kayb

Throwback night. Sloppy Joes and potato skins. We were out of sour cream😣 and Sloppy Joes don't taste nearly as good as they used to.

Haven't used that one (I agree with you, btw), but I can testify to her sandwich bread that uses potato, and her pain de mie.

Would strike me it would have to be two people who weren't very hungry.

Still planning on it, but don't have a spot for the dorm fridge at the moment. We will be moving this spring or summer, and I'll likely buy a used fridge and set one up then. I'd like to be able to cure sausages and such.

I want SO badly to go back to Japan. Eating in the noodle shops and the food halls of the train stations is such a treat. The Ryuan-ji (sp?) temple in Kyoto was, I think, my favorite place on the trip, though we also went to the Emperor's Palace and Kinkaku-ji. There is a sweet that's a soft, doughy pastry filled with sweet bean paste -- I forget its name. I could eat my weight in it.

Must try this for Cara if I get ambitious. My usual treat for her is fried grits cakes, topped with an over-easy egg. Kid can eat her weight in grits.

Have been at a conference all week and have eaten nothing exceptional, other than skipping out one evening to have a wonderful pimiento cheeseburger at the Capitol Bar and Grill across the street from my hotel. It's now colder than the proverbial well-digger's posterior, so I think it'll be either soup or a big pot of white beans tomorrow.

This is the kind of worthwhile info I LOVE to learn on eGullet. Thanks! My kids demand water chestnuts in all stir fries. They're getting jicama in the next one.

Speaking of wild rice -- I LOVE this recipe. I typically use mandarin oranges instead of navel.

FWIW, I've cooked flageolets and chilled them, then used them with tuna in an oil and vinegar dressing with capers and a medium boiled egg. Pretty doggoned good, and a protein powerhouse. When I cook them for that, I always cook them on top of the stove and test frequently, to make sure I get them just done enough to be good and tender, but not mushy. I find they hold their shape better if I drain, rinse, and then spread them out on a sheet pan to cool.

I LOVE water chestnuts. I can only imagine how much better the fresh must be than the canned.

I am surely enjoying all y'all's dinners (and lunches and breakfasts). I have eaten nothing worthy of note in more than a week, and it's been heavy on the fast and junk food the last three days, as I've been out of town with a grandchild having surgery. I leave tomorrow for a conference, so there will be more forgettable food. I am ready for some GOOD food; perhaps I can sneak away from this conference one evening and get a good meal. K.

Good story.

Interesting. First time I've noticed a food recall mentioning the specific plant where a product is produced. I don't buy enough chicken nuggets to have noticed whether the plant of origin is listed on the bag or not.

Here is a favorite spiced cookie recipe. It says bake them very dark, but I prefer them lighter. And here's another: Bacon fat gingersnaps.

Some excellent bakers in this group. You'll find plenty of assistance on spiced breads and cookies. Great chocolatiers, too! Welcome.

My pan is only about 9 inches, so I reduced the recipe by a third and ignored the shaping instructions. I have my own little way of shaping bread that works for me, so that's what I use any time I'm making a loaf, and, in modified form, a boule.

I REALLY like that recipe. Of course, it's the only pain de mie recipe I've tried.

I use the one from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Bread Bible.

Dinner tonight was homemade tomato soup I canned last summer, with grilled cheese sandwiches on pain de mie. Good stuff.

Don't know that you could call it an Atlanta food, but I had the absolute best braised pork shank (and one of the half-dozen best meals I've eaten in my life) at Murphy's Wine Shop in Atlanta. It was braised in cider, as nearly as I could tell, and had a marvelous sweet glaze brushed on it before it was let brown and crisp up.... Atlanta foods. Let's see. Chili dogs (for the historic Varsity Inn). Boiled peanuts (nasty things). Peach cobbler. Fried chicken, although that's ubiquitous everywhere in the South.

I've never thought of the Kroger I frequent as an upscale supermarket (I go there because (a) it's the closest to me, (b) it has a great deli and cheese section, and (c) the fuel reward points for gas), but there are some things I know I'm less likely to find there. F'rinstance, Wright's bacon packages ends and pieces in a three-pound bag that's only slightly higher than a 24-oz package of sliced bacon, and that's what I always buy when I'm going to make a batch of bacon jam. Same great taste, lots less expensive. I can ALWAYS find it in the smaller grocery, a local chain, in a part of town that's much more blue-collar and mixed ethnically. Ditto salt pork, when I've been looking for that. And when I took a craving for neckbones and dressing recently, the guy in the Kroger meat market sent me to that same store. "We don't sell 'em because nobody buys 'em." "My" Kroger is in one of the main business districts, within striking distance of several high-income neighborhoods, and also on the path from employment centers to the "burbs. All that said, surprisingly for a heavily agricultural in a heavily agricultural state, there is a REAL problem with food deserts in the Delta. The big reason, I think, is that the cropland is all given over to commodity row crops (cotton, wheat, soybeans, rice) and there's little vegetable growing going on. Likewise, there are long distances between towns, many of which are so small there is no grocery. I used to live in a town just 45 minutes from Memphis where now there is NO grocery store but for a small neighborhood market that ; the closest one is 25 minutes away in one direction or the other. There are lots of towns in worse shape than that, in the more remote stretches of the Delta. In some, there's not even a Dollar General or a convenience store, and any given house may be 35 miles from the nearest commercial establishment of any kind.

That looks quite interesting. A quick question about measurements: to what does "dag" and dac" equate? I would guess decagrams and decaliters, but thought I would ask to be sure. Also, any suggestions for a sub for Vegeta in the event I can't find it?

Judging from coastline variations and the Great Lakes, I'd say from upstate NY to northern Georgia. Interestingly, when I was visiting in western Virginia, I discovered they describe the mountains on the east side of the Shenandoah Valley (the "Blue Ridge,") as part of the Alleghenies, while the Appalachians are the mountains west of the valley. I always thought the Alleghenies were further north.

I would expect to find grits wherever corn was grown. Not much wheat was grown in Appalachia, thus grits, cornbread, corncake, cornmeal mush. Flour, when it was bought, came from the store. I didn't grow up in Appalachia -- I grew up in rural West Tennessee. But my forebears who settled there came from Appalachia, and brought their foods and traditions with them. I've seen quilts in Appalachian museums and shops that are identical patterns to the ones my grandmother and mother quilted. Foods changed a bit due to what was available and what grew where; not a lot of catfish in the Appalachian rivers, for example, but squirrel and dumplings, I'd venture, are damn near identical in both cultures. Likewise lots of pork dishes, and game birds, with the exception of ducks. Beef is probably more common in W.Tenn. culture than it was in Appalachia due to a greater access to grazing land. The Foxfire books are probably the best reference of which I'm aware to Appalachian life and foodways.