JanMcBaker

Oh heavens-- I've known about the various piggy parts in scrapple for years-- it's the wheat that's suddenly shown up in the ingredient lists of various brands that's annoying! Edited to add that I didn't mean my reply to sound like I was annoyed with your post-- just about the wheat! You're right about the ingredients though. When I was lots younger I finally read the list once while eating scrapple, after years of already eating it. My first thought was to stop eating scrapple. Two seconds later I'm thinking why, when I've already been eating it for years? And so of course I'm still eating scrapple!

And another member chimes in---- Yep! That was definitely some good meats! I lost track of the variety of beef cuts. Two friends that I invited, Betty and Ingrid, are not eGullet members but are certainly eaters. They assured me that they had a good time, enjoyed the food, and have recovered from the meat overload! Let me see what I can recall from the meat haze----- nice little buffet along the side of the room. Didn't want to fill up on too much from that, but I did have some chicken hearts-- they looked to be sauteed-- the skewered hearts were more salty. It must be fun skewering those itty bitty hearts on that big skewer! I prefered the sauteed ones. Also had a bit of this red bean dish and I couldn't tell what else was in it, but it was good. Had a chunk of what looked to be pork, and tasted like it too. Nice and tender and porky. Oh, and some pickled beets. I missed the egg and sauce that Ingrid had. It was whole hardboiled eggs in a sauce that looked mayonnaise-y and Ingrid said it tasted lemony. I guess kind of a.....constructed egg salad? The meats were all good, but some stood out more than others. One beef bit was a touch too salty for me. One I liked had a nice rind of fat--- some was nicely browned and crispy-- very tasty! I imagined those carcinogenic grilled bits of fat coursing through my veins...... I also like the beef short rib. I very much enjoy eating meat from the bone. It was a most enjoyable meal, with good company! I would certainly enjoy a return visit.

Since scapple's such a regional product I thought this topic should be in the PA board. If it's felt that it should be under a different area, please feel free to move it. Now, back to our show....... I suddenly noticed recently that Habberset's scrapple now has wheat flour as one of their ingredients. I was at the local Acme this morning and thought to check the other brands-- about 4-5 altogether. Every single d*** one of them has wheat! When the heck did that happen??!! Did they always have wheat and the new allergy information regulations forced them to acknolwedge it in their ingredients? Or is wheat a cheaper ingredient than corn meal or buckwheat flour? It's especially a PITA to my sister, who has a problem with wheat! Does anyone know what's going on with wheat in scrapple? And does anyone know of scrapple that doesn't have wheat?

I help at assorted cooking classes held at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. A 2-part class just concluded on Monday-- 'Learn Italian while you cook Italian.' The chef/instructor was talking about Italian restaurants and mentioned OG. She said if you have visitors from Italy, don't take them to Olive Garden-- they'd be horrified by the portion sizes, that they'd be repulsed by the huge quantities served. She didn't even get past that to anything about how the food tastes!

Sorry Herb, but there's also no "60th and Torresdale." Chink's is at 6030 Torresdale Ave., in the Northeast. 60th St. would be West Philadelphia.

Oh my--- stuff I can't have around the house 'just in case' cause then I have to get rid of it as soon as possible cause I can't have the temptation around. Make sense of that one, if you will! Mine include pints of ice cream, especially H-D and B&J's. I start out innocently enough-- just going to eat a bit of it, of course. Then I have to even out the top, then it starts getting soft around the sides and that tastes so good of course. Next thing I know I've gone through the whole pint with noooo problem. Another 'can't have around the house' is Grandma Utz's lard fried potato chips. Yum! Love those crunchy chips! If I have to have them I'll just get 1-2 of the 25 cent snack bags. Seeing mzducky's entry about rottisserie chicken reminded me of the Fred's Chicken that was here in Philadelphia. Rottisserie chicken was about the only thing he sold and boy was that good! I think they were about 2 to 2 1/2 lb birds. If I didn't put half the thing away to start with, I'd have no problem eating the whole thing in one sitting...... oh my...... now do I really want to admit all this in public?

That cinnamon and brown sugar sounds interesting. I usually go with butter melted with honey in it. It's a really nice flavor with the salt added, and the honey keeps the popcorn from getting that cold greasy butter feel and flavor.

OMG!!!! How could I forget THAT one?!! That is, word for absolutely word, exactly what I do! And, well, in this instance it's really more of a chocolate thing rather than a frugal thing......heh...... Except I've switched to Trader Joe's Midnight Moo chocolate syrup. Tastes more chocolatey to me than Hershey's does.

Priorities Mottmott, priorities! We know what we want, or need, to spend a pretty penny on, but we also want to get our money's worth too, whether it's a $2 jar of sauce, or a $200 pan.

Bread! Brilliant!! And it sounds soooo obvious now, of course! Seems like spearing a hunk on a fork should work well getting around those dang annoying ridges that are in some jars. As for recycling, there's not much around here for plastics recycling. Got a couple neat looking jars so far to save for next Christmas to put spiced pecans in for gifts.

Oh lordy-- I do that too with the sugar bag! It drives me nuts hearing those little sugar crystals moving aroound between the two layers and in the seams so of course I have to rip open the bag completely to get everything out! Ditto for the great idea about red wine for the sauces. Have to think beyond using water for some containers. Oh, and as for hand soap, I have one of those bottles that dispense foam rather than liquid soap. When it's empty I'm going make my own foamy hand soap. I think you can go with 1 part soap to 3 parts water and get foam. Really stretches the liquid soap.

This morning I was cleaning my cereal bowl in the kitchen area at work and I happened to glance into the trash can before I tossed in a paper towel. There was a peanut butter jar in there and I could see there was still a good bit of PB on the sides! Looked to me like there was enough to make a decent sandwich with what was left. I got to thinking how I just can't toss a jar with that much product still in it! And then I got to thinking about some of those newer, pain in the butt jars with all the ridges that make it virtually impossible to scrap out easily. So-- give me some validation here, please! Is anyone else, well, somewhat fanatical I guess, about scraping out as much as possible from a jar, and do you get PO'ed trying to scrape out those ridgy ones?

mmmm.....soup....... There's a little restaurant up on Bustleton Ave called Green Papaya. It's in a little strip mall about a block before Rhawn St., going north on Bustleton. It's owned by a Vietnamese family and the wife does all the cooking. Every day they offer two soups at dinner. One is a daily standard-- a fabulous cream of mushroom soup. It's just shy of a really smooth puree-- there's still a hint of texture from the mushrooms. Another one that I really like is their mushroom barley soup. There's a nice balance of mushroom and barley, and the thyme in it complements the main ingredients quite nicely. Yum-- great on a cold day.....or even on a warm day, for that matter!

Are you thinking of making them the same size as what you can buy? If so, I don't know what to suggest for something that small. Are you going to make them larger, and do you want the lettering like they have on the small candies, where it looks like it's soaked into the candy rather than on top like icing? Maybe you can cut words or letters out of potato and use food coloring to stamp words on your hearts. Trying to think of some method that's safely edible......

Now we're talking. Think of the funds devoted to suppressing said large scale study results too! ← Amen! Your comment triggered the edit to my original post.

I'd love to see a large scale study that compares a group eating processed foods to one eating non- or minimally processed foods. I'd be very curious to see what the rates of cancer and heart disease would be in the two groups after that! Edited by me to add-- But would the processors of highly processed foods allow such a study to take place?

Food isn't this movie's main focus, but food and food places (restaurants, kitchens) seem to be a major factor in Moonstruck. Think of it-- the different scenes in the restaurant with Loretta and Rose, in Ronnie's kitchen when Loretta cooks a steak for him (and we know how THAT ended up!!), and the entire final segment in that WONDERFUL huge kitchen with the whole family there! That to me really demonstrates the heart of the family. I just looove that movie....

Wow! I suddenly remembered one I used to do when I was a kid. For ages I would pronounce 'Neapolitan' as 'Nepalition.' I was usually pretty good at pronouncing words but for some reason I always got stuck on saying that incorrectly.

Years and years ago I worked for Ma Bell in directory assistance. One day someone called and asked for the number for 'Banana Hana'. I thought for a few seconds, then it came to me and I asked them "Do you mean 'Benihana'?" Sure enough, that's what they meant. Another call wasn't food related but still memorable, obviously. Someone asked for the number for the 'Public Lecher Building', meaning the Public Ledger Building here in Philadelphia......

weeee-haaaa..... I'll have what she's having!

Okay, Bourdain with: Laura Bush Sherri Lewis' Lambchop Any of the Welch's Grape Juice commercial kids SB (Great Idea!) ← All right, did you mean Bourdain cooking with them as another cook or as an ingredient?

Oh good lord--- I guess the poor thing forgot his ba-ba?

Oh my heavens, isn't that lovely!! I especially like that you can see the macaroni. I do love cheesy mac and cheese, but some I've had were basically some macaroni encased in a block of cheese---waaaay too much cheese! There does have to be a balance of the two, and that dish looks nicely balanced. Yum! I think I have to make some mac and cheese this weekend!

They're lovely, but I can't stand making teensy individual items that just seem to take forever to do. My thoughts run toward baking large items that can then be easily cut into individual servings-- brownies, lemon bars, cakes in sheet form. Especially since you don't really have a lot of time. There's a fabulous rich brownie recipe in Nick Malgieri's chocolate cookbook-- 'Supernatural Brownies'. Rich enough to cut in small pieces and still have a big time chocolate punch. And would truffles be too picky to do? Yep, they're small individual things but it's so easy to put such basic ingredients like cream, chocolate and flavoring together and you can get such impressive results! Hope this helps, and hope you feel better!

Great! Wonderful to hear that you're going to be on SOMEWHERE! I loved your live show, and I thought you had great guests... I really loved seeing Jessica Harris, and yes! loved being entertained AND educated! I just don't understand that--prohibition-- I'm blanking out on what I think must be a more suitable word here. And wasn't it Food TV that had 'My Country My Kitchen'? I loved that show-- it was wonderful seeing food and cooking from around the world. Anyway, can't wait till you appear again! Good luck Sara!