Katie Meadow

@Duvel Having such a kitschy "storefront" in an airport would make the trip for me, to say nothing of that dumpling soup. Not nearly as fun as xi'an dumplings, but lunch today was potatoes. The nephew who makes mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner (a family tradition the way cement is traditional for sidewalks) left an industrial size bag of potatoes behind and I took them home. Has anyone heard of these: Albert Bartlett Rooster Potatoes? I've never seen them before. The package says they originated in Ireland and are now grown here and that they are famously "good for everything." As soon as I hear those words I'm pretty sure that means they are good for nothing. Indeed they have very little flavor. On Saturday I made roasted potatoes with duck fat and even the duck fat couldn't quite elevate them. Today for lunch I tried a more aggressive tack: I mashed them, seasoned them heavily, added a boatload of garlicky chard sautéed in more duck fat, made patties and coated the patties with Panko. Then I pan-fried the potato cakes and served them up with two optional sides: leftover turkey gravy and a rouille. Not bad. And we have a few remaining for breakfast tomorrow. So I reckon Roosters need a good wranglin'.

The pizza wheel cutter is a simple cheap device. Folks, it costs about $10-15 and there are lots and lots of styles. Good looking ones don't cost more than ugly ones. It should be sharp and that's what matters most. In my experience it is way faster and more accurate than using a knife, so it won't be in your hand long; therefore I suspect most models will be comfortable enough for the occasional baker. Using a scissors would never have occurred to me, but to each his/her own. I can see Martha Stewart using a high end scissors, but she's certifiable anyway. It won't take long to acquire panache and confidence when using the wheel. If you have stretchy thick mozzarella I can maybe see how a slow cutting technique could be a problem with any tool. If that happens, try using fresh buffalo mozzarella, which is never gooey! There must be a good reason why pizza joints and high end restaurants all use this tool. Ours is all steel w/no plastic parts and we've had it for about 25 years. We make pizza maybe once a month. Like several posters above I also find it very effective for cutting strips of dough, along with an ordinary steel ruler. I use it for cheese straws. I could see it would be quite useful for making a lattice pie crust, but even retirement hasn't resulted in me making pies.

I don't do a lot of pickling or preserving, but this time of year I do two things. We eat dinner every Friday after Thanksgiving (absolutely NO leftovers allowed) with friends who love the following, so I take them some: escabeche with cauliflower, carrots and jalapeños and Mostarda di Cremona. The escabeche I like is based on Lisa Fain's recipe in Homesick Texan. The Mostarda is adapted from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano (I go heavy on the fresh pears and NEVER EVER include....drumroll.....raisins!) I bring them some coppa as well, since it is so yummy with the mostarda.

What exactly is the difference between pistachio paste and pistachio butter? I was gifted with some Sicilian stuff a while back (can't remember if it was paste or butter) and I'm pretty sure it had sugar in it. I didn't even bother to put it on toast; spoon to mouth, it lasted a couple of days. I want to try some other brands, some perhaps with no sugar, so with moderate amounts of sugar. For baking purposes or ice cream I assume you want one with no sugar? The Fiddyment Farms seems highly recommended and it is available through Amazon Prime, which works for me. Both the butter and the paste have no sugar. What might be the best uses for either?

When it comes to lox or smoked salmon I'm a pretty traditional girl. I'm not talking about the Northwest style smoked fish which I never experienced until I moved to the west coast (fabulous but very different). I've always eaten my lox on a bagel with cream cheese or in scrambled eggs. But now I have a new way to eat lox/smoked salmon. And it not only makes for a great breakfast, it makes for a a great appetizer with a martini or prosecco! And all you need besides the salmon is bread, butter and a few herbs.. As we all know, a good bagel is hard to find, especially outside of NYC. The recipe below is for a LOT of butter. I made apps for a party and still had butter leftover for breakfasts. And I recently discovered that along with a cocktail it makes an excellent dinner all by itself. SMOKED SALMON ON DILL & CHIVE BUTTER TOASTS 10 oz best smoked salmon in med-thin slices 2 sticks of butter, room temp 1 tablespoon lemon zest 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or to taste 1/2 cup finely chopped chives 1 tablespoon (or + to taste) fresh dill, finely chopped 1 1/2 T dijon mustard 1/2 tsp salt (adjust depending on how salty your salmon is) 1/2 tsp fresh black pepper baguette, rye or other bread--very flexible! Mix butter, lemon juice and zest, chives, mustard, dill, salt and pepper in a bowl until blended. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before using. Toast bread lightly and let cool just a bit. Spread on a layer of butter mix and place a slice of smoked salmon on top of each toast. Place on a platter and serve. Notes: This saves well in the fridge for a couple of weeks. I used the toaster. It doesn’t seem to be a problem if the bread cools a bit, especially if serving as apps. If serving a crowd it is easiest to toast the bread in the broiler, but watch not to over-toast. You can use a semi-sour batard or a rye bread or probably any of numerous breads. When I have it for breakfast I don't worry about softening the butter. I spread it on hot toast just the way I would for any buttered toast.

Perhaps we should. But I suspect I won't. I know myself well enough to know that teeny little packets in my freezer tend to be forgotten, discovered with confusion, and then tossed. Might as well face the music and do the tossing up front. Canned chipotle is just not a staple for me. Indeed I am finding my freezer to be a war zone these days. There just isn't enough room in it and I have a case of freezer anxiety.

As far as I know the mineral content of Oakland Eau de Tap has not changed; it's always been excellent quality and taste. I'm using the same water in the same pot in the same house. Since Moro isn't a bean I cooked before, I will have to wait until I make a familiar bean to test the water, so to speak. Interestingly, RG characterizes the Moro as a marriage between a black turtle and a pinto. Turtle beans do tend to hold their shape and to take longer to cook; I haven't cooked black beans in a couple of years. These Moro beans certainly have a richer liquor than black beans.

This afternoon I cooked RG Moro beans for the first time. Surprisingly, especially for such a small size bean, they took considerably longer to cook than many other beans. I've used a variety of RG beans over the past few years as well as two types of beans from Purcell Mountain Farms, and I cook them all pretty much the same basic method, so I'm thinking it's the Moro that's responsible. Anyone else have experience with this bean? I had to keep adding liquid and they just kept on drinking it up. Taste was very nice, bean liquor was super rich, but I had the feeling I could have cooked them 4 hours (and that's after a 6 hour presoak) before they would have been melting and creamy. Or maybe they just don't get that way? We were hungry, so after almost 3 hours we ate 'em. Typically I cook my beans 2 to 2 1/4 hours after soaking 5-6 hours.

Okay, I'll bite. I notice a thread titled "Lasagna Wars." If we are being correct, the spelling of the dish that involves multiple layers of pasta is in fact spelled Lasagne. Lasagna is the singular, and means ONE NOODLE: specifically referring to one noodle of the style of the broad flat pasta shape used for the casserole dish called Lasagne, which is plural and denotes layers of Lasagna noodles. It isn't really different than calling a dish of long noodles "Spaghetty." Only in America has the name of the dish become, by some sad corruption, "Lasagna." In Europe it is called Lasagne. End of whine.

Step up to the whine bar! I can't think of a worse topic for me, so I'm just saying Hi!

I swear it wasn't me!

Yes, we do have good oysters. My favorite local oyster is the Hog Island Sweet, and Hog Island's farm is about half an hour from the beach house. But I also love the briny east coast oysters that just can't be had on the west coast, although Hog Island also farms a smaller crop of what they call "Hog Island Atlantics," which are a little brinier than the Sweetwaters and have more of that eastern shape, but they are not quite the same as a European Flat. Rarely Hog Island gets some of those tiny Olympias from Puget Sound and that is a rare treat. My thanksgiving relatives are not oyster people for the most part. That's "day after" food for when the crowds have departed.

Turkey neck. This morning I made some stock for use in Thanksgiving gravy. Turkey neck is one of those things that I eat alone, partly because I'm sure that a person gnawing on neck bones isn't a lovely sight, and partly because I eat more than my fair share.

One of my favorite spinach recipes comes from Martha Rose Schulman via the NYT. It's called Provencal Spinach Gratin, and involves neither cheese nor eggs, but just a lot of spinach with a minimalist crunchy breadcrumb topping. There was a time in my life as a student when I was hooked on Stouffers Spinach Souffle. Remember that? It was basically a nice green salt lick and I wouldn't call it a scuffle. This recipe is what that should have been. Julia Child has several takes on real spinach souffle, and those are also very nice. I am not a fan of raw spinach, nor do I like spinach leaves in soup; I think they just dissolve and have an unappealing texture. For toothsome greens in soup I prefer chard or Tuscan kale. For green blended soups I like a mix of spinach and other greens. Spinach and dandelion greens are a nice mix.

Thanksgiving happens for my husband's family at their beach house north of Tomales Bay. There are deer and wild turkeys wandering about town all the time. The turkeys display like giant decks of cards in the middle of the road and have been known to block cars from driving down the narrow streets until the turkeys feel like they have done their job and move on. It's pretty funny. But it is weird to see one right out the window when we are passing around a plate sliced turkey.

If I wanted some type of fish at Thanksgiving I might opt for a smoked one. You could do it as an app; for instance a smoked trout spread or some type of smoked salmon on toasts. Personally I would be awfully happy about that. Although it does seem unusual to have trout on the table next to a turkey, if a grilled trout happened to appear before me I might just say the hell with the turkey. Of course if you really wanted fish as an option you would have to provide a challenging amount, no? So apps might be more realistic. But Thanksgiving is all about the bounty, right? And good suggestion on the veg dressing. I'm pondering the whole thing; the truth is my relatives seem far more attached to the idea of dressing than to the actual thing. Typically very few of them ate it, but they just wanted it to be there. I'm getting sleeeepy....

I agree that the NYT recent Thanksgiving suggestions have been blah. And that includes the fat section that came with today's Sunday Times. It put me to sleep. But truly I am starting to believe it isn't just the uninspired suggestions from all quarters, it's me, feeling there's nothing new under the sun at my in-laws' Thanksgiving; truly, I just don't find this kind of food very exciting any more. Bread does seem redundant if there is some type of stuffing or dressing. I used to make a good stuffing cooked in the turkey but I got tired of it and my husband likes doing the turkey unstuffed, and I agree that it cooks better that way. Any dressing I made would have to be vegetarian for half this crowd, and I've never found that to be very tasty. Honesty, a plain biscuit sounds good! If anyone here has a great vegetarian dressing recipe I would be happy to hear about it. One of my SILs might be willing to make it, since some of them seem to miss it, at least in theory.

This is really a question for fast food history buffs out there. Not that I can imagine devoting a career to such a thing if it means eating fast food every day, but yeah, I will try to keep my own prejudices at bay. I often see Taco Bell as referred to as Tex-Mex food. Why? Taco Bell was created in Irvine CA in approx 1950 by a man named Glen Bell. I don't think of Southern CA as the home of anything Texan. The genesis of Taco Bell is that in the fifties most Americans were not very adventurous about their food; Italian, Mexican and other so called "ethnic foods" went downscale to appeal to a broad market of people who were used to bland commercially packaged foods. I'm sure there was plenty of great home cooked Mexican food in SoCal, but not too many abuelas were opening restaurants. When I moved to New Mexico in the late sixties I believe there was a Taco Bell in Albuquerque by that time. With the unbelievable choices and fabulous hole-in-the-wall joints serving up bowls of red and green, chunks of pork with hatch chiles, chile rellenos and so forth,Taco Bell was never a draw for me or my friends, so I can't really say who patronized it. White people? Locals who found it novel? It was very rare to see any ground beef in any home-cooking or restaurant food. It was also rare to see a hard-shell taco where we ate. Never having spent time in Texas and only small amounts of time in the south, I only know from my interest in food (and from the Homesick Texan cookbook!) what characterizes Tex-Mex cooking. Chili, not Chile. Ro-tel tomatoes. Ground beef.Texas has a lot more cows than New Mexico, so ground beef chili became an American staple. Ground beef doesn't involve as long a cooking time as chunks of meat, especially tough less expensive cuts. So, you Taco Bell devotees, ring in. What's so Tex-Mex about it? Does it just come down to ground beef and Velveeta?

I'm not fond of most quick breads; often they are too sweet. But I do like this chocolate loaf. It uses olive oil and not butter, and is not as sweet as chocolate cake (and I cut back on sugar routinely), with a more bread-like crumb and gets baked in a loaf pan. So I'm thinking' it qualifies as a quick bread. In my mind a quick bread should be excellent toasted with a swipe of butter, and this one is. I have no idea where it originated; it came to me at a time when I was first looking for baked goods that used olive oil. Nigella has a loaf she calls Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake (uses butter), and that one is all over the place on line. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect it is richer than this one. PERFECT CHOCOLATE LOAF CAKE 1/2 cup sugar 3/4 cup cocoa powder 3/4 cup light brown sugar 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/2 tsp baking powder 2 eggs 1-2 tsp espresso powder 1 cup buttermilk 1 tsp sea salt 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup chopped chocolate 1 3/4 cup flour or nuts or chocolate nibs Preheat oven to 325. Grease a 1-lb loaf pan. In a large mixing bowl, combine sugars and oil; mix to combine. Beat in 1 egg at a time until well blended. Add in buttermilk and vanilla extract. Mix. Add in all remaining ingredients except chopped chocolate. Beat to combine with a wooden spoon. If a few lumps remain, that's OK. Don't overmix. Fold in chocolate and immediately pour batter into loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool completely before running a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen. Then, turn cake out onto a large plate. Dust with powdered sugar, if desired. Slice and serve. —MAY NEED LESS TIME IN THE OVEN

The Collins St Bakery did themselves some great PR with those tins. I have them in two sizes. I've never been in Texas and no one from Texas has ever sent me a fruitcake. I use mine all the time. I think I must have picked them up at a flea market or Goodwill a million years ago; mine are not shiny and don't say "deluxe." You can order the fruitcake from Amazon and the tin come with. The entire country must be lousy with 'em.

@kayb Envious I am! Black Arks are about my favorite apple in the world when they are good. The last few years here in CA they have been scarce and not as crispy as in the past. The season for them is like 2 weeks if we are lucky.

We have several old martini glasses. A few have broken over time, and I've discovered that large martini glasses are the current standard. I prefer the smaller size. Yep, I'm a cheap date; one is usually enough for a pre-dinner drink. And for those who wish to have a second one, it isn't overwhelming if the glass size is on the smaller side. I too like a little head room in my drink. I don't want to bend over and drink like a cat before I can reliably pick up my glass. And that goes especially for a second drink, when my sense of balance is already out of whack.

There's only one part of Thanksgiving dinner that I really like. That is the 15 minutes after the turkey comes out of the oven when I pick away at the crispy skin. Since the bird gets carved before anyone really looks at it, no harm done. Because my husband and I cook the turkey, I have no trepidation about this practice. After that the rest of the meal just bores me, food wise, including the turkey. I suffer through this because the one thing I want out of a roast turkey is the carcass. I am hopelessly addicted to turkey soup. My husband's family is very attached to their traditions, and for the thirty years since I married in, most of the dishes are pretty much the same. There is always a vegetarian entree as well as all the standards, but typically it is full of gloppy cheesy things and not very appealing to me. The pies, however, are very good, all baked by my SIL, so basically I don't eat much dinner; I save room for apple pie, which is my favorite. This year the crowd will be big, and there will be five pies! We have a standing dinner engagement with friends the following night and it's agreed by all: no leftovers and no Thanksgiving type foods allowed. Last year we had Coppa with mostarda, Lobster BLT's and a spectacular coconut cream pie (and I'm not big on cream pies ordinarily.) So the day after Thanksgiving is always a high point.

I noticed the same thing right away. There was absolutely no mention of the fact that the amanita muscaria is not edible--hardly a harmless mistake and very surprising for the NYT. Faeries love those cute red mushrooms with the white polka dots. And that's why faeries are now extinct.

This is one of those times I wish I had never opened my mouth. As I said above, I have nothing against using fresh tomatoes and roasted green chiles to make a salsa. I simply meant that I tend not to mix green chiles into a sauce that is made with dried red chiles or red chile powder. And if I am having a "verde" dish, be it enchiladas or posole or whatever, if I wanted more heat I would chose to add roasted green chiles over any type of hot red salsa, bottled or otherwise. Thanks @Lisa Shock for clarifying the "Christmas" concept. Now I sort of remember those combo plates: basically if you can't decide if you want red enchiladas or green enchiladas you can get both kinds next to each other on the same plate. And of course the truth is that you use what you have to make something you like to eat. That's the nature or regional cooking. As for Hatch Chiles, the story is long and twisty, and anyone confused about the type of chile pepper that is grown in the Hatch NM area can join the crowd. There is something called the New Mexico Chile pepper, and it is grown widely. And, as you would expect, it's all about terroir. The area around Hatch just seems to produce a heat and flavor that's very appealing. In the sixties and seventies when I lived there, the heat (Scoville type) was reliably consistent: Everyone seemed to be in agreement that Hatch chiles were very hot. Obviously they were using seeds that produced a distinctive chile. Now I think Hatch growers are producing milder chiles called "Big Jim" and others, and the last time I tasted so called Hatch chiles they were not as hot as I remember, and individuals varied within batches. I believe most of the crop is picked green for the markets and for roasting, but I'm sure some make it to a ripe red color if they get picked later and could be dried if so desired. Again, I don't pretend to be an expert; a NM botanist or Ag Sci from UNM might be a good source. Or some very dutiful research on the net, being careful to sift for misinformation. Mine included.