Katie Meadow

Well, two martinis, or maybe three. The problem is after two I tend to lose count, if not consciousness. Well, my husband is the martini tender in our house, so if there's a fourth Dorothy will be his problem. I'll be watching from under the table.

Oh my god I love this quote! I know a lot of Dorothy Parker quotes but never heard this one. If you read the NYT book review you know the feature profiling the reading habits of various public figures who are asked what literati they would invite to a dinner party. No one ever mentions her, but she would be at the top of my list.

The only reason I would ever participate in this thread is this: to thank you all for keeping everything pumpkin in one place and giving the thread a clear and simple title so I know to avoid it. The only good pumpkin is a jack-o-lantern with a candle inside. And the only edible part of a pumpkin are the seeds, buttered, salted and roasted. The rest of that glop goes right in the garbage. And as you would imagine, I don't have any positive thoughts about that stuff that comes in a can. The invention of pumpkin spice is a crime. The concept of a pumpkin spice latte is an insult to coffee. And just for the record, while I can't abide pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread, I adore sweet potato pie made from real yams or even sweet potatoes (or a mix!), but it must be totally without the spices that make it try to taste like pumpkin pie. Okay, done. My vote for best breakfast the day after Thanksgiving: leftover sweet potato pie and coffee with chicory.

@shain I made the noodle apple kugel yesterday: excellent! I used dried cherries. Loved the effect of a cake when baked in a springform and cut into wedges to serve. And, surprisingly, it holds together enough so that after carefully separating the cake from the springform bottom with a spatula I was able to slide the cake onto a plate. Question for you: My kugel didn't crisp up on the top as much as yours, and even with an extra 10 minutes in the oven it wasn't as brown. Any suggestions? Oh, one thing noted in your recipe: the ingredients list does not include sugar, but sugar appears in the instructions. I didn't use it and was totally happy without. Also my husband did the shopping and came back with some fabulous Italian broad egg noodles; definitely a treat and I think made this a class upgrade from the kugels of my college potlucks. Loved that it had so much apple. Sadly I have to avoid a lot of rich dairy, so this kugel is deeply gratifying.

I'm sort of attached to using Tabasco in a Bloody Mary, but in truth, Crystal, Cholula or other vinegary southern sauces would do well too. Clearly it's just out of habit. Forty years ago there weren't the options there are now and Tabasco must have had brainy marketing, especially in the north.

In the last two years we replaced our Le Creuset 5.5 qt dutch oven. This is the most hardworking object in the kitchen--I use it several times a week. My old one, which was at least 15 or 20 years old, is now routinely being used by my husband to bake round rustic loaves of bread and looks like it came out of Lascaux cave fire-pit. We also replaced our Cuisinart ice cream maker with a newer model that works faster and is way less funky. The old one was about 10 years old. Another purchase (not a replacement!) was a Nutri Ninja Pro, which I find way more effective for smoothies than my funky low-end blender and so simple to clean. Up next and probably soon is a replacement for our Cuisinart food processor. It still works, and it's hard to believe it is at least 30 years old. My husband claims he bought it for me for xmas in 1986-87. The awesomeness of his memory amazes me. Recently it developed an invisible breach and leaks a teeny bit. I can't see a crack, but if it gets stressed suddenly I can imagine I may have a mess to clean up.

I had forgotten about this! JAZ is a genius. This is definitely the best raisin rant ever, covering every possible way that raisins ruin otherwise perfectly good food. I'm so glad she mentions Raisinets. Never has there been a more heinous candy. The quality of that milk chocolate coating is so bad that it is hard to even realize just how awful the raisin is. I say its a mitten crab gonad and I say the hell with it.

Amazing. I am impressed that it says "nutritive dessert." You would have to eat it of course to get the benefits. As for the mitten crabs, I hope you are right that it's the roe that is the delicacy. Makes a lot more sense to me, but what do I know?

Let me clarify: by cheese I simply meant cottage cheese, ricotta, sour cream or other creamy dairy products that are very typical of both savory and sweet kugels, or at least they were common at temple events, potlucks, etc. My mother never made one in her life, so it isn't like I grew up eating kugel, but they seemed to make frequent appearance at various times. Mainly because they are kind of a default casserole for many people when they can't think of something else, and they lend themselves to being eaten at room temp. Apples with crispy noodles, that i can get behind.

I read a bit of background about mitten crabs this afternoon and dug up this: "Claudine Fontana from the Natural History Museum advised: "You could eat the meat from the mitten crabs at any time of the year, but it is actually the gonads of the Chinese mitten crabs that are considered a delicacy and these can only be eaten when they become sexually active in the Autumn months." That doesn't exactly make them more appealing to me, that's for sure, although anyone who can locate a crab gonad in all that other stuff inside the shell has my respect. Govt experts say that if you catch one in the US you should report it. Apparently there are plenty of them in the Thames, but would you eat something from that river?

I've grown to love being a downer! Don't forget that Chinese Mitten Crabs may be harmless in Liuzou and Fuchsia Dunlop parts of the globe, but they are a troublesome invasive species here in the US. They burrow into levees and weaken them, causing damage to flood control efforts. Also they are aggressive and omnivorous and can threaten local species. They have been found in Chesapeake Bay, where they threaten blue crab habitat. Just saying'!

@shain thanks so much. Surprising that there is no soft cheese involved, which is fine by me. I may try dried cherries, since I usually have them around. Apricots sound equally appealing. I don't know what it is about me and raisins. They just make me irritable! And that's without eating them.

@shain that kugel looks fabulous. (Except of course for the raisins!). I'm rarely enthusiastic about kugel, but now I want it. What's your recipe?

Okay, I find it beyond hilarious that there is a cocktail that tries to taste like a green apple jolly rancher candy. Jolly Ranchers are up there with the worst candy on earth. My dentist related a story about a fifteen year old boy, a patient of hers, who had an entire mouthful of rotten teeth that had to be replaced due solely to a Jolly Rancher habit. Le Chaim! Clearly I need to go do something else. But seriously, how is that drinkable?

I don't use canned chipotles very often. The last time was probably over a year ago. I confess: I throw out 90% of every can I open.

There must be a dedicated thread for chili and/or chile, but I don't see it. Growing up in NY no one I knew ever made either. When I moved to New Mexico in the late sixties I discovered CHILE. You got either a bowl of green or a bowl of red. Both used chunks of pork, never ground, and rarely beef. Neither used tomatoes. The red in red chile came from a paste made from ripened, dried, rehydrated long chiles. Although pinto beans are ubiquitous in all kinds of New Mexican dishes or as a side dish, they didn't appear in a bowl of chile. Very often potatoes were included in the bowl, which have a wonderful way of absorbing the flavor. The accompaniment was typically flour tortillas. When you say "chile" you could also mean a type of hot pepper: ancho chiles, Chipotle chiles, Hatch chiles, etc. CHILI with an I is an American adaptation. If you are making a Texas-style dish it would be called "Chili." And by the way, in the New World there is no such thing as Chilli, with two L's; that is a British twist, or massacre if you prefer. Ingredients that typically go into Texas style chili are beef (ground or not), tomatoes and beer. Often CHILE powder is used. As for beans, well, it's just one of those things people have strong opinions about. I recently made a Texas style chili using short ribs (I'm not a fan of ground beef), a bottle of beer and fresh tomatoes, which I happened to have a lot of and needed to use up. The short ribs made a very nice beefy broth and were fall off the bone tender. I used some ancho chile powder, RG Indio oregano and a little bit of cocoa powder. I had a modest amount of leftover beans, so, yep, I included them. I served a vinegary hot sauce on the side. I served it over rice, but warm corn bread would be a great go-with. For inspiration I used a recipe from David Leibovitz called Chili with Chocolate. As for chocolate, of course Mexico had it first, but any Texan must admit that, like bacon, a little chocolate is usually a very good thing. I don't believe I've ever knowingly used Ro-Tel canned tomatoes. I know that some Texans swear by them for a variety of dishes. I am guessing that if a Texan had a surplus of home grown tomatoes he or she wouldn't hesitate to use them instead, and it would not make their chili any less Texan. Lisa Fain, of the Homesick Texan cookbooks, clearly had them growing up, but she never fails to acknowledge that Velveeta and Ro-Tel are heavily nostalgic ingredients and that updating those old tried and true recipes like Queso is in no way criminal. Note: I posted this originally in the dinner thread. I searched for the chili cook-off thread but couldn't find it. Why? That's obvious. I spell it Chile.

Thank you Robirdstx for digging up the Chili cook off. Of course the reason I couldn't locate it was that the thread name shows definite Texas bias. I am going to copy my post to the chili cook off thread. Meanwhile, I hope some manager takes the recent Chili thread created a few hours ago and incorporates it into the cook off thread. Thanks!

There must be a dedicated thread for chili and/or chile, but I don't see it. Growing up in NY no one I knew ever made either. When I moved to New Mexico in the late sixties I discovered CHILE. You got either a bowl of green or a bowl of red. Both used chunks of pork, never ground, and rarely beef. Neither used tomatoes. The red in red chile came from a paste made from ripened, dried, rehydrated long chiles. Although pinto beans are ubiquitous in all kinds of New Mexican dishes or as a side dish, they didn't appear in a bowl of chile. Very often potatoes were included in the bowl, which have a wonderful way of absorbing the flavor. The accompaniment was typically flour tortillas. When you say "chile" you could also mean a type of hot pepper: ancho chiles, Chipotle chiles, Hatch chiles, etc. CHILI with an I is an American adaptation. If you are making a Texas-style dish it would be called "Chili." And by the way, in the New World there is no such thing as Chilli, with two L's; that is a British twist, or massacre if you prefer. Ingredients that typically go into Texas style chili are beef (ground or not), tomatoes and beer. Often CHILE powder is used. As for beans, well, it's just one of those things people have strong opinions about. I recently made a Texas style chili using short ribs (I'm not a fan of ground beef), a bottle of beer and fresh tomatoes, which I happened to have a lot of and needed to use up. The short ribs made a very nice beefy broth and were fall off the bone tender. I used some ancho chile powder, RG Indio oregano and a little bit of cocoa powder. I had a modest amount of leftover beans, so, yep, I included them. I served a vinegary hot sauce on the side. I served it over rice, but warm corn bread would be a great go-with. For inspiration I used a recipe from David Leibovitz called Chili with Chocolate. As for chocolate, of course Mexico had it first, but any Texan must admit that, like bacon, a little chocolate is usually a very good thing. I don't believe I've ever knowingly used Ro-Tel canned tomatoes. I know that some Texans swear by them for a variety of dishes. I am guessing that if a Texan had a surplus of home grown tomatoes he or she wouldn't hesitate to use them instead, and it would not make their chili any less Texan. Lisa Fain, of the Homesick Texan cookbooks, clearly had them growing up, but she never fails to acknowledge that Velveeta and Ro-Tel are heavily nostalgic ingredients and that updating those old tried and true recipes like Queso is in no way criminal. So Norm, I have no doubt that your chili was very good, which is the most important thing.

And a second person snuck in another bag of candy as well.

The roasted okra was fabulous. My oven may be on the hot side; I think it would have been more perfect with either 5 minutes less or no convection. We had them with a side of grits and I wasn't watching the okra at the end--I was busy stirring my grits. I've roasted green beans this way many times at 375 F. Anyway, the okra is even better than green beans. I made two dips, mayo based, one with just hot sauce and the other with less hot sauce and smoked paprika. My husband preferred the paprika one. And like you, blue dolphin, we could have easily eaten a second tray. I realize I noted that I usually doctor Vivian's recipes, but in this case it was simple and needed nothing. And "doctoring" is not quite accurate. What I do to her recipes is often to UNfuss them or UNgild the lily. Vivian stretches my patience when she instructs to add "twenty twists" of the grinder; in that case I add a generous amount of pepper to taste. And how does she presume to know what kind of grinder I own? And does Ben stand behind her and count? Somebody stop me. She puts me is such a mood!

A perfect cocktail hour snack with your pumptini. Garnish that with a poodle.

I'm going to make this today. Any roasting tips? I must confess that I have had to doctor or adjust every one of Vivian's recipes I have made, although that isn't very many. I have the recipe for the okra but not for any dips, so I'm going to wing it with maybe some kind of spicy mayo. At the market there was a stall selling Oaxacan mole tamales. Turns out Oaxacan tamales are not my favorite kind, but they were packed with a container of outstanding vinegary hot sauce and I have enough of that elixir left over to make some kind of go-with dippy thing for my okra.

A lovechild! Could a zumpkin spice latte be far behind? If you put a zumpkin in a spiralizer you would be making poodles.

blue dolphin, those multi-colored cherry tomatoes look so great in the jar. You couldn't pay me enough to peel a quart of cherry tomatoes. I bet Vivian makes her husband do it. I am sure they are yummy. Perfect meal: those tomatoes and a grilled cheese sandwich.

PB & J: it's never to late to make new memories. In the early morning of August 21, 2017 we awoke in darkness at a horse farm in the high desert north of Bend OR. We made our sandwiches with peanut butter and raspberry jam we brought from home on bread our wonderful airbnb host provided for us. We drove north up past Madras and wound through a series of dirt roads to a flat turnoff on a rise among fields. For some mysterious reason the whole area was covered in a soft bed of straw. There were three tents where campers had spent the night, one of whom had a very friendly parrot named Sunshine sitting on a play-stand set up on the roof of his car. We spread out our blanket. By this time it was a little after 9am, about an hour before the total eclipse, and getting pretty warm. We ate our PB & J"s for breakfast with cold local Oregon tap water. During most of the eclipse Sunshine remained silent and later his owner said he started to doze off when it got dark. I can't tell you how good those sandwiches tasted.