Katie Meadow

I keep thinking I want to bake one, but then I just don't get around to it. If it's good, point us to the recipe. It looks lovely. Any dessert that's better for being in the fridge overnight has my approval. Until 2020 every Thanksgiving for exactly FORTY YEARS has included my SIL's pies: usually five of them! Last year there was just me and my husband and no pie. This year there will be five of us and two bakery-bought pies, since the pie baker will be elsewhere on Turkey day. Sad. Her apple pie is always my favorite, but her pecan makes an excellent Friday lunch.

Good fried green tomatoes are an elusive item. Besides the tomato being good to start with, the batter should be airy and crispy, like tempura, allowing the tomato to be the star. Every time I visit my daughter in Atlanta I order them and I'm always disappointed. The crust is typically too thick, heavy handed or however else it can miss the mark. I would make them myself but alas, finding a good green tomato in the Bay Area, even when they should be in season, even at the farmers' markets, is a rarity. No one seems into fried green tomatoes around here. One of the best versions I've had was stuffed into a fried green tomato BLT in a tiny town in the Blue Ridge foothills.. Delicious. Still, hope springs eternal and it's very hard for me not to order them if they are on the menu.

Of course they have. If luck will have it I will be dead before that's all that's left to eat. One site I looked at described them as an intestinal track with a hole in each end.

In days long gone, an older southern gentleman had a table at the Berkeley Farmers Market. He had very nice fresh eggs and for a few weeks at best during the appropriate season he sold fresh shelled butter beans in generous bags. They were a sort of grayish mauve color, and absolutely delicious. They were not lima beans, at least not in my book. I was so sad when he disappeared from the market and assumed that he grew old and stopped farming or selling.

Thanks for the review of sea cucumbers. They look awful and sound very unpleasant. I'm guessing they will be on earth longer than we will.

Pineapple especially, but also other fruits like papaya, are commonly served with a generous squeeze of lime and a dusting of red chile powder. I came home from my first visit to Mexico and started doing that for myself. Tajin mix is chile, lime and salt, I think. I'd rather control the elements myself and use only fresh lime juice and good quality pure New Mexican chile. Delicious! For those with a sweet tooth pineapple is great with lime and a sprinkle of brown sugar too. It looks like your fruit package includes fresh lime, so I might be inclined to toss the tajin or relegate it to the drawer where soy sauce packets go to die and just use my favorite chile powder.

In my twenties I lived on a communal farm. I know, I can't believe it either. The property was owned by a jovial porky chap who grew up in Argentina, also on a farm. He was into rabbits. And yes, the liver was good and so were the kidneys. Those days I probably didn't know the function of a kidney or a liver. Now I'm squeamish about touching raw chicken breast, let alone anyone's liver, etc. But the kidneys were extremely popular with my friends on the farm.

@Shelbyyou are a forgiving and kind soul to make your in-laws bread for Thanksgiving dinner even though you will not attend. And five years ago, before xmas dinner after the election of he who shall not be named I never imagined my relatives would have a political argument during a holiday dinner (and we always talk politics), but two of my favorite people ended up in tears. Now the nephew responsible for that miserable event has apparently refused to be vaccinated. Several of us made it very clear that we would not attend if he was there. I don't feel the least bit guilty. There will be be five of us this year, all of us having spent the last two years in an abundance of cautious isolation. Anything less seems like lunacy.

I just could not let that typo stand. My original post said "dummies" instead of GUMMIES! Despite the obvious, it was the doing of spell check! I'd have to consume a lot of edibles before I couldn't spell that word.

I feel for you @Kim Shook. But my Thanksgivings only get better the more I give up. If my husband hadn't taken over the job of turkey I swear I'd be happy enough without it. Get some weed dummies and settle back on the couch and eat whatever comes out of the kitchen.

Kewpie was one of various purchases in recent years that I actually felt paid for itself just in the satisfaction of taking one spoonful and tossing the rest into the garbage. I totally agree that as I get older I have less and less desire to keep anything I don't like. I just have to be sure my husband doesn't notice. Sad, of course, but you can't donate what you've already sampled. I've reached maximum space available in most kitchen cabinets, but it's really that my brain that can't handle the clutter. Where exactly are you now?

So funny! I too used to fume when all the food came to the table and my MIL insisted that everyone take a turn to say their gratitudes. I slaved over a lot of that food and resented the hell out of getting colder by the minute.... Now it's different. The old people (well, older) are, sadly, gone. The rest of us mostly just dig in once the wine is poured. Last year there was no family Thanksgiving. This year it will be just be a few paranoid vaxxed up boomers; no millennial cousins, no greatest generation. It should be...dare I say...relaxing! I'm grateful for that.

Save the Horseshoe crabs, save the Red knots. https://www.audubon.org/news/saving-red-knots-one-crab-time The crabs were abundant on Long Island, where we used to summer. No one ever considered eating one. They were harmless, and we just stepped around them. Sometimes there would be hundreds. Now I suspect there are way fewer.

Totally agree, best raw, paper-thin, cold, salted. It never occurred to me to grind some pepper on it, but that's probably because growing up my mother never put anything on it but salt. I'll try pepper. I've used it julienned in stir-fry, usually when I'm running out of the usual suspects, and it retains some crunch but lacks flavor. Perhaps some of those who heap insults on kohlrabi have only had old overgrown examples. When it's woody and dried out it's pretty unappealing, but fresh and tender it has a delicious character. @Duvelyou must have had a traumatic encounter with a kohlrabi as a child.

If the wind is blowing in the right direction I'm sure you can smell camels from 6 miles away.

Just a personal observation about my own preferences in pizza, which are changing as I get older. I no longer like a multitude of toppings; in fact I like my toppings to be very minimal. The current trend, at least with restaurant pizza, is to pile them on, the more the better. The last time we tried ordering pizza we were in Atlanta, with my daughter an her husband, and the place they were going to order from didn't even list a Margherita pizza on the menu. It was more like, pick three toppings for X price. Hello, no. We used to do artichoke pizza or radicchio, but now we don't bother. I don't care and I'm lazy, I guess. And although I am not vegetarian, I actually don't like any kind of animal protein on my pizza. Unless in a social situation (what's that?) where ordering pizza for a group, we almost never eat commercial or restaurant pizza. W make it ourselves, and it is very plain. My idea of a perfect pizza is a thin crust, minimal tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella (not a thick layer), a little basil, and if it's ripe tomato season, a few thin tomato slices on top. I like my salad greens on the side, please, as a....well, salad. Also not a kale person, raw or cooked, so the question of whether or not it belongs on pizza is irrelevant to me.

My dad always made his chopped liver with cognac or brandy, probably which ever was the shorter reach. As a result, so do I.

I've never made gravy in my life. My husband makes it once a year for Thanksgiving. And I console myself by remembering that @Ann_Tgets up at 3 a.m. or some ungodly hour, so she has time to get a jump on dinner, lunch and tomorrow's breakfast!

My husband saves the "best" for last too. He risks not only his perfect hoard being stone cold by the time he gets to it--or me stealing it off his plate. Many of us just hoard one thing. He hoards food. On his plate, and in the fridge. He will dole out very small portions of good cheese, not wanting to finish it off, until it grows moldy or rock hard. He will eat a rotting peach before a perfect one and then let the perfect one become way too ripe. Not me. I eat the sweetest part of the watermelon first and the perfect peach while it is still perfect. However, I do hoard something: that's clothing. My nicest things go unworn because I want to "save" them. I'm trying hard to fight this bad habit. At a certain point I have to ask myself how long it will be before it's pajamas 24/7.

I happened on the second episode last night. The little cafe under the freeway was hilarious. A dusting of truck exhaust with your meal, anyone? Bring ear plugs and be prepared for no meaningful conversation other than screaming for the hot sauce. But I guess there are loyal truck drivers out there who stop whenever they pass through Laredo. It did make me realize how outdated my idea of Laredo is. Any cowboy's white linen shroud wouldn't be white by the time the pall bearers reached the cemetery.

Yes. And also Smitten Kitchen. Both appear to edit their posts and both write well.

I like glug, as in oil. And I like knob, as in butter.

Thanks, I'll start looking out for it in the various shops we frequent.

Just curious....I don't think I have ever had this American made brand, Sfoglini. How does it compare with Rustichella D'abruzzo? How does it compare to more common store brands like DeCecco? I use mostly those two brands. When it comes to pasta shapes, I guess I don't consider the amount of sauce that clings to it to be the main criterion; more is not always better. I did look at that video upthread. I love that woman! But all four of her trials with cascatelli looked to have more sauce than I prefer. Cascatelli looks like it would be a fun shape for kids. Who wouldn't want to be Steph Curry playing with his mouth guard?

Missed you. Happy to hear from you!