Kouign Aman

The one I bought in the airport was already peeled and vacuum-packed. It had a stamped 'best by' date of ~ 2 weeks.

San Diego - the backup town (always a bridesmaid never a bride ). This place is good, a bit "hole-in-the-wall"ish and very close to major tourist attraction = San Diego Old Town. Also very close to trolley stop. Berta's Latin American They serve selected dishes from a number of Latin American countries. They've been around for ages, but are rarely crowded.

Plants and cats. What's not to like? I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for blogging!

Dill can go sweet: carmelized onions with white wine and dill and olive oil. Sweet and delicious. There's a Filipino sweet pastry filled with carmelized onions. So, there's room for a riff on those, to make a sweet dill cake. Flavor the cake with white wine, use a mild olive oil, and mix in the dillweed. Perhaps use finely ground carmelized onions as a tunnel in the cake? Then glaze with a sweet wine glaze.

Caprese salad with home-grown basil on the menu for tonight. Im so excited. And in month, we can use our own termaters as well (tonight, they're Trader Joe's). The cilantro is trying to flower. Its fascinating - this plant has three different leaf shapes: the cotyledons ("seed leaves"), the flat-leaf we are so familiar with, and a lacy leaf that comes off the flowering stalk. Im letting 3 plants go and harvesting the rest for salsa etc. I've never seen a third leaf type on a plant before. I guess after harvest, I'll move this pot into the shade to slow down round two of flowering. Peppers and brussels sprouts survived transplant, altho' the ones still in the parent-pot are doing best. The garlic died back. This gardening stuff is fun, and its taking less time than I had feared. Next year I shall be completely out of control in the spring.

And dont forget to report back !

I beg to differ - Frog Spawn is not retro, its nursery food. Blanc mange - THAT is retro. So is bread pudding even if it is on every menu the past 10 years.

It sounds like its going great guns! your planned concoction: jambalaya? If you make those Xs with tape, and turn one end of the tape down on itself to make a tag, you wouldnt have to worry if you point <err..paint>over the Xs, because you could simply remove the tape and the Xs would be there loud and clear.

Dont know the restaurant. Do know eating out with nursing baby. My advice may come out sounding bossy - please remember this is just my opinion based on relatively recent experience. 1)No one else is paying to hear the kid make noise. Be fully prepared to pick your son up and exit the restaurant at high speed, possibly not returning if his nibs doesnt calm down or doesnt like the environment. This would be you, not your wife. Your wife needs the lunch. You are gambling. Sometimes gamblers lose. This may be one of those times. Be ready to accept and act on that. Of course, mom wont enjoy a leisurely lunch under those circumstances, so she'll probably bolt it down, pay the bill and schedaddle. If so, everyone should laugh. Otherwise its WAY too annoying. 2) plan around baby's schedule. When is your son noisy? Dont go then. Can your wife nurse in the car immediately before you head into the restaurant? Will your son then gurgle quietly and contentedly before eventually falling asleep? Will he nurse in the restaurant, thus amusing himself while menus are read, etc, or does he demand silence? 3) go really early and leave before peak crowds or before your son gets noisy. Or go really late - ditto. If I could choose, I'd go late, so that I had happy wellfed kid at the times of maximum craziness, and that the restaurant was quieting down as my kid was getting ready to snooze. 4) call the restaurant. Ask them. Ask them how they feel about nursing in the dining room. If your wife likes a bit of seclusion, ask if there is an outof the way corner table you can have. San Diego restaurants were very understanding tho we stuck to 'family' restaurants.Ask them what time of day works best. Tell them why you want to come to lunch (you are an old regular and cant give it up, whatever....) 5) Im thinking at 4 months, he's probably eating about every 3 hours? Is he happy in his carseat, placed on the chair next to one of you? Because if the restaurant has a tendency to get busy, the pushchair wont be popular with the waitstaff. And 4 months is a bit young for highchairs on average. I wish you luck and a wonderful lunch. BTW - for us, it started getting harder to eat out around 4 months (that being awake longer thing), got progressively more difficult to ~1 year, and didnt get easier until 18 months (that self-feeding throw stuff on the floor thing). Plus, anytime we had limited options, the munchkin would deviate from standard patterns of behaviour.

Yup. thanks!

Yup, but being from a british background, I dont think they qualify as retro in our household. I could use a good "recipe" for finnan haddie, if you have one. I havent had it in yonks.

Where oh where is your favorite butcher, and can he identify the source of the pepper bacon? :bouncing up & down excited icon: The Tenor is from Oregon and raves about the pepper bacon he could get up there, but the butcher he used to buy it from stopped carrying it lo these many years ago. We used to get a decent substitute from Costco, but no more.

I went to Siegel's Meats this weekend. Its a mini-mart as well as a meat market, including a fresh seafood section & produce. All the ...'interesting'... meats are wrapped in butcher paper in a separate fridge, rather than openly on display in the meatcase. Quite the contrast to the local asian markets such as that shown in mizducky's recent foodblog. Meat quality looks tempting, but the prices chased us away. The fiberglass steer out front was a hit with the munchkin.

Was given cuttings of African basil a couple weeks ago. They've got roots and one has survived a week in soil so far. The other two will "go dirt" soon. The cilantro will be ready for a large batch of Independence Day salsa, tho I'll have to use Trader Joe's termaters. No red yet on 'my' babies. Whats going on in your garden?

What a pretty plate, with the nicely arranged okra and tomatoes so vibrant against the blue. Im not much for leftovers, but you can ship me the rest of that cornbread if its really bothering you to keep it around.

Warmed (very gently), and poured over french vanilla or vanilla bean icecream.

What do you guys mean by "melon"? To me thats a category like "stone fruit" - pretty large and encompassing of a wide variety. Thus, to me "melon" includes watermelon, honeydew, cantalope, crenshaw, musk, and many others.

Chicken fried steak - breakfast/lunch/dinner & midnight snack of champions. By me, Oft purchased, never prepared at home. Hooray for your blog, Tupac!

From another thread, in answer to an earlier Q:

Gas oven? Separate the epazote as much as reasonable, and arrange on rack in over. Put cookie sheet down low to catch bits that fall off. Leave in over over night. The pilot ought to be enough to get it dry. Leave longer if necessary. Now I confess - I have never so much as seen epazote. But this worked for parsley and basil. Or, since you are in-land a tad, if you have a sunny balcony, lay the herb on paper towels to dry. Another option - wash it, and freeze it. Lay it out on cookie sheet to freeze then transfer into zipbags for sane storage. Biggest challenge in this is remembering you have it all stashed away hidden-like. Beet greens - so far all greens are ok in our house if steamed to acceptably-soft (our definitions vary) then sauteed briefly in olive oil with onions and garlic. I have no idea how this would work for beet greens (never having eaten one), nor how it would be with cooking spray (I do have olive-oil PAM, perhaps I'll try it one day). Ok, That was two+ paragraphs from fantasy-land. Is that playful enough? Thank you for blogging. Was much fun. I enjoy the way you write and your perspective on things.

Ate at Saigon this weekend (El Cajon Blvd). Extensive menu, friendly to kidz, food was good. I wrote down all the names (diacritical marks and all) but left the list elsewhere. Fried eggrolls, with lots of leaf lettuce and mint. Very good. Broad rice noodles with chicken and veg - rich, mild, familiar. Good noodle texture (once they were extricated from the covering pile o goodies). Broken rice with shredded pork and steamed egg. The chucnk of egg (sort of a fat fritatta with black fungus and cellophane noodles in it) evaporated - everyone at the table wanted seconds. The pork was very different from what I consider shredded (ala Ropa Vieja) - more like julienned pork. Well seasoned & rich even tho dry. It had a flavor undertone Im unused too - like meat hung a bit longer than usual. It was dusted with something mysterious to me, and also had clear ?noodles? sprinkled on top which were more resilient than Im used to with cellophane noodles - reminded me of the supposed sea cucumber salad I had in China, but finer. The pork/rice was better the next day when reheated together. Stirfried spinach was watery and redolent of garlic. This reheated nicely for breakfast omelets, sauteed with a little EVO. Something at the table came with a thin fishy sauce that we decided went best with the spinach. Added to the watery look, but worth it. And the crowner - whole crab (partially dismembered for us) in tamarind sauce. Oh yeah, we'll go back! This place is pictured and described in mizducky's second food blog. The building was originally San Diego Yamaha Suzuki lo these many years ago.

Specifically, it used to be San Diego Yamaha Suzuki (a motorcycle dealership), according to the Tenor. It looks like it still has the originally lighting (spots to shine on all the pretty bikes). I hope the goat is good. I'd have voted for curry or a mexican recipe, but not having either to hand... Im no bloody help!

Congratulations indeed! Another plug here for San Diego, especially if you can ramble the county and are not limited to the official city.

kasha - DZ Akins? they have a small mart. Looks like we'll be eating vietnamese one day this weekend. Where would you recommend? (Im only familiar with some of the places on Mira Mesa Blvd. Convoy / El Cajon Blvd etc are much closer to home). Are the places you've visited in this blog your favorites? I'm looking at mmm-yoso's blog too.

Wow, everything but the squeal.