Katie Meadow

Joy of Cooking was indeed my first cookbook. My mother gave me a copy when I first moved out of the dorm in college. I still have that copy. You can't beat her recipe for Brownies Cockaigne. It's easy enough to whip up when stoned. I've been making those brownies since I got the book about 55 years ago. Cockaigne indeed.

That sounds great. Another favorite: fried green tomato BLT. For some reason neither stores nor farmers' markets in these parts sell green tomatoes. Unless you have your own garden they are scarce as hens' teeth. My big revelation when last in the South was a place in the Blue Ridge Mountains that fried them in a tempura-like batter, rendering them ethereal and way better than the typical heavy cornmeal crust. So delicious.

@Pete Fred I don't have Basque fatigue yet but I want to. I've never made a Gateau Basque but I'm tired of not living next door to you. So is there a recipe you like best?

Labor day dinner tonight consisted of about all my favorite summer foods. We started with roasted okra, which is a bit crunchy and a perfect finger food with aioli. Really, my favorite way to eat okra. Then very good corn on the cob, simply buttered and salted. And a salad: no idea where the recipe came from, but it's called Peach Tomato and Burrata Caprese. If you like peaches and tomatoes together like I do, then this is a splash home run. Burrata goes in the center of the plate. Around it were sliced Cherokee tomatoes, lightly salted. Then a layer of peach slices. We had some plums, so I added slices of those too. The salad gets a minimal drizzle of lemon and olive oil dressing, a little more salt, a little bit of basil, and finally a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts. This is a fantastic salad when you have really flavorful tomatoes, a ripe peach and a tasty not too soft sweet-tart plum. With burrata. well, kill me now. And then there was tennis. And then Coffee Bean Blast ice cream.

I doubt it, given the list of powders and flavors.

I'm not seeing the disaster part. The tuna looks good. I like my food hot. It seems to me that if a chef spends a long time bent over my plate with tweezers, my food will be cold by the time it gets to the table. Maybe it's weird, but I don't want anyone but me playing with my food.

https://www.southernkitchen.com/story/eat/2021/07/22/chef-y-trick-supposed-make-better-grilled-cheese-but-does-it/8055197002/ In this article the mayo on grilled cheese hack gets the full monty. The writer attributes the popularization to Gabrielle Hamilton,which is where I first heard about it. You can count on GH to come up with interesting new ways of using common ingredients. If you don't want to spend time down this rabbit hole I will provide the takeaway: it's faster than using butter because you can fry mayo at higher heat, but guess what: it lacks the flavor of butter. I tried it once. Personally I am good with cooking my grilled cheese low and slow in a cast iron skillet. And I hold firm to the philosophy of mo buttah mo bettah.

Talk about rabbit holes. I've just come back up for air. I've never heard of egg coffee, but then I don't spend time on sites with exploding trends. Comparisons to tiramisu (sans cake) are especially swoonworthy. It screams late morning treat. I've learned my lesson about not drinking an iced Vietnamese coffee after 2pm.

I'm good with a glug or a splash, but not a bunch. Maybe a handful? Bunches are arbitrary divisions made on the basis of your grocer's pricing guidelines. Here in northern CA a bunch of chives is typically no thicker than a small pinkie finger. In Atlanta we found bunches of chives consisted of about ten times that much. For the same price or less. I agree with posters who are annoyed by endless overwritten preambles to a recipe; most of them are inane and repetitive to say nothing of poorly written. But what irritates me the most is the paragraph titled: "Why you will love this recipe."

FYI Koda Farms is going out of business. Perhaps there are other growers of Kokuho Rose Rice. Koda is packing up shop after almost 100 yrs growing that CA rice variety.

It's an awful feeling to run out of a dish when people are wanting seconds, so I like the idea of making ample amounts and hoping for leftovers. As for restaurants in China, do diners not ask for a takeaway bag if there's extra food on the table?

It isn't cheap, but CA grown Lundgren basmati rice is delicious. There is an organic variety which may be a little trickier to track down, but most of the places you probably shop in Berkeley carry at least the one designated "natural" if not organic. I use my Zoji rice cooker for all my meals calling for Sushi or Japanese short grain rice, but I like to cook my Basmati on the stovetop. A heavenly aroma, and worth it for my money.

My husband's siblings are two boys and one girl. They all developed a habit of appearing not to be piggy by leaving a tiny half-portion of food in the box or bag or the fridge. My husband does it to this day. He swears that he just too full and "couldn't eat" that last few bites. His parents learned to cut the dessert pie into six equal pieces to shut down the squabbling.

Taking the last piece or portion without asking if anyone else wants it is just plain rude. An option to split it is then a nice thing to do. I recently made Gazpacho for part of a lunch spread for four people. I thought I had made an ample amount. Little did I know my BIL eats very fast. He served himself seconds, which amounted to all that was left, before anyone finished their first bowl. I just find that really irritating, and I'm not generally a stickler for perfect table manners. If you ask, your host should let everyone know there's more in the kitchen, if that's the case.

pike heels and collard field jacket

Congrats, Granny!

Finally an occasion for a taste test: McConnell's vs TJ's. Coffee Bean Blast. Could not find either Turkish Coffee or Brazilian McConnell's,, so we had just the straight McConnell's Coffee. Blind test, but simply which you preferred. There were four of us; two liked the McConnell's better, two liked the TJ's better. Both have good coffee flavor and both have flecks of coffee. The McConnell's was deemed creamier and richer. The TJ's had a slightly bitter coffee aftertaste which I really liked. But I would happily eat either one, especially if someone else paid for the McConnell's.

@Shel_B My suspicion is that you wish to be talked into a stand mixer. Use your old egg beater every day to whip up egg whites or heavy cream and soon you will be strong enough to carry the stand mixer around the kitchen. Unless you have unlimited counter space and money burning a hole in your pocket, in which case you will have to throw yourself off the fence.

Thank you for reminding me that "egg beater" is the proper name of that thing. I might never have pulled that up from the lower depths of my murky brain.

I agree that a good hand mixer would be a useful purchase. We don't make elaborate pies or cakes and until last year an electric hand mixer was all we had in the house. My husband has been baking bread for years without a stand mixer, but his ambition lately has been to learn to bake brioche bread, and the stand mixer is very good for that, since it requires a lot of kneading. It's been decades since I had one of those hand-crank gadgets.. I think my mother gave me one about 55 years ago when I left for college.

@liuzhou I'm curious. What kind of cooling system does your apartment have? What's most typical? What about restaurants?

That cover gets an F for design. And the title of the book gets an S for stupid.

No leg is complete without its foot. Al least if you are planning to make a big pot of stock, buy a pound of feet to cook them with. I too find the leg by itself to be unappealing. Occasionally if I'm going to bbq I will buy quarters--a leg/thigh piece. I will eat one thigh and my husbands gets a quarter plus the extra leg. He has never complained about the leg part. He's a frugal partner; he'd rather eat food that I think is clearly on its way south than toss it.. So he is happy to eat the unhinged leg, as if it's free food or something just because I don't want it! Really, he comes by it honestly. I don't believe his mother ever quite realized how much three teenage boys could eat

Years ago, shortly after La Boîte opened and I was visiting NY I stopped by. I imagine it's grown since then. . I bought a little tin of Smoked Cinnamon. Just smelling it was transporting. The only thing I figured out to do with it was use it in a steak rub.

I'm weeping in my beer. The supplier of TJ's "Home made tortillas" are no longer making them. They've been a staple for us for years. Compared to any other store bought flour tortillas they were great. The ones now being stocked are more of the cardboard variety. When my husband asked about it a couple of store workers agreed it was very disappointing. I need a replacement in the bay area, Or we will have to start making our own.