Katie Meadow

A teaching moment for sure. The next time I take out the trash at night in my underwear I'll be sure I have some liquifying reeking onions in hand in case I need to throw them at a midsize predator. Coyotes very rarely are seen in my suburban Oakland neighborhood. Most likely, at night, it would just be a black and white cat, which is rarely a cat, but in fact, a skunk. It's a toss-up whether or not I could hurl an onion in time. Which reminds me I should stock up on ketchup. I take so many valuable lessons away from eG. You don't have to tell me twice not to keep onions under the bed. I'd never remember where I put them.

Maybe your husband could do the celery prep, Mine won't do it, claiming that he just can't find the strings! Since I'm the one who cares, I do it.

Sometimes the inner stalks are tender enough and don't need stringing. For tougher stalks I find breaking a stalk gently in half gets exposes a lot of strings you can simply pull, so some of the work is done for you. I've always used a paring knife. It never occurred to me to use a peeler, but it's an interesting idea for outer stalks.

Sounds like a great trip, @KennethT. You could have bought langoustines and cooked them on hot lava just a stone's throw from the volcano.

At the top of my list of the dangers that face @JoNorvelleWalker I would put: 1) Apricot kernels in daily doses of orgeat (cyanide) 2) Racoons getting into the bedroom, fighting over food and then making a nest out of dry goods 3) Tripping over a duplicate appliance in the dark (also bedroom) 4) Concussion as a result of a bag of limes falling from an upper cabinet 5) Plastic wrap (a distant 5) 6) Very unlikely but not good, a cryogenic accident caused by getting trapped in one of two blast freezers Love you Jo be careful!

Everything except "Squid Game."

Yes, yellow watermelon, when it's good is fantastic. It has a very subtle vegetal taste that red doesn't have.

Due to perhaps faulty information, I've long thought that vintage pyrex was safer to use at high temps than newer Pyrex. Maybe that's just a myth? I have only one glass square baker and one old pyrex 10 inch deep dish pie plate. I've been making my cornbread in the pie dish for many years, in the oven at 400 degrees. So far so good. The square one, which I believe is not so old, I don't bake higher than 350 degrees. I will say I'm a little nervous about both now.

I lived in NM from the mid sixties to the early seventies. In those days Hatch chiles came from the Hatch area and they were reliably vey hot. Terroir plays a part, I'm sure, but the seeds have to be a certain variety. If you lived in Albuquerque and grew the seeds from Hatch chiles they would be hot, but you couldn't really call them Hatch. At some point after I left to live in CA a variety of chile called Big Jim was developed and some were grown in Hatch. They were big, varied a bit in heat, but were generally considered mild. If you see a sign that says "Mild Hatch Chiles" you are most likely buying Big Jims. They could be grown around Hatch or they could be from somewhere else. Since I have not been back to NM in quite a while I don't know what the situation is there now and my information may not be current. The first years I lived in CA I missed real Hatch chiles terribly, and spent the dollars to have them shipped fresh in season. My friend Elaine, also a NM transplant, would also spend hours roasting a giant box of them to freeze for as long as they lasted. After several years of the extravagant purchase the chiles started to taste suspiciously unlike true Hatch chiles I remembered. I'm pretty sure they were mixing in Big Jims in haphazard quantities or they had grown a hybrid. Clearly growers were hip to the value of calling something "Hatch."

I'm assuming all the flavors are artificial. I agree that banana would rank high on the disgusting scale, but memory tells me most of the flavors were equally horrid. Like licorice.

I haven't seen a potato that's sprouted in a million years. Wouldn't it have to be awfully old? Clearly I don't have a root cellar. But I probably wouldn't eat it if one came my way. And yes, I did as a child stick toothpicks in a potato and sprout it on purpose but no one in my family ever suggested eating it.

I pretty much love potatoes. Fried, roasted with duck fat, in a green chile stew, various potato salads, etc. But I never was a big fan of mashed potatoes. It is possible I was never served good ones. I always found them to be essentially cement and usually not hot enough by the time the cook stopped fussing with them. Until now. I've discovered that adding mashed cauliflower to the potatoes is a way of livening the flavor and making the whole dish seem lighter, or more airy. The flavor, even when using almost a one-to-one ratio is very subtle. It still tastes like mashed potatoes. My daughter and SIL both claim to hate cauliflower, and they really liked this. I just boil peeled potatoes and cauliflower separately. Add salt and pepper, mashed garlic, creme fraiche or light cream and butter and use an immersion blender to whip it up. I use yukon golds instead of russets, because I prefer the flavor. As a final touch I brown some butter and crisp up some fresh sage leaves in it and pour over the before serving. Sometimes a soft goat cheese, if I have some, replaces or is added to the dairy. Mostly mashed potatoes appear as a side on thanksgiving, and they are more like a required afterthought, a job often given to a teen ager or someone who doesn't cook much. At least in my life it's been that way. And I don't believe my mother ever made mashed potatoes in her life. But this mashed potato cauliflower whip is a main event, and must be given the respect it deserves. I have both potatoes and cauliflower in the crisper today, so this is my plan for dinner as an entree. Sides will be golden cherry tomatoes. basic quick cabbage and carrot pickle, and maybe baby sardines.

Years ago on a road trip we stayed in John Day in Oregon, just overnight in a spare room of a couple's house. They were awfully nice people. He was, indeed, a hunter as well as a birder. My first shock came on entering the main room: There was an enormous wolf, taxidermied, hanging on one wall. It was awesome and horrifying. I stroked the fur and it was like silk. That pretty much unsettled me for good. For breakfast we were served elk that he had also shot. I'm just not a person who wants meat in the morning, especially not something gamey, even if only a "little" gamey. I took one bite and couldn't choke down any more. I felt terribly rude and embarrassed. I hope I at least partly made up for it by eating a LOT of the wife's freshly baked scones. I was so unnerved by that beautiful dead wolf. I'll never quite get over the whole experience.

Do you grow watermelons that have seeds? I'm totally convinced that the seedless watermelons that have taken over the world don't taste as good as ones with seeds. This is driving me nuts. My favorite is a yellow watermelon with seeds, and it is so hard to find these days.

Cherry season on the West Coast has been remarkably long and very good this year; a lot of them coming from WA. Cherries are just about my favorite fruit. The prices are ridiculous. My husband says he paid almost $9 lb for a bag earlier this month. That's like doubling in price over last year. About ten years ago I had a great source for good bings, at $1.69 lb. I won't buy salmon when wild King filets are going for $30 lb, but I guess I will pay anything for cherries. Actually yesterday my husband came back from a major shopping trip and said that wild salmon was down to $23 lb. I told him he should have bought it.

Exactly. Roast chicken was obtained from Williams bbq on Broadway and was accompanied by their barley- mushroom casserole and a vinegar-heavy salad. Salad was the only thing my Dad would eat that qualifies as vegetable matter. He would have laughed out loud if anyone served him brussels sprouts or rutabaga, neither of which I ever laid eyes on until I moved to CA. He probably knew the word "rutabaga' because he was a crossword puzzle addict. My food of choice in 12th grade when stoned was a foil tub of that mushroom barley stuff. I would kill for that now; brave an airplane full of maskless fools--if only Williams still existed, which it does not. That chicken does look good. I just talked my husband into roasting one for dinner, making good use of my time on eG!

My mother had one of those!

Yes they do lose their edge. Although mine sometimes chip or the tips break off from carelessness before they get sufficiently dull . My husband did some research a few years ago and determined that buying a new Kyocera every year or so is not much more costly than having one sharpened. The blades are so thin anyway it seems to me that sharpening one would make it even more fragile, but I don't really know if that's true, just a guess.

Not that I eat burgers very often these days, but I was always told to mess with the meat as little as possible: don't incorporate lots of stuff in it, don't mush or mix it up or take forever to form patties, etc, and above all use good quality beef. This onion smashing seems brutal.

Looks terrific. Do you have a recipe?

You are too kind.

Non-fluted tart pans seem old fashioned no-nonsense kind of objects that don't scream TART PAN, and I like that about them.

I'll go out on a limb: they are both stupid. I'm not diplomatic, I know. Also I've never had any desire to make Hasselback potatoes. And if someone gave me either of those things as a gift I would question their judgment.

I really hate broccoli; the smell of cooking broccoli is, to my mind, just awful. But whatever it is that's sold around here as Chinese Broccoli or Gai Lan-- I love. If Chinese Broccoli with garlic is on the menu, I order it. I can eat a stir fry of the stuff with garlic and chile and sauce over rice as a main dish.

So let's just say that "keyboard" is a metaphor and I don't know what you are spilling your eggs on. My keyboard is an actual thing, as I am a luddite who still likes a laptop.