snowangel

From down-home and fried, to a child who was gleeful while his folks were beyond exhausted (people are still telling us that they will grow up and leave home!) to frozen vodka? In four way-too-short pages, you have taken us from hither to yon like I don't think any other blogger has done. Let's see you do it again in another three years. And, tell Ellen I miss the missives from her adventures.

So, Percy, have you ever thought of getting a job working for some Egg council or board? I'd be proud to serve what you serve to my family for dinner!

In the way simple, but really great, do you have access to a mess of local tomatoes? Slice, lay out on a platter, drizzle with great olive oil, some snipped basil and voila! A celebration of late summer, and as great a simple food as your brother would have loved, I'm sure.

Tamales! We love them, but have never made them. Should I be saving husks from the sweet corn we have been eating?

Bryan, please talk about a few things. How was the flatware? Do you like it in action? How many people did you serve? What do your dishes look like? What was the cost of ingredients, and who came? And, how long did the prep take? More about the nuts and bolts of doing this, please!

Oh, add 9 of them that I didn't even know I had. (hidden in one of the five boxes I didn't unpack when we moved; bonus was that I found the almost finished knit shawl that I had been working on -- a spiderwebby silk/mohair blend -- that was use to keep the books from rolling around in the box.) One of the 9 includes the Ladies Home Cookbook, circa 1906. It includes not only nebulous recipes, but also methods for keep the outhouse smelling clean, how to avoid typhoid, and what to do with a crabby and teething child.

It was two years ago that I was asked to make the mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. Knowing what I know about making food special (not much), the potatoes were sort of flat, so I added a couple of mashed anchovies. Voila! Everyone raved about them, including the little old ladies. Yes, potatoes and anchoves. But then again, anchovies can add that little something to so many things...

Now, here in MN, they'd have stuck it on a stick and deep fried the whole works. No comment. At the CA State Fair, do you have the choice of Pronto Pups as well as corn dogs?

No pictures, but Peter (age 10) has mastered the over-easy egg on toast! Guess who's cooking breakfast tomorrow?

I love my Cuisinart toaster oven. And, since I'm often making toast for five, I do notice that the second and third batches take less time.

Paul: "Let's have pizza tomorrow night." Diana: "Yes, let's grill pizza. Mom and I have been talking about it." Paul: "I'd rather have delivery. I don't want a charred bit of dough." The gauntlet has been tossed down. Now, my last grilling pizza experience was less than successful, but the weather wasn't cooperating, it was in the middle of a blog, etc., etc., etc. But, I have a Weber Kettle. I can grill and smoke meat with the best of them. I come with a "Please. Help. Give me advice." I could use advice on how to best bank the coals, or should I slope them? I have to shine tomorrow, I really do.

We did not make it to the State Fair yesterday, thanks to a massive and torrential rain storm, but we will go on Monday, armed with Rick Nelson's commentary in the Star Tribune. I think the most amusing this is this one: Yep, Hot Dish (casserole to some) on a stick.

Inspired to read this article yet again, as young Master Peter (now 10) is hot to trot, I pulled out my first cookbook -- a very well worn copy of Farm Journal's "Lets Start To Cook." Why did they cease to publish these books, especially this one? It immediately fell open to the drawings of how to frost a cake -- put a plate on top of a bowl (so you can spin it and it is at eye level) and put strips of waxed paper under the cake so the plate stays clean). I flipped, and there is the recipe for Perfect Beef Stew -- that actually talks about what cuts are the most flavorful! This was published in 1966, long before microwaves, when prepared food meant canned tomatoes and sweetened condensed milk. To this day, I can still remember the recipe for Hamburger Goo (think sloppy joes) that is the best ever. My kids won't eat anyone else's sloppy joes. Oh, and there's a whole thing on rolling out pie crust (yes, in Farm Journal books, it's pie crust). There are side bars with all sorts of useful information (how does yeast work) and quaintly early 60's drawings in black and orange (!). Each meat chapter starts with a line drawing of the animal and the various cuts. Run, do not walk, to your local used book store and hound them for a copy, or search on Amazon. It would be a great gift for any beginning cook (no matter the age) and a good thing to tuck away for a future grandchild.

Kathy, are you suggesting that this recipe just might make me like radishes? (call me not a root crop fan)

Damn, Steven. I needed to see this meal you had at Bob's. We had every hopes of getting to the great and wonderful Minnesota State Fair today to consume copious and obscene amounts of fried food, but the weather and a network problem at Paul's office prevented it, so Monday it will be. But, darn it, your comment about the onion rings. I haven't managed to find a noteworthy onion ring in this fair state. I guess that's my mission this fall. To visit any and everywhere and search for a good ring. An almost perfect food when done right, IMHO.

So, did I espy fish pants above? And, more about those onion rings. I can't seem to find a decent onion ring within driving distance. Even at the burger joints on the way to the Cabin, they don't meet the expectations. Their breading is wrong and "flakey." Your last few pictures have made me realize my mission tomorrow at the Minnesota State Fair is Onion Rings.

So, I've lamented that my mom sold her china. I called my aunt the other night (she's the one who bought my mom's china for a nominal amount of money) to say that we still hadn't used the money she gave us for our anniversary to go out to dinner -- don't worry, I had sent a prompt thank-you note. Anyway, I told my aunt that I was thinking about not using the money to go out to dinner, but to start working on a set of china for myself. Then, she drops it. She purchased the china from my mom because my mom was insistent on getting rid of it, and she knew that "one of you girls -- either your sister or you or one of your girls -- would want it. It's in our storage unit, and we need to get out there in the next week or two, and we'll take an inventory of the number of placesettings, serving dishes, and patterns and I'll call and you and I can arrange a time for you to get it. I'm just so pleased that one of you girls want it." Could have knocked me over with a feather. For one thing, it's wonderful, at my age, to be referred to as a girl, and it's so touching she'd know I would want it.

Marlene, call your favorite meat guy tomorrow and order three more butts.

I think Abra's right about the quantity. Like I said just a few posts above, 30 guests devoured what had been a raw almost 13-pound brisket, and I know that had I had more, it would have gone (and I could have eaten some of it). I've served a lot of butt at a lot of parties, and in my experience, not many people are going to eat just one sandwich. I'd be tempted to smoke 6 of them.

Those were some beautiful looking onion rings. Why is a good onion ring so hard to find?

Marlene, I'd like to think that four butts will do it, but I smoked a 12.75 pound brisket last week, and 30 people devoured the whole thing. Outside of one tiny little piece that "fell off" I didn't even get any. And this was a group of adults between the ages of about 30 and 70 -- not teenage boys. I also think, if you are worried about time and smoking, there's nothing wrong with taking them to somewhere in the stall, pulling them, wrapping in foil and finishing them in a low oven.

Over here, Dave the Cook showed us his vacation traveling cook-kit. Show us yours, please!

We may have an issue of definitions here. A sippy cup, in my lexicon, is a child's cup with a special opening that looks kind of like a small volcano. There's a mechanism in there to keep it from spilling if it gets knocked over. However, there are also very good portable cups that use straws and don't spill very much at all if knocked over. We prefer those. There's some alleged developmental reason for favoring straws over sippy cups, but don't ask me what it is. ← Speech therapists hate those sippy cuts that done spill when they tip over -- they require the same action as sucking out of a bottle, which is different than sipping out of a straw. The details the oral motor development things on this are really hazy because it's been so long since I talked to Heidi's SLP about it. I'm going to assume that your dog is rather fond of parking himself under PJ's chair when he eats. Is Momo eating more table food now than he used to?

LindsayAnn, I think you'll find many of us that think that bacon is a good thing, and obscene amounts of bacon are even better!

Marlene, butt (pulled right after smoking) can be frozen as well, and reheated as per the above instructions, so you could do the smoking well in advance. I have a butt in the freezer (which I didn't pull in advance because I pulled it off at 2:30 am!) which I will thaw and reheat and pull this weekend, and I'll let you know how that goes.