suzilightning

an overwhelming desire for fishsticks and tater tots... which i just ate for lunch.

oh, my...oh, my...oh,my..... burgers and onion rings chicken and cashews tonight john wanted pork so it will be pork marsala with some rice pasta for me it will be a nice salad with avacado and green goddess dressing... can you have buttermilk blue cheese with the green goddess? in the meantime the baked beans are on hour 3 in the low oven for tomorrow's dinner served with raisin brown bread and toffuti cream cheese for one of my favorite childhood meals

i just finished reading Chez Jacques by Jacques Pepin and i actually read it more for his commentary and essays than for the recipes which were written old time Gourmet style. NOT to be missed are the essays on food critics, home vs restaurant cooking and nouvelle cuisine. i am also most of the way through A Well-Seasoned Apppetite by Molly O'Neill. haven't found many recipes i don't already have or want but the writing is lyrical in her seasons/ almost seasons and the specific ingredients within the season.

ok- two weeks of nursing an inflamed quad(lift, turn and walk with the heavy snow - DON'T pivot on the right leg) and some friends at work brought me some donations/discards. if you are interested please pm me: Coastal Cooking by John Shields Martha Stewart Livin Annual Recipes 2003 Nathalie Dupree Cooks Everyday Meals from a Well-stocked Pantry Nathalie Dupree Cooks for Family and Friends The Williamsburg Cookbook

i grew up eating steamed puddings in the summer. freshly gathered berries folded into a slightly sweetened bisquick mix. plop into greased coffee cups so they are 3/4 full. put into the big kettle - which would hold 6 or so cups - and pour in hot water till the water comes up about 1/2 way up the cups. cover and steam for about an hour. let cool slightly and top with a hard sauce.

when we were doing raw bars in the restaurant we would chill the clams about 30 min before opening- iced down real good or in the freezer. grittiness is a function of where the clam came from. you might want to open over a strainer set on a bowl. that way you can also harvest the clam juice and the grit is caught in the strainer. since you are using cherrystones there is no neck to speak of. necks and strips come from steamers- or longnecks or piss clams (and my brother-in-law and i have this argument all the time because he steams cherrystones and calls them steamers). think of them looking like mini geoducks. you do have bellies, though. that's that section that contains the alimentary canal and anything that the clams have been eating. you might try putting them in some water with cornmeal for a day or so but.....

john's new favorite is Seville, the triple chocolate cookie they just released.

Thanks for the tip--I'm pretty sure I've seen the Cabot light cheeses in some store or other; now I'll make a point of it to seek them out. ← ellen, congratulations on your slow and steady progress towards health. the cabot light is good but if you like swiss cheese the best low fat i have found is heavenly light swiss from finlandia. it is the only one johnnybird and i have found that has good mouth feel but is low enough in fat that he can tolerate it. any chance you are hopping across the border for some cocktails or fish tacos?

thank you for resurrecting this thread, Carrot Top!! Food wise i TRIED to read Insatiable by Gael Greene but all the talk about who she was sleeping with got old after a while. Through the ARC (advanced readers copy - uncorrected drafts) i have almost finished A Pig in Provence: Good food and simple pleasures in the South of France by Georgeanne Brennan. i love the flow of the story of adapting to the area - long before Peter Mayle. Another one from this program is Daniel Rogov's Rogues, Writers and Whores. since the chapters are so small it is in my workout bag for reading on the treadmill and bike. rambling through Kemp's United States of Arugula. i say rambling since i really don't want it to end but am savoring the writing. From Interlibrary Loan i just received Psyche A. Williams-Forsori's Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power. i am looking forward to this book about the "gospel bird" and how it impacted slaves and black women. other than that i am finishing up a biography of Edwina Mountbatten and have several light romances i am rereading.

friday john got back from georgia and we had pork roast with a potato and asparagus casserole(NOT the word i want but am having a brain f!$t) as well as a salad of spinach and dandelion with a cranberry port vinaigrette last night was chicken breast with lemon and capers and a broccoli rissotto. tonight? he is cooking the oriental meatballs i made and will have the salad and some noodles.

wow, sandy - what a spread. if it does you any good johnnybird knows the head of the cardiac unit at hersey medical... late wake up and work so an odd day snyders pretzels with cheddar mini 100,000 bar my first slurpee, ever.

believe it or not as a child of the 50s i was allergic to it. they used to put liquid benedryl in my bottle so i wouldn't break out in hives. i was the kid who would put orange juice on my cereal. over the years i seem to be able to tolerate milk better(no more itching) and most of the year i have a glass of coffee milk made with lactose free milk for breakfast - lots of ice in that puppy, too. recently one of the supermarkets around here started to carry kefir and that has been added for an afternoon snack. now i think i'll have to try goats milk and see if johnnybird and i can tolerate it.

i used to make lemon charlotte russe when i worked in restaurants years ago. it used plain gelatin or sheets. if you like i probably could dig up my old formula.

i have never been a big breakfast food eater though dinner/lunch has always been my big meal. when i was 26 or so i developed a hiatal hernia so i had to relearn eating (eg - no 12 cups of coffee, no chocolate, no soda and for a few years no spicy foods). if i'm working and working out i'll have a cup or two of hot cocoa and some yoghurt. lunch at work is my main meal - pasta with meat sauce, leftover meat with a starch and veg dinner is lighter - soup, salad late night snack will be some nuts or some cheese and fruit and crackers or, like tonight, a piece of whole wheat bread with some thin slice turkey breast and some honey mustard. if i do eat out i prefer to eat out for lunch on the days i don't work. johnnybird and i eat out for dinner (together) about once every two months or so...usually when i have to work the weekend and i decide i don't give a flying flip about cooking....otherwise i love planning and cooking for us

i am sitting here at work and have the most overwhelming craving for that new philadelphia cheesecake filling. i even think i have a coupon for it buried in my paper recycling. would it be a bad thing to eat the whole tub? anyone know if you need to bake it?? dang - 2 more hours to go. fresser - can you deliver?

and if you are a falconer and live near a chicken farm - ranch?- you buy or are given the newborn males that are discarded to feed and train your birds.

i, too, have just started making risottos. john likes smoked salmon with asparagus tips. i served a pear and sage risotto with a pork roast at the family christmas eve dinner. shrimp marinated in lemoncello, basil and olive oil then wrapped in prosciutto. seared and topping a risotto with lemon zest and peas.

icy cold here and a f*&$#!g flat tire and frozen drivers door this morning(thanks to my knight in dented armour, johnnybird, he got the tire inflated enough to get to where he could fill it with air then follow me to the garage so they could check it). luckily i had started soaking some great northern beans last night. got up early to make his lunch and breakfast and simmer the beans till tender. when i got home i mixed up a batch of baked beans and popped them in the oven. about an hour before serving i'm going to drape the top with some duck bacon. there is some raisin brown bread steaming as i type - both recipes from my great grandmother's receipt book to my grandmother. i have some mixed greens about to go on.... really old style food for dinner tonight

two new loaves of portugese sweet bread out of the oven and i have dispatched 3 out of 4 heels - 1 with apricot preserves, 1 with strawberry and 1 with miracle whip, finlandia heavenly swiss and black forest ham just showed this thread to john and he said "i don't like burned ends" i tried to explain to him that browned and crusty isn't burned. course he thinks anything that is any shade darker than mocha is "burned". as the bread ages over the next few days i noticed that himself will not cut off the crusts as long as they are softer. course this is the same guy that hates "burned meat" on the grill(meaning anything with color) though he bought the freakin' gas grill rather than replacing my hardwood charcoal one... love him dearly but there may be a homicide in new jersey

there is nothing, NOTHING better than slaw on a 'que sandwich. be CAREFUL getting home. all the sleet and freezing rain here has turned to snow and we have just had some peeks of sun through the thinning snow but it is still dangerous out on the roads..

wow forest - you can cook brats for me any day. they looked exactly like i like them - dark and crispy lousy, icy night here so luckily it was my day off - and johnnybird took today as his scheduled day off. shrimps are marinating in olive oil, chardonnay(2004 raven ridge), garlic, lemon juice, basil, oregano, salt & pepper. will broil them and serve with some rice fettuccini and green beans with shallot and olive oil and the rest of the chardonnay. i made some miniature crab cakes - heavy on the crab and light on the mayo. will saute lightly and serve with some asian slaw i made with some lemongrass ginger dressing. dessert for johnnybird will be some of the godiva truffles and amaretto i got him for a present. for me - another glass of champagne, please(don't know what kind he got me yet but i hope it is the duval-leroy) edited to say the dessert became the appetizer for john and i and how come when you spend time cooking something you don't want to eat it? dinner for me was three heels of portugese sweet bread - did not want to touch the shrimp, pasta or beans. the crab cakes have been regulated to dinner for someother night... have a good dinner all....

lousy, sleety, freezing rain here so... just put a set of portugese sweet bread to rise. when it comes out of the oven and is still warm but cool enough to cut smear with some butter and johnnybird has to make more toast dope in september nice whole wheat toast, a slap of miracle whip and a thickish slice of a really ripe tomato a good baguette with tapenade and smoked salmon - preferably from Perona Farm but sometimes just butter and strawberry jam

ohh, ohhh nice omlet but off topic - great book about isabella and i love weir's writing and she has her first faction(fact/fiction) book coming out this month about lady jane grey. she started it about 20 years ago and her publisher basically said "make up your mind - either you are an historian or you are a novelist" she shelved it and with the resurgence of historical fiction (phillipa gregory, robin maxwell, etc) she brought it out, reworked it and voila - i think a best seller. damn - i wish we had farmers markets more - june - oct just doesn't do it for me

actually there is an even more regional Beef on Weck divide. in Buffalo it is hot with jus. 60 miles southwest in Fredonia you have the same weck roll but served cold with the thin sliced beef, swiss cheese, chiffonaded iceberg lettuce and thousand island dressing. i like 'em both...