cakewalk

Because she was naked or because she was eating a stick of butter?

LIVER! margarine caramel pancakes of any sort (it's a texture thing) Did I say LIVER?

About 10 minutes.

"'All the research says I should be able to go to McDonald's and have choices', Larry Light, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, told Reuters in an interview." Larry Light. Creates lite meals. I'm lovin' it.

If my memory serves me well (because this was, of course, in another lifetime, perhaps even the experiences of a person completely other than myself who told me about it), I can recall eating celery, of all things, after a smokefest of some sort, and absolutely loving it. It was the chewing. Oh, man, the chewing. For hours. As for eating the stuff: it most definitely works, perhaps a little too well. When you smoke it, the effects are immediate and you know when to stop (it doesn't mean you will stop, but you know you should). But when you eat it, it takes quite a while. Have a brownie. Man, these things aren't working. Have another brownie. And another. Uh-oh. Also, when you smoke it, the high goes away in a couple of hours or so. When you eat it, it's with you for eight f*&^ing hours, like the food you ate it with. Can be very unpleasant. And of course, there are no munchies if you get high this way. You sort of took care of the munchies first (how pragmatic!).

I ordered "Baking with Julia" from Amazon over a week ago, but it still hasn't arrived. I still want to try the challah (I haven't baked bread in years), I'll just be a little late, nothing new. Hopefully by the time the next project is chose, my book will be here. BTW -- I would opt for a bread that is not sweet for the next round. When I get the book and look through it, I'll put in my suggestion.

Bread

Title caught my eye. Mint tea is a biggie in Israel, probably because of the huge North African population (Eastern Europeans seem to favor lemon tea). The mint used is usually spearmint, called "nana" in Hebrew (pronounced nah-nah, accent on the first syllable). Wonderful on a cold Jerusalem winter night. Always drunk in glasses, and very sweet, it's usually regular black tea with sprigs of mint and sugar added. I don't put sugar in tea or coffee, but when I drink tea with nana I always take sugar.

Yes on both counts. But during the summer I ask them to take it easy with the ice, or you can barely taste the coffee!

Ah, take a walk!

When the focus of the day becomes food (or sales), the importance of the person for whom the day is held goes out the window. That's what is happening here, and not just because it's a food site. But because the food has surpassed King. And that's why I think it's off base to create a menu in his "honor." Trying to make comparisons between Martin Luther King and Robert Burns, for goodness sake, sort of proves the point for me. How much of your Christmas dinner involves theological discussion? The media is not the message, the food is! I don't want to see that happen on Martin Luther King Day. (And I think you all get the picture. No more for me on this topic. Thank you.)

THE BEST!!!!

Neither was St. Patrick, or Rabbie Burns, or Jesus, etc. For the same, or similar reasons the people above are associated with food. Try starting a Jesus day in your local cafeteria. Once you figure out what to serve, WHATEVER you serve, I'd be interested in seeing how the whole thing goes over. (Maybe Mel Gibson will say it is as it was.) Ditto a Robert Burns day. (BTW -- what foods ARE they associated with?) And while I admire Burns's poetry, I don't consider him a symbol quite on the order of Dr. King. As far as St. Patrick's Day goes, most Irish people I know are thoroughly humiliated by the spectacle that St. Patrick's Day has become, it's association with drunkenness, etc. I find this entire argument ridiculous. It's one thing to argue whether "soul food" is an appropriate menu for Black History Month. (I find nothing wrong with that. I do not find the phrase "soul food" to be negative, but then I'm white.) It's another thing entirely to use such a menu in "honor" of Martin Luther King. Not because I think this particular food constitutes a slur, but because the food, ANY FOOD, has absolutely nothing to do with King or his message. Therein lies the slur. It is demeaning. Edit: typo

Martin Luther King, Jr. was not about food. I think the whole thing is misdirected. Why on earth would food, ANY food, be used as a vehicle through which to honor Dr. King? Was he a chef? It seems to me that that is the basic disrespect here. It is a complete (and very stupid, IMO) denigration of who Dr. King was and what he actually stood for. It's not too far removed from having a three-day sale at department stores in his honor. I mean, he wanted to make things more affordable for the poor, too. So would that be an appropriate way to honor his memory?

And the ones without are hard to find. That's why I buy Classico, it's just about the only one without sugar or corn syrup. It usually needs a bit of spicing up, but I really can't stand the sugar/corn syrup in the others.

Um ... compressed vomit in a jar? Sorry, sorry.

I used to read "Pantaloon" to my younger sister over and over and over again. We both absolutely loved that story. Oh that big white cake with all the icing and flowers! A couple of years ago I found an old and battered copy, and bought it. I meant to give it to my sister as a present, but, well ... true confessions time ... I couldn't bear to part with it! (If I find another copy I will give it to her. Really.)

And don't forget his infamous fresh fish fry from "Huckleberry Finn."

Leo?!!? In a pizza place? No way. You must have meant Frank. slkinsy's pizza looks nice, but it's not what I remember as classic NY pizza. It's too red, so either the cheese is underneath or there's simply not enough cheese. Also, there's too much crust on the circumference of that circle. The sauce needs to be spread out more. And I agree with everyone that the crust has to be crisp, and thin enough that you can flip the narrow triangular part of the slice over before you bite into it. And it won't be so cheesey that cheese will ooze out the sides when you take that bite. And it should cost 20 cents a slice. Lemme get two, please. And a coke.

I still do it. It's nostalgic. Pardon my ignorance, but how did drinking out of the Yahrzeit candle glasses become a tradition? Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a tradition. It probably had more to do with thrift than with anything else. Yarzheit glasses, as you noted, are lit on the anniversary of a family member's death, and on certain Jewish holidays in memory of those family members. That adds up to a lot of glasses! They're strong, sturdy glasses, quite hard to break. So we always reused at least some. Most went into the garbage because there was a limit to how many glasses we could break, even in my family. It was a stiff competition between Yarzheit glasses and Flintsone jelly glasses.

I still do it. It's nostalgic. One of my first (and fondest) memories is of eating hot borscht that my grandmother made, straight from her huge pot on the stove. I can remember standing on a chair by the stove and reaching into the pot with a fork to get the beets, still warm. My grandmother would make a lot of borscht and fill old nescafe jars with it and give a few jars a week to my family and others. We would drink it in glasses (yes, yarzheit glasses), cold from the refrigerator, and the beets would stay at the bottom of the glass and we'd eat them last. Every so often there'll be a thread here about which foods people absolutely hate, and beets seem to fill that slot for so many people. It makes me cringe every time I read it Oh if only you could have tasted my Bubby's borscht!

Bumblebee tuna, Hellman's mayonaisse, Wise potato chips. And I guess you gotta have bread.

I used to hate liver. And I still do. And I always will. So there. I also used to hate olives. And now I love them. And yes, I experienced the sixties. Maybe there really is a correlation. I was always suspicious of vegetables, because the only ones we ever ate were canned corn, canned carrots & peas, and potatoes. Everything else was suspect. Now I love just about all vegetables. But I still hate liver.

Do we spend our youth doing whatever we can to NOT become like our parents, and our middle age accepting this as an inevitability? I'd say our current bad economy and its dire prospects might be influencing you as well. Do not go gentle into that good night. Buy me an expensive dinner.

Interesting discussion, to say the least. It was my understanding (I may be wrong) that McDonald's in India does not serve beef. I've heard that their "beef" products are all soy derivatives. This was a big thing in Israel about 8 or 9 years ago when the first McDonald's opened in Jerusalem - a non-kosher McDonald's that is open on Shabbat. Tremendous arguments raged back and forth, with many people pointing to India as an example that Israel should have followed. Again, I'm not sure whether or not it is true. I think that saying "it's not necessary to keep kosher" implies (either deliberately or not, depending on who is saying it), at the very least, that there is no valid reason to do so. And yes, it is offensive, because I consider my reasons for keeping kosher most valid, to say the least. You might not agree with my reasons, but that does not alter their validity. When I hear people say this now, I generally get the feeling they are trying to "defend" (for lack of a better word) the fact that they themselves do not keep kosher, rather than insult the fact that I do. But the origin of the argument that kashrut is not "necessary" does start with the slow attempt to convert Jews to the relatively newly founded Christianity. There are more levels of kashrut than I could ever imagine. Technically, it is true that if it ain't kosher, it ain't kosher. However, Jewish law is meant to be interpreted. In fact, it must be interpreted. There is no way to live if we take the laws literally, and the very purpose of those laws is to enable us to live - as Jews. I don't need to tell anyone here what happens once something - anything - is open to interpretation. The question becomes how seriously you take the entire, larger issue of keeping Jewish law, and then it narrows down to finding a level that is acceptable to you, that you can live with. Everyone will end up maintaining a different level. Some people will accept that fact that you do things differently than they do, others will look askance at it. That's the way it goes - and this of course goes way beyond religion. I mean, look at the responses to the semi-homemade-cooking stuff! My own adherence to Jewish law seems to continually diminish. I'm kosher at home (although I buy non-kosher cheese), I do not eat pork or seafood anywhere, but I do eat in non-kosher restaurants (fish, veggies, salads, etc.) I started out eating only cold foods in restaurants, but now I'll eat hot, cooked foods too (there is a halachic difference between hot and cold, it really is a very complicated issue.) However, I don't kid myself into thinking that that stuff is kosher. It isn't. And even if the food itself is kosher, the utensils sure aren't. But that is my own level of adherence to the law. A lot of people will say that that's not good enough for them. Which is fine, their level of adherence is different, higher, stricter, "better," even. I accept that. I do not view Judaism as an "all or nothing" proposition. But I don't agree that any of this means that one cannot be a foodie if one keeps kosher. I can't compare my lasagne to yours if you're using meat and milk together, there simply is no comparison to be made. But that doesn't mean I can't make a great sauce and use the same fresh tomatoes and herbs that you would use, it doesn't mean I can't make my own noodles, it doesn't mean my cooking is going to be "inferior" to yours in any way. It is going to be different, but different does not necessarily mean "better" or "worse."