pax

Thank you. That made my day.

I made Marcella Hazan's Pork Loin braised in milk. My family licked their plates clean. I am not kidding. I modified it to do it in the slow cooker and now they won't stop asking for it! I was inspired by Rick Bayless' appearance on Top Chef to pull out his cook book and I made my first ever refried beans from scratch. I don't know why I was so reluctant for so long. Fabulous and so much better than opening a tin. Also, his gauc rocks, I've never made good gauc but I'm going to be watching for good avacados like a hawk now. How did I get to be this old without knowing about deflaming onions? And last but not least, two weeks ago my 6 yo came to me with Buster's Challah Recipe. That's right, Buster, the animated rabbit, bakes rockin' Challah bread. I'd never made challah before, so I had no idea what a great recipe it was until I baked a couple of comparison loaves from some well known baking books, and I have to tell you, Buster the PBS Rabbit is my new culinary hero. I hope it's ok to include this link, Buster says it's good to share.

Glenn Close boiling rabbit. And who wouldn't fry a chicken, and serve it with toast? I mean, c'MON. The possibilities there were endless. The steak/baking scenes in Moonstruck. Anything Mexican with a romantic floral note from Like Water for Chocolate. Fried Green Tomatos, anyone? You could have worked anything southern in there. Maybe chefs just don't get out to the cinema very much. Willie Wonka was inspired. They deserved to win just for getting into the spirit of the thing.

I confess, the water in my house is so hard and sulfurous that I don't cook with it. I don't even boil stuff in it. I use reusable plastic ice cubes that I can toss in the dishwasher and then refreeze. I guess if I can take my ice/water issues that far, that this isn't such a stretch. But I'm not proud of it.

I really like this idea. Want to do it on here? It could be fun. I can offer up Trader Joe's or Mom's bags, I have one each, brand new. I'll take pics. We could do it like one of those stupid dishtowel chain mails. ETA: I keep a laundry hamper in the back of my trunk to keep things organized, and I have taken it into Costco in the past to act as a box when I knew I was getting heavy things. It's so beat up it couldn't possibly be mistaken as their's!

We had a nostalgia food thread not long ago and now I can't find it. I bit into pure nostalgia at my local farmer's co-op on Saturday morning. A boiled Oscar Mayer on a soft roll with store mustard. I know, I know. But it came with brownies and benefited the 4H troop. Anyway, it hit the spot like no other dog has done in a long time. I guess I'm a dirty (water) girl. The weirdest part is that on the way home I started daydreaming about buying more hot dogs and what kind and I meandered off onto potato buns and I was just to the point of gently toasting them with butter when my husband rudely interrupted me to stop at the farmer's market to see if they had any new potatos. Hamster food freak!

Jeez, can't imagine anything that might make someone twitchy, sniffley, and bug eyed.

If I don't take my bags DIRECTLY BACK TOP THE CAR as soon as I unload them, I forget them. They just have to live in the car, end of story. My aunt told me in her local they are charging now for plastic bags. 25p or something.

This is why I keep tinned pie filling on hand, but I love the idea of the cheesecake spackle. I also love that you cook for your friends. If someone baked a cheesecake for me, I'd be blinded to any "faults" by some serious gratitude and crust crumbs stuck to my glasses. : )

It's been a long time since I've been there but I also remember it's where I had my first taste of grass-fed Argentinian beef.

Thanks for the tip about the eggier ones, I've been using plain ones to make "ravioli" out of pureed veggies and cheese for my kids as a quickie. I'll look for these.

The guest judges used to award a prize, I'm not sure if they donated it. Sometimes the disparity was quite a lot....someone won a trip to Italy, the next one a coupon for lunch at Mom's Diner, or some such.

It was the tableful of Dixie paper products that made me

I've never, EVER, turned to someone in an office situation and said, "Hey, want to split a doughnut?" and had them said no. That's my solution. Find another share-er and cut it right then. Pre-arranged sharing with another person is always good, it can help keep dieters "honest". (Please excuse that term, you know what I mean.) I will cut something myself and leave half, because I know I'm doing it tidily. I won't take something that's *been* cut, though. I guess I figure there's always some guy coming along behind me who will pick posible germs over missing out on the doughnuts.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you personally were trying to make anyone feel guilty. And I agree completely about in/out. So we're good there, I hope. No, what I was supposing was this; in the same way people are more or less susceptible to alcohol or caffiene or sugar, overweight people have their own individual sensitivities or susceptibilities that lend themselves to packing on more fat than a less sensitive person would from the same food, that's all. I am a bit muddly on cold medicine, so if I can't make myself clear, I'm sorry. And it really is just a supposition.

So many interesting comments here, it made for some thoughtful reading, thanks everybody. I have a couple of ymmv snippets to add. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes by fasting glocuse tolerance test (which I also believe to be misused). I was about twenty pounds over weight when I got pregnant and probably added another 20 by the time came around to do this test. I kept a food/blood glucose value record for the next two months and I discovered som odd stuff. One, I can eat anything.....anything......sugar, carbs, anything, without a blip in my blood glucose values. They go up as expected and come down, exactly as expected, well within normal. No, what killed me was my fasting blood glucose levels IN THE MORNING. I would go to bed at 11 pm after a snack of something, usually cheese and crackers, and at 8 am the next morning my bgvs would be in the 200s. I'd eat breakfast and an hour later, my bgvs are completely normal. I tried playing with it by varying the snack and even having no snack, nothing after dinner, but nothing changed the fact that I would wake up sky high. They tried putting me on insulin. I continually crashed. (Well, duh, of course, I WAS NORMAL during the day.) They backed it down to glucophage. I was sicker than a dog. Finally I just stopped taking stuff. It still happens. My insurance company has me listed as a diabetic, but I am not a classic diabetic. There doesn't appear to be a name for my weird blood sugar habits. Was I overdiagnosed? No, I was the fat pregnant chick that fit the bill and it was easier to fob me off with a needle and a pill than it was to find out what the heck was really going on. So I think there's a lot of room in diabetes dx for weird, misreported stuff and people with vested interests playing with the numbers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In relation to the calories injested vs calories expended theory, I do agree that that's the bottom line, but I think it puts an onus of guilt on overweight people that isn't deserved. I really believe that although there is a segment of the population that justs poisons themselves with huge quantities of junk food, I think that there are other people who DO make good choices, who DO try, and who have something going on with their body chemistry that torpedos them. You know how

I tried the plain version and liked them a lot. They felt a bit "dryer" to me than Munchos. Was the barbeque smoky? Maybe xext time I go down there I'll give it a shot.

I am 40, my mother was a stay at home mom who nuked the fast food she brought home to feed us. My father worked in wholesale meats for a variety of grocery store chains. He cooked, but only in the traditional "manly" way, throwing hunks of meat on the grill. I cook. I love to cook. It's relaxing for me to put on some music and dance/chop my way around for an hour at the end of the day. Some people go to gyms, I cook. My husband has a couple of dishes up his sleeve for the days I'm not inspired. He *always* cleans up. A man who washes dishes is the bomb, people. I am really interested in how many people equate food and love. It's taken me a long time to break down that feeling. I cook because I like to cook. I feed the people around me, whoever they are. If there are no takers I freeze it and it never fails that someone pops up who needs a dinner or someone has a baby or whatever....but my point is, I do it because I like it. I worry about equating food with love. It's led to many an eating disorder. "I worked hard all day and I brought you this food and you must eat it!". Oy. No thanks. My kids graze on fresh veggies and fruit and yoghurt and nuts, free range. Those are available to them if whatever I've cooked is not to their taste. I hope I can inspire good eating habits in my kids, not anxiety and pressure, which is what *I* feel when people get emotionally wrapped up in what they are presenting.

This thread has been brought to you care of The Catchup Advisory Board, which would like to remind you its natural mellowing agents.

My 6 yo will only eat one item on her plate at a time. I used to give her grief about eating her carbs up first and no veggies or proteins, but she was just picking her favourite thing and then filling up. Now when I serve the family, I serve her her protein FIRST, then serve everybody else, and then her veg, and after a bit, whatever the carb is. She sits next to me at table so it's easy enough for me to casually serve her without it being an issue. She's never complained about this method, I am not sure she realizes I am doing it. It doesn't really drive me nuts but I do wonder why she does it and I wonder if by "controlling it" (although this method is certainly an improvement than ragging at her during meals) I am setting her up for a problem.

Always on hamburgers. Never on fries. That's just wrong. Hot dogs with ketchup make me feel a bit ill to look at them. Ever since I started using Jaymes' salsa recipe, I've had to start making the stuff in buckets because my kids use it instead of ketchup on *everything*. I've had fun tweaking it to tailor it to specific meals.

I repeat, any chef worth their knives going to Chicago to cook for Top Chef without a deep dish pizza in their repertoire is a moron. Who cooks pizza from a recipe? It's a method. you either work it or you don't.

I worry what they will do to the Chicago Dog, Holly, I really do.

Ok, I don't want to post a spoiler, so I'm going to word this carefully. What moron would go to Chicago to cook for Top Chef and NOT bring a recipe for this challenge? I mean, hullo, people, this is a no brainer. I mean, I've made a couple of these this winter thinking about this series. AND in the same kind of pan that guy is whinging about, which is FABULOUS for those things because it can be pre-heated? Oy.

You know that expression, "Life is uncertain, eat dessert first"? The one and only time I went to a party where the desserts were set out at the same time as the meal (buffet style catering, you know what I mean), I ate my dessert first 'cause the hot food looked icky. And we ended up having to leave before the meal! Yay! It was perfect! So my advice is, don't wait till you're about to pop your clogs. Eat it all. Eat it all NOW.