Katie Meadow

Not the liquor store, in fact Trader Joe's. Bulleit Bourbon! $19.99 a bottle. That's good, right?

Clearly the signs are legion. Many of the above can be a tip-off. For me it's when I look in the refrigerator door and see either or both of these: a row of commercial bottled salad dressings and/or a plastic lemon squeezy.

Okay, day six. By the time we finished breakfast (toast and marmalade as usual) it was late morning, so today was clearly shaping up as a linner day. Around 1pm I was staring at a picture in the SF Chron food section of a peach with caramel sauce, so I had exactly that for a snack, with a little salt sprinkled on. Excellent. By the time we got a meal together it was almost 5pm. We had more burrata (I bought two of them, and splitting one works well per meal) and one of my favorite grain salads: bulgur wheat, blanched chopped swiss chard, chopped olives, a little tomato if we have some, shallots, parsley and cilantro, garnished with toasted pine nuts. Dressing is simply lemon and a little olive oil. I've determined that what I don't like about most deli grain salads is that there is often too much dressing; that ends up being wet and usually too vinegary. Less is better, for me. Great with the burrata on the side. My husband also finished up what remained of the babaganouj and we had a fresh baguette as well. I suspect he has in mind a late mint julep (what else can be done with a pint of mint simple syrup?) and a bowl of popcorn. What's the takeaway for me? I'm thinking four or five days is about my comfort level for a vegetarian diet; I'm happy enough, but after that my body wants a real hit of animal protein. Tomorrow I have plans to make red beans 'n' rice, but I can't see making it without the ham stock that's calling to me from the freezer. So, legitimately I can't claim to have eaten strictly veg for a week, but I can claim not have had any actual chunks of meat or fish. It's hard for me to imagine life without chicken stock, at least. When it comes to food, I'm very much in favor of moderation in all things. On Tuesday two of my favorite 20-somethings are coming over for dinner and I'm working up an appetite for grilled shrimp. Two more appreciative guests I've never encountered; they eat a ton and they appear to like just about everything that walks or grows. I like a challenge cooking for picky eaters or people with food issues, but these omnivores are a kick to cook for.

The funniest part of this whole experiment is that my husband hasn't noticed yet. Typically we go two or three days without animal protein at dinner, but this is day five. Our lunches are often haphazard, so he's had a couple of turkey sandwiches, but hasn't said a word about the fact that dinners have been strictly veg. Lunch today for me was leftovers from the fridge: green beans and babaganouj with crackers. Dinner was a nostalgia casserole of rice, zucchini, tomato with fresh basil and Mexican oregano, and a very modest amount of cheese mixed in; a holdover from seventies cooking. On the side was some delicious burrata, a fennel and radish salad, and a taste of pickled mustard greens which I made from a recipe my brother uses for his homegrown greens. A bit strange all together, but no one could say it wasn't healthy.

I would expect that a vegan diet is lacking the mouthfeel of fats, but most vegetarians I know eat plenty of omelets, brie, ice cream and chocolate. Dairy and eggs is a way of getting protein on a vegetarian diet. Although most whole grains and legumes have some protein, vegans need to work hard to find sources of protein beyond tofu. And, among many of the people I know who are past 50 and who have been strict vegetarians, many are now eating fish and chicken, because they just find their bodies need it. As for very little cooking, one of my all-time favorites is uncooked tomatoes on pasta. If you cut them up and add salt and basil and let it sit for half an hour, then dump it with added butter or olive oil onto a plate of hot pasta, sprinkle with some pecorino or whatever, it's awfully satisfying. Of course the tomatoes have to be great to begin with, or it's ho-hum.

Steven I admire your ambition--and your ability to keep the ingredients straight for three types of legumes and three pots at one time. Your omelet looks yummy. I've been thinking I should probably get more protein, since most of my veg meals have had little cheese, and no eggs. Being a dedicated vegetarian would be very hard for me, since cholesterol is something I have to limit. Some of my husband's family are diehard vegetarians and they eat mountains of cheesy entrees. I have to admit, I am starting to look forward to some shrimp in a couple of days. Today's lunch was an avocado salad with red onions and a peach smoothie. This evening we made mint juleps for the first time. Really tasty, but they made me wish I had some cheese straws to go with. That bottle of Bulleit Bourbon is disappearing quickly. The rest of the meal was sort of southern too, but only if you mean southern Europe. As you noted Greek and middle eastern food lends itself to a vegetarian diet. I grilled eggplants on the barbie and made Baba Ghanouj. I love it when it's still warm. Along with that we devoured most of a baguette, Greek salads and some surprisingly flavorful blue lake beans from the farmers' market, dressed only with a squeeze of lemon, olive oil and salt. My husband is chowing down on the leftover rice pudding, but I'm too full.

This was one of those disorganized days in which I can't really figure out how to make lunch and dinner, so we have linner. Linner happens usually somewhere between 3 and 4. We might have a late cocktail hour and/or a snack or dessert later, it's rarely planned. Today there was a snack around 1pm: smoothies, made from peaches, sorbet, a little bit of vanilla ice cream, and milk. Excellent, and very peachy. I've been craving rice pudding, so I made some of that. Linner was one of my stand-by summer salads: french fingerlings, snap peas and radishes with a creamy mustardy curry dressing, served warm. It was accompanied by a very simple avocado salad, with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and some fine shreds of red baby onion. Also there were crackers and my new favorite cheese, something labeled Pecorino Classico, and which makes lovely thin curls and can also be used as a grating cheese. Surprisingly unsalty. The rice pudding is chilling, so I am guessing there will a late-night snack. And since my husband recently went on a business trip to Louisville and came back with a new-found fascination with bourbon, a shot of that may be called for as well. I'm still on a Bulleit rye kick, but now Bulleit bourbon is challenging it to a duel. Not at dawn, in case you were wondering.

Cut and run. Maybe it was just a lousy recipe. Wouldn't be the first one.

Let me be the first to admit (in this thread, anyway) that zucchini bores me to tears. However, I feel it's my duty to eat it every so often. In my gardening days I learned after the first year never to plant any of it because it pops up anyway, regardless of intent. I do love the blossoms, although I've never been that successful frying them myself. My favorite way to eat zucchini is to make pancakes. In season I add fresh corn. A generous amount of grated zukes, a little flour and minced herbs, some egg, scallion, etc. There are scads of recipes out there. They lend themselves to dress-up, and are equally good with a dollop of dairy based or tomato based stuff. Best if you grate the zucchini and salt it, let it drain, then squeeze it out before mixing into the batter. I prefer them very vegetal, and not too eggy and they don't need much more than a thin film of oil or butter to get a little crispy. You can use up a LOT of zukes this way.

Tuscan and the ubiquitous curly kale I prefer to use in soups; you can throw in the raw leaves and they cook in 20 minutes or less. Tuscan--and I assume that's the same as Cavolo Nero or Black Kale--is more delicate, so doesn't need quite so much time, I don't think. The only kale I like for a braise or quick saute is baby Russian kale, but it isn't easy to come by. For lunch we had sandwiches and slaw. A cabbage in the fridge had seen better days, but a spicy dressing hides a multitude of sins. The slaw was unusual, but very good. I used about 50/50 mayo and Fage, and added a big dollop of left-over chile salsa, plus some minced dill pickle and celery seeds. It sounds a bit weird, but it was addictive. My sandwich was cheese and pickle, once again. Okay, enough pickles already. I'm having a gin and tonic now with some TJ's blistered peanuts. Dinner will be simple: a quinoa and corn melange, with roasted green chiles. The corn is from yesterday's market, just sauteed with onions in butter, then mixed with the cooked quinoa, with chile and cilantro folded in. On the side we are having Greek salads with none of the fixings; in other words just cukes and tomatoes, olive oil, squeeze of lemon, since we have no olives or feta.

Last week and again today I purchased a kind of avocado totally new to me. The avocado people at the Berkeley Farmers' market always have terrific fruit: the stand-by Hass, and in season Pinkertons and Gwens (I love these!) But this year there's a new one called the Gillogly. I looked it up and officially it is named the Don Gillogly. Shaped like a gourd, with a sort of neck and dark skin that peels off easily, it's not quite as dense as a Hass, but it's very creamy and really fabulous. Anyone else seeing these?

On the average we eat animal protein maybe twice a week, but it just so happens that I made my shopping list for the week last night, and it is pretty much vegetarian. If there's any time of year that it's easy to make veg meals, it's now thru Sept. The only non-veg thing planned is a pot of beans. I don't put meat in it, but I use ham stock for flavor. I never eat meat for breakfast; basically it's toast with marmalade or cuernitos from the Mexican bakery. I need my carbs to feel happy. Lunch today was a cheddar cheese and pickle sandwich, using home-made bread (husband's forte, not mine.) This sandwich really needs fresh bread, I think. Today at the Berkeley farmers' market we loaded up, and everything we ate for dinner was from that trip. We had delicious corn on the cob, a salad of sliced heirloom tomatoes and avocado, and peaches for dessert. Later for a snack we'll polish off leftover key lime pie made by my talented neighbor for our 4th of July picnic in her back yard. Typically we don't eat dessert. Soba, I wish I had your talent with a camera and your dedication to artful simple meals. Everything you make looks fantastic to me.

Here is a link to a recipe for corn fritters from Fine Cooking #100. It is simple and seems foolproof, and I'm not a person who generally makes much fried food. These are not really deep-fried, so the quantity of oil isn't scary. The recipe calls for whole milk and some sour cream. I haven't bothered using sour cream in years: 2% Fage works fine here. These are addictive, and I can eat them with or without salsa. If someone else would do the cooking, I would certainly have them with maple syrup for breakfast. I'll happily eat corn on the cob daily, if the corn is good, but I also like it combined in salads with quinoa and grilled poblanos, or with bacon and fresh shelling beans and okra in a succotash, in Mexican Tortilla soup or in combined corn-zucchini pancakes. Cut off the cob and sauteed in butter (with or without basil or chives?) and just dumped over fresh tomato slices is no-fail as well. And I haven't tried making it myself yet, but there's an artisanal ice cream place around here that makes a dynamite fresh corn ice cream. With a sprinkle of sea salt and/or a drizzle of caramel it's out of this world good. http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/fresh-corn-fritters.aspx Oh, and this is great too, especially for kids, but it is a tad labor intensive. My daughter invented this when she was seven or eight and wanted to help make salad for a potluck. For a while, corn, peas and carrots were her only vegetables: Cut corn off cob, steam very briefly. Shell English peas, steam or boil very briefly, so they are still tender (Shelling peas--always a good job for someone without knife skills). Cut carrots in very small dice. Steam very briefly, or not. We dressed it with just salt and olive oil and a little squeeze of lemon, but any number of dressing could work well. If you don't put any little flaky green herbs in it most kids seem to like it.

My latest discovery: TJ's chocolate hazelnut biscotti. They are crumbly, not too sweet, addictive. They have completely replaced Famous chocolate wafer cookies in my arsenal. And they make a delicious crumb crust. I made a lemon cheesecake using about half and half graham crackers and these biscotti (I didn't have enough of either without combining them) and it was excellent.

Yes.

A week in New York seems like a good topic, so I will just add MY week in ny to this thread. When I travel I'm inclined to eat out once a day, and scrounge or even skip a meal for the remainder. Besides, I'm visiting my 93 year old mother who isn't really into destination dining, doesn't have a huge appetite and needs to have an excuse besides food to go anywhere outside her own neighborhood. I have to plan our meals carefully around activities, and there's typically only one window a day. Monday: Matinee movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams at the IFC. Only a few short blocks from there is Buvette, good according to recent reviews. We got there early so we had almost the pick of the seats. One problem: most table seats have no backs, so we opted for backed stools at the marble bar. Fortunately we got the corner seats toward the front--very nice. We got sloshed (I know I'm a cheap date, but these drinks were substantial). If you like your martini with more than a rinse of vermouth, speak up. I had a rye Manhattan that was excellent. Due to space limitations, the bar is stocked with one type of gin and one type of rye, etc. Everything was delicious. Can't remember my app, but it was great, and then I had rabbit in some kind of mustardy sauce, very tasty. Dessert, though called a Tarte Tatin, was really just an apple tart. I can bake a better Tatin. Tuesday: After seeing the miniatures show at the MAD we ate a late lunch at their restaurant, Robert. My mother reserved a window table, so you can't ask for a better view. Truth to tell, it made me a bit queasy if I lookeddown. I had a crispy-skin sea bass served with a pancake-like bed of grated potato and fennel. The pancake was crispy on the outside and creamy but still toothy inside, and fish was tender and plentiful. Really good. My mother had steak frites, which was cooked exactly as she ordered it. The frites were disappointing. Wednesday: We were invited out with a friend of my mother's for dinner at Blue Smoke. She and her friend always get the Memphis style, I ordered the Kansas. Mine were fattier and more succulent, both were good. Also liked very much the sweet potato fries, although they aren't technically fries, but they were yummy. I ordered the collards, and they weren't bad, but too salty, which is typical. Actually all the food at Blue Smoke seemed pretty salty to me. Thursday: My mother had a doctor's appnt and wanted to go to the Marimekko store, both on the upper east side. We decided to try Lukes Lobster for a late lunch. She insisted she knew exactly where it was, so I didn't bother to take the address. Mistake. Lesson learned: don't ask anyone for direx who doesn't have a smartphone. Okay, so the lobster roll was very good. Lots of large chunks of lobster, tender, toasted buttered bun and thankfully very little mayo, the way I like it: not lobster salad roll, lobster roll. My mother thought the lobster could have been tastier, but it was fresh and with good texture, and the price is right with a drink and good chips. Friday: I met an old high school friend for a walk from her place in Chelsea to Chinatown and ended up at Xi'an on Bayard. Loved the dumbwaiter, loved the waiter, loved the noodles. Ultimate comfort food. We did not have anything with a lamb's face. Saturday: We had tix to "Through a Glass Darkly" at the NY Theater workshop (really great!) so I figured my big Momofuku Noodle moment had finally come. We arrived as the doors opened. What a scene. Is it always like this or more so on the weekend? Within 15 minutes it was packed, with people waiting outside. The asparagus was dynamite, and I loved my pork belly bun. My mother I think was sort of horrified at the amount of fat in the bun, but I thought it was ethereal. We had a noodle dish that was also very good, and a so-so snap pea salad. The noise level was just too much for my mother, so we didn't linger. Sunday: My brother came to town and the three of us had a very sentimental meal at Mezzogiorno. No one ever mentions this place, but my family has been going there for many years, and it's been consistently excellent and always a lovely experience. My mother has a thing for a Sardinian white wine they always have, and it was a perfect on a warm night. My mother had a big plate of prosciutto and figs and other things, which she loved. My brother and I shared an artichoke app and the tuna carpaccio, both fantastic. Then we both had soft-shell crabs: small crabs but three of them per plate, and succulent as can be. We were both in heaven. My mother had vitello tonnato (sp?) which she liked, but it doesn't appeal to me. I think she's eaten most everything on their menu. Dessert lived up to the rest of the meal. My mother had zabaglione that was excellent, and my brother and I both had the blood orange sorbet. Three large scoops each served with a frozen mint leaf (yum!) and it was terrific. Just a snarky aside to Chez Panisse Cafe: your sorbet desserts are stingy. Mezzogiorno is not cheap; definitely the priciest meal of the week, but then we did eat a lot of food. Monday: I always fly out of NY in the later afternoon or evening, and my tradition for the day is not negotiable. I always have a chicken and rice plate (white and red sauce of course) from my favorite truck on 53rd and 6th, luckily just four blocks from my mother's apt. Never disappoints, and enough food so that I can pack the leftovers for my dinner on the plane. Since my trips to NY are typically a week, I would love to hear what others do for a week in the city. PS don't ask what happened to the line width in the first few paragraphs, but I haven't a clue how to correct it.

Okay, that's one of worst sandwiches I can imagine. It rivals one my MIL made for my husband in kindergarten: peanut butter and mayo on Wonder Bread. I'm pretty conservative about sandwiches, and stick to just a few types, and always make them exactly the same. BLT: Only in summer when tomatoes are great. Turkey: On white bread with butter and lettuce, but only if it's the day after Thanksgiving. Otherwise on a baguette or batard with garlic mayo, chopped pepperoncini, tomato, lettuce. Turkey, ham, coleslaw and Russian dressing on rye. Tuna melt: my own quirky tuna salad and my own quirky method. Cheese and Pickle: cheese and pickles can vary, within reason. Always with dijon mustard. White bread preferred. Radishes allowed in. PB and raspberry jam or PB and Nutella. Multigrain bread preferred. Rarely made except for air travel or hiking. I would jump off a bridge before I would put bananas or honey in a sandwich. Grilled cheese. Has to be cheddar, and has to be grilled w/butter in a cast iron skillet. Banh mi. On a baguette, but never sour. Must have pate, either grilled shrimp or Asian BBQ pork, mayo, Maggi, cukes, pickled daikon and carrot, cilantro, hot peppers.

Toast. It's even a beautiful word. In the UK I was served toast that had been put in a vertical rack, each slice surrounded by air on all sides. Talk about a way to cool it down fast. It was bad, but it was better than the rest of the breakfast in my hotel. Because, after all, it was just toast. Cold and flavorless and cut too thin, but it was toast. Many kinds of bread make excellent toast. Anybody who really loves toast knows that. And many kinds of toast are good with marmalade as well as butter, except of course for a bagel, but a bagel isn't toast, it's a toasted bagel. Cornbread isn't toast either, but it can be toasted. The better the bread, the better the toast. However, lousy bread can make tolerable toast if you are really in need of some toast. The reason I don't like going out for breakfast? The toast is never the way I like it. All restaurants serving breakfast should put a chrome toaster on the table and let the patrons toast it themselves, so they can have perfect toast. Only dedicated toasters make great toast. Toaster ovens never make great toast because the heating elements are too far from the bread and toast too slowly, resulting in overly dried not hot enough toast. A broiler in a regular oven might make good toast, but I've never had the patience or the desire to make toast that way. Toast should be made one piece at a time. No toast should be sitting on a plate when everyone has a piece of toast already. Stacking toast results in it's own special loss of quality and of course, ultimately, in cold toast. And cold toast means someone just doesn't care.

I have found that 2% greek yogurt (I like Fage) is a pretty good sub for sour cream and even for some of the half and half called for in a recipe . Sometimes I sub it for half of whatever fatty stuff is called for. It works mixed with mayo in a creamy potato salad. I have also used it in combo with a bit of regular half and half in mashed potatoes. I don't see how using cream cheese would cut down on the fat content. But recently I made an interesting discovery. If you treat celeriac (celery root) like potatoes, and then use about 3:1 potatoes to celery root you need far less butter or cream to make it taste creamy; and here's where a little Fage can help too. The celery root gives the mashed potatoes a silky quality and a little extra flavor. I also find that yukon golds rather than russets tend to make for a creamier less dense dish, and therefore need less dairy and less fat.

When I get a craving for an ice cream sandwich and can't find ready-made that are any good (and in fact I don't know of any), my go-to cookie is the Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer. It really does have the not-too-sweet taste of the chocolate cookie of memory. If I can wait, I will make sandwiches out of softened ice cream and then freeze them. Otherwise I just eat the cookies and the ice cream together. And that way I can use coffee ice cream instead of the standard vanilla. I do have a neighbor who has perfected the home-made ice cream sandwich and whenever she gets inspired to make them it's a major thrill.

My goal in the kitchen is to make my equipment multitask for me. That's partly to save counter space and partly to avoid washing extra dishes. I often use a broad soup bowl to transfer stuff from the cutting board to the pot, and that bowl becomes a rest for spoons or tongs or whatever tools need resting--and often it's more than just one spoon, so a "single-spoon" rest wouldn't cut the mustard. FG's rectangular dish looks like it could accommodate several long handled tools, so that would work for me too.

Mint chutney? Uses a LOT of mint, and hardly worth the labor of cleaning the food processor in small quantities. Almost any Indian cookbook has a recipe for it, and there are plenty on line as well. Fantastic with Indian vegetable dishes or with lamb. I can't locate the recipe I used to make, but I always loved it with cauliflower or potato curries. Freezes well in modest sized portions.

I'm on a rye kick, so rye is the only spirit I pay attention to these days. I love the Bulleit Rye for drinking straight, and I'm lucky to have found a source that sells it for $21.99. But for mixed drinks I think Old Overholt is the best deal, especially if you can find the liter bottle for under $20. When I run out of Bulleit I'm happy enough drinking Old Overholt straight, which is something I can't say about the only other comparably inexpensive rye I can get, which is Jim Beam. We do drink gin, especially in warmer weather, and for overall usefulness and value we've been buying the family size bottles of Bombay (not Sapphire.) I wish Plymouth and Hendricks were cheaper around here.

Let this be a lesson to me. The first problem with our last dishwasher was the broken latch, probably a 75 cent piece of plastic. It was a KA, with at least 15 years of use behind it. Of course the replacement latch was not available, this model being discontinued many years before, and for two years we had to pry it open with a grapefruit knife. I'm going to take this warning to heart. I still load as we go, but now we close the door just this side of latching it.

When exactly are you coming? No one has mentioned Michael Mina. I have not been there, but you might want to take a look at the website, particularly the bar menu. There is a long happy hour w/discounts and a small-plates menu that sounds very appealing. I could go for duck leg tacos with smoked creme fraiche. It might be a good bet if you are not too hungry after a day of eating. If you want a getaway, drive out to Marshall, on Tomales bay (hour+ from downtown) and have some Hog Island Sweets at the source. Or get them at the Ferry Building. At Marshall they provide an oyster knife if you want to open them yourself, presumably at a discount. If you are here in June, dress warmly at Tomales Bay. Dillon Beach is a great beach for walking, about 20 min from Hog Island. If you are hanging about in the Mission, Delfino's is across the street from Bi-Rite Creamery, both good. I developed an instant crush on one of the guys at the creamery, so I remember the experience almost more than the ice cream. If I was 25 again I would be there all the time. I had the salted caramel, which is awfully good. And don't forget Tartine. I can't speak for the croissants in NY, since I've never looked for one there, but Tartine's are amazing. And so is the bread pudding with fruit, and the coffee is excellent. And it's usually very crowded. I like late morning on a weekday: lots of baby strollers, dogs etc. It's been so long since I lived in the Mission (or in SF) that I feel like a tourist when I'm there. Never been to Mission Chinese, mentioned by eje, but I've heard interesting things about it. For cheap eats in the east bay, I do have a soft spot for Bette's fried chicken sandwich at Bakesale Betty's, but only if you are on this side already; I wouldn't call it a destination.