Meanderer

Agreed, although it does require the willing suspension of disbelief in a few scenes, such as the way key people are violently removed from this life. And what do women in movies(and, I guess, in real life)see in losers like gambling addict, sous chef Duncan? Otherwise, it was a terrific movie.

They might enjoy the What If at 845 E. Chocolate, which should fit in that price range depending upon their choice of beverages. Al Mediterraneo, next door in Hummelstown, is also a reliable choice. While neither place is at all dressy, an even more casual establishment is the Warwick located in the center of Hummelstown. While the food, overall, is not overly impressive, the crabcakes are perhaps the best in the immediate area.

Um....why is your own company and food so uninteresting that you are 'forced' to watch other tables? How was it accomplished ? I've been 'forced' to hear other tables, in that they were so loud that our conversation was difficult to sustain in comparison. But forced to watch others eat.... never once in 40+ years of eating out at restaurants of many different caliber has this been done to me. Its fascinating to contemplate. ← I doubt pikawicca was suggesting that there was physical or mental coercion involved. Rather, it is more likely that we turn to look at whatever is making a disturbance in a restaurant the same way we can't avoid looking at a wreck in the other lanes of the interstate when we should be paying attention to what is happening in ours.

I wouldn't think it is a regional thing, based on my experience. Both of my grandmothers, born and raised in Illinois, as well as my mother-in-law, a Pacific NW native, overcooked everything as a matter of course. I assume that was how they learned to cook from their mothers and never thought that any other way was acceptable.

Let me know if you ever develop an interest in dining on ground hog. I understand the young ones are particularly tasty and the older ones do well in stews. We have a healthy and well fed(from our garden)population of those things around here and they act as if the wagon shed was put there just to give them a comfortable and picturesque place to reside. Please feel free to invite as many of them, dead or alive, to your place as you wish.

I have no empirical evidence to back this up but, based on my casual observation, those who reside in rural areas, including those in small towns, are more likely to have their own vegetable gardens. Modern suburban landscaping often does not factor in an area for growing food and, of course, apartment dwellers or those in cities who own homes with tiny lots have little opportunity to grow much more than herbs. Also, many rural areas have numerous small farmstands where the produce sold on any given day was likely to have been picked that morning. And customers of the local farmstands probably did not have to brave heavy traffic and numerous stoplights to get the just-picked sweet corn or tomatoes. Now, the winter is another matter...

Just curious, do you end up eating the same dinners when you eat at home or are there modifications for each of you? And congrats on 34 years of marriage! ← Thanks for the congratulations(although the 34 years includes two years of dating). When we have something at home she doesn't want to eat, we just make certain there are plenty of other things, such as salad, vegetables and starch, to satisfiy he appetite. Many of the sauces for some of the meat dishes we prepare go well on rice or pasta.

My wife will not eat shellfish, crustaceans, poultry, organ meats, lamb, or goat; she isn't too keen on eggs, beef, or pork; and she is allergic to mushrooms. Although she doesn't consider herself a vegetarian, she could happily live as one so long as she could consume dairy products. I will eat most anything and I very much enjoy virtually everything that falls in the categories listed above. I tend to think our relationship will work out because these things haven't changed much in the 34 years we have been together.

In our neck of the woods, Sunday drives for non-supermarket food are limited. Many of the farm stands and markets are closed on Sundays because they are owned and operated by Mennonites who do not conduct any commercial business on their Sabbath. Saturdays are another matter, as we have a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers, pork, beef, lamb, and poultry sold at the farms or within a few miles of the farms where the products were produced. A few cheese makers are beginning to spring up as well. We always try to take a cooler with us on our Saturday drives to be prepared for impulse purchases from any farm stands we happen to be passing.

I apologize if you think I was one of the posters who was "clobbering" you. That was not my intention at all. I merely made two rather mild observations in response to your post. The first was that, occasionally, it would be a good thing if the server would question what is on the plate ready to go out to the diner. I did not suggest there was anything wrong with the dish to which you referred(because, of course, I wasn't there). In other words, if you understood otherwise, my comment wasn't directed at your skills or actions on the night in question at all. My second observation was that, while I realize that people work in kitchens when they are ill, I would have preferred not to have been given the details just as I would prefer not to be reminded by a poster about all of the pesticides and antibiotics that went into the meal they have just so poetically described in another forum. Having expressed my recognition that people in restaurants do work while ill, I'm not sure why you subsequently thought it necessary to go to additional lengths to describe how bad the situation actually is. I am certain you don't intend to discourage people from eating out though the realities, if known by some who are not presently aware of them, might have that effect. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion that I chill out, if it was directed at me. I think that is something we all could learn to do much better.

Yeah, there must have been a trade publication a few years ago that convinced restauranteurs that they could sell more orders of chicken breast with Parma ham and mozzarella if they put "Tuscan" in the name of the dish. I recently saw a Tuscan salmon on a menu.

A degree and experience does not guarantee that mistakes or sloppy work won't occur from time to time. Doctors and lawyers, even experienced ones, have been known to commit malpractice. It would not be unprecedented for an accountant to screw up a tax return. I have to think that some of the ill-prepared food I have been served came from experienced chefs with degrees. Perhaps all of your food leaves the kitchen with perfection written all over it, but I wouldn't mind if servers who were knowledgeable would stand up for their customers in other establishments where the food is not prepared the way it ought to be prepared.

On occasion, I wish my server had the backbone to challenge the kitchen staff, even with items such as onions. On more than one occasion, I have been served onions that were supposed to be caramelized but which came out barely soft and as pale as when they were sliced. By the way, I'm not sure I wanted to know that someone working with food had a temperature of 102 and was coughing his head off. I'm sure such cases--and worse--happen with frequency but, from my standpoint, ignorance is bliss.

I don't have an answer to you questions, but I have a variation on your second one. What is the appropriate tip for the server in a BYOB who often does as much with my wine as the server who works in a restaurant where I've ordered a bottle?

Having reread The Darling Buds of May, by H.E. Bates, I decided to make Syd Larkin's version of a Rolls Royce(for those of you not familiar with the book, Larkin is the patriarch of a rural English family that lives, with great enjoyment, somewhat on the margins of English society. David Jason played Larkin and a young and very fetching Catherine Zeta Jones played his eldest daughter in the British television series). This version is unlike anything in the available cocktail books I have seen but we tried it anyway. The recipe is: 2 parts vermouth(doesn't specify whether sweet or dry--we used sweet) 1 part scotch 1 part gin dash orange bitters(we used Regan's) There was no concensus. About half of those who tried it liked it and half didn't. I was in the latter camp. Perhaps dry vermouth would have been better.

I found the answer to my own question: she has now joined the folks at Chef du Jour. ← That just might be old news, since Chef du Jour is where she started cooking, several years ago. It would be kind of odd for her to be back there, at this point. But, stanger things have happenend in this business. ← She is back. We were there Friday night and the food was quite good--and inexpensive, I should add, particularly after spending a week in the Santa Fe area. Speaking of the Santa Fe area, the best meal we had up there was at O Eating House in Pojoaque. The chef, formerly, I believe, of La Casa Sena, knows what he is doing. My coffee, chile ribeye was as intensely flavored as anything I could want and my wife's salmon was exceptional as well. No complaints about the appetizers either.

I found the answer to my own question: she has now joined the folks at Chef du Jour.

As I recall, Jennifer James left Graze nearly a year ago. Is she involved with any existing or soon to be existing restaurants now?

My recently completed experience with the Saveur recipe was similar, yet worse. I got the strong molasses flavor and the medicinal sense, but also no carbonation. Perhaps more yeast added at a higher liquid temperature would help. At least one person who tried the stuff liked it and she went home with a liter. I plan to try the remainder as weed killer.

Many, if not most, of the restaurants in Gettysburg cater to tourists who have trekked around on the battlefield and through the gee-gaw shops all day, so they are pretty casual and, I think, uninteresting both in terms of food and atmosphere. This may not matter much to your fellow enthusiasts, who you describe as non-foodies. One place that is good is a rather smallish Mexican restaurant, El Costeno, located in an unprepossessing strip mall anchored by a dollar-type store approximately three blocks west of the square. Although there are booths around the outside of the dining room, the restaurant, if given notice and depending on the size of your group, could string together several tables in the center of the room. I also understand there is a brew-pub outside of town, but I haven't been there so I can't vouch for it. More expensive, but pretty good, is the Cashtown Inn, a few miles west of Gettysburg.

The two things I hope restaurants avoid in their menus are hyperbole and cliches. My wife thinks I am peculiar, but I refuse to order any dessert if the word "decadent" is in the menu description because that word is both hyperbolic and a cliche. I have my standards, irrational as they may be.

Here's a suggestion: Take about twenty pounds of tomatoes, cut them in half crosswise, squeeze out most of the seeds and pulp, chop roughly and add to a large pot with a little olive oil and or butter. Bring to simmer. Meanwhile, in another large pot, cook about 7 pounds of pasta. When tomatoes are heated through and pasta is al dente, toss them together with two large handfuls of fresh basil. Serve with freshly grated parmesan, crusty bread and your "house" red to twenty of your closest friends invited earlier in the day(five or six of whom will have offered to bring a salads for everyone). Enjoy.

"The name Chexbres comes from a town we lived near, and far back it meant goat. It is pronounced Cheb, with just a little touch of the r, but no x and no s. It was an appropriate name, because Dilwyn Parrish did look like an especially beautiful goat." From "M.F.K. Fisher, A Life in Letters, Correspondence 1929-1991." This letter was written in February of 1974.

A nephew spent a good half hour deconstructing the fish on his plate to make certain there were no bones in it. When he finally got around to his first bite, he complained because it wasn't hot.

The last time I ate at a Red Lobster, in 1988, the servers dropped everything they were doing at least six times to approach various tables to sing Happy Birthday. I vowed then never to eat at Red Lobster again. The article does not say whether the chain has gotten away from the singing, so I plan to keep my vow.