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cakewalk

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Everything posted by cakewalk

  1. Liver (bleh). Wonderful thing for an anemic kid to hate. Used to drive my parents up a wall. Anything with caramel of any sort.
  2. That sounds like heaven in a Nescafe jar. Any chance you still have her recipe? And, if so, would you share? Oh if I had the recipe not only would I share, I would write out thousands of copies in magenta beet ink on pieces of white paper and rain them down on all the world! Alas. In truth, I don't think my grandmother worked from a recipe either.
  3. Borscht. Oh what memories. My grandmother used to make a huge pot of borscht, which she would then distribute to various family members and friends. She would put the borscht into empty nescafe instant coffee jars, somehow I remember them as being so big, certainly over a quart. I remember standing on a chair by her stove and eating the beets out of the pot (I would be red all over) while it was still warm. In our family we drank borscht from a glass, ice cold, and then ate the beets from the bottom of the glass with a fork. (As an adult I "branched out" in beet experimentation and started adding yoghurt or sour cream to borscht, eaten now as soup rather than a drink. We never did that at home because our kitchen was kosher. Borscht was always with dinner, which was always meat, which ruled out any milk products. Borscht with yoghurt makes the loveliest magenta color I've ever seen anywhere.) I still love beets in any way shape or form, and they always make me think about my grandmother and her kitchen on Southern Blvd. in the Bronx. What a great memory.
  4. "splifted"? Splashed + lifted, is that it? What a wonderful word.
  5. I agree that the entire "Dummies" series is a turnoff because of the title. I also resent the insinuation that one is a "dummy" because one doesn't know something. There is this thing called "learning," isn't there? I also resent the increasingly popular trend that there's something "cute" or "funny" about being dumb. I mean, how dumb can you get? That said, I admit I have used books of this series in computer-related areas and found them to actually be very helpful. It's true you have to wade through the cutesy language and all, but the info is basic and good. So I think I'll give the gormet cooking one a go. Gotta start somewhere. I'm a fairly decent basic cook, and I know how to read, I guess that should be helpful. Onward! Thanks, I didn't even know they had a cookbook in this series.
  6. I lived overseas for about 20 years, and when I returned to New York (about six years ago) it took a while to catch up with certain things. Chain restaruants was one of them. I would see a restaurant that I never saw or heard of before (with good reason), and think to myself, aha, a new restaurant. How nice that there are some new, independent restaurants in New York these days. And then I'd be in another part of Manhattan and I'd see the same restaurant there, too. And it finally hit me (I am, admittedly, a little slow on the uptake). These are not new restaurants. They're new chains. I was very disappointed. However, one of those chains does have one of my favorite snacks. Ollie's. First one I saw was on Broadway up by Columbia. I was taking classes there, and Ollie's was right across the street. For months I thought it was the only Ollie's in the world, how unique. Ha. Anyway, their vegetarian dumplings are the best. They roll the dough so thin! Sometimes on my way home from work if I'm tired and hungry and know that there's nothing hanging out in the fridge at home, I'll stop at Ollie's (now it's the one on Broadway and 44th St.) and get the vegetarian dumplings to go. Mmmm. Great sauce, too. But I have to give a thumbs down to the idea of chain restaurants in general. I have this haunting memory of being in Ireland several years ago and just walking around. I hit this area where I was surrounded by MacDonald's and Burger King and several other chain restaurants. I could have been anywhere in the world, and I didn't like that feeling. I wasn't anywhere in the world. I was in Ireland. And I guess I wanted to know it without having to say to anyone, "Excuse me, but, what country is this?" Just one of my idiosyncracies!
  7. cakewalk

    Dinner! 2002

    Many thanks Tommy and Jinmyo for the mint-garlic assists!
  8. I find cooking to be great therapy. I think it's partly (if not largely) a matter of control. When I'm cooking, I'm master. No one tells me what to do in my kitchen. It is rather exhilarating as well as soothing. And in the end, there's a sense of accomplishment and there's the proof of the pudding!
  9. cakewalk

    Dinner! 2002

    I'm overwhelmed. Overawed. Amazed. You're not making this stuff up, are you? You cook these things? By yourselves? All the time? Don't you ever eat veggie burgers? Okay, stop laughing. Obviously I'm new at this. But this site is eye-opening, enlightening, wonderfully enjoyable. Question: someone, somewhere on this thread mentioned making a mint-garlic sauce. Do you care to share a recipe? A while ago I was strolling around with a friend of mine. We were starving and just happened into this little Italian restaurant and bought sandwiches (grilled eggplant and zucchini, I think, but I may be wrong) on some nice bread. But it was the sauce on the bread that did it. I never tasted anything like it, and near as I could tell it was mint and garlic that made it do its magic. Any recipe pointers? I just love this site!
  10. cakewalk

    Mastic

    Just a tidbit: in modern Hebrew, the word "mastik" means chewing gum.
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