Katie Meadow

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.

Before I lived in CA I imagined that CA style burger meant the inclusion of lettuce, tomato and possibly avocado. The lettuce and tomato slice were new to me (the avocado still seems perverse), but what I found most characterized the way west-coasters (like my native CA husband) eat burgers versus the way I grew up eating them in NY was the addition of mayo or mustard or both PLUS ketchup. I don't remember ever putting anything on a burger besides ketchup and pickles, w or w/o cheese in NY. After a 6-yr stopover in NM, between NY and CA, I am pretty committed to a green chile burger. I no longer eat cheeseburgers, altho a green chile cheeseburger is a pretty standard classic in NM, but I do like a tomato slice and a little feathery red onion, or pickled red onions if available. I grill poblanos, which is what's most easily available here, and I make my own ketchup, and I use it, along with a little mayo and dijon mustard--my adjustment to CA. I can't stand hamburger buns. I like toasted sour or semi-sour batard or country bread. Does CA style means the use of thousand island dressing? Since the basic ingredients of that are ketchup and mayo, I guess adding mustard to that isn't such a huge leap.

Good with nice cold grapes. And sherry maybe? I always like a strong blue cheese with fruit. I'm addicted to Stilton eaten with apples or pears.

The older and tougher the ginger, the harder the whole operation. If the ginger is beautiful and fresh and "young" you can peel and throw away less fibre, and it is much easier to grate. I've never worried too much about a little waste, and just trimmed out a straight edge chunk and used the box grater, most often the second-to-smallest side. The juicy tender gratings are left on the inside, and the tougher fibrous stuff is left on the outside of the box, and I usually don't use it. If I just want flavor and no fibre at all, I find a lot of juice can be squeezed out by hand after grating. I've never tried the microplane, but that's a good suggestion.

We have limited supplies, and I drink far less than I used to. Mainly in the summer we drink gin--either G & T 's or martinis. Last night my husband made a Leap Year. I'd forgotten what a nice drink it is, and what a lovely color. 2 oz gin 1/2 oz grand marnier 1/2 oz sweet vermouth 1/4 oz lemon juice twist of lemon

What you keep your bread in sort of depends on what qualities you are trying to maintain, no? If I buy a fresh loaf of Italian bread or a baguette in the morning I might want some for lunch, and keep the rest for dinner. In six or eight hours the bread itself doesn't really get too stale (yes, maybe a little), and keeping it out on the counter seems no different than keeping it in a paper bag. But if kept in a plastic bag, the crust will get dull and soft in less than no time. Does the "breathable" plastic bag keep the crust crunchy for several hours? A non-breathable one won't. If I keep bread overnight I expect that it will mostly be used for toast, so I don't care so much about the crust. But if left on the counter or in paper overnight, the entire loaf will be dry and stale and even make pretty lousy toast. Overnight bread seems to do best in a non-permeable bag around here. I also assume that humidity and locale must make so difference. The air is pretty dry here in the summer.

Saying you are sick of cilantro, chile and lime is like saying you are sick of the classic mirepoix or the holy trinity of southern cooking: celery, onion and green pepper. Flour, butter and eggs is pretty trite, too, but they come in awfully handy when it's time for dessert. Maybe you just want a break from certain flavors right now. In that case, don't be mixing up any guacamole or pho or shrimp curry and join the Julia bandwagon: cook up a lovely Boeuf Bourguignon. Bon...etc.

I make rice salads frequently, often with leftover ingredients such as salmon, tuna or chicken. I agree that the rice should be freshly made for the salad. I like my rice salads room temp or slightly warm, so I usually make my rice an hour or two before assembling the salad. Rice that's leftover in the fridge is dry. I generally use white basmatti rice, but that's what I always have on hand. I make a tuna rice salad with either fresh cooked fish or canned. I like to add slivers of roasted red peppers, toasted pine nuts, maybe capers, parlsey, celery and red onion, with a dressing of sherry wine vinegar and olive oil. Sometimes I add a little saffron to the dressing. Then maybe a dusting of smoked Spanish paprika. For a chicken and rice salad I like to add fresh barely cooked shelling peas along with the usual suspects, or shelled edamame. I use either leftover grilled chicken, or just poach some chicken. I've made ham and rice salad too when I've cooked ham shanks for broth and don't know what else to do with all the extra cooked meat. For chicken or ham rice salads I usually make a dressing with dijon and white wine vinegar and olive oil. The flexibility with rice salads is great. Minced radishes, kohlrabi, fennel instead of celery, whatever. Easy to make vegetarian. Fresh corn, fried okra and diced tomato makes a nice rice salad too.

Thanks, I'm going to try this washing or soaking method the next time I have salty olives. In the last few years I've been searching out olives that don't seem so salty to me: lucques, cerignolas and nocellaras. Although lucques have finally reached a price per pound that I can't stomach.

I guess that puts me in my place. Still, I guess corniness & practicality don't always agree. ← Aww, Dave, I didn't say corny was a bad thing, did I? My FIL is a retired physicist who wears purple socks and birkenstocks. Isn't that corny? We also brought my in-laws a tablecloth sold at a roadside stand avec les cigales as the main design element. Equally corny and equally appreciated. Corny and practical are a perfect marriage! Hope you are feeling great!

I'm in the East Bay, and rarely go out any more. I'm clueless about SF restaurants now, but here's my take on Chez Panisse. Whenever my mom's in town we take her to Chez Panisse upstairs cafe for lunch; she likes to wander around that area in Berkeley. If you call for a reservation for lunch try asking for a table on the porch (I don't exactly know what they call it, but it's sort of a glassed in porch area) you will be eating in daylight and it's extremely congenial, although a tad cramped; the upstairs cafe can be a bit dark otherwise, but then the older I get, the more light I need on my food (or book.) I've never left there unhappy. I always end my meal with one of their home-made fruit sorbets. Costs a fraction of a dinner downstairs, I am sure. And if you go for lunch, you can always check out the shops in Walnut Square and buy some cheeses and pastry at that long-standing institution known as the Cheese Board. If you decided to eat downstairs, get hold of the week's menu ahead of time, so you will be able to pick a night that suits your taste.

Thank for the tip about washing olives. Perhaps olives that taste too salty to me could be made more acceptable that way. Since I've cut back on salt, my tolerance is lower. I have an great 50's style serving dish, with three sections. If I have two types of olives, I use the third section for pits. Or I often dedicate the third section to roasted and salted almonds or marcona almonds (altho marconas are far too costly to use often!) and provide a small pit-dish on the side. I do exactly as Steven does: I prime the pump by eating a couple of olives and putting the pits in the designated spot, so my guests don't have to wonder for even a second what to do with the pits. My FIL cures olives, and they are fabulous. He doesn't keep them in a brine solution, so they have to be eaten fresh, and quickly. Not a problem--a quart jar might last a couple of days in my house. We bought him the corniest olive dish when we were in the south of France a couple of years ago, with a built-pit bowl and, natch, an olive graphic. Well, he's corny that way, so he loved it.

I have stopped buying parmigiano and now buy only a variety of pecorinos. For grating (but equally tasty just to nibble on) I like Pecorino Stagionata. Now I've discovered Pecorino Maturo and that's good grated and dynamite on its own. For travel I found Pecorino Sardo is a fine all-purpose cheese, great for lugging on a picnic with crackers. It seems to last well unrefrigerated and is more available than the others. I always thought the pecorinos were less salty generally than the parmigiano-reg, but it's been a while since I compared them. Originally I stared using the stagionata as a grated cheese because it didn't seem so salty and had a more interesting flavor.

http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/datastore/datastor...urveynumber=351 The above UC Davis website is the best source I can find for a description of the zante currant, and a chicken & egg opinion of which came first, the currant or the corinth. When it comes to grapes, I would trust this source. I am going to look carefully in my markets for the next couple of months and see whether any fresh zante currants are available, and how they are labeled.