nibor

Great OC reviews this week Carolyn. Even though your words are quite critical, to the point of discouraging, your photos have the opposite effect. Yum! As for feeling out of place with the OC crowd - not long after we moved there we walked into a restaurant on Balboa one Thursday night, not realizing it was singles night for the ritzy Newport Beach professional crowd, and just burst into laughter. It was so like the wookie bar from Star Trek. I have never felt out of place in a restaurant again. We take visitors from out of town to see this action, much as we take them to Upper Newport Bay to see the local shorebirds, and joke about writing a field guide.

I wouldn’t go back to places 1) that are so noisy you can’t talk 2) where I previously had more than one bad experience with service 3) where I previously left feeling like I got ripped off. Even if someone else is paying I don’t like contributing to this.

Great tip Jason. Where do you buy your meat? I am usually in Irvine but this year in Europe. The meat and veg here taste so much better. I shudder to think about coming back to the water-injected no-fat tasteless stuff I was buying at the OC grocery stores.

Do the waitresses still wear those low-cut medieval wench dresses?

I was going to suggest that you just ask E what he likes. But you would probably get the same answer I get from my 40-ish husband - "Oh, I don't know..." So, what I do with my husband is sit down and go through a cookbook with him. When he sees something he likes, he knows it. You could try that with the Joy of Cooking. Or a Betty Crocker, or something more New-Englandish, which I would not know about.

We seem to differ in our pet peeves, and the degree to which we get peeved at others. Where do these differences come from? Did you learn your peeves at home, or did you develop them on your own? For instance, those of you who always wear shoes in the kitchen. Did you grow up having to do this?

Dear Sheena - I am probably not the only one envying this fun time you are having with your mommy. It makes me miss mine so much!

It has been what, three days now? I don't know if I will ever be able to look at either my cat box or my dish drainer again without laughing.

I travel a lot, and often find myself in unfamiliar areas looking for something to eat. If I don't know anything about a restaurant, and see it is TOTALLY empty, I don't go in. Fifteen people would however be more than a critical mass for me. That said, one of my current restaurant hangouts is almost always empty. Good chow, bad location, and more expensive than a lot of people around here want to pay for Chinese.

Once, and only once, I made jam out of mayapple fruits (Podophyllum peltatum). What a mess. As I remember, it tasted ok, sweet but not that interesting. http://www.missouriplants.com/Whiteopp/Pod...tatum_page.html

What kind of cactus? A prickly pear (http://www.korewildfruitnursery.co.uk/Prickly%20pear%202.JPG) ← Yes, that's it! I have heard you cna eat the fruit and also the pads, is this correct? ← Both are edible. From what I hear both require a lot of prep work - nobody I know has bothered to tackle this job twice. I am a lazy bum, so can’t advise. I am sure there are a lot of resources on the web on how to cook them. Be careful!

What kind of cactus? A prickly pear (http://www.korewildfruitnursery.co.uk/Prickly%20pear%202.JPG)

I know a lot of people who didn't care to spend their time doing what it takes to get a 4.0 high school GPA. They are scientists, doctors and college professors, and yes, they can put sentences together. Some can even cook.

Those wishing to learn to forage, but who lack guidance, might look into the following: 1) Local branches of nature groups. For instance, I googled "mushroom hunting club" and got: http://main.nc.us/amc/ and many more. This is where you meet the local gurus - the mushroom equivalent of an Audubon Society branch. 2) Take community education classes run by local governments. 3) Look at your local community colleges - they may offer classes, or the botany professor may be in touch with local biology-oriented groups. 4) If you see someone foraging, stop and ask what they are up to. You might think you never see anyone doing this, but have you been looking? I often see older Asian women gathering something from below the bushes along a busy street by my house. My husband never "sees" them although he drives by them too. (I have not stopped to ask what they are getting - I live in the LA area and wouldn't eat anything I found growing along these roads.) 5) Get field guides to the edible mushrooms and plants in your area and head outdoors - with caution. I did all of the above when I was a young adult. As an enthusiastic student I was welcomed by all. These people join clubs or offer classes because they like to share. But also to have company. Many people, women in particular, do not feel comfortable being out in lonely woods and empty fields by themselves, and in many parts of the world, rightly so. Having someone along to teach and yak with solves that problem and makes the trip more fun as well.

I think I already had my foraging fantasy. We were hiking in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, and came across morels. We sauted them in butter over our camp stove, then ate them on crackers with canned kipper snacks. This might not sound devine but it was, and an unexpected touch of luck after a long day in the cold woods.

Expanding the topic a bit: How did you learn to forage? How did you learn what was good, and what was safe? I grew up hunting mushrooms with my dad and grandfather. We picked morels, oyster mushrooms, and something we called “stump mushrooms” in Michigan. I have no idea what species those stump mushrooms were. I asked my dad how he knew they were safe. He said his dad taught him. His dad came from Lithuania, where, apparently, mushroom-hunting is more common than in the US. But who knows whether these very generic looking mushrooms also grew in Lithuania, or how grandpa would have known whether they were the same species. They looked, well, just like any old mushroom. But we stuck to what we knew, and never got sick. Friends of ours moved to the US from Austria. We took them out for a hike in the woods and came across wild raspberries. They freaked out when I started eating them, and wondered how I had learned they were edible. Good question. Seems like I was born knowing that. Is it true that all aggregate (raspberry-like) fruits from wild plants in the US are edible? I wanted to tell them so (thinking raspberries, blackberries, salmonberries, mulberries, strawberries) but since I wasn’t sure I kept my mouth shut.

This USDA map shows their range: http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=GAPR2 They grew out back of my house in Michigan, in a forest of white pine, oaks and maples. The Wikipedia article says they are used to flavor chewing gum, tea and ice cream: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Teaberry We didn't do anything fancy - if we found them while playing in the woods we ate the berries and chewed on the leaves.

Wintergreen berries in Michigan http://www.olbas.com/picts/wintergreen.jpg

If he reacts anything like I do, I bet he didn't taste it. Unless he was working next to a toilet or a bucket.

I wash meat to get rid of little bone chips and blood clots. Yum.

Vitamins also make me (gag, nauseous, etc etc). But I would like to take a daily multivitamin. Has anyone else with this problem come up with a solution? I have tried gummy bears, flintstones, and Centrum liquid, to no avail.

I am an American living in Europe. I get comments about my carbon footprint. Apparently my beef consumption is yet more damning evidence of America's lack of concern about global warming.

Thanks Norm! I travel to Atlanta a lot, and will check out some of the places you recommend. You get a more interesting view though...

I did that. I started with her nut cookies. I quit after about a month because neither my husband nor I could quit eating them. Must have gained five pounds.

curry meat pie