Katie Meadow

We lunched at a friend's house and for apps she served cheeses, walnuts and dried persimmons. She sent us home with several of the persimmons. Her daughter has a Hachiya persimmon tree and our friend dried a bunch of them buy tying them to a string and hanging them inside the house in a sunny window. When dried they are incredibly beautiful. Cut into thin slices they are fantastic; moist, easily sliced. My friend's other daughter is married to a native of Lyon, France and he came up with this method. I'm smitten. This is off-topic, so forgive me. For lunch she served Chicken Marbella! That's the dish we all learned to make from The Silver Palate cookbook. It was often the first grown-up entertainment dish of a generation. And it's having a comeback!

I don't have any instaInt cooker, so I don't have a clue about that. I use an approx 6 qt Creuset start to finish, The top is on with a small crack open for the full simmering time. The thickness of your bean broth will depend on how much liquid you start with. Beans vary as to how much liquid they drink. One option is to cover the beans with an inch or so of liquid to start with and add water as needed. I suppose if you end up with more broth than you like you could simply take the lid off during the last part of cooking. I follow three rules: I soak my beans for several hours, I don't salt until very close to the end, and acidic ingredients such as coffee or tomatoes are added about 2/3 of the way through. Clearly there are a lot of opinions about when to salt. I always cook one full bag of RG beans at a time. The Domingo Rojo beans that I usually use take about 2 - 2.5 hours total.

If you are new to cooking dried beans I suggest practicing with your Le Creuset before you throw more money at equipment. Delicious beans can be easily made in enamel coated cast iron.

As a previously employed proof reader, congrats, that must have been a major job. As for the cookbook itself, well, la di da.

I'm assuming those pork bones from Ranch 99 are not smoked. That looks like a good deal. Just curious, did you happen to see if they had smoked ones? I haven't been there in several years, but now that crab season is open a field trip may be in my near future.

@Shel_B When I was able to get smoked ham shanks I used to routinely make ham broth to freeze in quarts. I would use that broth to cook my beans in. The shanks were not very fatty and they had a lot of meat on them. Then Berkeley Bowl stopped carrying the shanks. After I discovered smoked pork necks at Waylon's I simplified my life. After boiling the beans for the requisite ten minutes (as per RG) I drop in a couple of the necks, whatever spices and herbs I chose and then simmer the pot until the beans are done. My bean of choice so far has been Domingo Rojo for a southern red beans and rice meal, and also when I make a New Mexico style pot of beans.

It's pretty easy to make a chicken-pork stock with chicken backs, feet, other bony parts plus unsmoked or smoked pork hocks, shanks or pork necks. If I am planning to make a Chinese soup I don't use a lot of pork. Berkeley Bowl has a good selection of chicken parts and some pork parts. I've also discovered a great product that I get at Waylan's meat market on Fruitvale, in Oakland: smoked pork necks. They are great for putting in a stove top pot of beans if you want a distinctly smoky flavor. I usually drop in two necks for a pound of RG beans and they are done when the beans are done. The meat you can pull of them after cooking is delicious, but is less than you would get from a shank. I just pull of the meat and throw it into the pot when it's all done. I think you would only need one along with several lbs. of chicken parts to make an impact if you wanted a bit of smoky taste to your stock. To add for clarity and direction, Waylon's is across the street from Farmer Joe's and next door to a Peets and La Farine Bakery, so not exactly in a food desert in case you have other items on your list.

It strikes me that making a quick and cheap stock does not involve a pig's head. At least not here in the Bay Area.

The last post in this thread was two years ago. Clearly there's an Avian Flu cycle. The last two years or so inflation raised the price of our usual free range organic eggs above $8. Yesterday my husband paid $12 for the same dozen eggs. He said the egg shelves were pretty bare. This is the first ever that I remember looking at cake recipes that use four eggs or more and thinking, deal breaker!

Here's how I warm up stuff in the microwave: I guess how many minutes my husband would do and then I cut that time in half.

And Happy Anniversary to you!

Sweet dreams are made of these. That pub sounds like heaven, or what heaven should be. When you figure out where it is let me know.

No kidding. I drink my rye straight from the bottle. 750ml = one shot.

@Dejah so happy for you having all your family for the holiday. I'm coming to your house next xmas eve. You had me at wonton buffet.

I have no idea where my recipe came from. There are a bunch of recipes for Torta di Mele with Sambuca on line, but mine is different, possibly tweaked by me and/or others. My recipe is called Torta di Mele with Lemon or Sambuca, and offers an alternative using lemon and no alcohol. Plus it includes a topping, which most others don't seem to do. Another differencei is that mine uses only one egg, while most of the ones on line use four eggs. If you are desperate for my recipe I can figure out how to send it in a pm perhaps.

Excellent date for a birthday. Have a happy one!

I realize now my brain has holiday addle, or worse. I did not make an apple calvados cake yesterday. I made an apple cake with sambuca! But I do have a couple of recipes for apple cake with calvados. One is a David Lebovitz recipe called Apple Calvados Cake. The other is from Acadiana Table and is called Apple Gateau with Calvados Creme. I've made the Lebovitz one and it was good. The other sounds dreamy; it occurs to me you could make the calvados sauce and it would be great simply poured over a baked apple. I believe both are easily available on their respective websites. I make a lot of apple cakes in the winter.

Thanks, I also have a dedicated carbon steel omelet pan that I have used for over 30 years and is, in my estimation, perfect. I hope this new pan works as well for as long. By that time I will be 107. I'm also keeping my cast iron skillets in good condition, so when the time is right that day comes I will hit myself over the head with one of those, if I can still lift it. That should be a fitting end. By then my omelet pan will probably be useless because there will be so few chickens left without avian flu that eggs will be unaffordable for all of us in the 99.99 percent.

Perfect xmas dinner for the two of us: To start, homemade cheese straws left over from xmas eve party and a glass of gifted Rittenhouse rye. For dinner, gifted Domingo Rojo beans from my Napa SIL (she's got my number) made into a New Mexico style beans over rice. Pickled veg, also leftover from the party. And for dessert an apple calvados cake made after opening presents. That's not quite correct. It was intended for dessert, but, unable to resist, we ate it warm from the oven a couple of hours BEFORE dinner. Gift of note from my husband: a 12 inch carbon steel skillet. Gorgeous.

To be fair I must amend my remarks. The SIL who can't cook has become a vegan and I wouldn't put it past her to omit butter from whatever she ends up making. So let's be charitable and say that's the cause of any crisp failure. And I adore her, no matter what.

Behind the bubbly: evil greed yes, surprising not so much.

We will be six boomers and six millennials plus some partners. Half, cutting across the generations, are vegetarians. There will be an eggplant parm, various salads and sides, and one of my nephews makes dynamite sri racha chicken wings. Our contributions will be cheese straws from Edna Lewis and smoky roast almonds to add to the apps, raw carrot salad that is Indianish and pickled vegetables. The sister-in-law who can't cook is doing dessert this year. I hope she doesn't bring her standard, which is a pear crisp of sorts that typically has undercooked under-ripe pears and oats that somehow stubbornly remain soggy. But there will be lots of Napa Valley wines and it will be a party. Cheers!

I second NY Noodletown. I've never had a bad time there. For chocolate, my favorite in all the world so far is Neuhaus, from Belgium. I'm not in NY nearly as much as I used to be, but I always made a detour to their Lexington Ave store. I notice they now have two other venues, one on Madison and another at Grand Central Station. Of course their chocolates can be mailed. And if you find yourself at Grand Central you can gawk at the amazing architecture and have lunch at the Grand Central Oyster Bar.

In my college years in New Mexico, when it was the right time of year, we would take a large blanket and drive up into the lower hills of the Sandia Mountains in search of piñon pine trees. We'd lay the blanket carefully under the tree and shake the limbs. Instant pine nuts.

Yes to Papaya King! Growing up on West 86th, Gray's Papaya was a short walk. But it didn't have the magic of Papaya King, which was a crosstown bus away. Glad to hear they reopened but I don't get to NY as often as I used to. But if I could go back in time it would be to Lichtman's Bakery, which was half a block from our apartment.