maftoul

Thanks, Holly. I was thinking along those lines. Munchymom, I will pass on your description of banana cream pie as a vegetable

I'm helping make food for a party with a North Carolina theme. I'm not having too much luck researching desserts. Does anyone know of any desserts that are regional and peculiar to North Carolina? Thanks!

Has anyone been to Modesto recently. We're going to be in St. Louis in a couple of weeks and have most of the meals mapped out, but a few open spaces remain. We'd like to hear any information about Modesto.

I haven't been, but based on your report, I certainly want to make the trip. It sounds terrific.

Wonderful photos!

Wonderful photos!

I have cooked only from Land of Plenty. I don't have the Hunan book, yet. These are the dishes we've made from Land of Plenty Traditional Dan Dan Noodles Xie Laoban's Dan Dan Noodles Yibin Kindling Noodles Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers Hot and Numbing Chicken Slices Gong Bao Chicken Strange Flavor Chicken Cold Pork in Hot and Garlicky Sauce Haricots Verts in Ginger Sauce Sweet and Sour Red Peppers Spicy Cucumber Salad Fish Fragrant Pork Slivers Pork in Lychee Sauce with Crispy Rice - My daughter made this one, I was a happy guest. It is one of my favorite recipes in the book. Sweet and Sour Pork Ants Climbing a Tree Dry Fried Chicken Tai Bai Chicken Fish Fragrant Eggplants Dry Fried Green Beans, Versions 1 and 2 - version 2 was our favorite Stir Fried Water Spinach with Chile and Sichuan Pepper Zucchini Slivers with Garlic I've had the book for 5 years. I use it every couple of months. We have our favorites that we make time and again, such as the traditional dan dan noodles, strange flavor chicken and sweet and sour pork. I love all of the vegetable recipes we've tried.

I'm intrigued by the Middle Eastern deli. Does it have seating, or is it carry out only?

What we can't use or re-sell, we donate to our community kitchens (aka "soup kitchens" that feed hundreds of people a day) It's tax deductible, we aren't sitting on it, and it's put to good use. The whole hearing impaired person thing is amazing. I'm in the midwest, but apparently this sort of hearing impaired person scam is happening all over. That's pretty evil.

It sounds exactly like something that happened to us where I worked. A person called saying they were an operator typing in information for a hearing impaired person and that this person wanted to order a large amount of food for pick-up. We declined when the potential customer stated he/she wanted to email several credit card numbers. We thought it was quite odd that someone would email several credit card numbers, saying that they felt better about emailing the numbers than giving it to us over the phone. We also weren't comfortable with splitting an invoice between several cards.

The Gong Bao Chicken, page 237, is great! Xie Laoban's Dan Dan Noodles, page 89, Pork in Lychee Sauce with Crispy Rice, page 198, and Sweet and Sour Pork, page 210 are all dishes that I've made successfully time and time again. Land of Plenty is one of my favorites.

The KC Star reported this morning that Joe D's in Brookside closed.

We had a wonderful time at Extra Virgin Tuesday night (Dec. 23) Not in accurate order, four of us had: Baby goat with apples Beef tongue Grilled baby octopus Pork cheeks Pig ears Hanger steak Chicken thighs stuffed with figs Warm eggplant salad Stuffed escarole Carrots and parsnips Nearly everything was terrific. The carrots and parsnips with sumac was not so great. That dish needs some work. It was pretty mediocre. All of the meats were wonderful. Succulent, well seasoned and flavorful. The grilled baby octopus was excellent! We all thought that some morsels of bread would have been great to eat with the delicious sauces and juices that each dish contained. One of our party has spent considerable time in Spain and said you do get bread with tapas in Spain for just that reason. None was provided at Extra Virgin. Another minor quibble was our server questioning our every choice, asking us if we were sure we knew what escarole was, among other questions to see if we knew what we were actually ordering. Well, we knew what we were ordering, thanks for the offer to explain, but don't assume we don't know what escarole is, and goat and pork cheeks. Other than those few minor issues, Extra Virgin was great. We will certainly return.

They need to change their sign! We stopped by Chefburger Sunday for the first time in several months. The fries we ordered weren't fries at all, but the kind of fast food potato product that is cooked, then extruded into fake waffle shapes, then frozen. Not good at all They were very similar to what kids are served in school cafeterias. If I would have known that they were billing those as fries, I wouldn't have ordered them. The Chefburger was okay, but wasn't very hot. It appeared that maybe they are pre cooking the burger somewhat. We got are order in less than 5 minutes.