feedmec00kies

Oh man, I wish I had room to do this! Instead, I guess I will resort to continue to have to buying duck, and save this for the day when I have extensive kitchen space.

Well duh, the only kinds of beer are $#!+y pale lagers and stouts. And you forget that Guinness, as the ONLY stout out there, is the HEAVIEST, THICKEST, most EXPENSIVE beer IN EXISTENCE!!!! WOOOO LETS GET DRUNK@*)(&!@!!!!!

Attention! Attention! I've just been informed that my boyfriend will NOT eat ribs! I repeat, he will NOT eat ribs! ...apparently there's something unnerving and nauseating to him about the rib cage...

Thanks raji! Since I live in the area, it's good to know about options around me... I don't know nearly enough about restaurants in walking distance. I'll have to try this place sometime.

I'll be eagerly following this thread, gfron1. I've thought about doing something like this at one time or another... at least hunting something for meat, which isn't quite the same as getting a domesticated animal for slaughter.

Hehe, sorry. I remembered something else when reading the word "lopsided" on the Filet-o-Fish thread. I don't like other people making my sandwiches (especially at delis or sandwich shops) because not only are things not spread evenly, but the individual ingredients aren't labeled evenly. Actually, this would be similar to what JanMcBaker said in response to one of my earlier posts (the one racheld was also referring to). If it was presliced [insert name of sandwich ingredient here], it would be a matter of even distribution. If it's not - particularly if I'm making grilled cheese - I cut whatever it is so that it very neatly covers the whole piece of bread. Oh, another thing. If I buy a small bag of pretzels, I start digging for broken ones, then, if I have the space, dump the whole damn thing out, and put the whole ones back in the bag. Then, I eat the smallest pieces first, and work up until I get to the whole ones.

...I think I have to agree with DCP here, this thread must be subliminally affecting me because I open my mouth and out pops "FOF combo please"... ← Heh, I was trying to figure out what to get for lunch today (and by lunch, I mean I mentioned to my superior, "Hmm, maybe I should eat" at 3:30 ), and I almost went to McDonalds for a FoF too! I think more than anything, I've eaten them before, so it's more that this thread has reminded me that they're available.

next time you find yourself in a McDonalds, order a salad. I suggest the southwestern salad (if it's on the menu. That one vanished from the menu at a McDonalds in L.A., but it's still here at my local McDonalds in Dallas). They aren't a half bad alternative. ← Yeah, salads have been the other thing I've eaten at fast food places... though I'm not a fan of (white meat) chicken, so I usually get the salad if there isn't the Filet-o-Fish (so that I'm still ingesting protein), or a side salad instead of fries.

Kimchi 9 from Outer Space? Heh, not proud. Jealous!

When I hear the words "Los Angeles" and "water" I think of two films. First, Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Second is a documentary I watched in an anthropology class that details the history which Chinatown was based actually based on, called Cadillac Desert. Based on those my knowledge of the history of water and Los Angeles, I find it even more interesting that LA won an award for its tap water.

Yeah, my mom told me about the symbolism in noodles when I was younger, along with the fish and the color red, etc etc. Even though her parents believed more in fire-and-brimstone Christianity than anything, those traditional beliefs still managed to stick in her consciousness, so I heard about them too. I've never liked the idea of breaking noodles, and I think it's a result of that knowledge. I even mentioned the long-life symbolism to my boyfriend, who subsequently stopped breaking them as well. I don't care if other people break them, though. Not that I don't value your longevity.

Errr.... I am like that too. Actually, I believe there was a whole thread devoted to the banana thing. I feel like I can taste the gas when i eat the ripe banana, and they're generally too sweet for me at that point. I eat them as yellow as possible before any black marks/spots appear. I also spread very evenly to all the edges. This has been made fun of by others in the past. My boyfriend can't eat the yolk and white of the egg separate at all. He only eats eggs scrambled, and they have to be whisked well before cooking so that no white part remains unblended into the yellow-ness. He also refuses to eat many things because they are "slimy". Raw tomatoes. Okra. Zucchini. Mushrooms. ::sigh:: His mom is one of those "I can't stand garlic" people. I've been warned not to insist on including (too much) garlic if I cook for her. He's tried to convince her that she doesn't hate it. Needless to say, I wouldn't be dating him if he was like that. Hehe.

Fengyi, I feel so bad for you. I think having no oven is pretty far up there on the list of sad kitchen situations. Plus the freezer. Eghhh. Potsticker, how the *()*#%)( did you LOSE weight????

It's true, I do at least have the over-the-cupboards space. We'd really be in trouble without it. Unfortunately, stuff that's infrequently used needs to be washed with soap to get grease from frying things before we use them, but I've realized that that's the case with ALL flat surfaces above the stove in that area. I try not to think about it because then I'll go on a cleaning frenzy. Yeah, I know it'd be easy, since it's probably just a matter of shutting the water off under the sink and using a wrench to loosen and switch the flexible pipe-things that are hooked up. We've actually gotten so used to it, though, that we don't really care anymore. We just have to tell any guests we have the first time they use the sink. Thanks though, for the offer, and if I decide to do it I'll certainly ask your advice!

These might be the handiest apartment-kitchen invention ever. I think it would work well for feedmecookies since she has an open floorplan that makes it easy to move stuff out of the way when you don't need it. I love mine (even though it's mostly dedicated that that monstrous meat slicer). ← My boyfriend almost had the heart attack at the idea of a mobile island. Basically, something that could move would scream to him, "We have no storage space! AGHH!" and he'd pretty much go nuts. Good to know those things exist, though. I'd probably think about something like that for the future. I've thought about putting the microwave up there, but I don't know how to go about mounting it. And I'd be terrified that the thing would somehow fall onto the stove while I was cooking or something, even if we had it screwed into studs and other secure things. Basically, he and I are basically too crazy for most solutions.

Well, there is more and more of a need for two incomes in a household, and just more time working in general, and I think that's a big problem when it comes to encouraging these skills. I think a lot of people really believe that cooking and other similar tasks just take too much time and effort - and that's both men and women.

Here it is... It's part of a larger room, as I said before. So the stuff on top... large pot, the large frying pan, baking trays, cooling racks, the regular-sized cutting board (haven't found a better place for it yet), large pan lid, large metal bowls, and splatter screens up there. We also have a bottle of Grand Marnier (my boyfriend doesn't have room for it because the rye whiskeys have crowded it out from the shelf on the left outside the frame) up there, a lunch bag that I don't really use, some unopened bags of chips, and whatever extra unopened containers we might have (like 6-packs of soda). The fridge is a little shorter than me, maybe 5'4", so it would be really small if it weren't just a one-bedroom apartment. Maybe it seems like it's too small because my boyfriend takes up a good 1/4 of it with beer and a few bottles of sake that are "on deck". Moreso, though, it's too small because, like most shelves throughout the kitchen, they're just too short for things, particularly on the door. We took off a shelf from the door for that reason. Oh yeah, that's on top of the cabinets too. Fortunately, there's a little room next to the microwave on top of the fridge, so that's where I keep the oil and stuff to cook. It keeps the 3 sq ft of counter space a little clearer. I don't do much baking since the flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder are in the cabinet with the rolling pin and the Cuisinart food processor above the microwave, blocked by other food that doesn't fit anywhere in particular. If I need one of them, I have to move things out of the way and get on a chair, so I don't really use more than one of them at a time usually. The cabinet to the right of the microwave is just our plates and bowls. The one above the stove is too high for most things, so on the bottom shelf there are glasses and some tea cups, sake cups, and beer glasses that don't fit on the exposed shelf (all tumbler-type lambic glasses, which are hardly used but traveled better than the kind we like to use with lambic). The top shelf of that cabinet has some hot sauce my boyfriend has collected, and not really anything behind it.. way too hard to get to, most of the time. The cabinets all the way to the right store most of the pantry items, with the spices in the right-most part to keep them as far from the heat as possible. The sink is too small. It drives me nuts. I can't really lay the larger pans and pots in there, so it's kind of a battle to clean those things. I'm tempted to change the fixture to something that would give me a little more room, but I don't really feel it's quite worth it enough to do. (By the way, if you ever visit, the hot water knob is the cold water, and the cold water knob is the hot water. Yeah.) Under the sink is the trash can, cleaning supplies, and plastic bags folded neatly to reuse at a later date. Drawers? Those four. Not enough. I'd kill for more counter space. I really would. Between that and the tiny sink, I am discouraged from doing things that would require the food processor most of the time. I really should get my hand blender from my parents' house, but haven't gotten around to it. I wish we could hang things, but there isn't quite any good place to do so. I'm looking (not hard enough, though) for a paper towel dispenser to hang over the sink, since that'll free up some space. There's also no really good place to put up book shelves or anything like that... not just in the kitchen, but anywhere. Storage space is always a concern. The room being large doesn't really help that much. The only wall space has a desk at it (really the only place for the desk to go), so we can't put a table against it to function as extra counter space for small appliances. The kitchen table is pretty multi-purpose anyway, being right at the entrance. That all said, I love this apartment. It's in a great location, it was renovated right before we moved in, and it's really not that bad. Just... the kitchen. Argh. Almost makes me want to move out to the suburbs. Almost. (And I don't hate my boyfriend for taking up space with his beer glasses/rye whiskey/150+ bottles of beer.)

As you said: in the past, probably, but now, no. Yeah, maybe some people who are too firmly grounded in traditional gender roles would say something, but that's silly. Anyway, those differ from culture to culture, anyway. I went to read the article just now, because there seemed to be a pretty strong (negative) reaction to it from some people. After reading it, I think the point isn't to lambaste women for cooking, though I'm not going to say the article isn't written with sensationalism in mind (isn't everything these days?). Some of it strikes me as more about relating the how women view the task of cooking to the larger handling of the term "feminist." Sort of. However, I don't think she's criticizing women for cooking. I think the point is more about approaching what seems to be a societal handling of women who cook as "relics", and that women shouldn't be afraid to admit they cook any more than they should be to admit that they're feminists. Am I totally missing the point here?

I think having a stay-at-home mom definitely helps, but more than that specifically is having at least one parent that cooks regularly. Those things seem to be learned from childhood, even if your parents don't sit you down and instruct you. Then again, I think it's more common for females to end up learning to cook this way; perhaps because, assuming a "traditional" nuclear family, children end up watching and spending time with the parent of the same sex more frequently. It's the same reason I think people (at least heterosexual people; I haven't figured it out for homosexual relationships) tend to date and be in relationships with partners who are similar to the parent of that gender, and why statistically the children from abusive parents usually become abusive or the abuser themselves. A lot of those behaviors and children's understanding of the way the world works starts in the home, from these observations. Maybe part of it is that those women who cook don't view it negatively if they see their own mothers choose to, at least in the younger generation. Anyway, I guess I fit the category of third-wave feminist from that article. I have a degree in Women's Studies, but like to dabble in knitting, sewing, love to cook, and generally have no problem embracing those traditional skills as a matter of choice (choice being an important part of it). After all, those things - women's work - have been mostly ignored as valid or socially important for a long time, even in cultural anthropology. I think that's a very large of the issue: many women seem to eschew those "female" tasks because they don't see them as important in a post-feminist society, since they aren't viewed as important to society as a whole when performed at smaller, individual levels/scale. At least until one settles down to those tasks completely, giving in to other socially-expected tasks like child-rearing. I like to cook because I like some control over what I eat, and the act of producing something from raw or semi-raw ingredients fascinates me. I like the sense of accomplishment when I do something well, and even if I don't I think of ways to improve the dish. My boyfriend wants to be able to cook, but he's not very experienced, and needs recipes. Except for steak, he's experienced failure (at least in his mind) every time he strays from set instructions, and so he has all but given up on cooking regularly. Once in a while, he'll decide to cook from a recipe, but as that requires some advanced planning and I usually end up doing the grocery shopping as the primary cook, it doesn't happen often. I do wish he would cook more, because it would take some burden off of me, but there are other things I feel are more important for him to help me with... like doing the dishes the same day that they're produced. Although, having dated another guy who cooked more frequently, I never really thought it was particularly "sexy". Yeah, when the person you love produces something for you, it's a lovely gesture. But I guess because I never was afraid of the stove, and because I don't see everyday cooking as so much a spectacular event as a necessity, I never really thought one way or another about it. I just mourn its absence a little. :tear, sniffle, sigh: For most of college, I lived in special interest housing where a good number of people of both genders cooked. Not everyone did, obviously (there were 30 people), but the house was overwhelmingly female, and I don't believe that the ratio of cooks to non-cooks of each gender was too different. No one ever seemed to think particularly one way or another of those who cooked according to gender; if people thought you were a good cook, they said so, whether you were male or female. Then again, this was "social activism and awareness" housing, so maybe that says something.

It's too early for me to bother breaking out the camera, so you all have to wait for pictures. My kitchen seems similar in layout to Domestic Goddess's... it's in a large room, but the actual kitchen is only on one side of the room. I can't figure out how to put a bulb into our fridge. The place was redone before we moved in, so the fridge is new, and it seems that the fridge didn't come with a bulb and it was never put in for us. I tried to unscrew the cover to the plastic enclosure, but I can never get it off. I also can't make the freezer colder; there is no knob. Half the time, the ice cream and sorbet is too soft. Part of the problem is that the seal on the freezer door doesn't seem very good. All the appliances are too small. Potsticker, I'm jealous of your storage space, as minimal as it might seem to you. Part of this, I admit, is my boyfriend's doing; he took up the larger of only 2 closets in the apartment in order to store his beer. But there's only two closets in the apartment. Bah. We store some things on top of the cabinets, where there's a gap between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling (I think because the apartment's pre-war and so it's got slightly higher ceilings), and some other stuff in the oven. We could only take out the shelf in one cabinet, the one right above the short refrigerator. The rest of the cabinets have fixed shelves, and often they are just too short for things. We access things by standing on the kitchen chairs, because neither of us are incredibly tall (he's 5'6" and i'm 5'7") and the lack of space means it would be a shame not to risk breaking our next every time we need something up high. On Valentine's Day, the smoke alarm went off 4 times when my boyfriend was making steak. The last time, we had to pull the battery out because it refused to let us shut it off anymore. Can't bring ourselves to cover the thing regularly, because it doesn't happen frequently enough. Pictures to come!

This might not be good or helpful advice since it's kind of specific, but... When I first started with craft beers, actually sitting and doing ratings was a good way to make myself think more and try and distinguish flavors/aromas. I'll be the first to admit I stopped rating because I feel now that it's a little too much of an interruption (at least for me), but it got me through that initial point of trying to think more about what I taste. Something else that I've heard, related to beer, was relayed to me by my boyfriend from some article posted on Ratebeer.com. It's probably way more specific to beer also, but the author apparently suggested going through your kitchen cabinets and smelling everything, and taking a note of what each thing was. Maybe you shouldn't see what the chemicals smell like.. I'm sure you can distinguish those based on past experiences. Interesting thing to note about smells... if you need to clear your nose with a neutral smell (especially when you're first trying to distinguish things), sniffing your shoulder or upper sleeve should provide that. Another beer tasting tip that's been passed along to me via the boyfriend.

Buying a box of fruit leathers was a great way to try and blow through the mandatory meal plan at the end of the semester/year when it was clear I wasn't going to use all the non-refundable meal money... Yeah, those were the fruit snacks my mom wanted us eating too. Although... I kind of wish they tasted more like fruits other than the apple/grape juice they use as fillers because those juices are cheap.

Hehe, you said "buns".

It's good to know that other people don't mind/like the Filet-o-Fish. It's one of the only ways I survive being pushed into a fast-food-eating situation when traveling (usually traveling upstate). My boyfriend claims it's supposed to be the least healthy of all of their food (supposedly he heard that somewhere), but looking at the nutrition info... it's not the best by any means, but it's certainly not the worst. And I think that it being an actual piece of fish, and not composed of ground [insert animal meat here], I try to think of it as a bit less sketchy..

Mmmm Doughnut Plant. I don't know how long they'll still be making them, but this weekend they had doughnuts with crystallized ginger glaze (for Chinese New Year) and rose petals+rose water glaze (for Valentine's Day). And you obviously don't know this, but I'm not big on sweets, and even less interested in doughnuts usually, but their doughnuts won me over.