mizducky

That was beautiful. Sincerest condolences on the loss of your dad. (Okay, now I'm tearing up too...)

Just to add to the confusion, Ming Tsai refers to "Thai bird chiles" and says that name is interchangeable with bird's eye chiles as well as bird peppers (mentioned at the bottom of this page). If it were me, I'd go to the nearest Asian grocery store and look for the tiniest fresh red chile they have (the chile rule of thumb being that size is inversely proportional to heat). If the signage or the staff say it's a Thai variety, so much the better.

Well, Hellman's is what I grew up with. And of the prepackaged mayos I've tried since, it's pretty much the one I like best. Although recently I've gotten very fond of Trader Joe's mayonnaise--it's got a nice sorta lemony tang to it, and a looser consistency than the Hellman's--or Best Foods as they call it out here. Not sure how the same product wound up having two different names depending on which side of the Great Divide one is on, but if you go to either product's website you'll see they look fairly similar except for the logo, and a little statement at the bottom linking to the other site: Best Foods Hellman's One of my prepared-foods Shameful Confessions: in a town where I've got a bazillion different pre-packaged salsas to choose from, one of my favorites is Von's Mild Southwest Salsa. It's actually a pretty decent product, nice and chunky (I'm not sure why they call it "Southwest," other than the fact that it has beans in it). Also, unlike other salsas that purport to be mild, this one is *really* mild. While I adore spicy foods, they no longer like me so well, so it's nice to have a salsa that I can consume in mass quantities without putting myself in mortal pain. Yeah, I can make my own, and do occasionally, but when it's one a.m. and one is fighting off the munchies by throwing together a quick bowl of nachos, it's nice to have a bottled salsa ready to roll.

I don't think this website has been brought up yet, has it? The World's Healthiest Foods Like I said, I do a lot of paid writing/research on health issues for various websites, and of the innumerable food/health-oriented websites I've seen out there, this is one of the best-organized, best-written, and most sensible-sounding.

Oh well--sorry to miss you! Happy eating, and maybe catch you the next time you head out west.

Hmmmm ... I'm not Greek either, but I understand that a lot of people put mint in their recipes for tzatziki (Greek yogurt/cucumber dip).

I'd be one of those Carnegie Deli-style overstuffed sandwiches. Partly because I'm just bursting with meaty goodness, partly because I love being over-the-top ... and partly because, yes, I am indeed more than a little overstuffed.

Hi Susan-- Yeah, the Gaslamp is downtown (or, perhaps a little more accurately, it's a several-block strip that runs through/alongside downtown). I'm afraid I'm no use for suggesting New Year's Eve dining venues for you, however, because I'm usually either working behind the scenes for Fearless Housemate's band on that night, or staying home and avoiding the "Amateur Night" drunks on the freeway. My impression from working some of these New Year's Eve parties in the past is that, for those that offer dinner, yeah, the dinners aren't all that inspiring. So you probably would be happier going to a restaurant than getting a package deal. Others might well have experiences differing from mine, though... (And alas, FH's usual holds for New Year's Eve have fallen through this year, so I don't even have a gig of his to recommend--unless he decides to do something crazy and throw his own NYE event...)

Nothing substantive to add, except I am now pining away for the New England Coast. Many thanks, Johnnyd, for providing such wonderful distraction (I racked up my knee Friday and now can't do much beyond trying to keep it iced and stay off it as much as possible, so distraction is definitely welcome).

Hee! This whole topic is a riot! When I lived in Seattle, I made the pilgrimage down to Puyallup for the fair (I believe it represents Western Washington, but everyone always calls it just "The Puyallup" ... learning how to spell and pronounce the town's name properly is a rite of passage for every new Puget Sound resident). The food there didn't really make all that great an impression on me. I do recall enduring the obligatory wait in line for a scone, and was rather underwhelmed. One of my bosses at Microsoft was from Minnesota, and our whole little department had a running joke with her about the Minnesotan fondness for state-fair food-on-a-stick. Several people found the concept of walleye-on-a-stick endlessly amusing. There is an actual county fair in Orange County CA--heh, maybe it's me, but somehow the idea of such a supposedly agrarian-oriented event in the OC strikes me as pretty darned funny. I went there once back in 2003, more because Steely Dan was performing in their concert arena than anything else, but Fearless Housemate was feeling his Eye-talian roots and had to have a sausage-and-pepper sandwich, and I'm glad I followed suit because it was a damn fine sandwich, respectably comparable to the ones I'd had at New York's and Boston's Italian saints' day festivals.

Alton Brown had a lovely episode of "Good Eats" all about fruitcake, including a recipe featuring all natural dried fruit, a goodly amount of booze, plus a routine for two weeks worth of dousing with more booze: link here. Mind you, I have not had an opportunity to make this recipe myself, but as a hardcore fan of this much-maligned baked good, I thought the recipe looked pretty darn promising.

Heh. My hometown of Nyack NY doesn't even have a whole song of its own, but it did at least get a quick name-check in "Let's Get Away From It All" -- as in "Let's take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack..." All those lovely smoked fish pictures have me drooooooooooling! I shall have to do something about that, and soon. Very enjoyable blog! Thanks a bunch!

I'd say I had two main cooking inspirations: 1) Mom. Another extremely talented no-nonsense feed-the-family-right cook. There was *nothing* this woman ever cooked that I did not inhale with gusto. She also, more than anyone else, instilled in me an intense love for food and eating. I feel obligated to mention that there was a shadow-side to this legacy, in that she also instilled in me her psychodrama about dieting/overeating/overweight, but when I put aside the memories of those more uncomfortable issues, I have to admit that we shared some damn fine food-appreciation moments. And I've said this before, but several years of being "sous-chef" as it were to my mom's Thanksgiving extravaganzas taught me more about cooking than almost any other experience I could imagine ... except for cooking with: 2) My friend Harry. He and I were best friends, and roommates for a couple of years, when we were both in our 20s and living in Boston. Harry was the son of a family in the catering business, and was one of the first people I ever knew who owned a copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," a microwave oven, and a food processor (IIRC it was one of the first models marketed in the US under the name Cuisinart, as opposed to Robo-coupe or whatever they had been called in France beforehand--they were pretty pricey, but Harry was a hot-shot programmer in the 1980s Boston computer boom and could well afford one). He'd frequently throw these amazing cooking extravaganza parties that would require several days' worth of advance food prep, into which I was eagerly co-opted. We became such weekly regulars at Haymarket that several vendors there knew us on sight and assumed we were husband and wife, which amused us considerably. We were also members of a larger informal circle of friends who were all dedicated foodies and loved doing group expeditions to various Boston restaurants, where we would take over a table and uproariously feast and carry on for hours (we'd tip big). Harry was responsible for opening up my brain to higher levels of cuisine than my mother had known to show me, and for demonstrating to me that these lofty and exotic cuisines were all within the grasp of any home cook with a bit of ambition. He was also an early exemplar of how to cook for a crowd.

Heh. Given that she mentioned the two name publications, it almost sounds like she suspected you were a reporter for some other, unauthorized publication. I'd never heard of cisco before. What do they taste like? (Smoked or fresh?) I did a little websearching and I got the possibly mistaken impression the smoked ones were a little like smoked whitefish chubs. (Sez the grrl who never met a smoked fish she didn't like.)

Holly, I've just turned up another grease-stain worthy joint for you to check out if you do make it to San Diego: Taco Motion in Pacific Beach (1313 Garnet Ave). Typical mom'n'pop storefront taqueria in a tiny strip mall, but with a number of menu items you don't usually see in taquerias geared more at the gringos. I've just inhaled one of their cabeza burritos, and man was it good. Wonderfully tender-but-chewy-textured meat and lots of it, in a thick mild brown gravy, with nothing else in the burrito except a sprinkling of sliced scallions, with lime wedges and hot sauce on the side to perk it up as one desires. Yummy, ridiculously cheap, and by the time I finished eating, the paper bag that had held the burrito was just one humongous grease stain. Now I've gotta go back and try their menudo (most places, if they have menudo at all, only serve it one or two days a week, but Taco Motion proudly announces that they serve it every day). Alas, no lengua, or tripas as a burrito/taco filling, so I'm still on the lookout for other joints to assuage my Mexican offal fetish, but this place will definitely do in the meantime.

I've become convinced that just about *any* recipe that calls for vegetables can be blasted into a whole new level of yum by roasting the vegetables first. Awhile ago I took my standard ratatouille recipe, and oven-roasted all the vegetables before combining them and simmering just a little more to blend flavors, and I wound up with the most intensely-flavored ratatouille I'd ever produced. With the sweetness from the caramelization on the onions and bell peppers, it was almost more like a caponata than a ratatouille. When the weather cools off again, you can be sure I'll be making all my usual favorite soups and stews, but with all roasted vegetables instead of sweated/sauted ones. Roast veggies rule!

More about the Crown Royal bags, including some unique uses they've been put to, from the official website (you'll probably hit an age-verification screen before you're let through to the page on the main site).

A flannel-type material with a slight nap to it; lettering and trim embroidered in gold-colored thread; gold-colored satiny drawstring. (At least the one I had as a kid was like that.)

No, not really.............. ← Oh dear. I had heard good things about El Agave--perhaps that's far enough away from the official center of Old Town to not qualify as being under its spell? Ya wanna bet? Well, at least when I was living in Boston from 1975 through 1989, a lot of restaurants in the North End really were nothing but average-to-mediocre tourist traps. Certainly there were also some sublimely excellent restaurants in the neighborhood, but you really had to know which ones they were, rather than just randomly wandering into any joint in the area expecting a pleasant rather than an unpleasant surprise. Perhaps some current Bostonian might wish to jump in here, but I can't imagine this all has changed since I lived there.

Ah yessssss ... San Diego's tourist-Mexican shuffle. As has already been said in numerous threads on SD cheap-but-good eats, the best Mexican joints are those that have an unmistakeably unglamorous-to-ghetto vibe. Coronado is a wonderful place, but you certainly won't be finding anything ghetto there--certainly not within walking distance of the Del. San Diego also demostrates another rule of how to tell if a restaurant is a tourist trap: if it's within, or in close proximity to, any major historical neighborhood of touristy interest, the odds are overwhelming that the touristy-ness has infected the restaurant too. I have yet to dine in any of the restaurants in San Diego's "Old Town"--I understand there are a couple of winners among all the pseudo-Mexican eateries there, but the whole tourist vibe (can you say "strolling mariachi band assault?" ) puts me off enough that I just haven't bothered checking out any of them. Especially when the little 24-hour taqueria down the street does fish tacos just as good or better than most of those places, for a fraction of the cost and none of the tourist-vibe.

In San Diego, may I recommend Hodad's - a very Ocean Beach ("OB") joint, serving burgers almost bigger than your head in a room ornamented with bazillions of old licence plates and the front of an old VW microbus. There are actually a whole bunch of neighborhood joints all up and down this stretch of Newport Ave. catering to the area's hippie/surfer/biker demographic, but Hodad's strikes me as especially friendly to the HollyEats.com vibe.

Yeah, somehow I missed this topic the first time round too. Though I don't have any exciting stories to offer regarding the Crown Royal bags. I did have one when I was a kid--have no idea where it came from, as my parents really weren't much for drinking--but all I ever kept in it was marbles.

Its no bad, but its nae haggis ← i've heard tell of vegetarian haggis pakoras (presumably the indian restaurant version of the above). can adam or any others from edinburgh elaborate? milagai ← "Vegetarian," "haggis," and "pakoras." Three words I never expected to see together in the name of one food item. Color me boggled.

If this is a kosher meal, I'm guessing the guests would appreciate deli. How about making little open-faced mini-sandwiches on cocktail-sized pumpernickel? Top with slivers of really good pastrami, corned beef, etc., on top of schmears of really good horse-radishy deli mustard. Garnish with slivers of sweet onion, slices of olive, etc. I know I'd inhale a whole bunch of those if they were served at a party I was at.

I worked in a McDonald's in my hometown, Nyack NY, for all of two weeks one summer--I think it was between my junior and senior years of high school, which would make it 1974. It was a little dinky McD's directly across the street from a New York State Thruway entrance--the very same entrance, by the way, where in 1981 a bunch of heavily armed robbers who had just knocked off a Brink's armored car would have a bloody shootout with local cops that would make the national news. I witnessed no shootouts during my two weeks of wearing an icky polyester uniform and working the counter at this McD's--but I did have the dubious pleasure of being on duty when a schoolbusload of kids returning from a field trip rolled right off the Thruway and up to my register. Damn, every single one of those kids had to place their own order, and then the chaperones were going to pay for the whole lot at the end--thankfully, even though I knew for-sure that my count went off somewhere in there, nobody called me on it. There was zero cameraderie at this joint, and a generally stingy distrustful attitude on the part of management--minimum wage, and yeah you got a free meal if you worked a sufficiently-long shift, but they actually put restrictions on what meals you could get free (i.e. none of the pricier burger things). When a better job I had been hoping for came through, I happily turned in my little plastic blue sailor-suity-looking outfit and ran away. Now, the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, that was a whole different story--got a job washing dishes in a for-real restaurant with, like, an actual French chef and everything--but that's a tale for a different topic.