Katie Meadow

I've eaten pasta cooked a variety of ways by many different people over the years; cold water to start, minimum total water, cooking at a simmer. The best taste and texture seems to result from starting pasta in a generous amount of water that's at a rolling boil, with salt added when it starts to boil. That way the water has the best chance of keeping at a continuous boil and the most consistently al dente pasta results. If you aren't convinced, try cooking pasta in cold water or very little water, and see what you think of it. It's a relatively cheap experiment. I was taught never to drink or use hot water from the tap except for washing dishes; my mom believed that the hot water tap carries more impurities than cold. I don't know if that's really true, but like so many other things I do I don't have science to back me up. So, it takes a few extra minutes to bring cold water to a boil. Yes, that can definitely be annoying with a gas range that is underpowered, and I can see the temptation to start with the hottest water possible. But I don't. And I don't pay much attention to the recommended cooking time on the box. I just taste it frequently during the final minutes. One thing I've noticed is that spaghetti often continues to cook while draining (and I learned to NEVER rinse pasta with cold water if you are eating it hot), so I take it out about 30 seconds before I think it's perfect.

Our default drink when we seem to run out of fun ingredients is a martini with a twist. However, if I did what you did, Chris, I would most likely be in a state where a xanax would be my next move.

For how long were the olives in the jar before the top blew? I would be careful, if I were you. I don't think I would eat them. I have no idea how you cured or preserved your olives, but olives that are cured and not brined in any way should be eaten very soon after bottling. My FIL cures delicious olives and does not salt them; no one in the family keeps them beyond a week or ten days.

I buy Strauss organic non-homogenized milk in returnable bottles. It's delicious, and you have the option of scraping out the plug of top cream to use for whatever fun you can think of. It must be sort of like clotted cream--that plug is halfway to butter most of the time.

Unlike a coffee grinder, the modest sized grinding bowl of a dedicated nut and spice grinder such as the Cuisinart actually detaches and is easily washed, plus the whole operation seems to have fewer nooks and crannies for ground spices to stick. It's a bit more of an investment that just getting a second small coffee mill, but it's use for making small quantities of ground or chopped nuts or even flours is a bonus. The Cuisinart retails for something like $49 and I am guessing the blade will last longer than the blade in a coffee grinder. It's really a great gadget, and I'm not gadget-mad. In my opinion works far better for spices and very hard seeds or grains than a coffee mill.

We would come to blows over a good nectarine when I grew up. Clafouti seems to work with peaches and plums, so it would be yummy with nectarines too. I would assume nectarines could sub for peaches most of the time. I can't see the downside of a nectarine pie; I like a nectarine cobbler with a biscuit crust. Mmm.

Most useful gadget this year is the Cuisinart spice/nut grinder. My husband uses it to make small quantities of specialty flour when he bakes bread. We have made spice rubs for various grilled meats. And it's perfect for nuts if they need to be finely chopped or ground. It holds at least twice the volume of a coffee mill, but best of all, having a dedicated grinder for everything besides coffee saves wear and tear on the irreplaceable blade in my venerable coffee grinder.

The Bowl has black-eyed peas right now, but I didn't see any other type of fresh shelling bean when I was there a few days ago.

That's pretty much how I cook black eyed peas, although I don't recall cooking them as long as an hour. I will add a little fresh thyme, and if I have any small quantity frozen, use ham stock instead of chicken stock. I often add some chopped tomato after the garlic and onions have been sweated and before I add the stock. I like the peas over plain white rice or over sliced tomatoes, almost like a warm salad. I wish I had access to more field peas, but here on the west coast there's a short black-eyed pea season, and that's about it. Although one vendor at the Berkeley Farmers' market has a limited quantity of fresh butterbeans for about two or three weeks out of the year, but they are gone fast if you don't get to the market early. A while ago someone on eG gave me a recipe from the Watershed restaurant that was a sinfully good way to cook butterbeans. The ingredients were: beans, ham, chives, butter and cream. What's not to like? I made it once, it was fabulous, and I realized I would have keeled over long ago if I ate like that regularly.

Equal parts ground chuck, veal and pork. I use relatively lean pork, and I think most of the richness comes from the chuck. I don't try to buy extra lean beef.

That's how I did all of the grilled sandwiches that were on our menu. Butter, toss the bread unbuttered side down on the grill, toast, flip, add cheese to one or both slices as/if required, build sandwich, toss other slice on top, continue as usual. The top slice would begin toasting (and the cheese melting because the bread surfaces are now hot) while building the sandwich on the other slice which made up some of the extra time spent toasting both sides. The customers loved it. As for the best tuna melt: place buttered bread on grill, top both slices with cheese, when the cheese begins to soften and the bread is toasted add tuna salad to one slice, top with the other slice, remove from the grill, cut in half or quarters, place on a plate... and dump it in the bin. Sorry, not a big fan of that particular sandwich. Yes, grilling the inside of each slice first, then flipping and building while grilling the outside seems like the most efficient use of one pan, one source of heat, and the way to get the bread maximum crispy. The only downside is the use of twice as much butter, but after all, this IS essentially diner food. I never had the slightest interest in tuna melts, except for this current craving. Perhaps I'm having a midlife crisis of some sort. It is kind of a weird sandwich, I'll be the first to admit. The way you make the best tuna melt is the way I make a Reuben, although I wouldn't waste a clean plate before tossing it. That tuna melt is sounding better and better. Now I need to make an eggcream to go with.

Well, yeah, cheese, mayo, butter...not exactly the healthiest meal on earth, but I do use modest amounts. That's one reason I am making them at home; ordering out a tuna melt virtually assures massive quantities of all three, as far as I can tell. Until last month I don't think I've had a tuna melt for 20 years. The idea of fish with cheese always seemed horrid to me, and I don't combine them ever--except now, in a tuna melt. And it's quite possible that if I eat one too many of these in the coming weeks, I will not want another for the next 20.

Shalmanese, you are pretty much of a nut case, but you probably already know that. Okay I'm just kidding. Would I rather eat a mediocre broiled steak than a chicken grilled over charcoal by Thomas Keller or even by me? Nooo. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a crispy piece of grilled chicken, sometimes I'm in the mood for a nice juicy rib-eye. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. Anything that doesn't use good ingredients and isn't cooked well is going to be less appealing to me than some other thing cooked really well, even if I generally like eating both of those things. Of course there are certain foods I don't especially like, even if high quality or cooked to perfection: tripe, brussel sprouts, scallops, beef liver and milk chocolate, but I assume that isn't what you are really talking about. On the other hand, even though I am not very fond of scallops, I would chose scallops cooked by Thomas Keller over a supermarket steak cooked by my mother. Then again, I would chose the pizza my husband and I make over one made by Alice Waters. But even though I favor a thin-crust minimalist pizza rather that a mile-hi topping on soggy crust, I would rather have a toaster oven pizza on an English Muffin cooked by a six-year old than eat tripe cooked by anyone. Actually an English Muffin pizza cooked by a six-year old would be a nicer experience than one cooked by me. So figure this one out. Relativist, mostly yes, I think. But I don't believe there are only two philosophies of good food. You would probably have a better chance of surviving on a desert island than I would if you could only have two ingredients. I might starve to death before being willing to commit to a favorite food for the rest of my life. I'll tell you one thing, it's hot and icky weather here today, and I would really love it if a sublime Neapolitan pizza showed up on my doorstep. Today, a rib-eye with lovely grill marks would not be high on the list, but I couldn't say why. Tomorrow, there's no telling. Hopefully something in the fridge jumps out at me.

Another very nice book is Verdura by Viana La Place, who also did Cucina Rustica. A few of her soups call for chicken broth, but basically it's vegetarian.

Steven, I assume you plan to give your son a camera so he can take snaps of everyone else's lunch. Otherwise you may have to just GO there for lunch yourself. After seeing this morning's dining section of the NYT I am so impressed--you are so totally in the swim. When my kid was packing lunches (K through high school, actually) I don't remember any creative parents. One of my daughter's schoolmates in elementary school had a mother who was a complete scatterbrain and had to get up really early to get to her own teaching job. Every once in a while my friend Sarah or I would get a frantic call from this woman at 6:30am saying that she was out of bread, and could we please make Zoe a sandwich? And Mom of Little Foodies, I so remember the days of those blue ice packs in the lunch bag. And how many of them started to leak after a few months...yes, lunches for public and private schools here just get toted around in the backpack with everything else all day.

I totally see your point about having both sides of each slice crispy, but how exactly do you toast bread on one side? Are you grilling it on the first side, then turning each slice over to put the ingredients on and then grilling the constructed sandwich on both sides? My first experiment was last night, using an "enhanced" broiler method. By the way, I don't own a toaster oven. First I toasted my bread slices (my husband's home-made multi-grain) in the toaster. I had the broiler preheating. I took one toasted slice and buttered it lightly. On top of that buttered side I piled my tuna salad, then grated cheddar. I put that under the broiler long enough for the cheese to melt well (like maybe 30 seconds), removed it and slapped the other slice of toast on top. It was very good, and fairly greaseless; both slices of toast remained totally crispy, including the one that was under the broiler briefly. Next up, after a short mercury break, I will try some type of grilling method. Lapin, I too limit my tuna intake, but when I eat the canned stuff, I now buy Ortiz brand bonito, presumably a smaller fish than tuna and so less likely to have as much mercury. And it's very good, packed in olive oil, most of which I pour out. Upthread someone suggested rye bread. That sounds yummy.

Another good addition would be the use of mayo with Maggi mixed into it. That's always seemed integral to banh mi.

Yes, the last time I ordered one it came open faced, and although the tuna salad was good, the resulting sandwich was flabby and had to be eaten with a knife and fork. I prefer a crunch and a sandwich that can be picked up. So JAZ, your method is really just like making a grilled cheese sandwich--or at least the way I make one--by assembling the whole, buttering the outside, grilling in a cast iron pan and flipping it over. Do you cover the pan at all? I often cover the pan during part of grilling time for a grilled cheese so the cheese melts faster. I guess the idea of grilling the whole tuna sandwich struck me as potentially pretty messy, and I was thinking that the tuna would get TOO hot in the time it takes for the cheese to melt and the bread to get crispy. However, I'm gonna give it a try.

Lately I've been craving tuna melts, no idea why. I haven't eaten one out that I didn't think needed improvement. I figure everyone already knows what they like in a tuna salad, so assume that's ready to go. What kind of bread do you like? What kind of cheese? And most important, what is your technique for toasting the bread and melting the cheese and putting the whole thing together?

What defines a smoothie? For non-dairy blender drinks I like to use orange juice as a base, or grapefruit juice. Then I just add fruits of choice. Mango and peach can give it a creamy quality. I can't stand bananas in drinks, so I never add them. I like blender drinks for lunch or late snacks, and I especially like to add sorbets or non-dairy ices to fruit drinks--just enough to up the cold factor but keep the fruits and fruit juice as the main event. When I use dairy, it's often just milk and fruit, then a dollop of yogurt and/or a dollop of vanilla ice cream to make it a little richer. I am sort of a minimalist when it comes to blender drinks, so I don't add tons of different stuff. Some of my favorite combos are: Grapefuit juice (freshly squeezed if you have it!) with pineapple sherbet or any fruit sorbet. Orange or grapefruit juice with fresh melon or stone fruit, sorbet opt. Orange juice mixed with carrot juice. I don't have a juicer, but whenever I go to a juice bar that's what I get if I don't get straight carrot. Good with a hint of ginger. Milk with berries or almost any fruit. Sometimes I will use 1% milk and add just a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. In winter, frozen berries work really well. My daughter prefers to combine fruit juice with dairy. She uses orange juice and yogurt and then adds fresh or frozen berries and she likes a small amt of banana as well. Her drinks always seem chaotic to me, but no one could argue they aren't healthy. Sometimes she mixes orange juice with a little vanilla ice cream and makes a sort or perverse creamsicle drink. If she hits the right proportions it isn't too bad, but she is generally reckless in the kitchen.

It's a classic, Dave.

I never made anything that pretty! Those paper cupcake things are so sweet. I was a terrible mother! Oh well, when my kid became a surly teenager I didn't regret spending so little energy making beautiful bento boxes. Oh, but wait, maybe she would have been been less surly if I had.....nah! I eat a lot edamame, so I usually had some in the fridge that had already been cooked. They were fine by lunch (not refrigerated at my kid's school I'm sure) and would be perfect at your kid's school, FG. And I suspect a small amount of flaked fish wouldn't have much smell if it was not only refrigerated but mixed with cold rice with a little soy sauce. And as for fishy, well, don't lots of kids still eat tuna sandwiches? Without pb & j and tuna sandwiches I would have torn my hair out.

When my daughter was little she used to be pretty happy with a low-tech bento type lunch. Edamame was a staple, since it was one of the few vegetables she liked, along with baby carrots. She liked sticky white rice (sometimes with a bit of rice vinegar in it like sushi rice), room temp, and I would spritz it with soy sauce. I could add a bit of flaked leftover salmon and that was usually good. She would even eat a little canned tuna mixed in with it. She also liked cold noodles, either udon or soba, with a simple soy sauce/vinegar dressing and later, when she could tolerate a bit of punch, I would add a just a little Jade Szechuan peanut sauce. Those were the days before peanut products were outlawed on school grounds. At some point in elementary school she had conquered chopsticks and that was always fun to take to school. Not considered a weapon then.

I add chocolate from good-quality bars all the time. I've used many different kinds. I add it two ways to my regular brownie recipe so it isn't a substitution, since I still use the same proportions of baking choc and butter. I'm with you, I don't like an overly sweet brownie, and I like a little chocolate boost and sometimes flavor as well. I might add a small amount of extra flour to the recipe, but not a lot. I take any bittersweet chocolate I like, sometimes just very dark, sometimes dark with orange or mint or even coffee. I might use a half bar at most. About a half of the total I use gets melted along with the butter/baking choc. The rest gets chopped fairly small, and is just stirred in at the very end, instead of or in addition to nuts. Start with a small amount. I guess I don't add enough to really change the nature of my brownies, and I don't like gooey or fudgy brownies--I just like them dense and moist and with good chocolate flavor. Lately I've been using Lindt dark mint. I've used Valrhona orange, and other Valrhona with varying cocoa content as well.

Maybe the thousand island concept comes from the fact that if you add mayo to the ketchup that's already on the burger, you are already in thousand island territory. There is a lot more use of mayo in CA, or at least is sure seemed that way when I first came out here. Mayo on a burger, mayo on artichokes. I grew up with melted butter on chokes. As for the avocado, they aren't as common on the east coast, although they are probably more common now than they used to be. I didn't grow up with them, but you can't live in NM and not eat them. I don't think my mother ate an avocado until she was in her eighties! I still find the CA roll sushi to be a dreadful idea. Avocado on a hamburger or in Japanese food? I just don't go there.