HungryC

I live two blocks from a Sonic, and the only thing I ever consume willingly is the cherry limeade. It's not half bad, with real lime and maraschino cherries. Plus, Sonic has half-price happy hours from 4-6 on all fountain drinks....

For the love of all things Louisiana, please don't thicken your gumbo with beurre manie or slurry or cornstarch. If you don't have file, the gumbo will still be fine. Just leave it out. Or PM me your snail mail address and I'll send you some. You can always increase the amount of roux should you have concerns about it being too thin.

A few questions: how many people? how many courses? what part of the country? what season of the year? Economies of scale & locale are important: I make a seafood gumbo (crab, shrimp, oysters, smoked sausage, ham) for 200 that runs about $1.50 per serving. Obviously, if I lived in Kansas, this wouldn't be possible. The first universal thing that springs to mind is red beans & rice....a pound of dried beans runs less than $5 and will feed a dozen people. A pound of rice is less than 50 cents and will provide four servings...so you could do a nice entree for about 80 cents a head, assuming that you have basic seasonings already on hand to spice up the beans. Buy two boxes Jiffy cornbread mix at 79 cents each (13 cents per serving for the mix, plus 36 cents for the two eggs) for a side dish. This brings your total to around .95 per person; this leaves sixty cents (ETA: out of $1 per person, assuming a dozen guests) for "extras". Not a fancy meal, but perfectly nice Southern home cooking that won't cause rickets. Of course, you could substitute black beans, pintos, garbanzos, or whatever's on sale at the food co-op, salvage grocery store, or dollar store. Speaking of the dollar store, I noticed POUNDS of land o'lakes butter in the refrigerated section for $1. Now that's a good price....

It arrived via mail from Amazon yesterday; I flipped through it while watching the Saints pound the Falcons, and I'm eager to get started. I was also excited to see my name in the long, long list of recipe testers Reinhart actually listed everyone who volunteered to test the recipes.

Fried oyster poboy!

Forget the damn blonde roux and cook it 'til it gets some decent color...browned things taste better. I've never found white chunks of chicken floating in a light sauce to be anything other than institutional. Throw in a bunch of chopped green onions (aka scallions) at the end, and previous posters are right: it will need some acid. A tiny bit of peeled, seeded, chopped tomato, simmered in the stock? A bit of tarragon vinegar?

Awful bread, awful meats: I can't for the life of me figure out why Subways are so successful, esp in cities with great indigenous sandwich traditions (New Orleans, Philly, etc). I'd rather have a banh mi any day!

--Reese's peanut butter cups, but in the holiday shapes (eggs, pumpkins, etc), as the chocolate/filling balance is better than in the round cups. --Newman's Ginger-Os; like an Oreo, but with delicious ginger cookie wafers & filling. --Junior Mints; the dark chocolate coating still tastes like real chocolate.

I can't figure out why the FDA is picking on the oyster industry. I guess they aren't paying the right lobbyists in DC....surely Taco Bell's green onions sicken more people in a year than vibrio does.

I like to save glass jars with proper lids--the kind with a rubberized/plasticized ring beneath the lid so the seal is truly airtight. (Pickle jars, for example, don't seal this way at all). But I really covet the tall, French Lorina lemonade bottleswith a ceramic & rubber stopper & metal bail closure. In fact, I buy the lemonade just to save the bottles. They're great for storing homemade dressings, limoncello, herb vinegar, oils, etc. I also have a collection of takeout chopsticks & plastic utensils out in the garage, used mostly for stirring paint, mixing epoxy, chemicals, etc.

Smarties...something about the powdery, melt-on-the-tongue texture of Smarties is just perfect. The small, original size is best; the larger, "giant" Smarties don't have the same texture at all. I never eat them, except at Halloween, when they show up in big bags of mixed candy...kids don't seem to like Smarties, so I can usually cadge a few from someone else's trick-or-treat bag.

I nominate "mains" used in lieu of "entrees," especially when paired with the verb "do." As in "for mains, we did the fish special and the pork tenderloin." Most unfortunate language!

That's what I use: the good ol' china marker. It will write on plastic containers (and rubs off for re-use), plastic bags, freezer paper, ceramic, glass, etc. I can label the various flours stored in my fridge by writing directly on the glass storage jars.

I feel ya on the Bakewise disappointment. My latest disappointment: My Bread by Jim Lahey. I wanted to like it, I made pretty good pizza bianca out of it, but it shouldn't win an IACP award any time soon. At least one recipe had an ingredient missing from the instructions section (no small matter in recipes as simple as Lahey's), the tone was way too conversational, and it lacked the sort of depth I look for in a cookbook. Is it too much to ask for a book to be well written? I don't want off-the-cuff, bloggy informality from a book!

I had similar thoughts...a soup kitchen, or a meals-for-the-elderly program, or even a school lunchroom/cafeteria? Someplace that does volume, as you do learn many important cooking skills when handling large quantities. If the present job is already paying a living wage, you can volunteer your services in a worthy, food-related cause.

Making a roux (essential to cajun cooking) in the microwaveis easy, and it requires way less stirring that the stovetop method. Crispy fried shallots (the kind used to garnish many Vietnamese foods) work well in the micro, too. Thinly slice peeled shallots, then toss with a little oil. Spread out on a pyrex pie plate in a single layer, and zap in 30-second increments until browned & crispy.

I am waiting, eagerly, for a US release....I hope it's as detailed & comprehensive as the first book!

No photo, sorry, but yesterday I unearthed a big chunk of smoked brisket (from back around 4th of July). I defrosted it & discovered it was too tough for sandwiches. So I browned some carrots & celery, added some garlic, rosemary, tomato sauce & red wine, and put the brisket to simmer for 2 hrs; it made a lovely ragu, served over Barilla Plus penne.

I'm with you on cleanliness, soap, and paper, but I think that an overdone restroom is just as bad as an understocked one. It shouldn't look like the hall of mirrors at Versailles, or I wonder what sort of cost controls were employed in the kitchen to pay the decorator's bill! My pet peeve is a single, tiny, unisex restroom in a place with 50 tables!

Buy, buy, buy (or check out from the library!) No internet source is going to give you the depth of Clifford Wright on Mediterranean food & history, the beauty captured by Alford & Duguid, or the sheer pleasure of reading Laurie Colwin's "Home Cooking" over again. Good cookbooks are always about more than recipes...

Darienne, perhaps your "green" cookbook was by Meta Given? My parents, married in '59, had a 2-volume set of her "Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking", which is filled with wonderful things--all your basic, middle-American, mid-20th century foods, plus charts & tables & confectionary techniques, etc. My brother and I used to kid my mother that we'd fight over it after she died, so she'd better specify who'd get "the green cookbooks" in her will. I unearthed a pristine pair when cleaning out my M-in-L's house a year and a half ago. So I guess Meta Given is partly responsible for my love of detailed, process-oriented cookbooks.

Like MN, south Louisiana has its share of butchers, with a decent range of local charcuterie (tasso, chaurice, ponce, boudin, andouille, headcheese, cracklings, etc). Heck, I can think of 3 places within 30 minutes of my house that do custom slaughter...you bring in the animal, tell 'em how you want it cut & packaged, and when you want to pick it up. Here's a pic of one at work (interestingly enough, she was also on "who wants to be a millionaire" a few years ago). What I miss from the goold ol' days (I mean the late 70s): not knowing that my mama's Crisco pie crusts might put us all in early graves!

Cast iron doesn't absorb moisture, so it isn't exactly ideal for dough. I use an unglazed terracotta pizza stone inside my Big Green Egg, running anywhere from 650 to 800 degrees. A thin pie will cook in 3-5 minutes, if the stone is sufficiently preheated. See pics below. The BGE's precise temp controls make it easy to bake over hardwood charcoal; in addition to pizza, I do breads, fruit galettes, pies, cornbread (now that's what cast iron is good for), cookies, whatever. (About the only thing I haven't tried is angel food cake!)

Mark me down for the 25-30% range. I use the rest, but more as reference/inspiration, or just to read for enjoyment. Some of them contain things that I just-don't-want-to-cook, yet I find the concepts interesting.

Try soaking sliced or chopped onions in fresh lime juice; it removes some of the bite.