Katie Meadow

@Chris Hennes, have you kept track of how many days in a row you are eating pizza? I'm so impressed! I know you like to cook through a whole book, but this different.

I'm sure that ramp butter would be delicious on toast under a layer of ricotta, salt, maybe a thin tomato slice. No ramps on the Pacific side here. Once I saw some for sale, wilted and pathetic looking, and marked with a price that no sane person would pay for something about to go in the compost bin. And when I grew up on the east coast I don't remember ramps meaning anything but getting on or off the highway. Someone must have been picking and eating them way back when, right? The pickled ones look great, right in my wheelhouse.

One of the great perks of old age is short term memory loss. By the time a package from Amazon arrives in the mail it's usually a complete surprise. I've had a craving for Bloody Marys lately and vodka isn't something we typically stock. So my husband was planning a trip to the liquor store. Smarty pants that he is he actually checked the liquor cabinet and low and behold an unopened bottle of Tito's was stashed in the depths. We have absolutely no memory of buying it. Maybe it was a gift? Makes an excellent Bloody Mary. Next up is Gabrielle Hamilton's Mariner, which is just the addition of clam juice. I didn't used to like drinks made with Clamato, but now I'm using Knudson's tomato juice,, which is good, not too thick or salty, and Bar Harbor clam juice. Everything old is new again now, right? Especially now. File this under "what I didn't have to buy at the liquor store." GH is a stickler for brands; I think mostly it's a nostalgia thing for her (see sardines on Triscuits.) I find it touching and recognize the urge: of course it can make life hard, but some of us, well, that's just how we are. For her well-known Bloody Marys she insists that you use Sacramento tomato juice. You would think that would be available in northern Cal, but it isn't.

Today was a new low for weird meals. For breakfast I had a piece of toast and a couple of fried egg whites. The reason for the egg whites was because yesterday we used four yolks to make an Atlantic Beach Pie. For lunch I had a grilled cheese sandwich and half of a mango. For cocktail hour we broke new ground and actually had a friend over. She came right back into the yard, never even going into the house, and she stayed at the opposite end of the picnic table from me and my husband. I had Bloody Marys and they had Corpse Revivers. On the table there were olives, potato chips, sliced salted kohlrabi and hand sanitizer. The snacks were eaten on separate plates, so there was no sharing from a common source. We were loopy after she left, so we totally abandoned the idea of dinner and had a slice of pie for dessert. The weather is warm and it was a treat to actually see someone we haven't seen in at least two months. I'm so used to seeing no one but my husband that it seems remarkable to actually have a live three-way cocktail hour and a REAL FRIEND. Cheers!

We sprang it on our daughter when she was learning about fractals. We used to call it Fibonacci, thus avoiding the dreaded "b" word. I liked it okay, but I'm not a fan of broccoli. I do like cauliflower, however.

I've never smoked any fish myself, but here on the west coast sometimes you can get smoked black cod. I'm crazy about it, and buy some whenever it is available. There used to be a smoke shack up the coast near Bodega Bay that had it, but the last time we were there, a few years ago, they didn't have any. Have you ever done that? Buying black cod to smoke surely doesn't cost the price of Copper River salmon. Not that black cod is a steal, exactly.

When I was a kid we always got Carvel during the summers on Long Island. You are up late.

Knowing this does not help me in the least. No doubt their smoked sable is divine, too. KMN.

Geez. You order pizza for your guests at the castle and the delivery guy turns out to be a super spreader who just won't leave.

Okay, so I satisfied an itch that wanted scratching for a million years. I made a clam pizza. I used canned clams, justified by telling myself it was pandemic pizza. I used a NYT recipe. It looked good, and it smelled like clams and the crust was my husband's no-fail OO thin crust. But I have to admit I wouldn't do it again. I don't even like white pizza very much, and clam pizza seems to be typically of the New England persuasion. Maybe Manhattan clam pizza would have been a better choice? I'm sure fresh clams would have been an improvement, but if I had them I would not make pizza with them. It just confirms my bias against cheese and seafood together. The second pizza (this crust recipe makes 2 and a half pizzas) was one of our old favorites: radicchio quick sauteed with garlic, ovalini and fresh slices of tomato plus our usual red pizza sauce. The half or "personal" was just a basic margherita. Lots of leftovers, and I'm very grateful to my Crustmaster for eating the leftover clam slices, which he claimed were just fine.

The closest I ever got to grape jelly in my childhood was Manischewitz wine. Then eventually it cropped up in diners on road trips. The only time I ever heard of grape jelly being associated with hot dogs was ten minutes ago, on this thread. It must be real, since no one could make that up.

When you bake a lot of bread (not me, him) you eat a lot of toast. And when you make your own marmalade you eat a lot of toast with that. Once I get out of bed I need to eat something with carbs. I can't be bothered cooking anything. And then there's the NYT sitting on the table waiting for me. No, definitely no time to cook. I've always been made nervous by the idea of brunch. I feel like I shouldn't eat first, but I can't not have at least one piece of toast or something in order to make it through until the brunch. Also I'm not chatty at breakfast, a fact that always annoyed my mother when I went to visit. Lately we've taken to eating ricotta on toast. And ever since we went south for our daughter's wedding I'm a big fan of sorghum butter on toast. Salted. Lox and bagels is always good. Sadly our favorite place to buy good bagels, good cream cheese and good lox in one place has now cut back to once a week orders only, so I'm missing that due to laziness primarily and having to think ahead days to place an order. I'm also very happy to have left over (veg) pizza for breakfast, crisped and melted in the toaster, never cold. I don't really like eggs or any kind of meat for breakfast. Anything that looks like a face on the plate, such as two fried eggs and a bacon smile is a nightmare as far as I am concerned.

@MokaPot, I went back to my orders for this year on Amazon (Prime). At the very end of February I purchased a pack of 6 cans of Ortiz tuna for a total of $24.49. That was then.

@MokaPot For tuna I like Ortiz bonito in the oval can. I may be misinformed, but I believe bonito is a small tuna, so it contains less mercury. It's very good quality, and not cheap, but I've discovered that Amazon sells a pack of several cans for a reasonable price--better than I have paid in the past at local gourmet shops. For sardines I also order from Amazon. Two brands I find to be very good: Santo Amaro, European wild, packed in olive oil, are a pretty good deal if you buy in a 12 tin pack. They are lightly smoked and typically large, three sardines to a can. The other one I like is Matiz, also European wild, a similarly large sardine and more delicate and not smoky, also in olive oil. They are a bit pricier than the Santo Amaro. None of the canned fish are cheap. They are from Spain or Portugal, but I can't remember which. Both have the bone in, which I require. Why toss out one of the best sources of calcium? As for the "wild" part, I believe all sardines are wild caught. They appear to be sustainable, at least on the European coast.

Another good root beer float can be made with salted caramel ice cream, but most salted caramel is too sweet for me.

Yep, I remember the Progresso canned white clam sauce very well. I don't remember the red one. I think my mom would buy the white in a pinch.

@weinoo, old school linguini and clams for me means specifically babysitting my younger brother. Whenever our parents went out we made linguini with white clam sauce and paired it with a nice bottle of coke over ice. So canned clams are a nostalgia food for me, and pandemic cooking is all about nostalgia. The "why" of that eludes me. Perhaps sheltering in place gives me permission to buy and eat things that are usually not on my radar. In my case that means date nut bread with cream cheese, root beer floats with coffee ice cream, and, in my dreams, Papaya King. I seem to be susceptible to all kinds of suggestions lately. I've spent years whining (to myself naturally, as no one else wants to hear it as much as I do apparently) about the lack of hard shell clam varieties on the west coast, so perhaps this is the therapy I need. What brand of canned clams do you like best? I haven't bought them in a million years.

First of all, if you are debating whether or not to refrigerate something it means you can avoid a problem right there. If you literally forgot and left open food out on the counter, I agree that what it is makes a difference but so does the overnight temp in your kitchen. I'd be far less concerned about a slice of pizza in a cold kitchen than in a warm one. When it comes to soup, my experience is that leaving soup out is not a good idea, especially if it has been heated up. I've always heard that getting freshly made stock cooled down quickly prevents bacteria from growing. The definition of hangover pizza doesn't necessarily mean you passed out before you could clean up a bit.

To the OP: Isn't it pretty to think so? Everything looks so lovely. Without actual people. Post-social distancing garden parties may not be in the cards, as summer is right around the corner. Hard to drink a Quarantini while wearing a mask!

I had one of those! Forgot all about it; no idea what happened to it. My first coffee grinder was a Moulinex. Very reliable, and they sold replacement blades.

For my last order from Geechie Boy I got the Carolina Gold rice for the first time. I thought it was delicious. Love to know how you like the Charleston Gold. Is Charleston rice always the aromatic one? Btw, last Friday I watched Vivian Howard's latest series and she dropped in on Geechie Boy himself on Edisto Island. That was a two minute thrill, which isn't nothing these days.

I too consider celery root a comfort food. My mother didn't have a lot of tricks when it came to cooking, nor did she have many parties when we we were growing up, but her one party trick was celery root remoulade. She wasn't a very good cook, but that one she had down. Fennel is a staple for us. I often sub it for celery in various soups. And it is my go-to easy salad, just paper thin slices with a little olive oil, lemon and salt and pepper. Radishes if I have some, which I usually don't.

By that time you won't remember what almond extract is, anyway. I don't agree that extracts keep forever. I think they deteriorate like just about everything else. Flavor is fragile.

Smithfield, which is in fact owned by a Chinese group, just donated 10 million pounds of product to Feeding America food banks.

Friday night was a Zoom seder, which was really a disjointed cocktail hour. I've never celebrated Easter, but Sunday evening we made a delicious fried rice, using all kinds of misc. items, including a little smoked ham, shitake mushrooms, shredded black fungus, carrots, cabbage, peas, chopped Chinese omelet, Chinese chives, and so forth. Satisfying comfort food. It was probably the first time I ever had ham for Easter. My daughter's Easter dinner on the other hand, far away in Atlanta, consisted of matzoh ball soup and beef short ribs. I didn't even know she knew what short ribs were. I'm so proud!