SuzySushi

Since my husband and now my daughter have diabetes, we tend to travel with everything but the kitchen sink! For plane travel, it's meal bars, bread, crackers, hard cheese, dried fruit, chocolate, juice packs (frozen, to double as an icepack), on-the-go packs of Crystal Light mix, individual aseptic boxes of milk, and water in our carry-ons. In addition, I'll put a few packages of vacuum-packed udon into our checked luggage. Depending on where we're planning to stay, I may pack coffee (and coffee filters and a single-cup plastic filter holder) and tea as well -- not if we know we're going to be in reasonable distance of a gourmet market, however! For car travel, it's all of the above, plus stuff we buy on the road, kept in the trunk of our rental car: cans of tuna, fruit, and vegetables ("for emergencies"), more cheese and bread kept in our room, and fresh fruit bought during the day. For long stays in rental apartments in France, we've packed soy sauce and short grain sushi rice -- not any more, though, because we now know where to get them there.

According to epicurious.com, "marinara sauce" is Marinière, the French equivalent of "mariner's style" Lending credence to the theory that tomato-based marinara sauce is an Italian-American invention, in The Dictionary of American Food & Drink, John Mariani calls marinara He says the first printed American reference was in 1948, and provides a recipe using olive oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, oregano, and parsley--the latter presumably dried since the recipe calls for only 1/4 teaspoon.[Edited for typo]

Both flavors and texture! The ikura tasted like ikura, and the soba tasted like soba. The ikura didn't stay on the soba very well when picking them up with chopsticks, so what I ended up putting in my mouth was mostly cold soba with a few ikura eggs, then a bite of the ikura separately. Warm rice is far stickier than cold soba!

I've never even seen kinkan and had to Google for a picture. Got to keep a lookout in the greenmarkets and Chinatown... Do they have a season?

Well, after all that build-up, a real let-down. Came dinnertime, I was engrossed in other things... such as work, restoring my husband's computer from a crash, and my daughter's possible concussion (she got hit in the head by a tree limb)... so took the easy way out by making tried & true soba and topping it with the ikura and slivered nori. Served with fresh asparagus. It looked colorful and gorgeous (sorry, no pictures), but the flavors, well, didn't meld. There was no "aHA" moment. Next time I'll go for the gold with an ikura donburi, blini, potato pancakes (not enough potatoes in the house today), or even try the pizza. Thanks for all the great ideas, though, guys!

Hmmm.... I'm getting an idea here. How about if I combined Japanese, Italian, and Russian themes by using pasta made of buckwheat flour -- i.e., soba? I don't have any shiso available (the market was out of it yesterday), but I could certainly add slivers of nori.

Great ideas! Thanks! Yes, it is the salted ikura (not fresh roe still in its sac). Kris, that pizza looks fabulous! At what point do you add the ikura? (I would imagine at the very end, so the eggs aren't cooked.) Hmmnnn.... now which to choose!

Okay, so my husband came back from the Japanese market yesterday with a lot of fish. We gorged ourselves on sashimi for dinner last night, but are still left with a surfeit of ikura (salmon roe). How best to use it tonight? It's just the two of us, plus our 9 year old if she'll deign to eat a few "pearls." I'm tired of rice, so don't want to do nigiri or chirashi-zushi, and it's too much to simply use as a garnish. Blini with Ikura? Fettuccine? Other main course ideas?

Thanks for reviving this thread, which I hadn't noticed before! Of the packaged brands that are readily available here, hands down it's LU "Little Schoolboys" (Le Petit Ecolier), especially their Extra Dark chocolate ones. Of the ones that are not readily available here, Jaffa Cakes or Pims (what used to be called Pims, anyway -- Jaffa Cakes under a different name). Walkers Shortbread ain't bad, either! Edited to add: Wal-Mart (gasp!) also markets a really cheap ($1.00 a box) knock-off of Nabisco's SmartWell's Devil's Food cookies -- the kind that have a cake interior with a chocolatey shell -- that are, to my palate, better than the original because they aren't quite as sweet. They remind me of the cookies I ate growing up. I also love the Bahlsen chocolate-covered soft gingerbread cookies that are available only at Christmas.

That's truly sad.

?? Where do you see "processed sugar" in the recipe I posted, unless you're calling Splenda sugar?

I never order spaghetti in a restaurant (except occasionally iat one local fast-food chain that's famous for it), because it's so inexpensive to make and I make it so much better at home.

Maggie -- I have nothing against substituting bananas or applesauce for sugar, but have a real problem in suggesting date puree for people who have diabetes because of its extremely high glycemic index. 1/4 cup of granulated sugar has 50 grams of carbohydrates and a glycemic index (GI) of 61. 1 medium banana (about 1/4 cup mashed) has 29 grams of carbs and a GI of 51. 1/4 cup of dates has 31 grams of carbs and a GI of 103, more than twice that of bananas! This information comes from a couple of sources, including carbohydrate-counter.org and carbs-information.com To everyone in general -- keeping the carbohydrate count down in sweets is especially important for kids with diabetes because the number of carbohydrates in a serving of frosted cake or a single can of soda (about 45 grams carbs) can equal their dietary allowance for a whole meal, without providing any nutrition.

Deep-fried foods. I can count on one hand the number of times I've deep-fried at home. I don't eat them frequently enough to "waste" all that oil. Also, tempura, which falls into the deep-fried category, but for another reason: the only way to have really good tempura is when it's fried just moments before eating, which means the cook is cooking while the guests are eating!

I live in Hawaii, where the weather is tropical year round. No difference between my "summer" and "winter" foods except for what's in season and what's not.

Okay, I found the recipe, passed along by an acquaintance. It's not as tasty as a "real" chocolate cake with sugar, but it'll work! Splenda Dutch Chocolate Cake 2 cups flour 3/4 cup non-fat dry milk 2 teaspoons baking powder 1-1/4 teaspoons baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa 1-1/2 cups Splenda granulated sugar substitute 3/4 cup applesauce 1 cup + 2 tablespoons whole milk 2 eggs + 2 egg whites 1 teaspoon vanilla Preheat oven to 350F. Mix together all dry ingredients. Add remaining ingredients. Mix with electric mixer on low speed until blended, then beat on high speed for 3 minutes or until color lightens. Pour into two greased and floured 8" round cake pans (I baked this as a sheet cake in one 9 x 13" pan). Bake. Let cool to room temperature before frosting and filling. Makes 16 servings. Nutrition Information per serving: 103 calories, 2g fat, 1g saturated fat, 30mg cholesterol, 210mg sodium, 18g carbohydrate, 5g protein. Exchanges: 1 starch. I didn't fill or frost the cake, but I have in my files the following recipe for a sugar-free frosting. I don't have the nutritional breakout. Cornstarch supposedly is metabilized more slowly than flour, and has less effect on blood sugar readings. I'd still suggest going easy on this! Sugar-Free "Powdered Sugar" Frosting 2 cups non-fat dry milk powder 2 cups cornstarch 1 cup Splenda granulated sugar substitute 2 to 3 tablespoons milk 1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon extract (optional) cocoa powder (optional) Combine powdered milk, cornstarch, and Splenda in a food processor or blender. Process until well blended and powdered. To make frosting, use the mixture as you would use confectioners' sugar, adding milk and extract and beating until smooth. Add cocoa powder to make chocolate frosting.

Hi Ursula, and welcome to eGullet! Yes, it's possible to bake sugar-free cakes, but what kinds of sugar substitutes do you have access to in Shanghai? I have some recipes that call for Splenda (sucralose -- which is the most stable sugar substitute to use in baking) and others that call for Equal -- aspartame -- and they're not always interchangeable. Both of those brands have websites with recipes (www.splenda.com and www.equal.com) that break out the carbohydrate counts. Also, the American Diabetes Association website has some cake and quick bread recipes (such as banana bread) that contain small amounts of sugar, but can be worked into a diabetic diet. Both my husband and my 9 year old daughter have diabetes, so I understand your problem. I baked a sugar-free chocolate cake for my daughter's last birthday but did not frost it (that's the hardest part). I'll post the recipe when I locate it in my files.

Have you seen a preview of Andrea Nguyen's book? I love the articles she's written.

Well, the popularity of Chufi's mouthwatering thread certainly bears witness to Dutch cuisine not being among the world's worst!

Hi, Pat, and welcome to eGullet! I love your blog (now bookmarked). "A bit ruff" is a hoot!

Idlewild -- I agree about being put off by buddy-buddy service. I once went to a new chain restaurant everyone was talking about (in Hawaii, we don't get a lot of national chains, so I was curious) and was horrified when the waiter pulled up an extra chair and sat down at my table to take the order. <<shudder>> I can't even recall the food. I've never been back.

Actually, to-the-penny retail pricing is not just for consumer psychology (where it is proven to work), but as a remnant of the cash-only days, to keep employees honest! They had to ring up the sale on the cash register in order to get the proper change, or else the customer would complain. They couldn't just pocket round dollar amounts.

Well, you don't need sweetener for the freezing process. The flavor would then depend on the natural sweetness of the fruit.

Here's a link to a sorbet recipe that uses Splenda. It suggests pureed melon or raspberries as the fruit, but I'm sure you could use others.

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