Katie Meadow

Time for @Francito weigh in. At some point she described the basics for Sunday Gravy, or Sugo di Carne. My understanding is that it is long simmered meats (varieties of pork and beef and bones) in a tomato based, red wine braising liquid to create a thickened sauce (aka gravy) for pasta. I always thought the meats were picked out and eaten separately after the pasta course. The op suggested the topic was meatballs. I rarely make meatballs these days, but my Italian meatballs usually included a mix of ground beef and veal and pork, bread crumbs softened in water or milk, a little hard cheese, a little beaten egg, garlic, herbs like parsley and thyme and some coarsely chopped toasted pine nuts; that's from memory. I make them small, brown them in a little olive oil, then add them for a final few minutes to finish cooking in a marinara sauce, not a meat sauce. I have no doubt there are a zillion ways to make and cook Italian meatballs and a zillion ways when and how to add them to sauce. My mother, never much of a cook, used to simmer them to death in sauce. That makes a nice tough meatball.

We are once again in Atlanta, where I am having to adjust to a lack of certain staples, my daughter's strangely equipped kitchen, and her husband's many categories of "Mmm, no I don't think so." They are both on a high-protein diet (she's nursing twins, he's just wired that way) and are picky about certain preparations of ingredients; she seems to have accommodated to most of his quirks. One thing we can all agree on is hot spice. He's game for rice and beans, Sichuan takeout, BBQ. Luckily he will eat fish and shrimp. And almost any kind of chicken. Her cookbook collection is meager, but it fortunately includes the Lucky Peach 101 book. Last night we made the Lemongrass Chicken from the book and it was a hit. The night before we made the lamb burgers and they liked that as well. One of the few things I will be relieved about when I get home, aside from not being in an airport or on a plane, is less meat. Vegetable sides are a challenge; they hate cauliflower and okra and he doesn't like salads with any vinegar or mayo. Finding good cheeses, good bread, good ice cream and good stone fruit also seems to be hurdle of olympian proportions. The plums and peaches are dreadful and the lemons don't have much taste. Lemongrass is abundant and so is good beer. And for those of you like me, who have developed a bizarre love of boiled peanuts, the DeKalb Market is up to its neck in the best fresh raw peanuts I've ever tasted, big, meaty and not a bad one in a batch. So we did that and my husband and I ate most all of them, even though we thought the protein content would be a draw. Not so. We are drinking lots of Highland Gaelic Ale, a brown ale made in Asheville. Today we are making a big batch of marinara sauce they can freeze and we can have for dinner with spaghetti and Italian sausages. We make it at home all the time, but prefer it half the time with cauliflower instead of pork.

After trying a variety of brands during lockdown, I've decided my favorite sardines are Matiz. They are relatively mild. And they are not cheap, but sometimes you can get a multi-pack from Amazon at an okay price. They were less expensive at the very beginning of the pandemic, before everyone started stockpiling them!

In the recipe I use, dill and turmeric get married and have a baby; the dill and the turmeric share the stage and make something new. I've only had the dish at one Viet restaurant near me in the East Bay. That was my inspiration, and I like mine better, having never been to Hanoi and nothing to compare them to. I make Cha ca Black Cod. I suspect the restaurant version used tilapia, a fish I really don't care for. Although how would you know? I am guessing there are plenty of other bland generic tasting fish in the sea or the farm. When I first heard of "Tilapia" I thought it was a made-up fish. I can certainly imagine it is good with halibut. I love that picture of the charcoal set up.

Back in Atlanta for a couple of weeks. Dinner, thanks to the amazing DeKalb Farmers Market was Black grouper--a first for me. Really delicious just oven roasted with some cajun spices, lemon and lots of butter. To go with a rather old school casserole of farro with corn, summer squash, tomatoes and fresh basil; pedestrian and like something from a hippie pot luck, only better, because farro. Perfect for my daughter who is a milk machine with twin babies and needs rib-sticking things she can eat in a bowl while nursing at the same time. It's like a circus trick!

Salted was what I grew up with, but when I left home I started using unsalted for just about everything. We usually have two types of butter, both unsalted: regular for baking, Irish for most other stuff. It's really pretty easy if you have a yen for toast with salted butter to simply sprinkle a little good salt on your toast.

That sounds excellent. I used to love birch beer, but haven't had it for years. Somehow I associate it with being at camp on the east coast.

Growing up it was simply Coke, except at the beach when I always had cream soda. There was a phase when I ordered Dr. Brown's Cel-ray tonic at a deli with a pastrami sandwich on rye. Those were the days before the "New Coke" disaster. I never much cared for Diet Coke. I do have a good friend who, for lack of a better word, appears addicted to it as an after-dinner drink. Then for thirty years or so I stopped drinking soda altogether. In the last few years I've re-discovered root beer floats, but only indulge in hot weather a few times a year. And I'm super picky about the root beer: it can't be too sweet and it has to be made with cane sugar. A couple of months ago I ordered a Mexican Coke (I think it was in Atlanta at a family run Arepa joint) and it was delicious.

No arguments here. Raw paper thin slices, salted, is my favorite way to eat it. Good as a desperation salad or with salted peanuts and a martini. I've always noticed a lot of kohlrabi in the veg markets in Chinatown. No idea how they like to cook it but I'm sure no mixed vegetable stir-fry would be any the worse for some julienned kohlrabi. My experience buying it in various Chinatowns however is that often it is pretty woody. I grew up eating it too. Until I realized they have lots of it in Germany as well as China I thought it was a Jewish thing and was once informed that the name meant "voice of the prophet" or the "Rabbi's song," but really it just means cabbage turnip! Loses a bit of romance that way, no?

You moved so you could eat more of an endangered species? I'm not trying to be catty here, but as far as I know Atlantic Bluefin has been on the critically endangered list for the last ten years. I know there are limits on the catch, etc, but can you clarify the status of Atlantic bluefin (or all bluefin)? There are very few restaurants or shops that sell bluefin here on the west coast, and I've always been encouraged to avoid it. I do know that Pacific bluefin is a different species, but they are overfished as well. The Monterey Bay Aquarium seafood watch still has both Atlantic and Pacific bluefin on their Avoid List. This is all about the ecological impact. There is also a lot of corruption in commercial fishing, since these fish can command sky high prices. And then there's this: "This summer’s amazing story about a record, 873-pound bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Delaware by a recreational angler took an unfortunate twist Tuesday, when international ocean conservation group Oceana reported that toxic mercury in its flesh tested at 2.5 parts per million, making it two and a half times higher than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Action Level for commercial fish. This amount is also nearly twice the highest level of mercury ever found by the FDA in any fresh or frozen tuna steaks." So, stay healthy. Yes, I have no doubt it is delicious.

Seeing a whole fish wouldn't help me in most cases. Maybe if it was a tuna or a trout.

Sad to hear. Always a shock when a member of eG dies. Are you all real people? Between a year and half of lockdown, my husband doing all the shopping, FaceTime doctor visits, lack of social events, pathetic and embarrassing reliance on Amazon, which I hate, etc., I think that slowly over time I have developed a permanently skewed view of life on earth.

@shaindo you have a recipe for that cheesecake? Looks great.

Totally agree. Still warm from the kettle.

@liamsaunt, having grown up in the northeast and then living in NM and CA I never tasted a fried green tomato until I began making trips to the south to see my daughter. I like them especially when they have a modest delicate coating, not a heavy breading. A tempura like batter might be good. The best way I ate them was in a fried green tomato BLT. A BLFGT? Say that without spitting out your last bite. As far as I can tell the only way to get a green unripe tomato here in the Bay Area is to grow your own, which I don't.

I agree that in order to be called Potato Salad the potatoes must be the main event. Salade Nicoise is not potato salad. Almonds and raisins in small amounts? Both sound weird to me. If I encountered a raisin in potato salad I would probably think it was a stow-away creepy-crawler, especially if I bit down on it without warning.

Aww, life is short. Don't diss kohlrabi! Salted, paper thin slices of raw kohlrabi make a great cocktail go-with. I can see it as a wrapper for sushi, although I never would have thought of it. Pickled kohlrabi is excellent. It does need to be fresh and tender and juicy, and it isn't always like that.

I wasn't being serious. Just implying the produce looks more beautiful than the stuff pictured here that comes from Imperfect or the other operation that sends boxes of "seconds."

Without giving this any scientific thought (I'm sure there are a number of readers who will be happy to) I've always suspected that relatively small cubes or dice, if cut before boiling, will absorb more water and result in mushy texture and loss of some potato flavor. Watery potato salad would be very bad. I use yukon golds during the winter for potato salad. If they are big (whatever that means to you) I cut them in half before boiling. Then when still warm I cut them into chunks and then gently mix in several shakes of salt and splashes of vinegar. I let that sit a bit before adding whatever else I plan to use. In summerI like to make potato salad with French Fingerlings, which are my favorites; excellent in potato salad, in fact excellent fixed in a variety of ways. Farmers' markets should have baby red potatoes or other waxy candidates this time of year. Although I've absorbed lots of recipes for potato salad, I rarely use one. I've made a zillion potato salads and and they are never exactly the same. I suppose I've pretty much decided what works, and I'm flexible. Potato salad to me is a mood thing, if you know what I mean. Anyway I only have a few criteria: No russets. Always celery. Often fresh dill. Usually some kind of pickled thing. Once in a blue moon capers. Once, and only once, beets. These days I'm into smoked paprika. Sometimes I like just an olive oil potato salad with good vinegar. The outlier potato salad is Japanese. The potatoes are just a few minutes from being mashed. The use of mayo is, to put it mildly, bold. There are peas and carrots in it. The main flavors seem to be salt, sugar and Kewpie. Sometimes it is inexplicably yummy. I've noticed that some recipes for Japanese potato salad include diced ham. But that's a little like a Russian potato salad! Except one uses Hellman's. My least favorite potato salads can usually be found at pot lucks and BBQ joints. Potato salad isn't having a good day when it's a guest at a picnic in CA farmland and the air is a pleasant 95 degrees. Did they pre-measure the mayo before they realized they didn't have enough potatoes?

Weekly boxes available, delivered personally by cart. Don't see any apples, maybe the horse ate them. See website, Perfect.com.

Most molded salads made with packaged Jello don't frighten me; I find them hilarious and have rarely been in a situation where I might actually eat some. The exception is the cranberry Jello salad served with a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Now that does scare me. I think it usually uses raspberry jello, or at least that's how my FIL made it. He served it in a ring-shaped mold with sour cream liberally glopped on the top. This was not something I grew up with.

Hi Dave, greetings from Oakland. If you baked bread like that for me I wouldn't complain either.

No wonder your appliances are in the bedroom.

My memory of the water in Greece is that it was the best I've ever tasted. NY water is good. Bay Area water is very good. But the water all over Greece was delicious.

I'm hooked on Cajun blackening spice. I don't really blacken anything, but during lockdown I started using it for fish, shrimp, cajun banh mi and as a necessary ingredient in a pot of red beans. Also we are eating a lot more red sauce which I make in quantity and freeze in portions. Spaghetti with sausage, spaghetti with cauliflower, and we are making pizza more often. Leftover pizza the next day can't be praised enough. Another thing we are buying and using more often is curry leaves. Curried cauliflower has become a staple. Oh, and root beer floats have become more routine in the time of covid. Ice cream and chocolate biscotti are taking up residence on a permanent basis.