dianem

(Oh, and if people have recommended the Farm Boy brand to you -- I'm 99.9% sure their house brand is made by Green Table. It looks and tastes the same to me.)

For someone new to kimchi, I'd suggest the Green Table Organic. It's a Guelph-based brand carried at some Sobeys/Longos as well as smaller grocers and health food stores. It's quite light and fresh tasting, and a good place to start. Not sure who might carry it in your area but you can contact Green Table via their website to ask -- they have a store locator but it isn't working for me. For something a bit stronger/more pungent, Loblaws carries Wildbrine in their organic foods section. Both of these are vegan -- i.e. no fish sauce or shrimp paste.

A lot of them are, probably more than half. The biggest local taxi fleet's cars are orange with green on top and the next largest uses black with orange tops. But you see red, yellow and black as well.

My husband and I cook together quite often. This is a source of utter amazement to my parents and sibling, who have more traditional relationships (she cooks, he might grill) -- they stare as if we are circus animals. We have a tiny kitchen and it's a bit of a dance but we have had close to 20 years to get used to it. Typically he does the actual cooking, I do the prep. The opposite is true for baking. I do timing (he's hopeless at getting things to the table still warm, possibly because he does not mind cold food). I do most of the meal planning; it's just my nature. Sometimes he wants to make a specific dish and I just figure out what sides will work with it. It all works well, except if we leave a meal too late. If my blood sugar drops I'm not allowed to be around knives and am banished to the living room for everyone's safety.

Could just be an allergen elimination diet. I tested allergic to a very peculiar set of vegetables too -- peas, spinach, eggplant, peppers, and some others -- and when I first got the results I was asked to avoid everything for a while. Fortunately it turned out that there were only two or three foods that were really a problem for me, but without eliminating everything with a positive test and trying them one at a time, there was no way to tell which ones they were. Diane

I was uneducated before, too. I do not have a peanut allergy and do not know anyone who does, although I have a variety of fairly mild allergies myself, so I was a skeptic. My husband, who is a former medical researcher and always believed that parents overreacted, looked into it recently. This is what he found in the medical literature: even a small exposure to peanut can cause full-fledged anaphylaxis. The difference between peanut and most other allergies is that it is more likely to happen fast and hard. And even if you do all the right things -- use an epi-pen immediately and get the patient to the hospital right away -- sometimes people just die, and there is nothing anyone can do. That is apparently what is unusual about the peanut allergy. So yeah. Parents of peanut-allergic kids, and those who are allergic themselves, are paranoid. And yes, they are right to be so.

Oh, thanks for the warning! I've been tempted by the olive oil version for ages and almost bought it this week, but sweetness in mayo is unacceptable to me. I'll know to avoid it.

For Ontario, the obvious choice would be the butter tart. Mmm. Must find my butter tart recipe. d.

My weirdest experience was with a battery-powered peppermill with a headlight. No, really. My husband and I completely lost it. I mean, we laughed hysterically throughout the entire meal. We didn't mean to be rude, but it was just the funniest thing and every time our eyes met... well. It was hard to get the check. I think the waiters were embarrassed. For themselves or for us, we do not know, but it was a memorable meal. I have no idea what we ate, though.

"It's Fun to Fondue" by M. N. Thaler? That's hilarious. I don't have a copy at hand, but my father wrote and published that book. I think my parents still have the copper fondue pot that's featured on the cover of the first edition... I know nothing about monkeys, though. I still have my very first cookbook: Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cook Book. Still my go-to reference for "bunny salad" (place canned pear halves on lettuce leaves; add raisins for eyes, cinnamon candy for a nose, blanched almond halves for ears, and cottage cheese for a tail). Classic! d.

Perhaps someone took issue with the fact that he is an English-only bag. After all, packaging is supposed to be bilingual... d.

Okay, I admit it... we buy this stuff. Yes, it would be very easy to cook up a couple of chicken breasts and slice them and put them in the fridge. But in practice we just don't, and these make good snacks and a quick source of protein to add to salads and noodles to make a lunch. My husband and I go through a couple of bags a week. d.

That's true -- although it's not all of Atlantic Canada as far as I know, just the dozen or so stores in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This won't help chamekke, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if A Taste of Britain would make an effort to get pickled walnuts if they were requested. I have dealt with them in my (non-food-related) business, as they were trying to track down a product based on customer requests.

You didn't know because it isn't true. Dominion is part of A&P, along with Food Basics and Ultramart. d.