pjs

Molly O'Neill devotes a whole page in her New York Cookbook to praising the wonders of "Schmaltz and Gribeness", specifically as found at a particular NYC restarant. Memorable quotes: "My customers know what they are doing. When they book a table here they book a bed a St. Vincent's Hospital at the same time." "Delicious on bread or, listen to this, with gribeness and chopped liver and black radish and a little chopped onion, which is what I refer to as a Jewish Casear salad, because waiters make it at the table." "It's dietetic, eat schmaltz and you won't be eating again for a couple of days." There's a recipe on the following page of the book. PJ

Flat Leaf Parsley. PJ

Just don't try tasting the sherry straight from the jar. PJ

Lidia's recipes are almost always worth the effort and yes, Marcella can seem to be extremely intimidating at first glance until you get to know her and her style. Essvee is dead-on in recommending Marcella's first and second book instead of the condensed Essentials, if you can find them. Lots of good stuff was left out of the compilation. The recipe for White Clam Sauce with Parmigiano Reggiano immediately comes to mind. PJ Edjit: Lidia not Lydia.

Sam, that summary was excellent. You could also surmise that they are now preparing their defense for the soon-to-be onslaught of obesity-related litigation. Hey, you had a choice. You chose the triple cheeseburger with the large fries. PJ PS Hemi's rule.

I looked up classification info for Szechuan Peppercorns here: http://florawww.eeb.uconn.edu/acc_num/198501352.html I used that info to look for a listing here: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/regpestlist/ They are not on the Regulated Pest List. PJ Edit: Durians and Water Spinach however, are on the list.

Yup. South Florida homeowners with heirloom citrus trees in their backyard tend to go ballistic when the Feds show up with chainsaws. PJ

Hardcover if it's going to be used. With a SEWN binding. My old paperback copy of the NY Times Chinese Cookbook just deconstructed itself into four pieces, dammit. Just like my hardback copy of Marcella's first book that was glued together. I think it was a cheap bookclub edition. PJ

Yup, 25 bucks for a ready-to-go tiff. If they have to futz around with the file it jumps to $35.00. Also, at these prices they consider shipping charges as a profit center, but luckily, I'm nearby. Did I mention the 24hr turnaround? PJ

Tana, I love your card! Nice type, nicely grounded graphic and lots of white space. And the dropshadow is subtle not glaring. Speaking of business cards, currently the wholesale price for a thousand, 4/0 10pt. C1S, has reached $25.00. I expect it to go even lower. My design prices are inline with the ones Steven mentioned. PJ

As someone who has been on the production end of printed promotional material for 20+ years I can offer some advice. Lose all the damn halftone screens and drop-shadows that make your pride and joy logo hard to reproduce and look like shit when, for example, it is screen-printed. Google Milt Glaser. PJ

Thanks for all the replies. Squeat's treatment with sprouts does indeed sound promising and delicious. I will be trying it tomorrow. According to Jane Garmey in her book "Great British Cooking" sprouts and chestnuts is a traditional side dish with the Christmas bird. PJ

I also have a Magnum Plus. The only fault I've been able to find with it is that due to the design the grind adjustment screw tends to slowly drift towards coarse while you're using it. Wouldn't stop me from buying another though. As pepper grinders go, in my opinion, it's in a class by itself. PJ

My local supermarket has Italian chestnuts for Thanksgiving. My only experience with them is buying them roasted--sold in a paper bag by street vendors in NYC. Gimme some ideas for them. I haven't a clue. PJ

You get bonus immunity if you visit a subway restroom. PJ

The palette of my palate, is wooden, like a pallet. Sorry. PJ

McAnecdote, Kroc once mandated that the franchisees go out each morning and pick-up all the McTrash in a two-block radius around their stores. PJ

And set up some kind of small fence to funnel the bastards to it. PJ

We have a suspended ceiling at work that the little bastards love to congregate, fornicate and defecate in. One morning an employee almost had a heart attack when replacing a foam ceiling tile that had fallen overnight he noticed the imprisioned live rat in the empty garbage can below the tile. Shaken, he released it out back and watched it run away for it's life. Fucker was probably back in the ceiling the next day. I would of filled the garbage can full of water or if I was in a hurry and he wasn't too big just flush him down the toilet. The resident cat, who was once feral, just yawned and went back to sleep. PJ

That's also my take on his dumb-ass participation in this campaign. BK's marketing continues to suck as it has since HIYW. I'd even wager Rachael's fee was bigger than Rick's. O'Neil's my man, though. I'd bet he gets a million or so a year from the bastards for claiming to eat the crap. PJ

"If you're going to be a whore, be a high-priced whore" --Don Siegal Apparently Bayless' price isn't high enough for him to not give it away after the fact for the sake of damage control. Fucking amateur. PJ

Most likely they only printed a few copies. The NYTimes mothership has apparently embraced non-impact printing of some--if not most--of their books. Non-impact, as in toner on paper instead of ink in paper. I own a couple of them, paperback and hardcover. If you're not familar with the different printing processes you would most likely never notice. In a nutshell, they can now justify doing a significantly smaller run of a book, though it will still cost noticebly more retail than one done in large quantity on traditional printing presses. You can print a few thousand at a time instead of ten's of thousands. PJ

If you don't send me a bag immediately I'm going to alert the authorities. PJ

Suzanne, Grimes wrote a book about the chicken? The story was marginally entertaining when it first appeared in the paper. But a book? PJ

For anyone who's interested AsianWok sells preground peppercorns here. http://asianwok.com/ I can't link directly to the product but you can find it by selecting ingredients/spices/pepper from the menu on the left side of the site. PJ