Katie Meadow

Kitchen mishaps no apron would prevent: Now that Seville oranges are in season in my neck of the woods we made our first batch of 2022 marmalade. It is beyond me how I ended up with ribbons of it in my hair. Truly icky. Filled up the jars, and got in the shower in a hurry. If I have any clothing I wish to protect will wear my one apron, that I've had for as long as I can remember. It is heavy cotton mattress ticking railroad or whatever you might call it. Works fine, looks very jaunty. But more often I cook in old flannel shirts and don't bother with the apron. After a few minutes I inevitably have a dish towel slung over my shoulder. Sometimes two of them if I forgot I was already wearing the first one.

My guide for crab cakes is this: use almost nothing but crab. Bind with the least possible amount of stuff you can get away with, the plainer the better. Crab, a touch of mayo, scallions and minimal amount of bread crumbs. Not a fan of Old Bay. Also not that it matters, I grew up on Manhattan clam chowder. Recipes for chowder are heavily stacked in favor of New England style, but Jasper White has a great recipe for Manhattan.

If anything seemed off Kerry could palpate the liver to make sure it's okay to eat.

I'm confused. How do you know what to call vertical rotisserie unless you know its origin? If it is Greece I would call it a Gyro. I would have expected it to be lamb, but my daughter, who spent a year in Athens, said it was often beef. If I was in Turkey or the Arab world or Israel I would call it Shawarma. In that case I would expect it to NOT be pork. If I was in Mexico or Los Angeles I would not call it either, but I would ask what THEY called it. If it had a pineapple ring on top I would assume it was pork, most often destined for al pastor tacos. The onion picture makes me think it comes from somewhere that has onion dome architecture, so I might call it shawarma. From just looking at a picture it would hard to know what to call it unless you had some idea of the spices/flavorings involved. The truth is here in Northern CA I don't get a chance to look at stacked vertical rotating meat very often, so my knowledge is pretty theoretical.

If you trip and fall into the conversation pit you probably needed more dilution or more vermouth.

When I was young we went out to my mother's brother's house in NJ for once a year seder. My uncle prided himself on making a great martini, and everyone but the kids was sozzled by dinner time. But what would you expect from a man who called his wife "battle axe?" Us cousins had to make do with Manischewitz wine. That yearly celebration was the only time I heard my mother really belt out some tunes!

Yes I've heard that old saw about dairy calming the heat, but who wants to drink a glass of milk after eating delicious spicy Chinese food?

@Kim Shook, your toast and cereal breakfast is what my husband eats every day: several pieces of toast, then a large bowl of boxed cereal + added home made granola + banana slices and berries. The only time he doesn't eat cereal is when he makes pancakes. We are not typically variety eaters at breakfast, although now he is baking biscuits once a week. Otherwise, Have Bread Will Toast.

@glennThese are my favorite current splurges: one is a smoked soy sauce, the other is black garlic. Both are Japanese, both intense; and definitely specialty artisanal items. I order from Amazon because I can't always find these locally. My one local source for the black garlic shoyu disappeared, but with Amazon Prime it is the same price anyway. I also use Kikkoman to thin sauces out. There are lots of products out there I want to try. I also keep a dark Chinese soy sauce on hand; I am cooking Chinese food with all of them. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G7MOHJO/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_8?smid=A3VDBPE82S43CG&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HN2YPV4/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_4?smid=A3EG2S0U6KWUM9&psc=1

I believe you have Amazon in Columbia. Have you checked the soy sauce options there? I order several very good soy sauces on line, things that I can't find even here on Bay Area shelves.

I'm with you, @Margaret Pilgrim. A dollar a glass is about right. I do have a few flea market glasses left from my college years, but most of the time I swear by my Ikea Svalka wine glasses. No need to wonder whether they are for red or white wines, because they are designed to be as average as possible. One glass for everything! For $5.99 a sixpack there's no angst involved. And, surprisingly, they don't break easily. Pre- Ikea I used Duralex French juice glasses for wine. Affected, but effective. If I need a weird thrill I use the gold-rimmed crystal glasses that I inherited from my MIL. When I hold them I feel like I'm on the Titanic. They are a lovely, restrained design and very elegant, but of course can't go in the dishwasher and therefore are a double threat: if your tipsy guests don't knock them over you can count on the back-up disaster when hand washing at midnight. So every once in a while when I think about it I just look at them and admire them and wonder whether if my nephew or my daughter will want anything to do with them. Currently they are both in the Tommy Tippy stage of "glassware" for their babies.

That quote you pulled out of the review? Wow, Pete Wells is tripping over his own "effete." But the fish n chips sounds really yummy.

I'm eagerly awaiting your review. I have a pack of the same in the freezer. Spud Puppies. What a dopey name. Spud Puppies are hot dogs wrapped in potato pancakes.

Oh, you must have seen the revised play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Drunk."

How old are those instructions that tell you to open a bottle of vermouth near the martini, then put it away? Also the idea of "rinsing" the glass with vermouth is comical. H ow would you even do that? Would you pour the excess back into the bottle? It seems to me you would have to love your gin a lot to drink it straight. I am sure I've tasted only a teensy percentage of available gins but I know I don't like Tanqueray in anything. I prefer Bombay regular to Sapphire. I love a Hendricks martini with adequate vermouth--in other words I like to know the vermouth counts for something. A twist of lemon is nice (that's how my parents drank martinis), or two olives in the glass to be eaten as a reward at the end. Just as I like a half sweet ice tea when in the south, I like a half dirty martini. One martini is all it takes--I'm a cheap date. As the years go by I notice some of my friends are drinking more, but I'm drinking less. A side of warm salty peanuts or cheese straws is all I need to go with. The best martini is the one my husband makes. The truth is I think martinis are the most delicious of all cocktails, but I can no longer handle the amount of alcohol in most of them. So so nice on a warm summer night. Most of the time we hear people talk about how they wish they drank less. I wish I could drink more!

Totally. It wasn't too hard to find good chile rellenos in mom and pop places in New Mexico, but here in northern CA not so much. Love them when they are good. So simple.

What I buy regularly at TJ's: Chocolate / hazelnut biscotti Empire kosher chicken (They used have Empire kosher organic chicken, which was great but no longer) unsweetened cherry juice Valrhona dark chocolate bar 71% (at $2.99 it is a steal) Tj"s maple syrup House-made flour tortillas Dark chocolate almonds w/ sea salt & turbinado sugar (not regularly since I eat too many of them) Bulleit Rye (good with dark chocolate almonds late at night!) Husband is opportunistic buyer of beer and Barbara's oat squares (oaty and aromatic when first opened, but in a few days they go south toward sawdust) Seasonal: butter toffee pretzels (love/hate relationship, thank god they are not available year round) What I would kill for them to bring back: Pane Guttiau Italian flatbread and chocolate coated sunflower seeds. Not eaten together, by the way.

Continuing my fascination with recommendations for TJ's products we bought a Kringle a few days ago. I'd never heard of it before I read about it here. I can only conclude that @Dr. Teeth must be a dentist with excellent brushing habits, because the amount of sugar in every bite is enough to make your choppers fly out of your head. Or as my dear departed Dad would say, "That'll put hair on your teeth!" My TJ's only had pecan. I had a sixteenth of it and my husband, trooper that he is, ate the rest because he hates to see food wasted. I have to say my track record with TJ's is dismal. They have about five items we rely on and swear by,. Sadly, several of my favorites have disappeared forever.

Nope, no cayenne. In fact the box says "Mild." Unfortunately they were worse than mild. They tasted like cardboard married sawdust. In fact although the box says "cheese straws" they were not straws, but rather crackers. But three for four ain't bad. I still have half a jar of that peach-bourbon jam, and I could eat that plus Beemster on Effie's Oatcakes as a main meal any day of the week.

My daughter sent us a box of southern goodies from Atlanta, all of which were surprisingly excellent. Often she picks out some weird stuff, but this time she hit the jackpot. First opened was a small pack of artisan peanut brittle. It was thin and crispy and delicate, far more interesting than most of the thick brittle that usually gets sticky in a hurry. That lasted all of an afternoon. Next opened was a jar of pickled okra which I served with cocktails to a friend I never thought would like it but she did. It was crunchy with just the right amount of heat--really good. Then something which I thought wouldn't be to my taste but which I actually find to be great: some artisan local brand of "Peach Bourbon Cardamom Fruit Preserves," which as it turns out is excellent with sharp salty hard cheese and oat crackers and surprising yummy as jam on rye toast. Lastly, if I'm not forgetting anything, there is one package of cheese straws which I plan to open tomorrow for a small party we are having. This will be the first time six masked, or in this case unmasked, people will be in my house at the same time opening and closing their mouths and breathing. It's sort of terrifying and I'm pretty sure I have forgotten everything I ever knew about being a host plus a last minute non-dairy request came in today! The birthday cake is going to be changed and needs to be shopped for again!

I've never figured out the genetic difference between a Minneola Tangelo and a Honeybell, except that minneolas are grown in CA and Honeybells are from Florida. But I am convinced that when both are at peak, the Honeybells from Florida are way better; of course they are impossible to get here in CA. Some sites say that the the difference is in the kind of grapefruit that the tangerine is crossed with. Growing up in NY my mother just swooned over the Florida ones, which have a very short season. We also favored the Florida white grapefruits, which were more common. Here in CA and Texas most of the grapefruits are pink. I don't know why you can't grow a good white grapefruit in CA. It has been a very strange citrus season so far. Satsumas have been scarce. Sevilles are behind schedule or non-existent, at least so far. I've had some good but not great super-sloppy minneolas and very good cara caras. Both have made very tasty juice. And there have been some little Tangos, whatever they are, that have been nice and tart, if you like that (I do.) But @SmithyI hear you. The standard navels have been boring. Blood oranges have been puny and not juicy. Where were you when you took that moonrise picture? Lovely.

Ah, the aptly named Welsh Rabbit. Neither Welsh nor rabbit.

Amazing pix, @liuzhou. They must be tasty to warrant the time it takes to suck them out of their shells. It's reassuring to know that snails are doing well somewhere in the world. They have disappeared from my small neck of the woods in the Bay Area. Lack of rain must be somewhat responsible. For some reason they liked clinging to the plastic wrapper of the NYT when it was delivered on wet mornings.

I want to put in a good word for Gabrielle Hamilton's White Borscht, which is easily located on the NYT site. Apparently it was a great comfort and a reasonably priced winter soup for her when she was an impoverished chef-to-be living on the lower east side, where Polish food had a foothold. I grew up on the upper west side, and we didn't know from white borscht, only red. Anyway, I made the recipe almost to the letter, although I halved it. It's a soup that makes its own gravy so to speak, so you don't have to start with labor-intensive stock or remember to unfreeze any. The stock itself is simply made with smoked kielbasa and cooks for only half an hour. I know kielbasa is ubiquitous but I've never eaten it before, and it's good! I had to buy the kielbasa and some russets, but I already had some leeks and creme fraiche. The only change I would make next time is to add more potatoes and not use so much of the cooked sausage in the final soup. Her version is meatier than I like. Also she adds more salt than is necessary, but for me that's almost always true. Yes, russets do need salt, but the kielbasa broth has plenty; salt is so personal. It was just as good the next day leftover. Really nice to have a new kind of soup!

Before @liuzhoustarted posting about "snail noodles" I would have guessed that Luosifen was the latest drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis. Now I am guessing if you eat the soup you will likely cure yourself of RA and many other conditions as well. Here's how I break down the various factoids here. 1) "Unpeeled" snails is a very poor translation for "in the shell." 2) "Unpeed" snails is most likely a typo, but if not, it means a raw snail you haven't yet irritated enough to pee in your hand. It does make sense in that you would want to get the pee out of the snail before it pees in the stockpot before it dies. 3) There are now lots of shortcuts for the broth, available on line if not at Piggly Wiggly. However, a true stock is made with pork bones and initially live snails. If the broth cooks for several hours to achieve maximum flavor, those snails wouldn't be very good eating; i.e. rubbery instead of just chewy like good escargots. 4) Escargots are land snails, no? Luosifen is made with river snails. Nothing has been said about whether or not people eat river snails in other ways, but I'm sure any snail worth its salt would be tough to swallow after eight hours on the stove. Unless you are very entrepreneurial, you are making escargots by stuffing the dead canned ones into pre-washed shells with a ton of garlic and butter, in which case you would use a tiny fork (or a toothpick if it was an impromptu picnic) to extract them and carry them from shell to mouth. There would be no struggle in extracting them of course unless you were eating them raw. Question: is this type of river snail eaten in other ways besides to make Luosifen broth? And if a restaurant serves Luosifen with snails in it, which I gather is not typical, should you assume those same snails were used to make the broth or are they fresh snails dropped in shortly before eating, the way you would do for most seafood soups? Oh, and are these snails, being harvested from the river very muddy? Even if you try and wash them there must be some crud that falls to the bottom of the pot, just the way sand does when you steam clams. I'm sure my summation only skims the surface, and I could go on and dip deeper, but even my curiosity has its limits. Clearly Luosifen has not given up all its secrets yet.