Lady T

Ahh, memories: 2:30 a.m. quesadillas...corn tortillas in a Pyrex baking dish (ease of cleaning; also works on baking parchment on a cookie sheet), under layers of semihot salsa, any two or three cut-up vegetables in the 'fridge that don't actively try to get away, and finally a blanket of shredded pepper jack cheese, tossed with finely chopped parsley, all to be baked about twenty minutes at 375 degrees F. Goes down superbly with cheap prosecco.

Tell me this: does this newfangled electric-chair method cause the lobster to retain less water than the throw-'em-into-boiling-salted-water method? I'd very much enjoy not having to drain the critters before dismantling them, sitting down with the melted butter and cut-up lemon, and having supper. Also: is this device foolproof? I am seriously not interested in reaching into the water to retrieve the dear cooked beast and getting electrocuted myself. Fact check: does this item do nothing but kill the creature, with cooking to follow? Or can it be set to cook, following the mercy killing?

And you are, of course, going to visit all 13 and report back to us. Yes? Enjoy!

Fairly asked -- and you see it correctly as a non-conundrum. To an economist's question, an economist's answer: Three words at the beginning of your question define my entire answer: if the foodstuffs are truly "of identical quality," then I absolutely will use the lower-priced private-label product. I want *value,* not defined simply by price but starting with the delicious quality this purchase will bring to my menu in my home. If I can make my choice with that purchase to obtain equal quality at a better price (for me) from local/private labels, I gain -- and I influence, infinitesimally, the entire retail chain working back from me and my purchases at the register. I have set up, in a very small way, the beginnings of a competition for my business based on *value,* -- but with quality as a defining factor, not price or prestige. Does this help to define my response? (Edited for greater clarity.)

Welcome, LindsayAnn! Italian ices can be found in the Taylor Street neighborhood, just west of downtown near the University of Illinois campus. Particularly wonderful on warm days. Enjoy. Always glad to see another Chicagoan on the board!

H'm. This isn't as easily parsed out as I first thought it would be. Things that look like ethics/values decisions from inside my own skin could very well look to others like decisions that are based on classist or elitist thinking. I am a foodie, absolutely. You'd have to call me a 'tastes-goodist,' I suppose; I plan my meals according to economy and nutritional needs, as anyone does, but I also demand of myself that I prepare these meals from the best quality ingredients available to me, to the highest standard my skills allow. If it doesn't taste good, though, the meal's a dud and I won't cook it or dish it up (whatever it is) that way again. That may mean that I shop at a Hispanic market, to get corn tortillas made earlier that day and first-rate dried chiles. Or it may mean turning over nine bunches of flatleaf parsley at Dominick's to get to the nice crisp healthy droop-free tenth bunch that will last four or five days standing in water in my fridge. It might mean running an entire chain of errands to four or five or six places to get the things in which those places specialize, instead of buying second- or third-rate everything from one supermarket because that's "efficient." It may mean that I buy 'fair trade' coffee, because I want small, high-quality coffee growers at the other end of the food chain to stay in business. It might mean spending a chunk per week at Whole Paycheck to get organically-grown produce, because I want merchants to hear me voting for quality with my hard-earned dollars. I think it likely that anybody on this site is going to understand this kind of thinking...but I can see, just as readily, that a stranger who looks at my errand itinerary or my produce bills might very well think I'm some kind of snob. Or wastrel. Or maybe just nuts.

What are her tastes in restaurants, boychick? It's maybe not too soon to learn how well she tips -- or not -- and how kindly and gently she treats waitfolk and sommeliers! Best to know now how she handles oblivious service and substandard food, too...not that you'd take her anywhere like that deliberately, of course!

God of wisdom: don't anyone tell Fresser about sour cream, strawberries (the real gorgeously-ripe thing, from an honest farmer's market, not them half-wooden pretenders in the supermarkets!), and brown sugar! We'd have to tie the man down...

I believe we'll have to. PM and we'll coordinate, yes?

I fall back on the give-or-take twenty recipes that I. Can't. Screw. Up, the ones I can prepare (and have in fact prepared) in my sleep/dead drunk/on my back in bed with double pneumonia/in the middle of concert week with the laundry still undone. I do simple stuff -- and yes, I know: under normal circumstances, roast chicken *is* simple. This, however, is for when the Angel of Cuisine ain't looking out for you: Quesadillas. Bowl of clean green seedless grapes. Wine of choice. Potato/leek soup. Freshly baked bread, yours or the local bakery's. Salad. Wine of choice: I've been mainlining Oregon Pinot Noir with this menu. Fish-of-the-week-on-sale, baked in white wine with butter and parsley. Serve with baked potatoes, steamed green veg (the asparagus is good at my local market this week), and champagne/cava/prosecco/sparkling wine of choice. Chocolate is prescribed for all food-preparation-related distress, as we all know.

Remember to pack some good sausage to go with. Or serious cheese.

Treasure Island. Sunset Foods (by special order, I believe). Whole Foods (likewise? Never tried it yet. Never had to before.). Convito Italiano, oddly enough. Anyone know of others?

Doubt it, actually: the Boys from the West Side probably will be too busy cornering the regional markets in fine champagne, cognac, and good unsalted butter -- to be ready for the Foodiban's next probable campaigns. (Edited to add free range organic chicken and veal.)

There are, to make the point more local and more specific, people in the 49th Ward in Chicago (whose alderman is Joe Moore, the sponsor of this amazingly stupid ordinance) who don't live as well as poultry raised for foie. He'd have more time to help them if he wasn't so frappin' busy legislating the diets of Chicagoans not in his ward. On moral grounds, no less. End of dangerously political rant. Pfeh.

I would guess that the difference in flavor and texture between livers from birds that have and haven't been gavaged would be plenty apparent to anybody with a palate. I do not generally include Chicago's foodservice inspectors in that category, however. Their primary imperatives have to do with sanitation and, to a lesser degree, worker safety, and there aren't enough of them to say with a straight face that those jobs are effectively done at this time. And now the inspectors who are accustomed, for the sake of public health, to watch out for cockroaches, mouse pellets, stale-dated dry goods, and unwashed hands are going to go on bootleg liver patrol? What kind of raises do they get for this addition to the job description? Who's going to train them? How?!? Angry as I am that the City Council is making our city a laughingstock over this, I intend to be one of the ones leading the laughter -- because major public ridicule is the one thing (beyond the Mayor's known opposition) that will turn the Council around. Don't call City Hall. Call Second City.

Leave it to our City Council. In other cities, they might regulate a food product because it might not be good for the residents (and no, I'm not going to get into a diversion about the nutritional profile of foie)...but today, in Chicago, they banned one because it wasn't good for the birds from which the product is made. I say again: bloody damnfoolishness. What a pile of...ahem. Pellets.

Bloody damnfoolishness.

One hour, 56 minutes: Big purring furry surprise...the pretty blonde who made apple crisp gets the goods. Whatever they are. Was there actually a prize? At least there isn't an audience screaming nonstop on my screen any more. <Sigh.> Maybe I'll go to the NBC website later and have a look at the recipes. Might be something worth considering there; none of the dishes this week have been beyond a reasonably talented home chef's capacities, absent the 50-minute limit. *Rises to finish preparing supper. Law & Order: CI is a repeat, so I won't miss anything.* Exit Lady T, with a snort. Of good champagne.

One hour, 45 minutes: Three chefs, nine dishes, all looking really quite creditable. Hype be damned: Puck's stuff looks awfully good. Cat's menu is certainly comfort-food-central, though. Cool exhibition overall. We await -- at long stupid tedious last -- the announcement of the winners.

One hour, 24 minutes: Interesting to see that the chefs do in fact have chops. Cat Whatserface handles a pasta machine well, and she also appears to give good saute for the squash blossoms. Haven't seen a damn thing Puck's doing. Are they keeping the cameras off him for a reason? Maybe he truly *is* a tired old whore. I am extremely tired of watching half the dishes in the place get flambeed. As to my own supper: second glass of champagne in progress; garlic is slivered, pasta is out, also S + P + butter + parmesan for last-minute mounting; herbs out for chopping to go into sauce at next commercial. Asparagus ready to wash and cut to go into saute. Edited to add ingredient and opinion.

One hour, ten minutes: All three chefs buckling down. Decent-looking menus all round; only 40 minutes to nail 'em. Did Puck *have* to throw the fish's head into the crowd? Ewwww. I like Armstrong's knife work. He multitasks well too.

Second hour begins: I am beginning to hate Alan Thicke with a deep and abiding ferocity. I am severely tired of Cindy Margolis' frontage. I want to burn Gael Greene's hats. All of them.

45 minutes in: Plating/presentation in progress on the screen: judging to commence shortly, apparently. The Miss USA candidate has produced something I might actually be interested in eating: the soba-noodle dish. I am extravagantly tired of the screaming crowd.

28 minutes in: The first glass of champagne is going down really well -- and really fast -- with the smoked trout on toast. I'm eating better than anybody else on this show will. Has the blonde model ever heard of hair restraint in the kitchen?

Mother kiss me on the shingle -- I just checked the NBC schedule, and the final double episode IS tonight. My TV Guide had all that listed yesterday. [snark]Hot damn: I haven't missed a chance to participate in our culture's most recent trend after all! [/snark] Excellent. My entertainment for tonight is assured! I'm breaking out a bottle and doing a champagne drunk to accompany this <gag> work of art.