Jaymes

I add a bit of the Mexican chocolate. It usually has cinnamon, so that's a bit of spice.

I can't help but be very curious about this. Why can't the Berkey water purifier "be sold in California"? It sounds like a terrific thing to have.

Actually, moderate to severe flooding almost always will "impact water supply." I'll quote myself from a previous "hurricane prep" thread: This is a lesson many New York residents are currently learning, as a great many of them are under "do not drink the water because it's contaminated" orders. I sure hope they heeded warnings to stock up on water, rather than giving any credence whatsoever to naysayers telling them it was not necessary and was, rather, alarmist overkill. After all, if it turns out you didn't need the water, what's the harm? Pour it down the sink. The other option is that all you have to drink is contaminated water because you weren't prudent enough to stock up. Which option seems most desirable to you? ETA: I hope all y'all Northeasterners use this thread to check in and let us know you're fine. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's worried.

Dan...you say that you "know there is a similar topic out there." No wonder it seems vaguely familiar to you, because you started that earlier one as well! Here So now I'm wondering...how did you get through that earlier storm? Any lessons you personally learned? Anything you're going to do differently this time around? Anything that turned out to be not particularly helpful and that you're not going to repeat?

Not an option on the 11th floor. Neither is a generator, or running an inverter from my (non-existent) car. Any chance that you have a fireplace? I know it's unlikely, but throughout the years, I have been in many apartments that do. We were without electricity for almost a month after an ice storm in the Midwest a couple of years back, and I felt just like a pioneer cooking in that fireplace.

And, before the storm hits, put a cup or small bowl of water into the freezer. Freeze it. Then, when it's hard, put a penny on top of the ice. You might be away when the power comes back on and, if everything in the freezer has thawed and refrozen, you shouldn't eat it. You'll be able to tell if your penny is still on top of the ice that the frozen things stayed frozen. Oh, and ps, it seems obvious but be sure that you've got a good non-electric can opener. It seems that every time we go through one of these things, I hear somebody say afterward that they either forgot they'd need one, or had one that they couldn't find, or had one that they did find but it was rusted and almost unusable.

I'll admit I have no real interest in making pho at home, due to the fact that I'm surrounded with excellent Vietnamese restaurants, all of which offer steaming bowls of pho, delicious and affordable. But, for what it's worth, if I did decide to try to make it myself at home, I'd probably start by doing some research into recipes/methods for traditional French pot au feu (like this one from A Bourdain: http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/Anthony+Bourdain%E2%80%99s+Les+Halles+Cookbook/Pot-au-Feu). After all, it was during the "Indochine" days of French occupation that the Vietnamese began their love affair with "feu/pho." They had to start somewhere, and I'm sure it all began with the traditional French methods. Just a suggestion...

A few years back, when my daughter and her husband moved to New Hampshire for a while, and I drove up through Vermont to visit them, I passed by a small country store selling, among other things, a nice selection of maple syrup, including this sampler: http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/store/jump/productDetail/Food_&_Candy/Food_&_Candy/Tastes_of_Vermont/Maple_Sampler_%28Box_of_Four_1.7_oz._Bottles%29/56749 Because I really love maple syrup, I figured I'd be buying a lot, so decided to buy the sampler and decide which grade I prefer. For me, it turns out that the darker and more flavorful the better. You might order the sampler and do a little taste testing yourself.

We very much prefer to put calamansi in our G&T instead of the more traditional lemons or limes. The flavor of calamansi is like a cross between an orange and lemon and lime. So so good that I can smell the aroma right now as I write this. I like it so much better that, when we're going for drinks, I often take a few calamansi from our trees with me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamondin

This would be particularly useful with those oatmeals which are coarse ground rather than mashed into flakes and which normally require overnight soaking and then slow cooking. The flavors in these oatmeals are way beyond the blandness of ordinary porridge oats.Edit: Here's a curious bit of information I picked up at the Oxford [Food] Symposium this weekend. Oats, unlike other grains, inhibit the absorption of dietary fat. At least one paper on the Scottish diet has suggested that the quantum leap in Scottish ill health related to massive fried food consumption has been caused by the fact that the Scots no longer start their day with porridge! I thought I remembered reading this somewhere, and have been looking for it. Excellent info. A current standard in our house whenever we have overnight guests is to get the Irish Steel-cut Oats going in the crockpot the night before so that we have a nice creamy breakfast all ready the next morning.

Reading back over this thread, I realized that I had never thanked you for that link to "Year of Slow Cooking." I have now made three recipes from the site, and find it a very valuable resource. Thanks so much for taking the time to direct me there!

I'll agree with you about the Kraft Mac & Cheese (although honestly, I was never a fan, not even as a kid), but I'll strongly disagree about the grilled cheese sandwich. When properly made, they were, and are, and will always remain, ambrosial.

My dad loves fried mush, and I make it for him fairly often. It's darn tasty. I'm thinking if your dad didn't like it, the reason was probably more the former than the latter. It's not difficult, but it definitely has to be cooked and (most important) seasoned properly.

I usually start my beans in chicken broth, which has salt. They always turn out great.

I've belonged to several "birthday clubs" for grownups at various locales where I've lived. I think the best one had about 20 or so members, most of them couples, but a few singles as well. We went out for dinner once every month during which a member had a birthday. The birthday boy or girl got to select the restaurant. If there was more than one birthday celebrant that month, they either drew straws to decide who got to pick, or they'd take turns, as in, "You got to pick last year." No presents were allowed, but funny cards were mandatory. The birthday boy/girl read the cards out loud, with much hooting and hollering and assorted other input from the peanut gallery. It was really great, great fun. Another birthday club requested gag gifts for the celebrants, but it had to be cheap. That was so much fun, as well. I haven't been to an adult birthday party in a very long while wherein the grownup birthday man/woman actually expected, or received, any gifts. Seems in pretty bad taste. Unless it's some sort of landmark birthday. We had quite a celebration when my dad turned 90. And everybody managed to come up with some sort of appropriate present, but they ran toward the sentimental - photo albums, favorite WWII music cd's - that sort of thing.

I've noticed throughout the years that a great many people select a holiday or event that they particularly like, or have some sort of affinity for or connection to, and make it theirs. Several friends have latched on to Halloween. One friend loved July 4th and had a big blowout every year. Lots of folks have St. Patty's Day parties. One couple from Kentucky went all out at Derby Day, complete with a parimutuel betting board. An advantage to this is that you can add various decorative items and accessories throughout the year and really do it up spectacularly if you're only buying/planning/storing party stuff for one event. Not only did the Derby Day couple make a large betting board for everyone to place their bets, they also had a life-size poster showing the winning circle from a previous race, where the guests could go stand and take a photo. The mint juleps were served in traditional silver glasses, and there was even a selection of appropriate attire if you forgot yours (floppy hats for the ladies; wild spring plaid jackets and bow ties for the men) that they had picked up at second-hand shops and thrift stores through the years.

Of course, the main thing about a tradition is that it really needs others. I mean, it can be your tradition to scarf down a half-pound of brie every Saturday night that you don't have a date or anything else to do and you're stuck by yourself, but that doesn't really capture the special magic of a beloved tradition. You say several times that you have a circle of friends that get together. If I were you, I'd start by asking them if they have any traditions from home that they miss. Maybe that would be something you could start, and even eventually incorporate as your own by adding a few updates or twists. Even if that doesn't happen, I'm sure the friend would appreciate the effort. I know pot lucks don't get a lot of love around here, but I think it might be fun for you to invite your mates over for a pot luck on a Sunday afternoon and tell them that they need to bring one dish that was traditional in the home where they grew up. These "beer and barbecue" guys will probably have to get on the phone with dear old mum and come up with recipes and try to recreate them. I have no doubt that the quality of the food might likely be, um, well, "uneven," but it could make for high merriment and much laughter and a discussion of traditions, some remembered with fondness and some better left behind, that could help you get a start. Traditions were critically important to me when I was raising my three kids. Due to my husband's job, we moved around a lot, and I mean a whole lot, like every two years or so, we were off to a new locale. I knew my kids would never have the kinds of childhood memories that ground kids that stay in one place... No "hometown," no "house we grew up in," no "that's where my best friend lived." None of that at all. So I tried to come up with strong family traditions and stick to them slavishly, so at least they'd have some constants in their lives. When I was a child, my own family had lots of strong traditions, most of which I tried to continue. But when I think back to any traditions I was a part of in my single life, I can only come up with one. I lived for a time in Omaha, during the folk music craze (and my "folk chick" phase). I waited tables at a coffee house that featured live folk music, and it was kind of the social center for folk musicians passing through. Lots of unknowns performed there before they became famous, like Mama Cass, among many others. And when the famous ones, like Peter, Paul & Mary, gave big concerts at the downtown auditorium, they'd always stop by our coffee house and do a few sets afterwards. One folk music producer/agent and his wife lived in a big old house on Martha Street. Because Omaha is in the middle of the country, many touring musicians would stop for the night, or even a few days, and stay at that house. (In fact, I remember a standing joke from those days: "No matter where your next gig is, you go to Omaha and turn left.") There was always a jam session going on in the front room, and people crashing all over the house. The doors were never locked, and there were always extra blankets and pillows in the front closet, so regardless as to what time you arrived, if there wasn't a bed available, you could make yourself a pallet on the floor. The place began to be known as the Martha Street Mission. I lived there for a while during some of the wildest/craziest/happiest days of my young life and some of the best memories were of Sunday Soup. The fellow that owned the Martha Street Mission had a big, industrial-sized stew pot. Every Sunday, he'd get up and put some sort of meat into that pot. He'd saute hamburger, or ground pork, or cut up some kielbasas, or throw in a couple pounds of pork chops, or start a chuck roast or some chickens to simmering, or something. The deal was anybody could come to Sunday Soup, but you had to bring in something to put into the pot. It could be a can of mixed vegetables, or stewed tomatoes, or a fresh onion or celery or green pepper or a few ears of corn, but something. And something to drink - beer, wine, Sangria, sodas, whatever. His wife made wonderful bread, so she'd make biscuits and rolls and loaves of bread, enough to feed the 20-60 people that would arrive. Sometimes the resulting soup was pretty bad, but mostly it was pretty good and sometimes it rose to fabulous. The only real rule for the guests, other than bringing something, was that you could not bitch or moan if it was bad, and especially not if you just didn't like the green peppers or mushrooms or onions or whatever else just happened to be in the soup that Sunday. You could eat or not, but no bitching or whining was allowed. Ah yes, the Martha Street Mission. And my youth. Both long gone now. But so many memories. .

And where can I buy Christine's book.

The older I get, the less-often I find things that are worthy of the time and energy it takes to get all wrapped around the axle. If BFMom hadn't been there, I probably would have done what others suggested and dumped the thing into the trash and made a lookalike. But as she was there, you had a great opportunity for an afternoon of unforgettably high merriment. My "strategy" in that circumstance, as soon as I saw how far along the path of disaster we had come, would have been to crack open a bottle of wine, or better yet, rum, or maybe gin, and whoop it up as the thing got worse and worse. And therefore funnier and funnier. You could have ended the afternoon with a "ta-dah!" type of photograph, showing all of the tipsy cooks. And the spectacularly tipsy cake. I did have such an evening, with such a recipe. It was a long time ago. It involved several dishes - one for chicken, and one for caramelized sweet potatoes flamed in brandy. The entire dinner was a spectacular flop. But fortunately, we were all well met friends of good cheer. So we just wound up drinking the brandy, getting sloshed, and going home.

I'm ready for this one. I always have some handy aids ready that I immediately press into service as the situation requires: serving dish, tupperware containers, aluminum foil. Them: "Oh, I'll just leave that because we've got to go home early and everybody is still eating it." Me: "I've got a serving dish right here that I can put it into so you can take your dish." Them: "Oh, I'll just leave that because I'm not sure how I'm going to get it home." Me: "I've got some foil right here, so I'll just cover it so you can take your dish." Them: "Oh, I'll just leave that because another guest said she'd like to take some home." Me: "I've got a tupperware container right here that we can put hers into so you can take your dish." Seriously, you just have to be fast on your feet to avoid getting stuck with the dish. And I'll admit that the few times during the years that I have been stuck with the dish, I just wash it and put it in my cabinet and wait for the owner to retrieve it. I'll call her once or twice, or maybe even three times, to remind her, but I'll do no more than that. I'm not going to track you down, or try to figure out when it's convenient for you for me to haul it over to your house. You brought it, you left it, it's your responsibility to come and get it if you want it. If years pass and you haven't, or if either you or I move away (and that's happened more than once), it's mine. I still have a lovely hand-painted Danish Christmas platter from fifteen years ago. Thanks, Jan, wherever you are. .

Usually I wait until our local grocer gets Seville Oranges in, and then I squeeze and freeze juice for pibil. I had never looked for bottled Naranja Agria juice, so maybe this is something everyone knew but me, but yesterday, while strolling through a local Mexican market, I discovered several brands, among them "Badia." Goya makes a "sour orange marinade," but I didn't check to see if there is anything added. Still, I was very glad to see that sour orange juice is a product that I can buy bottled. Who knew? Not me.

My Italian-American friends have always told me that when the immigrants first arrived in the US, they were working hard to learn the language and integrate into society. So they had to call pasta sauce something in English. Some groups chose "sauce" and some chose "gravy," pretty arbitrarily. Naturally, whichever name they chose to call it in English, they traditionally made big pots of it for the Sunday family dinners, and the names stuck.

I've just discovered the Cortas brand of jellies and jams. They're made in Lebanon. The apricot is the best I've ever had by far, with large pieces of apricot. Heavenly with cheese and crackers.

Such an interesting world. So many differences. So many preferences. Actually, the thing that you see as a drawback is a thing that I find gives me great enjoyment, and that's the fact that whatever was the original application for the chicken influences the stock made from its bones. So many times something I've made with the resulting stock was so very very good, and I try to replicate it, but can't, because it had the nuance from the original dish. The leftover turkey soup from a few Thanksgivings back was like that. Everybody kept asking me why I never made turkey soup that tasted exactly like that ever again. Well, it's because that year Uncle Vinnie had deep-fried a turkey that he had first injected with his special secret Cajun marinade. I dunno. Just part of what makes cooking and eating so intriguing. To me, anyway. I suppose if I ever want to be sure I have some "neutral blond" chicken stock, I can always make it, to have it available as well, but that still would never cause me to even consider tossing away chicken carcasses from other preps. What on earth possible negatives could come from having both a neutral blonde stock and an interesting brown stock on hand? Because I can't think of a single one. And I can think of many advantages.

Interesting subject. That's a mistake I made all too often way back when I was just a beginning cook. Figured if water was good, then something with flavor was better - stock, wine, milk, etc. It didn't take me too long to figure out that wasn't right. I tried making my mom's beef stew. She used water, but I thought beef stock would obviously be much better. And I'm sure there are plenty of folks that would tell me right now that beef stock is better for making beef stew. But mine was absolutely not as good as Mom's. It was good, but Mom's beef stew had a subtlety that mine didn't. In Mom's, you could also discern the flavor of the seasonings and vegetables - the carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, bay leaves, etc. - in addition to the beef. With mine, you got beef and that was about it. I didn't figure it out at first - just kept making it with beef stock. And although everyone else was happy with the results, I wasn't. I had to make it a great many times before I decided to try it with just water, and whatdayaknow... Perfect. I've got a great many recipes that are that way. You want a flavor other than a strong chicken or beef. I have a Mexican vegetable stew with potatoes, tomatoes, onions and green chiles. Had to make that only once with stock to realize I had screwed it up. Not to mention the obvious, of course, and that's cooking for vegetarians. Yep, sure can't do without good ol' water.