lamb

Yeah, my dad is from Brooklyn and he pronounces pizza "peetz-er". Cracks me up. I can't get over calling mozzarella 'MOOT zurel' How do you feel about calling capicola "gabagool"? When I first met my husband's Italian family for dinner at their house in Queens, I realized that I would need an interpreter to help me out. Step in my now sister-in-law who translated much for me. My m-i-l calls olive oil "olive earl" and toilet is "terlet". All spoken in the kitchen in her basement. Gone from NY for 20 years, but husbands still calls soda "so-der" and our daughter Amanda is "Aman-der". It cracks my kids up to hear him talk sometimes. He gets pissed because he really doesn't think he has an accent.

i'm not positive, but i'm pretty sure i use both "on" and "in" without giving it much thought. and i don't think twice when someone else uses either one. As a native NY'er, I agree with Tommy. Don't give it much thought, I've been on AND in. I've heard before that we stand ON line. Don't know where that one came from. Maybe a mid-westerner or west-coaster, who when visiting our fair city was milling about a line. Can't you just see a bunch of NY'ers yelling at a tourist "HEY YOU!!! - YEAH!!! YOU WITH THE CAMERA AROUND YOUR NECK!!! ARE YOU ON OR OFF THE EFFING LINE?? " See, very easy to misconstrue.

I am so psyched!! Wegmans in Woodbridge opens this Sunday. While I think I will stay away from the opening day crowds, (did opening day in Manalapan-it was crazy ) I will head there one night next week. Woodbridge is closer to me than Manalapan, and I plan on visiting the store quite frequently. Even my hubby said he would join my visits. Doesn't take much to make me happy.

No, amazingly it does not slide down. You dont need to press the stuff together. The $7 toastmaster has auto-expanding slots and when you push the toast plunger down it clamps down on the sandwich bag. Do you have to use the $7 Target Toaster with this baggie thing?

Doesn't the cheese slide down to the bottom of the bag when you are making a "toaster" cheese sammich? Do you press the two sides of bread together to stop the cheese from spreading?

I know I'm too late to chime in with a suggestion for the Wednesday dinner, but I hope you chose Cafe Abracci. Have been there quite a few times. My son's high school is right down the road, and so when my husband and I are on drop off duty for dances, we head there after we off-load a Tahoe full of teenagers. Was at LouCa's 2 times. Don't feel the need to go back there.

Even newer on the grocery cart front Talking Carts "Lamb, your milk has expired - time to purchase a new quart" No thanks.

Crazy Eddie - His Prices are INSAAANE!!! This commercial was a staple on NY Tri-State area TV in the late 70's - early 80's. Then Eddie Antar (aka Crazy Eddie) got into some trouble with the SEC. the story is here I grew up not too far from his original store. It wasn't anything special - but the commercials were. Edited to apologize for the off-food-topic of this Ad - but just had to mention it!

I will say - "Don't need a bag for that" and they blink and bag anyways. Stupid. The coin on top of the bills thing pisses me off too. I won't take the change from them; instead I first pick up the coins and then take the bills. I think our local cashiers must have my face up in the back room and throw darts at it while on break. I really don't give a shit either!!

The old Alka Seltzer ads were great. "That's one spicy meatball" "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!" I think, though, that the spicy meatball ad wasn't effective for the Alka Seltzer brand. Consumers thought it was for spaghetti sauce

Our local Pathmark in NJ has the "get your quarter back when you return your cart thingy" attached to shopping carts. No one cares about their quarters, there are shopping carts all over the parking lot. Local ShopRite has corrals to store carts in the parking lot. Some people (like me ) return them to the corrals, others think they are above putting a cart away and simply leave it to bump the car parked next to them . I recently emailed ShopRite's HQ because I was pissed that every time I picked out a cart at our local store, it ended up with bum wheels and I had trouble pushing the damn thing once it got loaded. They referred my email to that particular store and they replied that they had just purchased over 100 new carts. Still haven't seen them. Maybe someone stole them.

I'm reading, Tammylc. It's been 13 years since my last pregnancy, and I find myself smiling when reading about yours. I went through one where I felt great, and then the last one where I had to be hospitalized in month three because I couldn't keep ANY food down. My daughter is a result of that pregnancy, and I remind myself now about how the pregnancy was the easy part! Anyway, keep up the posting - I look forward to reading it!

This may be an autumnal dish, but I think I need to take a cold shower now.

Rewind back to the 60's and our kitchen in Brooklyn. Mom tries in vain once again to get me to eat canned Green Giant green peas. Gag. Can't even imagine why they are still on store shelves. Fresh snap peas now are on my dinner menu regularly.

I can't imagine *why* a supermarket would event think of doing that It's enough trouble to have to navigate in a grocery store among adult shopping cart "drivers". Just add little ones pushing carts through a store and that would really piss me off. Our stores in Central/South NJ don't offer that option. Thank God.

I'm going down Friday night to see the Soul Cruisers at the Tiki Bar (if the Tiki Bar is still there after Isabel ), and then on to the Seafood Festival on Saturday a.m. for a lunch stop. Wouldn't really recommend to make the trip down there just for the Seafood Festival. Really big crowds, lots of craft vendors, some food vendors. No place to sit to eat, restaurants along Arnold and side streets are packed. Many of the craft vendors own stores along Arnold, and the food vendors are local too. You might want to come down off season and visit the stores and restaurants at your own leisure.

Marlene, Don't know of any stores here in NJ that offer online shopping. I think "Peapod" used to offer it, but I believe that they are no longer around. I don't think that concept every truly caught on here. People still want to be able to pick out their own produce and such, and I think there was a problem with receiving wrong items in your orders. Not a bad concept, however, versus towing little ones through a supermarket!

Shopping with little kids=hurried shopping. When my kids were toddlers, I would just hate it when the weekend rolled around and my hubby, for one reason or another, couldn't mind the kids while I did my food shopping. Although my list was already planned, long checkout lines spelled doom for already figdety kids. Open a box of Cheerios, and good for a few minutes, until you would approach the kid-eye-level candy racks. Yikes! Now that they are older, my teenage daughter actually enjoys food shopping with me on my weekly visits. She likes to pick out the veggies and fruit. She loves the seafood counter and will ask the counterperson all kinds of cooking questions. She will also cut out coupons for items that SHE likes. She especially enjoys it when we go to Wegmans. My teenage son doesn't enjoy the shopping, but he sure enjoys the food!

OH DEAR!!!

I printed out a member list and and fully intended ALL WEEK to write something. Something nasty called work kept getting in the way. There's always next week.

I'm lucky enough, as an east-coaster, to have brothers that live on the West Coast. Brother #1 in Eugene, OR, regularly sends me See's candies whenever I am feeling down. I tell him I am feeling down alot. The whole box is a favorite! Brother #2 is on Vashon Island in Puget Sound. I receive copius amounts of seafood dry iced from Pike's. Life is good in good ole' NJ.

Emeril's Marinara Sauce. I know, I know, don't yell at me. But during the summer months at the beach there's no way I'm coming in from a day in the sun and making sauce for the young'uns for their "quick, hurry up, before we go to the arcade, pasta dinner". I think it's time to retire Emeril and make my own. Kitchen has cooled down and the arcade fascination has worn off.

When my kids were little I would eat in my bathroom to escape them. They followed me like a shadow everywhere. Now they are teenagers and they eat in their bedrooms. I find disgusting things in there. Scary. While I would not want to eat in a Restaurant's restrooms, a dirty restroom would turn me off to eating there. This said by a person who carries a purse size Purell with me "just in case".

I was sitting at the sushi bar in front of the chefs, had my back to the boardwalk, facing the Tiki Bar and the chefs. Italian-looking hubby (whats left of his hair is short), I'm blue-eyed with light, short hair, had on a yellow t-shirt with a pair of jeans. Both in our 40's. Had Corona's with lots of sushi (my face could have been red from the wasabi!) A family with mom/dad and about 5 blonde haired kids were at the sushi bar directly across from us, facing the boardwalk. Didn't think that was you We were there btw 8-9 - sorry to have missed you.

Geez, I'm sorry if you spent your night at Martells trying to find me. I really should have thought to at least put out a descrip of me earlier - not thinking. If you plan on being down again just post and we'll plan to officially meet over a drink at the Tiki Bar.