SuzySushi

So..... did anyone take her up on her offer?

I'm another one who wipes down the tops & rims of cans before opening them (with my unhygienic can opener -- but at least I know those germs are mine!). A former boyfriend of my sister's compulsively washed the outsides of all food cans and bottles before storing them in his refrigerator or pantry, which is one of the reasons he's "former."

One food professional I know developed an allergy to fish/shellfish after she'd written several cookbooks (ironically, one about fish). It threw her for a loop for a bit, but she bounced back by segueing into food industry consulting work (which doesn't require her to taste dishes, as she used to do as a cooking teacher/caterer), and she even came out with another cookbook last year.

My hubby told me that when he worked as a butcher there in the US, he had a fellow butcher who would pop pieces of raw beef into his mouth whenever he is chopping/slicing steak. He would cringe everytime he saw that. I, however, adore a bloody steak and raw beef. I have never eaten raw beef until I ate beef sashimi in korean restaurants. One time, we were dining in a korean BBQ place when my hubby's boss happened to be there at the same restaurant. He promptly sent over a platter of the tenderest pieces of raw beef that was meant to be eaten raw. I devoured the whole set. ← When I was growing up, we (my mom, my sister, and I) would always sample bits of raw ground beef when my mom was seasoning it for hamburgers or meatloaf. My mom had told us about steak tartare. Of course, that was in the days before all the e.coli incidents, and she always bought a piece of steak at a Kosher butcher shop and had it ground freshly (Kosher butchers don't use the hindquarters of the cow, so there was probably less chance of contamination).

The traditional Japanese way of cooking soba is to bring the water to a boil (like spaghetti, soba should be cooked in a large pot with lots of water), add the soba, return to the boil, add 1 cup cold water, return to the boil again, add 1 cup cold water again, return to the boil, and repeat if the soba is not done to your liking. (I test 1 noodle by breaking off a tip to make sure the core is not raw.) The process takes about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the brand and thickness of the soba. The reason for adding the cold water is to keep the pot from boiling over; I also think that it lowers the heat just enough for the soba to cook through without the outside getting gummy first. If your soba is falling apart, it may be an inferior brand. Check the ingredients label to make sure the first ingredient listed is buckwheat flour -- not wheat flour or yam flour.

Here ya go: Amazon.com List of Books for Picky Eaters. A friend of mine swears by Bread and Jam for Frances, and I (and my daughter) loved Gregory, the Terrible Eater.

Ah Leung, I echo others' sentiments in thanking you for your awesome volunteer work here, particularly the pictorials, while feeling a sense of dismay that you won't be as involved with the forum as before. I wish you well in your future endeavors, and hope you'll continue to contribute to eGullet as a "layperson."

Here ya go: Recipes for Hawaiian-style Pickled Mango and Green Mango Chutney.

I'm thinking that Vaseline would work, too -- and it's easier to slather on than vegetable oil.

Pam -- Check into the labeling laws in Canada. In the USA, products from small food processors can be exempt from nutritional labeling if the business has fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees and sells fewer than 100,000 units annually. Many specialty foods entrepreneurs use this exemption because it allows them to get a start without investing big bucks in product testing. Reference: http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/fo...l/newlabel.html

I'm sure the name must mean something else in Thai, but one of the leading exporters of processed foods from Thailand, including Chaokoh brand coconut milk and canned fruits, is Thep Padung Porn Coconut Co., Ltd. Online, they're now running the first three words of their company name together as one word.

Well, it depends. One of the fast-food sushi chains here makes a BLT handroll that's quite tasty -- bacon, leaf lettuce, and chopped fresh tomato. Tomato on its own or with fish I can't envision, though.

I can laugh in recognition because I, too, am surprised at how popular and beloved licorice is as a flavor in France (and Holland, too, if Chufi is to be believed). I first encountered it unexpectedly in a package of Mentos I bought, because I didn't recognize the French word for licorice (reglisse). Ptui!!! Yuck!!! What is that horrible taste??? It took me a while to identify because I never eat it here. Than I found out that many liquid medicines (such as cough syrup) are flavored with liquorice in France, just as we flavor them with cherry in the United States...

My husband and I are inveterate shoppers and check out stores both in small towns and suburbs whenever we travel. From a tabac/magazine store in a small town in Bretagne (where we stayed at a tiny, now-closed, B&B because our friend who lives nearby breeds cats, to which I am allergic) comes my copy of La Bonne Cuisine Francaise. My brioche pan and fluted tart pan come from the hardware store just outside the Alsacian village where my husband's cousin lives.

Or maybe the whole chapter was an oversight...

You can still salvage those brownies! Cut off the burnt parts, turn them upside down, and frost them. Or cut them into bits and make brownie trifle (or individual brownie "sundaes") interspersed with pudding or whipped cream. Present the individual ones in clear plastic cups. I learned this trick from my own baking disasters, mostly involving cakes that were so soft that they fell apart when unmolding from the cake pan, and an Easter lamb cake whose head toppled off as the cake was being transported to its destination (judicious use of frosting and toothpicks remedied that one).

Beaune is one of my favorite small cities in France. Bookmarked the blog to read at leisure!

Here's an article from Crain's Chicago Business on how soaring milk prices are affecting Kraft, a major cheese producer.

Cooking with Soup, by The Campbell Soup Co. I inherited it. Honestly.

And I thought deep-fried Mars bars were bad enough!

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words!!! Yes, there is hope indeed! Our dinner was lovely. I forgot to bring the camera, but here are some earlier photos from the same restaurant: My daughter's favorite: pork satay. Crispy roast quail. Seafood hotpot, filled with shrimp, squid, fish, vegetables, and cellophane noodles. We didn't order this the other day -- instead we had "Naughty Princess Shrimp," a stir-fry of shrimp, bamboo shoots, and basil leaves in a coconut milk-based red curry. Sticky rice, served in a traditional steamer basket. We had enough food left over for another meal at home! Sanrensho: I quite agree a lot is about exposure and environment. But that's part of why my husband and I were so surprised our daughter's "white food" stage lasted as long as it did. Marc Olson: That is an interesting article. Except for occasional meals at chains like California Pizza Kitchen or Romano's Macaroni Grill, which do have kids' menus, we mostly dine at ethnic restaurants where we order my daughter's meal off the regular menu. In other restaurants, unless we're all sharing, one trick we sometimes use for smaller portions is to choose her food from the appetizers side. That worked well when we were traveling in the Napa & Sonoma Valleys last summer. I don't think we've ever gotten chicken nuggets except in McDonald's!

The wholesale price of milk is going up, supposedly because diversion of corn to ethanol production is causing the price of animal feed to increase. A long & convoluted way of saying, yes, it's due to rising gas/oil prices.

Sorry.... can't resist a little bragging here. I've been grinning from ear to ear all morning. When my daughter, now 10, was born, my husband and I vowed to expose her to all the good things in life, including a wide variety of foods. Our plan worked for the first two years, when she would contentedly chow down on penang curry. Then she went into a "white food" stage.... and stayed.... and stayed.... and stayed. White bread, white rice, spaghetti with nothing on it. She'd freak out if she spied a parsley flake in instant ramen. Nothing green..... ever..... and no foods touching on her plate. We quietly despaired. She's always been more adventuresome about "foreign" foods. Loves sushi and dim sum, and, surprisingly, squid. And over the past year, she's slowly been broadening her horizons, though she still won't touch a green vegetable. Fast-forward to today. She's being graduated from elementary school; tomorrow is her last day. Driving her to school this morning, I asked if there was somewhere special she'd like to go to celebrate (secretly thinking she'd choose.... not Chuck E. Cheese.... she's a little too old for that now.... but the next step up, Dave and Buster's). And with not a moment's hesitation, she replied, "I'd really like to have dinner at that Laotian restaurant...." Happy sigh..... it's not all been in vain, after all.

That's the standard response to quality control issues, but I once got a more personalized response from a frozen foods company after noticing that a package of food I'd just bought was TWO YEARS past its expiration date (I always check expiration dates on perishable foods before purchase, but didn't even think to look at frozen ones). An email to the company produced an immediate response asking me to save the package and name the store/address where it was purchased. A few days later, I got a phone call from the regional sales manager who was following up the entire supply->distributor->store chain to see how a package that old could've remained on the shelf. The company was quite concerned and I'm glad to see they took such responsive action. Makes me trust them all the more. (And of course they sent out coupons for free products.)

Here's a recipe for a carrot cake that uses 1-1/2 cups oil, and another for a pound cake that calls for 1 pound (2 cups) of butter. I'm not sure how well the applesauce would work as a substitute in pound cake, though.