Darienne

Never had a Doritos to test out that unstated theory. In fact the above-posted event was my sole response to perhaps MSG. No one else at the table felt the need to stand in the rain.

I've never thought of myself as allergic or even sensitive to MSG, but I do recall vividly one episode eating Hot and Sour soup in a Chinese restaurant in Toronto, being so overcome by some ingredient in the soup that I stood outside in the pouring rain while my head felt as if a band of metal were trying to crush it.

Phyllo dough and Spanakopita definitely. Potato and pea filled Indian Samosas. I rather keep them in the category of purchased rather than made. Buy enough for two lunches, freeze them...and there they are for those kind of days...no work...just defrost and eat with tamarind sauce.

Looked up the recipe and was stunned! Simply stunned!

A friend posted this menu and I thought some of you might get a chuckle out of one of the side dishes. This restaurant is in Ontario, Canada.

First thing I learned to cook at about 8 years old. Taught to me by my best friend, and we are still friends more than 70 years later, who was 9 years old. Kraft Dinner it was and I quit eating it when I was about 15 years old.

What's this thing I keep seeing...Mac and Cheese as a Christmas dish?

I need to mix the isolate into the chocolate before I fill the moulds so therefoe 25 x 4grams = 100 grams of chocolate to do the job. How simple it is once you get a bit of help and settle down. Thanks as always Kerry. How often you have been there for me. And so many others too.

I own a particular Tomric mold, Disc no# I-2023:.16" x 1.30 (dia) .14 oz/4g. 30 cavity. It's been so long since I actually worked with chocolate and this is for mixing in an isolate pharmaceutical and so I need to get it right. I'm not functioning as well as I would wish and am asking for help. I need to make 25 discs in this mold. Can someone please tell me how much chocolate I should use. Does the blurb after the disc number mean that each cavity holds 4 g.? Thanks. Oh I don't have a scale which registers much less than 4 g. It's an inexpensive Starfrit and we use it to weigh the dogs' food.

Good luck on that one. Good luck to many of us on that one!

Shelby: BEP dish? Black-eyed peas?

Katie Meadow...what a story. Fascinating. Families,... What immediately sprang to mind was eating hamburgers burnt horribly by my Father and no one...no one... not even our young children dared to say a thing.

we've gotten as far as roast beef for Christmas dinner and that's it. with ed doing all the cooking. i'm still bedridden although with some hope of returning health for the first time in a while. no family or visitors however.

oh dear. is your keyboard now officially dead? ed worries all the time that i am going to spill my coffee on the new laptop.

brilliant...going to try that, heidih. and we are neither vegans nor vegetarians...in the words of Mark Bittman, whom i used to follow many years ago...we are 'lessmeatarians'.

Oh. Please.

It's really generous of CD to tell us about food recalls in Canada, but the number of recalls and warnings are growing rapidly and I would urge any Canadian eGer's to subscribe to the service themselves. CD can't possibly cover each and every one for us and it's so bother to check in our own email service daily. Here's the sign-up website: https://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-cfia/newsroom/email-notification/eng/1481653931267/1481654078038 I am grateful to you, CD, for putting me onto this service and for all the postings that you have done. Darienne

I use tahini constantly making hummus.

I'm sorry it wasn't wonderful for you. Halvah, when it is good, is excellent. When it isn't good...I guess it's pretty ho-hum. Lior has sent me some wonderful Halva from Israel and we used to be able to buy lovely stuff when we lived in Montreal decades ago. I was raised in Montreal and so was introduced to good Halva at an early age.

My favorite memory of Tucson is the wonderful zoo and arboretum. I'll never forget seeing a Boojum tree. I hope you get a chance to do that. Do let me know.

Takes me back. Just over 60 years in fact. Thanks ElsieD

In my household also, it was the starving Armenians. For our small wedding lunch, in Ottawa, in 1960, before the explosion of the Beatles and the entire world, we had Chinese food, at an Italian restaurant, La Paloma, run by Lebanese people.

Ed takes care of the Bosch and he's not here right now...but somehow it is running through this tiny mind that you might be supposed to add the Jet Dry stuff.

Our bountiful much producing Macintosh seems to be taking a year off. No apples. Nada. On the other hand our almost dead Northern Spy has quite a crop this year. Well, quite a crop for a tree which hasn't produced anything for several years. Northern Spies. That's apple pies. We haven't checked the current taste of the unidentifiable trees on the trail. I'll get Ed to do that soon. (Almost no grapes this year after last year's amazing abundance.)