Katie Meadow

Sad to leave Asheville. Next time we will stay longer. We stopped off on the way out of town at Hole Doughnuts, which are, I'm sure, the best doughnuts on earth. There's inside and outside seating. This time it was gloomy and chilly, so we ate inside. All doughnuts are fried to order, and you can watch them behind the counter rolling the dough and frying your doughnuts. The menu has not changed. All are yeasted. There's vanilla glazed, cinnamon sugar, and my go-to: the toasted almond sesame. There is a fourth one that varies weekly. This time it was blueberry. I'm not a person who ordinarily eats doughnuts but if this place existed at home I would weigh 400 lbs. We arrived at our daughter's with an obscene number of doughnuts and two enormous loaves of Owl Bakery bread. If I had my life to live over again I would go to Black Mountain College, which of course is no more, although there is a wonderful museum dedicated to the artists who taught there and their students. That museum is not in Black Mountain, but in downtown Asheville. The current show is lovely.

So High Rise guy is two for two. Dinner at Zambra was out of this world. It's Tapas. The wine list is head-spinning. I started with a lovely sparkly rose cava that came in its own little bottle which amounted to two full glasses. I wish I could accurately remember what we ate, but it's now the morning after. The plates were generous. The Patatas Bravas were the best ever. A salad of crisped chickpeas and arugula and little shavings of preserved lemon was so great there's no way I can talk about it. A bowl of mussels was so exotic and spicy and abundant we had to request more toasts to go with it, which they happily provided. Everyone was gracious. For dessert we shared a Basque cheesecake and an outrageous espresso martini. It had a lot of ingredients: cinnamon infused vodka and god knows what else. There was a bit of foam on the surface in which three expresso beans floated. Zambra is DARK. A problem apparently for no one there but me. They found us a very nice table under a window, so I could actually see my food for a while. By dessert the sun was long gone so I couldn't see the cheesecake on my plate, but everywhere I put my fork was delicioust. Unlike our first night, downtown was hopping, which was very reassuring. This morning we are off to Hole Doughnuts and Owl Bakery to take some great treats to the granddaughters. And by the way, Owl Bakery makes an unbelievable dark 100 % rye bread. I've been thinking about it for two years.

So great being back in Asheville! Here for just a couple of days. Crossed the bridge over the French Broad River for breakfast. It's raining so we decided against checking out the River Arts District, but the view from the bridge gives you a sense of disturbance, but you can't see the details of the damage to that area up close. Yesterday afternoon was brilliantly sunny and chilly, but warm enough to stop for an afternoon refresher on an outdoor patio. They had High Rise Soda, which has 5mg THC; I had a can of blood orange, and yes, an hour later I was marveling at how well I had packed, gawking at the beautiful white tile walk in shower all lit up from the south-facing windows. High up on the third floor, and high. Downtown seems relatively the same, but quiet, which wasn't the case two years ago in late April. We had an early nostalgia dinner of soup dumplings. Oh, about breakfast this morning at Sunny Point Cafe in West Asheville. This was a recommendation of the server who brought me the High Rise Soda. I don't love eating breakfast out, but this place was fabulous. It was packed and adorable. I will never go out for breakfast anywhere else in Asheville ever again. Fried green tomatoes, excellent, which isn't always the case. Smoked salmon on crispy hash browns on arugula with some kind of amazing. cream-cheesy drizzle. Shrimp and Grits fantastic: spicy, creamy, served with some kind of grilled slab bacon. Biscuit good, but not as good as my husband makes. In-house blueberry jam to make up for it though, so win win. We sat next to a very nice calm black dog, who did not appear to be a service dog. If you find yourself in Asheville, go. Of course If you are lucky enough to have two breakfasts in Asheville the other one should be Hole Doughnuts, which is where we are going tomorrow morning before driving to Atlanta. Dinner tonight is also a recommendation from the High Rise guy, who, after our breakfast this morning, has risen way up in my admiration. Later, that.

Toughen up, people! Crusty Baguette, fruit leather, salted caramels, chunky peanut butter, raw fennel salad, Mexican hot dog, fried chicken sandwich with spicy slaw. If not, rice pudding, a smoothie of carrot juice and orange juice, chocolate mousse, stewed rhubarb, Vietnamese Egg Coffee, cotton candy, pure fruit popsicles, home made blood orange jello and anything requiring an immersion blender. Hope it goes well!

No we aren't.

You don't think he bakes all night?

Kill me now, @Pete Fred. If you don't have a guest room I'll sleep on your couch.

Brilliant, @liuzhou A performance of great range and depth!

As for commercial strawbs Driscoll's is ubiquitous here in CA and elsewhere, although smaller operations do sell commercially here. In season, the alternative is our farmers' markets. My daughter in Atlanta buys boatloads of strawberries as the twins devour them. When I'm in Atlanta later this month and doing some shopping for her I'll look for Florida produce. I can't say I've noticed any difference in the berries when I'm there, but that proves nothing.

Plastic explosives often have a tactile feel like molding clay, right? So, like toffee.

I just cooked a package of Mayan Beans. Really good! I'm very committed to Domingo Rojo and these are definitely comparable, but smaller, and a little different in texture, very creamy. I ordered them a couple of months ago, but they are unavailable now. I used them to make Red Beans and Rice. Highly recommend when they come back in stock.

I have one of these tomato presses. They are not well designed, but they do work and they are relatively cheap. And best of all it's great looking and a fabulous color. Tomato Strainer, Tomato Juicer Sauce Maker Machine Suction Cup Base Hand Crank Food Mill Press with Stainless Steel Filter for Fruit Vegetables (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

And @Neely one more anti-slime okra treatment is my husband's adaptation of Vivian Howard's Okra Oven Fries. Heat the oven to 400F. Slice the pods in half lengthwise, cutting off the stem end if you like. Toss the okra halves with olive oil, salt, pepper, and any other spice of choice. Howard suggests ground coriander, we like smoked paprika. Place the halves cut side down on a baking sheet.Don't crowd them. Roast for 15 minutes. Turn the halves over and roast another 15 minutes or more to desired crispness. The pieces should be partly browned, partly crispy, partly a little soft. Really great for cocktail hour with a Bloody Mary. Or with a Porch Swing. Or on a porch swing.

I've often seen red bell peppers combined with tomatoes for a soup. A little tomato might reduce the bitterness and also support good color. I'm surprised your roasted peppers were bitter. Usually I find roasted red pepper dressed with salt and olive oil (when done by myself) to be pretty sweet. I've roasted tomatoes with a sprinkle of brown sugar, so as suggested above, sugar might help, and cream too.

Pain meds yes, but also a gummy.

Those compostable bags present a new problem. In my experience they shorten the life of some produce, especially fresh herbs if stored in the fridge because they seem to encourage condensation and get very damp. One solution that helps is to wrap the herbs in paper towels inside the bags. But then of course you are using paper towels, which also should be avoided.

There's a toney market that we rarely shop at but we were in the neighborhood and needed bread. Organic pasture-raised eggs were $14.99 a dozen! That's some kind of record for our neck of the woods. We need eggs but not that badly.

I see chile or chili as being about the most adaptable of meals in America, so calling a "bowl of red" authentic can mean many things to many people in many places. That said, the problem with using brisket already cooked is this: how do you get a meaty broth if you are not simmering the meat yourself? As for BBQ, if you fancy that in a chile, it would be more like Brunswick Stew in parts of the South, but typically it's pork. But you could invent a Texas version with brisket. Although that might already be a thing.

@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.