Katie Meadow

How funny that Mexican food is mentioned immediately. For me it was NEW Mexican food. In the late sixties I moved to New Mexico, essentially after growing up in NY. I remember like it was yesterday the first time I tasted a burrito from a little dive my friend frequented. Very hot! Pork, beans, fresh green chile. So good. Then a bowl of green. Then a bowl of red.....We had our favorite places for a bowl of chile or a breakfast or chile rellenos. Speaking of which, @Darienne, poblanos would be one of the best choices for chile rellenos because they have structure. Stuffing a Hatch chile is no mean feat; most of the thin long green chiles are too fragile. The problem is that even here, in northern CA, most poblanos are pretty mild and haven't as much taste as the routinely medium-hot ones we used o get in NM. Besides, if you made rellenos with real Hatch chiles your head would explode.

Okay I stand corrected. I had no idea Durkees was available widely across the US; I thought it was a southern thing, like Duke's mayo. But I can't say as I've ever seen it on shelves where we shop in the Bay Area. Of course maybe it's found in the ketchup and sweet relish aisle, somewhere I don't often go.

Geez Louise, it's the thread police! I don't know who changed, but that was a long time ago. I'm not going to look at what I said, either!

Google would have you believe that most people consider remoulade sauce as some kind of Louisiana staple. In fact, remoulade sauce is French in origin and hails from the seventeenth century. Therefore a classic remoulade, as used, for instance, in Celery Root Remoulade does not include Durkees or ketchup of any stripe. Whatever creole adjustments have been made to produce a southern remoulade sauce are a reinvention. Southern recipes sub creole seasoning, pickle relish and creole mustard (whatever that is) for the original mayo, dijon, horseradish, cornichons and capers. I've tasted Durkees once and it ain't exactly classic.

In my experience (and that's only with the one recipe I make) creamed spinach loses little if anything heated up as leftovers the next day, so if I were taking it to another venue for a meal I wouldn't hesitate to make it ahead, especially if we're talking only a few hours. But I'm glad you liked your kale. I'm just one of those grouches who don't see any advantage to kale over other cooked greens.

If anyone thinks wild pigeons are not tasty, they need only look to the sad demise of the Passenger Pigeon in North America. We literally ate them out of existence. They were free. They were easy to net or shoot because their numbers were so great. They have been extinct for 100 years.

Just an alternative for flour tortillas if you have a Trader Joe's near by. Theirs are far superior to Mission brand, at least I think so.

Do they really? That would solve so many of my problems.

I wondered how they had time to cook beans. Here's what I found: "Out on the trail, the chuck wagon cook soaked beans in a pot during the day. He’d set up camp and cook up a batch, but the beans would have to be eaten right away. Cooked beans spoil or sour quickly, so cowhands didn’t eat them on the trail unless they were traveling with the chuck wagon." "The cookie went hell-for-leather to prepare for the evening camp, collecting firewood or buffalo chips along the way for the campfire. The evening meal usually consisted of beans, salt pork, dried apples and an occasional beefsteak. A creative cookie was worth his weight in gold. He might find a prairie hen’s nest and cook up a special dessert.' So it's summer. The cattle drive stops for the night at dusk. The beans need two hours to simmer. No wonder they needed so much coffee, just to stay awake for dinner. I also learned they ate....wait for it..... soda crackers aka SALTINES. But then a treat for dessert: cowboy espresso (the mud at the bottom of the pot) and flan. Not too shabby.

Indeed, the first time my mother roasted a chicken shortly after she married my dad she cooked the whole thing, including the bag of giblets of which she was unaware. Also the chicken needed additional plucking.

Find my husband. He might be willing to try a bite. As for appropriate crackers, see the saltine thread. How could you go wrong?

This thread is more revealing about American eating habits than any other. I can't imagine pouring milk over saltines but then my mother favored --or maybe she invented it-- one of the weirdest combos of all time. She always had saltines on the side with a bowl of chocolate ice cream. I don't know where she got that from, although she did have strange parents. Maybe someone told her it was French; anything "French" she assumed was good. It is also true that if you don't eat the whole sleeve quickly they get very stale. The thrill of a opening a new sleeve is in my mind akin to the thrill of opening a fresh box of real Cheerios. They smell divine! Two days later, not so much. Here's a question: I know saltines have always been about available, cheap and easy. But has anyone ever tried to bake them from scratch? I think they would be great if the right recipe came along. As an aside, take the case of graham crackers. Like Proust's madeleine, they taste heavenly in memory, but the graham crackers you buy today are just plain dull. A few years ago I got so frustrated I talked my husband into making them, with real graham flour, and they were excellent. I don't have the energy for that kind of project now.

I certainly wouldn't.

Not really sure why Melissa Clark irritates me so much. Maybe partly because she has a slapdash attitude as noted above. But also maybe because her recipes don't seem very appealing. I think of her as someone who is always trying to come up with a new way to combine broccoli and cheese. I imagine her blindfolded reaching into a chaotic fridge and pulling our cranberries, thyme, cream cheese, squash and macadamia nuts and saying "Cookies!"

She needs reminding?

I hoard sardines and cans of Italian tomatoes. I try to buy multiples of things we use often, like pasta, rice, etc. One problem I'm up against is that my husband often fails to let me know when he has used the last of something, so I'm in offensive mode. The other problem is that he often balks at buying multiples when shopping. With staples, "buying it when you need it" often backfires. Is it so awful to have a few pounds of linguini on hand? I don't have a big enough freezer to hoard anything except home made stocks of various kinds, but I wouldn't know what it's like to have an empty freezer, or what I might do if I had more space.

My mother liked chicken hearts, but I don't remember her ever buying them in bulk. I used to eat the stray one here and there when they came in the chicken, but then I got a dog. Her appreciation way outstripped mine.

The name of this thread is perfect. I just stocked up on saltines because my toddler granddaughters are coming next week, and that makes for an easy snack. No, I would not serve saltines with a cheeseboard for any grownup event. Agree totally with @AlaMoithat there are plenty of crackers out there worthy of good cheese.. And with most cheeses I certainly don't want a salty cracker. My husband, who spent much of childhood eating margarine on saltines does not have anything positive to say about them except they were a cheap fix when I was pregnant. I'm still fond of them.

I've only recently become a fan of creamed spinach. Goes with everything as far as I can tell.

Saltines. The perfect Covid food. I should remember to keep them on hand just in case. To say nothing of Hot and Sour soup. Get better soon, all of you.

When did Americans appropriate the term "Chili con Carne" and think it meant beef? It's just meat. In many places chili or chile is made with pork usually cut in chunks. In New Mexico a bowl of chile was referred to as a bowl of red or a bowl of green. Typically it did not have beans. It was a long-cooked flavorful pork, and heat was applied either with fresh roasted green chiles or slurry made from soaked dry red chile pods. A pot of beans was a separate thing, at least among my cohort. It also would be flavored with pork. If memory serves, we would sometimes make a dish that used beef and potatoes. It was called Green Chile beef stew. Also no beans. I know there's a Texas faction that faithfully clings to the concept of chili as a no-beans thing. I'm not a Texan, so I have no opinion about that. Growing up in the Northeast I alway thought of "Chili con Carne" as an Americanized hodgepodge, often using ground beef, beans and a kitchen sink full of stuff. I associated it with pot lucks, college dorms, football games. Often it was sprinkled before serving with some kind of grated American cheese or maybe cheddar. Heat level came from the under or over use of any kind of available ground chile powder. If you ordered it in a diner it would come with saltines. Of course in New Mexico and other southwestern regions it was always served o[with warm tortillas. Oops, forgot to mention later interventions like Firehouse Chili and Firehouse Chili Gumbo. Firehouse chili is supposed to be SMOKY. Firehouse chili gumbo is a kitchen sink explosion of meats, beans, ketchup, vegetables and Louisiana spices using a roux. Hard to imagine, truly.

Not that I would ever make such an awful flavor of ice cream, but if I did I would leave out the 'n'

If you are trying to "understand" saltines you're already barking up the wrong tree.

Growing up we seldom had bread or rolls with dinner. The exception would be if soup or salad was the main course. If I was served a bowl of mussels or steamed clams without crusty rustic bread my tears would dilute the broth. And how sad would it be to have any kind of borscht without fresh rye bread? I don't think I've ever had real Texas Toast, but i imagine it would be good with BBQ. Better I'm sure than that floppy stuff that typically accompanies ribs, etc.

Peanut oil is not flavorless, at least to my tastebuds. I like Golden Lion peanut oil for most of my Chinese stir-fries. I think it is relatively miild compared to Planters. I use a lot of it and buy the large size in Asian groceries; not all of them carry it though. I took a Thai cooking class and my teacher swore by Golden Lion. I like rice bran oil too, but it would be pricey used in the quantities I use peanut oil. I've never deep fried anything in recent memory, so that's a mystery category for me. The neutral oil I prefer is Sunflower. Grapeseed I like for some baking when a recipe calls for neutral oil rather than butter. Canola I truly find disgusting. I don't understand why so many recipes call for it. To me it tastes like fish. When cooking Italian or with tomatoes and for most salad dressing I pretty much always use olive oil. I can't imagine making hummus without olive oil!