Katie Meadow

@Ann_T, So on board: tomato season is the best season. Partly because it also means corn season. My sandwich for a main meal yesterday: homemade white bread, Duke's mayo, ripe tomatoes and a sprinkle of salt. Open face. The day before: corn and tomato pizza with loroco vine. Loroco vine can be had fresh or packed in a vinegary juice. Fresh is hard to come by. It's a Peruvian thing, and is often used in pupusas along with cheese. A natural with tomato and corn in a quesadilla. My daughter, who is visiting from Atlanta, wasn't too keen on it, but she's always been a conservative eater. She was just happy to have home made pizza.

@weinoo THAT'S SO UNFAIR! Buckle my knees, smoked sable.

A pic of the ingredients lists for some of these items would be interesting.The salt content for the hot dog ones must be staggering. I can imagine they could concoct some chemical melange to taste vaguely of a meat sauce, or, way easier, cheese, but how can these chips possibly taste like macaroni or spaghetti? Just curious because it seems so bizarre. Spag Bol. It jumps the shark. Potato chips that pretend to taste like wheat for those GF souls desperate for some pasta.. I'm moving to Russia, where potato chips are most likely to actually be deep fried potatoes-- with a frisson of dirt and a touch of radioactive iodine. Chernobyl Chips.

Great story all the way around.

Bumping up this thread because there are lots of comments about canned sardines / favorites in various places but this dedicated thread would be a more useful place to post about them. I am partial to Spanish and Portuguese sardines. Matiz sardines from Spain are excellent and are available in a 5 pack and a 12 pack from Amazon. I've had Angelo Parodi from Portugal and they are very good as well, but even pricier than Matiz. One brand I can buy locally is Da Morgada from Portugal. They are excellent too, but very pricey and not sold in bulk from Amazon. The best deal for a 12-pack from Amazon is the Santo Amaro from Portugal, but they don't sell them in a smaller quantity, so I haven't tried them yet. Then there's the Bela-Olhau, sold only in single cans for a very reasonable price, and I haven't tried those yet either. I want them packed in olive oil with bones and skin; happy with larger size like 3-4 fish per can. So, if anyone has strong feelings about the above brands or has another to suggest I'm all ears. Because so many people seem to like Wild Planet I tried them. Not something I would buy again. Price is right, but I found them bland and a little mushy. Haven't tasted King Oscars in a million years. I love fresh sardines, grilled. However the last few years has been a disaster for sardines in CA and you simply can't buy fresh ones that are locally fished. Once upon a time they were the cheapest and healthiest option for fresh wild caught fish, but it is unclear if their numbers will ever recover in these parts. As far as sustainably fished wild caught and low mercury, we are getting very limited in our options and digging deep into our pockets. So...canned sardines.

Minor transgressions go down easier with a little good cheese.

Yep, also my favorite brand. Love that dopey lion.

As a fellow East Bay resident you're in no position to trade either. I'm keeping both. Oh wait, I just read several posts above. I will trade, but I want the grand-daughter.

@HungryChris my brother's likes the lobster rolls at Johnny Ad's. He lives in Lyme. From where I sit here in CA feeling sorry for myself, I would have the lobster roll AND the fried clams.

You are fast approaching a traditional New Mexico breakfast of Red Chile Huevos Rancheros. We had our favorite circuit of counter top and diner style roadhouses just for breakfasts. So good.

I'll buy that. My guess is equal parts of shredded wheat, vegetable oil and salt. I once nearly choked to death on a triscuit. It took me thirty or forty years to be brave enough to try one again.

An 80 pound sheepdog in spike heels could do a lot of damage. To itself, if nothing else.

Our kitchen is a patchwork of upgrades. The oldest part now is most of the cabinetry. Solid birch dating from the early sixties Our first upgrade was done in the late eighties. We spent most of our budget on flooring, and what was leftover was enough for formica counters and a modern looking tile backsplash. The kitchen is big, so whatever we do ends up being a lot of material. The formica was a fun loopy pattern and reminded me of a New York city bus. It lasted pretty well, for about twenty years. Some time around 2012 we needed a new sink and decided on new countertops as well. We put in Caesarstone, in a rather dark swirly blue. We were limited in color because of flooring and backsplash, and the price seemed reasonable. I used to spray it with Johnson's wax (I did that to the formica too and it really helped give it a long life), which was a terrific product and kept the surface smooth and glassy, but that wax has gone the way of most simple useful non toxic products: out of production. I never transfer hot pots directly from the stove to the counter. Nor have I ever chipped an edge and I don't see a lot of scratches, either. If you wash it sloppily with soap like my husband does, without rinsing, it dries a little streaky, but if you rinse it after soaping and give it a quick wipe with a bar mop it looks like new. If I had deep pockets and a lot of time for maintenance I would have marble countertops.

I'm pretty sure the sandwich originated at a golf club, and was meant to look like one, too. With a third slice of bread and a dopey toothpick to hold it together you could use it to club someone into a stupor. Oh wait, after a round of golf they were already there. Oh, and btw, I always sent my daughter to kindergarten with mustard in her sandwiches. We all know how much the "little ones" like mustard.

I like the association of the the club sandwich with a club, since that's the only place I've ever had one. However, if the barman made it how did he cook the bacon?

Who doesn't fantasize about the mom and pop station in the middle of nowhere, with maw cooking up some personal local specialty on a burner behind the counter? When the stars aligned and you thought life was always going to be like that. Probably you were stoned. Maybe it did happen more often in the past, when there were more amenable two lane roads. Or maybe you just got very lucky. And that was a memorable road trip, which is the best kind. My model is Stuart Little. He stops for gas and gets a perfect sarsaparilla.

After a morning of birding my cousin used to take me to a local yacht club and we would split a club sandwich. She always ate small amounts of food. What percentage of people just reconstruct their club by tossing aside the middle piece of bread? I always did, with my half. And then I would fish out most of the turkey or whatever that was. Usually there was too much mayo, but that was to compensate for the dry poultry. Back to basics: the diy BLT. No cheese, no avocado, either, although in those days no one tried to shove an avocado down your throat or add something "melty" to your food.

Linner, two days in a row: quesadillas Cubanos! I did something I never do, and that's roast a pork shoulder, Puerto Rican Pernil. I kind of used a couple of different recipes and mixed and matched ingredients and it turned out really well. Yesterday we made corn tortillas and super basic Cuban style filling: Oaxaca melting cheese, dill pickle slices and shredded pork. We had fabulous corn from the farmers' market on the side.Today we used TJ's flour tortillas, made the same basic quesadillas and had a fairly decent tomato barely dressed on the side. Tomatoes are not quite up to speed here. Some are okay, some no so much. The jury is still out about mustard on these things. Some people like standard yellow mustard, which I guess is traditional on a Cuban sandwich, but we don't keep that stuff around. My husband tried a very small swoosh of dijon, but even a little seemed wrong to me. I would prefer hot sauce or roasted green chiles, but was very happy with no condiments at all; the pork was a little spicy and the pickles added what dill pickles always do. I'm getting very lazy and don't often do something new and different, and I rarely cook large hunks of meat. My husband still likes plenty of meat so he was over the moon. For me, two days in a row of home made food without having to cook is the best.

I assume the fiery illustration is the fresh hell of corn, according to the Dante of eG. Just make sure the fire is still burning when I grill my beautiful milk and honey corn that I brought back from the farmers' market this morning! Yum only begins to describe the thrill. Only two weeks into peak corn season and I'm already depressed about it being over.

The short grain "sushi" rice I cook in the rice cooker lasts better overnight in the fridge than long grain. Sometimes I will eat a portion of leftover rice for breakfast, or, as noted above, use leftover rice for making fried rice. Even so, I don't use it after two days. If I have long grain rice to save I usually only do it if there is a lot of leftover sauce or gravy or whatever, and I make sure to mix it into the rice before refrigerating. Then at least there's some hope for it the next day. Dried-out rice just isn't very appetizing.

Everyone should be required to experience a beef feedlot. The level of pollution becomes very obvious just from a close drive-by. Lamb is now considered as bad or worse environmentally than beef, but in this country we just don't eat that much lamb, so focussing on reducing beef production and consumption makes more sense. It really is possible for most of us to cut way back on red meat. If you need to find a substitute--something that looks like meat or that has high protein or whatever--well, go for it if it works for you. Ultimately eating little or no beef is a sacrifice that is less difficult than many others that help the environment, and if an overwhelming number of people participated it could have a big impact. I am not a vegetarian, nor do I believe that eating animals is necessarily unethical, especially given that resources vary widely on the planet. I think of red meat as a special treat, although truthfully the longer I go without it the less I care. I'm not ready to give up the occasional BLT (yes I know that's not beef!), but just a few of them every summer during tomato season can be enough of a reward. I still eat some chicken and sustainable seafood, but if we don't start paying closer attention we will all be left with nothing but tilapia and rodents. Okay, I'll take my drugs now.

I have the same one. Works just fine, fits in a shallow drawer, and doesn't look like a tool of the inquisition. Admittedly I don't use it very often; my knife skills are decent and I'm very lazy. I got it after giving away my expensive deBuyer contraption (purchased on eBay) that came in what looked like a saxophone case. I used it once. I can thin-slice a cucumber by hand in half the time it took to set that sucker up. The lucky recipient of the giveaway was over the moon about it and I haven't heard whether he still has ten fingers.

My feeling about sets is that they are overwhelming and that not every size pot and pan is most useful made from the same material. Also those getting married these days have been living together or on their own for a while and usually have an eclectic collection and a few favorites. I'm also not enamored with appliances as gifts unless requested. Here's my absurd bias: the most useful pot is a 5 or 6 qt. enameled cast iron dutch oven. I like the 5.5 qt Le Creuset. And they are aesthetically appealing. If the couple doesn't have such a thing already it's a workhorse with a relatively long life and....colorful!

We used to get frybread or fry bread in New Mexico when we went to the pueblos for various events or at concession stands at fairs. It was often called Navajo bread.It wasn't topped with anything in my memory. It has a long and twisted history. Here's one source: https://www.cowboysindians.com/2013/10/more-than-an-indian-taco-2/ Fry bread is a simple wheat bread that is deep fried. I don't know how the term "Indian taco" originated; At least during my time in NM--the late sixties and early seventies-- it wasn't something we saw on menus. Tacos of course are typically made with corn tortillas, so I believe the intention was to use fry bread as a base for Americanized taco fillings such as beans, ground beef and grated cheese. It would be impossible to fold such a construction the way you fold a taco. Flour tortillas are usually made with white flour, so the ingredients may for them may indeed be closer to the ingredients of flour tortillas, but cooked in a completely different way. How fry bread migrated into NM and Arizona is a long story itself, but how it migrated into eastern Canada must be an even longer one. How it became associated with or called bannock must be another strange tale, as bannock is a Scottish oat cake. There's a wealth of online analysis about the history of Indian fry bread and its travels.

We all have to come to terms with where our food comes from and whether or not to eat animals. Everyone's time-table is different and I've never met two vegetarians with the exact same rationale. I find plenty of foods unappetizing and some foods really gross for whatever reasons. I never believed in requiring my daughter to try everything, either. I get the impulse, but mostly it just seemed like too much work. @fondue I can sympathize with your son's culture shock. He'll figure it out, one way or another and will become a more tolerant person for it. After seventy plus years I don't want duck soup surprise either. His response seemed more grown up than mine might have been. He sounds lovely.