Katie Meadow

For a fabulous breakfast or brunch try Tartine in the Mission. I've always avoided it on weekends, but during the week, both times I've been recently, there's a crowd of babies, parents (and dogs, but only at outside tables) ensconced for leisurely morning hours. May is often quite nice, so outside may be a good bet. Best croissant in the Bay Area, I think. And the fruity bread pudding is a close second. That would have been right up my daughter's alley when she was six months. That and a cold beer. And the dogs provide extra entertainment.

Of course ruining expensive ingredients is annoying, but I'm not sure it's something to cry over. All-around bad cooking like the Thanksgiving meal described above isn't worth crying over either, especially if someone else did the cooking. Let's put a positive spin on this. Any meal that incompetent and awful should be turned artfully into a good story for later, and be a source of laughter, not tears. As I practice cooking over the years, making mistakes and learning from them, I am more and more amazed at how dreadfully many Americans eat--and for so many reasons. Some people eat only in their comfort zone and only what they grew up with--and that might be good down-home from scratch cooking or it might be the use of heavily processed ingredients and a reliance on dried soup mixes, Kraft parmesan cheese, etc. My mother never had anyone to teach her anything about cooking. She was a pretty bad cook for the most part. A few things she managed to get right if she had the luck of using a good recipe, but she never got down most basic techniques, and many mistakes became ingrained habits just because she got hold of the wrong recipe 60 years ago. Almost everything I learned from her had to be unlearned. That's sad, but sort of laughable. So, positive. I want to eat a meal that makes me cry because it's so wonderful and not because it's so dreadful. When I first heard about Grant Achatz's signature dish with the burning leaves I thought that could make me cry. Although I think living in the Bay Area where no one burns leaves routinely means that I'm just as likely to weep with nostalgia at the smell of burning leaves as I am at the food that comes with. That, or the smoke is irritating my contact lenses.

One of my most memorable meals was a grilled steak that sat atop a mound of barley that had been cooked with moderately peaty scotch. No idea how it was done or how much scotch went into the liquid, but it was fabulous.

Blether, I rarely have enough fresh tomatoes to use up making ketchup, and if I did I would probably use them for something else. My confession: I use Italian San Marzano canned tomatoes for my ketchup, along with onion, cider vinegar, some source of sweetness or combo thereof, dry mustard, allspice, ginger, ground celery seed, cinnamon and cloves and either a little cayenne or the late addition of a dollop of good BBQ sauce to get a little smoke and heat in the mix. With fresh tomatoes I can so imagine making something better, but this ain't bad and only takes an hour, total.

I do a couple of things that are maybe unusual. The first is that I now use Ortiz Bonito del Norte instead of regular tuna. Please tell me if I am fooling myself, but my understanding is that bonito is a small type of tuna, so supposedly the mercury content is far less. It's pricey, but very good, always packed in oil. I pour off most of the oil. The other thing I do is to add my lettuce to the actual salad. Very finely shredded romaine gets mixed in to the salad along with mayo and the following, finely chopped: celery, a little red onion, pickled jalapeno. In summer I might add a little chopped tomato, but I prefer the tomato on the side. Sometimes I sprinkle on a bit of sweet smoked paprika. Works great in a sandwich, tuna melt or just on crackers. I've never put capers in my tuna salad, but I could see that. And the Bayliss recipe sounds yummy. As for celery, well, if I didn't have any celery I wouldn't make tuna salad, I'd just make a peanut butter sandwich.

One thing I find a little strange is that most veggie burgers rely on some type of grain for structure and are then eaten between two pieces of grain. I can see enjoying some of these veggie patty concoctions with a dip or sauce more than as a sandwich. Legume-veggie combo is a little different. For me the ultimate veggie burger is a falafel in pita, with tahini dressing and chopped cukes, tomato etc. Hold the ketchup.

Ketchup, yes, you're missing out. I make my own and Heinz tastes like a very pale imitation. It only takes an hour, uses relatively cheap ingredients you probably already have in your pantry, lasts a long time in the fridge. The flavors can be played with (for instance by using maple syrup, brown sugar or Lyle's Golden instead of corn syrup) and it's dynamite on a hamburger.

My mother was a hopeless cook. My dad made a few things really well: lox omelette, chopped chicken liver (always with chopped egg and cognac!), and summer salad of cukes, radishes and cottage cheese with lots of salt and pepper. When I make any of these, which isn't very often, I pretty much make them exactly as he did. I also make scrambled eggs the way he did, in browned butter, cooked fast.

After a second tasting I had to admit that the Rhubarb bitters tasted a lot like cherry cough syrup. Maybe it can be used in combo with Angostura for a more bitter cherry flavor in a Manhattan? I haven't had a chance to experiment with it since I'm in NY now, but I guess I didn't expect it to be so sweet. My only experience with bitters is pretty limited, and we typically only have Angostura, Peychaud's and Regan's orange in the house.

Ouch ouch. Can anyone explain this price disparity? At Ledger's in Berkeley we bought a bottle of Bulleit for $21. Now I'm in NY and today I shopped my mother's midtown neighborhood (admittedly pricey all around) for some rye to last me the week. Did find one place that sells Bulleit....for $52 a bottle! How's that even possible? No Rittenhouse (so elusive!), no Redemption. So I settled for comfy Old Overholt, which only cost me a few dollars more than I pay at home. I don't plan to keep searching, but I'm curious to know if east coast prices are typically higher.

Marmalade, that's me too. Goes on every kind of toast I eat. But the one thing I don't use it on is a PB sandwich, although I don't know why not. Perhaps it's plain stinginess. Since we make our own marmalade it seems wasteful to use the quantity necessary for a PB sandwich. With the exception of one jar of homemade concord grape jelly I was gifted (good!) I don't think I've had jelly in 30 years. For PBJ I like any kind of tart jam or preserves--raspberry, sour cherry or plum, strawberry-rhubarb. I don't think delicate flavors like peach or apricot stand up to salty PB, and I find most straight strawberry products too sweet. What is Mayhaw jelly?

Speaking as someone who is very unlikely to buy the book(s), I thought the NYT review was pretty well balanced. The Times Dining section must appeal to a huge variety of cooks and readers; I venture to say there must be plenty of readers who never even heard of the eminent doctor until this morning, and many of us who have read snippets about it or see the chatter on places like eG and who (by that I mean me) greatly appreciate an actual review of the book so they don't have to admit their general ignorance about the new food science here. I'm interested in the subject, but not about to plunge in. Ruhlman's review seemed careful and thoughtful and aimed at a broad audience. I'm glad to know that if I had a pressure cooker I could make really great stock in small batches, so when my library gets a copy (probably never) I can just get that volume, if someone tells me which one it is. Not having a pressure cooker is a minor stumbling block, to say nothing of all the other equipment. Of course the review also brought out the part of me that wants to run screaming back under the covers with a copy of Laurie Colwin. All good.

Which recipe is this one you mentioned? I am about to cook for a large group of men and this sounds interesting. Thanks, Kay The recipe is called One-Pan Sage and Onion Chicken and Sausage and is easily googled. I made a number of changes: obviously I didn't use a whole cut up chicken, I just bought attached leg-thigh pieces. I tried the sausage with it the first time I made it, but two things happened that I didn't like: the sausages leaked a ton of grease and they ended up tasting rather dry. I'm not a big sausage fan anyway, so I just leave them out and compensate by using a tad more olive oil in the marinade or a very modest splash of broth. Boiling potatoes cut in half and carrots cut in 3rds went in with everything else. The carrots were fantastic. The onions also are fabulous, so be generous with them in the marinade. Considering the lemony flavor of the dish, artichoke hearts might be good too, but I haven't tried that and it and it isn't exactly a frugal addition. I don't keep English mustard around, whatever that is, so I just used dijon. This dish is super easy and believe it or not the skin-side up chicken gets very crispy, as if dry roasted, since the liquid ingredients don't cover the top half. The fresh sage is dynamite. Tips: planning ahead is necessary, since this is best prepped with the marinade the night before (saving you time the next day!) and make sure you have bags that double-seal since the packages in your fridge will be very squidgy, as Nigella would say. I served it with white rice and a simple room temp beet salad on the side.

I catch my own lobsters. Well, no. When my husband was unemployed I started making a giant pot of beans once a week. Sometimes red beans and rice, sometimes southwestern style. The only pricey component is the ham shanks for the stock, but I make enough stock at one time to produce about five big pots of beans, so ultimately each serving of beans is pretty cheap. Now I'm a devotee. But the quality of the beans makes a big difference, so buying the cheapest beans doesn't always pay. I too am a big fan of using poached chicken in soups and rice salads, rather than just eating large hunks of it. But for a company dish, one of my most economical has been a Nigella Lawson baked dish for which I only use leg-thigh pieces. The dish is incredibly adaptable and you can bake all kinds of basic veggies along with the chicken, such as carrots, onions, potatoes. The marinade makes this dish distinctive and anyone who eats it will be a convert to dark meat, and that includes my husband.

Fage plain 7oz (what they consider single serving) low fat (2%) is 130 calories. I just checked the only one I have in the fridge. Not many more calories than the 8oz 0% that Steven mentions above. I'm surprised there's so little different between the low and the nonfat. It strikes me as weird that your containers are 8 oz and mine is 7oz. I only ever buy the 2% any more, so that's all I know.

You could try Rhea's Deli on Valencia. I've never been there but it's in a market with a variety of Asian food products and apparently they make a Korean sandwich that's very good. If you are hanging out in the Mission, you might brave the line at Tartine and see if they have some type of French style loaf that would work for you. And of course then you could get a croissant or the bread pudding, both of which are out of this world. I make Banh mi frequently. I'm pretty happy using Acme Rustic baguettes for mine; a bit crunchier than a traditional Viet roll, but really, one of the best baguettes in the Bay Area, I think.

Clearly without legislation most of us earthlings are not able to regulate our food sources so they are protected from extinction, free from mercury and other harmful chemicals, or sustainably fished or hunted. Good-bye Passenger Pigeon, true cod, Chilean Sea bass, Bluefin Tuna, etc, etc. I'm sure we can all name something we grew up eating and have a wonderful ritualistic feeling about that is either no longer available or unhealthy. If you are going to decimate the planet, that's what you get. Maybe when we were bringing down a skyful of passenger pigeons we didn't know any better. But we do now. Why is it okay for any given cultural habit not to be scrutinized and evaluated as to whether or not it's a practice harmful to the planet? Why should science and progress be trumped by traditional food practices that can only end badly anyway? As for sharks, the population is way way down, the practice of finning is cruel, causing the shark to die slowly as it sinks to the ocean floor, to say nothing of the fact that they are full of mercury anyway. And honestly, although there are not plenty of other fish in the sea, there are plenty of other nutritious soups. If a culture depends upon only one source of food for its livelihood, they better come up with a way to farm it. And if a cultural food practice is deemed necessary to maintaining the culture itself, well, maybe that culture needs to adapt. How much evidence do we need that adaptation to new circumstances is a positive thing? And of course the darker side isn't about the end of cultural traditions, it's about money. The value of shark fins or tiger penises or ivory just keeps going up the fewer sharks, tigers and elephants there are. There is certainly a generational component. My daughter and her friends have grown up in a different world than I did; they are by nature and nurture more ecologically savvy than we were at their age, or than many of us are now. Given the scientific advances in the last 30 years and the increased awareness of just how fragile our ecosystem is, wouldn't you hope so?

That sounds yummy, I'm on it. Just have to get some Aperol.

Okay, so I'm now the proud owner of a little bottle of Fee's rhubarb bitters. What to do with it? We are most likely to mix drinks using gin or rye. I'm thinking a rhubarb rye Manhattan would be nice. Actually I've sampled it straight and I can't say as I get much rhubarb flavor, more like cherry. Actually I'm starting to wish I had a hunk of freshly baked pumpernickel bread and a bowl of tart warm rhubarb. Any ideas for drinks using rhubarb bitters?

eje, thanks so much for the Ledger's tip. I never knew about it, but I've driven by it a zillion times. Incredibly sweet people. So, I bit--bought--the Bulleit. It's delicious! And price seems great, compared to Redemption. The Redemption is $27.99 and the Bulleit is $21.99 at Ledgers. BevMo is now selling Redemption for the same price, but other places sell it for more.

Chobani 2 percent yogurt seems to be an elusive product here as well. I only ever see the non-fat. So for now, I'm very happy with the 2 percent Fage. I think the whole milk Fage is a pretty convincing imposter when it comes to sour cream. Another interesting yogurt comes from Old Chatham Sheepherding Co, and that's probably easier to get for you on the east coast. Yes, it is sheep's milk, and I think the plain is delicious. Maple isn't bad, but I don't usually buy flavored yogurt. Old Chatham actually tastes like the yogurt I had in Greece--more than either Chobani or Fage does--so I suspect that what I had in Crete was a sheep's milk product.

Field trip to Ledger's scheduled for tomorrow, thanks! Blackhawk maybe not so convenient, but I'll try to remember next time I pass by that way.

I'll be visiting my mother in midtown in a couple of weeks and need to fortify myself since she's cranky these days. Where can I find a good selection of ryes (and decent prices) walking distance from 6th Ave and 57th St? The selection of ryes here in the east bay seems limited. I've finally located a source for Redemption, and I like that very much. To me it seems rather delicate (yes, apple-y) in flavor, and I like it for sipping. I've never seen any Rittenhouse here, but I would try it if I found some in NY. Any shopping tips?

If I turn my head 120 degrees I can see my ancient ceramic Dundee jar, filled with funky paint brushes. Just consider. Do you think it is possible that when we all first tasted this stuff, which, for those of us not born into a marmalade culture was new and exotic, it tasted a lot more bitter and grown-up than the same recipe would today?

I agree that puffins are bad, but Barbara's oat squares are quite good, and they keep their crunch.