DTBarton

I've thought abut this a good bit, I think it's genuinely random, or read off the nearest bottle o' sauce.

Wow! Great idea. I'm roasting some onion, zuchinni, parsnip and portabello mushrooms right now, also some fresh garlic. The house smells so good! Now I know the neighbors down the street have a garden so I'm on my way to hit them up for fresh basil, ok, yup, I have a can of black beans. Tonight's dinner should be great. I'm going to add the left over saffron rice that I made triple batches of and stuck in the freezer and some ginger/orange tofo that I started marinating yesterday. I think I'll grill it and add it to the rice. ← You make' a me so happy!

I love a room temperature roasted vegetable salad. Cut whatever veggies you want in little cubes (eggplant, zuchinni, onion, carrot, parsnip, celery, cherry tomatoes, chili and/or sweet peppers). Put in a plastic bag and shake to coat with a little olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Roast in a 400 degree oven on a foiled, Pammed cookie sheet to desired doneness. I like to put everything in at the same time, the harder veggies retain a nice crunch, the softer get brown and, well, soft. Take out, put in a bowl, add a rinsed can of black beans if you like. Dress with whatever vineagrette you like, a little fresh chopped basil is nice. Take bowl to picnic, serve at room temp.

I know it's blasphemy, but I think the microwave works better than anything. Put slices of beef on a glass plate and smear whatever moisture you've got on it (meat juice, gravy). Cover with plastic wrap and heat on about power level 6 or 7. I usually avoid the problem altogether and serve my leftover roast beef cold between two slices of rye with mayo, salt, pepper, lettuce, and plenty of horseradish.

Check out Chick and Ruth's for breakfast and/or lunch. Good food and great local atmosphere. http://www.chickandruths.com/

Mom made lots of good stuff. I especially remember rib roast and Yorkshire pudding at Christmas, pork roasts with hoppin' John, and these terrific pastrami sandwiches she made with pastrami, swiss and mustard on Kaiser rolls, wrapped in foil and baked for a long time in the oven. Hot gooey wonderful with dill pickles. She's gotten much more diet concious in her later years, don't get these treats much anymore althhough the pork roast still comes out on holidays sometimes. Got get both grandmothers in on this. Dad's Mom: Beef and noodles - shredded pot roast and beef gravy mixed with home made noodles she rolled, cut, and dried on makeshift string clotheslines in the kitchen. She would laugh today if someone told her she was making artisinal pasta. Born in 1903 in Oklahoma, she never heard the word pasta. This dish still resonates clearly in my memory, it was killer. Ham and beans - dries beans cooked with a big piece of ham, falling apart ham pieces mixed with beans at the end and served over conbread. Mom's Mom - A Presbyterian lady from the Shenandoah valley of VA. Great church picnic food, fried chicken, deviled eggs. Also the queen of the pressure cooker. I learned to like vegetables eating fresh produce from my grandfather's garden cooked in my grandmother's pressure cooker.

Thanks for the road trip reports, we can all live and eat vicariously though you folks. I need to take my camera with me on some of my Maryland area food jaunts. Hey Nullo, where's Daffy's deli in Newark? When I was growing up there (70s) there was a Daffy deli on Cleveland avenue that made very good subs. Of course, there was also Mr. Pizza and Sam's on Academy street (both gone now) just off Main St. where all the underage college kids (and some intrepid high schoolers) could drink beer without being hassled as long as they behaved. Had to be an honest 20 to get in Deer Park or Stone Balloon. Hard to get past Capriotti's and Casapulla's in Glasgow, though.

A little late for 4th of July, but here goes. Inspired by this thread, http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=68022&hl= I ordered a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. I've cooked ribs 3 times and been very pleased with the results. A great product at a bargain price. Much easier to use than my other smokers. Thanks to the posters who recommended it (lcdm, Daddy-A). And the learning curve is very quick thanks to the web site also recommended in the thread: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/ Looking forward to tackling the longer cooked pork shoulders, butts (shoulders in sheep's clothing), and briskets. Got to try the dreaded Minion method!

I have some experience in this area. We have some good friends (a couple) and when we first met them, the woman (who was about 27, eerily) would only eat about the same things on your list (mac and cheese, well done steak, mashed potatoes, sweets like pastries and cookies). She's now about 35, and while she's not going to tuck into a plate of sweetbreads or anything, she has expanded her horizons considerably. She will eat well in our local tapas place and sushi bar (loves grilled fish, not much raw fish, but she's advanced to seaweed salad, tempura shrimp and veggies, and California rolls), so it is possible for picky eaters to grow. When we first met she never would have considered setting foot in a Spanish or Japanese restaurant, much less actually EATING there! I believe this was accomplished by slow, steady exposure to other stuff by her husband and us without a lot of pressure. She also went to law school and when she was interviewing with law firms, they wined and dined her in many good Washington DC restaurants. She had started branching out before, but it was during the interviews that she actually stated her desire to get more sophisticated in her eating and drinking choices. So, probably like most things, if the person wants to change, they can.

I think Marsala would work OK.

For the spritzers, not too much ice!

Make mine vodka tonic! Lots o' lime. Also a nice Cuba Libre made with light rum, Coke (diet for me) lots of ice, lots of lime. For wine, I like to get an inexpensive sauvignon or chardonnay that I like and make spritzers, mix with club soda and serve over ice.

It is true that almost all shrimp sold in seafood stores is previously frozen. Fortunately, if frozen in a block of water, shrimp freezes very well. You can get fresh shrimp in the right areas at the right time of year. In the Carolinas, shrimp season is all summer and into the fall. They bless the shrimp fleet in McClellanville South Carolina (a true shrimping village north of Charleston) the first weekend of May http://lowcountryshrimpfestival.com/ I used to buy fresh shrimp in Charleston during the summers and I still get fresh Pamilico sound shrimp on the Outer Banks of North Carolina each summer and fall. I buy extra and freeze it immersed in water in milk cartons or plastic bags, keeps great. Here's a link to a Hatteras place that will ship you wild North Carolina shrimp. http://www.odensdock.com/seafood/ Ask them if they're getting fresh local shrimp yet. To me, the bigger issue for getting shrimp is wild versus farm raised. I find farm raised shrimp to be tasteless. It can be hard to find wild shrimp, the majority sold is farm raised in South America and Asia. We're lucky that we have a local seafood store that only sells wild shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico.

I think mine was made by someone called Bayou Country, same idea, large bore needle with a couple extra holes up from the tip. The one you linked should be fine.

I don't care for the overexposed and overused domestic chardonnay formula of too much oak, tropical fruits, too sweet. I wish my budget allowed me to enjoy white burgundies of better quality more often! One to try for unoaked is Kim Crawford unoaked chardonnay from New Zealand, which has the unusual distinction of being my favorite wine with a screw top.

For lunch in Islamorada, we like the Hungry Tarpon, mile 77.5 adjacent to Robbie's marina. No dinner. For fine dining in Key West, try Opera for Italian, great homemade pasta and other goodies: http://www.operarestaurant.com/ Also like Cafe Marquesa: http://www.marquesa.com/cafe.htm For casual on the waterfront, we like Half Shell, good stone crabs: http://www.foodreference.com/html/k-half-shell-raw-bar.html We also like the Fish House in Key Largo. Good fresh seafood and tasty smoked fish to eat in or take out: http://www.fishhouse.com/

Could be, but that injecting ouzo into lamb thing sounds intriguing! Doesn't get too sweet with the sugar content, Ducky?

I have enjoyed the pizza at Out of the Fire in Easton a few times when we drove over for concerts at the Avalon theatre. I need to try Tsunami again. We really liked them when they first opened, then it seemed they were more interested in being a trendy night spot/bar. The food sufferred, we had a couple of really indifferent meals and haven't been back for a few years.

Google search turned up some recipes, here's one link: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellit...d=1031769617992

Turkey fryers often use injected marinades for poultry, that's a good place to start, here's a link to one source for recipes: http://bbq.about.com/cs/turkey/a/aa102602a.htm I use my injector to put unsweetened apple juice in pork shoulders for long cooking. I do it once before putting the shoulders on the cooker and once at the halfway point, about 6 hours in. It's fun, you can really see the meat puff up as it takes in the juice. Inject in several locations to get all the different sections juiced.

It is true that statistically speaking, the United States spends enough in anti-poverty programs each year to lift every family living below the government defined poverty line to a position above it. Add in all the private hunger relief efforts from churches, food banks, etc. and there's more than enough food to go around. The federal WIC (women, infants, children) program that provides money for food to families and the agriculture department's food stamp program have so much money that they've been advertsing heavily on radio in my area for months trying to give the benefits away. This serious issue is analyzed in a humorous and enlightening way in P.J. O'Rourke's 1991 book "Parliament of Whores". He uses 1990 census figures on poverty and 1991 federal budget expenditure figures to show that we spend more than twice the amount each year needed to bring everyone defined by the government as poor up above the poverty line, see the chapter on poverty policy that starts on page 123. O'Rourke concludes this analysis with a statement that I think summarizes the complexity of the issue: "The spending of these vast amounts of money has left everybody just sitting around slack jawed and dumbstruck, staring into the maw of that most extraordinary paradox: You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."

It's not surprising that there are more consumer outlets with more choices in areas where the local consumers have more money. You must also factor in the increased costs of doing business in depressed neighborhoods such as security, insurance, maintenance and clean up, lost shopping carts, etc. This leads to a disincentive to businesses locating there. It is a very complex issue, but it seems to me that the only "solutions" that could be offerred are getting the government to tell food merchants where and what they can sell and tell food buyers what they can buy. That is not a road we want to travel. As for education, I know that I was drilled in the food pyramid when I was in public school in the 70s, I can't imagine that kids aren't getting even more information about nutrition 30 years later (possibly at the expense of their math and language skills!). The recent media coverage of the revamped food pyramid was hard to miss. Many factors (social, economic, cultural, the decline in cooking skills and the increased availability of packaged foods, ubiquitous microwaves) all go in to this.

Their vocabularies, and the quality of their cheese.

Apu is correct. Thank you, come again! This reminded me of an episode of "Married with Children", an old guilty pleasure of mine. Al Bundy was partial to a frozen snack called Wiener Tots. For some reason he asked his son to read what it said on the Wiener Tot box. "Not to be taken internally", he said. No, not that, Al said, keep reading. "This is not a food"