BekkiM

My husband is travelling in Nagoya and wonders where he should eat--he's quite adventurous and is on an expense account, so the sky's the limit. I tried searching this forum, but couldn't find anything specific. Thanks!

Where to begin? I made two turkeys this year (in part b/c the number of guests doubled after I bought the first, small, turkey and in part b/c I thought it would be fun to try two different brining recipes). The heritage turkey (which, at 10 lbs, set me back over $50) was done based on this year's Saveur magazine's cider-brined recipe. I won't be trying that again (although, on a side note, the stock with Calvados was to die for--until I forgot to put in the refrigerator due to an over-abundance of wine at dinner and had to pour it down the drain the next morning). For one thing, I don't think the cider-garlic flavor from the brine really penetrated at all and for another, the addition of 4 cups of wine to the roasting pan meant that the bird steamed and didn't develop any fond--so there was NO gravy! Toss that recipe in the trash. The second turkey was maple-brined (I'm not sure where I found the recipe) and, while it tasted good, there wasn't enough fat on the free-range bird to create decent drippings. I ended up with very pale gravy--not what I was looking for. I totally forgot to cook the carrots, I made up the cranberry sauce recipe at the last minute (consequently forgetting to add enough sugar--see the wine comment above), and my pecan pie didn't set in the center. Guests brought sour-cream apple pie (the apples were raw) and pumpkin pie (made with an uncarved, left-over pumpkin from Halloween--bleh), so dessert was a bit of a wash. To top it all off, after dinner we wrapped the two turkey carcasses in clean garbage bags and shut them in a cooler on the back deck (temps were below freezing, so it seemed safe enough), but the dog managed to open the cooler latch and steal an entire turkey for himself, so there went my dreams of turkey stock. On the other hand, both of my stuffing recipes (a "classic" from Saveur and a cornbread one from lord knows where) were both hits and the mashed potatoes tasted good. And the company was divine...

I went to Incredible Wine and Spirits (find it here) last night and it was okay--it's no Applejack, but it stacks up well (in my not-incredibly-broad-experience) against Argonaut. On the plus side, it's a heck of a lot closer than Applejack AND they take credit cards. On the other hand, Applejack is a quick detour when we're coming home from the mountains on a Saturday (darned blue laws--WHY can't I buy wine on Sundays?!?!?) and the selection is amazing. I did pick up some decent deals on some wine for Thursday (2 bottles of Wishing Tree Shiraz, a Shoo Fly Shiraz, and a couple of bottles of Shoo Fly white), along with a bottle of Calvados for under $100.

I'm so sorry about the Thanksgiving thing... You're welcome to come here as our countertop guys finally arrived (I'll tell the full sordid story in my thread rather than hijacking yours) and, if all goes well (HA!), we should have running water and a dishwasher by tomorrow. I love the stones for your backsplash--we have the same thing for the floor in our "spa" in the basement and I love them. They look and feel great and everybody notices them.

Oh, absolutely I do... Especially when I'm trying to make something I've only seen a picture of or that I've eaten in a restaurant and I don't have the recipe for. I'll Google an ingredient or a recipe name (Oysters Rockefeller is a recent example, the "greed" dish for my seven deadly sins tasting menu), as well as pull out cookbooks and old magazine clippings, read through them all, and (hopefully) come up with an amalgamation that a) approximates what I saw or tasted and b) has my own personal stamp and c) tastes good. In the process of my kitchen renovation, I had to sort through and reorganize all my recipe clippings and I found that there was a definite theme running through them (years of accumulation that I hadn't looked at for a while led to many, many duplicates) which is consistent with my cooking style... Every so often I get a wild hair that I'm going to get even more organized and index all of the clippings so I can pull out all of the "pumpkin cheesecake" (another timely example) recipes and compare them, but really, it's all I can do to get all of the cheesecake recipes into a single file folder--I'm never going to be able to subcategorize by ingredient or type. The great thing about eGullet is that you're never alone!

Tony's Meats on Dry Creek carries a bunch of "gourmet" stuff in addition to fine butchery products--you might try there (go during the day if you can--it'll be a zoo this weekend). And, while not exactly on topic, I heard yesterday that there's a new, and very nice, wine/liquor store at Bellevue and I25. Haven't checked it out myself yet, but a fellow wine-drinker at work has raved about. He says (and I quote) that it's called "Incredible Wine and Spirits give or take the 'and Spirits part'"

That might be my new sig line come Friday... Chad, who is somehow associated with the kitchen designer and who is NOT Robert, whose awesome and we love him, and who is the one who stepped on my freshly varnished floors, is supposed to arrive this afternoon to finish up a last few installation issues. For one thing (and let this serve as a warning to anyone else contemplating a kitchen remodel), the mixer stand (the kind on a hydrolic hing that allows you to swing the KitchenAid up and out from a lower cabinet so that it doesn't have to be stored on the countertop) is not, as I had assumed, a standard height... It's too high and therefore the mixer cannot be easily and smoothly swung up from below as it runs into the top of the cabinet, coming to an ignoble stop well below a useful height. Yes, I should have tested it while Robert was still here, but how was I supposed to know? So Chad's going to fix it. For another thing, the bookshelves for the cookbooks... THere were, originally, 3 shelves spaced evenly in the 42" that make up the shelf unit (not including the bottom of the unit which is, effectively, the fourth or lowest shelf). My cookbooks are pretty standard cookbooks and are too tall for this arrangement, so I needed to eliminate a shelf. However, apparently to shave off a few pennies of manufacturing cost, the sides of the unit do not have a continuous run of holes for shelf brackets, but just a few clustered for each of the 3 shelves. So I can't readjust their height. Chad is going to return and drill the remaining holes so that I can put bookshelves whereever I want them. It's the little things that will drive you insane at this point in the project... (As an aside, he's going to do the same thing inside the pantry cabinet where the microwave will be living) And, last but not least, he's going to install the undercabinet lights which will, hopefully, come Friday, illuminate my new countertops... Oh, and Robert (we love Robert) is coming by on Friday to drop off the now stained and lacquered (sp?) walnut panels--the large one that will hang over the island and the square ones that will adorn the fireplace wall in the attached family room. So this weekend will be plumbing for hubbie and wiring the lights in the walnut for me... If all goes well, I'll also be preparing the turkey stock from this month's Saveur since I'm making their apple-brined turkey as one of my offerings for dinner next Thursday. Fabby--looks like we're still neck and neck in this race. Can't wait to see more pix of your project. I'll post pics on Friday (either counter shots or mug shots--too soon to telll...)

I haven't been able to make myself post for a while because we've been having issues with the countertop people and I've been in a deep, deep funk. It all started with our first choice for the perimeter counters... The island countertop was selected as "mink grey" limestone and the one we liked came from a little granite shop that imports its own stone and does not sell slabs for other fabricators. Okay, so we'll just have them make the perimeter counters too... We selected an engineered quartz from Caesarstone only to discover they'd discontinued the one we wanted. No problem, we picked a similar one from Zodiac. In August, we gave them the preliminary drawings and paid our deposit. In the end of September, they made their measurements and sent us the drawings which were, um, how do I say this?, WRONG. So we made them come out and measure again and signed off on the corrected drawings on October 9th. No problem. They said it would be about 3 weeks for installation. At the beginning of the 4th week, they called us to tell us that the Zodiac material wasn't available. After a moment of stunned silence, a long moment, we asked "What?!" and they tried to blame it on not signing the contract. "Oh, no you don't," we said "You should have done this weeks ago" but they hadn't and we needed them to finish because starting over would take us even more time, so we didn't yell much. They offered us a third option, by Dal Tile. "There's a truck full of it at the distributor's now," they said. "The truck will be unloaded on Monday, we'll pick up the slab, and cut Monday afternoon." On Monday afternoon they called us to tell us that "Ooops, the truck is in Portland, not Denver, and it won't be here for 3 more weeks." At this point, my head feels like it will explode and I can only hope it happens when I'm near enough that the shrapnel will take them out too... So we rush down to the yard to pick out an alternative. As you might imagine, I'm in a great mood doing this. So, we pick out a natural stone, not an engineered quartz, that they have sitting on the lot. It's dark grey/brown, which looks fabulous with the cabinets and the mosaic and is actually in stock. As of today, they're claiming that they will install our countertops (FINALLY) on Friday. I'm asking anyone reading this to keep their fingers crossed that they show up with the counters because otherwise I'm going to spend Thanksgiving in jail for murder... -Bekki

I grew up in a small town in Vermont (Wallingford, population less than 1,000) and we did not have a grocery store. The nearest one was in Rutland, about a 15-20 minute drive for us (longer for the folks who live up in the hills around Wallingford and in some of the even smaller places like Ira and Dorset). All the meat we ate was frozen before we ate it. Usually, we'd buy 1/2 or 1/4 of a steer in the fall, as well as all of a pig and stow it in the large freezer in the shed. Everyone I knew did this too. A) It was cheaper to buy in large quantities like that, B) you didn't have to go into the "city" to buy food as often, and C) you had a backstock for those times when you were snowed in for days at a time and couldn't possibly get to the store. My mother had (and still has) an enormous garden (larger than some city lots) and so all summer we'd have fresh vegetables (to this day, I can barely stomach zucchini), none of which came from the store. In the winter, we ate mostly frozen stuff--my family was well-off enough that we could afford to stick our noses up at canned veggies, but that certainly wasn't true of most of our neighbors. My mother thought it was a sin to buy winter tomatoes, the only lettuce available was iceburg, and the only fruits were apples and bananas. There was a general store in town where you could get milk, eggs, and cold cuts--and canned stuff and chips--but it was understandably expensive for the reasons described by gfron1--hard to predict what stock to have on hand and therefore us patrons paid for the priveledge of buying what stock there was. Tragically, the general store has finally died out in Wallingford (at least, the one I remember has--there's a Cumberland Farms, which is the equivalent of a 7-Eleven, and another small store by the post office, but it's not as good as the place I remember) which is, I think, a cultural loss to the town. My "city" friends used to be amazed that I could walk into the store and take my purchases on credit, with no more than a word--no ID, no signing, no nothing--and that simpler time of trust and community has passed now that there are big box stores in Rutland. But there was a picturesque element to living in a small town too. The dairy farm down the road (which has also since been lost to progress) would fill gallon jugs with fresh milk if you came by before the milk company arrived. The locker in town had the best locally-processed ham steaks. Neighbors would drop off bags of fresh vegetables and homemade jellies and preserves. A woman in town made doughnuts every Saturday and Sunday and, as a special treat, we'd get a couple dozen every so often, packaged in a plain brown paper sack and fresh from her kitchen. Our neighbors sugared every spring and we'd sit in the sugar shack with the sweet smell of boiling maple syrup, pouring off a little taste in paper cups every so often as it reduced. I tell everyone now that Denver is a rural as I want to be and I mean it, mostly for the availability of the variety of foodstuffs. When we go back to Vermont these days, it's usually in December, when the garden's been put to bed for the winter and fresh vegetables are few and far between. The reality is that rural living, in my experience, is nothing like the buccolic fantasy perpetuated by TV and movies, especially for the rural poor. But I'm not bitter or anything...

My ten-year old son thinks it sounds like the 'worst-tasting thing in the world' (and he eats pop-tarts and hot pockets). He says it sounds a lot like spray cheese, which he also won't eat. I think the web site looks like a spoof--like it can't possibly be for real. It reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit. What does the whipped cream can add to the process? If you watch the video, it's not like the batter is "blasting" out of the can; essentially it looks like it's just pouring out. Didn't there used to be a product where you could buy pancake batter in a pourable container?

And the featured sushi is California Roll... CAN you freeze avocado? Wouldn't it get slimy? Ewwwwwwwww....

Aunt Jemima "syrup"

Oh, so sad! You must be beside yourself... We've got the stove in (and I've been cooking little stuff on it--hard to cook big things when there are no countertops and no running water), but the countertop people are driving us insane. They don't return phone calls and have been frighteningly vague about when the install will actually happen. Since I'm trying to schedule the glass backsplash to be templated the moment the counters are in, this is quite frustrating. Of course, the glass people aren't returning calls either, so who knows when they'll be able to show up. And the mosaic install can't happen until both counters and glass are in place, so it goes on and on and on... Hang in there, Fabby!

Kraft "Parmesan" cheese in the green can... Hamburger helper Bacos (isn't that what they call those cardboard fake bacon sprinkles?) Precooked shrimp (especially the round trays where they're all lined up in a circle around the tepid cocktail sauce)

Because a true "grilled cheese" sandwich requires white bread (preferably Wonder), margarine from a "crock", and american cheese... Yes, I know, nutritionally void, but that's the taste I crave when I'm thinking of grilled cheese. For any other sandwich, however, I totally agree with you.

I wonder if it's against the rules to make your own cake and put it in a store bought box and pawn it off as the stores? While working at various financial exchanges we were constantly coming up with innovated procedures to stay in compliance with exchange rules. ← I like the way you think! Sort of an "anti-fraud" technique.

I've been buying the big blocks of Manchego to have on hand for impromptu "weeknights with wine" with my girlfriends--it keeps well enough that it doesn't get mouldy before we've finished it. This might be better posted in the "I'm a fraud" thread in Cooking, but I've also bought the spinach artichoke dip, dumped it into a baking dish, and brought it to friends' houses (I do fess up if anyone asks, though) and during this kitchen renovation marathon I've been in, I've bought the chocolate lover's cake several times when we needed a dessert.

My staples at Costco (and we too have a family of 3, so you're not alone there!) are: * Organic chicken broth * Olive oil * Maple syrup (my parents in Vermont can't make enough to keep up with our demand) * Dried fruit and nuts * Meats of all kinds (Costco's quality is significantly better than our local grocery stores and I can't shop at Whole Paycheck every day) * Fruit (we go through an amazing amount of blueberries, applies, bananas, strawberries and cherries) * Organic salad mix (Costco's just seems to last better than the bags at the grocery store) * Parmesan cheese * Frozen shrimp * Frozen edamame At Christmas time, I also buy my eggs, butter, cream, sugar, flour, etc. for the massive quantities of cookies I make to distribute.

lol!!! Diet Coke just squirted out of my nose. The rest of you can have every one of the green bananas currently lurking in my fruit bowl (you'll have to fight my son for them, though--he'll only eat them if they're completely firm with not a brown spot in sight). I don't want my bananas mushy, but the skin needs to be completely yellow with just a few brown speckles--anything more than that and I toss them in the freezer to save for banana bread which is, imho, the only decent way to serve a banana (well, it was until SS's bacon fat idea. Mmmmmm... bacon fat...)

I completely agree with using a boxed cake in an instance like this. Personally, I'm not made of money, and I've also got limited time... why would I waste a really good, made-from-scratch cake on somebody who can't appreciate it? I know, I know, that makes me a bad foodie, but really... especially since you doctor them, I feel it's perfectly acceptable. (And my own confession: I have a few family members who prefer cake mix cakes. I found this out on accident when I had very little time and grabbed a box mix and added some pudding mix. They always compliment me on how much better cakes "made from scratch" are and how "it tastes just like the cakes I remember from my childhood". These are people who think Costco cakes taste great, so they get cake from a mix. Give 'em what they like, I suppose.) ← I do completely see the logic in not killing yourself laboring over a real cake for anyone that you suspect will not appreciate it . . . however, I just want to point out that I went the first couple of decades of my life thinking that I didn't like cake, because the only kind I ever got was cake from a mix with premade frosting, or grocery store sheet cakes with crunchy royal frosting. ← Yeah, my son won't eat cake b/c that nasty shortening "buttercream" they use on grocery-store cakes is foisted off on children so often (school rules prohibit me from making a "real" cake with "real" frosting and bringing it in to them from my home kitchen)--In my defense, I do make my own frosting, even on cake mix cakes.

This one has made me laugh out loud not once, but twice... It's official, I'm a food geek.

gfron1, I'm glad you enjoyed your meal at Fruition and somewhat gratified to discover that it's not just me--that while it's a pleasant meal, it doesn't transport one. So far, I just haven't gotten it about Fruition and can't see it as the #1 place in Denver. I had dinner (again) last night at Luca D'Italia and there wasn't a vanilla-scented candle in sight. We sat at the bar and both ordered the chef's tasting menu with the reserve wine flight. I love a tasting menu (especially when there's no published menu ahead of time so that each dish is a surprise) and this one was excellent. I'll describe the meal in a minute, but I want to start out with the brilliant (brilliant!) touch of sending us home with a copy of the menu along with the wine pairings, rolled up and tied with a length of kitchen twine. Such a little thing, but it brought me so much joy! (As my husband told the owner as we were leaving: "Now she can go home and tell her geek cooking board *exactly* what she had" which, of course, made the owner very happy) Anyway, reading from my scroll, we started off with an amuse trio of a cold eggplant dish, a braised pork shoulder with dried cherries and gorgonzola (funny, since my husband had explicitly told them "no gorgonzola" as he loathes the stuff), and a white bean and pancetta puree with balsamic vinegar. The wine was an Italian (naturally) sparkling Non Vintage Bellavista Franciacorta Brut Lombardy--nice, dry, and a pleasant start to the meal. I'm no expert on sparkling wines, so that's the best I can do. Next was a truffled asparagus soup with pickled beets and lump crab. In a word, amazing. I could have bathed in the stuff. Creamy, earthy truffle taste and visually stunning with the bright green of the soup and the deep red of the beets. Really marvelous. And with it a 2005 Vie di Romans "Piere Sauvignon" Friuli that paired perfectly--crisp, earthy, delicious. Wish I was less shy and more adept with the camera in my cell phone, because it was worth a picture. Then we had a riff on a surf-n-turf: confit of pork belly and a seared diver scallop with beluga lentils and pork jus (and to think, I just asked in the "embarrassing cooking questions" thread why no one makes pork stock...) with a 2006 Josef Hofstatter Gewurztraminer Alto Adige. I want to take this opportunity to take back every nasty comment and thought I've ever had about Gewurztraminers... This one was a) delicous and b) absolutely perfect with the rich, fatty pork belly. The acid in the wine really cut through the richness and held its own. I loved it. And, really, what's not to love about pork belly? Pasta course was a Tallegio Agnolotti with veal sweetbreads and a thyme chicken reduction. The sweetbreads were divine and the pasta was lovely. Just enough tooth to give you something to chew paired with the sweet, creamy cheese centers... And we switched to red wines at this point with a 2000 Moccagatta Barbaresco "Brie Balin" Piedmont. A nice wine, not too rich--a good transition from white to red. At this point, I was stuffed and so when the waitress/bartender reset our places with steak knives, I nearly groaned. At some level, good as the food had been, I think I was hoping it was over so I could go home and dream of the meal I'd eaten. But, nooooo... they had to serve grilled lamp chops with a chick pea puree and lamb sausage with a 2001 Gagliole Super Tuscan "Gagliole." To be honest, I think that even if I hadn't been stuffed, this was the weakest dish of the night. The lamb was perfectly done--on the rare side of medium--but the sausage didn't really contribute to the dish and the chick pea puree was just a tad grainy for my taste. It was an okay dish, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. BUT then came dessert and it was marvelous. I was afraid they were going to serve something rich and chocolate (because so many people, strangely to my mind, expect nothing less than rich and chocolate when it comes to dessert), but no! They served a housemade sweetened ricotta with fresh strawberries and a balsamic reduction. It was creamy and just lightly sweet--the perfect end to a heavy (or any, for that matter) meal. And my husband proved just why I've stuck with him for 15 years by not finishing his ricotta and letting me have half of his in addition to my own (did I say I was full--I guess no one is ever too full for dessert!). I don't know and don't care if he didn't like it--to me it was a little moment of heaven. Now I've got to go figure out how to do it myself. Anyway, for anyone who was frightened off from Luca D'Italia from the previous mediocre report, I hope this one leads to reconsider your choices because this was a great meal and it wasn't the first (or the last, I hope) that I've had there.

Boxes of cake mix which I doctor and use to make birthday cakes (e.g. more Barbie cakes that I care to admit to) for friends' children. In my defense, a) I can't see wasting "real" cake on a group of 5 year old girls who are already hopped up on frosting and soda and b) I have a very hard time getting "real" cakes to rise consistently (maybe the new stove will help) and I'm usually very pressed for time. Bags of those individually frozen biscuits (somehow they seem slightly more like cooking than the cardboard canisters). Cans/boxes of chicken broth since I very rarely take the time to make my own and have grown pretty fond of the organic brand currently offerred at Costco. Canned black beans are a cheat? I'm not sure that's fair.

New? Used? Traditional? Contemporary? Do they all have to match? If used, you might look at eBay or craigslist (depending on whether they have to match or not). If new, I just bought my counter stools online (can't remember which site) by googling "counter stools". I would think a Google of "cafe table" would return quite a few results. Many places offer free shipping these days.

The good, the bad, and the ugly... Actually, let's start with the ugly... Here's a shot of the stack of boxes and bins that are filling up my dining room, mocking me with their kitcheny goodness: The good is that my new stove is now working; I can even turn on the burners. I haven't cooked anything yet, since I don't have running water or countertops (I'm too chicken to attempt washing more than a small cutting board in my bar sink in the basement), but I have turned on all the burners (more than once). The installers were laughing at me this weekend because I had the stainless steel cleaner out even while they were still slaving away at installing the refrigerator. So, without further ado, here's the range: There isn't really a bad (hyperbole is a lovely thing) except that we're in a lull in visible progress right now. As Fabby points out, though, at this point of this project, it's actually a welcome respite to have a home, no matter how disrupted, that is free of random workmen. I can stand in my kitchen and dream about the meals we'll create together without interruption or embarassment. This picture is a little dark (I didn't have time to lighten it), but here's a shot down the center of the island so you can see the entire layout: