Katie Meadow

Identifying what's properly salted is a crapshoot. If you eat out a lot, most food will probably be within your expected preferred range. Anyone who has reduced their sodium intake for one reason or another knows that the taste buds adjust after a time, and keep adjusting as the level of salt in the diet decreases. If you eat a lot of processed food and fast food, most of that stuff will also taste properly salted, no? I love salt, but I've cut way back in the past few years. I never ate a lot of fast foods or processed foods, so my tolerance level for sodium is below average, I am guessing. Mostly I don't eat out any more, and the reasons are multiple: costs far too much, the food often tastes too salty and I usually have the time and/or inclination to cook. I try to salt my food moderately while cooking, and usually end up undersalting by some amount, even to my own taste buds. So I often use a little finishing salt after plating, and always provide it to guests at the table. I have a sister-in-law who cooks with no salt at all and her food is tasteless, imho. She's the only person I know who probably considers my cooking too salty. With the exception of baked goods, I almost always cut back on the salt specified in a recipe. I used to think that restaurants in NY oversalted more than restaurants on the west coast, but I don't believe that any more; salt seems evenly distributed in all parts of the country. If the sodium content of all processed and fast foods was cut back somewhat--maybe gradually--and if many restaurants did the same, there would be a general lowering of salt tolerance in the entire population; hard to imagine that happening, however, given the vast number of people who are used to phenomenal sodium levels. To say nothing of the money it will cost the food industry to make some changes.

Thank you Frank Bruni's mother! The recent recipe in Dining for her traditional xmas eve Eggplant Macaroni is excellent. The eggplant is prepped as for eggplant parm and the noodles, sauced with your favorite red sauce, are layered in along with a modest amount of grating cheese. The whole is baked. I didn't have as much red sauce as specified but I thought it was perfect, and even better the second day. My husband topped his with a snowfall of grated cheese and that was fabulous. What I like is the simplicity, and the refreshing lack of gooey cheeses. Not that I don't love mozz and ricotta, but this is easy (and cheap) to prepare and doesn't have that "in your face" cholesterol presence. Makes a large casserole, perfect for vegetarians.

Try that heater that's in the attic. If it doesn't do the job to your satisfaction, there are lots of economically priced small space heaters--gas filled or otherwise--on the market, some mentioned above. They are quite effective, especially in a modest sized room. In addition, you might try cooking in the oven in the morning. Put together a stew of slow cooker type comfort foods the night before, and put it in the oven first thing in the morning. Using the oven (oven door closed, obviously) will still help warm the room up and not be wasteful. Or whip up some cornbread or popovers. I even find that making chicken stock in a giant pot on top of the stove heats up the kitchen, considering the pot is radiating heat for several hours non-stop. My first year of college in Wisconsin it was so frigid in my dorm room that I went to a Salvation Army store and bought an ancient popcorn popper and deconstructed it so I could sit at my desk with the exposed glowing coil beneath me. They don't make 'em like they used to, though. And I'm sure the safety aspect of my clever solution never figured in to the equation. In those days we used typewriters and threw away a lot of crumpled sheets of paper. I wouldn't be surprised if the waste paper basket was right next to the popper bottom. No science major, here.

[Manager's Note: You can read the earlier posts on this topic in Trader Joe's Products 2002-2011)] Finally my local TJ's is stocking Bulleit Rye, and not just Bulleit Bourbon. Same price for either, $19.99. And that's the same price as it is at BevMo, which also just started to carry the Rye.

My husband bakes bread (he likes kneading)and makes a mean pie dough and we make relatively simple cakes or baked desserts without a stand mixer. I've often flirted with the idea (they look so lovely!) but considering how often we would really use it, I keep balking. Most hand held mixers are pretty junky, and believe me I've been through many of them; I find a hand mixer invaluable for whipping egg whites, cream, creaming butter and sugar, etc. Finally I bit the bullet and bought one that was a little more heavy duty, the Viking. I like it a lot and it seems worth the extra $25 that it cost above most other basic hand mixers. Perhaps if you had a good hand mixer and used it for a few months it would be easier to decide how much you really want a stand mixer. And if you do decide to invest in a stand mixer, for smaller jobs you would still be glad you owned the hand one. The hand mixer thread here was very helpful to me.

What a weird thread. It has caused me to look at my peculiar storage habits and see what my reasons for up or down really are. Fine glassware (gold rims, inherited, rarely used) are stored in a closed cabinet, rims up. They get looked at more than used, so they look a lot nicer right-side up. Plus I agree with posters above that resting glassware on a thin delicate rim seems counter intuitive. Mugs. My mugs are restaurant style and have a rather flat rim. If they are not bone dry when removed from the dishwasher they hold condensation if stored upside down. I store them right-side up. All 12 get used pretty often, so I don't really worry about dust. Cheap Ikea wineglasses get stored upside down. They also get used fairly frequently, and are durable enough, so I have no rationale for this. Drinking glasses that get used frequently are stored right-side up. Those that are used not so often are stored rims down. I think it's to prevent dust settling in them, although it seems like a toss-up: dust inside or rims touching a less than pristine surface? Luckily there are only two choices. Now I might rethink and store all glassware rims up, since I am sure most glasses get used faster than visible dust can accumulate inside them--and I am pretty sure that I don't have a shelf-cleaning fetish. Frankly, in a kitchen that sees cooking every day and with wooden cabintery built in 1960 it's hard to imagine a germless dustfree environment. And here's the thing: if a glass looks dusty I will wash it before using it. Same for a rim that doesn't look spotless. Besides, I've never once had a documented episode of getting sick from drinking out of my own glassware, nor has any family member or guest. And I hate shelf paper, it's totally annoying.

How he justifies sweet potatoes or carrots being unhealthy is a great trick. Sounds like he eats carbs, though, so high calorie carbs like brown rice, bulgur wheat, pasta etc., with vegetables he WILL eat sauteed in ample olive oil might be a good start. It's always hard to see someone lose more weight than is healthy. Maybe you could convince him to see a nutritionist to help come up with a palatable diet and some new ideas that he could cook himself when he's on his own; quirky eaters are the bread and butter of nutritionists and many nutritionists have some excellent ideas for high calorie foods that don't include butter or animal fats. Peanut butter and avocados come to mind. My too-skinny daughter was told to drink orange juice for a mid-meal snack, since that's high carb as well.

I hope I'm not totally misguided in my efforts to make the stuff I own last as long as possible in good condition. No wood ever goes in our dishwasher. The handles on my knives look decent. My in-laws put all their wooden handled knives and utensils in the dishwasher and they feel unpleasantly rough and look dried out and pale. In the dishwasher thread it has been observed many times that the life of modern dishwashers is increasingly short. Other than poor quality manufacturing and the use of cheaper materials and planned obsolescence I can't imagine why. So, I try to run the dishwasher in the most economical way possible, meaning as infrequently as I can get away with. Awkward shaped plastic objects, all pots and pans and large mixing bowls get washed by hand to maximize space in the dishwasher. Because dishes can sit unwashed for more than 24 hours, I briefly rinse them before loading. I don't know how necessary this is, but I don't like opening the door and seeing large congealed food stuffs, or smelling them. I'm guessing that I am not saving money on water use by washing pots and pans by hand, but hopefully I'm extending the life of the machine. Personally I would rather pay the water bill than buy a new dishwasher every three years.

Typically we have guests and make Coq au Vin on New Year's Day, but this year we are having Cheatin' Heart Chicken as part of a border meal; and that would be the Louisiana-Texas border. The cheatin' part is because I have leftover turkey gumbo sauce and I'm going to cook chicken in it for an incredibly easy dish over rice. Along with this will be buttermilk slaw and vegetable pickles (very fiery as it turns out, due to an unusually hot batch of jalapenos), both from the Homesick Texan cookbook (great gift, thanks hon!), chard in the manner of collards, and cornbread. For dessert there will be a very high-class jello mold (anything molded counts as southern, right?): fresh pure blood orange juice mold (nothing in it but gelatin and a coupla Tbsps of sugar) served with brandied whipped cream and chocolate cookies. Ooh, maybe I should sub bourbon for the brandy? There will be cheese straws and edamame for simple apps, so that's how the beans get in.

Living in New Mexico for a number of years during the late sixties and early seventies I've eaten my share of pinto beans. I did not become a big fan of beans then. It's only been the last few years that I branched out and began trying other types of beans and discovered how different they all are in flavor, texture, depth of pot liquor, etc. It's been so long since I had pintos from NM that I really don't remember what they were like. I have tried RG's pintos and found them a bit bland and typical of most pintos in that they don't hold their shape very well and tend to melt; great for refritos I suppose. What I always wanted from a pinto I discovered in rattlesnakes, which I am lead to believe is a cousin of the pinto. The only place I have found to buy good ones is Purcell Mountain Farms. I would suggest that anyone looking for a pinto-like bean with deeper flavor and firmer texture try them. If RG ever goes into the rattler business, I'm so there. Any dish you can call 'Snakes in a Pot can't be bad, and they don't taste like chicken. The Good Mother Stallard beans are my favorites of all Steve's inventory (of the ones I have tried so far, anyway.)

So far the best price for Ortiz that I can find is at Berkeley Bowl, and they are pretty reliable about keeping it in stock. They sell smaller cans of Ortiz and it is cheaper by the pound that way than buying a jar or large can at, say, the Pasta Shop. Still not cheap, but presumably because it is bonito--and therefore a smaller type of tuna--it has less mercury. Your cat must be awfully picky. I'm sure the fresh fish counter at the Bowl has something he will like.

Recently I've discovered Trader Joe's brioche bread. It is an extremely useful product--especially if you need stale brioche bread for french toast or bread pudding, since it is pretty much stale as soon as you buy it. Actually I very much like it for toast.

djyee, that looks yummy. Did you take a workshop from Kasma? I took one the summer before last, though we did not make that dish.

Wow, no new posts since 2009? Last year my daughter and I got Baking with Julia for my husband. It was a success. He's a pretty good baker, but has limited technique, and still makes some basic loaves he learned from the Tassajara Bread Book way back when, but he's starting to branch out. He makes a lot of bread for sandwiches, and it has to be toastable. Mostly we don't eat sweet breads. We own exactly two other bread books, besides the crumbling Tassajara and the Julia book: Glezer's Artisan Baking and an ancient copy of Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery, which I have rarely seen him look at. I want to get him another bread book, since he seems inclined to leaf through options when contemplating what to bake next. I'm thinking Reinhart's Crust and Crumb or Carol Field's Italian Baker. What are some ideas for more recent publications that you bread bakers have liked?

The only source of grease in these cookies is the oil from the peanut butter, so if DH drains off the oil before you make them that is the likely sticking culprit. I'm not much of a baker, and frankly the science of baking mostly eludes me, but in my experience most other recipes for peanut butter cookies use less pb and additional butter to compensate (not to mention flour.)

Don't recall a serious sticking problem. They are delicate though, and tend toward the crumbly, so you have to be gentle getting them off the sheet. Maybe a silpat or even just parchment paper would help. Perhaps some peanut butter has a higher oil content than others and has less tendency to stick? As for the sweet factor, I probably cut back a little on the sugar as well, since that's always my natural inclination. Did you start with salted peanut butter? Adams pb is in fact pretty salty if you just eat it out of the jar on a spoon.

Yes, great story. At least with this southern tradition you are on alert for the metal in your mouthful. One new years day a zillion years ago my family was in the the Yucatan and we were served venison. I got the buckshot and broke a tooth. The rest of the day is a blur.

Andie, my chile paste was rojo, made from dried New Mexico chiles that I prepared a la Rick Bayless. If you get some decent hot chiles you can make a lot of red chile paste and freeze it in small amounts. When I lived in NM that was the staple during winter and spring when fresh green chiles were not available, and it was very typical to add it to beans or posole at the end, often just serving it separately so people could add it to taste, which was good, because it was really fiery. In those days I'm guessing they were dried hatch chiles. But these chiles I used were absurdly mild, not typical for NM dried chiles. I've had better luck using a mix of dried pasillas and guajillos which are sold in bulk at Mi Pueblo. Different flavor, though. I'm sure beans for the new year is a tradition somewhere. I'm looking forward to trying the Mayacobas next.

So I made my version of Sopa Tarasca last night. The beans were soaked for about 4 or 5 hours first. White onion, a little bit of minced carrot and then garlic was sauteed in bacon fat, then the drained beans were added to coat and 6 or 7 cups of chicken stock. The beans were boiled for 5 minutes, then turned down very low. I added Oregano Indio, fresh thyme and a couple of small dried red chiles, and a bay leaf. While the beans were cooking I roasted some really nice canned tomatoes from Dirty Girl Produce that I bought at the farmers' market recently. After roasting I mashed the tomatoes up with their juices and a generous amount of chile paste made from New Mexico chiles. I had to add a lot, because for some reason these chiles were very mild. I sauteed another half onion, some garlic, dumped in the tomato chile mix and some salt, warmed it up and set it aside. After two hours I added some more salt and the chile mixture to the beans, simmered the pot another 15 minutes and considered it done. I forgot to buy any corn tortillas, so I served it with queso fresco, chopped cilantro, crema and a little raw white onion. Excellent with toppings. I'm sorry my chile wasn't hotter. The Bolita beans were very tasty, but they had more of a potatoey texture than I expected. I think I would have been just as happy using my Rattlers, but I like this technique of adding tomatoes toward the end; it is a different flavor than if the tomato is added at the beginning with the broth.

I don't believe I've ever knowingly eaten olive loaf. If they sold it at Barney Greengrass my parents must have either been clueless or careful to avoid it. I had to google it just to see a picture. Yes, it does look vaguely familiar with pimento-stuffed green olives, so I must have seen it in my peripheral vision once or many times. It seems there are two camps when it comes to nostalgia for olive loaf: those who swear by it on rye with mustard, and then this guy, although since his concussion he may not be very reliable. http://blogs.poughkeepsiejournal.com/bobmillersmusings/2011/05/29/olive-loaf-anyone/

Okay, I haven't had a first date in 30 years, but here's what I remember from first date meals. Don't overdo it on the rich sauce or red meat or the cheese or cream. First dates are usually--especially if you are cooking for someone--not the most relaxed events. Meals heavy in animal protein that are accompanied by dense red wines do not always leave one feeling witty or light on one's feet. And can the anchovies, unless you already know this person really well. Just a personal and somewhat different take on this.

Just back from an expedition to my local supermercado and noticed for the first time they are selling peruanos and flor de mayos in bulk. Dunno if I just missed them before, or if selling them in barrels alongside Pintos is a new thing for them. Anyway, two questions: is there a diference between peruanos and mayacobas, or are they essentially the same bean? How do you like to use them? Would they be good for refritos?

EatNopales, I'll let you know what I do and how it turns out at the end of the week. My beans are never fatty, since I defat my stock--whether pork or chicken--before using it. My plan is now to add roasted tomatoes and garlic at the end, along with the chile rojo and salt, for the last ten or fifteen minutes of cooking. In a traditional Tarasca, when is the chile added? Looks like from a variety of pix that a dried chile is added whole. Can't wait to try something new! Country, you might try the Rebosero beans. I've used them in place of Pintos (when I couldn't get my precious Rattlers.) They are very nice, and might be a good taste test along side RG Pintos and grocery shelf beans.

EatNopales, what would make the recipe something other than pre-hispanic? And another question: I notice that most recipes for Sopa Tarasca call for adding the onion and tomatoes after the beans are cooked. Typically when I make a pot of beans, be it for red beans 'n rice or a more New Mexican style, I saute the onions and garlic, etc. first, then add the beans and then the stock, whether chicken or ham based, so the beans cook in the stock rather than in plain water. If I am using tomatoes (I usually don't) I would think to add them along with the stock, or at least early on. Does this particular Michoacan soup get its character from adding tomatoes late in the game, which I can imagine would be a fresher taste?

EatNopales you've given me a good idea. Never had Sopa Tarasca, but I looked up some recipes and it sounds yummy. One of my dream trips is to go to Patzcuaro for Day of the Dead. Since I have some red chile paste in the freezer that I made with anchos and guajillos and plenty of chicken broth in there as well, I'm going to make my own deconstructed version of Sopa Tarasca. By deconstructed I just mean I prefer to leave the beans whole rather than blending them up, but I will use the traditional tomato, with fried tortilla strips and some queso fresco for garnish.