Beebs

Ok, so I made it for tonight's dinner, over pasta, and a bottle of vinho verde. DH loved it! Next time I will use more sriracha and sundried tomatoes. Too lazy to roast the peppers so just sauteed them. Thanks for sharing your recipe, BadRabbit!

Yum! That sounds delicious! I think I have everything so that's going on my dinner list this week. As to something to accompany it, another vote on a dry white wine, or even dry sparkling or maybe rose.

Rotten milk & cream; milk/cream containers that have not been properly rinsed and dried before getting tossed in the recycling pile. Ick. Cooked broccoli that has gone off. And the water that broccoli has been cooked in and gets dumped in the sink. Reeks the next day. Daikon pickles. But it stinks so good!

Fake lime flavour. And it must be green.

Yes! Banh mi is the devil's spawn for big messes in the car. Mine is takeout-only too and even when we eat with the car parked, door open, leaning out, it's still a crumb blizzard when we're done. And fresh croissants are evil too. Crumbs and buttery fingerprints everywhere.

For cocktails, my local paper ran these recipes: Click!

Here in Vancouver there is only one Whole Foods (plus a small handful of Capers Community Markets, which are part of WF). WF isn't Whole Paycheque for me, as I rarely buy staples there, just specialty items that are harder to find elsewhere. Echoing others, it definately has the potential of sucking up a week's salary if I were to buy all my groceries there, every week. But I've also found certain products that are very good value. The cheese selection is as good as (and as comparable to) many of the specialty cheese shops in the Lower Mainland. I also get whole cakes at WF, more often than at "proper" bakeries. A large black forest cake comes out to $25, it's delicious & fresh, comparable to high-end bakery cakes which might run me about $35-40 a pop. Same with their breads. And the staff is usually more helpful and knowledgeable than other grocery chains. Since I rarely buy meat or produce from WF, using up my entire paycheque to eat is never a problem. Except when I impulse buy and leave with over $50 of gourmet cookies, chips, chocolates, sodas, and other stuff that I don't need (or should eat!).

I love mein ge da. It's total comfort food. I usually put a bit of sesame oil and white pepper in the batter and let it rest about 30 to 60 mins. I cook it by tipping the bowl and cutting chunks of batter directly into simmering soup. The soup is a broth of pork and either cabbage or daikon. I like to dip the dumplings in soy sauce and chili paste.

With finely minced shallots or red onion, dusting of pepper, generous dash of Maggi sauce and sesame oil. I like it slapped on crackers.

Cheese. Particularly gorgonzola. I'm obsessing about going to Costco and buying one of those giant hunks of gorgonzola and digging into it with a spoon. OMG. I'm still thinking about it. At this point, any cheese will do.

I love cocktail weenies - little itty bitty hot dogs that you can eat a lot of. Nigella Lawson has the great recipe of tossing cocktail weenies with soy, honey & sesame oil and baking the whole mess till dark brown and caramelized. Yummmmmmm....

I love blue cheeses, husband hates them - more for me! If I could only eat one blue cheese for the rest of my life, it would be gorgonzola. Second place is Saint Agur. I love creamy blues. It's a bonus that they stick on a piece of baguette better than the harder ones, and don't crumble off the bread and down my blouse.

I like this website a lot: A Year of Slow Cooking

New potatoes, either roasted in butter & herbs, or lightly boiled with parsley shallot vinaigrette. Steamed asparagus dipped in Japanese kewpie mayo or aioli.

And the only thing better than crispy duck skin is peking duck - pure roasted duck skin + fat, smeared with a bit of hoisin, sliver of scallion, and wrapped in a flour crepe. Soooo good... I wonder how one might go about making "peking" chicken skin....hmmmm...

Sushi. Party trays of different rolls & nigiri sushi never fail. It also helps that it's inexpensive & plentiful here, too!

I think that's it in a nutshell. When it comes time to break the long night's fast, nobody is in much of a mood to experiment. Just waking up and starting the day requires physical and mental energy enough. I think that for some folks (at least for me, that is) it's a matter of what doesn't feel gross in the tummy first thing in the morning and sticking with it. I know that if I eat a heaping pile of bacon, eggs, sausages, and pancakes as soon as I get out of bed, all that fat and salt will make me feel sick for the rest of the day. I need a good few hours before handling anything more adventurous than a slice of toast or bagel and tea/coffee. This means sticking to the the tried & true 5 days out of the week. Weekends are for experimenting.

Flabby pale chicken skin is gross. So when I do chicken braises, stews, etc., I'll cook it with the skin on, but pull it off just before I eat it. I only pull it off on my portion though. Everyone else can eat their own flabby pale chicken skin. Oh, the exception is some Asian style chicken, like white-cooked or soy sauce. That's ok. I'll eat that flabby skin. Crispy skin, on the other hand, has my DH & I at each other's throats for it!

Some runners consume baking soda to enhance their speed and as an electrolyte. Yuck. Sounds appallingly vile.

Yes, to Whole Foods, public & farm markets, bakeries, and cheese shops. Especially cheese shops - they can sell me pretty much anything I sample. No, to other big chain supermarkets like Safeway and Costco, where I don't even bother sampling lame deli meats or packaged granola bars.

For the avocado, what about something dessert-y (other than the ice cream)? I saw an Alton Brown episode where he used avocado as an icing for cake. Or avocado profiteroles? Avocado pudding, mousse, creme brulee, panna cotta? I have seen - but never tasted - avocado bubble milk tea.

From my mom, proper Chinese homecooking. Stuff like braised pork hocks, beef noodle, steamed ribs, soups.... My food doesn't turn out half as well as hers and I still haven't done much of the fancy complicated dishes for entertaining or festivals, but I'm hoping to improve. Mom's also taught me basic dishes like bolognese or chicken cacciatore - I like to think that I'm up to her level for Western-type dishes. She's not a great baker, so I've surpassed her in that department.

There's a restaurant here in Vancouver that focuses on cheese, Au Petit Chavignol. They've been here a few years, though. I've also heard of a small tofu place out in Richmond, but I'm not sure what it's called (it's in Chinese) or where exactly it is.

Not a big smoothie person, but I got this in my email a couple months ago. Scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a link to free ebook of 126 smoothie recipes. The ebook is called "Smoothies for Athletes", but there are some interesting-looking recipes in there (spiced date smoothie, anyone?). Can't tell say if there are any hits/misses, as I haven't tried anything from it yet. Favourite smoothie (when I do have one) is peanut butter & banana, sometimes with a bit of cocoa powder thrown in. Tastes like dessert.

The Canadian Competition Bureau has in place a Scanner Price Accuracy Voluntary Code. It says that if the scanned price of a non-price ticketed item (ie, price label stuck on the shelf, or otherwise displayed, rather than on the product itself) is higher than the shelf price or any other displayed price, the customer is entitled to receive the item free, up to a $10 maximum. Retailers participating in this may have a label posted at the checkout counter or by the store entrance. This is voluntary, of course, and I think only some large chain retailers are participating in it. However, not all cashiers may be thoroughly familiar with the code and small retailers likely aren't participating in it. Actually, about a yr ago in Vancouver there was some fuss about it with a large retailer which caused them to review the code with all their cashiers and managers. ETA: Ha! What they said ^^!