Katie Meadow

No personal electrical appliances in the trenches? Who knew? Not even a silent Sunbeam stealth toaster? Wherever you were hunkered down, if you were packing MRE's you probably didn't have sliced bread, either. Maybe a toast fork can be weaponized, because it wouldn't be very useful without a fire, which you also couldn't have.

If only Nigel Slater designed MREs for the armed forces. You may not have had an MRE as provided by the military, but I know you've had Spam, and that's the closest civilian relative I can think of. No toasters in the trenches--too much noise when they pop up. A dead giveaway if the toast flies out above ground.

The only experiences I've had with MSG have been Chinese restaurants. Since I don't have any Chinese restaurants where I adore the food, it's very rare that I have to confront the problem. Especially these days, of course. My own wontons, pot stickers, stir-fry dishes and so on make me happy. In fact I never order dumplings at restaurants, because mine are better. I understand that urge toward scientific experiments as @Duvelsuggests, but that's just not me. As for salt, I've never gotten dizzy from it, and I've had plenty of food that I thought was way too salty. Ask me if I care about all the studies debunking the effects of MSG!

I've never been able to detect the difference in taste when MSG is added to restaurant food. About twenty minutes later I know for sure one way or the other. No mistaking the symptoms for me. I don't eat a lot of Chinese restaurant food, partly because of that and partly because most of it doesn't seem that great. I make some dishes at home, admittedly a limited repertoire, and never wish they had more flavor. The fact that some people are sensitive to MSG and others not never seems to figure into "scientific" judgments. All I know is that if it isn't the MSG it is something in the food that doesn't like me. My husband doesn't react to it, or perhaps he's just generally spacey.

I've looked back on the foods that have survived frequent rotation during the past ten months. Mostly it has been comfort food which means several things. One is the nostalgia factor, the things I grew up eating pm the east coast or ate during my years in New Mexico, during the late sixties and early seventies. That would be wonton soup, various other Chinese dumplings, bagels and lox, linguini with clams, tuna melts, rice pudding, date-nut bread with cream cheese, root beer floats and of course pizza, although our home made pizza doesn't resemble a NY slice. Ever-present today are some of the foods I lived on in NM, admittedly with tweaks: pots of beans, burritos, flour tortillas, a constant freezer supply of roasted green chiles. Rattlesnake beans cowboy style over rice is what's for dinner tonight, on New Year's day, with Chile con Queso as an app and some pickled cabbage and carrots for a side. Another requirement about comfort food: I have to feel comfortable making it. It can't be too involved or time consuming. Yes, I have plenty of time, but limited energy for cooking. And, surprisingly, it involves decreasing amounts of meat, especially red meat. I ate beef for the first time in two years on xmas eve, in honor of a NM tradition. My first burrito was from basically a window in Albuquergue which became a years-long habit: a huge affair with pork, green chile and pinto beans, wrapped in foil, no table service, and eaten in the car. While driving a stick shift. The green chile was searingly hot. Now my burritos are very different, often made with rice and shrimp or fish, more coastal CA, more often with a hot red sauce. Soups are a constant. There's always some kind of stock in the freezer. So is pasta with a basic marinara sauce that gets frozen in pints; sometimes that becomes penne with a little hot Italian sausage, sometimes it becomes cauliflower with red pepper flakes on linguini fini. And now during the citrus months, fresh squeeze orange juice for breakfast seems important, where it used to seem too much trouble. I'd rather spend big bucks on a bag of oranges than on a hunk of meat, but that's just me, now. Prepared take out during the pandemic has been every couple of weeks from the same place we've been to for years, a Vietnamese place that has the strongest most delicious iced coffee you can imagine. Best for lunch, or it pretty much ruins our night.

Your kids ate broccoli? Happy New Year, night owl.

I've always been partial to leftover curried vegetables as a pie filling. Basic potato, cauliflower, peas, carrots and spinach or other greens, etc baked in a double crust. Or a single top crust works for deep dish. Not too sweet dough, all butter crust. Served with chutney or pickle and cucumber raita and tart apple, sliced thin.

That's probably correct. If you like crepes I suppose you could try making crepes in it, but it doesn't seem like a standard crepe shape to me. But I don't like crepes, so I wouldn't use it that way. If I acquired this pan I guess I would simply try lots of different things with it and see what it works best for. It's got a big diameter, so perhaps you could bake fish in the oven with it? Or maybe a very simple slim upside down fruit tarte? Fresh fruit in caramel, pastry over the top to bake. Really just winging it here. If you don't think it would be very useful, check out eBay and see what they go for in various conditions, used or unused. Somebody will buy it at the right price.

So....1 lb of macaroni uses 1 1/2 sticks of butter and 4 cups of various cheeses plus a cup of cream. Rich, you think? Americans will eat mac and cheese at the drop of a hat, as far as I can tell. Thanksgiving, xmas, whenever it's available. I get a craving maybe once a year, but mine is modest compared to many. And I always have a side of roasted green chiles to add, NM style! I admit that at Thanksgiving 2019 a new guest brought a big casserole of mac and cheese, which was his tradition. And since I am so bored of the traditional turkey and fixings it was a welcome change.

Step 1: get a three-legged stool. Step 2: put on goggles. And then?

Yeah, but how many ingredients are there? And whatever is in the ramen flavor packet does double duty if the noodles themselves aren't salty enough. Isn't it morning where you are? Don't you have anything better to do than check your udon packages? If you are slurping wonton soup I'm totally envious. I'm just settling in for an evening of The Great British Baking Show, from which I learn a great deal, although mostly not about baking. Cheers!

The pix I saw showed that the food options were illustrated, just like any good halal cart! I did check out the dormouse entry above (sort of like a rabbit hole!) I hope the name of the fattening jar comes up in conversation some day soon, or at least in a crossword puzzle. Or show and tell. "What I learned during the pandemic."

Udon especially seems to contain plenty of salt, same with with most Asian noodles, fresh or dried, at least to my tastebuds. When I buy fresh wheat noodles in Chinatown, whether egg or plain, they don't need salt either. But I definitely salt the water for Italian pasta. The first time I ever cooked dried udon I think I salted it; lesson learned. Look at the ingredients list and the salt level can be frightening.

Bamix Pro immersion blender. Leek and Potato soup in a few days! The prospect of getting rid of my lousy blender is pretty exciting. National Brand Mango pickle from Pakistan. I have to hand it to my husband. He went above and beyond to search out the last one in Oakland. All the shop owners claim that Covid has messed with the company's shipping and it's very hard to come by. We are addicted to it served along a vegetable curry and I was beginning to think I had seen the last of it in my lifetime. No, I won't pretend we didn't get a corporate gift of See's candy. It's not very good, we make fun of it every year and trash-talk the milk chocolate ones, but they all get eaten, and now of course I wish we still had some.

Take your cue from the thread titled "Christmas Pre Starter Mystery...." and make yourself some Parsnip Air. Earthy and surprisingly refreshing.

And a cheat and an all around pompous selfish human. No one protects his recipes like he does, not that I want them.

My MIL sent my husband to school with a peanut butter and mayo sandwich. Is it in there?

If I had to eat lunch on xmas day, parsnip air would be about all I could handle. That and a cup of tea.

Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! My parents had all his albums. I've been pretty indecisive about what to have for xmas day dessert along with our pizzas....zabaglione? Pink peppermint ice cream with hot chocolate sauce? But now at least I know what to do for New Year's Eve: I will get some thulium and thallium and go out with a bang. Here's to the end of 2020!

Mediocre panettone is awfully easy to come by. It benefits from being toasted and buttered. If it needs further disguise you can make French toast or bread pudding. Yes, it's sweet. Yes, kids will like it.

With a name like Old Dutch I was expecting licorice flavor.

How do you get a semi-liquid egg out of the wok? I cook my egg first in the wok, like a thinnish pancake, remove as soon as it is removable,, cut into pieces, then add back at the very end.

I have no xmas day traditions. When I was little we had a closet xmas. And I do mean closet. My mother came from a Kosher household but she loved xmas tree glitter. My grandmother lived in our apartment building, so my mother would literally hide a small tinseled tree in the coat closet in case Grandma happened by. You wanted that homey xmas cheer? Look in the closet, among the raincoats and liquor supply. Xmas day was most likely a movie and Chinese. In college in New Mexico I had a boyfriend I always spent xmas eve with. He had a big family and their tradition was green chile burgers. Xmas day was always a free-for-all, one place or another. Once I settled in CA and met my husband to be every xmas eve was spent with his family and every year his mother made the most god-awful minestrone you can imagine. That's just what they did. To this day, forty years later, I have no idea if all the siblings and in-laws really liked it or just pretended. It was what it was. It wasn't in his family code to dislike anything out loud. Gift opening happened after dinner and it was interminable. Xmas day was still a wild card, since his parents traditionallly had other plans and all the sibs eventually married into families with their own xmas day traditions. When we had our daughter I was pressured to have a tree and presents on xmas morning. Not so bad. Xmas day was still a wild card. No traditional menu. Sometimes a movie, sometimes an invite, sometimes dinner in SF's famous crab restaurants, sometimes guests and coq au vin. This year it's just the two of us. I'm going to thrill my husband by recreating my NM xmas eve with green chile burgers. I haven't eaten beef in two years and he misses it. I miss it, or maybe I miss my old boyfriend from a zillion years ago; I really don't know and in the end it doesn't matter. Not any fuss so it's fine with me .Xmas morning will be lox and bagels. Xmas dinner will be home made pizzas, a variety: artichoke, radicchio-chard, and a plain margherita, or something of that ilk. He does the crust and the baking, I do the toppings. Again, not a lot of work for me, except, well, artichokes. Dessert is an unknown. Maybe I can talk my husband into making zabaglione....I like it warm....

We have been loyal to a local Viet restaurant. We used to eat there a couple times a month, now we take out about the same. As soon as my husband walks through the door they know our order. That's comforting, and so is the food. Our only other take-out these days is lox and bagels, also from one purveyor. Strange times, these are.

Home made cheese straws is an excellent gift, especially if you can find some square tins to pack them in. In simpler times, if such a thing existed, they were a great on-the-fly appetizer for drop-in guests and always better than commercial ones. That's probably not happening, but the recipients will have them all to themselves, so it's win win. Cheese straws and good olives and gin martinis. Sounds good right now and it's only noon here! Good too of course with a clementine shrub! Cheers! Much nicer than the overload of cookies that everyone suffers through. My intake of sweets has increased with the pandemic and now I'm pretty sick of them. I made a very nice apple cake recently and realized I just wasn't interested in eating much of it.