Restorer

I had a turkey and brie sandwich with tomato, onion, cucumber, basil, and honey mustard on foccacia from Panino. This place makes awesome sandwiches, and I just had to share this picture.

A blood orange and Irish breakfast tea.

I think I made the transition fairly early. In my early teens, I was a processed food junkie. I'd eat a bag of Doritos for lunch and not think twice (other than worrying about getting caught spending my lunch money on chips instead of a "balanced" school lunch). Sometime in high school, I had a health class, and at the same time I began watching a lot of FoodTV. The combination of the urgings of the health teacher, phrases on TV such as, "You can really taste the cabbage in this!" (cabbage has a taste? I thought), and a one-week "caveman diet" homework assignment got me to recognize and appreciate the tastes that exist other than sweet, sour, and salty.

The head is the best part! Served alongside sushi made from the raw body of the same shrimp (as SuzySushi pointed out), the head is great dipped in tempura batter, fried, and served with some soy-based sauce.

As far as I can tell, only 4 out of the 41 dishes on the menu are offal. I think that's a ratio that my family can handle. My mother's the type to say, "ooh, neat" and point it out to my brother, and then procede to choose something different. I think they'll both find good stuff on the menu, once they know what most of that stuff is.

From what I've gathered, it opened April 10th. I'll be there on the 28th. I've been practicing my low-light photography techniques with my old point-and-shoot. Sometimes I have to get clever about the settings (since not very much is manually adjustable).

I'm going on an impromptu trip to Las Vegas this weekend, staying at the Mirage. I managed to convince the rest of my traveling companions (family) to try out B & B Ristorante, but I fear I'll have to explain every item on the menu to them, as they're not quite as into the "culture" of food as I. Fortunately the menu is nearly identical to Babbo's, so I can draw on reviews and pictures of those dishes to educate my family. I'll come back next week with pictures and a review.

That just inspired me, so tonight I replicated it. My fish was rainbow trout, with ginger, garlic, lemongrass, thai basil, serrano chiles, shallots, soy, and lemon. I served it with sauteed sesame asparagus. Best dinner I've had in a while, as I haven't been doing much cooking with my new health problems. I regret not getting a picture.

My technique for hard-boiled eggs is to run the cold tap over a hot egg for a good 15-20 seconds, then switch the tap to hot and run the egg under it for just a couple seconds. It seems that the thermal shock from going from hot to cold and back to hot is enough to loosen the shell from the egg.

I grew up eating convenience foods - it's what my mother cooked. TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, fast food when she wasn't cooking. When we did get a somewhat involved dinner, it consisted of Shake 'n' Bake pork chops, Rice-A-Roni, and some canned or frozen corn, or frozen spinach. When most of the items on your plate are properly capitalized, that's a bad sign. When I visited my father on weekends, he would often cook something for dinner, and try to involve us kids. His use of processed foods extendeded to canned tomato sauce (as a base for pasta sauce), frozen vegetables, bagged salad, and bottled salad dressing. Unlike my mother, he had kitchen tools and knew how to use them. Once I moved out and started cooking on my own, I must have rebounded, as I tended to completely avoid processed convenience foods. Frozen vegetables are okay, as are certain canned vegetables, and bagged salads; but I never bought TV dinners or canned soup or anything easy like that. I wanted to make everything from scratch, my own way. These days, I'm back on convenience foods almost entirely, but I have an excuse that was only barely hinted earlier. I have health problems at the moment, including anemia, so my energy levels are rock-bottom, and I just don't have the motivation or drive to get up and cook. I'm lucky if I have an appetite at all. That's my excuse.

You know, looking at that cut, it occurs to me that it's the same exact cut used for the "fake" prosciutto that I enjoy, made in Germany, sold by Trader Joe's.

On an episode of America's Test Kitchen I saw just recently, they mentioned equivalencies for table salt, Morton's kosher salt, and Diamond Crystal kosher salt. 1 cup of table salt is equivalent to 1.5 cups of Morton's kosher is equivalent to 2 cups of Diamond Crystal kosher.

that's because it's hot!!!!!!! ahahah, you can't slurp up noodles without being noisy, unless you are slurping up cold noodles like soba. I would never eat soba noodles loudly....spicy ramen on the other hand..... ← I think this goes hand in hand with the tendency of the same sort of people to eat very quickly - the type of people that can eat a bowl of noodles in 5 minutes. I've always been a slow eater. I let my food cool down to a temperature that won't burn my mouth before I try to eat it, and when it's still too hot I blow on it before it makes it into my mouth. I can't imagine eating as fast as some people do. It's quite possible to eat a bowl of noodle soup quietly.

I wish I could demonstrate the noises made while slurping noodle soups. It's not just the slurping - especially not the polite, quiet slurping as one would do with some spaghetti (ala Lady and the Tramp). This is loud, multi-noodle, wet slurping, accompanied by seemingly exaggerated smacking of the lips and open-mouth chewing. See the noodle-eating lesson scene in Tampopo (just before the executive ordering scene). There's also the habit of one of my roommates to, as I said, stand in the middle of a room and eat. Sometimes it's crunchy snack food, like chips. And usually, his mouth is open 75% of the time he spends chewing, putting chips in his mouth one by one, chewing and smacking, and only stopping to swallow every 5 or 6 chips. When the middle of the room is right over your shoulder, this can get extremely grating. Maybe I'm especially sensitive to these noises, but I think how you eat should depend on the culture you're surrounded by, not the culture you grew up in. Maybe I'm in the minority in the situation, though, as my Asian roommates outnumber me 3-to-1.

Living with Asian roommates has sensitized me to eating noises. My roommates take me too seriously, it seems, and I'm too polite, to mention it to them, but some of their habits really irk me. Eating soupy dishes or noodles with tremendous slurping noises. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, shoveling food into your mouth from a bowl with a spoon. Even the almost-food-related habit of walking around the house while brushing your teeth, which I assume developed from living in a small house with a large family.

As far as cheese, the ingredient list says there's swiss, provolone, cheddar, feta, and parmesan on there. You can see the picture with the sliced cheese layered at the bottom, and two pictures later you can see the feta and powdered parmesan on top. There must have been some additions to the sandwich before the next picture was taken, as some of the onion rings have moved around, the parmesan is harder to see (maybe it soaked up the grease?), and the braunschweiger has been smeared on the top pieces of bread. In the scale picture, you can see the canister of parmesan cheese they used.

Looks like it's the parmesan cheese (dry Kraft style).

I'm not sure which claims you're pointing at. I was looking for information about this now that I have some brown rice. The claim that germinating rice greatly increases GABA levels has been tested, and the results published, a number of times (for example, this study). Though, that study tested a 72-hours soak, and the article referenced from Wikipedia gives a time of 8 hours to 24 hours at 40 Celsius. The claim that these rice cookers can germinate rice in two hours is a bit dubious, though, and I haven't seen any peer-reviewed studies that really show what the effects of GABA are in the first place (but I haven't been searching long).

Karen: Horlicks tastes different thatn Ovaltine. Ovaltine is a chocolaty drink. Horlicks is a malt drink. It doesn't have the rich, smooth feel that is in a chocolate flavored drink. And they make Horlicks candies too! I like those. ← Ovaltine has three different varieties: rich chocolate, chocolate malt, and malt. The rich chocolate flavor seems to be the one advertised most (solely?). I currently have a jar of malt Ovaltine, only because the store didn't have the chocolate malt flavor. Ovaltine started as a malt mix.

I just today received in the mail a 6-quart dutch oven and 4 pounds of Rancho Gordo beans. As soon as I have an opportunity in the kitchen, I'll be trying this method. The only question is what type of beans to try first...

I think the same thing, and I'm sure many others do as well. And we know it's not by lack of skill or desire that we aren't able to cook like that - not all of us have the equipment! I would love a proper burner for my wok, and a ventilation system to go with it.

I just had the exact same thought.

It's not too much of a stretch to see it this way: Coffee is indigenous to parts of Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the civet cat has been eating coffee cherries for ages (the source of kopi luwak). It's possible the natives saw this, and decided to try eating the fruit of the coffee cherries. I don't know how coffee fruit tastes, but imagine the natives chucking the unchewable pits into the dying embers of a fire, then later discovering this wonderful smell coming from the fire. A brave individual picks some of the seeds (that's what they are, not beans) out of the embers, and tastes them. The roasting has made them chewable, and they have a decent flavor. I can imagine the late-night fire-tenders sitting around chewing coffee cherries to stay awake, and chucking the beans into the fire. Some, as they pop, fly out of the fire pit and can be picked up and eaten. Now, as to how ancient people figured out to grind up the coffee and put it in hot water... well, coffee only spread out of Ethiopia around the 9th century.

Trader Joe's Marcona Almonds. They're a bit expensive ($7.29 for 12 oz), but oh so good. Lightly coated in oil, with some coarse salt.

I rub my steak with whatever oil is on hand (grapeseed or canola) before I put it in the cast iron pan. There is no oil in the pan to start (other than what's been seasoned into the iron).