Katie Meadow

It may sound ordinary, but with martinis you can't go wrong with high quality Virginia peanuts. Or Marcona almonds. Give yourself a break! Keeping those saltines warm and crispy sounds very challenging.

I assume you have tried Tokyo Market and Ranch 99?

For a house gin we often use plain old Bombay. Sapphire is pricier and I don't actually like it as much. Bombay clocks in at 43%.

Thanks, you're a doll! Some of the recipes I've found (sans sel) recommend bread flour, so experiments will be made.

A question for you bread bakers: For cocktail hour in Decatur GA my daughter needed a quick carb fix and ordered a Hawaiian Roll which was actually listed in the starters. It came as a very tall slightly squarish chunk of soft fluffy brioche-like bread with a shiny brown top embedded with large salt crystals. It was buttery on the bottom, sweet and salty and utterly delicious. At another restaurant the same thing was simply served as a bread course, also with crunchy salt on the glaze. Also delicious. Then at a funky cafe they sold sweet rolls about the shape of a Mexican sandwich roll, glazed all over that had a similar taste, plus the salt and with a buttery crisp bottom. What are these? Just Hawaiian rolls topped with salt? And why was it so common around Decatur? I've looked for supermarket Hawaiian rolls, sold in trays of a dozen, similarly lofty and glazed but without any salt crystals. No recipes on line seem to have salt crystals on top. Anyway I'm craving the sweet/salty/buttery things. So maybe my husband, currently on a brioche learning curve, can duplicate the rolls we had in GA.

Girl, you are a cheap date! I'm a cheap date when it comes to martinis; I'm under the host after just one. But chocolate is another thing. My favorite is Neuhaus from Belgium. This year we had to decide whether to buy a box of Neuhaus dark chocolates or paint the house.

Over a lifetime of cooking I've collected enough spice jars so that I can buy my spices in paper packets ("refills") and rarely need to buy anything in little bottles. This saves money, and my spice source is high quality and local, which helps. Needless to say the spice bottles are not "matchy matchy." One benefit for me is that the lids vary in color, so I've accumulated jars with red, black, white and blue tops. My spices are mostly in four shelves, each about 2 jars deep. Each shelf houses jars with one color, loosely organized by use. This is the only way my husband knows where to put back any given spice once he's removed it from the shelf. I use a labeler, since years of washing out jars makes them appear tidy and clean, without funky paper labels. Just curious: I looked at the Penzey's website and see no indication that spices can be bought without bottles. packets Do any online spice purveyors offer 2 - 4 oz packets w/o bottles? Shout-out to @weinoo: I'm impressed you have saffrons, i.e. more than one kind. Oh, my one regret is that spice bottles have not typically been square.

In fact he did. He kept all the PB and dark chocolate for himself and gave only milk chocolate to the Reese's Co.

Sounds yummy! They ship to Namibia, Argentina and Vatican City among other places, just not to the US. Why?

Finally! For father's day, a sit-down lunch that the twins approved of and were willing to eat everything and hang at the table. Bacon, which is their favorite food group, omelets with Oaxaca cheese. plantain slices fried crispy in butter, and for dessert a churro coffee cake thing. To drink, Gabrielle Hamilton's strawberry milk. Whew. The plantains here are fantastic; they ripen well and are sweet as candy.. The ones we get at home are inconsistent and not as good. We're flying back this afternoon with a Vidalia onion in our luggage. No other souvenirs from Decatur. I would pack a peck of corn if I could, but it won't fit in our suitcases. v Ooops I meant to put this in the lunch thread. I wouldn't know a SV if it hit me on the head.

Fabulous and amazing it is.

My Ninja personal blender is at least seven years old and going strong. I love it. I think it was developed to compete with the Nutri-Bullet or so-called Magic Bullet. Remember those long-winded infomercials when they first came on the scene? I bought it after using my brother's Nutri-Bullet and found that it was more powerful and just all around better than the bullet.

You're in MT, so you must mean Mountain Oysters!

I dunno about that. I had a lousy one this evening at a pricey restaurant in Atlanta. A rather weird tasting gin and a wimpy tonic. No muddled lime and no mint, just a shrimpy wedge of lime on the rim. My husband makes a really good G&T. As for the Porch Swing, before last month I thought they were made with bourbon, which I don't care for. But a few weeks ago at a wonderful converted farmhouse in Becket MA called the Dream Away Lodge I had one made with gin. They must have had the very last bottle of Pimm's on the east coast. As soon as I get back to CA I'm going to pick up a bottle and I'll be in business. Recipes vary widely when it comes to the splash of soda. Some say ginger ale is good, which I do keep in stock. I find 7-Up too sweet.

Aggrieved by my daughter's low liquor supply we went out the other day and bought gin, tonic and Carpano Antica. It's very very hot here in Atlanta. I wanted a Porch Swing, but apparently the east coast is suffering from shipping issues when it comes to Pimm's.

As @Margaret Pilgrim observed, I too thought about where we all live, but in a different way.. I'm here in Atlanta on east coast time. The twins like to wake us old folks up at 7am. By 7:30 I was browsing on my laptop and noticed @Shel_B was posting. That means you were thinking seriously about this egg at 4am Pacific Time. Really? I wish you a better night's sleep tonight.

@Neely, old and picky works for me.

No pix. The thin crust comes out blistered and spotted and a bit crackly. Structurally good enough to pick up the slice easily; not the foldable NY style I grew up with. We like a rather minimal topping, just a thin coat of sauce, modest amount of buffalo mozzarella, a few shreds of basil, and very thin slices of tomato. If you strategically place the basil under the tomato slices you get a lot of flavor and no burnt crispy leaves.

I wait until summer and buy avocados from a CA grower at the farmers' market. However, that doesn't solve the environmental problem of excessive water requirements. The amount of water needed to support the almond industry is also untenable in the end.

Thanks. The biggest problem was that the instructions said to start rotating the pizza after less than thirty seconds. The crust needed more time before it could be manipulated. The second pizza we let cook on the stone for at least a munute. Turning it as instructed proved problematic. We were able to rotate it after a minute using long tongs, which was a lot easier than trying to turn it with the recommended metal peel. Do all these outdoor ovens require you to rotate the pizza to bake evenly? And do all of them require a stone? Are there any with a steel instead? In our regular oven at home the pizza goes in, and seven minutes later it comes out with leopard spots, and when you cut it with the little wheel you can hear that satisfying crunch of a thin crust, which we prefer. We use a bit of cornmeal on the peel instead of semolina, same idea. Yes, there is a learning curve no matter how you make pizza. Just getting it right in our home oven took a few years of practice and experimentation.

One thing is for sure: there's a learning curve to these outdoor ovens. First pizza was an ungodly mess and ended up being a giant calzone, or something related to one.. The successive pizzas were better. Getting the crust done so the bottom is crisp is a work in progress.

Fried wonton wrappers are also good with creme fraiche, scallions and salmon roe and a little seaweed salad as a garnish. If you are lacking wonton wrappers potato chips work with creme fraiche and salmon roe as a dip. The ahi tuna recipe sounds great, if a little more labor intensive plus more ingredients.

Has anyone used the Solo Stove Pi Prime pizza oven? My husband makes a great crust (Forkish) I love the thin crust pizzas we make using a heavy steel in our regular Viking oven. Interior temp doesn't get above 550 degrees, but the steel has been a revelation. We are in Atlanta and it turns out my daughter's husband has purchased the above outdoor pizza oven which he doesn't yet know how to use. Nor do either of them have a clue about making a pizza dough. So our latest project as grandparent guests with free time is to learn how to use this thing and make the twins their favorite food and hopefully help their parents learn how to make a pizza pie. Cooking in other peoples' kitchens is usually a rocky proposition, but using an unfamiliar appliance is not my idea of a relaxed afternoon. Reviews generally like this oven, but apparently it can burst into flames when not required. There have been some substantial thunderstorms here lately, so perhaps our chances of burning down the deck, the house and the forested back yard are only moderate. Any hints appreciated.

Here I am, back in Atlanta. We are trying to do a lot of shopping and cotoking for our daughter's family:she's easy and appreciates most everything. Her husband not so much. He's a protein fiend, won't eat a vegetarian meal EVER. The twins turn three on Sunday, and they are getting pickier by the minute. Hard to please them all is putting it mildly, but we are trying. Patience with food inflexibility is not my strong suit. The kids get a pass, but my son-in-law is making me want to jump off a bridge. So it's back to the International Farmer's Market in Decatur. Amazing to me, there's fresh Georgia corn already; I guess I'm used to having to wait til July or August for good corn in the Bay Area. This was super fresh and super sweet. The bacon from the butcher counter is delicious. Also available were what was labeled snap beans, which I've never encountered before. They're definitely different from Blue Lakes. The internet was little help, most sites considered green beans, string beans and snap beans as interchangeable. Green beans and strignbeans are the same in my book, but not these. Anyway I cooked them long and slow with a little bacon, chopped fresh tomato, white wine, etc. The snap beans were very tasty. The beans and the corn made a fabulous dinner for me, so to please my SIL we bought a variety of sausages which were grilled by my daughter on a George Forman. A strange appliance if ever there was one. These overwhelmed working parents have a charcoal grill which they predictably don't use; it's in an annoying location and these are children who don't wait....for much of anything.

In my opinion the problem is that it's turkey. Unless you simply love turkey unconditionally, but kudos for trying! OTOH turkey soup made from roast turkey parts is the bomb. But once you've made a rich stock all the turkey parts except the necks are inedible. I love the necks with a little broth and salt. Do you remember Brennan's in Berkeley? Fabulous drinks and really good turkey necks: big ones, one per serving. Very fun. So sad when they closed.