Lilija

So, here we go. Normally, I zero in on one or two intense cravings, and obsess over them. Today, I crave food, and copious amounts of it. For breakfast before work, I had a bowl of Wheat Chex and milk (good start, right?) Then a slab of "spideweb" cake, which looks like a mound of whipped cream. Concealed in this mound is 2 layers of yellow cake, banana custard, and strawberry jam. I thought it was kind of breakfasty...and why don't we have desserts with breakfast anyway? We should. I certainly did. Then, in the car on the way to work, I ate a huge handful of Sweet Tarts. Now, I'm eating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. It tastes like hot garbage, I don't know why I'm eating it. We keep it around because my son loves it. I just ate another bite, and it still tastes like garbage. I have to stop, but it's so warm and filling. For dinner, I was eyeballing a can of Tobasco Spam that my dad sent me. Musubi? Fried rice? Hell, why wait for dinner? Maybe it'll be high tea, later...

Ok, I don't mean this, I don't even know you, but I couldn't help but giggle thinking..."someone's the common denominator here..." But, I am quite certain that's not it

I work with umami a lot, at my job. Unfortunately, I am not a scientist, only a taste panelist, but I do have some narrow insight. -Umami is found in naturally in LOADS of things, stuff you would never even imagine, like tomatoes and mushrooms. In fact, we determined that tomatoes have a potent umami element. Cheeses, yeast based things, fermented foods, seaweeds, obviously meats. We ate and rated tons of natual foods, for umami. -Different ingredients, like the aforementioned Dorito glutimates, as well as yeast extracts, MSG, and other stuff that I can't think of offhand, produce different umami flavors ranging from sweet, to tangy, to metallic, to bitter. They naturally range far and wide in saltiness, too. We spent months tasting straight umami in water, from a multitude of sources. Umami without the salt element is straight up icky. -This might seem like common sense, but salt enhances it, and it enhances salt. Weirdly enough, sweet brings it out more, too. It's late, and we haven't done umami in a few months, specifically (we've moved on to parsley), but I might be able to answer some questions, relating to its flavors, and capacity as an enhancer. Like I said, I'm no scientist, just a victim, but I definitely spent a lot of time with the flavor. As far as my favorite way to get a quick umami kick...double dashi pellets, an extra spoonful of red miso, in my miso soup, with toasted nori crumbled on top. It's like a direct hit to the brain. Not that I crave it much after studying it so in depth, last year

Randi, really, if you can't bitch to us about it, where can you bitch? We know you're doing the best you can, you know you're doing the best you can. Money's money, and it's only two times a month. The worst thing, really, is that your supervisor is so not on the same page. That might be the most ridiculous, nitpicky, and formulaic email I've ever seen... <start with a compliment, don't use any "you" language", stay courteous> I like how she uses the word "we" and "lets". Did she cook any of this? May as well come directly from some PR form letter. I'm frustrated in the third person, honestly.

I'm coasting along in that lovely pre-PMS phase (batten down the hatches, folks, a storm's a brewin) and Pax, I think you just GAVE me a few cravings. I just broke out into a cold sweat, thinking about potato pancakes, and palmiers.

Here's another good one, this will be dinner on Saturday. There's a snowstorm coming, and this will be just the thing. It's relatively quick (if you have some beef stock on hand) and better still, cheap. My big soup pot of this will feed a small third world country. Stuffed cabbage soup. It came around, once when I had all the fixins for stuffed cabbage, but in a fit of laziness decided to not roll and fuss with all the leaves. Into the pot went ground beef, to brown, (ground pork, lamb and veal work good, in fact, if you get your mitts on the meatloaf mix, use that) Then, diced onions, lots of sliced cabbage, garlic, black pepper, red pepper flakes, some salt and lots of fresh dill, all sweated a bit. Next, a big can of crushed tomatoes, and enough beef broth to make it soupy. Then a small bag of sauerkraut, a reasonable handful of rice (not too much) and a bunch of sliced up good Polish butcher kielbasa (brown it first, or not. I've done it both ways, I actually like it unbrowned). This gets simmered till it all kinda looks soupy and wilted, maybe an hour. The only garnish this needs is more fresh dill, and the only side it calls for is buttered rye. This is a serious soup. If you take the time to really drain the ground beef, it's healthy, even.

For dinner, Tuesday, I made my riff on thom kha gai. The last of the homemade chicken broth, steeped with a small mountain of chopped and bruised lemongrass, coriander seeds, chili paste, the juice of a lime, and strips of the rind, fish sauce, a pinch of brown sugar, garlic, and other seasonings which fail me right now. I heat all that up, to a bare simmer, and let it steep that way for a half hour to an hour. I strain all that, bring the broth to a boil, and add a chicken breast, sliced into fine ribbons, some baby bok choi, chiffonaded, a can of baby corn, in bite sized pieces, a few razor thin sliced shallots, straw mushrooms, a handful of shrimp and a few cans of coconut milk. In bowls, topped with a lot of minced cilantro leaves. So good. So delicate, and light, yet so filling. We had some bao in the freezer, so we had sort of a pan-Asian meal.

I can expound on this, a little, by using either of those dishes for two kinds of leftovers. As a side dish to migas, or huevos rancheros, for a nice weekend breakfast. A good lunch, would be either of these things, as burrito filling.

I like a few things from the Taco Bell menu. Weirdly enough, nothing else will do when the craving hits. Mostly it's for the bean burritos, or enchirito, or now the volcano taco. A good lunch, not too horrible nutritionally is 2 bean burritos. I don't like anything else on the menu, though. I think the thing that hooks me in is the sauces.

Last night, it was one of Aunt Debbie's molasses chews, a bit of cookies and cream fudge, a gingerbread man from the neighbor, a stalk of celery for the reindeer, and two fingers of Knob Creek. I like this theme of booze for Santa. As far as I'm concerned, eGulleters have the right of it.

I was always pondering the inclusion of eggs, what it did for the stuffing. Interesting, so it binds it? Are we talking slicable?

Last year, for the Very Boring Party, I brought a bunch of retro appies. Stuff that people remembered as popular in the 70s. Meatballs in a slow cooker, little cocktail weenies, Chex mix, cheese ball, finger sandwiches, and they went over all so amazingly well. Comfort finger foods, I guess. I didn't bring one bit home, it was gone.

This year, we're lying to everyone, save for a few close friends, and keeping it low key. Last year was a dreadfully dull and arbitrarily alcohol-free party (I brought a flask of Crown Royal, and took care of myself, but the toast was sparkling grape juice...lame. lame. lame.) Three years of boring NYE parties, and we've had it. This year, we'll likely go out for a late hibachi lunch on NYE, with some close friends. It's rather festive, with 12 of us taking over the empty hibachi joint, and getting buzzed on cheap sake. For the evening, we're gonna nibble our favorite finger foods, all night, while playing video games and enjoying each other's company. Definitely toast with a nice, expensive bottle of Champagne, and maybe if we're hungry have a 3 am breakfast. No more boring parties! I'm taking NYE back!

You can't ask a question like that, then grace us with those pics...I got nothing, by comparison! My recent obscene sandwich was on crusty Italian bread, too, but it had breaded chicken, pepperoni, prosciutto, roasted peppers and asparagus, Parmesan cheese, shaved not shredded, slices of hot pickled cherry peppers, and a small mountain of mozzarella, and some enterprising souls dipped the works into some leftover marinara. It was the leftovers from like two meals, all crammed into a loaf of bread, and toasted. Overkill? Absolutely.

I have sort of a theory. It'll take a few words to tease it out so bear with me. Wait. Maybe an introduction is in order as I'm new here: I don't know if I'm a foodie. Probably not. I'll confess a few items I just don't want to eat - most fish, most of the time (an odor thing - yes even really fresh fish), and "variety meats" ever (simply too hard to contemplate - I can't explain better). Whatever. I love most good food and can bake a darn good yeasted sourdough bread so I'm not a total and complete loser. I love to cook most of the time and have gotten pretty good with a few things and quite tolerable with many. I'm still learning from watching the Food Network and gathering interesting cookbooks and sifting out information here and across the internet. I'm an artist, a painter, by day, and show in galleries. I've noticed that there is a kind of parallel universe to the world of bad food. There's a world of people with no or little visual sense. I'm not really addressing the people who want to look only at "happy" pictures of lighthouses and seagulls. They are an easy target and not very interesting. More, I'm interested in some of the professionals in the art world who seem to have come adrift from the moorings of art as a possibly pleasurable visual experience. Much critical writing about art seems devoid of the simple pleasure of taking in a work. They veer into the textual and theoretic, and away from sheer experience. I don't want to be a bore with more than that hint on them. I just note that some people seem immune to the experiential. But, to bring it back to food, and this is where the visual cripples intersect with the awful cooks, the terrifying vegetarian hosts and the food maulers; some people seem to be out of touch with the experiential act of tasting food or looking at art. It seems a similar deficit to me. Maybe these are people who eat merely to live. I suspect the ranks of dieticians and healty food nutjobs, who prescribe deadly dull regimens of celery and low fat milk, are largely comprised of people who eat merely because they need to and have no sense that food and eating are something larger. Could it be their bretheren cook so badly simply because they are so out of touch with sensual experience that they just don't know how awful their food is? That's my bet. What an amazing thread! Hi everyone, C ← Pretty amazing insight, yourself, but you're right! My best friend/housemate is an artist, he's shown in galleries, and actively painting and selling his work...I'm a pretty passionate home cook, so we're constantly talking about the paralells, and art vs. craft. Sounds like you'd fit right in with our conversations, haha. I have to read him your view. It's a really good assessment. It's a love thing. Love color and form, respect it, learn it, use it to it's fullest potential, observe it, bring it from nature into yourself, and present all this in your art. I'm not really an artist, though I can roundly appreciate it. Now put the word flavor into that statement. Love flavors and food, respect them, use them to their fullest potential, observe flavors, bring them from nature into yourself, and present all this in your creations. If you don't love it, respect it, revel in it, how can you do it any justice? Art and food (and many other things in life, really). Artistboy says this: "There is nothing worse to both an artist and a cook, than the reaction of no reaction. The reaction of apathy. You hit it very well, with the "eat to live" thing. Apathy towards food."

I got some dry spots, too, but not many. I didn't think the butter was going to incorporate into the mix, either, so I sorta helped it along, and mixed it in the bottom of the pan. I wonder if mixing it together, thoroughly, before hand would fix that.

I recently discovered that I still love tart candies, like Spree and Sweet-Tarts. I ate a giant box of Spree, almost singlehandedly over the course of 3 days. They were so munchy, and sour, I couldn't quit. It's unusual, because I'm generally not into candy, especially commercial kiddie candy like that. Damn were they good, though. One thing I have lost the taste for is commercial ice cream. When I was a kid, I loved Bryers, and Ben & Jerry, and now I can't stand either. So cloyingly sweet, I can actually taste the chemicals.

First: I have had some VASTLY screwed up homemade M&C, don't underestimate people... everything from squashy overcooked noodles, to dry clumpy stringy cheese, to chunks of only God-knows-what within. It's one of my all time favorite dishes (though not a holiday tradition, really) but it's fairly easy to mess up, I think. Two dishes that find their way to most holiday meals, if not all all of them, are tomato pudding, and creamed baby onions. They're both usually fixed in small amounts, and eaten sorta like relishes, since they're both so rich, in different ways. For the creamed onions, I buck traditon, and make a sharper, less pasty, lighter version. I saute the onions slowly till they're melty and light gold, then make a veloute sauce, with a swirl of cream, and dijon, to finish. The bechamel version is too much, with a huge meal. The tomato pudding is like a very intensely tomatoey, lightly sweet, spicy bread pudding. It cuts right through and almost cleanses the palate. These aren't ancient family traditions, though, just ones we started ourselves 11-12 years ago, I guess. We don't really have any old traditions. Also, these two things are exclusive to holiday meals. Not intentionally, I don't think, but that's the way it seems to be.

I happened to have a box of that brownie mix on hand, and made the linked recipe today. They came out so rich and gooey, I decided to cut them into 1" squares, and pack them into my Christmas candy gift tins. I made them years ago with graham cracker crumbs, as a crust and once with crushed Oreos, but these are the best. Heavy, though, good for one bite.

My son just came up with one, after I stole a squirt from the Reddi Whip can behind his back. He whips around and says "what was that?! Ohhh...you have fluffymouth...you stole some whipped cream" Fluffymouth: A mouth full of stolen whipped cream. It's when your cheeks are puffed, and you have the cat-that-ate-the-canary look on your face, trying not to laugh it all over the floor.

Yikes, those chicken bowls sound like way too much of a good thing. Beans and rice and chicken and gravy(!) and sour cream and CHEESE!? I do love some Popeye's chicken, though. I really like El Pollo Loco, too, when I can get it, every time I used to visit my dad on Guam, or friends on the west coast, I would try to have it. It was always such a treat, though I probably haven't had any in 15 years.

Actually, yes, they do.

Soon after my cranky-ass post, there, I met with serendipity. I was on my way to watch my son bowl, and I stopped to get coffee and a snack for him. They were just taking fresh baked pretzels out of the oven, as I was standing in line. Sweet cream cheese ones, plaiin ones, cheddar ones, and jalapeno cheddar. I grabbed two jalapeno cheddar pretzels, and had them with my coffee. It was what I was craving. Salty, crunchy, chewy, spicy, and meltingly plastic cheesy. I was lost, and then I was found.

It's weird, I know I have PMS, I'm bitchy, achy, fatter than usual, my skin looks worse than it did when I was 16...but I do not have the qualifying cravings. In fact, I'm having anti cravings. I don't want anything in particular, no real urge to cook or eat anything. If I get within 4 feet of the pantry, though, I stand there, gazing around, nibbling. A peanut butter cookie a handful of multigrain puffy cracker chip things a bite of dreadfully bad carrot cake that my husband brought home from work a glass of milk a glass of V8 a few mugs of green tea half a spoonful of miso This was my lunch, taken over the course of two hours. In writing, it certainly looks like a PMS binge, but all told, it wasn't a ton of food, and I didn't really crave any of those things. Nor do I want a proper lunch. Or dinner. Or anything. I haven't tried booze yet. Maybe I should just open the bourbon now, and get it over with.

Husband made one up the other day. He saw me gleefully helping myself to forkfuls of pie, dispensing of plates, or slices, just fork to half-pie. He walks in, as I'm artfully dobbing whipped cream on my next bite, raises his eyes, and simply says "forktart?" Forktart- a whole dessert in one bite. Seperated from its whole, by artful forking. Could be that one bite of cake you extract from the half-sheet leftover from your kid's b-day. Could be a chunk of pie in the middle of the night, stolen from under the foil. Could be one huge spoonful of trifle, before you pack it away in the fridge.