Katie Meadow

Show me the Queen of Diamonds and I can make you believe that it is.

Last night we splurged on fresh wild halibut. Has anyone else ever made "Fish in Crazy Water?" I used the pared down NYT recipe, The original I think is from Marcella Hazan and there seem to endless variations, using more or less vegetables. A little surprising the NYT recipe doesn't call for white wine along with tomatoes and water for the poaching liquid; I would add a splash next time. But with halibut it was really delicious. @Ann_T, with a crusty fresh baked baguette for slopping up the sauce this seems like the easiest most lovely way to have a great piece of fish. Although I'm always impressed by your halibut fish and chips.

Cleaning up after that sounds like a miserable chore. Maybe a bigger, smarter fridge is in your near future. So sorry! However my impression is that if we don't hear from you any number of things could be the reason. So keep talking.

The varieties of chiles that can be labelled "New Mexico Chile" are numerous. In order to be called NM chile the pure chile powder (meaning no additives) must be from peppers grown exclusively in New Mexico. I'm not sure whether or not the original strain was an anaheim variety, but I never even heard of an anaheim chile until I moved from NM to CA. When we bought long green chiles in NM they were never labeled "Anaheim." They were longer than the poblanos and brighter green. Sometimes they were specified as Hatch, presumably if they were grown in that location. They were routinely, reliably hot. The CA Anaheim, at least as sold in CA, is very very mild, and just about worthless in my opinion. Ancho chile is the dried form of ripe poblanos. I think of it as rather a medium heat when sold as powder, with a touch sweetness; a workhorse chile. Often good red chile sauces will be made from a combination of ancho and other types, depending on the kind of flavor you are after, or what chiles would be local to your area. Poblano peppers can range from hot to mild; the fresh green ones sold here in the Bay Area are typically mild, but every once in a while I can find hot ones. It isn't predictable. The Mexican supermarket near me, which, sadly, closed, used to be my best chance for hot poblanos and hot jalapeños. Then I found one vendor at one farmer's market whose poblanos were good and hot. Too bad for me, that same vendor's poblanos have been very mild since the pandemic. No idea why. My husband usually does the farmers' market run and he won't ask why.

That's right, blame your family.

I adore leftovers! Especially those I made the night before. No cooking and it's always the way I like it.Win win.

You make me feel like a curmudgeon. What a selfless act. I would just tell my husband if he wanted that he could make it himself. Lamb is peculiar; if it's not too fatty I like it, but it isn't something we eat regularly. Once in a while I make it in a stir-fry with cumin, in the northwest China style. Pre-cut kabob meat is the leanest for slicing in my experience.

Take heart. You are SOO not alone. He's nothing if not smarmy. I would never tune into anything he's on.

This topic is pretty broad. I divide the subject into several categories, all of which exclude a trip to the store:: 1) Pantry meals, when fresh supplies are low. This would include frozen beans, soup, etc., This could also mean some quick meals using tinned seafood or sandwiches of various kinds, but it often involves boiling spaghetti, doing something to an egg in a pan or popping slices of bread in the toaster. We always have a homemade red sauce and some Italian sausages in the freezer. Also linguini with canned clams is a great pantry meals. Some simple cooking and possibly a little brain work might apply. 2) Emergency, desperation and quick meals. Cheese and crackers, and hopefully there's an apple rolling around somewhere. If there's fresh bread the sandwich options are good, peanut butter and jam, cheese and pickle, etc. No real cooking or thinking necessary. Just popcorn might work for me, but my husband needs something more filling. Grilled cheese is a good option. 3) Kitchen sink meals. This means mostly putting together a meal from leftovers, scraps, and using up various partial servings which are left lurking in the fridge. It often involves the microwave, many small bowls of things, etc, A free-for-all with some negotiations. Part of the reason for this category is because of a bad habit my husband and his siblings developed growing up. Always leave a half-portion of anything, just so no other sibling can accuse you of eating it all.

I don't remember ever eating Atlantic halibut growing up on the east coast. Now on the west coast halibut is one of the few fish left that gets high marks from the Monterey Bay seafood watch. Fresh salmon is even pricier now and King salmon is suffering badly, as are the Orca who eat them. Do you not like Black Cod (aka sablefush)? Halibut and black cod ,are typically the two fish we buy, although not as often as we should. Yes, the price is high for both. But we almost never buy beef, so I consider these fish a necessary splurge. Both fish make excellent fish tacos, I think. I like halibut a lot but it's easy to overcook it. Not so for black cod which is really forgiving that way.

This is one weird thread. I don't want to go back any further than this page. I don't see how going to flea markets is shameful. It's fun, and buying crap you don't really need has always been part of it, just as finding treasures you still love after fifty years. Above is the first post by someone named Duby, That person only posted for a few months in 2011, but there's enough that's alarming in that one post. I wonder what happened to that person. Praise be that they didn't "open" any further in this thread. I can't think of anything really shameful about what I've eaten in the past. I can however think of some awful moments that involved things that came back up. When it comes to creative use of Oreos no doubt the examples are legion. I myself am not at all ashamed of the fact that if an Oreo ever comes my way I scrape off the filling into the trash. The cookies themselves aren't bad. As for ice cream, all we can do is thank our lucky stars we can afford a pint and a freezer to keep it cold. Cheers!

I carry a small bamboo utensil in my bag. It's not a spork, because one end is a fork and the other end is a spoon, but every once in a while it proves to me how indispensable it is. And how clever I am. I also carry a tiny tube of good salt. That started because once in an artisan ice cream store I ordered sweet corn ice cream. The were charging 25 cents for a sprinkle of salt and that pissed me off no end.

There is another twist favored by my husband. It's a mash-up of the classic tomato sandwich and the classic James Beard onion sandwich: Fresh white bread + great tomato + Vidalia onion slice + mayo + sprinkle of chives. This sandwich depends on unlikely timing, at least in the Bay Area. Vidalia onions are not readily available except for a small window, and that window is usually before great tomatoes make their appearance. ,, You can use another type of sweet onion, like a Walla Walla, which may give you a little leeway, but Vidalia is raoyalty.. Of course you can't call it a tomato sandwich.

Those piparra peppers are singularly dellicious. One jar doesn't last long chez moi.

Poor Eric! He's getting roasted on all sides.

Yes, growing up in NY I didn't know anything but Hellman's. I was a long-time Californian dutifully buying Best Foods after that until I started hearing about Duke's and became curious. Couldn't find it on the shelves locally in the Bay Area, so I started ordering it from Amazon. It may very well be available in some stores here but my husband does the shopping now and we are creatures of habit, so basically toggle between the same four or five places for what we need. Why Eric Kim calls Duke's "flavor-forward" is beyond me. It's just good-tasting mayo without the sugar.

You and my mother. See above.

In Vivian Howard's first book, "Deep Run Roots," her version of the sandwich is called "Elbow Lick Tomato Sandwich." Which, you must admit, is a great name. It takes at least two days just to make the bread. Another day may be devoted to finding a Cherokee Purple tomato. Those used to be reliably sold at our local farmers' market, but are scarce now. Then there's the smoked corn mayo: an outdoor grilling event followed by a blender event. She doesn't specify this, but I'm sure that when she calls for 2 eggs she means for you to go out to the coop and shove a chicken off its nest. After all, you can't charge $29 for Pepperidge Farm bread. But if you can make a sandwich with a ripe summer tomato, some decent fresh white bread and Duke's mayo and you end up licking your elbow you're there already. And if by the look on your face someones asks what you are smoking, tell them not corn.

Yes. My mother, who, despite living in Cincinnati until she ran away from home and adopted NY, and to whom the south was only endured because my grandmother lived in Miami, would have made the perfect tomato sandwich with vinaigrette instead of mayo. Then she would have picked out the tomato and tossed the bread.

But what does Barbie put on a tomato sandwich? Never mind. Where's Gabrielle Hamilton when you need her? She would know the RIGHT way to make a classic tomato sandwich. Actually I already know her answer: Hellman's, Pepperidge Farm white bread and a just-picked tomato from a Sicilian hillside garden. See directions for how to build. Slice the tomato 3/8 inches thick. Cut the slice in half moons. Then put the half moons back to make it look like whole slices. Bury the slices in mayo as if you were burying a body in a New Orleans cemetery: shallow, so you rise with the first heavenly bite. If you are going to use furikake on your sandwich, why waste your stash of Duke"s? Use Kewpie and then you only need a lousy supermarket tomato because you won't be able to taste it anyway. Hilarious topic. You gotta hand it to the NYT. Clearly a sizable number of readers spent a long time on that double page spread and got a lot of mileage out it, myself included.

Classic southern dinner last night. Shrimp n Grits: fat gulf shrimp with a light fresh sauce of cherry tomatoes, wine, shrimp stock. White grits just shipped from Marsh Hill Farm (used to be Geechie Boy). And from the farmers' market: okra dusted with cornmeal sautéed in butter. Finally padron peppers cooked on the grill. The peppers were flavorful, but many were too hot for me. We usually get shishitos, which are less meaty but seem to have a ratio of fewer hot ones. The few padrons that were mild were delicious, but once you get a hot one it's hard to appreciate the milder ones. I took tiny bites off the pointy ends to determine the heat level. If it was too hot I gave it to my husband, who seems to have developed a very high tolerance for hot stuff, while my tolerance has decreased over the years since I lived in NM. My memories of NM are very vivid and it's hard to believe I lived there so long ago in the 60's and the 70's. OMG I'm O.L.D.

Spoken like John McEnroe! Yes. Need a new take on an old standard? Add raisins. Or furikake. Or miso.Or rutabaga. Or radish greens.

My favorite summer dinner tonight! All from the farmers' market; really delicious corn on the cob, okra cooked on the barbie (not that Barbie!) and good early girls, sliced with olive oil, salt and pepper. Some kind of baby plums for dessert. Fool proof.

And why is that, do you think? Many recipes I see these days look like somebody spun a food wheel, blindfolded, and picked five ingredients to make a meal from.. Remember that thread about three ingredients that are weird together? If there was a contest to make a dish with all three Melissa Clark would win. Oh, wait, I didn't say it would be edible.

There's no doubt the tomato / mayo / white bread sandwich is a great one. One thing about Eric Kim, though, he has a knack for inventing the wheel. Again. A two page spread in the magazine just because he adds furikake? I totally agree that a great ripe tomato is essential, since there's basically nothing else going on. But good fresh bread is just as important. So yeah, timing is crucial. This sandwich, like the famous James Beard Vidalia onion sandwich is only made in our house the day my husband bakes a brioche or pullman loaf. Not to beat a dead horse, but Duke's mayo is the slather of choice for me.