Katie Meadow

Wouldn't it be useful to define barbecue before trying to figure out where it came from?. If you believe it means long cooking over smoke rather than simply grilling over a fire,, then look to places that had plenty of wood to burn. Just a guess here.

Agreed. First there will be the cut on your finger. The there will be an oil spill, colored red. @JoNorvelleWalker don't even think about it.

That bottle is a blast from the past. Is it readily available? The price I pay for letting my husband do the shopping. Oh, wait, still worth it.

The snails look small. Do you just suck them out of the shell or do you have special snail forks?

@Kim Shook I always have saltines on hand, but try the sardines on triscuits, a la Gabrielle Hamilton. Here are her instructions, hilariously fussy as always: Canned Sardines with Triscuits, Dijon Mustard, and Cornchons Ingredients 1 can sardines in oil 1 dollop Dijon mustard small handful cornichons small handful Triscuit crackers 1 parsley bunch Directions Buckle the can after you open it to make it easier to lift the sardines out of the oil without breaking them. Stack the sardines on the plate the same way they looked in the can – more or less. Don’t crisscross or zigzag or otherwise make “restauranty.” Commit to the full stem of parsley, not just the leaf. Chewing the stems freshens the breath.Reprinted with permission from Prune. Since you already have sardines in mustard sauce you are halfway there. Since almost choking to death on a triscuit sixty years ago I don't have a long history of keeping them around, but I have to admit that they are very good with sardines. Direction #1 sounds dubious. Buckling a can of open sardines has a high disaster rate, don't you think? I guess if you are charging $12 for a sardine appetizer you want them looking pristine and whole. Rest in Peace, Prune.

Fruited rice and sprigged anything deserves a round of quiet applause.

That was nice the cook went to special effort to make poached eggs. I'm just surprised there was rye toast available.

Use of heavy cream in large quantities is a splurge no matter how you look at it. Might as well get what makes you swoon and.... enjoy!

Not to rain on your parade, but this doesn't sound like a very high use for shrimp. It's hard to imagine the texture of the shrimp being very good by the time the bread is cooked. If the shrimp is good quality I would simply make a shrimp cocktail to go with warm cornbread, or a spicy peel & eat shrimp in the shell. Then it's only a hop and a skip to hold the cornbread and make shrimp 'n' grits instead! Any great NJ tomatoes yet? Sauce for that is awfully yummy made with ripe fresh tomatoes. Then stick some birthday candles in a lemon ice box pie.

In my family, after dinner at an Italian restaurant it was always just an espresso with a lemon twist. Mmm, delicious.

Everyone has a different tolerance level, and it doesn't always have to do with the food actually being spoiled and unhealthy to eat. Those of us with sensitive noses are more likely to detect that "just starting to go" smell or taste. Milk or cream can smell bad in the carton as a result of thin layers of dairy on the upper carton, but if you pour the milk out it can be okay. I am usually ahead of my husband by a day or two in determining I don't want to eat something. He just isn't as sensitive to smell or taste as I am and often, if something isn't obviously bad, he just can't tell. Me, I can usually tell the day before something smells bad and I just don't want to eat it. Old yogurt may not be spoiled, but it doesn't taste very good either. The trick for me is to catch something in the very beginning stages of deterioration and get him to eat it before I throw it out a couple of days later. If you have a hard time determining whether food should be consumed you would be well advised to have a cast iron stomach.

I love Neccos, hate those hearts and have never had Rolaids. I did used to like aspergum, though.

Wow, great information and the best title. I'm thrilled they are coming back, especially if the packaging is the the same. Chocolate was my favorite flavor, so I'm a little hesitant to applaud any changes. I don't see how they could be made any better, or any worse, for that matter. I thought they were perfect as they were.

@weinoo, if hockmesser is Yiddish for a one-handed curved blade, then that's actually more like my mother's, only hers had a wooden handle. Maybe mezzalunas are usually two-handled? My mother would have likely not known either name for her curved blade until later in life when she acquired an Italian boyfriend. Chopped liver he would never have eaten. I don't know where the recipe came from, exactly, but it has been edited by me. The ingredients list is very much like the one for Jasper White's recipe, which I have made with fresh clams, and which is good but overly complicated if you ask me. I don't see why any recipe using canned clams should be fussy. This is really basic. I think it can sit around and then be reheated. All that's missing is my mother's favorite dessert in the summer on Long Island: driving to Howard Johnson's for pink peppermint ice cream cones. MANHATTAN CLAM CHOWDER 3 or 4 slices bacon (or pancetta, etc.) 1 tablespoon olive oil, opt. 1 small onion, chopped 2 carrots, peeled and sliced or cut in small cubes 2 celery stalks, chopped 1 large garlic clove, minced 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme or a few sprigs of fresh thyme 1/4 teaspoon celery seed 1 or 2 bay leaves 14 ounces of canned tomatoes, chopped, with juices 12-14-ounces of clam broth or juice* (that would be bottled if using canned clams) 1 pound waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into bite sized cubes (about 3 medium yukons) 2 6.5 oz cans of baby clams, juice reserved* Salt and black pepper to taste Tabasco or other hot sauce *If using fresh quahogs, scrub clean a dozen or more quahogs. Place clams in a small pot and add two cups of water. Bring water to a boil. Cover the pot and steam the clams until they completely open, about 10 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Remove clams from pot and set aside. Strain the clam steaming liquid through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth to catch any grit, reserving the liquid. Remove the clams from the shells, chop. Use chopped clams in place of canned. Use steaming liquid in place of clam broth. Slowly cook the bacon with the olive oil (don’t bother if your bacon is fatty) until the bacon is crispy and its fat rendered. Remove, chop and set aside, leaving a tablespoon or two of bacon grease in the pan if you want to cook your vegetables in it. Sauté the onion a few minutes on a low flame in bacon grease or oil, then add celery and carrots for about another 4-5 minutes. Do not brown the vegetables. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the herbs, chopped tomatoes with juice, clam broth and the juice from the canned clams. Mix and bring to a simmer, then add the potatoes and chopped bacon. Cover and simmer gently until the potatoes are done, about 30 minutes. When the potatoes are tender, add the canned clams, cover the pot, turn off the flame and let sit ten minutes. I can’t imagine that cooking any further will make the clams more tender; they are what they are. Add salt as needed, serve with salt and pepper and Tabasco or Crystal hot sauce if you like.

Now dig up the mezzaluna that went with! My mother must have gotten rid of her bowl and blade when she moved to a small apartment because I sure never found them. In my seemingly endless coronavirus nostalgia fugue I made chopped liver a few weeks ago and it is impossible not to think of her set-up under the circumstances. Never did a bowl take such a beating. And speaking of nostalgia foods, last night I made Manhattan clam chowder with canned clams, (basically your fault, Mitch.) It was a first for my husband of 33 years and he was thrilled, as he should have been, given that our main meals have consisted of Bloody Marys and Root Beer Floats with grilled cheese sandwiches for two days. (Not that that's a bad thing of course.) He stepped up to the plate and made excellent biscuits to go with, a skill worth my encouragement which is paying off -- for me at least -- big time. No oyster crackers, but really, biscuits fresh from the oven with clam chowder?

@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.