emilyr

I'm not sure about the sunflowers, but my guess would be that they leave them to dry to more easily collect the seeds and so thatt hey're (the seeds) are fully mature. They do that around here with seed and feed corn. Also around here (Mid-MO), they grow a crop that I think is sorghum that looks like the second picture. Some breeds of it are used for sugar/syrup, but mostly it is for animal feed. I'm not a farm girl, but I live among them, so I may be wrong! Also, to repeat a refrain, you are living my dream! This is all so beautiful! And I even took Italian in college, but I'm sure yours is much better!

Rebecca, I was thinking of something just like this, but with a blueberry compte swirl! My mom's favorite potluck bring-along is a really mock cheesecake made with frozen lemonade concentrate, whipped cream (well, ok, Cool Whip) powdered sugar, and cream cheese, in a graham cracker crust with blueberries or blueberry sauce as a bottom layer (btwn the crust and creamy filling, if that makes sense). It's just kind of what summer picnics mean to me. I think a really creamy lemon ice cream or gelato would be heaven! Too many are grainy or sorbet-like. Maybe a lemon/cream cheese base?

Yes. I think she just mixes the torn up tortillas with a paste of butter, sugar, brown sugar and spices and stuffs them into the apples, but she may toast or sautee them first. I haven't had them in a couple of years. I really like the nuttieness of the tortillas and don't think it's too corny. They absorb the flavors of the apple and the suagr and spices, so just a good sweet toasted corn flavor - goes well with kind of tart apples, IIRC.

Stuffed baked apples are a good fall dessert. I usually stuff mine with a crisp topping mixed with dried fruit like cranberries, cherries, or raisins. If you wanted to tie it to a Mexican theme (to match your entree), my friend makes a good fruit stuffing with corn tortillas (torn into shreds, as I recall), brown sugar, cinnamon and butter, then tops the apples (or pears, or once - sweet potatoes) with dulce de leche in the last few minutes of baking to get a caramel-y coating over it all. I don't know any cream style Mexican sauces much myself, though. I seem to recall one I had in a restaurant that had a cheesey base, some sort of pepper (chipotle? I'm bad at recognizint peppers), and cinnamon that was really yummy. It was on a shrimp dish, so that might be good for Seafood Rellenos.

I think what bothers me most is that Ephron has recently been touted as somewhat of a foodie. I believe I saw an ad for a cooking demonstration she was giving as part of the New Yorker festival, and she's put recipes into her new book. I don't know anything about her food history and what her tastes are, nor have I seen the recipes, so I'm not debasing her in this position. I think egullet itself shows how diverse and varied the definitions of "foodie" can be. I'm just worried people are going to take her as an expert and write off a white tablecloth experience based on an "expert" opinion. Since all of the listed "grievances" are things that are fairly normal occurrences in half-way decent restaurants, I'm afraid that people with less experience will be intimidated by the piece and not want to try those restaurants. Or worse yet, not be intimidate, but think that all of these things HAVE to happen at a nice place and get a kind of reverse-snobbery, all based on the grouchiness of this one piece.

I think if you cooked the bacon low and slow to pull out the fat, but not completely done and cripsy, you could freeze it, and later reheat it and finish it as crispy as you want without the texture changing too much. My family freezes raw bacon often enought, but I've never tired it with cooked bacon (it doesn't stick around long enough! ).

Side Towel Chicken Origami Hey, that's not stupid: that's art! ← My uncle used to do the banana trick at the bottom of this blog. I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. Now I do it for kids I babysit for or little cousins!

I'd like to add an estra request to this. My dad works with a man who also cooks at a Greek restaurant. They're going to be going out to lunch this week, and my dad doesn't want to go in totally ignorant. What websites might have a good overview of the types of foods he should be on the look out for. I tried explaining some of the Greek dishes I know, but he's a visual learner. Thanks in advance, Emily

Ahhh, A topic near and dear to my heart. We are most cetainly a mashed potato family, and when we're cooking a lot (which unfortunately we aren't right now), MPs show up at least once a week. We love homemade best of all, of course, but with time constraints, we often use premade or boxed. In order of preference, we like, 1) Frozen, 2) Premade/packaged, 3) Boxed, dried flakes. I have to qualify this by saying that the frozen are best, simply becuase they're just frozen, boiled, mashed potatoes. You just defrost them and add the milk, butter, etc. on your own. They just remove the boiling step. And we never just eat rehydrated potatoes plain. We always buy one of the flavored boxes (garlic, sour cream and onion) and add to it - like sour cream and peas or corn, jalepenos and cheddar. That beings said, my favorite way to make mashed potatoes is to steam them. After peeling and cubing, I add them to the top of a pasta pot, with water underneath, toss in a couple cloves of garlic (we've always done this, and I don't really get potatoes without them), and once the water's boiling, it only takes about 15 minutes to cook about 5 lbs of potatoes through. Not only is it faster, but the potatoes turn out less glue-y, and you can add more of your liquid of choice (chicken stock, milk, cream - depending how "healthy" we're being that day) without worrying about making them too loose. Fresh herbs get tossed in with a generous knob of butter. Parm on top. At Thanksgiving and Easter we go whole hog and add tons of whatever dairy yumminess is available: Cheeses galore, cream cheese, sour cream, creme fraiche, milk, cream - whatever! Plus, top them with more cheese and butter and bake til golden and bubbly. This is also the only time when we "whip" the potatoes with a mixer. Most of the time we just go after them with a potato masher or a big wooden spoon. I haven't had MPs in a few months becasuse they're not really what I crave in the summer, but I have made mashed sweet potatoes several times. Steamed, mixed with butter and apple juice, fresh sage mixed in and topped with carmelized onions! So yummy!

A friend just returned from a trip to Wisconsin and told me about their visit to the WI State Fair and the giant cream puffs. Look here for a photo: http://weblog.textdrive.com/images/39.jpg I want to try cheese curds, regular or fried. "Fried, they're gooey, salty, hot and good; raw, they're squeaky and yummy." Has anyone been to the State Fair in New Mexico (Albuquerque)? ← OMG! I spent 10 years on the road doing state, county and backwoods fairs; I WANT THAT CREAMPUFF NOW! I worked the Milwaukee Summerfest several times, but NEVER found food like that! Best Fair Food I have had was the strawberry shortcke at the Plant City (FL) Strawberry Festival, and the homemade bread and home churned butter at the same venue. DROOL! ← I LOVE those cream puffs. I think maybe St. Peter gives you a plateful at the pearly gates! Plus, there's no such thing as a fair in Wisconsin without cheese curds.

I love fish stock-flavored risottos and soups made of dashi, so this sounds like it would probably be pretty good.

I asked around and got some recs. Madison's Cafe Bingham's Alexandro's Das Stein Haus These are what friends and coworkers told me, but in general, when asked about JC, everyone (from Columbia anyway) kinda went, "eh...Madison's, I guess," or whatever restaurant. One coworker's daughter was pretty excited about Das Stein Haus, though, because they do a lot of different flambe dishes.

The Cracked Crab is the only place I've eaten in JC. It was a pretty decent seafood place for the midwest, I remember, but I can't remember exactly what we ate - so it must not have been so awesome. I have friends in JC and one of my company's offices is there, so I'm definitely on the look out, too.

Alas, I am going to miss the MO State Fair this year. I only really eat corn dogs when I go to the fair. I love them fresh from the fire and dipped in spicy brown mustard with a cup of fresh squeezed lemonade (only haf the amount of sugar, please)! HEAVEN! My parents are going to see James Taylor at the fair...maybe I'll get them to smuggle me out a dog. But it won't be the same. I've also been thinking about Wisconsin fair food recently. The summer I worked up there, part of the job was visiting fairs...I know - tough job description! I became thuroughly addicted to cheese curds. Fried, they're gooey, salty, hot and good; raw, they're squeaky and yummy. Also, in towns around Indian Reservations, we'd get "Indian Tacos" which were the average taco fillings (seasoned beef or chicken, rice, beans, tomatoes, cheese, etc.) wrapped in an Indian flatbread. One drunken night at one of many beerfests, my co-worker and I decided that the most genius idea would be to run our own Indian Taco cart and go from fair to fair and state to state "spreading the good news."

Several people have mentioned the McD's hot apple pies, but they still carry them in my town's restaurant. In fact, the summer I worked there in college, it was one of my jobs to bake them. When I worked in the drive through, my boss told me to be sure to tell people that the coffee and the hot apple pies were HOT! I actually had it mentioned on my evaluation that she'd caught me not telling people that they were too hot to eat right away. I don't really eat them very often, but since they're only 2 for $1, my family will buy 10 or 12 to keep in the car for road trips.

I loved a fastfood joint called Zipps. I don't know if it was regional, but I made my mom go there every time she let me pick dinner. I'd get the chilli with a slice of cheese melted on top and an order of zesty curly fries to mix in. Sometimes I'd get the burger, but the most I remember about them was that they were kind of "gooey" - like they'd been melted all together. I was ten at the time, and "gooey" was still a good way to describe a burger, I guess!

I just wanted to bump this in anticipation of the roughly 1 billion tons ( ) of the berries my local (secret) patch is getting ready to produce. My first couple pints have gone onto shortcakes, macerated for ice cream (with orange and cinnamon) and tossed onto salads. I'm particularly interested in any savory recipes you might have. Someone mentioned a barbeque sauce, and I may try that this weekend. I bumped a thread in the baking fourm, too, so this one is more for savory dishes. Thanks in advance!

I just realized that this is the baking forum, so I'll also bump a blackberry thread in the cooking forum for savory items.

I just wanted to bump this in anticipation of the roughly 1 billion tons ( ) of the berries my local (secret) patch is getting ready to produce. My first couple pints have gone onto shortcakes, macerated for ice cream (with orange and cinnamon) and tossed onto salads. I'm particularly interested in any savory recipes you might have. Someone mentioned a barbeque sauce, and I may try that this weekend. Thanks in advance!

I worked at Mickey D's the summer they introduced those salad-in-a-cup things and the fruit and yogurt parfaits. The nice retiree lady that made these on the opening shift for the whole day lost her husband the first day I was there, so it became my job along with frying hashbrowns and rotating freezer stock at 5 am. I didn't stop smelling like yogurt for four weeks. Plus, since I was "so effecient and such a great worker," I finished all my assigned tasks too early and was assigned to also work the registers and in the drive in. By the end of my second week I was training new people and when I asked my manager what a key was, she said, "I didn't even know that was there." I don't remember exactly what it was, but it ended up saving a lot of time on each order. Another job that wasn't in a restaurant, but somewhat food related was part of my summer internship. I worked as a production assistant for a travel show in WI and went out one day on a shoot at a Brewery with a freelance cameraman just to get some shots of an event in their beer garden. All started out fine, I got a couple free beers, lugged around the tripod and back-up bags and reapplied my sunscreen. Then the cameraman (also somewhat enlightened by his free beers) was talking with the brewery owner about what a great shot it would be from the roof down onto the garden. Could we get up there through an attic or access door? No? No problem. Do you have a ladder? Great! First we climbed up 7 feet to a porch overhang. Then up to the first story, about 9 feet. The finally up to the roof over the bottling plant. 12 feet. On a 10 foot ladder. I'm already not a heights fan or particularly graceful, but you try doing that carrying a huge camera, a big duffle bag of other video accoutrement, the back up battery bag, and on 2 really good dopple bocks. Then he asked me to take down some flags attached to the building on struts that stuck out from the building about 3 feet. After telling him in no uncertain terms that I was NOT going to hang off the side of a brewery for anything, he got another shot and then we had to get down. So just imagine the above scene in reverse. Not fun. But the beer was good.

I often took the train home to Missouri from Milwaukee when I was in college, and on the commuter train between Milwaukee and Chicago, the little cart would roll down the aisle offering different items depending on the time of day. The one thing they always had was white cheddar flavored popcorn. I'm not usually a flavored popcorn kinda gal, but I couldn't resist trying the one item they decided to keep all of the time. Plus they were 99 cents for a pretty big bag. By the end of my sophomore year, I had learned enough to get a seat at the back of the train (from whence the cart came), have a bunch of singles and change (there was never any change that early in her trip down the aisles, and the cart lady really liked it), and buy 4-5 bags. It probably isn't the most healthy thing to sustain you on a 6 hour train ride, but it was cheaper than anything in the dining car or club car of the long haul train I'd be in later in the day. And the one time our train broke down for 6 hours, I was able to offer to my seatmates. Plus I like how my fingers get all covered in the yummy white powder.

Thanks RyuShihan! I'd heard some good things about Morgan Street Brewery and we'll definitely check that out. We seem to be running into the "not a lot downtown" problem. We may be heading out to Clayton. Thanks for your help.

My friend did something like this a few years ago with quite embarassing effects. She was in a coffee shop in Oxford that was filling up quickly working on her laptop. She hated communal table sharing, but would put up with it if she had to. On this particular day she simply ignored the man who came up to the table after she said that is was fine that he sat there. When he left he said thank you and she just waved him away. Some people from the next table came over and started asking what he had said and so on. "What do you mean?" she replied. "I didn't pay any attention to him. I'm working." "But," they replied, "don't you know who that was?" "No, and frankly I don't really care." "Bloody Yank. That was flipping PAUL MCCARTNEY!" And here's the part that's embarassing for me. She's my friend and I love her, but the poor girl replied: "WHO?" In the email I got (apparently just after she left the coffee shop with angry villagers with torches and pitchforks in hot pursuit ) she asked me who this was. When I told her he was a Beatle, she was somewhat embarassed, but not as embarassed as I was for her. Needless to say, she got the Beatles Anthology for Christmas that year!

Just bumping. I have 6 people hungrily looking forward to your recommendations!

Ooh! I'm going to St. Louis next weekend and I can't believe I didn't remember this one. Although I wouldn't think it was weird (in my area anyway), nothing beats breaded cheesy ravioli dipped in pesto!