nibor

Your absence was noted!

Toby, is that your tattoo?

Perhaps Russ Parsons can chime in?

I second the warning to be careful about buying vegetables more than a couple of days ahead of time.

I would like to take a class where a dinner similar to that I might normally make is improved using tips and techniques that an average-to-intermediate home cook, like me, might not know. The only cooking class I ever took was advertised as something like that. We were going to learn how to “fix” dishes by tweaking things like salting and spicing at the end. What a joke – the instructor stood up front tasting and tweaking while we sat in 6 feet away, in rows of chairs, watching. We never got a bite and so had no idea what she was actually doing to the food.

If they don't float I catch all sorts of grief. Hint: if you are transporting the soup even a couple of blocks, don't add the balls till you get there. Even the lightest floater will sink on the way.

Where I have lived in Germany and Switzerland they don't provide bags, and they don't bag your groceries for you either. You can buy bags if need be, in case you stop in unprepared. But normally everyone brings their bags, carts, boxes, etc with them. And you can't complain about the baggers - you do it yourself and you better be fast. I have a little 2-wheeled cart to haul my groceries - we call them kartoffelporsches, or potato Porsches. Most men, and most women under 60, wouldn't be caught dead with one. I drag mine around proudly!

What, no photo?

I haven't watched an entire show on FTV in years, but Mario and Emeril were in part what got me started cooking. This was after 40+ years of just eating whatever. I got sick of Emeril's act pretty fast, but I stuck with Mario for a while and did indeed sometimes go straight from the TV to the computer to print the recipe I had just seen him perform. My other inspiration at that time came from a gift subscription to Cook's Illustrated. Their experimental approach appealed to the scientist in me very much. Now I am a pretty good cook.

Thanks for the memories. I grew up on Michigan blueberries too. "U-pick-em", and we did, into buckets tied around our waists with clothesline rope.

Hmmm. Hopefully, even if you're a really nice person, we'll never meet because I wouldn't want to offend you but if I know your first name and need to speak to you that is what I will call you. You must have informed me of it or I wouldn't know it so I'd feel weird not using it. I find it infinitely less rude than "hey you". If you require mr/ms/mrs so-and-so that's how you should introduce yourself to me, with no first name given. Even then I'm likely to just avoid talking to you, I don't do the formal mr/ms/mrs thing too well. I think it comes from a friend's dad when I was a kid requiring all the kids to call him "master so-and-so". Master my ass, I just stopped going to that friends house. ← I am not talking about people I know. I am talking about people whose knowledge of me comes only from having my credit card in their hand.

I don't like it when people I don't know touch me gratuitously. I don't like them calling me by first name either. I am not an old or especially formal person - I just don't like my space invaded.

Do not cook with a used stirrer bar. Please....

People in Eugene do not head to Portland "a lot", if you mean in terms of seeking food or entertainment. It is a hike. It is however perfectly charming and, with the occasional easy trip to Corvallis or the Pacific, a nice place to call home.

Perhaps your oven needs to be leveled?

Beautiful!!! Thanks for posting. Now I need a new toy - a butcher's hook.

Vinotas – I had breakfast at one of the restaurants in photo 18 on your blog of Beaune. We thought it would be touristy, being right by the market, but we were hungry. That cheese omelet was perhaps the best thing I have ever eaten. I have tried unsuccessfully to recreate it back in the US but our eggs, our cheese, our butter, well, none of them are good enough. I dream about that omelet.

This is not a neurosis...

There seems to be a lot of variation among people in how well they think milk "keeps". I can't stand the taste of whole milk (in the US) two days after opening even if it has been refrigerated. One of my friends thinks it tastes fine for a week.

RunBe4Ufly, I think you may be out of luck.

This is what made me decide to give Gelson's and Bristol Farms my business, despite the outrageous cost. We are finding good meat at good value at Costco now.

After a couple of glasses of wine at dinner.... Ok, so some people eat around their plate in a clockwise manner. But is this only in the northern hemisphere? Do they go the other way round in the south?

Amateur here. I too have a friend like this. The bone presents too stark a realization of the source. She would rather not think about it.

Either of these would probably work: Austrian, but upscale Ottenthal Restaurant & Weinhandlung Kantstraße 153 10623 Berlin Tel.: 030 - 313 31 62 (bis 16.00 Uhr Anrufbeantworter) Fax: 030 - 313 37 32 http://www.ottenthal.com/start_restaurant.html Spanish seafood + more: La Sepia Marburgerstrasse 2 10789 Berlin Tel.: 030-2135585 http://www.lasepia-berlin.de/

Darya - yum...we eat at the one in Orange County all the time.