FabulousFoodBabe

I do! I do! How many bites for the pineapple?

Okay, my use of the word "primate" was not well-considered. But there are lots of things that others in the primate family do that I don't think humans should do. I think bananas should be eaten flambeed or buried under ice cream, fudge sauce and whipped cream. Danielle! Whatever happened to "Olive Garden Girl?"

I'm in love.

I once broke up with a guy because I saw him eating a banana in a way that just made me cringe. Like a monkey. The memory still sets my teeth on edge. I mean, what teenaged guy would pack a banana in his lunch? And then sit there in the cafeteria, next to me, yakking away, peeling it like some sort of primate between bites? I just couldn't look at him any more without thinking of him in a diaper, striped shirt and beret, scratching his pit with one hand and eating the banana in another. I just ditched him right then and there. And no, I never told him why. Please, please tell me, someone out there on eG., have you ever done this? If I am a lunatic, am I alone? Many thanks, Fabby (I was reading Ya-Roo's story and laughing my butt off, and then recalled the banana incident to my husband and sons. Mr. FFB told me that when he intends to leave me for a stripper, he will go on an all-banana diet, to make it easier on us all.)

Me too. But the people who matter aren't fooled. Heck, in my experience, most people aren't fooled, in a professional or home setting.

We may need to form a support sub-group for mise en place bowls and another for pet dishes. Sign me up for both and, depending on the extent of your "problem" I should probably chair the mise one. ← Hmm. I only use pyrex custard cups and those little steel sauce cups for my mis. Or parchment. However, my dog and cat are another story, especially since the former is 14 1/2 now, and deserves her (prescription, hypoallergenic) kibble to be served in something better than what she has now. As for the cat, well, he's got to go on a diet (sez the doc) so he should have something nice. All the diet books say so, right?

Wow! I'm going to fantasize about this! Your architect obviously understands your addiction. It's pretty great, until I start thinking about what will happen when I find something else that I just have to have. Will I have to get rid of something? Will we have room for my ever-expanding family of dishes? It's like having custom-shoe cubbies built into my closet. I just can't do it. All my little things deserve their own spot and shouldn't be sent out on their own if I find purple crystal dessert glasses (to go with the blue coupes I already have). Oh, dear. I think I need some of this, too. I've been kind of ignoring the barware (except for the good crystal and the Reidels and the Reidels that you can buy at Target -- thank you, therese, for that tip), since we moved into a house with no existing wet bar. But, the new kitchen will have a new wet bar and the house is kind of contemporary, so if I start looking nowFor God's Sake, someone stop me!

I love the spikey cups. You made them, McA? Cool! I have way too many dishes, and I love them all so much that I can't even think of putting them away where I can't look at them all the time. Briefly: I have two sets of Christmas dishes: One fine china, one pottery-ish. I have in my kitchen cabinets right now, three sets of "everydays" in square stone, square white ceramic, and black rounds (looks glorious together). I also have a few dozen glass salad plates and dishes for snack-plates for the kids. There's much more, and I keep finding stuff I have GOT to have: Purple square pasta bowls. rectangular salad plates. "leaning" drinkware. Or, my current favorite: The "Heros of the Torah" glass series at Fishs Eddy in New York! (I am not making this up!) I'm redoing my kitchen and the architect is having me inventory all my stuff so we can design the storage around it. I'm really kind of embarrassed.

I can remember in the fog of a long-ago food memory, having banana-mint pesto. It wasn't bad. The texture was kinda weird, though. I wish I could remember ...

Fresser, you are a man of many talents. Visuals du jour: Fresser in the middle of an orange cloud. Did the burp came out all at once, or did you have mini-burps the rest of the day? MizDucky (again, that hat!), doing a spot-on Marlon Brando as she takes in the orange peel. Too funny!

Hmph. I would have put the quotes about "foods." Transfats? Not food. No maragarine has been in my house for over 20 years. Alcohol? Not food. Essential liquids I'm sure that oysters lightly poached in low-fat, low-salt chicken broth would be perfection on this list. I'm shuddering. -Fabby, who will give up her Diet Pepsi when they pry it ouf of her cold, dead hands

This is comparing apples and oranges. The thread is about taking credit for someone else's creation and execution. Most of the chefs out there are responsible for all aspects of their foods' creation and execution -- and have often prepared the dish themselves many times before it gets onto the menu. Just because they're not cranking out 200 of them, themselves, during the night, doesn't make it any less their own food. now, if a pastry chef takes credit for the executive chef's work, that's a different story.

There was a store in a neighborhood where I lived long ago, that specialized in cooking for people -- in their dishes. You could bring the stuff to their shop or they'd come to your home for an extra fee, so the food smells would be wafting about when your guests arrived. They did a hell of a business!

I couldn't take credit for someone else's food. (And no one is fooled when others say they cooked it, when they didn't. You'd have to have a room full of complete strangers to pull that one off!) When I buy something, I say I slaved over the [deli case, seafood counter, telephone].

Am I the only person here dying to know who the family is? (I'm thinking of possibilities ... ) Enquiring mind, indeed! And while you are lucky to have such a job, timh, your employer is lucky to have you, too. As with an awful lot of the industry, be they private chefs, cooking teachers, food writers, etc. -- there are people calling themselves experts and being paid to do things who are un- or underqualified, or simply clueless.

Doesn't anyone say "floor whore" or "door whore" anymore?

Hey, what a great party! If your daughter wants that much cheese, she should have it. I would add vegetables (roasted crudites, perhaps) or fruits, skewered, to the list.

Lasagna. It's still killer. "Sauce" used in said lasagna and all Sunday meals (in my family, making sauce took all day, though.) Risotto, eh? Whatta kid!

What everyone is telling you is good advice -- getting the job experience will be amazing for her. As her palate develops, her tastes could change. I couldn't eat romano cheese until I was in my 20s; it was too strong for me. Same with baccalao, certain olives, peppers, and dry wines of any color. (And when I started cooking professionally, I quickly got a reputation for being able to take the chef's concoction and "back out" the recipe, because my sense of taste was so keen). Right now, it's probably more important for her to see if she feels at home in a kitchen. Yep, even though he himself went to the CIA. Personally, I think culinary school can teach some important, essential things that a new cook may not learn right away. Ain't that the truth! But, my 9-year old niece wants to be a chef and got her first inspiration from me (of course!), and then Rachael Ray. I told her to get through third grade first, and then we'll talk.

Pan sizes that don't exist, for baking. Recipes that start with "Conchetta and I love to serve this to our sorority sisters after a naked pillow fight. Passs a steaming bowl of barbecue sauce separately." Anything with a Food TV Star on the cover (sad but true: I've been given more of those than I care to remember.) While I don't bail on them, I also never use restaurant cookbooks (I've been given Brennan's, The Mansion on Turtle Creek, K-Paul's, etc. etc. etc.). I like to read them but don't cook from them. I have kept every cookbook I've ever gotten -- The Jif Choosy Mothers' Cookbook(circa 1978), the Better Homes and Gardens looseleaf notebook that someone started for me (egad!), about 40,000 Junior League, church and "team Mom" cookbooks that everyone just knows I'll love. Not all of them remain on my shelves, though. Nathalie Dupree's book is propping up one side of the foosball table.

"He had cauliflower ears, apple cheeks, muttonchop sideburns, and corn teeth." -W.C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"* *I think.

Yep, I think this is closer to the truth. Lobster tanks are a huge PITA and god forbid they break down overnight. I still can't eat lobster bisque at most places. Ooh! Great idea. I'll name mine "Pinchy," and maybe they'll let me put on a tank and go in to play with him until he dies of old age. I recommend the chapter titled "A Brief Time Line of the Lobster in America," page 42, The Areas of My Expertise.

Personally, I have always wanted to try the Mock Apple Pie on the Ritz Cracker box, just to say I have. But ... I just can't make myself do it.

Sandy, you are too much! I loved your post and it brought back a memory. 'Way back when I didn't know any better, I went to work at the local Bar Association. I'd never seen a green bean casserole before in my life*, but had to prepare it almost weekly for some working lunches that the various lawyers had at our offices. We used canned (Blue Lake, French Cut), with some cream of mushroom soup, heated on top of the stove, with Durkee Onion Rings. Special occasions called for a few packaged sliced almonds (the kind with the skin still on), for color and texture. That was "Green Bean Casserole Supreme." OMG, I haven't thought of those days for a long, long time. *technically, I guess I'm Caucasian.

When the boys were young and pliable, we used to make Christmas Cookies every year to give as gifts (and for me to take to cookie parties). We made dozens of candy-cane cutout sugar cookies, coated them in Royal icing, and the boys decorated them with M&Ms, colored and sanding sugar, sprinkles, chips, jimmies, crushed hard candy -- pretty much whatever would stick to them. We'd make little paper cones of white chocolate with food coloring in it, and they'd do the Jackson Pollack thing. They were adorable, and everyone looked forward to getting them. Snif. It remains one of my favorite memories.