ratgirlny

I notice someone mentioned Mt Kisco smoke house. That place brings back such memories for me. They used to do all their smoking in a facility right under the big hill in Mt Kisco. I can't remember the name of the hill, but it is the big one. We lived on top of the hill looking right down on the smokehouse. The wonderful smell used to waft up all the time. Once, our cat disappeared for a week, and I went to all the businesses down at the bottom of the hill to search for my cat. When I got to the smokehouse, I discovered that they had a whole contingent of local cats that they were feeding scraps to! My cat eventually reappeared, but I now always wonder how many meals she had down at the smokehouse. They have moved since, to the other side of town, and no longer do wholesale. I heard that a lot of people in the fancy houses on top of the hill had complained about them. Not me!

I want to recommend Jackie's Bistro in Eastchester. They do basic good French bistro fare, very traditional. The restaurant has a nice homy feeling. I don't know how long they have been there (on route 22) but at least since we moved into Eastchester 6 years ago. Also, go to Royal Palace on 100B for the crowds - they do a huge catering/party business with the local Indian community. On weekends, there are always weddings/graduation parties/whatever with tons of people in beautiful colorful clothes, and pounding Indo-pop going. It is lots of fun even when experienced vicariously.

We're planning a trip into that area tomorrow. Are any of these places mentioned in this thread OK with kids? We have two little boys, 5 and 3. They go out to ethnic (Chinese, Korean, Mexican) places all the time and are reasonably well behaved. From reading this thread, I am assuming that Uncle George's (sp?) would be fine with kids, but that the food isn't that good. HOw about the places like s'Agapo? And are reservations needed? thanks!

I prefer not to steam asparagus, which makes it turn gray, or to roast it, which makes it turn leathery. Instead, I drop the stalks into a big pot of boiling water, boil for 3 minutes, and then remove them. I serve the stalks with tarragon-lemon butter. To me, that is the essence of asparagusdom. I also made a great pureed asparagus soup recently, using a simple recipe I found on Epicurious.com. It involved 3 lbs of asparagus, one leek, 5 cups of chicken stock, a little heavy cream, and some fines herbes. I also stirfry it sometimes, but I don't find that method really brings out the asparagus taste. Somehow the asparagus just ends up tasting like stirfried any-other-green-vegetable.

I hate celery either raw or cooked. Especially cooked.

I totally agree on the seared tuna thing. It is like tuna that couldn't make up its mind. I usually scrape off the cooked part and then pretend that it is sashimi. The undercooked veggie thing has been going on since the 80's. I always hated it, but my new pet peeve is dry overcooked roasted veggies that taste like shoe leather. I guess it is really hard to cook veggies CORRECTLY? And avoid anything with "grilled chicken" because I know it is going to be that prepackaged, dried out chicken with the fake looking grill marks.

For cooking, I definitely feel most comfortable with cuisines of the Mediterranean - southern Italian, Greek, and North African. I just feel like I instinctively know what it should taste like. Also, I find it easy to cook when getting good results is mainly based on good veggies, olive oil, and plenty of garlic! For eating out, I feel most at home with French bistro style cooking, and Korean food. For some reason, I find the two cuisines similar in that they are very "homey" and comfortable. Korean food, especially, does not stand too much on ceremony.

Many years ago, I lived with a Neapolitan family (in Naples) for a while. They taught me to cook a number of wonderful things, including their tomato sauce. They most definitely did not put lemon in the sauce. In fact, they did not make one of those heavy longcooked tomato sauces that we stereotype as neapolitan. The basic recipe was chopped, very ripe (maybe overripe) tomatoes with olive oil, garlic, basil, and sometimes a splash of red wine. This was cooked for maybe 20 minutes or so. They did squeeze lemon over pasta with olive oil and garlic though.

I've only had skate in France. I really like it and always order it when I am there. To me, it seems very mild. They always serve it on the bone(or is that a cartilage?), but it is so easy to eat! Just scrape it off. I usually have it with brown butter and capers.

I lightly fry lots of garlic in good olive oil and toss with linguine. That alone is just fantastic. If I feel ambitious, I might cook brocolli raab or shredded collards first and toss that in too.

My dining secret : I hate sharing in a restaurant, even a Chinese restaurant. I eat slowly, so I always end up losing out on the good stuff while my dining companions wolf it all down. Plus, I usually ordered what I wanted, and often have no interest in what the other people ordered. I know that ordering plates to share is considered to be so trendy these days, but I really hate it.

I am the weird one out here. I've only had roast vegetables in restaurants or at catered affairs like company picnics (caterers seem to love roast vegetables for some reason), and they have always tasted like shoe leather to me. The texture seems horrible to me, all tough and stringy and dried out. Except for roast potatoes, which are invariably hard and undercooked. Sorry. Maybe I should try it at home or something.

My mother was a great cook for the most part, but after she went back to school, sometimes standards slid when she had a late afternoon class. I remember that we had a French exchange student staying with us when I was 14, and once afternoon my mother called me and asked me to make dinner. She had left behind a box of Hamburger Helper. The French teen stood there and watched in horror as I browned the burger, dumped a box full of dehydrated potato slices on top, dumped in milk, and finally shook in some radioactive powdered cheese. "What is that?" she asked, her eyes wide. "DINNER! " I exclaimed. She did not eat much that night. I actually liked Hamburger Helper when I was 14. What I hated was when we would go to other people's houses, and they would serve us kids hot dogs while the adults got steaks.

A friend of mine in Texas mailed me a couple of cans of RoTel, and dare i say it - I found it bland. It just tasted like diced tomatoes to me. I could see some peppers in it, but I couldn't taste them. I doctor mac n cheese by putting in some jarred salsa (Chi-chi's Hot).

Mint makes me nauseous. I can't even stand a slight whiff of it. On the other hand, cilantro and tarragon are my two favorite herbs.

Ooooh, Brussels Sprouts. When I was a kid they were my second favorite vegetable (first was artichokes). My sister and I would fight over the last one. As a kid, I liked to pick them up in my hands and peel them, leaf by leaf. Yeah, I know, gross, but it was great fun for a 7 year old. I notice that my 4 year old loves to do the same thing. These days I eat them one way only : boiled (not to death please) and slathered with good butter. My 4 year old prefers to put balsamic vinegar all over them.

A nice thick patty made from 85% lean burger, grilled so that it is nice and rare inside. A NON-TOASTED Kaiser roll. Hot pepper relish, several bread and butter pickle slices, and a lot of Dijon mustard. I also like burgers topped with Swiss cheese and mushrooms. The burger should be accompanied by a Brooklyn Brewery IPA.

OK, I have to admit, I just don't GET the McDonalds french fry thing. I hear people in my city (NYC) claim all the tiime that the best fries in the city are at McD's. Huh? When I eat them, all I can taste is salt and bad grease. No hint of potato anywhere in those fries. And the texture is totally weird. For my taste, the best fries anywhere are to be found in Belgium. And in NYC, I am partial to those Belgian-style frite shops that were so popular about 10 years ago. But I do have a nasty food habit. I am totally intrigued by the combination of melted cheese over carbs. A prime example would be one of those nacho plates in pub-grub restaurants. But best of all, totally best of all is... Poutine!

People here have mentioned buffets at home - always good in my opinion, and in restaurants (chain buffets are bad, Indian buffets are good). But no one has mentioned buffets in another context : weddings (and catered events in general). Here, buffets are always a good thing. Given that wedding food is always abysmal (except at Chinese weddings), at least a buffet gives guests a pretense of choice, lets them avoid the 45 minute wait to be served, and gives them something to do during those interminable breaks-between-courses-for-dancing. By the way, Chinese weddings are the best - all food, no dancing!

1. Old lettuce. I can smell it. This includes that shredded iceberg that sits for too long in premade sandwiches, and any lettuce that comes prepackaged in a plastic bag. I am sorry, but it gives off this horrible odor. 2. That acrid marinade that they dump all over the attempts at gourmet salads in supermarkets delis. For example, our Food Emporium sells salads like sundried tomato and bulgar wheat, or chickpeas with roasted asparagus, which look fabulous but they have all been drenched with that weird acrid marinade. 3. Guacamole made with sourcream, yogurt, or worst of all - mayonnaise. 4. Chain restaurant pizza.

A couple of months ago, in a fit of "healthiness" and against my better judgement, I tried substituting ground turkey for hamburger in my family taco recipe. Normally I mix hamburger with lots of cumin, black beans, spicy salsa, and olives. We put cheese and tons of fresh cilantro in the tacos too. I kept reading that hamburger is so unhealthy and that one should really substitute ground turkey. My friends said "you can't tell the difference". I thought that with all the spice and flavor in our standard tacos, maybe my friends and the health magazines are right. So I used ground turkey in place of the burger. Blech! Horrible! It was pale and gray and tasted like, um, turkey. Even my two little kids wouldn't touch it. We all ended up eating cilantro/cheese/avocado tacos that night. Also, I remember as a child in daycamp, we were told to bring in a hamburger patty, a potato, a carrot, an onion and foil. We put them altogether in little foil packets and put them in a campfire. The result? Carbonized hamburger, burned carrot, and a raw onion and potato. I went hungry that night. To this day I refuse to make anything in a packet, even those gourment things that use parchment paper and are supposed to be wonderful.

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? My parents were grad students and then professors. Our food culture was very 1960's academia, a strange mixture of Julia Child, Joyce Chen, and meatloaf. My mother subscribed to Gourmet, and had that "1000 Recipe Chinese Cookbook" Was meal time important? It was determined by the time my parents got home, a bit late by middle class American standards of that era (around 7). We usually all ate together, until our high school years when activities started interfering. Sometimes my father would work late, but my mother would eat with us. Our dinners tended to be LONG - over an hour - and we liked to sit and chat at the end of the meal. Our dinners were talkative and loud. Even in high school, I made an effort to be there because our dinners were usually more fun than high school activities. Was cooking important? Extremely. I can still remember watching the original B&W Julia Child shows on WGBH-Boston, wiith my mother taking notes (no VCRs in those days). What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? I never was aware of that rule until later when I read stories about other families. However, we did not watch TV at dinner (half the time we didn't even own one) and we weren't supposed to open our mouths when chewing. My sister used to yell at my father because she thought he cleared his throat too much at the table. Who cooked in the family? My mother. My father was, and still is, a terrible cook. He likes to eat good food, he just doesn't understand how it is made. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? We ate out more than most people in the 1960's, but far less often than people do today. When we were living in cities (we moved a lot), we ate a lot of takeout Chinese. Keep in mind that takeout Chinese only existed in large cities in those days. We also ate at some really awful "kid-friendly" places, for birthdays and so forth - like Red Lobster, Steak and Ale, Spaghetti Factory, and so on. When we were kids, we thought those places were awesome. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Never. Often, though, we would be fed first. Still, we were allowed to hang out and harass the guests and taste some of the food. My parents were really into these gourmet dinner parties in which they would show off their knowledge of food trends. When did you get that first sip of wine? Around 10 or so. Was there a pre-meal prayer? No way! We never went to church, and my parents were somewhat hostile towards religion. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? No, my mother was much too experimental. She would get some idea from a magazine and dash off to the store to get the ingredients RIGHT THEN. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? Quite a bit, although we eat out more (like everyone nowadays) and our food horizons have expanded to include things my parents wouldn't have even conceived of. Our dinners are still long and talkative. I can only hope that my two kids also prefer to eat dinner with us over doing high school activities when they get to be that age (right now they are preschoolers).

I have a husband and 2 kids, ages 4 and 2. I do most of the cooking. I cook dinner from scratch most nights. If we are really busy, it might be pretty simple, like sandwiches. On Friday night, we usually get delivery (Chinese, pizza, sushi) I choose the menus. If I let my husband do it, we would be eating overdone pork chops or chicken with potatoes every single night. No one in our house currently has strict eating restrictions. However, my younger son was treated for a serious illness last spring which necessitated a lot of dietary modification - neutropenic diets are no fun. As for likes and dislikes - my kids eat almost anything. My husband doesn't like garlic, so I have had to, um, educate him on that one. I have sort of a set repertoire, but I like to try new things every couple of weeks. I get my groceries delivered via Peapod, and shop for fresh veggies every few days. Our local supermarkets are awful beyond compare (suburban NYC) but I don't have time to go to the Whole Foods that often. In summer I make a weekly trip to the farmers market. I have two preschool boys. We discuss rockets, constuction vehicles, toys in general. My husband and I occassionally discuss politics or work. We do not have a TV on during dinner, or any meal (TV is in another room). I have a bad habit of looking at the NYTimes at dinner, but I usually use it as a starting point for discussions, and the kids like to look at the pictures (although I have to seriously censor them). By the time we get home from work and daycare pickup, and get everything together, it is 8:30 when we eat. I wish we could eat earlier, but I have never figured out how. I am amazed by people who eat at 6 - I don't even get home from work until 6:30, and my husband gets home closer to 7. We all eat together. We don't have external people over for dinner very often. When we socialize, it is usually to do outings with friends with kids, rather than dinners. We do entertain my husband's family, but their ideas on eating are so different from ours that we usually let them bring food and call it a potluck. My kids eat new foods all the time. They aren't picky. We have always had the rule that they can eat what is on the table or nothing - we don't make second dinners. We do usually have a variety of foods on the table, and don't complain if they just eat, say, cherry tomatoes for dinner. We usually light candles and have a tablecloth. My boys can be very silly, and they like to make their napkins into hats. I have taken many photos of them doing this.