Dianabanana

Spumoni ice cream has the colors of the Italian flag... ← Right! Spumoni--of course!

Mexico has chiles en nogada, the traditional Independence Day dish containing the colors the mexican flag: poblano chilies (green) stuffed with picadillo, served with a walnut-based cream sauce (white) and topped with pomegranate seeds (red). Japan has hinomaru bento, meant to resemble the Japanese flag with its bed of rice with a round, red umeboshi plum in the center. I suppose in the US we have 4th of July cakes decorated with whipped cream, blueberries, and strawberries to resemble our flag, although that doesn't really seem like a "traditional" dish to me for some reason. Does anyone know of any other patriotic dishes meant to symbolize a country's national flag? I'm looking for traditional dishes specifically meant to be patriotic, not just traditional dishes that happen to incorporate colors of the flag. Would a caprese salad qualify for Italy? I've often heard people note that it contains the colors of the Italian flag, but I've never heard it spoken about as a patriotic dish in the same way as chiles en nogada or rice with umeboshi.

I am hoping Santa will bring me an IH rice cooker, although I'm still not sure which one.

What is the brand you use?

Last night I got home at 4:45 and somehow managed to bake RLB's Maple Walnut Tart in time for a 6:00 dinner benefiting our local food bank. That's including blind-baking the crust! Thank goodness it was freezing out so it was cool enough to eat by the time I walked it down there. Never got to take its picture. I am a pecan pie lover and consider it essential to Thanksgiving dinner, but the Thanksgiving pecan pie has now been usurped by this Maple Walnut Tart. Maybe it's the PMS talking, but I thought this was one of the best things ever. I'm not alone, either--it disappeared off the dessert table before anything else even got touched.

I've never had this, and obviously a lot of people love it so there must be something to it, but the thought of all those crunchy little sprinkles against my teeth--it gives me the shivers! Especially the little round ones.

Yup, but you don't even have to snip. I just plop the leaves in a cup and pour boiling water over them. A little fresh tarragon goes nicely with mint, if you have it. Sometimes with fresh mint I detect a vegetal, almost grassy flavor that I don't get from dried. Not sure why that should be.

Perhaps he would like to go on a trip. I can send him to you, and maybe you can take a photo of him near one of your local landmarks. You can then do as you wish, wrap him around a book or pass him on to another person. ← I think this is a great idea! Like the traveling garden gnome in Amelie!

I agree. My husband of 18 years was a picky eater when we first met ("I don't like soup," "I don't like green beans," etc.). My attitude was basically, "that's ridiculous, you've just never had it in a version you like" and set myself the challenge of proving to him that he did in fact like soup, green beans, and pretty much everything else. The thing that made it work was that he realized how important it was to me and it was more important to him to make me happy (by trying new things and trying to like them) than it was to have his own way, and I guess that's the key for both parties in most aspects of marriage. He's still the same person and I suspect his dining habits might be quite a bit different if I were to drop dead, but meanwhile he's a cheerful and enthusiastic companion on all my culinary adventures.

Update: Philip Glass of pecans.com very helpfully informed me that Prilops are from South Texas and are a propagated native pecan that shells well and has a nice color. The "native" pecans that he sells are not Prilops but rather "standard shelled native pecans" that taste as good but don't have as nice a color as the Prilop. The search continues!

I've gone my whole adult life without buying breadcrumbs, but I recently bought some Progresso Italian flavored breadcrumbs. I was thinking maybe it would be delicious in a nostalgic kind of way, the flavor I remember from meatball subs and eggplant parmesan as a kid. But it wasn't.

Okay, I e-mailed andiesenji's place to ask what variety their native pecans are and will report back.

Real soy milk doesn't need an ingredient list . . . or at least its list is very short: Soybeans, water. And if it is fresh, it's delicious, especially as part of a Chinese breakfast. One of the most delicious things I ever ate was a bowl of freshly made warm soy milk served with the most perfectly made, crispy, chewy, salty scallion pancakes, very early in the morning in a divey Chinese dumpling shop, which of course had vanished the next time I tried to go there. But soy milk like this is very hard to find, so most people think soy milk is like Silk, or worse, that dreck sold in the aseptic cartons. Shameful. Same situation with tofu.

I've been doing some poking around online. In the 1998 Pecan Taste Test conducted by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the Prilop variety was the overwhelming favorite, scoring 265 points overall, while the Choctaw variety was the overwhelming loser, scoring a mere 160 points. The order of preference was: Prilop Schley Moreland Cheyenne Forkert Success Desirable Choctaw Ironically, I have been completely unable to identify any mail-order suppliers of Prilop pecans, while it appears that the bottom-rated Choctaw pecans are one of the most commonly available varieties. However, this information is useless in practice, as nobody sells pecans by variety. They will sometimes tell you what varieties they grow, but then when it comes time to order, you only get to choose the grade, not the variety. Now I'm determined to have these blasted Prilop pecans, and I'll buy a bag for anybody who can tell me where to get them!

I'm thinking about ordering some fresh pecans online, and I'm wondering: 1) Are they going to be significantly better than the new-crop Diamond brand pecans that will show up in my grocery soon, such that they will be worth the extra cost? and 2) What's a good purveyor?

I'm afraid I do this almost exclusively. Once in a while I start feeling like I should plan our meals in advance and then shop, but it inevitably turns out that all the produce on my list is wilted, banged up, or missing altogether. So I just buy whatever looks good and figure out what to make from it when I get home. Of course, once I decide what to make, I always need some other item that I don't have, but my saintly husband is usually willing to run out and get these things for me.

Cool Whip, when it tastes horrible, is full of junk, and any idiot can whip cream? Edited for typo.

Obviously Kerry's husband knows just what she needs!

I jusr tried to order some online but they d/n use a secured server ? Had anyone ordered form there ? How's the Cinnamon Raisan PB ? ← Well I just tried to place an order and the site STILL isn't secure, some three and a half years after this post. Why in the world don't they have a secure server? Weird.

I completely agree with using a boxed cake in an instance like this. Personally, I'm not made of money, and I've also got limited time... why would I waste a really good, made-from-scratch cake on somebody who can't appreciate it? I know, I know, that makes me a bad foodie, but really... especially since you doctor them, I feel it's perfectly acceptable. (And my own confession: I have a few family members who prefer cake mix cakes. I found this out on accident when I had very little time and grabbed a box mix and added some pudding mix. They always compliment me on how much better cakes "made from scratch" are and how "it tastes just like the cakes I remember from my childhood". These are people who think Costco cakes taste great, so they get cake from a mix. Give 'em what they like, I suppose.) ← I do completely see the logic in not killing yourself laboring over a real cake for anyone that you suspect will not appreciate it . . . however, I just want to point out that I went the first couple of decades of my life thinking that I didn't like cake, because the only kind I ever got was cake from a mix with premade frosting, or grocery store sheet cakes with crunchy royal frosting. ← Yeah, my son won't eat cake b/c that nasty shortening "buttercream" they use on grocery-store cakes is foisted off on children so often (school rules prohibit me from making a "real" cake with "real" frosting and bringing it in to them from my home kitchen)--In my defense, I do make my own frosting, even on cake mix cakes. ← Okay then, you get a pass! Seriously, the frosting is what counts.

No, it's not just while ovulating, it's in general (I see that the part I quoted would give that impression, though). Elsewhere it says, "There is a wealth of scientific data showing women's superiority at identifying and detecting odours at even very small concentrations." All I'm suggesting is that if things smell different to men and women, then, because smell is so intimately related to taste, we can suppose that things might taste different to men and women, and if things taste different, then we might hypothesize that men and women might tend to cook differently as well. In what way, I don't know, and I don't know how you'd test it, and I don't actually have an opinion as to whether you can tell who's cooking. But it makes sense to me that there might be a gender difference.

Why wouldn't men and women have differing palates, when we're biologically different in so many other ways? Women definitely have a more acute sense of smell than men once a month, and may have a more acute sense of smell overall. I know that for me, this means that I smell and taste components that my husband is unable to detect. I have no idea how this affects my cooking, but it seems impossible that it wouldn't. Edit: When I say that I smell and taste things my husband can't detect, I definitely don't mean this is in any way superior. In fact, most of the time I'm smelling or tasting something I wish I couldn't. ← Because our sex organs don't have anything to do with our tastebuds as far as I can tell. Maybe some women have a more acute sense of smell at some times of the month, but certainly not all do. I've certainly never heard of that before. There is only a real difference between groups if the distinction between them is greater than the distinction within each individual group, and I sincerely doubt that's the case. ← Women Nose ahead in Smell Tests From the article: Experts say many studies show women out perform men in olfactory (sense of smell) sensitivity. Tim Jacobs, Professor of Physiology at Cardiff University, said: "Some studies have shown that during ovulation, there's a surge of oestrogen which increases sensitivity. "The structure of the nose is the same in women as men. "They don't have any more receptors in the nose. "Studies have also shown smells activate a greater region in the brain in women than men."

I agree. I'm not all that concerned about bacteria. I mostly want to remove the yucky wax from my peppers, apples, cucumbers and so forth. Peppers especially are often coated in a wax that tastes really strongly like a petroleum product (why??), and cucumbers are often slick with greasy wax. I just use full-strength Planet liquid on those. Science schmience. I know what I know: Waxy produce isn't yummy.

I've always adored Mark Bittman's food and writing, and now that I see him in person I find that I adore him! I need to know whether he is in a relationship so I know whether I'm wasting my time dreaming about him as the Perfect Man. Edited to add wub!

Why wouldn't men and women have differing palates, when we're biologically different in so many other ways? Women definitely have a more acute sense of smell than men once a month, and may have a more acute sense of smell overall. I know that for me, this means that I smell and taste components that my husband is unable to detect. I have no idea how this affects my cooking, but it seems impossible that it wouldn't. Edit: When I say that I smell and taste things my husband can't detect, I definitely don't mean this is in any way superior. In fact, most of the time I'm smelling or tasting something I wish I couldn't.