mizducky

Yeah, I was going to post earlier (but got interrupted and forgot) that using the cheap chunk light tuna probably makes a bigger difference than you might think. Not only is its flavor stronger, but its softer texture means more of it will disintegrate into the sauce. Also--did your mom use tuna packed in water or in oil? Even extremely well-drained, that would still make a major flavor difference, I would think. Meanwhile, I'm hard-pressed to think of any specific food item that fails to thrill me the way it did when I was a little kid, but I reckon that there may indeed be a whole bunch. I just think of what my dad used to do to steaks on the barbeque, for instance, which we all used to wolf down like there was no tomorrow, and I just know that nowadays I would feel a lot less enthusiastic about those carboniferous chunks of tortured cow.

Heh. When I first read the title of this topic, I thought it would be *all* about the free samples. Grazing the samples carts used to be my favorite part of the whole Costco experience. That, and finishing off with a Polish sausage with tons of sauerkraut from the snackbar for "dessert." Strangely, I've never tried anything else from the snackbar. Once I got my routine down, I didn't feel particularly motivated to vary it. Love them thar Polish sausages.

I adore octopus, but have never cooked it for myself, so this thread got me curious enough to do a Google search--and I found this excellent article on octopus cookery. Not specifically Japanese, but it does give a lot of great info about buying, tenderizing, and cooking the beast. I'm under the vague impression that the beating-with-a-daikon thing (whether done patiently or otherwise ) is not only about the weight and heft of a daikon, but some kind of tenderizing property of that vegetable. (The above article kind of hints at that idea, though it goes on to say that simple long slow simmering works just as well.)

Shallots are also very popular in Vietnamese cooking. A little more info on this page (scroll all the way to the bottom). I vaguely recall that some other southeast Asian cuisines use them as well, but right now I'm not remembering which. In fact, if you decide you're hooked on shallots and need a steady cheap supply, I suggest you try an Asian food market. I have seen sizeable bags of shallots for very low prices at my favorite local 99 Ranch. About FTV claiming shallots are somewhere between onions and garlic--I dunno, but I suspect they might have been more trying to convey something about the physical shape of shallots rather than their flavor. They do tend to look a little like huge garlic cloves, only with the characteristic onion layers within each "clove".

For years after that commercial for Underwood meat spreads in which the little kid said "borgashmord", my family jokingly called any kind of buffet-type array of food by that name. (We also couldn't help but notice that the kid in those ads bore a striking resemblance to one of my cousins. Thankfully, once said cousin hit puberty he also hit a king-hell growth spurt, eventually transforming from little pudgy kid with mop of red hair to tall skinny beanpole...with mop of red hair. No recollection as to whether he ever had problems pronouncing smorgasbord. )

This is another one of the bazillion reasons why, when I lived in Seattle, I used $tarbucks as a last resort only, and had a few favorite trusted independent espresso joints, mine being Cafe Vivace. Yeah, I still drank a lot of lattes there--but the thing I liked about Vivace was that for a change you *could* taste their coffee, which they roasted themselves, through the milk (their barristas also really knew their stuff). Agreed however that there's a whole lot of crappy coffee drinks served in the Pacific Northwest, and a whole lot of crappy coffee underneath all the milk and syrup and junk. My serious coffee hound friends up there buy their own beans and either use a home espresso machine or a French press; they also have favorite indy coffeehouses and turn to the chains only for caffeine-level maintenance.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever served anybody breakfast in bed, nor had it served to me. I'm not at all sure why. Certainly I've had people in my life over the years who would have inspired such a gesture ... hmm, I think I never did it for my most recent ex because she was such an extreme morning person that she was already out of bed for hours before I stirred, and she never did it for me because in those days I was so intensely not a morning person that me personally toddling out of bed to the coffeemaker was an essential step in rousing me from the hibernating state. Plus growing up in my family, a celebratory breakfast required the entire dinette tabletop on which to spread it out. But I wouldn't mind at all giving or receiving a breakfast in bed. As far as I'm concerned, crumbs would be part of the charm ... and also avoidable with the right precautions. As to what I'd want served to me in bed: probably the same thing as my idea of a celebratory breakfast in general: either really good bagels and lox with all the fixings, or a big beautiful omelette filled with way too much yummy stuff.

See, I too thought "source" in its current use as a verb implied, not just finding that special ingredient, but finding a *steady, reliable, uniform supplier* of said ingredient in the amounts required by the business at hand, which, in the case of specialized ingredients especially, is no small endeavor. I'm none too crazed about the "verbing" of nouns either. But in some cases, a noun is being pressed into service as a quick-and-dirty solution for telegraphing an idea for which no short simple word currently exists. So I'd rather people say they "sourced" a special item than sit there as they go into a whole mini-dissertation about how they "found a supplier of a rare and high-quality ingredient that could keep up with the volumes of that item we need for our day-to-day operations."

No apologies needed, dear. Just keep breathing, and asking for help. You're doing great. If it helps any, think of it this way: you may not be 100% stopped, but you're certainly smoking a helluva lot fewer cigarettes than is your norm. And you're getting closer to that 100%. I am failing to recall which modern spiritual pundit said this--I want to say Thich Nhat Hanh--but the teaching goes as follows: if one ceaselessly follows the North Star, one will never actually reach the star itself, but one will make great progress in a northerly direction. HOWEVER! you can--and will, eventually--reach your North Star. Meanwhile, though, you are indeed making great progress in your chosen direction. Okay--intermission from me being so damn serious ... those were some fabulous munchies you cooked up while you were busy smoking and working on not smoking yourself.

During the infamous year I spent on unemployment (thanks, indirectly, to the dot-com bust), Kraft mac-and-cheese was one of many cheap dinner strategies I resorted to. I'd separately heat up some of that cheapo frozen vegetable mix (y'know, the carrots/green beans/corn crap) and add that in to the finished mac-n-cheese. Yeah, it wasn't the most sensational-tasting stuff in the world, but it was cheap, filling, and sorta nutritious.

Smoke turkey, not tobaccy! Edited to add: Y'know, like the 1960s saying "Make love, not war" ... only sideways, sorta ...

Condolences on the loss of your grandmother, eJulia. In her memory, some of my own grandparental food memories: All four of my grandparents were born and raised in one of those pieces of Eastern Europe that Russia and Poland spent a few centuries or so arguing over. Of my two grandmothers, one proudly upheld the legend of the terrific Jewish cook, and the other blithely and rather cluelessly trampled it into the ground My paternal grandmother seemed to believe that seasonings were unhealthy or something. Every time we'd visit, she'd either serve nearly flavorless boiled chicken, or extremely dry hamburgers, with a watery salad of iceberg lettuce and minute flecks of carrot. She'd painstakingly collect all the windfall apples from her yard, then peel and trim all the bad parts off so that, when done, she'd have a pile of trimmings at least twice the volume of "good" apple. Then she'd either make applesauce--no sugar, which was good, but no cinnamon or other seasonings either, which was kinda bland. Or she'd make bread pudding--apparently out of apples and old bread only, so that the apples were practically the only moisture in there, and the poor thing would always get scorched on the bottom. Supposedly she and her husband ran a restaurant at some point in their youth--I can only imagine it didn't stay in business all that long! My maternal grandmother also worked in restaurants--she'd been a cook at one or another of the big Jewish resorts in the Catskills at some point--and she could cook like a dream. We didn't see her very often, but when she came to stay with us while my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my kid sister, boy did she ever cook up a storm! I remember watching in fascination as she made kreplach from scratch, and as she cooked blintz wrappers so thin and perfect it was to weep. This is the same grandmother who, when my mother was a kid, would keep a crock of fermenting sauerkraut on the fire escape of their Lower East side tenement flat in the wintertime, and a crock of fermenting yogurt wrapped in a baby blanket in the closet next to the steam heat riser. She'd also do the classic keeping a live carp in the bathtub for a week to flush out all the mud in its system prior to making it into gefilte fish. And she'd drag my mom along to the live poultry market so that mom-as-little-girl could go around the backs of the cages and poke the birds hiding back there, so they'd come out where bubbe could see them. All these and many other stories of my grandmother were told to me by my mother throughout my childhood--I liked these tales even better than Dr. Seuss, and would often ask my mother to retell my favorites.

Oh that's right, you explained about those in your blog. I could see how those would be really soothing on a crappy day. Someone up a ways mentioned sushi. Even though my traditional crappy-day foods tend to be much heavier, there's a certain kind of crappy day for which I find sushi the perfect antidote--one in which confusion and jangled nerves is the major component. Then it's really nice to eat something so aethetically harmonious--if the world can't be in harmony, at least my dinner can be so. Not to mention that it's damn tasty. And sensual.

Chris, are you just letting the sammich do the talking? Or was it such a crappy day that words failed you? Edited to add: yummy-looking steak sandwich, by the way. Very eloquent.

Aaaaaaauuuugh! I was going to say my number-one most-hated kitchen chore is cleaning a non-self-cleaning oven (chemical warfare red alert *hack* *cough* *choke*), but your post reminded me that I have never, ever, been brave enough to tackle a kitchen exhaust fan on my own. Urgh. I never really thought of myself as a delicate sort, but ... urgh. I think that's one task I'd gladly pay for someone else to tackle. Preferably when I wasn't around. Urgh.

Well, I'm hoping some of my fellow San Diegans will chime in right quick, as neither steakhouses, Italian restaurants, or party-type bars are my usual hangouts. But until they show, let me throw in at least a couple of possibilities: Steakhouses: we've got the usual high-end national chain suspects (Morton's, Ruth's Chris), but I am told on excellent authority (thanks, mmm-yoso!) that you can have a tasty old-school indy steakhouse experience at Bully's East. Fun bars--there are tons of wild 'n' crazee bars in the Gaslamp District downtown, and more of same in Pacific Beach, but I would also like to put in a good word for Humphrey's by the Bay on Shelter Island. They have some pretty tasty bar munchies plus an adjoining restaurant; their recently-renovated Backstage Lounge has a regular rotation of decent-to-excellent live bar bands (okay, I'm slightly biased because several of my musician friends and acquaintances have bands that play there regularly); and by the time June rolls around Humphrey's will be knee-deep in their terrific Outdoor Concert Series which books a variety of major national acts. Methinks you could put together a pretty fab bachelor party weekend by booking an overnight suite (the Humphrey's complex includes a hotel) on a night of a great Outdoor Concert show--do the concert, adjourn to the lounge afterwards to keep the party going, then adjourn to the suite for after-hours partying...and crashing, for those too schnockered to be safe behind the wheel. Even better, this whole place is right on the water--you've got a marina on one side and a beach on the other, in case your group wants to also get in some water-frolicking time.

Oh, exactly. I certainly met plenty of people at college who happened to have attended prep school, and were great people. It was the folks for whom having attended "the right prep schools" was not an academic brain-expanding thing but soley a class status thing, part of a whole way of categorizing the world into the worthy and the unwashed, who really got up my nose.

Oy. I went to college with a boatload of people like that. Boy are they ever tiresome. If you didn't go to the right prep school, your presence was barely worth acknowledging. And if you were a public school product like myself, you might as well have been invisible. I could only imagine what they must have thought of the people their parents paid to run their households. The whole thing's a crock, of course. I recall thinking as a freshman how weird it was for them to look down their noses at my distinctly un-preppie attire, when I thought their preppie clothing had to be the most butt-ugly fashion statement I had ever laid eyes on. And as far as I could tell, the Boston Brahmin culinary sensibility seemed rather laughable too. Once only did I attend one of the formal teas at one of the more heavily preppie-identified dorms at my school. Ugh. I'd much rather have been getting shnockered at the TGIF at my (decidedly anti-preppie geek-haven) dorm--or escaping into the city for "low-class" ethnic eats and other bohemian delights. Ech. Too bad. They may have the bucks, but yeah, they don't know what they're missing, let alone how to fully appreciate what they have. Here's a hoity-toity motto with which to defend your brain against them, Tim: Illegitimus non carborundum--don't let the bastards grind you down.

The PB TJ's (boy, does that ever sound like geek code! ). I've been to the La Jolla Village one once, and yes it's got a brand new building, but it's also in a mall with one of the screwiest, most congested parking lots I have ever attempted to drive through without getting into a Towanda the Avenger moment, so I haven't been back. When I move, I think the Hillcrest one will be my nearest--also in a shopping center with a screwy parking lot, but I shall give it a shot. But I think we should take further discussion on this topic, if any, elsewhere so as not to distract from the main focus here, that being our noble tobacco fighters. Having said all that, though ... TJ's has certainly got a wealth of snacky things suitable for staving off the nicotine-fits. Lotsa chocolates, lotsa nuts and dried fruit, lotsa chips and salsas. Y'all could do worse than dropping by one, if handy, and getting a nice big tub of those little chocolate kitty-cat cookies to keep the mouth and hand occupied ...

Indeed I do remember that movie--ironically enough, it was called Cold Turkey, and not only did it star Dick Van Dyke, but it was directed and co-written by Norman Lear. Not what you'd call a sophisticated comedy, but I thought it was pretty damn funny. And I do remember that heading-back-up-the-stairs scene, plus several other running gags about the joys of substituting sex for cigarettes. Meanwhile, being on something like day 10 of my new food regime, and having just provoked a king-hell joint-pain flareup by walking around Trader Joe's (no electric cart, plus unevenly slanted floors that are hell on my joints), I am *extremely* in touch with the concept of feeling way cranky about doing stuff that's healthy for me. And I can only reflect that this must be the same crankiness that I've postponed all these years from when I quit smoking but redoubled my eating--knew I got off that evil weed a little too easily! Anyway, long story short is that I sympathize, no, commiserate with all you recent tobacco quitters, urge you not to beat up on yourselves for how hard it's being, and further urge you to do whatever is necessary to make this change as easy as possible on yourselves. As the instructor for my healthy-eating course said to us all--and I do think it transposes nicely to smoking--you've had years of practice to learn and reinforce this behavior, so of course it's going to take awhile to retrain all those habits.

What is a fluffernutter sandwich?? ← Behold, the Fluffernutter. Strangely, I have never had one. Ever. Not even as a kid. I didn't even care for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all that much. I greatly preferred sardine sandwiches. Maybe that's why I turned out this way. Although I am far from immune from the charms of soothing a crappy day by eating peanut butter straight from the jar ...

"Napoleon Dynamite" not only features a variety of low-brow and/or less-than-appetizing foods, often in very silly situations ("Napoleon, give me some of your tots!"), but has a whole montage of these foods making up its opening credits sequence. Another reason why I adore this weird little movie.

Oh dear. I'm so sorry things are still sucking ... My favorite comfort foods, like several posters preceding me, all seem to involve grease, sugar, and booze in various configurations. Grease: at the very least a humongous overloaded cheeseburger, or some nice tacky Chinese takeout, or a delivery pizza with way too many toppings; ideally it would be a big honkin' slab of prime rib, though when I'm feeling really crappy I'd rather just hunker down in my cave than be required to face fellow humans in a restaurant, or even to cook, for that matter. Sugar: either a pint of Cherry Garcia or a package of Brach's Bridge Mix (I dunno why, but I find the latter really soothing). Booze: good bourbon, straight up, no screwing around. Sometimes Southern Comfort if I'm really feeling the urge for oblivion. And of course, Zappa is an especially appropriate soundtrack: nothing can cheer me up in such moments quite like a few rousing verses of "Broken Hearts Are For A**holes". (Heh. There's something eeeeeeevil about me writing about these foods when I'm on day 8 of a diet ... fortunately the diet is not sucking ... at least so far ... and also, fortunately, there's no calories in just *writing* about food ... )

Y'know, I was just about to post about Wonka ... As for movies with food not necessarily the main focus, but still a major player: --Another of Ang Lee's flicks: "The Wedding Banquet" (for all that it revolves around that titular meal, I don't recall seeing a whole lot of the actual banquet dishes on screen, but still ... ) --"Rocky Horror Picture Show" -- two words: "Meatloaf again?" (Aw c'mon--you were all thinking it too...)

An old buddy of mine beat his humongous cigarette addiction by taking up weight training. He's stayed quit for some 25 years now. He also wound up getting bodybuilder-huge (a testament to the size of his habit? ) After I finally quit, I was appalled to discover how stinky the interior of my own car smelled. I would come home from a night in a club (when they still allowed smoking in clubs) and be stunned at how my clothes reeked. It was kind of mortifying, really, to realize my friends had been putting up with this stank on me the entire time I smoked. Yeah, boy howdy, isn't it *interesting* (in its own weird way) to watch one's Skinnerian reinforced behavior switches just flick on like that? Heh. I should add here that I was another of those possibly annoying people who, when the time finally came, just put the damn cigarette down with nary a struggle. But I can't be all that proud of that, because right this very minute I am once again fighting that very same struggle only postponed by several years, around overeating. So I am right now *extremely* in touch with my own inner Skinner-box-trained pigeon.