Dianabanana

Just a thought, but have you had your thyroid checked? Weight loss, anxiety, and a need to burn off energy are common symptoms of hyperthyroidism.

Any time I drink coffee, which isn't often, it makes me absolutely ravenous.

Anyone else ever notice how water seems to taste . . . well, wetter when you drink it out of a Mason jar? I'm not sure what it is, but those jars somehow make water taste like you just filled them from a hand pump. Go ahead, laugh--but I'm serious!

That was lovely! But I feel I must say a word in defense of dates stuffed with marzipan, or preferably, almond paste. I love these. If you keep a tube of Odense almond paste in your fridge, you can make them one or two at a time when the mood strikes, as a perfect little accompaniment to black tea. If you refer to them as "sweetmeats" they taste even better. I might even prefer them to truffles!

^ Wow, thanks for the tip! That seems like a super bargain to me, too. Even if for some strange reason you don't plow through all two pounds in no time, it's okay--they keep forever because they're so dry and have no fat (like, a year, judging from the ones that got lost in the back of my cabinet and tasted perfectly fine to my super-picky taste buds).

What is this "spray dried coconut milk powder" of which you speak? Something available to mortals? What else do you use it for?

It starts at the correct temperature, but that temperature will drop much faster than with a larger cup. ← Don't go trying to confuse me with physics, Kent, dangit! All I know is my big honkin' mug of tea is lukewarm when it's half empty, whereas my dainty little mug is still hot when I finish it.

Okay, I've been thinking about this and realize that I purposely go out of my way to buy extra-small cups, mugs, and glasses. For instance, right now I'm drinking tea out of a mug that only holds 5 ounces. I think there are three reasons for my preference: 1) I actively enjoy the ritual of pouring a beverage or making a cup of tea at least as much as I enjoy drinking it. Kind of the same way that a cigar smoker enjoys the whole cigar-lighting ritual. This way I get to experience it more often. 2) With a small cup your beverage stays at the correct temperature the whole time you're drinking it. 3) Small cups are cute.

I have to agree--I actually find those big drinks hard to lift and easy to drop. Plus if I ever drank 44 ounces of anything I'd spend the whole night in the ladies' room.

Whoa, that HK-style club sandwich looks good! So prasantrin guessed correctly--eggs, ham, processed cheese, pickles, and some kind of tomatoey meat sauce? What kind of flavor does the meat sauce have?

I'm glad to read that you put sauteed onions ahead of bacon. Though personally I prefer the aroma of bacon, in my experience, onions frying in butter or olive oil is the smell most likely to elicit that comment that lightens every cook's heart: "Something smells good!" That's worth a promotion. What, pray tell, are the cooking aromas (I assume there are at least three) that occupy places six through ten? ← My mother-in-law says that when she was in training to be a Cub Scout den mother, the training meetings were scheduled precariously late for a 1960s housewife who was expected to have dinner on the table when her husband came home--so the trainees were advised to just start sauteeing an onion in butter right away because it would smell good enough to fool the husbands into thinking that was an entire dinner they were smelling. Anyway, in Jessie's defense, I've got a 750-sq-ft house and 365-sq-ft condo, and I'm here to tell ya that size does matter and even the most salubrious cooking smells can indeed be unwelcome. What might be just a normal cooking odor in a regulation-size house can easily become a curtain of aerosolized grease in either of my dollhouses. I know for sure that if Jessie were participating in the Cradle of Flavor thread, her number one sensible hint would be "Toast your fish paste out on the grill!"

I have to agree with this statement. ← I have a proposal that I think can unite vegetarians and carnivores: Call it "do-your-best-ism." Recognizing that eating meat does requires the loss of sentient life and a huge expediture of resources, Doyourbestists would do their best to eat only the meat that they really felt they needed to eat in order to meet their needs, whether nutritional or emotional, and would do their best to eat the most humanely raised meat possible. There would be some whose best would result in their not eating any meat, because they just don't feel that they need it--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Vegetarians. There would be some whose best would result in their still eating quite a bit of meat--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Carnivores--but they would no longer be overindulging, animals would be treated more humanely, and meat quality would be higher. Some might feel that their best would involve not eating any meat for most meals, but still cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving or eating meat when it's served at a dinner party, because it's important to them not to feel socially isolated--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Hypocrites. They too would be welcomed into the fold of Doyourbestism. Best of all, there would be an end to snarky carnivore vs. vegetarian threads on culinary web sites! (Not talking about this one, which has been mercifully civil so far.)

^ That sounds delicious! I wonder how it would work to make a regular pumpkin pie and just line the crust with amaretti crumbs first. It would have to help keep the crust from getting soggy, always an issue with pumpkin pie.

I am a huge Mark Bittman fan (known affectionately as Marky Mark in my house), but he did a similar list this summer on 101 quick dinners, or something like that, and although I found the list strangely exciting, the ideas that I tried turned out not to be that terrific. Still, who can resist a man with a hundred and one ideas for quick dinners, however unsuccessful they may be? Love ya, Marky!

I think I've probably already mentioned elsewhere the time I saw a Safeway stockboy killing fruit flies by spraying the fruit with RAID. So yeah, I wash my fruit--and I wash it well!

I stopped eating it months ago when I read about Chinese eels being fed birth control pills to make them grow longer. Pass.

These Krinos ouzo candies in the link are FANTASTIC! They have these in a bowl by the register at Lola (in Seattle) and I always have a terrible struggle with my conscience over how many to take. My conscience usually loses! Are the Kookaburra pastels the ones with a coating of little nonpareil-type things? If so, I love those--the crunchiness on top of the chewy licorice almost makes my gums itch, in a very, very good way! Unfortunately, I've only seen them once. I see a lot of Kookaburra licorice but no one seems to carry these particular ones. The other kinds are too soft for me. Right now I've got a bag of Tire Tread black licorice that's pretty good--very chewy. I like my licorice chewy.

The other night I got home from work before my husband and started stir-frying some tofu while the rice cooked. As soon as the tofu hit the wok, I realized it was going to spatter all over my nice new top, and it was too late to stop the stir-frying, so I whisked off the top and threw on an apron, which happened to be a really cute, vintage floral one, very June Cleaver. My husband walked in, dropped his briefcase, and in hushed tones said "You are the best wife ever!" Anyway, I normally present a much less exotic picture when doing any serious cooking. I try to wear clothes that I've already ruined with oil spatters, and unfortunately I've got plenty.

I read somewhere that Japanese moms often use tiny pots for deep-frying just one or two items for bentos in the morning. I picked one up at Daiso for (what else) $1.50, but I haven't tried it yet. It's the cheapest possible aluminum with maybe a 2-cup capacity. They had a huge stock of them so I guess it's a big seller.

You roll the paper into a tube and light the top end, then let go and make a wish as convection pulls the paper up in the night sky or your kitchen ceiling, as the case may be. I absolutely adore these on baked pears or just alternating bites of amaretti and dark chocolate.

Because most of it is eaten in the form of sushi, it's easy to think that you can't possibly be contributing very much to the problem. After all, you don't eat sushi every day (even in Japan) and when you do, it's just a teeny tiny slice. "Just this tiny little bit," you think.

Yeah, and "guilt" as in "guilty pleasure." Guilt to me is what you feel when you've done wrong to someone else. How can you feel guilt over something you ate? Regret, maybe, but not guilt.

It happened twice this week--I was invited to eat someone's "famous stack enchiladas" and someone's "famous chili."

I just discovered a wide selection of these at Daiso! Shallow, deep, short, long, different kinds of drop-in trays, and of course all $1.50!

What a wonderful story. : My first taste of fresh yuba was also in Nikko many years ago. Were the dishes he served French or Japanese? ← Sorry for not checking back in sooner . . . the yuba dishes all skewed Japanese-- for instance yuba "sashimi", then a sort of maki sushi but with yuba instead of nori and impossibly thinly sliced vegetables (no rice)--that sort of thing. We also had a few French dishes, including a corn bisque and trout amandine. The restaurant was supposedly closed for the season, yet they produced all of these highly perishable and impeccably fresh ingredients like fresh yuba and trout. I really don't understand it.