MelissaH

Anna, save some for me!

The newest book by Joanne Chang, Baking with Less Sugar, has a bunch of recipes for baked goods where dates are used as the only source of sweetener. I haven't tried any of those recipes yet, but the others from the book that I've tried (blueberry bran muffins, coconut chiffon cake, honey cashew morning buns) have been winners. She takes the dates and cooks them in a bit of water with baking soda so they break down, and uses the resulting syrupy mixture as the sweetening agent in the baked good.

I remember Roman Meal, which is what my mom bought for sandwich bread. I always wanted white bread, but my mom insisted on something that at least looked brown.

Did anyone else's school have the Lunch Count ritual at the beginning of the day, just after the teacher took attendance? The teacher would ask those who were going to buy lunch to stand up. Then those students would sit down, and the teacher would ask those who were just going to buy milk to stand. At some point the ritual was amended to add a request for those who wanted skim milk (with lunch, or just as milk) to raise their hands. Ostensibly, this was so the cafeteria (which still actually cooked) would know how much food to prepare each day. I know I usually brought my lunch (and did NOT get milk to go with it, ick!) but I can't remember much about what I brought. The year I went to fifth grade, I switched into a private school where everyone's lunch was included, and those of us who were old enough to be trustworthy were actually served on trays with real breakable dishes and glasses and the like. The year I went into ninth grade, the school proudly announced that tuition was not going up this year, but that lunch was no longer included. That was when I basically quit eating lunch.

BaTampte is one brand I can find as well. If the jar isn't too old, they're half sour. If they've sat around in the grocery case, they're more than half sour. Even in a refrigerator, they continue to age. You really can't keep them at the half-sour stage without either adding some kind of chemical preservative to end microbial action or cooking them to kill off the organisms that do the pickling. I suppose freezing could also do the trick, but you wouldn't have that nice snap once the pickles are frozen.

Trouble is, they don't stay half sour. Because the half sour pickles I know are a fresh pickle, they get picklier as time passes. The only way to get half sours, which I've also heard called "new pickles," is to get to them before they become full sours.

I didn't tell you about the first time I got roasted chiles, when I didn't know that you pretty much had to freeze them on a cookie sheet before you bagged them rather than just toss the whole container in the freezer. And I also didn't know that you really should wear gloves when you handle them, especially if you're going to manipulate contact lenses (even if you wash your hands first!).

A friend's small children decided one day that anything with visible onions was no longer edible. So all of a sudden, meatloaf and other food had "water chestnuts" instead, although the recipe and preparation had not changed one bit! (Fortunately, the phase didn't last long.)

I might have to look for those cookies next time I'm around a TJ's. I love lime! Do these have any tartness to them, or are they just sweet sweet sweet?

Looking at your box of chiles is making me miss my Colorado days big-time. This is the time of year when the chile roasters would come to the farmer's market, with their giant drum roaster that you could smell from blocks away. If they didn't have the kind you wanted already roasted, they'd tell you to come back in half an hour and they'd have them ready. I'd take the big plastic bag of warm roasted chiles and carefully put it into another plastic bag, and then load it into my backpack, where it would nestle into my lumbar region for the short bike ride home. There's nothing like that here, alas.

What about a soak in vinegar?

I've never seen meatball grill baskets like those, but I think I might need to look for some!

November 2004 for me. That was a little more than a year after we'd moved to New York. We're still happily here.

Hard work, yes; I think for some people the bigger deal is that it's work at lousy hours when you'd rather be home with your family, and in many cases with minimal benefits.

I, too, love those spiderwebs with the zigzags. You've now got me thinking of ways to incorporate spiderweb-like patterns into a future knitted sweater! The one year we grew eggplants, I was surprised that the flowers were such a pretty purple. And I was even more amazed to see that the eggplants were purple right from the beginning; it's not like tomatoes where they start out little and green, get bigger and green, and only then change colors.

Andie, do you peel the pumpkins and other squashes these days?

Wow. So many tomatoes, so little time, so few stomachs!

Oh, yay! I love seeing other people's gardens because I'm absolutely hopeless when it comes to growing plants. (Proof of this: earlier this year I killed a mint plant!) I'm glad there are other people around who do not have this problem, and I look forward to seeing the week in your kitchen, your garden, and wherever else you bring us along!

For that price, you can buy a lot of these.

They definitely are wonderful in vegetable soup!

I recall getting tzatziki or gyro flavo(u)red chips in Canada last September, I think. Am I misremembering?

A few years ago, a friend gifted us with a jar of another friend's blueberry habanero bbq sauce. It was stupendous, especially on meat that had a bit of fat (i.e., not chicken breasts). However, if you're not in NE Ohio, it's probably unobtainable, and it was long ago enough that I can't remember a whole lot about the flavors and what else might have gone into it.

Thank you so much for the travelogue! It was fun to read, with all the right details.

This year, I got sick of messing around with kitchen towels/cheesecloth/sieves/other kludges and gave in and bought a "real" jelly strainer bag and wire stand. I'm glad I did because it seems to work better for me than anything else I've tried in the past. I've also discovered the real key, for me anyway, is to get it started dripping and then go away so I don't get impatient.

Buying pizza dough from TJ's isn't really in the realm of possibility for me, as I live too far away. But one of my local pizzerias is happy to sell me a dough ball. Have you asked locally?