MelissaH

Any suggestions for somewhere to grab an inexpensive bite of lunch on the way from Centraal Station to the Heineken factory, at the end of May? I'm looking for somewhere that would appeal to university students on a tight budget towards the end of a 10-day trip. Most of the group has adventurous tastebuds, although sandwiches are always good. I'm disappointed that poffertjes won't be in season any more by then! MelissaH

Yay! Klary's blogging! Happy birthday, and I can't wait to read more! MelissaH

Full details forthcoming shortly, after I go out to get fertilizer for the lawn. But over last weekend, we visited our friends in Connecticut, and paid another visit to the IKEA store in New Haven. We've pretty much finalized our cabinet order, cleared up a few details, AND even visited a flooring store to lay eyes on the Marmoleum click floors. (We still like it.) We're currently finalizing sinks. We've barely even started to think about paint colors. And the electrician was in to give us some good news about our electrical system: we won't need to replace our whole breaker box! MelissaH

I'll let you know when we're done with ours by the end of the summer. The pieces are coming together nicely, though, and we've pretty much finalized our cabinet order from IKEA. Island? No room for one in a kitchen that's 8 by 18 feet. But ours (like Bruce's) is open to the dining area, and I'm *so* looking forward to being able to cook with my husband! MelissaH

Chad, Anything special about keeping a cleaver sharp? Should it be treated differently from a normal Western knife in that respect? MelissaH

We've used my husband's "turkey fryer" burner (never used for turkeys, but many times used to make beer!) on many occasions for wokking. It works beautifully, and always garners attention from the neighbors because it gets used out front on the driveway. We've gotten so used to the heat that thing cranks out, we didn't even consider anything special for the kitchen reno we'll do over the summer. Anything for indoor use available to us pales in comparison. MelissaH

Is there anything near JFK that's readily accessible if you don't have a car of your own? In late May, 4 or 5 of us will be flying JetBlue in from Syracuse in preparation for catching an international flight that evening. We don't want to cut it at all close timewise, so we'll probably have at least 6 hours between flights. We're open to suggestions for things to do, both at the airport itself and nearby. Oh, we'll be hauling our luggage with us, since it will all be carry-on. MelissaH

Fried ham, fried ham Cheese and bologna! After the macaroni We'll have onions, Pickles, and peppers, And then we'll have some more Fried ham fried ham fried ham! Save some second verse, _____ talk, much much worse! MelissaH

I'll be very interested to see how the stuffers from Northern and Grizzly hold up. However, I'm holding off on acquiring any major new kitchen tools until after we finish our kitchen remodel. Those of you who have had stuffers for a while now: how have they held up? How are they for ease of use and ease of storage? Are there any maintenance issues I'd need to be aware of? MelissaH

We view a floor the same way we view cabinets: something we don't want to have to replace any time in the near future. Durable is good. As far as a sink: when we go looking, I'll be bringing my largest roasting pan and a half-sheet pan along, to be sure they can fit inside for easy cleanup! MelissaH

And we had people commenting that they missed NOT having grits! Azio wasn't horrendous, but the service left a lot to be desired. It looked like they had a number of parties other than ours, judging by the large tables in curtained-off areas. The basketball game that night probably didn't help much. But I asked for a Coke to drink, and it never came. Furthermore, at about 10:00, the staff came by and loudly started to dismantle the curtains around us. And then they pretty much threw the check in the face of the person who was paying. It was like they couldn't wait to throw us out...although do people really dine out after 10 PM in downtown? None of us was happy about that! I think lamb would probably have worked better in the sandwich. It needed something a little more gutsy than pig. It wasn't bad, but the pork might as well have not been there, for all I could taste it. And no, I didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market. I wound up with only a small opening in my schedule on Tuesday morning after my focus group, and with a car I might have been able to squeeze it in. Oh well, gives me something to look forward to next time. MelissaH

We think we've found our floor. We were originally thinking of the Armstrong brand commercial vinyl tile like this (or in another color, or putting a couple of colors together to make a pattern). I liked the durability, the ease of installation, and the ease of care. I didn't care so much for the feathery pattern within each tile, and the fact that it looks like the floors in many institutional-type buildings including the one I work in. And then we watched This Old House, and saw the episode on which they were putting in the kitchen floor in the house they're renovating in Washington DC. It was a click-together linoleum floor. And as my husband and I watched them set the floor in place on TV and listened to them talk about it, we just looked at each other, thinking the same thing: "That's our floor!" We liked the overall look, and when they showed us the side view we liked that it looked robust, and we liked their blue color although it probably won't work in our kitchen which will have yellow and red accents. We also liked that the linoleum is considered a much "greener" material than vinyl. So we watched the credits, and saw a line for Marmoleum floor. There are places around here that sell it, and we'll be going to look in person. But this looks like a prime candidate. In other news, we know about what we'll be looking for in lighting, and we know what we'll need to do for the utilities. My husband has a preliminary calendar of events, and if everything goes as planned, we'd be done by the end of July. Which is good, because we need to be done by the end of August when classes start! MelissaH

Monday was a good eating day in Atlanta. I had brought along a Cara Cara navel orange, and that served me well for breakfast. I was up fairly early, so I could meet a friend at the aquarium doors at 8:30. We waited on line for half an hour until the doors opened, and spent a couple of hours looking at beautiful things that could potentially be food. If you go, don't miss the whale slide. And if you go down first, you can take photos of your friends as they come down. The slide even has baleen in the mouth, just like a real whale! (Teeth are food-related, right?) My next food-related stop was back at the hotel to grab my friend Sam. We hopped Metra to Decatur, and lunched at Watershed. We had no trouble finding the restaurant, arriving there at a little after 1. We shared a platter of artisanal cheeses, which came with a small pile of pecans drizzled with honey from North Georgia, and toasted thin slices of bread. I can't remember what these are anymore, but I do remember that the soft white one was a goat cheese coated with a vegetable ash, because that was my favorite of the three. One of the others reminded me of a mild swiss-type cheese, but the flavor was pretty well lost on me. The other was something like a cheddar, but it didn't light up my taste buds quite the way the goat cheese did. Next was the main courses. I got the roast pork sandwich with fig conserve, fresh cheese, and dijon mustard. Sam got the white truffle chicken salad sandwich, which he declined to share. We each got a side of the new potato salad with bacon and sour cream dressing. From the moans that Sam emitted, I deduced that he enjoyed his sandwich. My sandwich was also quite good, but the pork didn't seem to have much flavor to me, and I didn't taste much of the cheese either. What I did taste, though, was the bread, the sweet fig conserve, and the potent pungent mustard. And that combination was tremendously enjoyable. I wonder if the sandwich would work any better with thinly sliced smoked turkey breast in place of the roast pork, or possibly even a smoked pork in some form. (Bacon, anyone?) I think I'd probably leave any cheese out, because the butter on the bread did the trick to mellow the mustard just a touch. Might have to experiment with this one, if I can ever find figs or fig conserve. The potato salad was a winner. I'll need to look for that recipe; a reasonable place to start would be in The Gift of Southern Cooking. Or if anyone else has a recipe, please share! For dessert, Sam had to do the carrot cake. I had to do the apple cake. I only ate about half the whipped cream. Sacrilege, I know, but I didn't feel like it needed any additional gilding beyond the caramel sauce. And thus ended the notable eating on the Atlanta portion of the trip. I discovered that a MARTA Breeze card can apparently nuke a hotel key card's magnetic strip. I found that the usual spots for good grazing were generally good spots for good grazing in Atlanta. And I discovered that the Perimeter REI store is reasonably easy to get to by MARTA also. Never did get to IKEA, since the choice was between that and REI, and REI was more urgent (but not at all food-related). We've decided to do IKEA over the Easter weekend, which is a long weekend for us. Thanks again for all your help, everyone. You made my wanderings through Atlanta much easier and less stressful than they might have been otherwise. I'd actually look forward to returning, should the need arise! MelissaH

I'm back. And most of the food I ate was provided by the Marriott Marquis, where the bulk of my activities took place. Friday night's dinner was eaten on the airplane, courtesy of Wegman's deli. Much better than the crackers offered by the flight attendants. Saturday morning started with EGGS and BACON! Mounds and mounds of bacon, cooked crisp and ungreasy and salty and delicious. Those of us who eat pig ate an absolutely obscene amount of bacon. The eggs were scrambled, and between them and the bacon we got the protein that we'd been asking for the last few meetings. No grits, though, or sausage gravy, or biscuits: we were a little disappointed. The pineapple slices were also killer. And they had chocolate milk in boxes and hot chocolate, which made my day. Saturday lunch was stuff at the hotel again: roasted veggies with vinaigrette, green salad, bread and cheese and meat and condiments to build your own sandwich, some kind of soup that I wasn't hungry for, and brownies that looked more chocolaty than they tasted. The roasted veggies were the lunch highlight for me. Saturday dinner at Azio wadn't bad. It was a quick walk from the hotel, which is always a plus after some of the death marches we've been led to dinner on. The food was OK, nothing special. Choice of house or caesar salad, five choices of entree (3 pastas, veal milanaise, and chicken something-or-other), and dessert. Half my table, including me, had the caesar salad and the ravioli florentine. The salad was nicely green and the dressing inoffensive. The ravioli, which was stuffed with walnuts, spinach, and romano, was fine. The sauce on the ravioli (mushrooms, asparagus, and sun-dried tomatoes in butter) was also fine. But a few of us agreed that the sauce didn't really seem to go well with the pasta. And dessert wasn't bad either: it was trays of bite-sized pieces of cheesecake, brownie, lemon meringue pie, and a few other things, with blackberries and strawberry halves. But I got the distinct feeling that the dessert bites were the sort of thing that could have easily come from a warehouse club and been plated on the big silver tray to look fancy. People said the sushi place nearby was good, but I didn't go there myself. Sunday breakfast was a repeat of Saturday. Sunday lunch was unremarkable (Champions, the sports bar in the hotel) and Sunday dinner was grazed from various receptions. The highlight of Monday was a trip to Decatur for lunch at Watershed. But that will need to wait for another post, as I have a student waiting for my help right now. MelissaH

I am so ready to get on an airplane. Now. MelissaH

Well, if it's not taboo, how about something featuring one or another of Cantillon beer? Preferably in the proper glass? MelissaH

OK, so there's hope for the group dinner. I know at least that it won't be any worse than what we did for the NYC meeting: Mars 2112, which has since been noticed by Frank Bruni in his Diner's Journal blog. On another and final note: can I get to Dekalb Farmer's Market by public transit? Their Web site's been down since before this thread started, and the MARTA Web site is next to useless for figuring out how to get somewhere, if you don't already know where you need to go. Thanks, and I'll be there tomorrow night! MelissaH

Lori, I dined solo there one evening in August. I told my waiter what I wanted to spend, and he brought me a beautiful assortment of dishes, one at a time, that made a phenomenal dinner. I'm now hooked on patatas bravas, and look forward to making some myself once we remodel our kitchen and get a hood that permits frying. And I'm not a coffee drinker, but their coffee set off the flan for dessert beautifully. However, it was a Friday evening and the restaurant was crowded, so I didn't read the book I'd brought, and I didn't linger. I don't know what it would be like at lunch. MelissaH

Off topic, but out of curiousity, is there a discrepancy between your findings and the caloric information given on the nutritional labels? ← Huge discrepancy. Like the experimental values we get are at most 10% of what the label says. Some of my students found that burning a Cheeto didn't raise the water temperature at all! This means you can eat the whole bag without guilt, right? It's more a case of poor experimental design: incomplete combustion, heat loss, and lots of things other than the water that need to be heated. In this case, it's not a technique issue either: when I tried it out myself last week, my results were comparable to what my students are seeing this week. And the lab manager tells me that the results for nuts were equally bad in previous years. I'm particularly troubled by the burning Cheetos not raising the water temperature at all. I don't know if this has something to do with the Cheetos, or if it's related to the fact that they're done in the hood. (It would be ideal for the students to do everything in the hood, but it's not practical with the setup available to us.) In my lab section today, we'll be testing this out: the students will burn only Fritos, and they'll compare the results in the hood with the results from on the bench. That way, I'll at least know if Cheetos only have no calories if you eat them while you sit in a fume hood. Between the lack of agreement between the experimental and label values and the calculations that are confusing to the students (too many numbers, apparently!), we're going to be looking at a more "traditional" experiment for future semesters. It's always nice when your experimental results match the theoretical values in a teaching lab. MelissaH

So, I finally got my meeting agenda book, which tells me where they're taking us all for the group dinner. What can you tell me about a restaurant called Azio? I found their Web site. I'm guessing we'll be getting something like their PRIX FIXE SAMPLE MENU 1 { INSALATE / salads } Insalata della Casa Insalata Cesare { SECONDI / entrees } Fettuccine Primavera Chicken Marsala Ravioli Florentine Penne Telefono Veal Piccata { DOLCE / dessert } Chef's Choice Dessert Platters. Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after? MelissaH

The lab my chemistry students are doing this week involves burning food items underneath a beaker of water, and seeing how much the temperature of the water rises. The point of this lab is to then calculate how many Calories of energy were released per gram of the food item in question, and compare that value to the value given on the nutritional info label. The lab itself doesn't seem to be working worth a darn, but to get this back on topic: The original lab from the manual called for using different varieties of nuts. Our lab manager and I discussed it, and together we decided that due to the potential allergy issues of nuts, we should use a different food item. (Not to mention, the stench of burning nuts is particularly nasty....) We're limited to things that burn well (as in burst into flames) and that can easily be speared on the end of a pin that's stuck in a hunk of playdough which is sitting on the bottom of another upside down beaker, to hold it underneath the beaker of water whose temperature is being measured. So we settled on good 'n' greasy snack foods: Fritos and Cheetos. When a Frito gets torched with the flame from a bunsen burner, it ignites fairly readily, and doesn't smell horrible. It gives off some smoke, but not enough for the smoke detectors to be a concern. But the Cheetos: oh my heavens. They give off black oily smoke, and they REEK! (We do these in the hoods, both to contain the stink and to make sure we don't set off the smoke alarms and evacuate the building.) But worse, as the Cheetos burn, they oooooooze a nasty orange oil, which then drips down the side of the playdough and the beaker holding the playdough. And this oil is not easy to wash off! I used to have a problem with Cheetos. After this week, I'm never eating one again! For next year, we're finding a different calorimetry lab to do. Probably one that doesn't involve food at all. MelissaH

I'll second Andie on her recommendation of the B&D waffle iron. Mine was a birthday present from my parents over 15 years ago, and it's still working perfectly. My favorite waffle recipe? I use the ingredients from Marion Cunningham's yeast waffle recipe minus the baking soda and about half the yeast, but I mix using the method from Cook's Illustrated's yeast waffle recipe. Basically, I mix up the batter as recommended, but I add the eggs right from the start and put the batter in the fridge to rise overnight. In the morning I preheat the waffle iron, stir the batter up, and use about 3/4 cup of batter per waffle. In the rare event that I have extras, I let them cool completely on a rack, toss them in a ziplock bag in the freezer, and toast them up another morning. MelissaH

My husband refuses to eat berries he didn't pick himself, at least in this country. When we were in Europe a couple of summers ago, and saw some small, very red strawberries, he went gaga over them and demolished a whole basket in short order. He let me have one, and I understood why: FLAVOR! When we got home, we went to one of the local pick-your-own farms, and stocked the freezer. They're miles better than any supermarket berry I've ever had. MelissaH

Yes it is. CLICK [Groovy Flash opening too!] A. ← Do you trust this? How much does it add to the cost of a laminate-plus-dropin sink arrangement? Melissa

Thanks for the vote of confidence. It's always nice to know of people who have done what you're going to do, and it's worked well for many years. And yes, budget is definitely an issue so we'll be checking out the Kindred sinks. (Their Web site isn't as easy as Blanco's to navigate and find the sink we're looking for, though.) If we're going to be replacing our countertops in a few years, we'll also be replacing our sink then. So we need something nice, and big, to get us through but we don't want to spend a fortune on something that we know isn't going to be a permanent fixture. (And if we can get it in a farmhouse sink, so much the better because that would make my husband very very happy!) But thanks even more for the IKEA Fan Web site. There's an incredible wealth of information on this site, and if I vanish from eG for a few days, you'll know where to look for me! MelissaH