Katie Meadow

I have a recipe for smoky tomato soup that uses lapsang souchang tea. Not bad, and you don't need much. Tea, that is. I prefer my scotch neat.

I never heard the word "toastie" until I came to eG. In fact, or maybe I'm making this up, it was in a post by Anna N. I guess I never ordered a grilled cheese sandwich when visiting the UK. For the hell of it I googled it, trying to determine if there was actually a difference. Predictably there is a world of dopey confusion as to what that might be. To some people a toastie indicates it is made in a " toastie maker" or press as opposed to flipped on a skillet. Where the butter should go is another topic entirely. My mother, a New Yorker who spent her growing years in Cincinnati never made a grilled cheese sandwich in her life, as far as I can remember. Nor did she ever make tomato soup, which is a nice traditional go-with. When I proudly got my first cast iron pan at a flea market in college I started making them for myself. If I asked my husband to make me a toastie he would be stumped. However he makes a mean grilled cheese. In a cast iron skillet. The butter goes on the outside. "Toastie" seems more inclusive, as it implies that it need not be just cheese between the slices. But I'm stuck with grilled cheese. Another word I learned being on eG is "melty."

Okay I'm sure they don't, but living here for fifty years it seems like a lot of them happen in late summer or fall. The biggest one I lived through in the bay area was in October 1989. It still makes me jumpy this time of year. We were watching the World Series game 3. My daughter was almost two, and in her high chair, which we just managed to stop from falling. The TV went to static. Luckily our house is on bedrock and we didn't suffer much damage. I've spent time in the NC mountains and sometimes get the urge to move there, closer to my grand-daughters in Atlanta. But maybe not.

We don't call September in the Bay Area "the beginning of football season." We call it fire and earthquake season. Indeed, the weather can be glorious when it isn't in the 90's. Then it's best to cool down at the coast, and always a stop for Hog Island Sweets. This week the weather is wacky beyond belief. On Tuesday it is supposed to hit 98 here in Oakland. And remember, no one has air conditioning. Your trip sounds very fun.

When someone figures out how to turn legs into wings, let me know.

I find all this info to be a confusing mess of questionable science and luck. The idea of re-boiling stock the next morning after it sits on the stove and then cooling it down before refrigerating or freezing seems like an annoying waste of time, although it might be safer. In winter, if your kitchen is nice and cold at night I don't see a problem leaving the hot stock out at night if you can stand to deal with putting it away the next morning. But in warm weather I'ld rather not. My solution to this problem is to get the stock going early in the day and get the cooled stuff into containers in the fridge by dinner time. Maybe it's just me, but the last thing I want in the morning is the smell of chicken broth and the chore of dealing with it. If time is short, and you have an abundance of ice, sitting the pot in the sink to cool it down is effective. But again, extra work. The idea of re-boiling an already made soup for fifteen minutes the next day seems particularly destructive to the poor soup.

Maybe they are promotional items for a brand called Pony Express.

Joy of Cooking was indeed my first cookbook. My mother gave me a copy when I first moved out of the dorm in college. I still have that copy. You can't beat her recipe for Brownies Cockaigne. It's easy enough to whip up when stoned. I've been making those brownies since I got the book about 55 years ago. Cockaigne indeed.

That sounds great. Another favorite: fried green tomato BLT. For some reason neither stores nor farmers' markets in these parts sell green tomatoes. Unless you have your own garden they are scarce as hens' teeth. My big revelation when last in the South was a place in the Blue Ridge Mountains that fried them in a tempura-like batter, rendering them ethereal and way better than the typical heavy cornmeal crust. So delicious.

@Pete Fred I don't have Basque fatigue yet but I want to. I've never made a Gateau Basque but I'm tired of not living next door to you. So is there a recipe you like best?

Labor day dinner tonight consisted of about all my favorite summer foods. We started with roasted okra, which is a bit crunchy and a perfect finger food with aioli. Really, my favorite way to eat okra. Then very good corn on the cob, simply buttered and salted. And a salad: no idea where the recipe came from, but it's called Peach Tomato and Burrata Caprese. If you like peaches and tomatoes together like I do, then this is a splash home run. Burrata goes in the center of the plate. Around it were sliced Cherokee tomatoes, lightly salted. Then a layer of peach slices. We had some plums, so I added slices of those too. The salad gets a minimal drizzle of lemon and olive oil dressing, a little more salt, a little bit of basil, and finally a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts. This is a fantastic salad when you have really flavorful tomatoes, a ripe peach and a tasty not too soft sweet-tart plum. With burrata. well, kill me now. And then there was tennis. And then Coffee Bean Blast ice cream.

I doubt it, given the list of powders and flavors.

I'm not seeing the disaster part. The tuna looks good. I like my food hot. It seems to me that if a chef spends a long time bent over my plate with tweezers, my food will be cold by the time it gets to the table. Maybe it's weird, but I don't want anyone but me playing with my food.

https://www.southernkitchen.com/story/eat/2021/07/22/chef-y-trick-supposed-make-better-grilled-cheese-but-does-it/8055197002/ In this article the mayo on grilled cheese hack gets the full monty. The writer attributes the popularization to Gabrielle Hamilton,which is where I first heard about it. You can count on GH to come up with interesting new ways of using common ingredients. If you don't want to spend time down this rabbit hole I will provide the takeaway: it's faster than using butter because you can fry mayo at higher heat, but guess what: it lacks the flavor of butter. I tried it once. Personally I am good with cooking my grilled cheese low and slow in a cast iron skillet. And I hold firm to the philosophy of mo buttah mo bettah.

Talk about rabbit holes. I've just come back up for air. I've never heard of egg coffee, but then I don't spend time on sites with exploding trends. Comparisons to tiramisu (sans cake) are especially swoonworthy. It screams late morning treat. I've learned my lesson about not drinking an iced Vietnamese coffee after 2pm.

I'm good with a glug or a splash, but not a bunch. Maybe a handful? Bunches are arbitrary divisions made on the basis of your grocer's pricing guidelines. Here in northern CA a bunch of chives is typically no thicker than a small pinkie finger. In Atlanta we found bunches of chives consisted of about ten times that much. For the same price or less. I agree with posters who are annoyed by endless overwritten preambles to a recipe; most of them are inane and repetitive to say nothing of poorly written. But what irritates me the most is the paragraph titled: "Why you will love this recipe."

FYI Koda Farms is going out of business. Perhaps there are other growers of Kokuho Rose Rice. Koda is packing up shop after almost 100 yrs growing that CA rice variety.

It's an awful feeling to run out of a dish when people are wanting seconds, so I like the idea of making ample amounts and hoping for leftovers. As for restaurants in China, do diners not ask for a takeaway bag if there's extra food on the table?

It isn't cheap, but CA grown Lundgren basmati rice is delicious. There is an organic variety which may be a little trickier to track down, but most of the places you probably shop in Berkeley carry at least the one designated "natural" if not organic. I use my Zoji rice cooker for all my meals calling for Sushi or Japanese short grain rice, but I like to cook my Basmati on the stovetop. A heavenly aroma, and worth it for my money.

My husband's siblings are two boys and one girl. They all developed a habit of appearing not to be piggy by leaving a tiny half-portion of food in the box or bag or the fridge. My husband does it to this day. He swears that he just too full and "couldn't eat" that last few bites. His parents learned to cut the dessert pie into six equal pieces to shut down the squabbling.

Taking the last piece or portion without asking if anyone else wants it is just plain rude. An option to split it is then a nice thing to do. I recently made Gazpacho for part of a lunch spread for four people. I thought I had made an ample amount. Little did I know my BIL eats very fast. He served himself seconds, which amounted to all that was left, before anyone finished their first bowl. I just find that really irritating, and I'm not generally a stickler for perfect table manners. If you ask, your host should let everyone know there's more in the kitchen, if that's the case.

pike heels and collard field jacket

Congrats, Granny!

Finally an occasion for a taste test: McConnell's vs TJ's. Coffee Bean Blast. Could not find either Turkish Coffee or Brazilian McConnell's,, so we had just the straight McConnell's Coffee. Blind test, but simply which you preferred. There were four of us; two liked the McConnell's better, two liked the TJ's better. Both have good coffee flavor and both have flecks of coffee. The McConnell's was deemed creamier and richer. The TJ's had a slightly bitter coffee aftertaste which I really liked. But I would happily eat either one, especially if someone else paid for the McConnell's.

@Shel_B My suspicion is that you wish to be talked into a stand mixer. Use your old egg beater every day to whip up egg whites or heavy cream and soon you will be strong enough to carry the stand mixer around the kitchen. Unless you have unlimited counter space and money burning a hole in your pocket, in which case you will have to throw yourself off the fence.