foodie52

Haha: I like that about your uncle! Hey: the Spam with pineapple and marshmallows tasted pretty darn good ! Don't knock it til you've tried it. My advice: don't try to "gourmetize" this party. Enjoy it for what it is: retro , to a time where food was really, really weird.... Your guests will enjoy it. And yes, I DID eat plenty at the party! If you only eat that stuff once a year, it tastes pretty good!!!

We had a 50's party just a couple of months ago. It was potluck: here is what I remember seeing: Spam chunks, pineapple chunks, and marshmallows, skewered and then broiled and stuck in grapefruit. Spam casserole ( like tuna casserole, only better ) Barbie doll cake Pineapple upside down cake More casseroles, this time with peas and tuna and cream of mushroom soup. Green beans with cream of mushroom soup and French's fried onions Aspic: tomato jello with shredded cabbage. Truly disgusting, even 50 years later. Jello mold containing cherry jello, a can of crushed pineapple and a jar of applesauce, with melted redhots in it, too. I actually found that recipe on line... Gagging yet?

Texas On the Plate by Terry Thompson Anderson has just come out. I've enjoyed reading it. I remember Jay McCarthy from Central Market days...he was our exec. chef for a while.

Bring back: The milkman and real heavy cream, not the ultra pasteurized. And what's up with that,anyway? If it's pasteurized, isn't that enough??? The stuff has no flavor whatsoever anymore. You have to go to Great Britain for decent cream. And bring back raw milk cheeses. All of them. Get rid of: Butterball turkeys and any other protein that has been injected with flavored water. Fruits and vegetables out of season. Can't get cranberries in the summer? Too bad, so sad! They grow in the FALL, for heaven's sake. Don't come bitching to me about it.

Carr's Ginger Lemon Creams go great with tea. Even the soggy mess at the bottom tastes good. I've dunked McVittie's Dark Chocolate Digestives since university. The dark ages... I recently thought about trying to calculate how many packets of those I have eaten in my lifetime but the task became too daunting.

Thanks for your recommendations! Rod McDonald, of Old Vine Imports, presented the Australian Shiraz: d'Arenberg Laughing Magpie. Don't remember the vintage. 95% Shiraz, 5% Viognier. Also a good wine. And my third fav was Qupe Bien Nacido Vineyard Syrah 2001 100% Syrah, toasty and mineral notes, with some oak and floral tones. We also tasted the Treana Red which didn't do anything for me, and Llano Estacado (Texas) Shiraz which was promising but definitely not in the same league as the other wines.

Yesterday, as part of the Saveur Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival, I attended a seminar titled: Lusty Reds and Scarlet Lips. We tasted 6 wines, most of them 100% Syrahs. Two of them blew me away: Hedges Cellars Syrah 2002 100% Syrah from an 8 acre parcel of land in Washington. It's not yet bottled and there will only be 100 cases. Soft on the end, at first taste, almost like cotton candy. Later, the flavor changed to apricot. Terre Rouge Syrah "Sentinel Oak Vineyard-Pyramid Block" 1999 Calif. The most European-style of the wines. Won Best New World Red. From '82 vines, yield is 3 tons per acre. According to the master sommelier who moderated the session, this wine had "great grip" and good structure. Both were amazing!

Once, someone in the store asked me where the TIN-ed as-per-AH-ghee were....

I LOVE your photos! How come we haven't gotten to meet you guys?

So you're saying... Maybe our next breakfast meeting should be at the airport? We all need to buy a ticket to Vegas, have Breakfast at Bergstrom, lunch at Picasso, then fly home. Anyone up for this??

St. John get my vote: it's an open kitchen as well, so he probably could coax a tour out of the staff. And if Fergus is there.... Don't forget reservations wherever he goes!

Check out Bob's Red Mill : they have an extensive gluten-free line. Look here:Bob's

Right now, I love tempranillos. So....that leads to another question. If I love tempranillos this year, what are the chances that I'll find them just as good in say, 5 years from now? Are there flavor "nuances" that we non-wine-snobs might recognize as changing over the years depending on weather, climate changes, etc?

Yes, it was ironic.....but isn't it sad that some people can't put aside their preconceived ideas ( in this case, from just looking at the brownies) and tasting them out of pure curiosity?

I'm not talking about the becoming more "wine aware" with age....I kow that years ago I drank mostly sweet whites. What I'd like to know is, over the years, does one's palate change enough so that one prefers one style of wine or one grape over another?

You guys are so lucky, living in NY! We'd never have an incident like that down here!

Seinfeld: The babka George and the trash can The soup Nazi Enough said!

It was still pretty rude of your boyfriend's coworkers to turn down something you had made. I mean, YOU'D never do that, right? That's why I don't go to Europe unless I have to anymore ( my parents live there...)I save my dollars for flights to Australia and the Far East where people are still polite to Americans.

I put some on a pizza just last night. I ate the leftovers at room temperature. Just plain. Nothing else. Dessert!

Wait a minute! You mean, they came to Houston but didn't come to Austin?? What kind of a travesty is THAT??? Edited to ask: Is anyone here a member of the Peeps club?

Speaking of French cheeses... Back in 1979 my husband and I visited Guise, in the Champagne region. We were taken out to eat somewhere in the countryside. The cheese platter at the end of the meal elicited so many oohhhs and ahhhs that the proprietess of the restaurant gave us an entire wheel of Marouille to take back to the US with us. Unfortunately, we still had a week or so to go in Europe.... The evening before our flight home, we wrapped the cheese in plastic. And newspaper. And more plastic. We put it in a large carryon bag and shoved it under our seats. The aroma ( I don't want to call it a "stench"...) wafted throughout the airplane. People walked by and wrinkled their noses. It was very funny. When we got home, we unwrapped and determinedly ate the cheese which was actually at the point of rotting. After hauling it so far for so long, we were NOT going to throw it out!

Well, this wasn't exactly an article about food, was it? More like musings about life while sitting on the can. Sort of like, stand up comedy while sitting down at the keyboard. I wish I could get paid to write fluff like that.

prasantrin: Glass jars don't seem to pose a great problem. Just remember that, the more you wrap a product, the more unwrapping needs to take place. Skip the bubble wrap: it may appear as if you are trying to hide something. Enclose jars in plastic bags or two and wrap in clothing. Make sure you have a hard-sided suitcase. I've never had anything break on me and I travel a lot. Carry on anything that it would break your heart to lose. I think that is the rule to follow in these terrible times.

I try to eat local honey the most. Here in Texas, we have wonderful mesquite honey, which is light in color and delicate in flavor. Also guajillo which is smoky-flavored. I've discovered New Zealand honey:there is a line of flavors, but one is my favortie: Manuka, from the company, Airborne. The Manuka has some folklore surrounding it, and is used by the Maoris in a variety of remedies. Some of it has a potent antibacterial effect. It's woodsy and earthy , with just a hint of mineral bitterness. We sell Hawaiian where I work: it's very white and very expensive. I haven't tried it yet.

I am so jealous, jealous, jealous..... I lived in GB for 8 years and became addicted to marmalade, even at the tender age of 17. And now, alas, I am in the USA. For Christmas every year, I receive 8 to 10 different marmalades: frm Tiptree to Cooper's to Rose's to Thursday Cottage. I adore marmalade. I eat it every morning on English muffins or bagels. I "export" it by the pound whenever I visit you lucky guys. It's outrageously expensive here. Not fair!