Jaymes

I probably should have been more specific in my response. Silhorn did ask about bean "powder." I do think of the instant refried beans as "bean powder," but they're not. They're actual dehydrated beans. You can even pick them up one by one. Which my dad sometimes did as a snack. My response as being a pretty good product is about these dehydrated beans, like the ones to which I linked. Silhorn, if you're talking about actual bean powder, or flour, that doesn't sound workable to me. But if you do want an acceptable dish of refried "mashed beans without all the mashing," I definitely do suggest you give one of the instant dehydrated refried bean products a try. That's exactly what they're for. If you've got some other sort of "bean powder" in mind, I can't help you. And I'm sorry if I misled you.

I hope you resist the urge to answer the siren song of Santa Fe, where you'll be just one more trendy new kid on the culinary block. Don't know why I feel so protective of you. Guess I'm getting old enough that my grandmotherly instincts kick into overdrive all too frequently. Maybe Cruces? On the way to a lot of places. Emerging culinary scene. Close to major city. Your current loyal client base can (and I'm sure do) get there with some frequency. Folks drive from all over to go to Chope's (although I personally don't think it's worth it). Abq? Tucson? Dragoon? Park yourself right next to The Thing. Scribble your name on all their roadsigns. Huge new market. Huge. .

Good news - Houston has more people! Bad news - it's in...um...Houston.

Hey - we all knew it had to happen.

Yikes. Planning to drive from Houston out to SF Bay area for Christmas. Was determined to stop in Silver City for at least a day or two, just to go to Curious Kumquat. Say it ain't so, gfron. Or at least, say if it is so, it will be well after the first of the year. Or at least, say if it is so, and it's before the first of the year, you're coming to Houston. That would work, too.

Like most dishes, refried beans made "from scratch" using good, fresh ingredients are superior to refried beans made with instant rehydrated products. That said, I do know for a fact that a great many Mexican restaurants do use some of the assorted brands of instant beans. And I've eaten them myself fairly often. My father loved to take his motorcoach off on adventures and when he got too old to safely do that by himself, we kids would take turns going with him. He loved Mexican food, and refried beans (especially molletes with beans and avocados for breakfast), and packets of the powder were the easiest thing to take with us, and to cook, by far. The truth is that, given what they are, they're not bad - especially when you dress them up with some salsa, butter, cheese, pico, sour cream, what-have-you. They're certainly good enough for things like bean dip, nachos, molletes, etc. And it's handy to keep a couple packages in your pantry for last-minute dinners when you simply do not have the time to make refried beans from scratch which, let's face it, does take some advance planning. I think they're better than canned refried beans, which are a staple in many kitchens. If you don't want the vegetarian and/or low-fat option, you can reconstitute them using chicken or beef broth, or even stir in a little lard or chopped bacon or chorizo or whatever. , There are quite a few brands. You can go online and read reviews, but, especially since my dad had health issues, he preferred this non-fat vegetarian brand: http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Fe-Bean-Vegetarian-7-25-Ounce/dp/B000FICDO8/ref=pd_sim_325_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CCQW7XKADV29SVX8WNN&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR111%2C160_ ​ ​

I love pumpkin bread, muffins, cookies, etc., as much as anyone. But my eyes really light up at the thought of such desserts as pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin flan, and this wonderful treat, that I often prepare for Thanksgiving dinners in lieu of the more typical pumpkin pie: Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie Crust: 1 Pkg cinnamon crisp graham crackers 1/3 C melted butter Grind crackers into crumbs. Mix with butter and press into a deep pie dish. Soften 1 qt best-quality vanilla ice cream. Snip ½ jar (the size of McCormick spices) candied, crystallized ginger into small pieces. Combine ginger and vanilla ice cream and pour into crust and freeze. Combine 1 C canned pumpkin, 1 C sugar, 1/8 tsp salt, ¼ t powdered ginger, 1 t ground cinnamon. Mix well. Whip 1 C cream to soft peaks. Gently fold whipped cream into pumpkin mix. Pour over frozen ice cream. Dust top with pumpkin pie spice. Freeze until firm. ​

Here's a little something I found pretty interesting... As a great many of you are probably aware, there's been a recent "cucumber recall," with cucumbers from a particular company, "Limited Edition," being contaminated with salmonella. But what really caught my notice is that, when you read down the list of stores that were carrying these exact same cucumbers, you come across both WalMart and Whole Foods: http://kfor.com/2015/09/04/cucumbers-sold-at-walmart-whole-foods-recalled-for-salmonella-risk/ What do you guess the cucumbers were selling for at each store? Doesn't make Whole Foods look so special.

This is really pretty-much my whole world right now. I babysit my daughter's four kids, ages 7, 5 1/2, 4, and 2 1/2. They're all in school - from first grade down to preschool. They all need breakfast, snacks, and lunches. My daugher and her husband work stressful jobs, fulltime, so life is kind of a madhouse - a wonderful whirlwind of a madhouse - but a madhouse just the same. When daugher had her first child, she was all about no commercially-prepared foods. She nursed that baby for about a year, and then it was only organic, homemade baby food, preferably from her garden. Needless to say, she's over all that now. I doubt that, with only one to take care of, you'll need to embrace all of her tips, methods, shortcuts, but a few of them might help you out. First - she always has a nice supply of dry cereal. She definitely avoids the highest-sugar brands, but does buy cereal that the kids will eat dry (Kashi Squares, Frosted Shredded Wheat, Honey Nut Cheerios), and puts them into those small "snack size" plastic bags. They're always available so she can grab a few at a moment's notice. At breakfast time, the littlest kids will sometimes just get a handful of that cereal along with fresh fruit that they eat with their hands, and a glass of milk. The oldest child can manage to eat cereal with the milk and a spoon, without getting it all down her front, so that's what she gets. Sometimes on the weekends, my daughter will make up a big batch of oatmeal, or cream of rice, or cream of wheat, and put it into the fridge. Then on busy weekday mornings, it's ladled into individual bowls and heated in the microwave. For the littlest ones, she stirs in enough milk so that it's the consistency of mashed potatoes, making it easy for them to eat with a spoon. There is always fresh fruit, and either juice or more milk to drink. Sometimes on Sundays she also will scramble up a bunch of eggs. It keeps just fine in the fridge for several days. So during the week, it's easy to get some flour tortillas, put in a little bit of the scrambled eggs, a dash of mild salsa, and some grated cheddar cheese. Maybe a little leftover ham or chorizo if they have it. And into the microwave for breakfast burritos. She also makes her own breakfast bars, following several favorite recipes, but reducing the sugar. If the family is running really late, too late to eat breakfast at the table, then it's "Into the car, kids" and they eat their breakfast bars on the way to school. She also buys breakfast, granola, etc., bars as a backup. In addition to the dry cereal which doubles as snacks, she buys an assortment of healthy snack-type things, like those vegetable things that look like pastel-colored French fries, dried apple crisps, other kinds of dried fruit, edamame, etc. She buys them in bulk, but then fills up those little snack bags and has them ready to grab and go. Definitely often includes cheese - those cheese sticks, or cheese slices, or cubed cheddar, Munster, whatever she has on hand. She also often sends raw vegetable crudités - baby carrots, celery sticks, broccoli, etc., which the kids really like eating with what they call "white sauce," which really is, of course, ranch dressing. And she tosses apple slices with lemon juice to keep them from browning, and sends them with peanut butter (it's not banned at any of their schools). She orders both the ranch dressing and the peanut butter in handy single serving cups. Like this: http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Valley-Ranch-Single-Cups/dp/B00WGUWEJW/ref=sr_1_9?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1441487848&sr=1-9&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A5872339011 And this: http://www.amazon.com/Jif-Creamy-Peanut-Butter-cups/dp/B00C6VNWTC/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1441487944&sr=1-1&keywords=individual+peanut+butter+cups She has an assortment of lunch containers and lunch is often leftovers from last night's dinner. She saves those 'plastic knife, fork, spoon, napkin' packets that come with takeout orders and puts those into the lunchboxes. She also buys plastic forks that she sends along with the lunches when she doesn't have any takeout packets. She doesn't worry about things like heating up last night's spaghetti, or rice and chicken, or mac & cheese, or whatever. The kids seem to eat it just fine at room temperature. Overall, I'd probably echo Heidi's suggestion not to overthink this. You're setting out on one of life's greatest adventures. So have fun with it. And I'm sure you, and he, will do just fine.

Well, I do need to warn you that, like all experiments, some were more successful than others.

"...just mayo"? Heresy, gfweb. Heresy.

You know, growing up, one seldom realizes exactly how your regular childish life is going to influence you in later years. Now I know how grateful I am not to have been enlisted early on in the mayonnaise wars. Our fridge was a "everyone's welcome" mayonnaise zone. My father, about whom I've written previously, was an inventive and imaginative food explorer. Having spent considerable time as a youth in the kitchen of his mother's restaurant, he turned up his nose at very little. And when, in later years, his job took him around the world, he saw as one of the greatest benefits of this travel the opportunity to investigate and bring home all manner of exotic foodstuffs. Easiest to transport were the herbs and spices he found in such exotic locales as Tunis, Morroco, Thailand, Saigon, etc. And the simplest thing to do with this cornucopia of tastes and aromas was to stir them into the mayonnaises he loved to make. It was easy then to spread them onto an assortment of chicken breasts, fish fillets, breads, crackers - even the occasional weiner that we kids liked cooking over the flames of our gas stove. So, in our fridge at any given time, there was an assortment of various mayos and spreads: Dad's latest concoctions, whatever was on sale that my thrifty mother bought (often Kraft), and which brands could be purchased in whichever region we were currently living (Have I mentioned that I have moved over 50 times in my life? At least half of those before I left home for college?). Regardless as to which mayonnaise you may have loved and found to be superior in every way, most certainly including morally, when you lived back in Wherever, now you find yourself in Germany, Alaska, Panama, Philippines, Kansas, Florida, New York, California...the list goes on and on and on ad infinitum. We did do the Best Foods/Hellman's regional thing, even though a great many folks, including us, do not believe they are identical. In fact, if you read this whole article you will see that in a recent taste test, only 16% of these particular "food editors" detected no difference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/hellmanns-vs-best-foods-mayo_n_1263492.html In addition to the eclectic assortment of mayonnaises in our fridge, there was always Miracle Whip. Invented during the pre-war days, it has less-than-half the calories of mayonnaise, which my chubby mother (God love her & I'm sure He did) thought was a good thing. And, besides, although it was certainly way too sweet for turkey sandwiches, and the tongue sandwiches that my father adored, every good Southern cook knows that the tang of Miracle Whip is perfect for the very best deviled eggs. So I had no idea until much later in life that one's choice of mayonnaise would engender such indignant vitriol and scorn. And I am still a bit flummoxed by that. I no longer have a lot of mayonnaises/spreads in my kitchen. I'm living by myself now, in a little bachelorette condo at the "Active Senior Retirement Resort" (although I'm basically the only "active" one I've seen). But I spend most of my time over at my daughter's house babysitting her four small children while she and her husband do battle in the workaday world. So I know what's in their fridge: Duke's Light, Blue Plate, Miracle Whip (always gotta be ready to whip up some deviled eggs in case company is coming)... And Hellman's. But not the Hellman's with which most of you are probably familiar. My daughter teaches Spanish. And we're living in Texas now. So we're in the midst of a pretty Latin/Hispanic environment. Of course our Hellman's is this one: http://www.hellmanns.com/product/detail/97901/mayonnaise-with-lime ​ And the lesson I've taken from all this is this: Never mind not talking about politics and religion in polite company. The subject you should not, cannot, absolutely must not, ever, bring up is mayonnaise. .

There certainly was in our house. What my grandmother called "that ol' cotton bread" wasn't allowed in her house, or in ours. Our sandwich bread was Roman Meal. Anybody else remember that?

When my church does the communion cake thing, they use a recipe similar to conchas, panes dulces, but without the sweet topping. The texture is more bread-like than, say a Danish roll or yeast doughnut. They're easy to pass and pull apart without getting too many crumbs all over everything. I've never tried making them, so don't know the recipe and might be mistaken in thinking they're conchas, but you could check out recipes online and see if you think that would work: http://www.food.com/recipe/conchas-mexican-sweet-topped-buns-119586 ​

Your mom was light years ahead of my mom. At least certainly more ambitious. My mother saw no reason to buy frozen vegetables that might require effort and at least a modicum of actual cooking when folks like Del Monte so helpfully and thoughtfully cooked and canned them for you. Never saw a need to cook cuts of beef steaks that might require nuance and skill when you could pat out a hamburger patty and wrap a piece of bacon around it, secure it with a toothpick, cook the hell out of it in the skillet, and then top with a snazzy mushroom sauce; ie; Cream of Mushroom Soup. Or maybe go Italian; ie, Cream of Tomato Soup. We never got TV dinners. Way too fancy. And besides, I now recall, they weren't common until the mid-1950s, so it wouldn't have occurred to my mom to lay in a supply of them.

There are members here that don't like to cook and don't know how to cook. They hang out in the regional threads talking about restaurants and chefs and wine. Although I don't think there are so many of them here as there used to be. (At one point there was a pretty insufferable contingent of the "What do you mean you haven't been El Bulli yet!" crowd.)

Like to cook. My mom hated to cook. She had to when we were young because that's how it was. The meals she turned out were often so imaginative in their shortcuts that they make me laugh when I think about them today. Her idea of potato salad was, first, make instant mashed potatoes, then stir in some mayo, pickle relish, onion and chopped hard-boiled egg and serve immediately. We kids were the only people on the planet that thought all potato salad was warm and smooth. I think Mom's favorite thing about being Catholic was that she got to serve us fish sticks on Fridays and pretend it was because she was pious. Sloppy Joes were cut-up wieners simmered in bottled barbecue sauce and ladled over hamburger buns. But then came the weekend, and Dad took over the kitchen. He was a wonderful cook and loved it. Still does. Even now, at 94. He learned from his mother who was a legendary southern cook and, at one time, even owned a small hotel and restaurant at a place called Goose Creek, south of Houston, on Galveston Bay. As soon as Dad retired from work, Mom retired from cooking. And we were all the better for it.

I do, too. And I really like that, because it's Pyrex, I can put it in the microwave.

Amusingly enough, here's an original ad for that bowl. Only $2.99. http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/26299041/

Thank God you cleared that up!

Thanks for getting back with us. That actually sounds pretty delightful, far more than many of the kitschier suggestions - like my Panic Cake. Which, after thinking about the recipe to which I linked above, I now realize wasn't the best choice as an example. I do realize that it's unlikely anybody here would try to make it based on that link but can't help wanting to clarify and correct. Couldn't find my original recipe, and decided that, since it was so easy and ubiquitous during those decades, such a thing as a "recipe" probably never existed. So I called my son, who asked his eight-year-old daughter, who still makes it all the time, exactly what she does. For starters, that recipe to which I linked calls for more sugar. You're using canned fruit pie filling, which has sugar. And a cake mix, which has sugar. You definitely don't need to add any more sugar. Like I said, I realize it's unlikely anyone will try this but, just in case: Panic Cake 1 can fruit pie filling 1 box cake mix 1 stick butter or margarine Lightly grease an 8x8 baking pan (we always used Pyrex). Pour in the fruit pie filling. Sprinkle the cake mix over, evenly. Dot with butter. Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes. You can add pecans but since our family makes this at events with lots of kids, we leave out the nuts. White cake mix with cherry pie filling is the classic, but it's also good with white cake and blueberry pie filling. And spice cake with apples. Very retro. Haven't had anyone outside of our family serve it to me in several decades, but within our family, it shows up fairly routinely. It's kind of like a quickie fruit cobbler. And now, back to this century...

We called it "Panic" and made it a lot for family gatherings, primarily because it was so easy that my kids could make it. We did serve it with ice cream (never Cool Whip - I hate that stuff). As my children reached their teen years, they liked experimenting with flavor combinations. I remember spice cake with apple pie filling being a particular favorite. All three of my kids are grown now with families of their own and they still make it. http://www.cooks.com/recipe/3q1qe9sy/panic-cake.html (Not sure why this recipe seems to be doubled.)

Probably shouldn't answer for other people but I can't help but feel that most folks agree with this. I know I do. Within reason. But we are not talking about that. We are talking forty minutes of disruption. That is some people's whole meal. At some point, the responsibility shifts to the parents. I think I'll save at least a little bit of my sympathy for a single mother working as a waitress whose tips might have been negatively impacted from irritated patrons leaving early.

I met a rude Canadian. Once. Long ago. Although, come to think of it, maybe she was French.

We know that "calm speech" didn't get through because the owner clearly states that she spoke with the parents several times, and they did nothing. Inexcusable.