SuzySushi

Just out of curiosity, what kind of curry are they serving? A Japanese one made out of commercial roux? A southeast Asian curry? ← Asked my daughter. She says Japanese style curry -- mild, with a lot of sauce.

I don't know how good the school lunches are -- my daughter, the little gourmet -- complains the pizza crust is too soggy! -- but they sure are varied. Typical lunches last month included rotisserie chicken, beef & bean burrito, chicken teriyaki with stir-fried noodles, creole macaroni, and the latest menu addition, curry! (DD loves curry, but says some of the other kids won't touch it -- a lot of kids from military families are in her school, so they didn't grow up in a multicultural environment.) The school potlucks also tend to feature everything from the ubiquitous brownies and Spam musubi to stir-fried noodles, Vietnamese summer rolls, and fresh pineapple with li hing mui powder!

Oooh! Now I know what to get for my stepson for his birthday!!! For a party, a friend of his who is an entomologist once brought stir-fried mealworms and cricket cookies. The mealworms were crunchy; the cookies tasted like oatmeal-raisin (without the raisins). Interestingly, this woman is a vegetarian except for eating insects and eggs.

No such rules here, thank goodness. Hawaii's still queen of the potluck parties! Still waiting to hear if my daughter's class will be having an end-of-year class party (DD generally gives me 3 hours notice!) -- she's graduating from elementary school this year and they're taking them all to a banquet lunch at a restaurant on Tuesday.

Of course there's also the recent U.S. success of Dannon's Activia yogurt, with "Bifidus Regularis" to help "reduce long intestinal transit time." Over $100 million in sales in its first year of introduction! That says something about the new health concerns of the baby boom generation.

Well.... chocolate does come from a bean, as does coffee! (That's probably why scientific studies are discovering both are good for us.)

Okay, to cook a small quantity of rice, you need a small saucepan! I use a 1-quart saucepan. For short grain rice, add rice to the pan (3/4 cup or 1 cup is fine in this size pan). Add water and swish around with your hand to rinse the rice. Pour off the cloudy water, holding the rice with your hand to keep it from falling out of the pot. Repeat the process once or twice more, until the water runs clear. Add fresh water to about 3/4" above the level of the rice (the standard way to measure is 1 knuckle!). Bring to a fast boil, cover, and turn down heat to low. Cook 17 minutes, then let stand, covered, off the heat for 5 to 10 minutes longer before fluffing the rice to serve. For long grain rice, add the water (or broth) to the pan first and bring to a boil, then stir in the rice. Bring to a second boil, cover, turn down heat to low, and cook 15 to 20 minutes, until liquid is absorbed. The proportion is about 1-3/4 cups liquid to 1 cup rice. If there's too much liquid at the end, you can drain it off, or bring to a fast boil, uncovered, and boil off the excess liquid, making sure that the rice doesn't scorch at the bottom. (If your rice is both gummy and undercooked, it sounds like you're using too much water, and cooking it for too short a time or at too low a heat -- e.g., "keep warm" instead of "low.")

In the back of my mind, I recalled an announcement from a couple of years ago about someone in England trying to start a company making vegetable ice cream (to get kids to eat their veggies). Don't know if it's the same company, but a search brought up this: Fresh Daisy's Little Discoveries -- ice cream in Pear & Parsnip and Orange & Carrot flavors. The ice cream claims it's made from 50% fruit and vegetables and 50% cream, but doesn't say what percentage of the "fruit and vegetables" is actually vegetables.

I'm also thinking about Southeast Asian coconut milk-tapioca pudding, to which taro cubes, corn kernels, and tapioca (cassava starch) goodies are often added. I've also had Filipino corn maja blanca, a "white pudding" made from coconut milk with corn kernels added. Another distinct Filipino dessert/snack is Hopia, small turnovers filled with ube jam, sweetened mung beans, or even sweet caramelized onions.

Pumpkin anything -- pie, flan, cake, cookies, etc. I've made Middle Eastern candied pumpkin, and also somewhere in my files is a recipe for Middle Eastern candied eggplant. (Haven't tried the latter.... that, I suspect, is taking vegetables a little too far.) The Japanese and Koreans make a sweet soup from azuki beans, and I've had a Chinese sweet bean soup that was green (maybe from mung beans?). Sweetened azuki beans and lima beans are used as fillings in Japanese pastries; they have a consistency and taste similar to chestnut paste. Sweet potato pie. In the Philippines, ube (pronounced "ooo-bay"), a purple sweet potato, is used to make jam, cake fillings, cakes, and ice cream. In Hawaii, taro is used in sweet baked goods; for a while, McDonald's here even offered "taro pies"... made like their apple pie turnovers, but filled with sweetened taro cubes. In the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, corn kernels and avocado cubes (yes, the latter is a fruit, but in the West we treat it as a vegetable) are added to halo-halo and other iced beverages. Tapioca iced tea, which hails from Taiwan... and our own tapioca pudding come from a root vegetable.

It's a mixture of mayonnaise, Sriracha sauce (Asian chili sauce -- the most common brand is Huy Fong, made by a company in California, and has a green rooster on its plastic bottle), and a little tobiko (flying fish roe). No recipe: mix quantities to taste.

Ketchup on anything other thaqn french fries is wrong! ← Speaking of the great Philippine free-for-all... Ketchup is/can be put on burgers, fried fish, spring rolls, hot dogs, fried chicken, vienna sausages (scratch that-- ANY sausage), SPAM, ham, fried eggs, pork chops, meat loaf. Plus anything that touches a frying pan. My mom had a story about how ketchup was relatively new to them in the 60's when she was a child (I'm sure that can't be accurate, as it should have been introduced early in the century, during the American occupation). They enjoyed it so much that they ate it plain with rice. ← A lot of Japanese children like eating rice doused with ketchup. The older generation is horrified!

You were lucky.... when I was growing up, we had Minute Rice (We did have the real stuff once a week when we got take-out Chinese food on my mom's "day off" from cooking.) I currently use two standard kinds of rice: jasmine rice when I want separate grains, and Tamaki Gold koshikari rice for Japanese food and risottos. Occasionally I'll buy basmati, black rice, etc. for specific dishes, but I don't keep them around in 20-pound quantities!

Eggs are a very good medium in which to sneak in some vegetables: Quiche with vegetables. Scrambled eggs with vegetables. Breakfast casserole aka strata aka bread pudding with vegetables. And, does it have to be vegetables, or will fruit do? There's a strong American tradition of eating fruit at breakfast, from orange juice or half a grapefruit to sliced or dried fruit with hot or cold cereal.

No TJ Maxx or Marshall's here, but we do have Ross, where I sometimes find fancy condiments, teas, and chocolates. They rarely have the same brands twice -- I think they're overstocks. I also shop a local discount chain, PriceBusters, for Lazzaroni amaretti cookies in bags (instead of individually paper-wrapped) -- cheeeeeap!!!! -- Walkers shortbread, and Nutella (about half the price of supermarkets).

Beautiful! Thanks for posting!

Omedetou gozaimasu! Congratulations! Let us know if it gets posted to Youtube or some such.

I'd certainly like to know more about the math behind the measurements. But assuming this is a size-adjusted productivity index that's relatively sensible, it's interesting to see California at number 3. These are the top ten: State Rank in 1999 FL 1 GA 2 CA 3 WA 4 NC 5 AR 6 AZ 7 ID 8 IA 9 NE 10 I'm very surprised to see Arizona on there, so this measurement must include livestock, which I hadn't really been considering. Also interesting is that California was #1 in 1960 but fell to #3 by 1999. ← Other USDA data include livestock, eggs, and dairy products in production, so I wonder if this measurement does too. The tables weren't annotated as to definitions, which must be somewhere else. marketstel: Yes, I'm surprised that Alaska and Hawaii are not in the report! Hawaii has a lot of agriculture, which has moved from "export crops" like pineapple and sugar cane to more diversified small farms.

Here ya' go: USDA data on agricultural productivity in the United States. A slew of complex data tables, but according to Table 13, Total Productivity, it looks like Florida and Georgia are ahead of California (or at least they were in 1999, the most recent year for which full data is available). Without reading more deeply, I'm not sure what "total productivity" includes.

Nope. I don't wear aprons. The only one I still have is a dainty "tea apron" I made in fifth grade sewing class. I've never found Western aprons particularly practical because they don't cover the parts that seem to get splashed the most. I used to have a Japanese kappogi -- a kind of backwards sleeved smock that covers one's front from shoulders to hips -- but it disappeared years ago. Maybe I should buy this pattern and make some! I usually cook in an oversized T-shirt, then change into nicer clothes before guests arrive.

I'd agree with the advice given, plus ask some more questions of you (or add questions for you to ask of yourself): what is your ulterior motive for spending a year in France, besides eating well? Will you be working (in which case you need to find facilities that enable you to do your work)? Will you be using your home as a base from which to travel (you might want to choose a village that has greater access to major arteries or trains)? What do you want in the way of weather (the North is cold and damp in the winter; the Alps are snowy)? Are there particular aspects of food and/or wine that most interest you? (Go where they are.) I'd also suggest that you get this neat "Survival Handbook," Living and Working in France by David Hampshire. A lot of essential information there.

Yunnermeier: What an exciting blog! One of these years, I hope to make it to Malaysia and experience these culinary adventures for myself. For now, I've enjoyed them vicariously through your evocative writing and photos. (And thanks for the recipe... I've PM'ed you with a question about it.)

Yes, there seemed to be a great emphasis on prepackaged, quick fix meals. ← Since Food Technology (the magazine in which the article was published) targets developers of pacakged foods, that's only natural!

Add a little lime or lemon juice when you're making it. You shouldn't be keeping it several days, anyway; it should be eaten fresh.

I've had lots of good made-in-USA artisan & farmstead goat cheeses, and Rouge et Noir soft cheeses from the Marin French Cheese Co. have won a slew of awards at regional, national, and international competitions.