Katie Meadow

Between the bananas, bubble gum and slime I'm outta here. The closest I've ever gotten to a frog is having to put in ear plugs to tone down the racket at night. I've never had a mint julep either. I can't decide if the end of days means no frogs or nothing but frog farms.

Wow, this is going to be a memorable Thanksgiving by virtue of subtraction. For 40 or so years I've done the holiday with my husband's family; a big crowd. Not gonna happen this year, at least for me. My husband is weighing the pros and cons of making a turkey for the two of us; he's embraced the job for years since half his relatives are vegetarians. Seems insane to me. I like to pick at the crispy skin when the bird comes out of the oven, but turkey meat is just meh. I am however a carcass junkie. There's something addictive about turkey broth. I don't even like all the traditional sides. I go for the company and my SIL's apple pie. Maybe an apple pie is in my near future. One pie for the two of us means we definitely will get pie for breakfast. Silver lining! The bar is low these days.

Okay, just curious. Frogs are an indicator species. Don't you have to be careful which ones you eat? I've never had frog's legs and don't believe I will start now. And, @Kim Shook my southern roots are exclusively southern Lithuanian. I'm not a fan of bourbon, I much prefer rye in a cocktail or straight up. Bourbon tastes like bananas to me. Too sweet.

Yep, that's it. I use a little less marinara sauce than the recipe calls for. I don't like it soupy and that way the edges of the top noodles get kind of crispy. Very simple; the only real labor is sautéing the eggplant slices. Takes patience and can't be rushed.

I too do some serious menu planning. Here's an example of approx one week plus of main meals. The major shopping run usually involves two stops: Berkeley bowl for fish and meat and vegetables and then a specialty shop for dry pasta, fresh mozz and other cheeses and deli meats. There are always changes and reversals. At least once or twice a week I try to make something that gives us leftovers. Typically we eat a long latish breakfast, rarely involving any cooking and then linner in the afternoon or early evening. Snacking occurs at odd hours; we don't plan a sit-down lunch. Sometimes we make a special run for seafood if we are in the mood. And when we are really low on supplies and I can't stand the idea of cooking we go for take out lox, bagels, etc and that's a meal, with sliced cucumber and radishes or whatever, to pretend we are having a vegetable. About half our meals are vegetarian or use a chicken or ham broth but no meat. No blackboard though that's very impressive! Just a miserable list of scribbles and cross-outs. Day One: shopping day. Always seafood of some kind. Shrimp wonton soup with home made broth and choi sum. No, I don't make my own skins, good ones are available. 2. Large caesar salad and sauteed corn with green chile. Probably some easy app or side. 3. Chicken stir fry with cabbage, choi sum, Chinese chives on rice. Extra rice made for next day. 4. Fried rice with a variety of veggies and a bit of smoky ham. 5. Pizza and a fennel salad. Three kind of pizza: radicchio and garlic, tomato, ham and pineapple, all with fresh mozz. Lots of slices left over. 6. Leftover pizza of course, and a very simple spinach gratin w/no cheese. 7. Dan Dan rice noodle soup with the rest of the choi sum. 8. Eggplant pasta casserole and a fennel salad. Frank Bruni's mother's recipe--really good--no meat and minimal cheese. 9. Leftover casserole and crudites; some scrounging. 10. Red beans and rice, using ham stock from the freezer. Leftover beans usually get frozen for some desperate evening. Things I always have frozen: chicken breasts, marinara sauce and thick tomato sauce for pizza, , Italian sausage, two kinds of stock, roasted hot green chile, some kind of cooked beans, edamame and peas. The freezer is usually pretty crowded. Oh, and about corned beef. My dad, due I assume to some secret past, loved using canned corned beef to make hash. I assumed that corned beef was exclusively a canned product or only something sliced in a deli. Corn a beef? Huh?

The rye cookies sound yummy. One reason they may be successful is that they are not 100 percent rye; they use an equal amount of AP flour. I'm very fond of buckwheat flavor, but baking with only buckwheat and no AP flour is a major challenge. One of the most touted recipes for an all-buckwheat cookie comes from Tartine Bakery. Note that Elizabeth, the baker, is allergic to gluten and has worked hard in the last few years to bake gluten-free. I like a percentage of buckwheat in some cakes and pancakes, but I've never had an all-buckwheat bread or pastry that I really thought was great. I like Soba noodles a lot, but most of them, if you read the ingredients, are not 100 percent buckwheat; those folks who avoid wheat altogether already know that. If there is a big selection of soba you will probably find one or two that are only buckwheat. My experience trying them once is that the texture really suffers.

Everything looks great. Also very nice are the two pieces of pottery. Fried rice is my comfort food.

Duran Pharmacy! We used to go for breakfast. That was in the late sixties, about 13,000 years ago.

Maybe they are using the leftover dye from the children's aspirin. The color in the photos looks more pretty in pink, though.

@heidih, @Kim Shook et al, whoever recommended Nyakers gingersnaps, thanks for creating one more quandary for me. One box and I'm an addict. How do you keep them from getting soft? The only way I can think of is to eat the entire sealed package within 24 hours. I'm perfectly capable of doing that, but it would be nice to give myself an extra day or two. Ideas?

How exactly do you saturate and drain the paper filter?

For several years I had a great gold filter; it was fine enough so that the coffee drained slowly through it. I got a lot of use out of it, but finally it became raggedy and failed. I tried to replace the exact type but it was no longer available. I tried three or four kinds, including the stainless steel one cited above and none of them were fine enough to slow the flow. I gave up on metal filters entirely. I drink far less coffee than I used to, and I'm happy when my husband makes a press pot.

My mother was crazy for shad roe. She used to wrap it in bacon and saute it. I take one bite and find it amazing. Then after another bite I get overwhelmed by how rich it is. I would much rather have the shad. So delicious! A fish you don't see on the west coast. Citarella would bone it for you. Or at least they did in the past.

Agree--Almondinas original flavor are excellent! Most all commercial cookies seem blah to me, but then I don't think I am a cookie person. However there is one packaged tea biscuit / cookie I really like, and that's Effie's Oatcakes. They are not too sweet and just a little salty. And, unfortunately, pricey.

@liuzhouare those morels farmed or foraged? Do they tell you when you buy them? Just curious. I know that morel cultivation is still in its infancy, but China is apparently ahead of the curve.

I haven't made that recipe in years, but for a while it was in frequent rotation. My husband is now the chicken-roasting person. He just makes a bed of cut potatoes and lets the whole chicken cook on top of them in the oven. Works, and I get a night off. The potatoes are my favorite part. If I am just roasting potatoes I really like a bit of duck fat. In the summer months though I really love a room temp potato salad. I have one I'm crazy for this year.

You have a cat? We shop the same way, and I try not to forget what a privilege that is. Safeway is for paper products and Cheetos; things not sold where we buy vegetables or protein or bread. Many people don't have those options. It helps to live somewhere with a large multi-ethnic population. Or in a climate with a long growing season and a lot of farms and farmers' markets. It gets very complicated.

Ah, more great memories from the kitchen of @JoNorvelleWalker. When you got back from the ER I hope you reassured your guests that you got special artisanal red carrots from the market when they praised the beautiful color of the soup. @gilbertlevinethanks for the tip, but I have to confess I don't really like carrot soup. Also I'm very lazy, as in once the carrot is peeled I'm not likely to cook it.

I love carrots, especially raw. BUT. I can't remember the last time I had a really good sweet one. It doesn't seem to matter much where they come from. Farmer's market carrots don't seem to be a guarantee. I would be munching them all the time if they so often were not tasteless, woody or dry or were nothing but a fibrous core. And I adore carrot juice. If carrots were consistently sweet and tender I would have gotten a juicer long ago. Carrot and grapefruit juice is one of my favorite combos. Carrot and orange isn't bad either.

For the last six months we have adjusted to larger shopping hauls, less often. With a little fill in for fruit, tomatoes and so on we usually stretch our major shopping events to two weeks. Sweet potatoes are an excellent "end of days" food; just as good two weeks after they were purchased. But I do need lots of butter and salt to be happy.

Missed that. You are way ahead of me. I'm still trapped in the goo.

Speaking of molasses in storage tanks: the great flood of 1919. Maybe that's when they invented Boston Baked Beans. https://www.history.com/news/great-molasses-flood-science

Thanks for the info, @dtremit. It's unlikely I will ever make baked beans, I just don't enjoy them. My husband would be happy to have my portion at a pot luck/barbecue. Also I'm not into molasses. I find that anything molasses can do Steen's cane syrup can do better!

First I put the banana on a plate. Then I cut it neatly in half with a knife. Then I peel each half and throw away the peels so I don't have to look at them. They're unsightly, don't you think? And what if I dropped one and then slipped on it and cracked my head on the tile floor? Then I would have to post something in the "I'll Never do That Again" thread and there's no competing with @JoNorvelleWalkerso what's the point? But I digress. So now I have two perfect peeled halves of banana on a plate. And that's how I open them.

I eat a banana about once every three years, but only because I think it's good for me.