abadoozy

I make Tom & Jerrys for two all the time. Well, all the time in the winter, at least. For two big mugs: 1 egg, separated 1.5 cups milk, warm 2 T. Sugar 1 shot rum (I use Meyer's) 1 shot brandy (I use a local cheapo brandy that's a bit sweeter than most) Nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice... whatever you like for the top. Whisk the egg yolk with 1 T. of sugar until it's pale yellow and frothy. Meanwhile, beat the egg white and remaining tablespoon of sugar until it forms soft peaks. Fold the egg yolk into the whites to make a batter. Gradually add the brandy and rum to the batter and fold to combine. Put half the batter into each mug. Fill with warm milk. Top with freshly grated nutmeg or cinnamon or whatever else you like. This is what I always wanted eggnog to taste like...

Looks like beef jerky to me...

I think bacon goes with everything, but it wouldn't solve my problem. Unlike the Le Crueset terrine, mine isn't solid. It's like the one pictured a few posts up - it comes apart, and is not waterproof. If you pour water into it, it comes right out the sides. And last I checked, bacon, though delicious, wasn't much of a water barrier either. I ended up taking Mottmott's advice and using tin foil (I've done cheesecakes like this before.) It's in the oven now. Cross your fingers and hope it comes out - if not, my father is going to be very unhappy that I ruined some of the venison from the first deer he killed in 9 years! Just curious, though - what have others used for the plastic wrap? I did call GFS and they'd never heard of heatproof plastic wrap. Is it commonly available out in the real world? Or are the Saran guys lying, and Saran wrap heats just fine?

We once stayed with my husband's sister for about a week. As a thank-you, we picked up some really nice steaks for a special dinner the night before we were leaving. Prime beef, not sure of the price per pound, but 4 steaks ran us close to $100. Took 'em back, cooked them up, and watched my brother-in-law pour A1 over his. Husband was kicking me under the table, and I had to work very, very hard not to say anything.

Ha! I was just remarking to my husband yesterday that I'm happy it's winter. My 5 gallon stock pot full of beef stock went into the garage to cool overnight - there's absolutely no way it would fit into the fridge, even if the fridge was totally empty. The garage, on the other hand, was cold enough to solidify the fat quite nicely. All my bowls and blades for terrine-making today have been on the front porch overnight. I was actually thinking of doing the whole deed on the porch, until I read in the Charcuterie book I'm using that although you do want all the tools cold, putting the Kitchenaid on the back deck during a snowstorm was probably going overboard. I just about bust a gut laughing, because that's exactly what I was contemplating. They must have had me in mind when the wrote that paragraph.

I'm about to foray into my first attempt at making a terrine. I recently acquired a terrine mold - one of the ones that come apart - and a good recipe book, so I'm ready to go. My venison and fatback are marinating in the fridge, my bowls are sitting outside in a snowbank to keep 'em cold, and the only thing that's holding me up is the @#$#@ plastic wrap. The technique I was planning to use involves lining my mold with plastic wrap, filling it, and baking in a water bath. At 3am last night, I woke up thinking "Plastic wrap? In the oven? Is that possible?" A little research this morning on the Saran Wrap web site revealed that Saran Wrap is not meant to go into the oven. So.... what to do? Is it just lawyer-speak, and can my festive blue Saran Wrap stand up to a 300 degree oven and water bath just fine? Or will I end up with a melted plastic shell around my lovely terrine? Can I get heatproof plastic anywhere? I live in a small town, there is no Costco or other such large place. We do have a Gordon Food Service retail store, and I plan on calling them as soon as they open at noon to see if they carry the elusive heatproof plastic wrap. If that route doesn't work, what are my options? I'm completely new to terrine making. Can I use several layers of tinfoil? Any technique that doesn't use a water bath? For what it's worth, I'm doing it with about equal amounts of venison and pork fatback, pureed with various spices, a madeira reduction, and I think I add some egg whites and heavy cream.

We're very familiar with Gruet, and it's already on the list. We fly into Albequerque at around noon - perfect timing for a stop at the Gruet tasting room on our way to Santa Fe. Also very familiar with dessert - too familiar, my pants are getting tight. Or did you mean desert? Before moving to The Middle of Nowhere we spent a couple decades in Colorado. Thus the trip to New Mexica - it was one of our favorite getaways, and we've missed it now that it's not a day's drive away. Thanks to both of you for the recomendations. Will check them out. Anyone else?

Hubby and I are heading to Santa Fe/Taos next week and one of the things we'd like to do is spend at least one night sipping some good wine. We live in a very small town where the wine selection is limited mostly to American wines, and hubby in particular is interested in trying some French wine. In light of that, if there's a good wine shop in Santa Fe, we'd like to visit it. I know there's no end of really great restaurants with good wine selections, but we'd also like to buy a few bottles. I know Santa Fe isn't a hotbed of French wine activity, but *any* selection is better than what we get at home. Any suggestions?

Which models? I've tried the stainless-steel "Brew Central" Cuisinart maker and it wasn't any better than a standard drip maker in my opinion. The only machines I've found that do brew hoter (and better) are the Capressos. I do love me my Capresso coffee maker... truly wonder stuff.

My local ice cream is made by Jilbert's - a local dairy that also provides decent milk & butter. They've got a funky retail store with giant fiberglass cows outside (and 30+ flavors inside, open until 10pm every night in the summer!) As far as I'm concerned, most of those premium brands (Haagen Dazs, Ben & Jerry's, Cold Stone, etc.) are far too rich for me. I honestly can't eat more than a spoonful or two. I much prefer old-fashioned lighter ice cream. I find myself lonely in that attitude, though - most people tend to go for the big thick rich ice creams. Yuk!

One thing that's worked for me is not to concentrate on what I can't have, but waht I *can* have, at least the healthy bits. Face it - most of us can afford to eat more vegetables. You mentioned you didn't like green salads, so figure out what kinds of veggies you do like and load up on them - 3 times a day if you can manage it. I've found that trying to get in veggies at every meal fills me up with things that are both low-calorie and good, and I tend not to go for the ice cream when I'm full of carrots. Like others here, I'm loathe to give up taste, so I go ahead and add the butter or whatever it is that makes them taste good - I just try not to go overboard, and figure that a big bowl of fresh green beans (or whatever) with butter or a vineagrette or dipped in homemade mayo is still better for me than french fries. Not that I'm a skinny little thing - I can stand to lose 20# or so - but I'm also far from obese. I run and take long walks and bicycle and all that. And that brings on another thing - making the conscious decision that I'd rather be a bit overweight (not obese) and eat well. I'm the opposite of the Weight Watchers motto ("Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!"). "I'd rather be fat & happy than thin & miserable."

I've done extensive research on this very topic Back when I was dating my now-husband, he was simultaneously going through a very bad divorce and the very unexpected death of his father. Through it, he had a phase he now refers to as "margarita therapy." Along the way, he experimented until he's now a top notch marg maker. We tend to go with a 1-1-1 proportion. From my experience, this is what most places in the southwest use as well. If your limes are especially sour, I might add a splash of orange or pineapple juice (or that nifty bottled pomegranite juice you can get nowadays.) Tequila-wise, use high end tequila. I'm happy to realize that this board is one where I probably am not going to have to convince people that yes, you do indeed taste the tequila in the drink and that Cuervo is not the same as El Tesoro. The better the tequila, the better the marg. Silver (blanco), Gold (oro), it depends on the mood. I wouldn't say one is better than the other. Definitely use high end triple sec. I'm not familiar with Marie Brizard, but I use Cointreau a lot, as well as Grand Marnier. I've experimented with other orange liqueurs as well, but in general I use one of the forementioned ones. Put all the ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, and shake well. Pour into glasses with more ice. Yum. Now I want margaritas!

I think Lucille's was going downhill when I left Boulder, 3 years ago this month. They were cool back in the day, but "meh" lately. Anyone know if Angkor Wat is still in Longmont? It had incredibly good Asian takeout, for being in a strip mall. They opened about 2 months before I left, and I still miss the food.

Oh, did you ever hit the nail on the head with that one, busboy. And it's not just food & restaurants - it's everything. From restaurants to car dealerships to realtors to just about any retail establishment, you can see the effects of the lack of competion in a small town. When you're the only store around, it doesn't matter if you know what you're doing or not - people are stuck. And let's not even get into the amount of nepotism that goes on. Suffice to say that if you're related to one of the old, local families, you have advantages that an out-of-towner or less prestigiously-connected local will never have.

Interesting premise, Busboy, although I'm not sure that the lifeblood of small-town restaurants is in tourists. I don't think tourists carry this town, for example, although they do help. We're simply not that much of a tourist destination (thank God!) No, I think the trick to opening a really good restaurant here is capturing the local clientele. But what do I know? I'm far from an expert, I just like to eat. And, for what it's worth, this is a college town too. But I respectfully disagree with the idea that a college town can't be rural.

You're not argumentative at all. In fact, after I wrote that, I was thinking about the same thing. Obviously not everyone who grows up in a small town turns into a tastebud zombie, since *I* didn't , but there are so many who simply don't think outside the box. I think maybe part of it is that people learn not to associate good food with restaurants. I know my 70-year-old father doesn't; he hates going out, and a lot of that is because he doesn't think the food is as good as the stuff my mother makes. My mother could be the poster child for "good home cook." She doesn't make fancy food, and she doesn't have a huge repertoire, but what she does make is excellent. The sad fact is that they don't expect the same when they go out. It's like they don't go out when they want good food, they go out when they don't feel like cooking at home, and they expect that the food will be bad. As far as how it translates into the dreck... I honestly don't know. I'm trying to think of some of the local places, and one thing that stands out is that a lot of the more popular restaurants here are second or third generation restaurants, places that someone's parents or grandparents started and now the children own them. So maybe they were really good back in the day, but over the years the kids don't show the same dedication or knowledge as their parents did, but enough people still go there out of habit to keep them in business. The made-from-scratch marinara of 1962 has been replaced by Sysco, and the meat is three grades lower than it used to be, but the name of the restaurant is the same and they still serve strong drinks, that kind of thing.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this same subject myself, as I live in a town that makes Lexington, VA look like Paris. It's a complex subject, but from my perspective it comes down to education. Namely, in a lot of small towns, people haven't had any experience with truly good food. Sure, there's the one place in town that makes great burgers, or decent sub sandwiches, but overall, people simply don't know the difference between a plate of fettuccine al-Sysco and fettuccine alfredo, much less the vagaries involved in making pasta al dente or using high-quality cheese. And how could they know, when the best pasta in town is Olive Garden? Rural America is much more homogenous than city-dwellers understand. People seem to have this idea that small town America is full of homegrown goodness – the Italian immigrants who opened a great pasta place, the Mexican family down the street who make tamales to die for. Reality is more like the guy who opened the steak place and figured out that he can microwave low-quality steaks and drown them in Sysco’s equivalent of A1 and people will pay $12.95 for that and a salad complete with pale pink tomatoes and wilted iceberg lettuce. Compared to that place – and believe me, it exists – an Olive Garden is food from heaven. When I hear about new restaurants opening here, I almost hope that they’re going to be chain restaurants, because my experiences with the locally-owned ones have been so bad. I have just about enough true-story material to do an entire piece on the various bad food & service I’ve had in this town, starting with the chef who was “too busy” to cook my meal and going on to the incredibly horrible meals they’ve found time to cook for me. As far as asking the hotel clerk or another local, good luck. The clerks in at least one hotel here are reportedly not allowed to recommend the best restaurant in town because it competes with the mediocre hotel restaurant. Most locals don’t know what good food is; ask them for a recommendation and they’re going to send you to the places they grew up eating in. They don’t have anything to contrast them with, so they think they’re good. I hate to be so pessimistic about this subject, but there’s no way around it. I’ve lived in my share of cities and small towns, and the small town food is more often bad than good. I told my husband before we moved back here that he’d be happy I knew how to cook, and he laughed at me. Three years later, he tells me how right I was. I have high hopes that my particular town is on the verge of changing – we have one or two really great places now – but that’s only one out of thousands.

now there's an idea for a new thread: a competition for the town with the worst restaurants what is your town, do you mind sharing? ← I'm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan... a great place for many things, but any attempt at food other than bar food seems just doomed. Except, of course, the one or two bright shining exceptions I mentioned above, one of which is run by an e-Gulleter.

One restaurant here in my home town advertised not one, not two, but three years running their annual Christmas buffet. It included, among the ubiquitous prime rib and glazed ham, "Duck ala Ronge." Three years in a row. What do you think it could be? Free range duck, in the style of the free-range chicken eggs I buy at the local co-op? Duck with a range sauce (is that like Ranch dressing?) Because, they really, really couldn't misspell a l'orange that badly, three years in a row, could they? Yes, they could. I'm convinced this town has the worst restaurants (with one or two bright, shining exceptions) in the country.

My mother used to sneak venison into things like chili and other casseroles. Nowadays I love venison, but back then my Dad used to butcher the deer in the kitchen, and it sickened me. I get her back now that I'm an adult by putting anchovies in stuff that I make and serve to her. As far as the OP, sure, I'll occasionally serve things and try to avoid telling people about the bits that they may like as long as the bits are small (anchovies in marinara, etc.) I'd never go as far as lying about something big ("No! That's not lamb, it's just really tender, gamey beef!") And if directly asked, I'll tell 'em what I'm serving.

The title pretty much says it all. I live in a teeny tiny town in the northern midwest, and although there's a couple OK wine stores in town, the selection is small. For example, Mr. Abadoozy recently had a hankering to try some Burgundy, and there flat out isn't anything in town beyond a $15 bottle of Jadot. I'm not saying there was nothing in our price range, or in the specific type we wanted - there was NO Burgundy. I went everywhere in town. We compensated by drinking a few bottles of New Zealand and American Pinots, but it just ain't the same. I've been supplementing what we can find by buying cases when we're out of town, and, on occasion, ordering from places like Hi-Times (www.hitimewine.net) out of California. Of course, I pay a heck of a lot of shipping charges, shipping cases of wine & champagne from California. I've done some Web searches trying to find a place a little closer to home, but I haven't found anything. Ideally, it would be out of Chicago or Minneapois (or anywhere in between), have a Web site that lists their inventory, and would be willing to ship. Anyone know of anyplace?

"Independent" and "family owned" doesn't always mean good, especially in small towns far from metro areas. Come up to my town, I'll take you on a tour of the small, locally-owned places that would scare the socks off anyone with taste buds. With the notable exception of a small handful of local places - including one run by an e-Gulleteer - most chain restaurants are better run, serve more interesting food, and are an overall better dining experience than the bulk of the locally owned places in my town. I hate to admit it, but it's true. The worst that a chain has offered up to me is dull food at high prices. The worst that a locally owned place has offered up is the stuff of horror stories.

I had a cinnamon roll at Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis last weekend. It was a pretty good cinnamon roll, but what made it extraordinary is they served it warm, and dripping in a really wonderful caramel sauce and toasted pecans. Talk about a wake-up - between the sugar and the coffee our hangover from too many martinis the night before was history. I've never seen a roll done like that, with the sauce over it instead of just relying on the inside gooeyness (which it had plenty of as well.) I think I just gained another pound or two just writing about it.

I would venture to say that I don't use most of my cookbooks, the Cook's Illustrated ones being the exception. However, I *do* read them, and I get ideas from them. Often they just are filled with ingredients that I can't get (I live about ten miles past the end of the earth, food-wise) or preparations that I'm not going to do. That said, I still love them, because I remember what I read, and at some point later it comes bubbling out of my head in some form or another. Oddly enough, I have made stuff out of "Hot Sour Salty Sweet." Great stuff. Last time I made something I convinced myself I needed Kaffir Lime Leaves and promptly ordered a bag, which now sits forlornly in my freezer, waiting for me to open it.

It occurs to me that one of the problems with home-plating is that we just don't have the resources around that a restaurant kitchen would. Some of those we can remedy - a sprinkle of fresh herbs, for example, adds a bit of color that brightens things up quite a bit. I was lucky with my flank steak - I'd bought an extra jalepeno, and had a half a shallot left over. I hadn't even thought of a garnish for the meat until I plated it and said to myself "wow, that looks boring." A few chops of the knife and I at least had some color to add to the plate. I think deblar had a point when she (he?) said that sometimes the problem is the raw ingredients. Some of you pros can correct me if I'm wrong, but I have to think that sauces, vegetable choices, and garnishes are often chosen with the final plating in mind. Take your simple meat-n-potatoes dish - brown, brown, and more brown. Often with a brown sauce. What's it need? A few carrots, beets, anything with color. A sprinkle of a fresh green herb on top. Shalmanese's risotto looks as if it would taste fabulous, but I'm thinking in a restaurant it might be topped with a whole piece of chicken, or even better - squab or some other small bird. And more color. But if Shalmanese is anything like me, 9 times out of 10, cooking at home, I'm not going to go out of my way to perfectly roast a squab breast just for prettiness. (I don't want to pick on Shalmanese - it's just the most recent post with pictures, and I can so relate to the feeling of "I'm so frantic doing everything at once that I tend to try and plate as fast as possible"!) So what's my point? I guess I'm just wondering if it's just a losing proposition to get a casual dinner to look as good as a finely-plated course served in a good restaurant. Hell, even most restaurants don't work too hard on plating - when's the last time you had a gracefully plated burger and fries? Some recipes - the big, the bright - take well to a good plating. Others? meh. Last night I roasted a chicken and served it with cauliflower in a quick cheese sauce. Tasted great. Looked like crap, and I'm not sure if anything that I could do quickly on a weeknight would make it look better.