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azurite

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Posts posted by azurite

  1. Fresh sardines (canned sardines easily found). Worst part is that I live on the coast of OR, where sardines are considered bait fish. I didn't know they existed (any more) on the west coast until I was in SF for dinner last year & we chose an Italian restaurant w/fresh sardines on the menu--I tried the fresh (stuffed) sardine dish & it was great. I asked, "where'd you get the sardines"? "Here", I was told. Monterey area, I guess. When I got back to OR I started asking around and the one "local fish" seller here, said, maybe in June, but didn't get them in. Latest I've heard is that some chefs in Seattle are using them.

    First chance I get I'll go down to the docks/harbor here & ask one of the fishermen selling tuna if they'd be willing to sell me some sardines. Once we establish what a sardine is, the names of fish seem to vary sometimes depending on which coast (in the US) you're on and sometimes even where on the west coast. Then I just have to hope that one of the fishermen might consider it worthwhile to sell me a few, rather than deciding that if he/or the occasional she, can't sell many it's not worth dealing with the fish at all.

  2. My guess is that the various gov'ts will claim that the fish, oyster, et al are "safe" to eat (those fish & shrimp that are still alive & around to be caught) but within a year or two additional research will indicate that isn't accurate. The existing dead zone will be enlarged for years. Offshore drilling in the GOM, in deep water, will continue, maybe after a 6 month hiatus. People will return to the Gulf for vacations, they will get used to oily beaches.

  3. Looking for some midrange restaurants for dinner in downtown Baltimore. I'll be staying at the Hotel Monaco (I believe it's the former B & O building) at 2 North Charles St. Probably be eating w/2-4 other people--this will be the evening we get to choose where & what we eat--so people are pretty happy if we can find a restaurant w/food all of us enjoy. I live in an area w/lots of seafood so I'm not interested in a restaurant specializing in seafood. Asian, or Italian, Indian, (probably many "ethnic" dishes), as is good "American" cooking, although not a steakhouse, barbecue, or burger place (no matter how good the burgers are). Emphasis on local and in season is fine, but not a necessity.

    Cost probably midrange. I've read the thread & am wondering how much of the information is current and would be interested in any suggestions offered for dinner. It'd be great if we could walk to the restaurant but a short cab ride, if the food's good, is not a problem.

    Thanks for any suggestions.

  4. Berries from the evergreen huckleberry, a native species of the western PNW. I don't exactly forage, one seeded itself in one of my herb beds, & they're difficult to move successfully, so I left it there. It now towers over the lavenders, thymes & roses in that bed. If I don't pick the berries and/or cover it w/fruit netting, the birds strip the bush by the end of October at the latest. Some years I am also able to forage in my backyard for the berries of the native coast strawberry, small but delicious. Have to compete w/the slugs & some other slimies though.

  5. Scrambled eggs w/some milk or cream added, cooked/scrambled over low heat (takes around 20-25 minutes) on toast. Deborah Madison's quinoa,corn,spinach & feta soup; bagels, cream cheese & lox; hot cocoa; lentil soup w/tomato & some garlicky or spicy sausage; my mom's potato salad, her sweated cucumbers w/a sprinkling of hot Hungarian paprika; just picked ripe Italian prune plums eaten while still warm from the sun, slices of aged cheddar cheese plus slices of tart apples and green split pea soup (those 3 items as a meal).

  6. Here's a link to a "beginner" cookbook that's getting some good reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Food-Manualfesto-Healthy-Eating/dp/1604860731/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266211591&sr=1-1 , and here's a review of the book: http://www.alternet.org/health/144351?page=entire

    According to the review, it's mostly vegan recipes w/some suggestions for some dairy additions, but is useful for non-vegans too since it focuses on the idea that people can learn to cook tasty inexpensive meals that don't take forever. I looked at one of the recipes on the blog, it called for steaming & offered an explanation of what steaming is (or what you use), which could be helpful to someone w/no cooking experience or background such as helping a parent, other relative or friend prepare meals from scratch.

  7. I can only echo what others have said--I really dislike noisy restaurants. In the places I've been or eat at, it's often the volume of the "background" music that is really upsetting. I can tune out voices more easily, although I find cellphone rings, etc., and loud "cellphone voice" very annoying too. I've read that high levels of noise make people eat & drink faster. Maybe nice for those running the restaurant, maybe not so healthy for the customers.

    It seems odd to me that so many musicians, always, always, no matter what the size or acoustics of a room, use amplifiers. I've heard the Tallis Scholars (acapella group that sings medieval choral music) fill a very large church with the sound of their unamplified voices. So why is it necessary, in much smaller spaces, for fiddles, drums, pianos & guitars to be amplified? If they're playing electric guitars (or mandolins, or whatever stringed instrument) it's possible to keep the amplifier turned fairly low. Sometimes I fantasize about finding a bar of the kind that Raymond Chandler & others wrote about, someone playing jazz on a piano (unamplified) w/a solitary singer singing quietly but well in a dimly lit bar.

    Almost forgot: some time last year, someone at the Boston Globe reviewed some restaurant & the noise level was mentioned. I wrote to the reporter, saying something about noise levels & didn't it bother anyone but me? She responded saying that of most of the comments she'd gotten that concerned noise-every single one of them complained about noise levels--a few indicated they were either happy about noisy restaurants or wanted even more noise. I think a fair number of people just put up with it.

    Usually if I ask for the "music" to be turned down, I get strange looks, or "we can't do that." If everyone hasn't ordered, sometimes we just leave (if I'm alone, I leave). I have friends who are starting to suffering hearing loss, and in a loud restaurant (or bar) it's becoming impossible to hold a conversation w/them w/out really raising my voice. That's not fun. So I eat out much less frequently.

    Maybe my friends, family & I aren't the demographic that matters--but I'd think that in many parts of the US, times might still be hard enough that losing any customers would matter to restaurant owners & managers.

  8. Another source of bis-phenol A is the lids used in home canning http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages/home_canning_faq/42.php The information at the link claims that the amount of bisphenol A is so small it won't hurt anyone. I have my doubts but can't say I have specific evidence to refute Kerr/Ball's contention--and it'd be nice to have a choice. The only choice is to buy more expensive European style canning jars--and I'm not sure the rubber rings used with those jars don't contain bisphenol A.

  9. My friend (lives in the west foothills of the Coast Range of OR) has a wood cookstove that sounds similar, although it doesn't have holes for the pots. It's definitely a learned cooking technique, using a wood cookstove, changing cooking utensil position instead of turning a control up or down, but it has its advantages. She is much less concerned w/spills on the cookstove surface than I am, and has room for many more working pots & pan than I do. Her baking is much closer to a clay wood-fired oven than anything I've got. Her cookstove (Amish made from Canada) can also be used as a source of hot water, but she has not been able to find anyone w/the skills or interest in doing the work needed to hook it up to her water system, etc. It has a compartment on the side that holds a fair amount of water (essentially a hot water tank), but you need someone w/some welding & plumbing expertise to hook it up to her existing plumbing.

    Her stove is fairly effective at heating most of her house. If the house were better insulated, it would be more than fairly effective.

    During the summers, she uses a portable convection oven & electric burner to do any cooking, as temperatures can get into the 80's & even the 90's during the day and that's too hot to build a fire in an indoor woodstove.

    In terms of cost, a cord of cut alder firewood is around $100 and little over--although she's getting her wood from an old friend & there's some bartering going on as well, so I don't know how much actual cash is involved. I think she gets through around 6 cords/year, maybe a little more, but, at least during the colder months, quite a bit of the wood is for heat, not cooking. Unless it's summertime, I've never noticed her selecting meat based on how long it'll take to cook--mostly because when it's cool, she's going to build a fire anyway.

  10. Meat & fish, all local--if buying salmon that travels pretty far when alive but is caught by fishermen out of a local port (Newport, OR) is buying local. I can also buy local shrimp & crab.

    The majority of my other "meat" (chicken) comes from a local farmer. I use sausage or bacon sometimes in soup, neither is local.

    Produce-in the summer, all of it except for citrus is local, from farmers' markets or gifts from friends or overflow from acquaintances. I got I don't know how many pounds of Bartlett pears from a staff person at an office share I moved into this summer--she had a surplus. Made pear chutney & pear sauce, a few jars are pear & apple sauce as a friend gave me some apples from one of her trees. Except for citrus, most of the fruit I eat all winter is still local, as I freeze or dry some of what I buy/grow or pick (at a friend's place) during the summer & early fall.

    Vegetables--probably about 50% or so local during the offseason/winter, I grew enough potatoes to store, about 5 lbs of Romano beans (ate & froze the surplus) and some winter squash. Froze enough corn bought at the farmers' market to last until it's corn season again. Herbs like parsley, sage, thyme, sorrel, etc., usually overwinter in the garden. I have some lettuce, kale & broccoli growing in containers outside. Some nuts, local (hazelnuts, walnuts). All mushrooms are local, either picked locally or grown locally. Canned tomatoes, probably not local (Muir Glen), & I think most of what my local co-op carries during the winter is from CA.

    Spices for Indian or Asian meals, 0% local.

    Grains, 0% local as far as I know, unless the millet is (some millet is grown in eastern OR). I make my own bread & bagels, so the processing is local. Sometimes my eggs are local.

    About 80-90% of my cheese is local, goat cheese from within 20 miles, cheddar/monterey jack, etc., within about 70 (Tillamook cheese--Tillamook also produces butter & ice cream, both of which I buy sometimes). Most of my dairy, except for milk, is local, as Nancy's (yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese, sour cream) is in Eugene, OR, & buys local milk as far as I know. Sometimes I can afford to buy the blue cheese (very good but expensive) made in southern OR (which would be sort of local, w/in 150 miles or so).

    Dried beans/legumes, probably 0% local.

    Wines, not local unless someone brings a bottle of wine from OR/WA, otherwise I buy reds from Argentina or Chile because they're good & they're inexpensive. I guess I could buy all "local" (or made in OR) gin, but I haven't yet. If I drank beer, I could probably buy all local beers. Tea, not local, I don't drink coffee, what I keep around for friends may be roasted locally, but is otherwise definitely not local. Ditto for chocolate, cocoa powder, sugar.

    Water, 98% local except when I'm traveling), as I drink filtered municipal tap water drawn from a local river.

    So I'm only partially local. I feel lucky I can eat as many locally produced foods as I do & perhaps in a few years I'll be living further inland & can grow more of my own produce. For 4-5 months/year, western OR seems to almost overflow with great produce--5 or 6 varieties of berries, 5 varieties/types or more of melons, many apple varieties, hazelnuts, walnuts, chesnuts, sweet & sour cherries, plums, peaches, pears, nectarines, sweet peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, lettuces & other greens . . ..

    There was an article in an OR newspaper (Oregonian) that talked about growing olives in OR--that I've got to see.

  11. Real delis. Pasteurized but non-homogenized milk delivered from a dairy. NY Extra sharp cheddar (hard to find these days). Eclair--a Viennese pastry shop on W. 72nd St. in Manhattan, down the street from my grandparent's apt. Some people's grandmothers baked apple pie & cookies, my grandmother walked down the street & bought petit fours & Sachertorte at Eclair for our visits. I don't remember ever missing home baked apple pie (which I don't care for much anyway) or cookies.

    Meals where people stay for awhile & talk. In my family (& I am not that old), no one was permitted to talk on the phone during dinner, no TV (I did hide a book under the table & read occasionally). However, we argued alot, and my father tended to engage in monologues, so it wasn't as if every meal was a delight. Most of the people I eat with now seem to race through their food, get up, go off somewhere. Sometimes my family would get so involved in a discussion, it seemed the food would get cold before anyone realized we'd been talking that long. Maybe we should've paid more attention to the food those evenings, since my mother, or occasionally my father, had put in the thought & time of cooking it, but I miss talk at the table being so important & absorbing. I miss some of what we talked about too, I haven't met that many people who talked about what we did. Maybe I don't get out enough.

    I would bring back the relative lack of noise. Not so many planes flying overhead, no double or triple trailer trucks. Few helicopters. No boomboom cars & I don't remember any loud exhaust Harleys or any other motor vehicles w/custom loud exhaust systems in the areas I lived when I was growing up, no megabass sound systems blasting from houses, apartments, etc. Not until I went to college at least. No cellphone ringtones, unmuted or otherwise.

  12. I'm going to be in Milwaukee in early November for a meeting--in downtown Milwaukee, not far from the train station. Since we will also be staying in a downtown hotel that's where we'd prefer to find places to eat. We can choose where we will eat on Saturday evening and I'd welcome your suggestions & recommendations. It's a moderate sized group & generally we split up among 2-3 different restaurants as people have a variety of food preferences. I'm told there's a good bus system in Milwaukee by a meeting attendee who lived in Milwaukee years ago (she also had good things to say about the food, but moved away years ago so doesn't know what's good now), so while we probably want to stay in the downtown area, if there's a particularly good place that's a direct bus ride away, I'd like to hear about it.

    We have a food per diem allowance and can probably spend 1/2 of that, maybe 2/3s on dinner, as some of our day's meals are provided/catered--so probably entrees up to $25, we pay for any alcohol ourselves.

    A few people might like a steakhouse, otherwise Serbian, Italian, Pakistani, mideastern or local/organic would be great too. So far, from reading this thread (and a 30 best restaurants review from the Milwaukee paper someone provided a link to) it seems like Coquette's Cafe, Sanford Restaurant, Zaffiro's Pizza, Zarletti, Shahrazad, Tulip, Anmol, Tess and Three Brothers are all possibilities. I noticed Coerper's Five O'Clock was listed as a good steakhouse but I couldn't tell from the address if it was downtown or not.

    More suggestions or opinions about the restaurants on my list are welcome. If you can tell me which of the restaurants are downtown and which are not (and if so, how far away), that'd be wonderful, as it would save me a lot of looking at Google maps.

    Thanks in advance for your suggestions, information & advice.

    azurite

  13. This year I planted a spring green manure, buckwheat, & a fall/winter green manure, New Zealand white clover. I live near the beach on the OR coast & have acid, sandy soil (& many slugs & snails), w/a few lenses of clay scattered around. I hadn't used some of the veg garden area for a few years (did what produce growing I did in containers), so I used the buckwheat to sort of clear it after I'd dug it over, or keep it clear. I haven't had much luck with winter green manures, I've tried hairy vetch & one year that worked sort of ok. I'm not sure just what the problem is, it may be a combination of acid soil (even though I've limed off & on) and the days & nights usually are fairly cool. I planted the NZ clover seeds in early to mid September and the seeds germinated well but the seedlings aren't growing very fast. But I noticed that the seedlings had a little growing spurt over the 2-3 day period a couple of weeks ago when we had some unusually warm weather (80's). A new bunch of large Romano beans suddenly appeared on the vines as well, quite a dramatic response to sun & heat.

    The buckwheat grows very well, I forget what it does--concentrates some minerals in its roots & stems, I think. It's also supposed to outgrow & choke out bindweed (a problem in this area), and maybe it does, sort of, a little. If you let the buckwheat flower (which I always do although I think that's when you're supposed to dig it in), it's a native bee & other flying insect attractant, so it's useful just for that reason. If you let it go to seed, you can collect the seed & plant it next year. It's easy to dig in and it seems to me it improves the texture of the soil as well.

    This spring I helped a friend clean out her chicken house & was given some of what I'd cleaned out. That stuff definitely improved the fertility of my soil this year. I also do what Maggie the Cat does, but I do it all year around, in the veg garden if there's space (i.e., the green manure doesn't make it), otherwise, anywhere I can dig a hole & bury it. This spring I took out two shrubs that had died (turned out only one really died, the other one just died back almost to its roots) because of some unusually cold weather last winter. Lately I've been digging in my kitchen compost where the one shrub was while I try to figure out what I could put there, if anything. There's a rhodie in the front yard that needs to be moved. The worms & other soil critters seem to enjoy the kitchen compost, everything but the corn cobs & bits of egg shell disappears amazingly quickly, but the fertility of the soil has not improved that much. It is a very sandy, permeable, & acid soil and it rains a great deal in the winter so nutrients tend to wash away.

    I think, for long run soil fertility, a soil w/some clay (if you can break it up) is better than a very sandy soil. I will probably always need to amend the soil, although evergreen huckleberry (a native) and the native strawberry & salal (native, has an edible berry), and blueberries all do well even this close to the ocean. I was given 2 red currant bushes a year ago & they seem to be doing ok too.

    A friend w/many years of gardening experience & some clay in her soil, has said that planting potatoes helps to break up the soil.

    Your local agricultural extension office (the Master Gardeners) may have some useful suggestions regarding improving your soil w/green manures & other means and generally they are aware of what does well locally. Many of the extension service handouts, articles, etc, are available online as well.

  14. Lilija,

    Thanks for the information. I don't eat that much processed food (canned/jarred sauces unless I canned it myself, etc.) but if I'm thinking of buying something canned to have around (power outage supplies, if I'm feeling too ill to cook for awhile . . .) I almost always read the list of ingredients. I can figure out most of the less than straightforward terms, but the few occasions I saw yeast extract or a related phrase I really didn't know what it was (thought it might be brewer's yeast). Glad to have that question answered!

    azurite

  15. In my experience, there is no bottomless cup as far as hot tea, at least not where I live (OR). The server may offer more hot water but generally, if you want another tea bag (you get perhaps two cups from one teabag), you pay. While for coffee, you get coffee each time.

    If the server brings a teapot, there may be two teabags in the hot water, but again, you will pay for more teabags, if you don't want just more hot water poured into the teapot. I've had servers bring a small pot of hot water w/a teabag, and a mug filled w/hot water too--which seems a little odd to me. Apparently you're supposed to remove the teabag from the teapot and dunk it into the cup of hot water.

    But I've never seen a server bring a single envelope/serving of ground coffee, dunk it into a cup and then offer more hot water but charge you if you want another envelope of a single serving of coffee.

  16. I tried Lapins for the first time this year--bought them at a farmers' market in Corvallis, OR (Willamette Valley). They were ripe & delicious. Flavor was different from the Bings, but they were sweet & good. Much darker then the photo in the NW cherries link. Lots of sour cherries this summer too, a friend said she picked & sold 50 lbs from her sour cherry trees & still had enough to freeze quite a few pounds for herself (she likes them better than sweet cherries, both for pies, turnovers & eating out of hand). I didn't think I'd ever like to eat sour cherries, but if they're really ripe, they're good eating.

    I saw an article indicating that some of the farmers raising sour cherries in northern MI (biggest source of sour cherries in the US) were thinking about dumping some of their crops because they couldn't sell them or not at a decent price. Doesn't seem as though it's been a very good year for farmers & ranchers so far. My friend w/the cherry trees isn't a farmer, but someone w/land who was probably close to self-sufficient in corn, fruit, veg, some nuts & eggs at one time (her & her family) but she's never made a living off of her land.

  17. Territorial Seeds out of OR has some heirloom seeds, and some organically grown seed or starts (potato starts, leeks, onions, etc.). Like Johnny's Selected Seeds, for Maine & similar climates, Territorial Seeds is raising & selecting for seeds for veg & fruit that do well in the Pacific NW so how closely your climate resembles that of the PNW needs to be considered when looking through the seed catalog.

    Peace Seeds out of Corvallis, OR, and Abundant Life seeds (Saginaw, OR) offer some heirloom seeds, I think (or unusual varieties of a given herb or veg). A relative newcomer, just for herbs, is the Thyme Garden Herb Company near Alsea, OR. I've not grown any plants from their seeds yet, but have bought plants in 4" containers from them & they've always seemed to be in good shape & have done well. Thyme Garden has a broad variety of herbs as well as a good range of varieties w/in a given herb, i.e,. quite a few different kinds of lavenders, thymes, mints, as well as some relatively unusual herbs. I bought some Thyme Garden lovage seed this spring but never got around to planting any of the seeds this year.

    All the seeds I've gotten from Seeds of Change (with the except of the Bread poppy seeds, but that may have been my fault) have had very good germination rates. I look very carefully at the seed information though, to be sure that what veg or flower I'm interested in is likely to do well in my climate. I think Seeds of Change grows & trials its seeds in a much drier & hotter climate than mine, so I don't assume the varieties are well suited to my area or that of a friend (also western OR but a somewhat different growing environment). However, S of C's heirloom Romano beans have been a great success, just as productive & tasty as described in the catalog.

    A Seed savers exchange that includes people from wherever the garden is would probably have some seeds definitely worth trying.

  18. My parents have one--my mother probably still has it. When my sister & I were small my father made pancakes from scratch almost every Sunday (except when it was very hot during the summer) & used it to cook the pancakes. My mother used for schnitzel and I think some other foods but I don't remember what they were.

  19. I think raccoons adapt to living almost everywhere. I remember driving on the service road (parallels the LIE) towards Flushing (Queens, NYC) around 4 or 5am on a Saturday morning to meet some people for a geology field trip upstate, looking over & seeing a raccoon rummaging in a garbage it had taken the lid off of.

    NY, NY, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere . . .. :-)

  20. I grew up in a "talk about everything at dinner" family (and my mom was a fairly good cook & she did most of the meal preparation). If there was something everyone particularly liked, like fresh corn on the cob purchased that afternoon from a local farm or farmstand, then we'd focus on eating the corn (& praising it). I didn't enjoy the arguments we sometimes had, but I did appreciate the idea of conversation at a meal. I thought good conversation or discussions added to the pleasure of eating with other people.

    Most of the people I know now (that I share meals with sometimes) scarf down their food & that's it. Maybe they talk afterwards. I'm usually the last to finish and I feel a little let down, even if the food's very good. A few friends are different & I enjoy eating with them a great deal.

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