Katie Meadow

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.

Thanks to @andiesenji I ordered the Tellicherry peppercorns from Sir Spice. Best moment was opening the bag under my nose. They are fresh and tasty, so no complaints. I have two pepper mills.One is a Unicorn that I found in my mother's kitchen when she died and seems a very adequate work horse and I appreciate how easy it is to refill. However if the refill sleeve accidentally gets shifted, which has happened twice, the result can be pretty annoying, and since the whole thing is black it's easy to miss that the hole is exposed. The other is an upside-down style from Cole and Mason. It's very solid and the five grind selections actually are pretty effective, which is not true of most grinders in my experience. I had one of those standard Danish teak grinders from the fifties, and that lasted sixty years. It wasn't very precise, but I always liked the mid-century look of it, and the feel of the wood. None of my pepper mills ever housed a black widow.

Never one to miss an opportunity to say I hate something. Miracle Whip belongs in the Museum of Inexplicably bad American Foods. I grew up on Hellman's, switched to Best Foods when I moved to CA and then discovered Duke's and never looked back. Yes, Heinz Ketchup was ubiquitous when I grew up. I find it nearly inedible now, and that's why it is the only condiment I am willing to make from scratch--and I do, although I am not a heavy user anyway. On my plate eggs and ketchup will never meet. But eggs with red chile New Mexico style? Now that's heaven. When I have fries I really want aioli with them. I never even heard of putting ketchup on a grilled cheese sandwich. Who does that?

I am loving this. More please is right. I can get behind the Guinness in a New York minute. I'll have the neeps and tatties, hold the haggis. My spellcheck really doesn't cotton to those foods. I had to spend a fair amount of time correcting "needs" and "tattoos." Drink enough Guinness and you might stumble out of a tattoo parlor with a poorly drawn haggis on your......well, where would you want that?

Forgive me if I wasn't clear. I'm not worried about your finances, although no opportunity for kindness to you would be missed, I hope. I just want you to spend your dollars on anything that doesn't enrich Chris Kimball. I can go lower, but I'm not sure how. Okay, that's not strictly true.

It's hard not to like Dorie, but I have to admit that I own French Table and rarely consult it. I don't think I've opened it in two years. But she's a generous spirit and there are a couple of her simpler recipes that I have made many times. As for Chris Kimball, he's never been a conundrum to me. I just plain hate him. Beyond the fact that he is a pompous phony, he seems determined not to give even one recipe for free. All the sites associated with him do that blurry thing which infuriates me no end. So stingy! If had a copy of that Milk St book I would send it to you for free. Maybe someone out there has one.....

My husband claimed he would prefer a graham cracker crust. I can certainly see that. It's just that saltines are so funny.

Yep, it's his recipe.

I'm not much of a baker. And I especially don't do pie dough, although my husband can. I make great brownies and a couple of good apple cakes and two dependable types of cookie . But I've had this cartoonish recipe floating around for years and I realized the other day that if I don't hurry up and just get it over with I'll be dead before ever tasting it. Some of you have no doubt made it or heard of it: Atlantic Beach Pie, from North Carolina. The pictures always look fabulous and the ingredients are downright silly. The crust is made with saltines, sugar and butter. The filling is made with egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk and lots of lemon juice. And that's it. I can't remember the last time I bought saltines; it must have been forty years ago....or more. My mother used to buy them to eat alongside chocolate ice cream. Yes, she was strange. As for condensed milk I went through a phase of making Viet iced coffee years ago, so I do remember what that's like. And I remember having it in tea in Mexico; always fun along with fresh made Mexican pastries. The recipe suggests topping the pie with whipped cream, a sprinkle of sea salt (it's Atlantic Beach Pie, after all) and lemon zest. I didn't have any whipped cream, so I simply salted and zested the top of the custard. Okay, this pie is addictive. It gets served cold, from the fridge and it so easy it's embarrassing. Also the recipe leaves you with bit less than half of a sleeve of saltines. They're really good. It's like discovering a new exotic cracker. I had no idea.

A quick survey of various sources yields the following: Most sources attribute the invention of the fork as a dinner utensil to 4th century Byzantium. Supposedly it morphed from Greek and Roman two-pronged tools that migrated to the tables of Byzantine nobles. It is also the most common theory that the fork then traveled to Italy before the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages. Apparently the Medici's were early adopters. I'm sure they found them to be very useful for stabbing each other. With the pointy end, of course. Oh, and my vote goes to fork twirling as the main reason to avoid breaking long pasta. You break it for kids who haven't acquired that dexterity yet. It was invented by the Phillistines.