Lilija

So, we went to this bodega, and bought roughly 3 lbs. of dried peppers, all kinds of unnamable and unpronouncable. I bought them based on appearence, mostly. I know that there was one 8 oz bag of dried chipotles among them. Took em home, dried them further in a slow oven (in batches, 3 lbs of dried peppers is a metric truckload.) then ground them in my coffee grinder. I now have 3 lbs of this perfect paprika-smoky-spicy-essence of hot Mexico sun-pepper goodness reposing in my freezer, and it is THE spice for me. I use it in everything, from hot chocolate to tomato dishes, to macaroni and cheese. It gets sprinkled, rubbed, and dashed into most things, but so far, its single best application is mixed with a few things, and rubbed into a nice brined pork shoulder. Does that count as a spice? I hope it does. Herb, that's a toughie. I'm going basil, here, maybe I'm a little basic. It's abundant in my garden, never boring, never "common" tasting, to me. It's always a suprise with it's sweet, verdant, sometimes sharp complexity. It melds with a million cuisines, styles, and flavors. It freshens up whatever it's in or on. Nothing says "midsummer" like a chiffonade of basil on a scandalously ripe tomato half, just kissed with grill marks, and warmed through. (I could go with a simple slice of tomato with basil, but I like it grilled better, for some reason) I need to go plant my garden now, I miss it!

Microwave popcorn. Extra salt. Miso soup. Chicken Nuggets. Weirdly enough, no booze, this month, or chocolate. Could be because I'm suffering from a nice URI, and salty light crunchy things, and hot brothy things go well.

This is wonderful! Family dinner type posts rank up as my favorite kind, here at eG, doubly so when they're rachel's. Thank you for sharing, we need more like this!

Because it really really tastes good! There's something about pickles, raw onions and barbecue that taste so incredibly good. To me, it's the texbook definition of "more than a sum of its parts". Why coleslaw? Same reason. I think because it cuts the richness, too. Ya gotta eat something on the side, and pickles work. Why do any two foods go together? Why peanut butter and jelly?

I was a big fan of Irish Car Bombs, myself. It was a great way to get the party started, and they do taste like something creamy and somewhat chocolatey, when done right. I can't drink them anymore, though, because once I tried to do it with a plastic shot glass. The shotglass didn't sink, and wound up bobbing and smacking me in the nose for the duration of the chug. Gag-city. Haven't had one since.

I want to try every one of your suggestions. In the same meal.

Some chain place somewhere fills deep fried breaded mushrooms with this stuff, or deep fried breaded chicken breasts. I don't remember where, or when, but I do remember the chicken rocking my socks. I would imagine a light pounding, rolled around some frozen Bourisn, ala Kiev style, then rolled in panko or however you bread your cutlets, and fried would be pretty darn good! Or, in mushrooms if you like 'em.

Ok, my husband found a semi-boneless leg of lamb, on sale. He brought it home, with that look in his eye... Me, I'm not a fan of lamb. I'll eat a sliver of it, off his plate, or a cube from his vindaloo, but I don't think I could make a meal of it. Outside of a gyro, I could pretty much take or leave the stuff. I looked at it, and thinking of our recent discussion on Greek marinade, I said "sure, I'll chunk it up and make kabobs out of it". You would think I said I was doing that to the family dog, by the look he gave me. He wants this thing roasted the traditional way, with mint jelly and the works. This is where I turn to you fine folks, and pick your brains. Tell me all about the traditional roasted leg of lamb dinner, how I should do it, what temperatures for cooking, doneness, seasonings, sides, hilarious anecdotes, history lessons, etc. This is the first lamb I have ever cooked. Bonus points and an eternal spot in my fond memory if this lamb will wow even me. Edit: Something told me I should have done a search! Thanks for combining this, loads of great reading here!

Speaking only for myself, I don't use rosemary, I find that it kind of takes over and fights with the oregano.

Pho and hot alcohol. I love the above mentioned concoctions, whiskey and tea, hot rum, any form of a hot toddy, mulled wine, all good ideas! Good for just about anything that ails ya. It's one of my confirmed migrane "cures" too. Not so much a cure, but it definitely makes riding out a migrane almost bearable. Edit: Come to think of it, the above mentioned combo works for PMS too.

I just made the lightest, tenderest, tangiest best pancakes ever the other morning, with some yogurt. I subbed in half a cup of yogurt for half a cup of the milk in my typical weekday morning Bisquick recipe, and as always added an extra egg (I like my pancakes eggy for whatever reason). You could probably do that with just about any pancake recipe, or sub it in for the buttermilk, but I just wanted to report that it does amazing things to the standard pancake.

Garlic! I forgot copious amounts of garlic. I can't believe I left that out.

I would say they use vinegar for a cheaper and easier alternative than fresh lemons. Cider vinegar has a similar brightness and fruitiness, but not as intense. My only real suggestion for you is try simplifying down the ingredients to mostly (great quality) oregano, and a bit of basil, and use the lemon juice for sure. I make souvlaki all the time, and I use fresh or dried whole crumbled Greek oregano, a bit of basil, grated lemon rind, the lemon juice, half as much olive oil, and let it sit for 8+ hours for pork or lamb and skin on-chicken with bones. Maybe 2-3 for chicken breasts. The results are just about identical to the I get at our local Greek place. I also toss planks of eggplant and zucchini in this kind of mixture, or whitefish filets. Also delicious brushed over grilled tomatoes! Totally all purpose stuff, once you hit upon your particular ratio of seasonings. My Greek friend laughs at buying lemons by the one or two, they buy them over there, like we buy potatoes. In huge bags!

I always kinda liked crusts on my sandwiches, unspread with filling. It was like getting two meals. I always pulled or cut them off and saved the naked bread strips for last. It was like a squishy pb & j sandwich, with a side of ghetto breadsticks.

If you have a good Eastern European butcher or deli around, you could try kishka, it's the Polish version of boudin noir. Not sure how it stacks up, but it's a soft fine textured sausage that's good fried, and is almost jet black.

We went out to dinner the other night with some relatives and close friends, and it was quite the enlightening experience. First off, I rediscovered a quirk of my own that seldom rears its head, but is impossible to ignore when it does. I. Can't. Mix. Pasta. (or most starches, besides bread, but mixing pasta shapes is the worst) There can NOT be two kinds of noodles on my plate, period. It makes me extremely uncomfortable. A piece of penne bounced off my friend's plate, when the waitress set it down, and it had a piece of spaghetti threaded through it, by some freak occurance. It sat close to the rim of my plate for the duration of my meal, and it really bothered me. I kept trying to subtly move it, or cover it, without making a scene, but it stayed right there, just taunting me. My husband noticed my silent distress, and picked the thing up and dropped it in my plate of fettucini, and I lost my appetite. I have no idea what it is, or why, but mixing pastas really affects me. I also can't eat potatoes and rice together on the same plate, or noodles and rice (pilaf, gross!), and some people like mixing different kinds of cereal in the same bowl, and it just sends shivers down my spine. I kinda forgot about that till the whole penne/spaghetti incident. The second thing that was genuinely entertaining, was trying to watch my food neurotic friends sit across from each other and try to function. One of them was the typical "no food touching, one thing at a time" kind, where he seperated everything on his plate, and ate it clockwise, till he finished with his entree. The other friend was the one that I mentioned upthread that has to eat everything in exact proportions, one bite at a time, equally. Sometimes, to make it happen, he has to shove two bites of different things in his mouth. Watching them kinda stare at each other, and look uncomfortable was well worth my pasta ordeal.

Kinda creepy how this works out, but I sent the mister to Shop Rite today to pick up some romaine and a loaf of bread, and he comes home with those and a box of Lofthouse chooclate iced. I'd never seen them or heard of them before this thread, and boom a few days later, we're munching on 'em. Total serendipity. They were darn tasty, the icing was suprisingly good. Hard to find a good soft cookie, pretty much anywhere but my own kitchen.

I'm not a huge fan of fries in general, they're filler, pretty much, but Checker's fries are damn good. About the only fast food place I'll actively seek them out. When I was younger, an order of chili-cheese fries and a banana milkshake from Checkers would be the perfect end to a night of partying Down the Shore. Wendy's are passably good, I'm inspired to nibble at more than one. I don't order them, though, I just eat a few of my son's.

I dont know I feel very validated by this thread actually ← Me too, just another reason why eGullet always feels like "home" to me. You're ALL nuts I say that in the most affectionate way possible, of course.

I should make a list, next to my shopping list on the whiteboard, on the fridge, and call it "Egullet Made Me Do It" because count one more craving inspired from this thread. I asked the old man, the other day if we could hit up McDonald's this weekend sometime during our errands, since I wanted a Filet-O-Fish. He just rolls his eyes, anymore. I haven't gone to McD's yet, though, we hardly ever eat there. The other night, though, we found ourselves at Wendy's, and they're having a fish sandwich for Lent too, apparently. It's a cod fillet breaded with "panko" which wasn't of course. It was still extremely good. It comes with lettuce (which I left off, hot lettuce is gross) and tartar sauce. The fish itself was firm, nicely flavored, didn't seem "chopped and formed" and had a great sandy crispy breadcrumby crunch. No awesome Filet-O-Fish, for sure, but it was darn good in its own right.

Wait, you can't just leave me hanging! I want to know the stories!! At least give me the Doritos and the pineapple juice... ← They're both pretty straightforward The pineapple juice ban came about on one of our trips to the Carribean, I drank too many fruity pineapple juice based drinks, and threw up too many fruity pineapple based drinks, and for whatever reason it tasted the same both ways. So, pineapple juice smells and tastes like bile, to me. I'm not exactly friends with rum, either, but it doesn't have the same effect. Doritos...when I was 20, a friend dared me to eat a whole bag of Taco Supreme Doritos, since I was raving about them. Remember those? I was never a big fan of Doritos, but those were really incredible, and short lived. I ate the whole damn bag. I felt all dusty and smelly for like days after, even after I showered, I thought I could still smell the dust on my clothes and hands. I tasted them for awhile, too. 9 years later, and I get the willies when I smell them.

As far as something contaminating stuff for all time, everywhere, I get like that too. I won't eat lemon meringue pie anymore, ever, because once I had some at a diner, and there was a thin but even layer of jade green mold between the lemon and the meringue. It tasted like lemon, meringue, and sour dirt. I'm really easily put off of stuff. I go back to most things eventually, but currently blacklisted are enchiladas in any form, beef-vegetable soup, Doritos, the aforementioned meringue, Sambuca, pineapple juice, Jagermeister, and Mongolian barbecue. Each food product comes with a story that starts out with "well, I used to like it, but I had a bad experience..." While we're talking about it, my husband won't eat anything a certain shade of green. Pea soup, guacamole, and spinach noodles all fall into this category. He loves spinach, likes peas well enough, as well as other legume soup, and doesn't mind diced or sliced avocado in stuff. It's the shade combined with the texture. My housemate has a proportion thing, He eats everything equally on his plate, right down to counting out chunks in a stew or something, so that everything is consumed proportionately. The last bites in a bowl of beef stew, for example will be equal sized pieces of beef, carrot, and potato. He really loses it, if I mess with him and throw a spoonful extra of something, when he's half done with his meal. The other night, we had chili with cornbread. He agonized, because he cut himself too small of a piece of cornbread, and he would finish it too fast, before his chili was done. He struggled and huffed throughout the meal. It was hilarious. As far as the waffle thing? That's just normal. I drip one drop of syrup in each square, after I put a dab of butter in each one.

I love this thread, that we can share our PMSsyness, and not only be accepted, but lauded. When here, in my house full of men (even my DOG is male!) I get "did you really just eat ALL that <insert buttery, cheesy, chocolatey, carby item here>?!?!??".

It makes a great relish for pork, instead of the traditional applesauce. I like it mixed with shredded fresh ginger, or a spoonful of horseradish stirred in, alongside roasted pork, or ham.

I am actively looking for a place to get the salt beef, once I figure out what it even is. After that, I'm making it, for sure.