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Rebecca263

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Everything posted by Rebecca263

  1. I'm so glad that I lived long enough to see Hydrox at the supermarket again! They're on sale at ShopRite- 2 packages for $5.00. We bought a package and ate them while we watched the psychedlic Casino Royale film- such fun! They taste exactly as I remembered them- more cocoa flavor than Oreos, a less sweet, and smoother filling, and crisper than other brands. Actually, I couldn't eat too many, the filling was just too rich for me. Not being able to eat more than 5 servings is probably a GOOD thing- yes?
  2. Isn't it just a tiny bit weird that this aberrant day happened on FRIDAY THE 13TH?
  3. What I'm hearing is that you're having a bit of difficulty swallowing the cost of your delicious creation. There are only 2 ways to go, a smaller sandwich or a higher price. It is what it is- hopefully ALL of the food you serve 'rocks it', and, let's face it, we don't charge by the flavor, we charge by the cost, whether it's labor, location or product. Here, it's product. Go for it! It's YOUR costly sandwich and it's a delicious costly sandwich, it will still sell. edited to add: Have we ever wondered, what, exactly is this 'it' that the sandwich is rocking?: I'm getting dizzy thinking about a sandwich rocking a baby to sleep or some silly thing like that!
  4. Ooh, an eclectic and filled with FRESHNESS blog, I can't wait! Soba, you are very fortunate to be able to afford such great produce, I envy you and I am so very excited to follow you this week. Thanks for blogging for us during this wet and unpredictable late spring! Will we get refrigerator shots this time? PS: I know how you're feeling. Be well.
  5. I am out of zaatar! i called my stepmother, and she has promised to make me a batch next week. My old bag had no parsley in it, nor citric acid, by the way. I got it in Brooklyn last year, on King's Highway. Which I miss! I miss Syrian cheese and decent olives!
  6. We use rags and sponges to clean up poo and cat puke in our house, and we use the bags that packaged foods, like cereal and popping corn come in, for cat litter. I made a commitment to not use paper or plastic shopping bags for a year, and 6 months in, we STILL have 3 bags here, a Target bag, and 2 ShopRite bags. They're stuffed with newspapers, which, I swear, are more fertile than Tribbles. We use newspaper for packing internet sales. My next step in environmentalism is going to paper tape, completely. But, it's so expensive, and I'm not!
  7. Because I personally liked the veggies and pizza at Cafe Viva. It's very American, and New York IS American. It's true that one can get great pizza in a lot of places, but since no one else was chiming in, I offered my suggestion for a fun afternoon. If I had been told that the afternoon needed to include snobbery as a side dish to all foods, I would have aqdjusted my offer accordingly, but nobody mentioned that. I didn't realize that we are only alliowed to like certain kinds of pizza on eGullet, I must have missed that in the posting guidelines. I didn't feel so stuffed after eating there that I couldn't indulge in a sfogliatelle, which is one of my favorite desserts! A 19 year old girl might not have the eating stamina that you folks do, or the haughty attitude, either!
  8. Hi! So, you've got the home front all to yourself for a few days, huh? Sounds like illicit meal fun is ahead for you, too! I go into the city every week, and my daughter and her friends accompany every so often. I send those teens all over the city for mini adventures- I can't stand to have them milling around me all day while I'm being poked and prodded by the medical folks. I sent them down to alphabet city awhile back, and it was a big hit. The main attraction, food wise, was a bakery called Veniero's(when I used to live in NYC we called it Venereal Disease, but that's just because it was always so crowded, not as a commentary on the food!). It's on 11th Street, between Avenue's A & B. Veniero's in a very old Italian bakery- heavy emphasis on the lovely sweet things that Italians are famous for- fruit tarts with lovely cream centers, sfogliatelle that fall apart in your mouth into bits of cloudy heaven, ricotta cheese cakes that taste so much healthier than they should, cannolis, many, many many cookies of every taste and look, lots of chocolate baked goods. You can order all kinds of mini items, and get bite size tastes of almost everything that they serve. Going there is a great excuse for a meal of sweets. For a real meal, if they can do both, there is a great little vegetarian pizza place right nearby on 2nd Avenue off of 11th Street called Cafe Viva Pizza. They had more than pizza, and I really liked the veggie options when I ate there a few months ago, it definitely made me feel very worthy of my later bakery gluttony! Anyway, the neighborhood is interesting, and it's not too far from this fun book shop where the 2 of them can linger over the stacks and bring you home some interesting cookbooks! That place is on 12th & Broadway- and there are some great little interesting and cool laces all throughout that area, so they can have a great time, eating and otherwise. I have lots of other mini NYC adventures- but I don't think that anyone else will point you out to this one, and it really would be fun, as there is so much to do in that area on foot. I think that your step daughter will really enjoy the trendy arty atmosphere, and they can spend as much or as little time there as they want, without feeling that they've missed out on something more "NY".
  9. My American style coffee maker broke a few months ago, and I only use my ibrik now. I really want a French press or a moka, but I've found that all of the setups in our price range(trust me, it's LOW) are made in China or are Italian made but made of aluminum, so we're waiting. To be honest about it, I only used the coffeemaker rarely(guess that's how I got it to last since 1987!), most people come over and expect Syrian coffee from me, and I'm not one for anything with a less infused flavor profile than that myself.
  10. Roger, you've got a viable idea here, especially considering the British pub culture that I'm familiar with. I have lots of British friends, and you're completely correct, they order those very drinks that you've mentioned, every time they are here in the States! I'm always flummoxed when my erudite friends belly up and order a margarita- but they seem to think that drink is very 'fantastic', and Brits tend to really go for those citrus flavors with their alcohol, too. At oleast the ones I know, do! And, they've all told me how different drinking habits are in the UK. There are probably many pubs that would take an interest in your machine, and lots of clientele for those drinks, machine made. Our fair citizenry of eGullet may be forgetting that most people are not cocktail snobs as we tend to get here- most people in a pub are looking for a bit of a buzz and some socializing- their palates are not so sophisticated that they would refuse a drink from a machine out of hand- they're actually more open minded and relaxed in attitude than serious cocktail afficianodos would be about the process. There are many clubs that don't have bartenders who 'do' cocktails, as well. My fiance has performed in many venues in Britain where they only served beer, ale, some hard liquors in shots or with soda, and some drink made of ale mixed with juice- that was odd to my tastebuds. I would have appreciated a drink machine in some of those places! I say go for it anyway, you're already making the machine, use it as a prototype and take it around- you've got nothing to lose.
  11. we don't have "TV" at our home, so I have to get my advertising fix at places like Youtube... here's the one that creeps me out lately, yet is oddly fascinating. The product itself is ridiculous, but the is really uncomfortable to watch. All I can think of is sweaty lime butt and gym socks, UNAPPEALING to the nth degree!
  12. This looks just like some of my partner's art installations from the late 70's to early 80's! Come to think of it, it also looks like his living room, but that's a subject for another time. My daughter is quite jealous of your travels, as am I. I would have wanted 4 bowls of that rice, and we could have spent days in the book shop! That saw is an Oldenburg piece... he's made a living being 'witty' by designing huge sculptures of oversized every day objects.
  13. I didn't know that Jodorowsky did Estonian commercials back in the day!
  14. I knew that my stepmother really thought of me as family the day that she finally served m'jeddra for lunch when I was at her home. We DO tend to think of m'jeddra as a secret food, sort of, don't we? We all eat it, but don't serve it to company. I suppose that I'm just a rebel about things like that, haha!
  15. I think that pureed corn is what we call creamed corn in the US. I have a friend from Guatemala who uses it and she calls it pureed corn.
  16. You can't taste the lemon in a black & white cookie, but if you eat a cookie without it, the flavor just misses the mark, somehow.
  17. Forget me helping you, I can't make these to save my life, but I CAN tell you that the best recipes, the MOSt authentic tasting black & whites, are the ones with some lemon in the recipe. I do not know why, that is just the way it is.
  18. Some of my friends went and ordered a corned beef sandwich, and a Rachel. Since when did those sandwiches come with French fries? I must be senile, I didn't remember that. They sent me the photos (and a copy of the 16.95 bill for the Rachel) and I tipped them with an email of a drawing of a twenty dollar bill. Quite nostalgic, but mostly the food hadn't been really good for years and years.
  19. You mean me? For m'jeddra? Um, OK. (Sheesh, has no one warned these people about my 'recipes' as yet?) 6 onions, or more, if you like 3 spoons of olive oil 1 cup of any long grain rice, brown or white 1 cup of lentils- not orange, they get too mushy- also, don't forget to pick over the lentils, there could be rocks! salt to taste accompaniments as you wish. You chop up at LEAST 6 onions. You brown them in a big skillet with lots of olive oil and some salt, not a lot, just a couple of pinches. Really, you are going to brown them! Pull out about 1/2 when they are light brown(not gold, brown!) but not yet crispy, then fry the rest until they crisp. While the 1/2 of the onions are crisping, you put about a cup of lentils into a pot with, hold on, I'm going to the kitchen to measure, OK, I'm back- about 3 1/2 cups of water, and you cover the pot, bring it to a boil and then simmer that for about 15 minutes. COVERED, did I say that? Good, I sometimes forget to tell that part. THEN, you add a cup of rice to the pot and the just limply browned onions(yes, you DO!), stir things up and cover the pot and simmer THAT for about 20 minutes longer. Don't worry if you overcook by a few minutes at any step, this isn't baking, we're all good. OK! NOW you mix a couple of spoonfuls of the crispy onions into the pottage of lentils and rice, and you serve it! The more crispy onions you make to serve alongside, the more people will eat, some people are positively ogres about those crispy onions, so you may want to be prepared, I've made as much as ten onions and had them all get eaten. Gee, even I get a headache thinking of someone trying to follow my thought process! It might seem hard, but honestly, a 6 year old can make this, IF you cut the onions for them!
  20. I wonder if this Ethiopian restaurant in New Brunswick area would accomodate them? The food is fantastic, and the ambiance is really nice, as well.
  21. I make this one dish every time a certain friend of mine visits us... he adores it to no end, and he swears that he hates beans, so we always shout to each other "Lentils are NOT beans!" when we plan for his visits. It is m'jeddra, lentils and rice. Yup, pottage, that simple food. The reason that I believe my non bean eating friend loves m'jeddra is that it is made with lots of very well fried onions, including a side bowl of cripy fried onions to add to your own serving, and that it is accompanied by buttermilk, sour cream or yogurt. He salts his serving and mixes the dairy into it, and usually consumes a good bit of the crispy onions... and I have never met anyone who didn't like this simple and really inexpensive dish. Personally, I like to fry an egg and serve it atop a leftover bowl of m'jeddra, with buttermilk and hot sauce on top. My neighbor comes over and puts barbecue sauce on his, but he's weird. Oh, yeah, you can spice it up and then mold leftover m'jeddra into balls and fry them, or if you can afford salad, you can mix m'jeddra into salad, yum. The one thing I will never skimp on is my daughter's ketchup and her balsamic vinegar- she adores certain kinds and that is THAT. She's worth it and I just keep my blinders on when I need to buy those items.
  22. Well, then, half of the time your kids would love my matzoh balls! the other half of the time, they would hate them, because they are so soft that they disintegrate. I am the world's worst matzoh ball maker. I am going to go back and read this thread, but I want to share my first night seder with you all here. We were invited to a seder at the house of people from our shul, but I was 'toxic' from chemotherapy and became delirious. My daughter wouldn't go to the seder without me, she felt too shy. Kiddle came to my room at 9:00PM, while I was on the telephone making crazy pain induced 'deals' with the doctors so that I could stay home, and she made us a seder from the items in our kitchen. She got out one of my books on the seder, and sang every prayer. She brought a pitcher of water to my bed and helped me to wash my hands, she used celery tops for bitter herbs, and made a kind of 'charoset' out of apple sauce and cinnamon. She fed me drops of grape juice, for the wine. We had everything but a roasted egg and a lamb shank. She made a chicken breast, and even put a tiny bit on a plate for me. It was the best seder I have experienced in my entire life. By the way, Kiddle is going to be an international volunteer next year, instead of going straight to university. My daughter is a good person, she is going to be OK, and I can see that now, so I don't have to be fearful about who she is going to be when I am gone. There isn't a meal in the world that can top that, but I am sure that 18 years of helping me feed and help people, of having discussions of how to bring light to the world, and of giving tzedekah have been instrumental in forming my child's attitude and heart. Yay! The next night Kiddle went to my sister's, and when Kiddle returned home to our front door she spilled the container of matzoh ball soup that my sister had made for us, which served to share our seder leftovers with the birds in the neighborhood. Oh, well.
  23. I'm Sephardic, when I CAN eat, I need my rice! One of my friends sent me a warning about the price of rice, with a 5 dollar bill, to cover some rice. I used the 5 dollars for gas, to get to the rice, instead, though! Well, my daughter and I went to the local ShopRite yesterday(our food stamps got cut off, we had some ShopRite gift cards and decided to stock up). I usually buy brown rice, but it was SO expensive compared to white rice, I just couldn't justify it. We ended up paying US$0.45 cents a pound for long grain white rice, in a 20# bag. I can remember when I could find brown basmati for 80 cents a pound, last year, now it was $2.00 a pound. It's a California product, not organic. We spent 70 dollars and tried our hardest to buy the most long lasting foods, beans, rice, and lots of markdown produce, most of which I prepped and stuffed into the 'tiny freezer of miracles' last night. Our only splurges were Kiddle's organic ketchup and Kit Kats(they were on sale, and she adores candy) and Cracker Jacks- for Mommy. I'm even thinking of returning the Cracker Jacks- I could buy another pound of beans. Has anyone noticed the prices of olive oil? I will have to buy it, eventually. Still, I promise you, we're pretty lucky, and we know it. We eat a lot better than many people who spend lots more than us, I'm a great home cook. I can feed anyone who shows up at our door, and please them. And, I love to, so whenever I am home, feel free to come for a meal if you are ever near Englishtown, NJ!
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