racheld

Marsh is an Indiana chain, very large, everything you can think of to cook, terrific bakery, nice deli goods, super produce and meat markets. I almost explained it in above post, but guess I was on a roll to finish. But I love all the guesses, and all are sort of apropos. And it was the abundance and the CLEAN of it which moved him to say that. He had tears in his eyes when he was actually in the store.

PS Several years ago, we were sponsors of a visiting Colonel from Nigeria, here for training at the local Army base. We took him lots of places during his stay here, and the Army group took the visitors to several of the highlights of our country: Washington, Statue of Liberty, DISNEYWORLD, for Heaven's sake!! On their last night in town, we had the group to dinner and casually asked what they had enjoyed most about America. Our friend enthusiastically replied, "Marsh!" (local grocery chain). My husband and I were discussing the evening after everyone left, and I mentioned his strange, but sweetly envious, answer. Hubby pointed out that his pictures of home plainly showed that HIS wife purchased their dinner out of someone's LAP on the sidewalk. So don't knock the A&P. Edited to define "Marsh" though there are mentions in succeeding posts.

eipi, Hon, You gotta quit hanging out in the Froot Loop and Plastic Cheese aisles, and get yourself over to PRODUCE!!! Or dairy. Or Meat, Seafood or those Gucci aisles with ninety-dollar mushrooms. It's a BANQUET out there.

Home-baked cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting; fat sausages with herbs and little chunks of three cheeses; crisp thick rye skillet toast; Decker melon; orange marmalade; plain old Folgers in the press.

Hubby says I'm a dish junkie. My first stop at Goodwill is the glassware aisle. If we slow down at a yard sale and there's no glassware table, we keep going unless we can see BOOKS in evidence. And books we acquired: My cookbook library is more than 600 volumes, though I do confess that lots were new, from the remnants aisle at Half Price Books. I love great stacks of the beautiful picture books, entertaining books and cookbooks and decorating books; books about tea and gardening and herbs and plants, and have them on all surfaces which will stand still. And hubby's photography shelves hold several hundred books, as well, from sales of all kinds. I've furnished both kitchens, one entirely open cabinets, with collections of lovely pastel dishes and serving pieces and vases and bowls. Lots of Depression ware, loads of Fiesta (even the old ORANGE stuff), and my own favorite: Jadeite. I've always loved the pale teal of it, the almost translucent glimmer of oceany green with the little shadings. I've collected many Jadeite cups and saucers, round and square, plus cream/sugar sets, teapots, a LOVELY scalloped cakestand, lots of compotes and plates and bowls, and my VERY best piece: a ball jug. It stands there with its little round belly and its slightly tilted head with the ice-catcher, as it stood amongst the drek of the shelves when I spotted it with its little tag reading 7.98. We had just entered the store and I picked it up, abandoned my basket, hustled Hubby to the checkout counter and escaped with my treasure before its true value was realized by some sharp-eyed price-setter. (My latest Jadeite book offers its twin for $700.00). It's in the TOP cabinet in the "fancy" kitchen, all by itself, looking down on our around-the-room top shelf of Hall teapots, mostly in that recognizable Hall green, and all but a few acquired for less than $10. Beautiful old apothecary jars bought for a couple of dollars each hold pastas and rice and coffees on my kitchen counter. Old Homer Laughlin boardinghouse-sized bowls, with their fading pink roses and whispers of gold trim, shine down from atop the refrigerator, where they keep company with Stafford teapots and ironstone pitchers. A charming cream and teal 1900's stove mentioned in a previous thread, rescued from a storage container at a permanent outdoor flea market--$150.00. It will replace the horrendous "harvest gold" monstrosity in the up kitchen, and will serve no other purpose than to look pretty and hold some of the pretty dishes. An 8'x3' stained-glass light fixture, its iris and daffodils painstakingly worked with leaded outlines, was a housewarming gift to my sister when she got her HUGE dream kitchen. It holds three 8" globes of light, and hangs over the big center island. Cost: $40 at closing time at a yard sale. The guy's wife had made him get rid of his pool table, now that the children were grown and gone. A set of three Le Creuset gratin pans, each a different color, stacked and taped together with VERY sticky tape: 4.99. A beautiful bronze-colored baker's rack, worked in grapes and vines, so heavy we had to call in help to move it from the store: Goodwill for $60.00 on half-price day. All the paintings and needlework framed on my kitchen wall (one of which is a fruit/cutting board/very-sharp-knife study in DARK tones which could have been done by Freddie Kruger) were less than $5 each. A fabulous meat slicer, a Ron Popeil click-around roaster with all the original packing and paperwork, a Black Angus countertop oven which would hold a turkey, a new microwave in the box, wineglasses and French jam jar glasses and margarita glasses with little cacti for stems and heaven knows how much silverware (plate) and several serving pieces (Sterling) and the lined cases for same. All silverware was mixed into the big clear plastic containers with the mismatched Made in Taiwan stuff and sets of stuff with blue plastic handles, and you have to be careful and move it around with a spoon, never your hands, lest you encounter a sharp blade. And it's all 29 cents for flatware, 79 cents for serving pieces. And one day, there was a little stack of clear bowls, nine of them, all shapes and sizes and patterns, footed and handled and plain. Match glass and thumbprint and hobnailed and Depression, all presumably from the same turned-out china cabinet, and all for 49 cents each. They grace our dining table on special occasions, gleaming in the candlelight, holding butter or lemon or homemade cranberry conserve, or just jam when I'm in a festive breakfast mood. I sent four to my sister, as well as one of the clear devilled egg plates--faux heirlooms, to us at least, though they may have served another family long and well. A set of three well-blackened, well-used, well-loved skillets, given to our son who does all the cooking for his family; I cannot yet part with my own. Three wonderful Magnalite roasters with lids (50.00 for the set), parceled out mongst the starting-out cooks of the family. (I had requested one of my own YEARS ago after seeing my Mom's. She gave me a large one for my birthday; THEN I found out the thing had cost $140.00---I was embarrassed to have been so greedy). I cruise antiques stores, just to see what prices they attach to the things I picked up for a couple of dollars. Just the other day I came home and took all the clear glass "diamond" plates out from under the living room flowerpots, because I had seen a set of six in the store for $90. A quick wash with diluted Lime-Away and they gleam like diamonds, indeed. We moved here from two houses before, leaving most of the furnishings to relatives who remained there, and have furnished this entire two-story house from Goodwill and yard sales. A couple of nice inherited pieces; otherwise ALL our belongings had other lives with other owners we never knew. Lovely to think of the families and circumstances and daily lives of our things, in the times before they came to us. And LOVELY are the prices we paid. Edited because I forgot to mention my collection of Flintstones mugs, which the children tease me about unmercifully---more than 100 of them---49 to 99 each, over the course of several years.

I make all our salad dressings, for home use and for a few friends' dinners and parties in their homes now and then. When the "ranch" mix first came out, we tried it. After paying about 500$ a pound for those powders (dry buttermilk, salt, garlic, and a few shreds of parsley dried like spiders on a windowsill), I bought my own buttermilk powder and went from there. Then, I started making all our "ranch" with the brine from our homemade dill pickles (that added enough tang to eliminate the buttermilk powder and the milk), adding mayo to the proper consistency, along with minced garlic (or powdered, as the spirit moved) and some chopped or dried dillweed (not those horrid dried seeds). Neighbors would come by and pick up a quart. One of my sons' childhood friends who had eaten many a meal at our table would make a detour past us on his way back to college on weekends, just for a quart or two. Haven't touched the little blue packet in years, but we always have "ranch" in the fridge, fresh and tasty and salty and dilly and nice when used sparingly over a salad, or made with less juice to "dip" consistency. And the bottled? Garlic-flavored glue with floaty parsley dust. Doesn't even SMELL like something edible.

My great liking for okra (also okree to the older generation in my neck of the woods) was cause for an irate reaction, a considerable grudge against two of my Mother's friends, and the very first lightbulb moment in my love affair with words when I was about six. I made up little poems and stories and scenes, carefully crafting the rhyme and meter and plots, and had been reading avidly since I was four. That great gift of reading had come to me courtesy of a lovely woman across the "road" (our smalltown synonym for "street" in my childhood). She was Mother to four husky, rowdy boys, all yells and fists and elbows, and I think she valued our quiet days of books and words as much as I, in the quiet of her smoky, cluttered living room with all the books stacked round the walls and the dust motes falling like snowflakes in the sunbeams invading the cracks between the heavy, musty drapes. She had introduced me to places and people unknown, and I will bless and value her all my days. I had developed quite a vocabulary, and though I knew not the meaning of syntax and was just grasping the definition of grammar, I had quite a firm standard for my own sentences. Pronunciation, however, was another matter. Just the reading of a word, without having heard it in its proper inflection, can make for some strange syllables. The two women were standing beside a flowerbed in one's yard, and I was playing on the lawn with the daughter of the house. We were well-raised children, taught not to interrupt our elders, but when one mentioned okra, I burst in with my own enthusiastic endorsement, "I LOVE okree!!" They burst out laughing, and I rose, highly insulted, and did my chubby little best to stalk off in righteous indignation. Before I could reach the road, one said, "We were just mentioning it's not correct to say you "love" any food." That stoked my burners even more, and I fumed my way home, in a grievous grump which lasted probably til suppertime. And though I played with my friend forever after, I never did look at her mother as the nice person she surely was. That they did not correct my pronunciation as well most likely was the reason that I did get over that slur on my grammatical possibilities. And I STILL love it, in a most grammatically incorrect way.

Munches of Cream Cheese, shrimp, roasted red pepper on sesame crackers. A new Oliver Camelot mead. Black-skillet-seared ribeyes a la Doe's Eat Place; Avocado salad with lime mayonnaise; English cucumber and tomatoes five minutes from the garden. Poufy garlic loaf with parmesan and basil. Tawny port. Sci-Fi Friday night lineup.

Alright, so happens to that little round? Two-eyed egg? ← Put it right in the skillet with the toast and sizzle it, also. On occasion, buses were almost missed because of cutting LOTS of little rounds (or hearts or diamonds, etc.,) out of slice after slice of bread just for making the cute little tasty toasts. A pile of these on a plate, quick snowing of powdered sugar, and you have a nice Kiddie favorite, worthy of a Miss Martha "how-to" segment. You also have a limp pile of bedraggled cutout bread rims, which can be cook's treat (and only breakfast) when thrown into a DRY skillet in the same fashion, powdered, and consumed with that last cup of coffee when they're FINALLY out the door to the bus.

From the original post, maybe it could have been a galactoboureko, which meets all the criteria listed. No remembrance of crust also fits--it's easy to forget the paper-thin whisper of phyllo which may have just melted away beneath. That's the creamiest, eggiest sweet custard there is, with no lumps, and though there is usually no sauce, nothing says you can't serve it with one, strawberry or any other kind.

We can only continue to work together to make the world a better place and hope that someday... What a wonderful world it would be. ← Someday, all those eeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww people will wake up and see CNN announcing that scientists have discovered that okra is a combination of Botox, Viagra and SlimFast, and what kind of parties will they throw THEN, HUH? THEN we'll see who's been right all along. Crispy, crispy little wheeeeels..........

Oh, ((((Marlena!!!)))) What a snitty thing to do!!! Knew just where to stick (and donate) the knife. I'm so sorry this happened to you. I know just how I'd feel, and would just MELT if I saw something of mine on the shelves. But they got grabbed up immediately by some lucky soul who is STILL gloating and bragging to HIS/HER friends about the great trove. We may see it appear before this thread is done. I'm gonna go looking for you in a REAL store today, and she can just take THAT!!! So there. Gotta go cause we're leaving for the weekend, but you just don't worry about that ^&*(%. She can just open some more Lean Cuisine and take her broom in for its oil change. Pah. rachel

Sauteed onion and green pepper, eggs scrambled in, then rolled into a warm flour tortilla. Cool sour cream or salsa for dipping. My avowedly redneck BIL asks often, "When you going to make some of those BOO-reedos?" And a morning staple when the kids were in school: the one-eyed sandwich. Cut a little round out of the bread slice, fry gently in a little butter, then break in an egg. Gently flip to cook other side. Pass the honeybear for making a circle round the edges of the bread, careful not to get any on the egg. And hash nests: Chop leftover corned beef, fry gently with onions, peppers, diced potatoes til everything's tender. Make indentations in hash, break an egg in each one...salt and pepper eggs. Bake in low oven til whites are firm and yolks still softly runny. And one more, from a friend's repertoire...messy but delicious: Pour an 8 oz. container of whipping cream into a buttered pie plate. Break in as many eggs as will fit without overflowing the pan. Sprinkle eggs with salt and pepper. Completely cover eggs and cream with thin-sliced Gruyere or Fontina; bake til cream bubbles and eggs are softly cooked. Serve over toasted Engish muffins with asparagus or spinach or broiled tomatoes. Or eat right out of the pan with a spoon.

Finger frittata? Don't think I've ever seen that. Anything rolled into a tortilla is always popular at showers, and they make lovely colors and flavors now. We just did spinach ones with a mock-crab salad, sliced into diagonal pieces, and dried tomato ones with a vegetable stuffing. Really pretty together on the platters. French-toast fingers with powdered sugar are nice, as are beignets, since it's a brunch. And dainty-sized breakfast burritos, in plain flour tortillas, are always a popular brunch selection...any filling with the eggs, especially mushroom pr onion/green pepper. And fruit is a given, with the fountain.

It is not an urban legend that you can fry chicken in a popcorn popper. I've seen it done. And cook noodles and vegetables and soup and stew, all from scratch. Well, not the noodles---they didn't have little wooden drying racks sitting about or anything, but the two girls across the hall could turn out some Lovely dishes. They were both great cooks, but one had the odd habit of making instant coffee with hot water straight out of the tap...Yuk. But she would take a big swig and give out an AHHHHHHH worthy of a truck driver. And then there was the night that my own roommate could not eat the entire can of tuna and squished the contents down into the bathroom sink drain with a spoon. Best never spoken of again.

Oh, please let me think so. It sounds nice.

I have only her Party Food one---I take a bagful of pretty picture-laden cookbooks when we go away for weekends, for restful reading/viewing by the lake. And don't anyone laugh or throw fruit---I just picked up two dozen issues of Taste of Home--a favorite of my late Mom, and they're going with me tomorrow. I intend to peruse and absorb every single can of cream of mushroom and container of Kool Whip, every birthday cake made entirely of DingDongs and pink Hostess Snowball caterpillars. And I might return and decorate the kitchen entirely in Apples. So there.

Oh, gosh, this is hysterical!!!! I've been heehawing in my best yokel fashion and wiping my eyes. My Mammaw played a mean mandolin, but she always SMELLED good. Where DID you get that one?

Just GORGEOUS!!! Can't wait for more, though I think you must live with a camera in one hand and flowers in the other. Wish I lived next-door...I'd help take care of that sweet baby, plus I'd let you store all those beautiful flowers at my place, just to give you more room to work, of course.

I can't believe I let you bait me into that. I'm a MOM, for heaven's sake. I should know better.

Chris, you naughty boy. You know that thing they used to tell little girls about eating their breadcrusts to make their hair curly. Well, you should hear what they tell little Southern boys about finishing their okra.

Die-hard Goodwiller here: In the Kitchen with Rosie; the Time/Life ones you mentioned; anything to do with microwaves--I think the entire nation bought a Sharp in the 80's; lots of Emeril, one autographed. Many cake decorating books, mostly the cut-the-cake-into-a-bunny/butterfly ones. The little spiral bound church/organization ones are frequently there, as well as the HUGE CIA tomes. I've never seen a Martha Stewart, Lee Bailey or Ina Garten. I did, however, pick up a 40's Larousse and an 1800's Mrs. Beeton's Cookery book, as well as hundreds of others. And I just saw a Patricia Cornwell one, Scarpetta's Recipes or some such...it just came out last year, I think. Quick turnover. And is Moosewood the big paperback with the broccoli on the cover? It's everywhere.

Robyn, I DO like animals. I like birds. I think they are beautiful and delightful and a wonderful part of the world. I have a wonderful one which is seven years old, a sweet and happy companion which I pamper and care for and converse with all day long. I also like to walk outside my house and not be pooped upon. I'm not speaking one random poopshot, but THOUSANDS. I'm talking slick, yukky crusts and slicks and slimes of it, on the patio and furniture and all over the plants and the cars and the sidewalk and anybody unwary enough to walk out the back door. It happens EVERY DAY. It goes on ALL NIGHT, raining down and covering everything within a 75 foot area. It is smelly, it is disgusting, it is unhealthful, and I have to clean it EVERY morning, if it is not to become a permanent concrete on everything we have out there. When it rains, the entire area emits a nauseating fishy-poop smell, much like the penguin island at the zoo. You cannot escape the smell and the rain of it and the mess of it and the completely frustrating FACT of it. It happens every year, for at least two months of the summer. We cannot enjoy the cool of an evening outside. We cannot invite guests for cookouts or al fresco dining or cocktails in the garden. This has become a lark latrine, a tanager toilet, a permanent starling s***zone, and I will not live this way. The birds do not know better. But we have to LIVE better, and that must take precedence. Yes, they do bother me...we have taken the only remedy which will give us any surcease from a constant, unbearable stench and mess and grime which takes away from our enjoyment of Summer outdoors. I WILL NOT give up and let the birds do their DO on all the things I have worked in the heat to plant, and arrange and keep in good order. No, they haven't invaded my house, but they do invade my life, my property, my peace of mind. EVERY DAY. By the thousands. Please come for cocktails tomorrow. We're gathering on the patio at seven. Hope you like dirty martinis.

Very UN-funny experience re: crying children in restaurant. A couple of weeks ago we stopped into Cracker Barrel for breakfast, almost noon on Saturday. The couple at the next table had two little girls, maybe 5 and 7. I heard a rather loud comment from the dad, then looked up to see the older one weeping . They were sitting in two rows, rather than one on each side of the table, and she was sitting beside the man, crying into her napkin. This went on for several minutes, with him jabbing at her with a mean, "Don't you CRY!!" and she finally got her emotions under control. We were involved in our own conversation, and then I heard him berating the younger one, who began to weep also. He repeated the "You'd better NOT cry. You're embarrassing me." During all this time, even at our close proximity, I had not heard ONE WORD from any of the three females at the table. Daddy Dearest had loudly proclaimed, had held forth, had put out countless opinions and proclamations. Not one word from his family, just silent weeping after one remark or another. THEN, he turned to the older child again, snapping at her, and she again teared up and scrinched up her little face. By this time, everyone around us was quiet as mice, listening to this preposterone-laden little despot (well, NOT little---he ran 230 or so, and walked like a weight lifter) as he claimed his place in humanity by being the owner/dictator of his own private citizenry. I could not stand it a moment longer. I spoke to my husband, but in a very loud voice in the silence, "I wonder if he wants to come over here and try to make ME cry!!" From the surrounding tables, I heard several murmurs, with one quiet "Yesss!" somewhere in the background. In a moment, he got up and beckoned to the older little girl, the one sitting beside him. She obediently rose. They turned their backs to us and started for the door. He laid one arm possessively around her shoulders, then reached around his own back, waving his other hand in her direction until she reached up and took it. He then pulled her arm around HIS waist, and so they walked out like sweethearts entwined. The tiny wife and the other little girl remained at the table for a few minutes; the woman had ordered a salad, and when the man was leaving, she kept her eyes firmly on him, meanwhile rapidly eating the child's bowl of macaroni and cheese. She choked it down, then they rose and followed the others out. It was a disturbing encounter, though our only interaction, as it were, was my one comment to my husband. And though we were a little time in finishing our meal, they were still in the parking lot when we emerged from the restaurant. They stood outside their car as we walked past, and I made sure he saw me write down his license plate number.

I'm homesick for Edinburgh, and I've been only once, and that for just two days. I love the wander of it, the streets and the uphills and the voices of the passersby. Love the pictures, the info, the atmosphere you're evoking. The minuscule haricots vert juxtaposed to all that pink seafood is a lovely tableau, and if I could have crammed all my carry-bags full and made it home with those gorgeous beans which were everywhere, I'd have jettisoned woolens right and left. Without injecting too much "Yank spin" into this---may we hope that there is a huge cold draft blowing from somewhere across all that lovely meat in that very sunny window? Or does the quick morning crowd, as mentioned above, grab up every scrap and make away with it before the warmth seeps in? Lovely. Just lovely. More, please.