torakris

Cool can! I have never seen it but sounds good. The name is: tansan (carbonated) bombe (a gas cylinder) and on the right it says: umasa bakuhatsu (basically "delicious explosion")

Nikujyaga is definitely best when made with the mealy (starchier) potatoes, I wouldn't recommend using waxy potatoes at all. It is also much better with beef, but that is just personall preference. I also like to keep mine very simple just beef, potatoes and onions and maybe some shirataki threads if I must extend it a bit. I do not like carrots, snow peas and other vegetables in it and especially no curry powder!! This seems to be a popular version I am constantly running across in magazines usually with pork. It maybe possibly be good but just don't call it nikujyaga. I guess this was a little jet lagged induced rant....

I am so glad to see the pictures going up! I had left my camera in the hotel room... First off a big thanks to everyone involved it was a really wonderful event. I ate so much food I wasn't hungry until about 3:00pm this afternoon. On th way home, Alex (palladion) and I stopped off at the big silver thing in front of Zingerman's Roadhouse and I ordered a fresh squeezed lemonade. It was probably the best one I have ever had but it still took me 3 hours to drink because I was so full. I went straight from Ann Arbor to a family reunion, taking along with me some of the leftover bread and fig jam that Randi (calipoutine) made. They were a huge hit! Thanks guys. More pictures please!!

Edsel's words do not describe how good this bread was. This was honestly some of the best bread I have ever had in my life. I am going home with some (ok, most) of the leftovers. It is 11:00pm and there are still 10 of us hanging around enjoying each others company. I have a feeling there won't be too many comments or pictures until well into tomorrow.

Calipoutine and I were the only ones who passed on the wine tasting and thus found ourselves doing all the manual labor. I pitted a couple hundred cherries and then moved on to slice hot peppers. I will leave you wondering what they are going to used for.... I also just came back inside from where Steven and I were grilling peaches and then zucchini, again I will leave you wondering.

I am closing this thread. All of the new posts should be made to this thread.

I guess I am the first person to report in! I am Tammy's house enjoying her caramels, waiting for a couple others to arrive. We had an great tour led by Jan Longone, who was very informative. This was followed by a lively dinner at Bella Ciao and some wonderful conversations with Ronnie's son Lucas.

In Ubud, I absolutely loved Ketut's Place. This is "local" food that can get no better. He is only open a couple times a week so you need to check. I also enjoyed a cooking class and more wonderful food at Bumbu Bali 2 (also Ubud), the pictures (and comments) on both places canbe found with this thread.

guest is Deborah. ← Great! She was a lot of fun at our dinner on Saturday.

It only took a couple tries but I was finally able to label the the pictures correctly. I must apologize to Chef Matthew because my pictures do not do the meal justice. Maybe Edsel took better ones..... My favorite part of the meal?? Probably the pork belly and fried rice and the lobster salad. Well my week is over, it was a lot of fun and thank you to all of those who followed my week. I have a family BBQ today and my sister Mary's house, a small gathering with only 25 of us. I just whipped together a zucchini frittata, this is my grandmother's recipe and we can't have a gathering without it and I have become the new official maker of it since my grandmother passed away 2 years ago. The recipe is here. The zucchini came from my dad's garden and he had a basket of yellow and green beans as well so I made a Greek style salad with red onion (also from the garden), tomatoes, peppers, Kalamata olives, feta and mint and parsely (also from the garden. I will see everyone again soon at the end of Calipoutine's blog as I will be joining here in Ann Arbor for the Heartland Gathering.

Pookie, I am looking forward to your first blog! and Randi, I will be seeing you again very soon!! I am really looking forward to next weekend in Ann Arbor.

I just realized I left the menu of what we ate last night in my dad's car and he and my mom are at church right now.... I am going to post the pictures and come back later to edit what exactly they were. Amuse Bouche: Bloody Mary Soup For the bread, Truffle Butter, Honeycomb and Whipped Amish Butter The Breads: Multigrain, Walnut and Raisin, Pepperoni White Asparagus with Egg White Foam, Poached Liquid Yolk, and Vanilla Butter Sauce Kona Kampachi 3 ways, top: Nigiri with Green Tea (almost raw, hte fishw as just dipped in hot soy sauce) left: BBQ with Fresh Corn and Couscous (rare) right: Coconut Poached with Lime Cilantro Chutney (medium) Pork Belly with Foie Gras Fried Rice Lobster with Grapefruit, Saffron Oil, Orange Peel, Kalamata Olives and Hearts of Palm Pomegranate Sorbet Basque Style Lamb: Colorado Lamb, Merquez Sausage, Potato and Roasted Garlic Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich (honestly, that is what the menu says)

I snap pictures too early. I am just home (almost 1:00am) from an absolutely incredible dinner. I will have to post the pictures tomorrow as I am just going to head up to bed...

In just a little bit 8 of us from eGullet are going to be arriving at The Leopard Restaurant in Aurora, Ohio where the chef, Matthew Mathlage, is preparing a special tasting menu just for us. Many, many beautiful pictures to follow. Now I need to figure out what to wear!

Back to last night. After Parallax the 6 of us headed over to the Velvet Tango Room where we were joined by 3 more people for cocktails and dessert. I really enjoyed the Ramos Gin Fizz when I was there last week but wanted to try something different. I don't drink normally and can't handle anything that actually tastes like alcohol. The bartender was great and said she would make a drink for me. It turned out to be a lovely mixture of with the made on the premises ginger ale with another made on the premises red wine reduction syrup. We all saved room for dessert. With Bananas Foster and Crepes Suzette on the menu who wouldn't?? Paulius (the owner) prepares everything tableside (or sofa side in our case). Wonderful!! The Velvet Tango Room thread and did I mention that Paulius presents all the women with kisses and roses...

Sorry for not finishing the pictures of last night, I had to run out shopping.. Laura and I hit another Gabriel Brothers, Kohl's and Bed, Bath and Beyond. I went back and forth on a tablecloth but ended up not getting it because I wasn't sure of my dining table size. We stopped for lunch at 5th Ave Deli a new place at Eastgate shopping center that was recommended by NancyH. Once again Nancy has found a great place. Though it has all your deli standards, the owner is Lebanese and has put a couple Lebanese items on the menu. I really hope she expands it more though. We both had the shwarama. The meat was just a tad on the tough side but the sauce had a great flavor and I would get it again. I didn't have my camera with me so I am sorry but there are no pictures.

I think I paid $9, it was really good crab. I have no idea if it was frozen or not. Isn't soft shelled crab season over? I found them in Costco back in May but they were imported form Thailand. These ones last night were better. I have never seen anything like this in Japan...

Last night My sister, Laura, and I enjoyed a fabulous dinner with a group of Cleveland eGulleteers. We started at Parallax in Tremont and then headed over to the Velvet Tango Room for cocktails and dessert. My sister and I started off the meal with the scallop ceviche these scallops were incredible, absolutely fresh. I then chose a dish that I have never tried before, a spider roll! though it was difficult to eat, I really enjoyed it. For my main I chose the grilled shrimp with South American chile sauce and Latin style cream corm. Excellent!

That sounds sooo good! I love morello cherries.

Thanks! I am probably headed to Trader Joe's tomorrow, I will pick some up.

Just back from a lovely dinner and cocktails with a wonderful group from eGullet, pictures to come tomorrow as I am headed off to bed. The other book I am waiting for is The New Spanish Table by Anya von Bremzen I thought I ordered more but when I checked Amazon just now all the rest are workout videos... without those I would probably weigh 300lbs

The cookbooks are rolling in... last week I made a pretty large order from Amazon and Amazon's marketplace. Yesterday I received: Charcuterie (Ruhlman) Mexican Everyday (Bayless) 365: No Repeats (Rachael Ray) I don't own any of her books and was curious...

We spent the better part of the day at Cleveland's Natural History Museum inluding a visit to the planetarium and the special Jane Goodall exhibit. It was a lot of fun. Cleveland's history musuem is quite nice and we go at least twice every visit. For lunch we just take fixings for sandwiches and assemble them there, along with other easy to eat foods. Today we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (grape and apricot jams) with grapes, bananas, carrots, pretzels and granola bars. Water for the adults and drink boxes for the kids. The prep my plate the kids had a good time

this is the second time you mentioned your nephew Jake is helping out with some cooking--is this a long-time hobby of his, or influence from his Aunt Kris, or both? ← Jake really likes food, he prefers shopping and cooking toa ctually eating though. He even joined me last year for the Heartland gathering in Ann Arbor!

I didn't really think about it, I guess I am just eating them because it is what my mom bought for us. Last week I bought a hue pack of English muffins and none of my kid's liked them, they said they prefer the Japanese English muffins...