Katie Meadow

My Lithuanian ancestors would be thrilled to have chicken fried rice, no matter what. I'm sure they ate Chinese every Sunday, like we did on the upper west side of Mannahatta.

Not really surprised. L.et's hope I get another twenty years out of it. By then I'll be 97 and won't remember where the kitchen is.

I I love my Viking. It is now over 30 years old. We have needed service on it twice, neither time major, although of course service calls don't come super cheap, but that shouldn't be too surprising. It's a workhorse with heavy duty cast iron grates, Very high flame to very low simmer, easy to adjustl. We bought it with a cast iron wok grate that can be subbed in and that's fantastic. Since the Bay Area is a big city it isn't hard to find independent contractors who know how to work on Vikings. Maybe that would be challenging in a small town or in the countryside. Really my biggest complaint is that the marks on the oven dials are getting hard to read after so much use. Not critical yet, and I assume it can be remedied one way or another. I don't know if the new models are as reliable. But that goes for many appliances.

@Smithy YOU. ARE. AWESOME.

I criticize my own cooking all the time. Only then will my husband join in. But usually he softens the blow and is actually wrong about the reason something isn't as good as one hoped. If we make a recipe for the first time and it's awful, it often is the fault of the recipe. And wow, there are a lot of bad recipes out there. In a similar vein the habit of some recipe writers to include a paragraph headlined, "Why you will love this" irritates me no end. I might love it, but the odds are not good. As for menus that describe a dish as beautiful or delicious, well, I agree, that's rarely a good omen.

https://www.thekitchn.com/polenta-versus-grits-whats-the-difference-187807 This is an in-depth dive into grits vs polenta. I'm sure this information is already here on eG somewhere, but it's worth repeating. Bob's red mill medium grihnd cornmeal is a fantastic product; I use it all the time to make cornbread or to add it to baked goods that include cornmeal. My preferred type of cornmeal pudding/mush is American made grits. The good stuff is stone ground and made specifically from cornmeal sold as grits. There are a number of mills that will ship to you. This is not instant grits, by any means. You can get white grits or yellow grits and they taste a little different. Cornmeal in the Americas is typically made from "dent" corn while cornmeal made in Italy used for polenta is made from "flint" corn. Italian polenta is often made from finely ground corn. I'm sure that excellent corm meal mush can be made from just about any kind of corn and with various grinds. But my suggestion for a a baseline polenta would be to actually by an Italian product, fine ground if you are looking for a silkier texture. To my knowledge most Italian polenta is made from yellow corn, but that's the extent of my info when it comes to Italian grown flint corn. Needless to say there's a wealth of information on line about the difference between grits and polenta, and not all of it simple--or correct. I'm no expert but I do love most things corn. @Shel_B I'm glad you have come up with something that pleases you, but it does sound like a rather complicatied method.

Related to drought/lack of humidity is warming. To survive the trees have to move up the hill.

I've never seen canned pudding. Is it actually a can? If so, don't underestimate the hazards.

Thanks. It's a toss-up for me. GBP or canned peas. Neither.

What is GBP? British Pounds Sterling or Great British Peas?

I make mint chocolate brownies by simply adding some chunks of good quality mint chocolate bar to the melted chocolate. How much you use in relation to how much regular dark chocolate you use is up to you; a little goes a long way. I use Theo, but there are other bars out there, and their intensity of mint flavor varies. I'm not sure how to do it if you are only using cocoa. Of course at the end of the day, with a mint chocolate bar, you may still be getting extract. If you want to use real mint leaves I suppose you could make an infusion in whatever liquid goes in the cake.

Yep, very nice pureed and mixed with mashed potatoes. Celery root remoulade was a cocktail party trick of my mother's. Nice with a martini, dirty or with a lemon twist. You know, the kind of cocktail party where everyone has little plates and forks and it's better than dinner.

I'm sure I speak for everyone here: send a picture.

The National Wildlife Federation says this about California Bay Laurel: Leaves of the California bay laurel have been used by people to get rid of head lice and to discourage fleas. Scientists now think that dusky-footed woodrats use the aromatic leaves to keep fleas out of their nests. For some people, the oils from the leaves of this tree can be toxic. In my experience the local leaves you can pick here in the Bay Area are very intense; to my taste not particularly pleasant. For my needs dried Turkish bay leaves are just fine.

Does snake taste more like eel or more like chicken? There is a hilarious story in John McPhee's 3-part series in the New Yorker about thirty years ago from his book "Rising From the Plains." The material profiles the geologist David Love, whose mother's Wyoming ranch was a focal point for travelers. You can read the short excerpt about the murderer Bill Grace here. And yes, it's about eating a rattlesnake. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2019/10/23/rising-from-the-plains-is-classic-wyoming-book/

All you need is a hammer, a nail and a coconut and you can live another day. My mother, whose food habits were surprising, had a thing for fresh coconut milk. She hammered three holes, tipped the coconut over a glass and drained out the liquid.. Delicious.Then she would split it open (yes, with the hammer) and we gnawed away at the flesh, and most likely tossed the rest when we got bored with it. Looking back it seems to me you could soak the coconut meat in water and produce another drink. Not as yummy, but maybe good? When split a fresh coconut is like a snow geode. Lovely.

Same here. Only I love it especially because it's my husband who makes them and not me. I am far too fuzzy in the morning to actually cook anything. Which is why I eat toast for breakfast just about every day and rarely post in this thread.

Blue crabs are a favorite nostalgia food for me. As kids we used to catch them with butterfly nets in Hampton Bays, Long Island. I especially love them during soft-shell season. I've had tender big ones at NY Noodle Town. They are not a West Coast crab. Surprisingly I saw them for sale, live, at 99 Ranch the other day here in the East Bay. i've become squeamish about killing live crabs in my old age, so I didn't get them. I'll be on Edisto Island off the SC coast in late April and I'm hoping they have some there. The place we are staying at backs on the marsh, and the property description says it includes a" crab dock." There will be some 3 and 4 year olds with us, so they may object to throwing a living creature into boiling water, and I get that. I'm not one of those people who propagate the myth that lobsters and crabs don't feel pain.

I don't like that sort of thing. I don't like bananas or bread made from them. I thought you didn't have an oven...

Thanks! I've been waiting over two years for an answer. Okay, not really. In fact, I don't even remember posting about them. But due to the link I believe I know more tham most people on Earth about them. Well, not counting people in China. Do they taste as good as the article makes them seem?

@Kerala your friend has some whacky plates!

I too detest commercial ketchup and never keep it in the house. But for frosting a meatloaf I suggest a homemade ketchup with an addition of spicy smoky BBQ sauce. It's made with canned Italian tomatoes but tastes nothing like traditional ketchup. I almost never eat beef any more, so I haven't made meatloaf in years. I also used an equal mix of beef, pork and veal back in the day. And speaking of NOT ketchup, I like my french fries with aioli and smoked paprika.

So beautiful! How do you make plum caramel?

Agua de Tamarindo: tamarind, water and sugar. Tamarind soda can easily be found in many Mexican restaurants. It's good

I'll have the Lily Pad Pizza please, and to drink, a glass of Aqua Pond.