Darienne

A wonderful Middle Eastern recipe with I have for breakfast often. Megadarra. Basically lentils (I use the green or brown ones), rice and fried onions. And of course that wonderful soup, Harira, which has no doubt hundreds of variations. I was first taken with it because I'd never seen a soup before with lentils, chickpeas and rice. But that's just my recipe.

We ordered some and were not really pleased. We live in mid-Ontario and I don't really know how long they took to get here. I grew up eating fresh Montreal bagels and I don't think they can be packaged in plastic and sent by truck or whatever and still taste good and fresh. Montreal bagels go stale pretty quickly. Nope. We won't order them again. Still that's only two people's opinion. Obviously thousands love them as they are fairly popular.

Not to mention our wonderful cheddar cheeses.

We've eaten it for years. And we've never ever 'tasted' the lard in it. Besides as good French Pea "Soupers" , we might just like lard. (Ed's Mother was French Canadian....and I was born and raised my formative years in Montreal.) Normally for supper, I would add a can of chickpeas, parsley, grated carrot, more ground pepper, and some cooked brown rice. Ed has added real bacon bits to his.

Never used one. Probably never will. And I haven't been to a parade in a decade. Oh well...

We use it for our version of Chinese dishes which Ed loves. With long green beans, tofu, Singapore Noodles, eggplant, Hot & Sour soup. Chinese dishes are the one thing I could make before I 'discovered' cooking and most of our recipes come from Margaret Gin and Alfred E. Castle. Regional Cooking of China, 1975. I also use a combination of ground beef and pork for Mexican style meat balls, used in a variety of ways including Albondigas soup. My Mexican cookbook, Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking, 1965 is in even worse shape than my Chinese cookbook. I had never eaten pork, as such, before I got married.

Egg Foo Yung is a favorite. Scramble them for the dogs. (Two giant dogs.) Fried eggs on Sundays...Ed cooks them French Canadian style...or the way his French-Canadian Mother cooked them anyway... Pannukakku, Finnish pancakes take lots of eggs. Used to hate eggs. Had a run-in with an English baby-sitter and a soft boiled eggs when a youngster. OK. It did go down....and then it came up. Avoided eggs for decades.

I know that I would not eat it. But then I'm fairly squeamish about such matters and Ed will eat stuff that I won't. But that's really just a gut reaction (pun intended).

We have tried a number of brands ( I live in Ontario, Canada) and stick with Arroy-D only. It tastes the best to us. And I use either the cream or the milk...whatever Ed manages to buy for me. A good number of years ago there was a eG discussion...I can't recall what topic...about the mislabeling of the coconut milks/creams and how they made no sense. We all just agreed at the time to let it go...

And do you have your stand mixer sitting out? There's no room in our kitchen for the stand mixer to sit out and it's a ginormous 7-quart monster. And so I never use it except when forced to...maybe once or twice a year. At most. (And yes, I am crabbing.)

Sometimes I think this topic should be sub-titled: "Ya wanna bet?" I hate my hand mixer. It's a Hamilton Beach and when I bought it in Moab five years ago, it was already an old model. That's what is for sale in Moab...out-of-date appliances. Sorry, I am crabbing. It starts at 'fast' and goes up to 'incredibly stupidly fast'. So I was mixing liquid coconut oil, carob and peanut butter with added bits of this and that, and turned it up to 'incredibly stupidly fast' and completely lost control of it. Yes, a viscous brown mess was suddenly all over the kitchen and me. Many rude words later...which somehow Mr. Ed reading two rooms away completely missed...the kitchen is clean. I am clean. The mixture is in the freezer solidifying. And I am wondering when I'll do it again. You'd think I'd learn. You'd think.

One issue not mentioned here and one that I remember reading about some years ago...is that of the buffer zones around the fields of grown greens actually being cleared and denuded of all greenery, so that the contaminated 'winds' could blow straight from the cows' fields into the planted fields.

Ya think?

People eat apricot kernels? Why? Or should I ask? ps. Added: looked it up. Tried to delete the above post, but apparently couldn't.

That really is sad. Life without potatoes...cannot imagine it. No French Fries? Inconceivable!!

Thursday and reporting back. I was quite disappointed that no Ontarians got back to me with a decent potato salad potato. However, Ed bought some red potatoes in FreshCo, unpackaged, red skins with white flesh, alas he didn't check to see the geographical source for said potatoes, and lo and behold! today we have delicious proper potato salad. Still, we are back in business. The rest of the 'spurious' red potatoes will go into potato soup.

Now that's a cake!

@gfweb: they WERE red potatoes. That's the problem. @Katie Meadow: but I am looking for an Ontario brand name to use. I'm still looking for a brand name available in Ontario. I've started researching the Loblaws brand name 'Farmer's Market/Délices du Marché'. I have a package of coloured peppers in front of me with the information I need. And sad to say...yesterday I made our favourite cucumber salad with Farmer's Market cucumbers and was stunned at how wet the cucumbers were. The recipe calls for 1 cup each of water, vinegar and sugar. I put NO water at all into the mix and still the liquid sitting in the mixing bowl was amazing. I'm wondering if the brand is similar to the 'No Name' brand, also a Loblaws brand, mostly canned items, which we don't use at all. Many of the items are just not to our liking.

Recently I started a topic in Cooking: Mushy Red Potatoes in Potato Salad. Ed had purchased red potatoes...exactly what is called for in potato salad...under the brand "Farmers' Market" and they were incredibly mushy, even when cooked for under ten minutes. Not just mushy on the surface...which can happen easily (for me) when I don't catch the potatoes exactly when they are just right...but mushy through and through. Ugh. ElsieD reported also using this brand and being disappointed in them. What I need now is to be steered to a suitable brand name, available in Ontario, which someone has used recently to make a non-mushy potato salad. Thanks.

Ed's Mother was French-Canadian...Metis actually. Now she made French-Canadian style beans. She was an amazing cook.

The bag is almost empty now. So don't worry this one. We'll eat them. But the potato salad, which we had for supper along with our other usual salads, is really pretty awful. I know Ed will eat it. I don't think I will.

We just steam our asparagus and eat it with butter. We do eat quite a lot of it. Mostly we like the rather thin ones, but last week Ed bought just about the fattest asparagus I've ever seen. Oh, I thought, these are going to have lots of tough ends. And I was so surprised, that fat as they were, the entire stalk was soft and completely edible when steamed. Looked back at the first page of this topic and found my entry all about our asparagus patch which supplied us for years...until the year of the massive renovations when the many large trucks completely destroyed it.

Well, these were sold as "red" potatoes and noted as for potato salad. And that makes two of us who found them objectionable.

I knew that. We won't make a special trip to town to return them, but Ed does all the shopping and they came from the local city's Superstore so it won't be a problem. And while you noted that colour of flesh and skin are not necessarily what we think they are, these potatoes are still meant for potato salad. It says so right on the package. And definitely they are not.

Right. Except that I wasn't making mashed potatoes. Actually, I'm not crazy about mashed potatoes although Ed loves them. I wasn't raised on them. I'll keep your information in mind next time. Ed is still returning the unopened bag and buying a different brand next time.