Katie Meadow

@Tan Can Cook Hi. I've never eaten at that restaurant but I have eaten at Special Noodle in that same complex. One of my favorite dishes there is the Soup Pan Fried Buns. Not that many places serve that and theirs are really good. If you know of other places that do that in the East Bay let me know! I'm in Oakland, and the place that makes them near me doesn't compare. Anyway, welcome!

My Lithuanian ancestors would be thrilled to have chicken fried rice, no matter what. I'm sure they ate Chinese every Sunday, like we did on the upper west side of Mannahatta.

Not really surprised. L.et's hope I get another twenty years out of it. By then I'll be 97 and won't remember where the kitchen is.

I I love my Viking. It is now over 30 years old. We have needed service on it twice, neither time major, although of course service calls don't come super cheap, but that shouldn't be too surprising. It's a workhorse with heavy duty cast iron grates, Very high flame to very low simmer, easy to adjustl. We bought it with a cast iron wok grate that can be subbed in and that's fantastic. Since the Bay Area is a big city it isn't hard to find independent contractors who know how to work on Vikings. Maybe that would be challenging in a small town or in the countryside. Really my biggest complaint is that the marks on the oven dials are getting hard to read after so much use. Not critical yet, and I assume it can be remedied one way or another. I don't know if the new models are as reliable. But that goes for many appliances.

@Smithy YOU. ARE. AWESOME.

I criticize my own cooking all the time. Only then will my husband join in. But usually he softens the blow and is actually wrong about the reason something isn't as good as one hoped. If we make a recipe for the first time and it's awful, it often is the fault of the recipe. And wow, there are a lot of bad recipes out there. In a similar vein the habit of some recipe writers to include a paragraph headlined, "Why you will love this" irritates me no end. I might love it, but the odds are not good. As for menus that describe a dish as beautiful or delicious, well, I agree, that's rarely a good omen.

https://www.thekitchn.com/polenta-versus-grits-whats-the-difference-187807 This is an in-depth dive into grits vs polenta. I'm sure this information is already here on eG somewhere, but it's worth repeating. Bob's red mill medium grihnd cornmeal is a fantastic product; I use it all the time to make cornbread or to add it to baked goods that include cornmeal. My preferred type of cornmeal pudding/mush is American made grits. The good stuff is stone ground and made specifically from cornmeal sold as grits. There are a number of mills that will ship to you. This is not instant grits, by any means. You can get white grits or yellow grits and they taste a little different. Cornmeal in the Americas is typically made from "dent" corn while cornmeal made in Italy used for polenta is made from "flint" corn. Italian polenta is often made from finely ground corn. I'm sure that excellent corm meal mush can be made from just about any kind of corn and with various grinds. But my suggestion for a a baseline polenta would be to actually by an Italian product, fine ground if you are looking for a silkier texture. To my knowledge most Italian polenta is made from yellow corn, but that's the extent of my info when it comes to Italian grown flint corn. Needless to say there's a wealth of information on line about the difference between grits and polenta, and not all of it simple--or correct. I'm no expert but I do love most things corn. @Shel_B I'm glad you have come up with something that pleases you, but it does sound like a rather complicatied method.

Related to drought/lack of humidity is warming. To survive the trees have to move up the hill.

I've never seen canned pudding. Is it actually a can? If so, don't underestimate the hazards.

Thanks. It's a toss-up for me. GBP or canned peas. Neither.

What is GBP? British Pounds Sterling or Great British Peas?

I make mint chocolate brownies by simply adding some chunks of good quality mint chocolate bar to the melted chocolate. How much you use in relation to how much regular dark chocolate you use is up to you; a little goes a long way. I use Theo, but there are other bars out there, and their intensity of mint flavor varies. I'm not sure how to do it if you are only using cocoa. Of course at the end of the day, with a mint chocolate bar, you may still be getting extract. If you want to use real mint leaves I suppose you could make an infusion in whatever liquid goes in the cake.

Yep, very nice pureed and mixed with mashed potatoes. Celery root remoulade was a cocktail party trick of my mother's. Nice with a martini, dirty or with a lemon twist. You know, the kind of cocktail party where everyone has little plates and forks and it's better than dinner.

I'm sure I speak for everyone here: send a picture.

The National Wildlife Federation says this about California Bay Laurel: Leaves of the California bay laurel have been used by people to get rid of head lice and to discourage fleas. Scientists now think that dusky-footed woodrats use the aromatic leaves to keep fleas out of their nests. For some people, the oils from the leaves of this tree can be toxic. In my experience the local leaves you can pick here in the Bay Area are very intense; to my taste not particularly pleasant. For my needs dried Turkish bay leaves are just fine.