bavila

Baby #2 is due 2 months from today, and I want to start stocking up the freezer to get ready for those sleep-deprived first few weeks. Anyone have suggestions for tasty (and basically healthy) dinners that can withstand the freezer? Any other tips? I find summer a particularly challenging time to be doing this as it seems most of the things I usually freeze are more cool weather dishes (chili, soups, beans, etc.).

Or as the Indigo Girls put it, "when God made me born a Yankee, he was teasin'". So Dean, what do you use for leavener in your biscuits? I've been doodling with my recipe when we're not having low-carb days at our house, and I'm just not quite pleased with the leaveners in that I think my baking powder is giving a metallic flavor. I've heard this could be a brand issue, in that some brands of baking powder will taste metallic and others won't. Any opinions?

For best muffaletta, I'd vote Central Grocery, though other's would say Napolean house. I second Pascal's Manale for BBQ shrimp, haven't tried Mr. B's. Best fine dining for me is Bayona or Upperline. And even if hurricanes are made "from scratch" by anyone, they're still going to be glorified "vat". This is the name we had in college for the horrible alcoholic punches mixed up for fraternity parties in 30 gallon garbage cans. One of the parties was called Red Tide. I'm not sure there's much to miss beyond red dye no. 5 and loads of sugar. Of course, I'm sure someone here will correct me if I'm wrong.

Amen to that. As a fellow bio person, I've never bought the argument that just because an organism is animated or has certain nerve receptors that it's wrong to kill it. We all die, and other animals (lest we forget that humans are animals) act as hunters or predators. We have pointy flesh-tearing incisors for teeth. Sounds pretty natural to me. As for the health argument, well, an herbivore can choose a healthful diet or not. So can omnivores. I suppose religious beliefs as a foundation for vegism I have no problem with. I'm not out to proselytize. Which brings me to mizducky's comment. I've never met a proselytizing carnivore, but several proselytizing vegans. Please, eat and let eat! As for the financial discussion, on the individual level, vegism is probably less of an issue than being able to eat healthfully on a lean budget if you're not prepared to cook for yourself. If you're relying on inexpensive packaged or prepped foods, I think it's just difficult to get a balanced diet. On the macroeconomic level, and the reason I started the thread on the Louisiana board was sort of a philosophical wondering -- if proselytizing vegans achieved the goal of all humans going vegan, then what happens to communities (like the Cajun family on Trading Spouses) who rely on killing animals (for food, for leather, what have you)?

That reminds me of my friend in Lafayette. Let's say she lives in a "transitional" neighborhood near the railroad tracks. I think she established herself well at the outset by tanning deer and rabbit hides in the carport. I think she has a reputation as some sort of witchy woman amongst her neighbors. Anyway... perhaps I can better clarify my question about economics. While it may be possible for low-income individuals to go veg, I wonder what the vegan's answer is to entire communities who would be out of work if everyone went veg. While it might be easy to make out the "big-bad-beef-industry" as cruel and avaricious, it's much harder to paint watermen (notoriously dirt poor) the same way. I don't know what their alternative would be. Must respond to potty-training toddler's request to use potty...

Thanks for the synopsis, Mallet. You saw much more than I did. In fact, I think the making of the gumbo will occur in the next episode to be aired. I'll agree with Brooks that the extensive growing season would make eating veg would be pretty simple in LA, but I'm thinking of the economic impact if everyone did go veg. India is a good example for the lack of affluence and vegetarian living. So would agriculture then become the economic driving force for those areas?

Anyone see Trading Spouses the other night? Vegan mom from San Diego trades places with Cajun (and omnivorous) mom from Thibodaux. So what do you think? Is veganism a viable option for communities that have historically made their living (directly or indirectly) off of fisheries and fur-trapping and the like? My thought is that ideologies such as veganism are only possible in a truly affluent society, and economic microcosms like Thibodaux would vanish if the world (or even the United States) went vegan. Of course, that's a scenario that is pretty extreme.

The first thing I attempted to make completely on my own was sugar cookies. I must have been around 8 or so, and was basically unsupervised at the time. I completely blew off the directions and dumped all the ingredients in a bowl -- resulting in the soupiest cookie dough you've ever seen, and completely inedible "cookies". I suppose this was a good lesson for me to learn as someone who generally doesn't read the directions for anything -- sometimes you really need to! I also had some Betty Crocker for kids book handed down to me from my sisters (who aquired it about 10 years before me), and I remember thinking how lame the recipes sounded. Maybe that was the first indication of my foodie-tendencies...

Oh God. K&B Vodka. My stomach is already churning. That said, it was quite said to see all the purple signs replaced with red and blue Rite Aid signs when we drove through town.

The good news is that I've got one cucumber that's about 1/2" long and two tomatoes that are about 1/4" in diameter. YAY! The bad news is something is eating my basil, which is still very tiny, so I don't think vertebrates would be to blame. The tiny holes in the leaves suggest bug or fungus to me. Anyone have ideas?

Lucky Changs and Good Friends in New Orleans -- plus many others, I'm sure. Hubby and I happened upon Le Petit Prince in the Latin Quarter in Paris in 1998. He had been deployed for three months, and we met up in Paris, so we were quite oblivious to all the blatant signs around us -- a framed picture of a rainbow-striped banana atop a column, the business card with a Renoir-esque painting of a group of men dining together. We laughed at our own cluelessness once we left. Of course, I suppose this also means that the staff treated straights and gays equally well. In fact, the maitre'd also seemed happy to speak English once he heard my feeble French, so they were probably one of the more American-friendly places we patronized in Paris. Can't say I know of any gay restaurants in Annapolis.

I don't particularly like daiquiris -- just the idea of having a drive through daiquiri store. Here's a question -- are daiquiris the only drive-thru liquor available? Any particular reason? I grew up in Lafayette Parish, and my recollection was that any open container in a vehicle was illegal there. So when you went for your daiguiri, they put a piece of masking tape over the lid. I also managed to get through college (Tulane) while the legal drinking age was 18. My husband and I pat ourselves on the back for managing to go to college in New Orleans, finish in four years, AND have pretty decent grades. We think our early partying helped us out with time management in the professional world. This was particularly blatant when my husband was in the Navy, with the Academy grads (who had experienced almost NO freedom in college) trying to flounder about at work while recovering from massive hangovers. Amateurs. Now I live in this insanely legalistic state called Maryland. I can't even buy beer or wine in a grocery store, much less pick up a bottle of vodka. And what really ticks me off is that the state even regulates which distributors can sell in a given county. No distributors handle Abita in my county, so my liquor store can't order it for me. Absolutely un-American. Of course, now that I've painted myself as a total lush, I'll say that my pregnant self is sober and looking forward to a lovely margarita or caipirinha directly after delivery.

Funny -- I can't remember if my bread knife is Wusthof or Henckels. Either brand has 8" knives for about $60-70, Chef's Catalog or Williams-Sonoma. My MIL also recently gave me a Calphalon knife set, and the bread knife is nice, but a little heavy for my hand. The blade is also thicker than my other one, and I find it better suited for denser breads. If you can get your hands on a Cook's Illustrated review of knives, that would probably best guide your purchase. As for the space issue, I so love the magnetic bar we have in our kitchen. And when it comes down to it, there are really only about 4 knives that I use regularly and would all fit on it. Yay, free counter space!

This morning I finally got the last of my tomato and cucumber plantlings in the ground. I was planning on creating a new bed for them, but we've got too many house projects going on, and I am too pregnant to be doing all that digging right now. My herbs are looking quite happy -- sage (which would take over the entire yard if I let it, I think); rosemary and thyme perking up; new dill, parsley, and chives seem to be established; basil is still pretty puny -- maybe it hasn't been hot enough? I envy those of you with your large gardens. I have only a small patch on my yard that gets (almost) full sun, so I have to pack in the stuff I really want there. Wish I could grow some field peas. Yum. And just to make those of you in Minnesota and environs ill, my parents are already pciking tomatoes in Louisiana. Unfair, isn't it?

Drinks on the roof of the Hotel Washington and then around the corner for oysters at Old Ebbit would be a great combo. ← For the "DC vibe" I second the Hotel Washington roof/Old Ebbitt combo. I also like Old Ebbitt for lunch. Quite reasonable. As for Tex-Mex, I'm never entirely satisfied with anything outside of Texas, but, I have been known to eat heartily at Austin Grill near the MCI Center. Get the pork tacos. Oh yum. And drink many margaritas.

Here's a story I wrote for the Annapolis Capital on the crawfish boil we had a few weeks ago. It's FINALLY online, and won't stay for long, so I've just copied and pasted... I left out the recipes as they are available in Folse's book. Crabs are king for Marylanders, but Cajuns Crave Crawfish By BRIDGET AVILA Crawfish boils are the signature social event of spring in Louisiana, and every spring I get homesick for afternoons with friends and family spent lingering over a table of the spicy red beauties spread out over newspaper. Click here for recipes. Marylanders know the joy of picking crabs and washing them down with an ice cold beer, as do folks in Louisiana, where many of the crabs we eat here come from. But steamed crabs just don't take the place of crawfish for me. Most years, the Washington area alumni club of my alma mater, Tulane University, holds a crawfish boil in May, which is a good way to cure my crawfish cravings without the airfare to go home. But this year, to my horror, there would be no Tulane crawfish boil. Hubby and I decided that matters must be taken into our own hands. We would fly in the live "mudbugs" and host our own boil in the backyard. In Louisiana, you can acquire live or boiled crawfish from local restaurants or seafood vendors, usually for about $2 to $4 per pound, or for free for those lucky to have a private crawfish pond. The places that we knew best for crawfish had larger minimum orders and higher shipping costs than the online vendor we chose. Cajungrocer.com can also be reached at 1-888-272-9347 and is a reputable source of a wide variety of food products from Louisiana, from links of boudin and andouille to tapes of Cajun or zydeco music. Don't be afraid of hosting your own crawfish boil, it's like steaming any other kind of seafood. We used a 30-quart pot with propane burner - available as a "turkey fryer" at many hardware and home improvement stores for about $80 - to boil 20 pounds of crawfish in three batches. Following a recipe or the directions provided on cajungrocer.com caneliminate guess work and help you avoid overcooking and under-seasoning. Vendors will recommend ordering 5 pounds per person if ordering for Louisianans or 3 pounds per person for everyone else. We went with an even smaller amount per person as we prepared other favorite dishes from my home state, like jambalaya and crawfish pasta salad. Cajungrocer offers orders of live crawfish as small as 10 pounds for $54.95 and includes next-day shipping, packaging, and seasoning packets, making a first-time boil a little less daunting. Our party was set for 3 p.m. and we had just about worked into a sweat before the FedEx truck drove up at 11:50 a.m. with a cooler full of live Louisiana crawdads. We opened up the box, hosed the crawfish off and finished our preparations. Not all of your guests may be interested in the spicy crustaceans you'll serve, so you'll probably want to offer other options. A cookbook like John Folse's The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine is a good place to find Louisiana dishes, and to learn about the many cultures that influenced the unique cuisine of the state. Weighing in at about ten pounds, this is not the kind of cookbook you can blithely toss about your kitchen, but a veritable treasure of history, photographs, and 700 recipes tested by Folse, who has been called "Louisiana's Culinary Ambassador to the World". While area bookseller's and libraries have a decent variety of Louisiana cookbooks, Folse's tome is still somewhat of a regional phenomenon and not likely to be found on local bookseller's shelves. It is available at www.jfolse.com, or call John Folse & Company at 225-644-6000. Live crawfish are generally available in the January through June, with a peak in April and May. As with any seasonal item, the crop will vary depending on the weather. But when it gets warm enough for you to want to spend the day outside in Chesapeake country, you should be in luck. All of the recipes that go with this story are from Folse's book, The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine.

Amen to that. When we were there recently, it just seemed like there was something in the air encouraging everyone to imbibe -- a lot. I didn't notice this as an undergrad -- perhaps because I was too busy imbibing. And I may have been particularly sensitive on this trip with my sober pregnant self, looking longingly at my other's cocktails.

Well, I've never lived in DC, and thankfully no longer work there either (woo hoo! no more commute!). But I will keep your suggestions in mind when I visit my friend who lives on the Hill.

I've never been crazy about ketchup, even as a kid. Maybe that's because I don't like a lot of any kind of condiment or sauce on my food. But I really learned to hate ketchup when I waited tables in a diner and had to marry or fill ketchup bottles as side work. Get enough ketchup going around you a few times and the stench is pretty intolerable. Plus the sugary tomatoey messes that ensued were a pain to clean up. My aversion has subsided somewhat, but I still rather a combination of mayo and mustard for my fries. Maybe it's the French in me.

My Hill dining is limited to Tortilla Grill Cafe, Aatish, and a Turkish place on Penn (Anatolia, maybe?) -- all basically low brow, but reasonably tasty. Oh and a French place whose name I also can't remember (might have been La Colline), but they had a lovely leek tart. Very nice for a lunch sitting outside trying to forget how painful participating/listening to Senate hearings can be, at least if it's not swamped by politicos. At Tortilla, the pupusas and accompanying salad rocked. And you can not beat the price. Anatolia -- it's been a while, so I can't offer specific comment. Recently met a couple of friends at Aatish for dinner with my 2.5 year old. My daughter LOVES pappadam. The waiter was somewhat alarmed that she would eat them since they're a tad spicy. I assured him that she was accustomed to the heat -- no biggie. Then she started playing with the container of coriander sauce, basically just looking at it. The waiter really freaked out then and nearly ripped the dish from her hand. I felt like saying, "Stop trying to tell the Americans not to eat Pakistani food in the Pakistani restaurant." Luckily he had other tables seated about that time and had less time to hover over us. Sheesh.

I'll hide hummus from my hubby as he'll inhale the entire amount before I get any. In a reverse scenario, I buy him butter pecan ice cream because I know I won't eat it. And something I don't hide exactly, but I won't share with just anyone is pecans from Louisiana (which my dad acquires from a friend's tree then shells and cleans them himself before sending to me, the sweetheart). One must have some discriminating tastes to be deemed pecan-worthy.

banana leaves are attractive (and big) for fruity tropical items

Refining my request a tad -- we'll be staying at the Dominion House in Blooming Grove so that and West Point will be our center of operations. Thanks!

Just passing through and thought I'd suggest something a friend made recently -- dulce de leche cheesecake squares. You could easily embellish with anything really, for the sake of presentation. Good luck. Oh, and another quick thought -- tiny meringue cookies with a drizzle of rosemary chocolate topping.

On a regional level, I hope that crap dip goes the way of spinach and artichoke dip in the Chesapeake Bay area. Sure, it can be tasty, but every single restaurant in Annapolis (at least downtown) does crab dip. Boring. I also don't think locally grown produce is a fad, but that the cache surrounding it will die down and come into proper perspective. For several reasons local is better, but that's not everything. Oooh, and fruit salsa with fish? Pass yours down to me, thanks. Yummy.