Kent D

I'm pretty sure it was about our 3rd date when I cooked for my future wife. It was my Mom's failsafe "barbecue brisket in the crockpot", Golden Potato casserole, green beans, tossed salad, potato rolls (purchased), and probably a pudding and coolwhip pie. I had just moved out of my parent's house a month earlier, and was working with the resources I had while rooming with my buddy from high school. She seemed to find it acceptable, since I'm still doing most of the cooking 20 years later.

And maybe I'm just being cheap and cynical, but won't all those changes in supply practices probably result in higher product cost and higher menu prices? Not that people who eat at Spago mind a couple more dollars an entree to feel good about eating free-range piggies. I don't eat foie gras, and I think providing vegetarian options and environmentally-safe ingredients are a good thing, but blaming it on obese kids who aren't even eating in his restaurants is a cop-out. If you're that concerned about health, cut back on the fats and reduce portion size, don't use kids to deflect criticism of your business practices.

Most of these don't sound all that bizarre to me, but I've never been adverse to mixing food flavors together. I've had a leftover spaghetti sandwich on garlic toast, I've had the peanut butter/banana/bacon/mayo on raisin bread, I always flip my burger open to add a layer of fries and some mayo. But I was always fond of peanut butter/homemade sandplum jam/chocolate Quik powder on toast. My mother, by the way, was a big childhood fan of the grilled cheese and mustard sandwich, hold the cheese. Her Dad ran a drugstore/lunch counter, and he made her grilled mustard sandwiches for an afternoon snack.

It happens everywhere - go into any respectable town in Texas and ask where the best barbecue is.

I always leave a reasonable tip, not wanting to risk a potential confrontation and having to explain how the service was unsatisfactory, but if I get bad service, I don't go back to the restaurant, and I let their dwindling customer base take its toll. There are too many dining options to subject myself to an unpleasant dining experience. And yes, call me cheap, but I really don't believe that a tip should be based on the price of what you order. A plate with a cheeseburger and fries is just as difficult to carry as a plate with some goose's liver splayed out on it. And don't get me started on restaurants that have a tip jar on the counter for carry-out orders. I'm walking in, picking up a sack of food, and carrying it out to go home and eat it -- why am I expected to tip for being handed a bag? Er...what was the question? Oh, yeah. Every tip won't be 15%-20%, some people are cheap bastards, it all evens out in the end, don't lose sleep over it. If EVERYONE'S leaving a server a small tip, it might be something wrong with the server, not the customers.

Let's see, there was a collection of restaurants in Wichita's Old Town area that were clustered around a central kitchen. I forget the names of most of them, but one Saturday afternoon we (I, the wife and daughters) decided to try out "Rita's Cantina" (We had a BO-GO coupon). It was a nice day, maybe 1:30 in the afternoon, and the indicated entrance we walked in went past the dishwasher. We couldn't find a host station, even after looking into a couple of the various restaurant rooms. There were no customers apparent in these rooms, either. We finally ran into a waitress who told us to just pick a table and she'd be right with us. Evidently, you could order off any of the various menus regardless of where you were sitting. We selected a table in the room towards the front of the building, where the only other person was a possibly homeless person reading the paper by the window. I never detected any odor of food while we were in there, saw no evidence food was even served there, so I can't really speak to the quality of the cuisine. After about 10 minutes with no further sign of waitress, menu, or service, and feeling more uncomfortable by the minute, we got up and walked out the way we came in, nodding to the dishwasher on the way out. Evidently, the restaurant complex was owned/managed by a married couple in the throes of a pending divorce action, and it closed a week or two later. Oh, and the wife and I were in our favorite Chinese buffet restaurant in January while the health department inspector spent a good hour in there pointing out what was wrong to the manager, and I noted later on the state health department inspection site that it had received several "critical" infractions, but I thought the food was just fine, and nobody got hurt.

I'm no help, my last sourdough rye, while flavorful, caused my family a significant amount of digestive distress, and they have asked me not to re-attempt.

They haven't made it here to the heartland yet, but even when they do I don't see me making a special trip to try one. If I'm going to pay $4 for a burger, it won't be at McDonalds. For that price, when you add fries and a drink, I could make a round of GOOD burgers for my entire family.

Can't believe I haven't seen this thread before... Right now, I'm partial to Miss Vickie's Lime and Black Pepper, Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar, the Schlotsky's Black Pepper chips...oh, who am I kidding, I just love potato chips, preferably the "kettle-cooked" variety. But in a pinch, even Pringles are fine, although I really don't consider them potato chips as much as potato snacks.

I just read through this entire blog in one sitting and I am SO hungry now. I want some garlic rice, and hotel eggs, and some beef stew and empanadas and most of what's been pictured from those restaurants. Such a fascinating mix of food and cultures. And I would die for access to markets that look that good here - such variety. Thank you for your efforts this week, the blog has been very educational and very entertaining. And now, I need to go find something to eat.

I have "cooked" since I could sit on the cabinet and hold a spoon to stir cookie dough. All four of my grandparents were good cooks (one grandfather ran a small-town diner, the other a lunch-counter/grill and was a great breakfast cook). Both my grandmothers encouraged/demanded our hands in the kitchen when necessary. My mother taught me everything she knew about cooking, and would turn the kitchen over to me at least once a week once I hit 12. I read every cookbook in the house, checked ones out from the library. I attempted to introduce "ethnic food" into our diet , other than just Chef Boyardee pizzas and Old El Paso tacos. However, I took the "family classic" recipes with me in my heart, and I reproduce them often, although I "tweak" them somewhat. My brother and two sisters ALL know their way around a kitchen to varying degrees. It's never been a "the kitchen's a woman's place" in our family. My wife can cook, when I let her, but she prefers to clean, since she thinks I don't know how to do that, and I don't debate her. I love to cook for my family, my friends, my coworkers, but I would enjoy it almost as much if I was alone. I love to share my ability with others, but sometimes it's just for the selfish joy of creation. Is that so wrong?

I'm a unabashed carnivore and eater of things that quite often are bad bad bad for me, but if those calorie numbers for those cited dishes are correct, then shame on those restaurants. I can't imagine 3000 mgs of sodium and 140 gms of fat on a plate, and wanting to eat it at one sitting, which I know from observation people DO. But nutritional ratings or not, if you order 16 oz of fat-rimmed steak, smothered in barbecue sauce and cheese, with 3 servings of fries laying next to it and wash it down with a 25 oz. mango blush margarita, you should expect to get what you deserve.

← Ugh -- after reading those examples, I may never eat out again. 2,000+ calories, 150 gms of fat, 3,000mg of sodium -- those restaurants should, at the very least, be required to give a warning and ask you to sign a waiver before serving those entrees. Just so you know what you're doing to yourself.

Wow, I didn't realize sourdough starter was so complicated. I just stirred some water and flour together, left it uncovered for a couple days, started dumping and adding some more flour and water, and it's happily brewing away atop my refrigerator. Baked a long-ferment loaf of french bread yesterday for our Mardi Gras potluck at work - it was delicious. Haven't NAMED my starter, which is odd, because I name my car, my computer, several of my kitchen implements. Perhaps this weekend I'll sit down with "The Creature" and have a chat with it. Wait a minute, I HAVE named it -- I do refer to it as "Feeding the Beast". Also, in a related question -- I have heard that you can schmear some starter out on wax paper, let it dry, and even mail this dried starter material, and reconstitute it with some flour and water. After all, the gold miners used to carry dried starter around their necks in a bag to make bread with. Yeast is pretty hardy as I've noticed.

I noticed the tub of nuts we bought the other day (Planters, I believe) had added walnuts to the mix. I guess my tastes have broadened as I've aged -- I'm finding I like even the Brazil nuts now.

Every day I look back on my life and regret never trying. But then I ask myself "Did you REALLY want to spend 60-70 hours and up every week cooking the same stuff over and over, without even seeing the people you're cooking for?" I'm just not cut out for that life I think. That much immersion in food would probably kill my love of it. But I do wish I had given it a shot for a few months or years -- flipping burgers at MickyD's doesn't compare, I'm sure.

Oh, when I bake bread, that heel comes right off the loaf and into my mouth - it never sees the bread basket. And I sometimes find myself reaching across the table to eat the girls' crust after they gnaw all the innards off the crusts. My loaves are always rather "sturdy", but the dogs rarely get a scrap of crust from me.

Alton Brown demonstrated the technique on his cross-country tour show "Feasting on Asphalt". My strangest cookbooks would probably be my two "Hillbilly Recipes 1 & 2" that I picked up down in Branson. There are some usable recipes, once you figure out "pertaters" are potatoes.

Most of my cookbooks I read for pleasure, or ideas, or reference -- I don't follow directions well. But a few of them have pages gritty with flour or sugar, and my Mom's hand-me-down copy of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book has molasses and chocolate smudges on some our favorite recipes when we were kids. I ordered a copy of the 1961 Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook from eBay for my daughters, and was glad to see that although the cover was clean and the binding was still tight, there were little smudges on some of the pages to give it that "lived-in" look.

I guess if I like eating it, it's not that gross but: any beer and dark chocolate a peanut butter, orange marmalade and chocolate syrup sandwich and when I first tried beer, couldn't stomach a "red beer" (1/2 Miller High Life & 1/2 V-8), so I was drinking beer and washing it down with grape KoolAid - hey, I was only 14...I learned to like unadulterated beer years later.

The force? ← malevolent force of culinary nature...I abbreviated slightly.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"...hey, I like chocolate.

Is "French Fries and Gravy" from "Diner", directed by Barry Levinson? I seem to remember the characters eating them while discussing the Baltimore Colts.

I, for one, believe that those Oprah housefraus could USE a little exposure to the force that is Tony Bourdain. I think he'll survive the encounter just fine.

I rather enjoyed the excerpt, although whether I can scrape together 10 pounds to buy the book is quite another matter.