DTBarton

My parents lived in Holland for 5 years in the early 1980s. I had the opportunity to spend several Christmases there. One thing many Dutch people do on Christmas day is go to a lengthy multi course meal at a restaurant. Many restaurants are open to provide this service. The couple times I went they clocked in at between 4 and 5 hours with about a course an hour of food served and different appertifs, cocktails, wines, and coffee and tea. The whole thing was designed to be a leisurely family gathering. It should be noted that Christmas Day in Holland reminded me of Thanksgiving Day in the USA, i.e. a day more for family gathering and meals than gift giving. Also, the Dutch version of Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) comes on Sinter Klaas Day, which is December 5th, so that's when more gift giving is done. Sinter Klaas and his helper Scwartze Piet (Black Pete) deliver gifts to the kids from a boat or a horse, no flying reindeer here.

I'll go with the 15 - 20 minute recommendation for the 1 1/4 lb lobster, I usually do closer to 20. Helps to tenderize the tail meat somewhat if it's cooked a little longer.

Agree that I prefer the Wine Advocate to the Wine Spectator. I like the absence of advertising, for one thing. I also found that when I was starting to buy wine more seriously, I agreed with Parker's reviews more than WS's. I have friends who like Tanzer's publications as well. Tanzer is not as big a fan of big, extracted wines as Parker. I'm just used to Parker's writing and have found his recommendations to work well for me. Any credible publication will work as long as you learn their lingo and what it means. As far as the gender thing, from my experience, for whatever reason, I've met many women with good wine palates who enjoy tasting and pairing with food, but very few who go in for the research/buying part of things. Granted most of these women have husbands or boyfriends who do the buying so it might just be a matter of convenience.

I've had decent luck mixing AP flour with cake flour in a ratio of about 4/1. Perhaps you could order some good 00 flour, that's where I'm headed next in the great never ending pizza experiment. http://www.fornobravo.com/pizza-ingredients/index.html

I think I knew by the time I was about 8 or so that food was a big deal to me. I enjoyed cooking with my grandmothers wwhen we visited. My Dad's Mom was from Oklahoma and she made two dishes that my brother and I always asked for: beef and noodles and beans and ham. She was the first person I saw make homemade pasta, rolled it out by hand, cut it and hung it to dry all over the chairs in the kitchen. She never heard the word pasta (noodles, they were), much less "artisinal", but that's what she was doing. She mixed the noodles with pot roast that had been braised and shredded and beef gravy. She also made my grandfather's favorite, corn meal mush. Never called that something high falutin' like polenta! Served the long cooked beans and ham over cornbread, aaaahhhh. My Mom's mother was an old school Shenendoah valley Presbyterian. Cooked very simple and fresh. They had a big garden so all summer had lots of fresh produce served with simple roast beef or ham or chicken. She used a pressure cooker all the time to cook vegetables like green beans, carrots, or corn. Her rule was as soon as she could smell the vegetables in the pressure cooker, they're done. The Presbyterian picnics were feasts with all the church ladies trying to outdo each other in fried chicken, salads, deviled eggs, and desserts. My parents would do food projects on weekends. I remember the homemade bread or the big projects like roasting a suckling pig or a whole rockfish. I distinctly remember the revelation of neighbors taking me to a Chinese restaurant (basic Cantonese) for the first time at age 7 or 8. Then the serious awakening when we got a Szechuan restaurant in town when I was a teenager. My brother and I would go there for the whole fried fish in spicy black bean sauce and kung pao shrimp.

I must add, however, that my neighbor has a Weber gas grill with an electric rotisserie that I sometimes covet. The solution is that when I want to rotisserie something, I take it to his place and treat them to dinner using his grill. Did a leg of lamb a couple weeks ago, that rotisserie is the deal for that.

I agree. Conspicuous consumption. That's OK, it's their money, but I too have had bad food from fancy set ups. The same goes for fancy indoor kitchens, some of the owners would be better served learning how to buy good ingredients and cook properly. It reminds me of the Boston Market TV commercial that shows a huge fancy stainless steel range in a obviously upscale kitchen. A woman walks in and sets a Boston Market bag on the range and yells "dinner's ready!" I have a large Brinkmann charcoal grill ($179 at Sam's club). The two features I need in a charcoal grill are enough size to cook indirectly and an easy system for raising and lowering the fire and/or the grate. Cast iron grates are nice too, this Brinkmann has those as well. I also have a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker for slow cooking and barbecue ($200 at Amazon.com). I love it, just participated in the 2nd Annual International WSM Smoke Day last Saturday. http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/

If you roll the roast beef around on a grill a little bit, you can call it "Pit Beef", a very Maryland thing.

Did you decant the '82s you had? No. My recently departed father in law had (his wife still has) a nice stash of 1982 Pichon Longueville, like 3 cases. This is some of the best wine I've ever had. Interestingly, I saw a thing in the newspaper about the 82 Pichon Longueville. The writer said he'd had two bottles of it. One was fantastic and the other was just OK. I've had the same experience with my father in law's wine. The good ones are over the top fabulous and another bottle from the same batch might be just pretty good.

"and Bonaparte kind of an in the mood thing." I'm always in the mood for Bonaparte bread. I haven't found anything else close around Annapolis. We have a shop in Annapolis that has it (at a serious premium) and I stop by the store in Savage Mill when I'm up that way. Unfortunately, our shop in Edgewater that used to have it doesn't anymore.

I've had a few 1982s recently. A very good year in Bordeaux and the ones I had were drinking beautifully now. It's not about to go bad or anything, but no reason to wait if you want to drink it now. Decanting is up to you but I would definitely open the bottle a couple hours before drinking it. I always pour a little bit to try when I first open one, it's fun to taste the changes as it opens up. As for food, I'd go with classic simple red wine stuff. Roast beef, steaks or lamb simply prepared, roasted potatoes and root vegetables, steamed asparagus.

We ate at the Peking Duck House on Mott street recently. I thought the duck and the string beans were very good. Pricy for Chinatown, though.

Many years ago I worked in KFC. They double dipped the extra crispy chicken. Also, it was deep fried in an open vat as opposed to pressure fried like the original recipe. I think double dipping is great but might work better with deep frying than pan frying.

Recent thread with link to NY Times article on Charleston dining: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...+New+York+Times

You could make some hollandaise or bearnaise sauce for steaks and/or vegetables like asparagus.

Try posting in the Florida regional forum. Here's links to Sarasota threads from there: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...110&hl=Sarasota http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...757&hl=Sarasota http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...541&hl=Sarasota

If you're in the greater Baltimore area, there are 7 locations of the Double T Diner. http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1385609 Not sure I'd say gourmet, but the places are big with extensive menus beyond regular diner fare. And huge selections of baked goods. I've never had anything bad at the Annapolis location. Holly eats review: http://www.hollyeats.com/DoubleT.htm sample menu: http://www.marylandrestaurants.com/Menu1/doublet.html

How about a salad of fresh mozarella balls with tomato, sweet onion, and fresh basil with balsamic viniagrette? You get the added benefit that it will kind of look like a big bowl of golf balls.

The Fog City Diner in San Francisco is pretty upscale: http://www.fogcitydiner.com/index_body.html

I use the Weber Smokey Mountain cooker also. Don't miss the 2nd Annual International WSM Smoke Day on May 27th! I'm a registered participant. http://tvwbb.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/t...13/m/1750001014 I've found that I like to do the ribs for about 7 hours at 225 - 235 degrees. A little less if they're small, a little more if they're biguns. Then I take the racks off the cooker, coat them with sauce (I like Bulls Eye regular cut 50/50 with white vinegar and then add a little brown mustard and Texas Pete) and put them in an aluminum pan, covered, in the oven at about 175 degrees until ready to cut and serve.

The others have pretty much nailed it. I used to work in a seafood market and we got huge bags of clams. It was amazing how long they stayed alive in a big mesh bag in the bottom of a fridge, many days. Mussels are a little more perishable, but should be fine overnight.

Early September is a great time for produce and seafood. I'd be tempted to go with dishes that use the abundance of great tomatoes, peppers, and other late summer veggies. Also, that's the teeth of shrimp season in the Carolinas, you could get some fantastic shrimp from there, also good time for fresh fish and lobster. Those ingredients could be worked into a Moroccan theme, I think, although Southwest comes to mind also.

It will be interesting to watch as this plays out. I have seen prices come down somewhat on Bordeaux after peaking in the early 2000s as evidenced by futures prices in some catalogs I get. Maybe a great vintage, maybe a good vintage with some early heavy hype to try and get the prices back up some. Agree that some nice buys from other vintages are available. I have some 95s, 96s, 98s, and 2000s that are still young. In the interim, I've found good value in the 97 vintage that was initially panned, but I believe to be soft and early maturing. Good stuff, drinkable now at reasonable tariffs.

As someone who traveled alone a lot on business working for defense contractors (i.e. you don't get wined and dined as folks do in the private sector) I never had any problem eating out alone. I usually took a book or a magazine or something. I was in NYC last week and had lunch in Chinatown at the Peking Duck House on Mott St. There was a guy in there who was dining solo with his IPOD. The new age book or magazine, I suppose.

Sorry. it's NEW Beef King, not Big Beef King. Stupid memory! http://newbeefking.com/