mizducky

Hey, I'll play! Okay, the majority of these prices are from the local supermarket (Von's), for the most generic/on sale version of the product, unless noted. Just for grins I multiplied almost *everything* out to the price for either two pounds' or one quart's worth (as appropriate to the item). Obviously few non-commercial bakers buy a quart of vanilla extract at a time (and besides, I assume commercial bakers buy at wholesale prices through specialized suppliers rather than from a supermarket), but it amused me to see what a full quart of supermarket vanilla extract might cost. beef (chuck) $5.98 bacon $6.72 chicken, whole $1.98 salmon $11.98 (atlantic fillets, color added) shrimp $13.98 (frozen uncooked in-shell) cabbage $1.38 (bok choy) carrots $1.29 (raw fresh) chiles $2.98 (fresh jalapenos) corn $2.98 (frozen) garlic $3.98 (fresh raw) mushrooms $2.80 (plain white button mushrooms olives $17.28 (Mezzetta jarred Calamatas) onions $1.38 potatoes $1.32 (red-skinned potatoes) squash $1.98 (acorn squash, whole) apples $1.98 bananas $1.38 lemons $2.49 oranges $1.00 tomatoes $5.98 beans (dried) $1.38 flour $0.40 (Gold Medal AP unbleached) pasta (dried) $1.38 (Trader Joe's) rice $1.92 (Botan Calrose--pro-rated from 5lb bag) sugar $1.60 (granulated white sugar--prorated from 5lb bag) cooking oil $2.88 (store brand canola oil) olive oil $8.32 (store brand evoo) sesame oil $20.80 (Sun Luck) vinegar $4.48 (Star red wine vinegar) butter $7.00 (store brand unsalted stick butter) cream $5.76 (whipping cream) eggs $6.08 (liquid low-fat egg substitute) yogurt $2.74 (lowfat plain yogurt) milk $1.49 (1% milk) cinnamon $20.80 paprika $17.92 pepper $17.92 vanilla $112.00 (pro-rated from 2 fl. Oz. for 6.99) beer $4.16 (domestic microbrew--$6.29/4-12oz bottles) bread $4.16 (2.99/24-oz multigrain loaf) coffee $18.56 (Millstone whole-bean coffee) juice $2.00 (Organo-groovy berry 100% juice blend tea $3.65/20 teabags (couldn't find a bulk tea price!)

Dang! I hate it when a cooking project turns into a comedy of errors! And I totally identify with stubbornly soldiering on even though a recipe has started acting uppity at me (me, I blame it on my family--the Brenner clan has a stubborn streak about three or four miles wide). At least you didn't cut or burn yourself or anything. My kitchen comedies often end with me having gotten so hyper that self-damage occurs. But even so ... the gingerbread does look awfully nice. And rescuing mistakes by transformation is certainly a fine cooking skill in its own right. I like to remember the (possibly apocryphal) advice of Julia Child: "now remember--when you're in the kitchen, you're all alone and there's no one there to see you."

I adore beet greens--so much so that I evolved this recipe for a beet-and-greens borscht. I like to use even the stems--they're not as tough as stems from other greens I can think of (collards, for instance), and harbor a bunch of flavor. So if you buy a bunch of beets with greens, you don't just get two vegetables for the price of one, but three.

I am unpleasantly surprised to hear that the Empress tolerated "working girls" at their bar in the first place, let alone that they allowed their unaccompanied female customers to be harrassed by other patrons, regardless of whether it was a case of mistaken identity or not. Frankly, I thought the Empress was too classy to countenance such crap on their premises. Though maybe I'm being naive here.

Now see, this is all kinds of inspiration to me. I regularly find myself dining alone, but very seldom take the opportunity to interact with other diners, for despite my highly sociable nature I also have a certain awkwardness, even paranoia, about being social with total strangers. No truly awful past experiences, but just enough tacky boorishness that it's made me wary. But maybe I should just get over myself and see what I've been missing all this time. Ghod knows I'm certainly better at verbal self defence (in case things go sour) than I was in my super-awkward twenties. Edited to add: y'know, I always used to admire my ex for her incredible talent at striking up friendly conversations with total strangers. She was especially good with shopkeepers and festival craftspeople--totally disarming them with praise for their wares, and then using that as a natural entree to ask them all sorts of things about their processes etc. Must have been the gift o' gab from the Irish part of her heritage.

Not to question anyone else's taste here--far from it. Still, I find myself intrigued by the intensity of some of the reactions. I mean, it's not like we're talking about, say, balut or something here. And as has already been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, there are innumerable threads on eGullet waxing rhapsodic about food items far more "unhealthy" (if a bit more familiar and well-known) than this red-neck Monte Cristo. Nor do I mean that I'd be bellying up to be the first to taste this baby myself--like I said, it ain't on my diet either. But I was a lot more icked out by a recent link in another thread to really exotic-to-me "goodies" on a stick (starfish, seahorses, scorpions) than this critter. Again--thoroughly *not* questioning people's rights to their particular opinions. Just ... a very slight bit startled, is all. (Heh, and I must confess I will be mightily tempted to reference this thread, among others, the next time I happen upon one of those recurrent eGullet threads inveighing against the U.S. cultural diet obsession and/or anti-fat bias ... )

Now see, I was thinking more along the lines of the Armistead Maupin series, "Tails (sic) of the City." I, too, am looking forward to this week's San Francisco treat. (Okay, quit taking aim with those eggs and tomatoes, folks... ) (Somewhat) more seriously ... it's been literally years since I visited the Bay Area, so I'm considering your blog a potential inspiration to fix that one of these days real soon now.

I must say I haven't noticed any specific smell, one way or the other. That may just be me being unobservant, though--with fruit, I only seem to key in to fragrance if it's doing something really obvious (haven't smelled durian yet, but I bet I wouldn't fail to notice that one... ) At least with the Moros I've gotten my hands on so far, they can be recognized by skin color. The skins have characteristic pinkish streaks and blushes, not unlike that on many red grapefruit, only more redder and more pronounced, to the point that some fruits' skins are almost all-over splotchy fuschia-to-magenta.

I have finally found some nicer blood oranges. I suppose I would have found them faster if I had gone someplace like Whole Paycheck, but my inner skinflint is sort of allergic to them. But I found some very small, very dark (inside and out), and quite sweet and juicy Moros at the Vine Ripe Market (Kalypso, if you're reading this, thank you for turning me on to that place). Interesting to taste that musky component of the flavor palette reined all the way in--just a very faint hint of it all the way at the bottom, and a very slightly medicinal note in the aftertaste. I could also taste a little of that berry-like aspect--I'm assuming now that the strength of that flavor varies as well? Anyway, I'm fascinated. (Edited to fix "tyop")

Geez, Chris, just tear my heart out and throw it on the floor, why don'tcha? Oh god, am I now jonesing for fried clams and clam fritters--which, even if they weren't strictly off my menu right now, and it weren't already ten p.m. here, would still be damn difficult to find in this town. *sob*

My mom was strictly a boxed-cake-mix dessert maker--she made some pretty good ones, but my fondest childhood dessert memories are all of bought desserts. Chief among them: this fabulous seven-layer chocolate cake on the menu of a kosher restaurant a few towns over from ours (sadly now long gone). Intensely chocolately sponge cake, with, IIRC, a berry puree filling between the layers and a dark ganache on top and sides. I have never found its like since, and I miss it. I also have fond memories of the revolving glass-enclosed display case of pies and cakes prominently displayed in almost every diner I ever visited in the New York area. Towering merengue pies were the divas of this non-stop show, but I always went for the cheesecake--super-dense New York style, if you please, with the cherry goop on top. Then there was rugelah--which we usually only got when we visited the Brooklyn outpost of the family. And when I became a college student in Boston: cannolis from the North End--again with the super-dense filling, preferably studded with pistachios and candied cherries.

What an interesting little gizmo! What does the printing embossed into the metal say? My reading-upside-down skills are a bit rusty.

As I recall someone pointing out when the Luther sandwich surfaced in a previous thread, this concept is actually not all that far removed from that of a Monte Cristo sandwich (which are often griddled or fried, and then sprinkled with powdered sugar). In fact, I'm tempted to nickname this burger/doughnut creation a "redneck Monte Cristo" Still -- it ain't exactly on my diet. So for me, it's a "c".

Terrific blog! Thanks, and enjoy the Pacific Northwest! (I'm sure we'll get periodic bulletins over the coming weeks about your progress in moving and in settling into your new hometown, right?)

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "jug wine". (Ow. I think I just hurt myself.)

What's so funny about that? ← Well, with that particular bunch of west coast extremely urbanized computer geeks, even the word "walleye" by itself was likely to elicit giggles, just because the word sounds funny to them. Probably half of them never even heard of it before, and I'd bet cash money none of them ever fished for one (I know I sure hadn't). Add to that the thought of this oddly-named fish served on a stick, and they were over the edge. Although, to be sure, that group was also rather easily amused.

There's a whole Japanese anime/manga series about the dire consequences of eating a mermaid. It's been a long time since I saw any part of it, but IIRC the stories revolve around a young man who inadvertently becomes immortal from eating mermaid flesh, and then spends the next several hundred years as a lonely wanderer, seeking some way to make himself normal again. I have no memory of what, if anything, was said of the flesh's flavor. Myself, I suspect it would taste a bit fishy.

Alright then, if you're gonna be easy like that ... I have been known to enjoy a nice Jack and Coke on occasion -- the "Jack" being Jack Daniels. Somehow I can't bring myself to mix a "real" bourbon with cola.

Sometimes I just put the juice in along with the tomatoes as part of the liquid content of the dish I'm cooking--for instance, for simple braises.

Oh yeah ... I have been informed by long-time San Diegans that the original sorta-kinda-legendary local taco shop chain was called Roberto's, and that it got popular enough that a small cadre of copycat chains sprang up, all of whose names end in "-berto" (I've spotted Alberto's and Aliberto's so far). I didn't realize they'd spread as far north as Pomona (assuming, of course, that this is part of the same "-berto" phenomenon ... ) Just what I had for lunch today, too! I'm on a serious pho kick right now. Healthy, cheap, filling, and yummy. I've even conquered getting the noodles to my mouth with chopsticks. Now if I could just learn how to do that without splashing soup on myself, I'll be all set.

That was a neat trick, though ... not only useful, but if I ever wind up teaching a kids' cooking class, I must remember to haul this trick out to show them. Oh, and the video on how to peel shrimp shell easily and neatly is pretty cute 'n' useful too. Hiroyuki, are they saying anything especially amusing in the voice-overs or captions on these videos? (One of these centuries, I need to try to learn some Japanese...)

An old boss of mine who hailed from Minnesota had a running joke going with us employees about the myriad foods-on-a-stick glories of her home state's fair. I think the one that really knocked us all over laughing was fried walleye on a stick. Somewhat more seriously: onions--whether in chunks, halves, or slices, the stick is an absolute boon here, keeping all the rings/layers/whatever together. You can grill 'em, broil 'em, or (in the case of slices) tempura them. For that matter, you can string appropriately-sized chunks of most any vegetable and either broil/grill or tempura them. Some harder veggies should probably be parcooked in advance. Season them up all sorts of different ways, match with any number of sauces/dips. Also consider sate, yakitori, and other skewered cuisines from around the world.

I think it's an attempt by Mexican shrimp producers to achieve even further leverage into the US casual-food market. Cheap shrimp have definitely made a big impression on the TJ McFunsters(tm Bourdain) tier of restaurants, but a burger-shaped shrimp product would really take off in that segment IMO. I can just hear the dippy Applebee's commercial for it right now.

How about this? No new revelations on the construction of these li'l shrimpy hockey-pucks though. Now my interest is piqued, so I'll give it another go. Edited to add: there is a shrimpsteak.com, but it seems to be broken.

Heh. Both of these phenomena are part of my Szechuan restaurant experience. I used to be a real fire-eater in my youth, but a few years ago I was bummed to discover that my bod was beginning to plead for mercy. So now I indulge with discretion, but I still indulge. And yeah, I was eating in "Szechuan" restaurants here in the States for years before I finally got steered to a *really* good one (Ba Ren, here in San Diego, which I've ranted about elsewhere), and got to experience what "ma la" was really about. One of my favorite things about Ba Ren is that they serve a variety of cold appetizers like the one you cite here, Ah Leung. I don't recall seeing one that was all tendon, but IIRC their version of "Husband and Wife Beef" includes tendon, and they have other dishes drenched in chile oil like the one you depict (like a dish of thin-sliced pig's ear). I find them addictively good--if I didn't consciously restrain myself, I could probably eat enough to cause some severe tummy distress. But oh, it hurts so good.