mizducky

I am convinced that pho may possibly be the ideal meal for weight management. Plus it's orders of magnitude tastier than one of those frozen "Mean Cuisine" (pun intended) meals. Okay, this is at least the second time The Bruce was mentioned, and now I'm curious. I tried Googling "The Bruce" and keep getting "Robert the Bruce" -- fun, but no help there! So what is this "Bruce" you speak of? And I've been served frybread, as-is and as Indian tacos, at gatherings in Seattle and in Northeast California (near Lassen Volcanic Park). Yeah, I got the vague impression they originated with the Navaho ... they've traveled far, and that's a very good thing as far as I'm concerned. I just hope Taco Bell doesn't find out and get inspired to do a bastardized form of them--that might be really scary.

This page lists a lot of the substitutions already mentioned in this topic, plus (I think) a couple not yet mentioned, along with helpful pictures and alternate names in a number of languages. I'd also suggest thinking about substituting various lettuces. We tend to think of lettuces mainly as raw--or at most wilted--components of salads, but cooked lettuces turn up in a number of cuisines (off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Italian escarole soup). I've never tried the following, but I'm wondering if Boston/bibb/butterhead lettuce might not make a good match for the texture of spinach.

Kerry, your little snapshot tales about island life are reminding me of a song done by a folk trio called "Women, Women & Song," hailing from Vashon Island (in Puget Sound, near Seattle). The lyrics of the song, entitled--what else?--"Island Life," concentrates on an apparent foible of the Vashon community, that all the residents seemed to be related to each other--if not by blood, then by marriage (and divorce, and marriage, and ... ) (Somewhat) more seriously: I too am digging the idea of an international potluck featuring wild game and sushi.

Wow, a lot of dietary fiber! You will be pleasantly surprised in the bathroom in about eight hours or so. As they say, kai-shoku kai-ben (eat well, evacuate well) ! ← Heh. Actually, that was sorta-kinda deliberate. I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit out of sorts from the weekend, and decided to make something that would help clear my system out. So to speak. Heck of a lot more interesting--not to mention tastier--way of doing it than eating prunes.

I had fun yesterday making up my own cross-cultural nabemono: Ingredients: shirataki, Chinese-style dried bean curd stick, dried shiitake, dried maitake, onion, garlic, ginger, carrot, kombu, and scallions, all in home-made dashi (my first try at making dashi from scratch, too). I seasoned it with a splash of Chinese dark soy sauce. Obviously, I could have spent a little more time neatening up the presentation, but what the hey. It came out pretty darned tasty if I do say so myself, and I will definitely be making this combination (or variants thereof) again.

Oh man, I so totally want to make a trip out there now. I'll definitely let you know if/when that should come to pass. Thanks for the great blog--and all the gorgeous photos.

Wow, I was reading about Manitoulin Island just the other day, totally at random! Maybe I had a premonition! I'll be looking forward to yet another virtual vacation to a place I have not yet had a chance to visit. Oh yeah--and a vicarious chocolate splurge.

Whoa--I had never heard of this style of barbecue before! Of course I immediately went looking for the previous topic here on eGullet, and also out on the web ... wow, that's fascinating. (And yummy sounding!) And the grill apparatus looks really cool too--real folk-arty. Next time I take a trip up the California coast, I am definitely going to hunt around in the Santa Maria area and see if I can score me some Q.

Yeah, I think you can say about all IKEA products, including the kitchen stuff, that you have to watch sharp for the quality/durability, which can vary. But a goodly amount of their stuff does hold up pretty darned well, and is often cleverly designed. And in addition to all that, I find I just like IKEA's design aesthetic. I think they must have me right in the crosshairs of their demographic-targetting machine. This one pan of theirs that I own is a typical example of their stuff. It's the one I call my "fake wok"--bowl-shaped pan, aluminum with non-stick inside and royal blue enamel outside, glass dome lid with plastic handle. It didn't cost much. You can tell it ain't built for the ages the second you pick it up. But it works quite well for what it is ... and since I've taken care not to abuse it, it's lasted a whole lot longer than I've had any right to expect. Plus it's kinda cute. So, hey, as long as you're not expecting the stuff to be Le Creuset, what the hey! It's fun and clever and serves its purpose.

Or even better, when you specifically go out and buy a digital camera in order to carry out an eGullet food blog. (Okay, I did own an old one before the blog, but it went pffffffft! the very first morning of the blog, so...)

Natural Selection Foods a.k.a. Earthbound Farms is apparently a huge outfit based here in California, that supplies organic produce under a whole constellation of brand names. Here is the notice about the spinach recall from Earthbound's website. Note the long list of brandnames--including some interesting and familiar ones. Here is a recently-posted AP wire article noting the pinpointing of Natural Selection. Re: inevitable questions about "organic" farming: I recall seeing articles go by in the newsletter for my local organic food co-op, expressing concern about the huge upsizing of "organic" farms such as Earthbound, questioning whether operations on that scale were still capable of taking the level of care necessary to provide healthy product. There was also some feeling that big outfits like Earthbound/Natural Selection, by packaging and shipping product across the country, were sort of going against the whole spirit of local, small farms supplying produce to their communities (though that's not an actual part of the definition of "organic," as such). Some accounts I've read or heard (on the radio) today speculate that the current practice of some large-scale farms of doing at least some of their processing right there in the fields, while making for greater efficiency, does raise the risk of contamination--for instance, from washing produce in the field with water cross-contaminated by run-off from nearby cattle farms. Note that scenarios like this are pure speculation at this point. But given that the current suspect is pre-washed pre-bagged spinach, rather than, say, fresh spinach (organic or otherwise) sold unwashed in bunches like many markets carry, the arrow does seem to be pointing to something somewhere in the processing chain, rather than in the growing methods.

So far, I have yet to see any form of konnyaku turn up in a mainstream (i.e. catering to non-Asians) supermarket, even in those stores' "ethnic foods" aisles. However, a number of the local Asian supermarkets here in San Diego carry several varieties all the time--especially 99 Ranch and Vien Dong markets. I do remember having a bit of fun trying to hunt the stuff down for the very first time, never having even seen it before other than in photos on the web. I asked a very helpful manager at 99 Ranch--he had decent English skills, but there was apparently still a bit of a language gap going on. I'm guessing that as a Chinese guy he wasn't so familiar with Japanese products; or else my pronunciation of the word "konnyaku" was way the heck off somehow. When I called it "yam cake," he guessed I meant Chinese style turnip cake--which I did buy and enjoy a lot, but I could tell immediately it was not the product I'd been looking for. Thankfully, on a later visit to 99 Ranch I did stumble upon their stock of konnyaku, in the same refrigerator case where they kept tofu, fresh noodles, pickled veggies, and other chilled products of that sort. (Edited for clarity)

(Hopefully) helpful word-geek sidebar: "Dead" in this context, I think, is a bit of slang hailing from Britain, meaning "very". As in: "I'm dead good at cooking omelettes." It's not, as far as I know, a specific terminology for a state of fruit ripeness. Carry on ... Edited to add: I have a market near me that does much the same thing with their almost-too-ripe produce. I simply buy the stuff when I'm planning to use it ASAP. Short of immediately cooking it, I know of no way to prevent it going all the way over the hill into uselessness.

And now I finally bothered to play that Sanjay Gupta video linked to on the CNN site, and Sanjay's saying to not even bother cooking the suspect bagged spinach let alone wash it, just throw it all out. (No info as to why cooking doesn't work on the spinach, or from whom he's getting the cooking-doesn't-help advisory.) Especially given that you have to sit through a damfool commercial in order to even get to that video clip, how many consumers are going to bother? It would have been a lot more helpful if they'd put that important info upfront and center in the text article.

Sigh. I find this article, like the previously linked one (both off the AP wire) to be sufficiently unclear as to only further confuse the public and add to the hysteria. They go to great lengths this time around to emphasize that washing suspect spinach won't remove the bug. Then later on they say that if consumers are worried about their other fresh produce, they should wash that--with no explanation in the article about why that works for the other produce when it doesn't work for spinach. (Plus, yeah, many a foodie is going to go "warm water? but I was taught to wash veggies in cold water!"). Plus you have to read on a ways to get the info that thorough cooking kills the bug--and it's in a paragraph about produce in general, possibly leading confused readers (like me) to go "okay, but does cooking kill the bug on the spinach? You just said washing doesn't remove the bug from spinach but recommend washing for other produce, so is spinach an exception to the cooking rule too? And what the hell does 'thorough cooking' mean, anyway? Five minutes? Five hours? What temperature?" If home canning directions were that vague, we'd have people dropping from botulism left and right. What especially irks me (as a writer for science websites who frequently finds errors in newspaper "science" articles) is knowing there's probably some poor shlemiel at the AP desk churning out these confusingly-written news items without a thought to their effect on a nervous readership. No wonder the FDA is erring on the side of extreme caution and just telling folks to avoid all bagged spinach, period--they probably realize the difficulty of getting a more detailed message out to the public without it getting garbled en route. (Edited to insert correct TLA)

I'm guessing such a link will emerge eventually as investigations continue--the authorities are probably just being super-cautious right now until they figure out what the link is. The article suggests it's the same strain of E.Coli in all cases--that, and the timing, do argue pretty strongly for a single infection source. Perhaps it's a less obvious one than a common producer, packager or distributor. (Typhoid Mary, anyone? ) Meanwhile ... damn. I was even looking at spinach in the market today. Glad I bought baby bok choy instead. Still, irrational as it may sound, I'm gonna be washing those puppies within an inch of their lives.

Wow. Major Georgia O'Keefe moment. The sun and shadow on the rock formations. The petroglyphs--they heard the call and wrote it on the wall, alright. And then--wham! diner land, neon and green chile slathered goodness and all. Dayum.

To judge from photos so far, not only is the landscape gorgeous, but the town is cute as a button. As is Fred (reminding me strongly of my roommate's yellow tabby, who is draped over the top of my monitor as I type this).

Been meaning to post that I saw a ad on FN for your show the other day (I'd been watching TV for a change while I convalesced), and I liked it lots. In the ad you came off as a "just folks" kinda guy--no shtick, no artificial gloss--and personally that really appealed to me. Especially in contrast to so much of FN's other offerings. So far, so good!

I confess to occasionally making the following late-night bastardized "mashed" potato thang: --Microwave potatoes (unpeeled, but skins pierced liberally) till well done --Break open and mash a bit, breaking up the skins but still leaving lots of lumps --Cover with thin slices of cheddar or similar cheese --Nuke again till cheese is well melted --Mash some more until cheese and potatoes are well combined --Inhale as soon as it's cool enough not to scorch your mouth Nuked cheese tends to get a bit oily, but the potatoes happily absorb all. This works with most any kind of potatoes, not just the starchy varieties usually recommended for mashing.

Dang! Couldn't they have re-written the laws to at least exclude the Jagermeister?

That does sound perfectly yummy. Okay, then I'm stumped as to why my family didn't do mashed potatoes at all. I fall back on my theory about my mom's peculiarly selective anti-fat attitude.

They taste pretty darned fine without the copper mug, too.

Duh! No wonder my mom didn't grow up making mashed potatoes! It's easy for me to forget, because my family was, and is, not religiously observant; but still, cultural tradition lingered, and so, yep, no mixing of dairy and meat on Bubbe's dinner table. Interestingly, my mom cheerfully (and rebelliously?) taught herself to cook all kinds of treyf ... but still, there's that odd omission of the mashed potatoes ... alas, she's no longer around for me to ask her what was up with that.

Hi Jenny-- I don't know where your mashed-potato-novice correspondent hails from, but at least here in the US we often run into a phenomenon where a whole generation of folks did not get basic from-scratch cooking instruction handed down to them by the previous generation, on account of that previous generation becoming enamored of all the convenience foods of the 1950s. Then there's cases like mine, in which our immigrant grandparents or parents simply didn't cook those dishes to start with. Those of us who grew up to become food geeks despite, or sometimes because of, this vacuum of intergenerational cooking lore have had to do a helluva lotta catch-up!