. That'll work.

Thanks, Michael. That was a fat one down the middle of the plate if you cared to hit it out of the ball park, so to speak. I won't be showing up at your place with any children in tow, but just wondered if you would take the bait and either wax poetic on the subject of raising kids to eat properly or to entertain us with tales of outrageous requests. You appear to be willing to comply with whatever your customers want, and I can appreciate that.

An ex-neighbor of mine moved to Alaska a few years ago but, every now and then he comes back to his old stomping grounds in DC to visit. The last time he showed up with a giant styrofoam container of freshly-caught salmon and halibut that his Alaskan fishing buddies supplied him with. I'm talking cleaned, skinned, proportioned pieces sealed in plastic and ready to rumble. I was able to snag some halibut and went to Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (vol. 1) for the proper way to prepare it. It was as lovely a fish as could be found in the best restaurants. Anyway, my friend sent some freshly caught and smoked salmon down here and directed the recipient to give me some. I have two packages of smoked salmon (specifically marked "Not for Sale"). Now, what do I do with it? Our household consists of two people. I have about 1 1/2 pounds of this stuff. On the other hand, we will be having a party very soon for somebody who's birthday is tomorrow and has just retired from his government job. (He was a big mucky-muck with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and refused to go to Iraq, after NOBODY took his advice and the result was the scandal at Abu Graib prison.) I would like suggestions for either scenario: either my DH and I eat it all ourselves, or we do something wonderful with it for about 15 people. Your best recipes will be more than appreciated.

One other question, which came up on another "chef" chat': What, if anything, do you do to accommodate kids, menu-wise?

To follow up a bit on origamicranes' comments: Economics is certainly playing a role in the home-cooking issue; but, here in DC (and I suspect other cities), it isn't the economics talked about on this thread. Rather, it is the complete lack of supermarkets in a large area, which is also the poorest area--the same area where large numbers of people don't have cars or access to good public transportation. Nutritionists have had to throw up their hands in dealing with obese children/teenagers who have, or are in danger of developing, Type 2 Diabetes in that part of town because there is no way to buy and prepare the proper food. It's fast-food or starve for quite a few of my fellow citizens. Also, I would like to remind everyone that being a good cook takes practice. My DH and I learned classic cooking techniques by watching Public Television cooking shows, checking out cook books from the Library and reading about it. I also make use of Epicurious.com. We take turns cooking dinner and I think we eat better than the average American, since we rarely use prepared foods (with the exceptions of canned tomato sauce, chicken stock and beans). And, it takes practice to come up with the kind of meals that can be prepared with little time or effort and still be quite delicious. As an example, in Jacques Pepin's memoir "The Apprentice" he has a recipe for Chicken with Cream Sauce. I make that with rice and a vegetable (Brussel Sprouts are good with this--really!!) in less than 45 minutes. Finally, there very little that's more satisfying than gathering your family and friends together and feeding them something delicious that you have prepared with your own hands. Good food, good wine, good friends. And no haggling over the bill at the end.

Michael, This has been just fascinating! So, when's the best time to get a reservation? I can't interest DH in the Corduroy outing, so he's gonna have to take me to your place.

Oh I learned this years ago. They recently had tuna on sale and I saw that it was still frozen, so I bought some and thawed it at home. It was delicious and a very good price. I buy bags of frozen shrimp on sale and keep it frozen. I can make at least 4 meals out of one bag for the two of us. I also check the date on the mussels. If the "use by" date on the bag isn't at least 6 days away, I take a pass. I'm not kidding about carefully shopping at that, or any, grocery store.

A fish story: When Larimer's on Conn. Ave. closed, a new place opened up called "Market Day." You could get boned rainbow trout there, which I did. Once, what I bought was rotten, so I started insisting on smelling it first. When they closed, Whole Paycheck opened up in Tenleytown. They also had the boned trout and happily allowed me to smell the fish. It was never bad, so I sent DH to the one on P Street to get trout. Yup, spoiled. What did HE know? So, from now on no fish gets bought without being inspected first by me. One time, not long ago, the young woman behind the counter showed me the fish SKIN SIDE UP!!! The thing is, when this stuff is fresh it is truly lovely stuff. And, at 7 or 8 bucks a pound, it isn't a bad deal. I also love their lamb sausage. Hector at the seafood counter at the Columbia Road Safeway won't allow me to smell the fish. As he put it, someone might see me rejecting the product and then they won't buy it, either!!! Doesn't that make sense to you? I shop there v-e-r-y carefully. Eunny: I buy butter only on sale and put it in the freezer. That's no solace for you and no excuse for WF, but you might want to consider this practice. One more yucky story: I bought some Uncle Ben's Arborio rice at the Safeway, simply because it was so cheap and, I thought, how bad could it be? So, risotto for dinner. I got all the ingredients together and chopped everything up and opened the bag of rice, measured it into a glass measuring cup and turned back to the sink. When I turned around, little black ant-like things were pouring out of the cup. I squealed and threw it into the sink and washed the rice and little buggers down the sink. Then I was stuck without rice. However, "So's Your Mom" on Columbia Road was just up the street and they have a small selection of imported stuff, so off I went. I bought a box of the real thing and was back home in ten minutes. Risotto was served. The moral of this story: never lived anywhere that doesn't have arborio rice within a five minute walk.

The thing to remember about pepper, as opposed to salt, is that the taste and aroma start to deteriorate as soon as a peppercorn is ground. I make a pretty good Caesar Salad at home and salt and pepper it (with a pretty good grinder) before plating it. Both my DH and I ALWAYS add more pepper from the grinder on the table. Go figure. I much prefer to have a grinder on the table of a restaurant. However, for reasons already stated in this thread, that isn't always going to be possible. I would not assume that the servers in chain restaurants were nitwits; rather the people who go to those places expecting good food are the nitwits. I would always expect professional service wherever I go, knowing that servers rely on tips for the bulk of their income whether they work at OG or the Four Seasons. I had the unfortunate experience of having to eat dinner in various incarnations of Applebees, OG, Outback Steakhouse, TGI Fridays--all the places I had never eaten in before--while clearing out my mother's house in Texas. When I got to decide where to eat, I always chose the family-owned Mexican place where the food is about as authentic as it gets. While I held out little hope for the food in the chains, and was rarely disuaded from that opinion, I did expect, and generally got, professional service.

Don't forget Saigonnais in Adams Morgan. We re-discovered this place one rainy, Sunday night when the restaurant we were headed for turned out to be closed. Refreshing, tasty food and a glass of wine for not much more than we would have spent for lousy food at Timberlakes.

I am another gentile who was introduced to "Jewish" food by some of my coworkers in Beverly Hills, low these many years ago. They took me to "Linny's" and everybody ordered the greplach (sp?), except for me who ordered the mazto ball soup simply because I had heard of it but had never eaten it. I then learned to LOVE greplach, and have never had any as good as that at Linny's. I have never made matzo ball soup from scratch, but remembered a tip one of the girls gave me: when you mix it up, the longer you keep it in the 'fridge, the "fluffier" it will be. Years later, I learned that there was a dispute between those who liked their matzo balls "dense" as opposed to "fluffy." I come down squarely on the fluffy side. As strange as it may seem for a Catholic girl (non-practicing), I get the urge to make matzo ball soup and potato latkes whenever Hannukah rolls around. Go figure.

At the risk of being pelted by overripe tomatoes, I thought I would tell you about the set of "Precision" knives by Sabatier we bought from Amazon.com for $50. At that price, we couldn't pass them up. They are made in China, not France, and are not the quality of the French knives. However, they are pretty good, hold an edge pretty well. The set contained 6 knives (Chef, boning, paring, bread, and 2 utility knives), 6 steak knives, one sharpener and one pair of scissors all in a wood block. I think we later saw this same set for sale even cheaper. This is a good deal; the knives are perfectly useful in a home kitchen; no, a professional would probably choose a higher-quality, but I take your friend isn't a pro. Get her this--you'll be a hero--and these are knives you will be able to use at her place. Go for it. Rosebud

It appears we are getting into etiquette questions here. The ignoratti who don't KNOW if a wine is good or bad, but are control freaks who just want to show off by rejecting a perfectly good wine, make the rest of us pay the freight, vis-a-vis restaurant wines prices, are always going to be with us. Clearly, the customer shouldn't have to pay for "bad" wine, but the restaurant shouldn't have to pay, either. If everybody knew they could get free wine by rejecting what they originally ordered, no one would offer wine at all and we would be required to bring our own. Which brings me to an incident at Brennan's in New Orleans in 1988. I was there working on a convention and my DH was able to come along for the ride. We went there on our last night and noticed a table full of cardiologists (!) there for another convention. One of them looked at the wine list and asked for another one. Apparently, he recognized the one for the "tourists" and knew there were better things on offer. The waiter looked impressed and brought another, special, wine list. DH thought it was a hoot! Why didn't WE think of that? What does it all mean?

Ah, Hillvalley! I wrote something similar about L'Auberge Chez Francois and Kinkeads. (SP?) It is S-O-O-O disappointing to have a bad meal at a place everyone else raves about. Intellectually I know that it is close to impossible to turn out miraculous food on a daily basis, what with the human factor and all; however, the price is the same whether a dish is good or bad. Then there is the issue of service (human factor, again). If you are paying with someone else's money, that's one thing--but your own hard-earned bucks being spent on a lousy meal is something else entirely. I'll repeat myself (from another thread) about the reason restaurant critics visit a place more than once, and at different times, just to make sure a bad meal or rotten service wasn't an anomaly. Restaurant critics, however, don't pay for their own meals. There is no solace I can offer--but I can thank you again, publicly, for arranging the Colorado Kitchen feast. We KNEW the food was going to be good but the price was ridiculous (at least in terms of the owners, not the eaters). Wishing you nothing but fabulous food, Barbara

Babka: I have sent you a PM re: that recipe we discussed last night. Just a heads-up. Rosebud