Yajna Patni

'cause if the peeps don't like it they can just change it. Or something.

I have been hamstrung by wanting it to be really good. Surprisingly, despite my horrid spelling I am a lapsed academic, and the really good, and arguments that will stand up to all kinds of assault thing can make it hard to start. I will do as you say Nakji!

I love Lord Peter Wimsey. Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorite writers, and Lord Peter IS fussy about his food!I will have to hunt down the cook book. I also had a fabulous north Californian camping trip along highway one with a pile of Diana Mott Davidson. Death by chocolate? I think was one of them. Great fun!

Until about a year ago there was a restaurant supply store in Boston's china town that had the whole shbang. Loads of tiki mugs and scorpion bowls. Sadly the store disappeared. I have quite a large collection of tiki mugs and bowls and such, but they have all come from flea markets and goodwill. My suggestion is to ask at a Chinese restaurant where they sell the drinks. They usually have lots of tiki stuff, and must be getting it from a supplier somewhere. Most of them are made by the same company. If you are buying on ebay.. 90% of the ones that say they are vintage are not. So do not over pay.

Tea has been my beverage for all my life, but I do not think of it as a way of life. It is a drink. I drink wine at night too, but that is not a life style. Tea is tea, you can make up a whole ethos around it, but the majority of people who drink it in the world are not over moneyed New Yorkers, and they drink as a drink not some life style decision. There are a lot of people with too much money and too much time that want to buy into a pre made life style. Tea is as good as anything else I guess. People write articles like that about foot wear too.

My toaster... a really nice dualit with three slots, one which has a cage thing to make grilled cheese. Lots of other stuff, but that was my favorite.

Andi I have those Eva Zeisele dishes. I love them. I am strictly a pattern person. I love old dishes, and only allow my self to buy one or two of each design when i find them, so i am all mix and match. My special favorites are Bunnykins though. I have a lot of Bunnykins dishes.

I have such a problem with pasta. I tend to not eat it because in my head a 'serving" is equal to a giant mountain. On my own i will eat a half a box... or a whole one. I mean to leave it for left overs but it never happens. I believe that 1/4 of a box is what i should eat.

I don't think they taste even slightly the same. They are in the same family botanically I think, but so is turmeric, and i think even cardamom. I have heard people suggesting to sub ginger when they can't find galangal, but I think that is more of the kind of sub where you add a different taste not similar one.

I make mine just like jenni, but I leave out the methi usually because i don't really like it.

As far as the local tea experts go, I am pretty sure they will find he has it all wrong. But as far as making MY perfect cup of tea he has it all exactly correct to the letter!

I made regents punch for Christmas! it was the hit of the meal. I work at an ice cream store in Cambridge, (Toscaninis) and i pulled out all the pints of ice cream i had hiding in my fridge, and it was found that a scoop of pineapple basil sorbet scooped into a cup of the punch was very very good. I used cheap awful fizzy white stuff, and it was still delicious.

I don't know if it helps, but this is my veggie xmas menu, and my two cents. Menu first course is Regents Punch, spiced nuts, olives, stuffed mushrooms. Course two is vegetable pot pie, heavy on mushrooms and caramelized onions, so a dark gravy. Balsamic roasted potatoes and onions herb and lemon risotto. salad with chicory oranges avocados and fennel. Course three apple pie, flan, assorted little cookie things, and if I had $$ marrons glace, and a smoking bishops punch. I am nearly 50 years old and have not eaten meat or fish since I was 14. I started eating eggs a few months ago. I am a vegetarian for ethical reasons. If you come to my house, I will cook you the best meal I know how, but I will not cook meat. If you invite me to your home, I do not expect you to change your menu for me. I have become expert in the last 30+ years at vegetarian "pre gaming" i.e. eating before I leave, keeping crackers in my purse etc. About the turkey on the table... my feeling is, if I would be uncomfortable with it I would stay home. Holidays are personal, and it is not my business to change up yours. On the other hand... Indian and chinese are two cuisines that can be ordered out, and easily cooked, and have a lot of veggies.

They have decaf Espresso so they make the americano with that.

usually the chai i have drunk (not sweet US chai made from syrup) is well boiled using CTC tea, or tea dust. well boiled with half milk and preferably buffalo milk for the higher fat content, with spices and sugar. The boiled tea has a strong more bitter tannic taste, which is perfect when you what it to be tasted through the full fat milk sugar and spice. To my taste an unbiled chai is a little lame... dosn't have the same strong filling quality. The spices tend to overwhelm the taste of the tea and it all works less well as a whole Leaf teas dno not boil as well as a CTC to my taste. I really don't see it as an issue of lower or higher or better or not. It's different, two different tastes. A sangria made with a very delicate expensive wine is not much good either.

I am sorry. I didm't mean it like that, and was referring more specifically to a poster up-thread. I just see Egullet full of people asking how to deal with other peoples dietary needs, and being told, o just dont bother, tell them its ok. I should not have posted a rant like that.

I guess I don't understand if someone asks you specifically not to use something why you would do it? Regardless of how you feel about your cake, do you think if some one turned out a homeless alcoholic living under a bridge somewhere that it would be worth it so you could make the cake you felt like making? I guess it is a pet peeve. Like cooking vegetarian, if you don't want to, fine, just say no you don't want to do it. Why use ingredients that would offend some one, and then offer the result to them? It is cruel. Not in any way nice. not what food cooked for another should be, which is a gesture of love. If you want to be cruel, tell them you think they are stupid and a pain, but don't deliberately work to defy their personal taboos. You have the right not to cook for them, but why feel you are so superior that you have to destroy someones beliefs to prove you are right

I have them every moring. The night before i put them in the pot, bring the water to the boil and leave them. When i wake up in the morning they take just about a minute to cook. not a rice cooker or a crock pot, just a regular cooking pot. My mom does the same thing but in the microwave. Toasting them makes them really really good.... toasting them in butter makes them even better.

why not back track and move on? Broccoli Rabe or Chinese Broccoli? I am prejudiced and cant stand broccoli.

Well, i couldn't find st James, but i got the appleton estates and a barbancourt, because that was about it for darker rums that are not gosling. Most stores by me have the barbancourt, and brugals?which is dominican. I got an ice crusher from the 50'sat a yard sale that is shaped like a rocket ship. it works like a dream. I got some orgeat by trader tiki. I did not have energy to make it myself, and the fellow in the cocktail store in Davis sq told me this one was good. I have been making Mai Tais. I like them kind of on the limey side. SO much better than a pineapple explosion, and so fun to serve in my naked lady Tiki glasses. For the triple sec I have been using some stuff i got in a new hampshire liquor store for cheap. It is a grand marnier brandy based knock off. It is not as good as cointrea or grand marnier, but does not taste of jolly ranchers like de kuyper etc.

Indian Chinese is famous. As soon as i land in Delhi i need to run for some gobi manchurian or chili panir etc. I love the intermixing s of people and how they translate the cuisines of others, and how they adapt their own cuisine to different ingredients when they arrive somewhere else.

I should say in fairness, i am 100% behind the political beliefs of Frances Moore Lappe and Mollie Katzen, its just i don't see why I should eat boring food because of it. Luckily after leaving home at 16 or 17 I headed to India, and ended up in Bengal, where i found veg food that was the exact opposite of boring salt free or bland. I guess i feel guilty dising their books. But they were naaasty. And as Chris said the food was always offered with an air of violent Moral superiority , and i will shut up now.

Ha Ha Chris, I may have suffered too.... but I would nominate the 70's vegetarian classic Diet for a Small Planet. I stopped eating meat in about 1978, and i didn't then, or now see why vegetarian had to mean no salt, and a lot of cheese. bleagh. I think it was that suffering to be moral thing. I don't do that.

I think the real benefit to organic is not the taste of the resulting produce, but the fact that the process is less harmful to the soil. Chemicals work, but they also lead to depleted soil which can not support more plants without even more chemicals.

what about oil pickles? I have made and eaten these for most of my adult life, as have lots and lots of Indian people, and any one who buys a jar of mango pickle at the Indian store. I have usually used green mango or lime, which both have a certain amount of acidity, but there are many pickles that do not have that... i have made carrot and garlic and drumstick.