Rebecca263

Oh, dear, Sandy, is that a naughty thing to you? I'm fairly well stocked with Hello Kitty, and I'm 43! Will my Transformers collection redeem me in your eyes? That, and the fact that I drop major dime in Philly lately!

That's OK by me, I'm a home made sauce/gravy girl myself, so far. I have to mention to you all, I was talking to my neighbor over the gardening today. He's Italian and he says that Rao's is his favorite. I can't comment on this, I'll have Rao's and Patsy's at the tasting, but I won't be judging, as they're in the stable of companies I'll be distributing. Still, it seems I got lucky, the product I'll be delivering seems to get high marks from people! Whew! Now, I've just got to get people's input of the other 10,000 items!

OhMyHolyBeans, Sandy! This is the KING of all blogs! Fantastic! Kiddle and I have been traveling to Philly on Saturday mornings as often as possible, and we've never seen this side of the the city! We can't wait to go back and check out some of the places you've shown us, and we're definitely parking and using the trains next time! THANK YOU!

Just want you all to know, I'm sitting here reading my eGullet today, I just finished a pear, 2 pieces of some chocolate mousse cake (with a dark chocolate icing, how did they do that? It's WONDERFUL frozen), and a 1/4 of a home made basil tomato pizza from last night, and I washed it down with a nice couple of glasses of KFP Coca Cola. Now I'm off to do a little house prep for the upcoming visit of one of my boys next week, and I'm not in the least bit repentant or feeling guilty! I hope that makes you all feel better, as I believe that I'm a fairly average girl of middle age, and it is just by some odd chance that the poll taker missed me. I must have been busy, getting busy, or eating. Now, my sister, she is always on a diet, she makes her hubby beg for 'dates', and her kids and life are wonders of structured activities. SHE feels guilt. I just feel. They must polled her by accident.

I'm not repentant one bit about my Subway visits. I also won't be trying the sandwiches. There's just no need for me to eat it in order to know that I wouldn't like it. I LIKE chips, and I ADORE my niece, and if she begged for McDonald's, I'd take her there, with a smile, too. Heck, they've got toys at McDonald's! I can trade a toy for lunch once every few months!

Yes, we're in 2 different middle of nowheres, aren't we?

So, should I add a jar of Azureus and a jar of Deltadoc to the lineup?

Tomato sauce and pureed soups are the MAIN reasons I am contemplating purchase of an immersion blender. This is what I don't understand! I mean, yes, we're an instant culture in a lot of ways, but boiling pasta takes, what 30 minutes from start to finish? That's enough time to make any number of quick toppers. So, how are there so many jarred sauces? I never realized how popular an item this is! And, I can't figure out why! I'm really excited to be trying jarred sauce. I'm picturing a sweet, basil filled Sicilian style sauce coming out of those jars, judging by th ingredient lists. This week is pretty hectic, too, with the new job, one of my boys arriving on friday for a nice long visit, and kiddle having three Sweet 16's to attend. A jarred sauce tasting for the FT Gang (Freehold Township) is just the thing!

Dip the business end of a bunch of pacifiers into chocolate? The same treatment for baby spoons? That's silly, and still delicious.

Yebra makes me feel like I'm home, and m'jeddrah is my all time comfort food, so satisfying, with a dollop of yogurt, or a stream of buttermilk atop the crunchy onions and the lentils and rice. I HAD to buy a splatterware covered roaster years ago, just for one recipe: my Mommy's chicken and spaghetti . A lot of Syrians make this dish- spaghetti with an allspice tomato sauce, baked with chicken pieces, until the spaghetti is crusty on the bottom of the roaster and rich with the fat from the skin of the chicken. I can't really eat this dish anymore, I think that in the past 7 years I've made it 4 times. But, I lug the roaster with me, from home to home, because it reminds me of Mommy's. And, when things get really unbearable, I make a batch of chicken and spaghetti, in the splatterware roaster, just like Mommy's. The aroma fills my head with memories of sitting at the kitchen table AFTER dinner, sharing the crunchy bits of pasta in the bottom of the roaster, with my sister, father, and, of course, Mommy, who always let everyone else have the best bits, even though this was one of her favorite dishes.

I just tried a bottle of this! I would have liked it, it tasted pretty good! I really like the ginger finish of a Coca Cola, and this has it, in spades. But, I am now feeling ooky, and I don't think it's from the group of very drama oriented 16 year olds that I had the pleasure of dealing with tonight, either (aske me about the girl who decided to rollerblade to my home from a town ten miles away, without telling her parents, and got lost in farmland ). No, it's the curse of the corn syrup! Satan's spawn, if I believed in the poor fellow.

My daughter grew this in our last apartment, in a pot, by the window with the Northern exposure. (Sorry about making it a link, it's the only way I know of to upload the photos so far.) It was the sweetest pineapple that we ever ate. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=mo...lbum&album=2819

I'll have a double order of Ravioli ala Mama, a side of broccoli, a big glass of wine, and some of everything on the dessert table. But, I need to know, is it rude if I skip the pacifier as a side?

I'm adding Batali to the list, if I can find it. I'm not sure where TJ's and Whole Foods are up here in the New Jersey Tundra . If the budget allowed, we COULD go as high as 40 or so brands, it seems, without a problem. There's so much jarred sauce out there! Wow! Regarding the salt, well, honestly, I think that this job will be good for my diet, as I'm not really interested in starting on packaged stuff at this time in my life(I'm already 43, you know! ). Besides, lucky me, extremely LOW blood pressure; salt is my friend!

I tested a new Senseo recently. There will be some slight changes in the next season's machines, so they've sent them out for feedback. I liked the IDEA of the pod system, the idea of vacuum sealed product, the sprayer for the water, etc. The 'crema' on top was interesting, albeit not really crema. There was no sweet top to it at all, it was just a light, oily scum on the top of the cups. And, the final nail in the coffin: the pods that I had all tasted stale to me. Now, granted, I'm a retired coffee jockey, and was a coffee geek for years (trying to live that down! ) but the coffee pods really did taste old. Sorry, no blurb from me for your journal adverts! Now, you CAN buy a plastic refillable pod, then grind and stuff with your own choice of beans, but then, after all that effort, you certainly don't need a pod machine. A moka pot would be a better cup, to me. For a regular cup of joe, I say buy a French press and have at it, though. A four minute brew in a French press is really decent coffee, and simple to deal with, too. With the long contact of bean and water, the extraction of coffee oils is very high (much higher than a cute Melitta drip), so if you start with excellent freshly roasted and home ground beans, you can't go wrong. AND, you can buy one of those stainless steel travel models, and take your press with you to the office, or the zoo, too! That's what I got for my sister, and she's thrilled with the coffee she can make for herself, even after a year. She still won't 'mess' with an ibrik , sheesh. I KEEP tellin' her!

Hmmm, sous vide sauce! Who'd'a thunk it? As tomato sauce is only a small part of the items in the distributor's line up (it's a distributor with an immense list of companies represented, the bulk of which are 'ethnic' foods), I don't know how much information they will have for me immediately. I just want to be upfront about how I became curious about jarred sauces, and that I can't be a judge of them in any public capacity now, although, I AM really looking forward to trying them! Believe me, though, there are over a hundred companies in the stable, and I will be intrepidly studying every one of them, as time permits! I am very excited to be working again, and I hope that I can keep up the pace, physically! A funny bit, one of the corporate folk told me that learning the products would be 'a cinch' for ME, because I cook so much! Guess he doesn't realize that since I actually DO cook, and from scratch, I rarely need most of the items from the 'middle' aisles! Coffee in a pouch, drink bases, powdered soups and mousses, some of this is a whole new world!

This thread reminds me of why I LOVE eGullet. Now I want a doughnut.

For the final night of Passover I made: Apps for the kids of stuffed eggs, then mains of Chinese seasoned chicken and vegetables, small packs of minced steamed vegetables eith a dipping sauce, and dessert ? Fruit plates consisting of green grapes, some small rosy apples I fell in love with at the market with no name on them, and pineapple. Man, those kids ate everything! Tomorrow night we will celebrate with another houseful of kids and home made something, but I have no idea yet what that something will be.

Ohmyholyoats. I so want a piece of coconut cake this year! That touch of lemon in the cake sounds divine. I really anticipating the photos!

Natasha, I LOVE that quote you've got as your tag line! That's EXACTLY what I'm wondering about jarred sauces. Does price connote a difference in taste and quality? As a rule, I can't eat corn syup, so I'm going to focus on the sauces minus that ingredient, and at the grocery today I noticed that a lot of the jars had cornsyrup listed. Has anyone here eaten Ragu brand? I'm sure someone eats it, as it has the largest shelf space! How do they make it so inexpensively and yet there are 10 dollar jars as well? Is jarred tomato sauce like a steak? Something that you need to spend some money on in order to get a great product, but if you buy it cheaply you can make it palatable with the right recipe?

OK, I'm in the process of deciding on a new career. I'm old enough to have had a few already, and this time around I want something completely different than my past ones. I've decided (for now) on outside sales, in the grocery field. The company that is wooing me right now has a few tomato sauces in their fold. Some US$7-8 jars of tomato sauce. I've never bought tomato sauce in a jar. I'm fascinated by this stuff! At every store that I visit now, I am completely enamored of the sauce aisle. And, MANY people buy sauce in a jar! There are almost a hundred different brands, from US$.99 for 24 ounce jar to almost US$10 for an 18 ounce jar. Tell us, do you buy your sauce at times? And, is it better than homemade? AND, what are your favorites? I feel a taste test coming!

I just went out to the front walk, and picked a blade off of the plant by the door. It tastes like a mild onion, but not with a clean finish. An off taste, reminiscent of chewing on milky weed stalks as a child, is also present. Mildly unpleasant, but probably a wild onion. Shucks, I'm disappointed, I was hoping that it would be divine.

Sandy, WOW! That's one fully packed refrigerator!

Along the roadside and in my front garden there are some scallion looking plants growing, wild. We pulled a bit. There is a tiny bulb, and the cut greens smell oniony, but how do I know if it is edible?

I know this sounds silly, but, to me, it's Passover when I have marshmallows and a glass of Coca Cola to binge on. Ah, the flavors of spring!