kayb

There was a piece on NPR several years (I think) ago about just this topic. The reporter focused on India, where he was joining a family in their home for dinner. Their nine-month-old was in a high chair at the table, eating small portions of everything the parents ate, up to and including a pickle that, the reporter said, singed the hair in his nose. He was most amazed, and learned that Indian families took children straight from breast milk or formula to whatever the family was eating, and thus there were very few picky eaters in India. How accurate that is, I can't attest, but I tend toward trusting NPR more than a lot of media sources. I started feeding all my kids from the table fairly early. They're not, to this day, very picky. Definite individual tastes -- one will not eat raw tomatoes, one will not eat mushrooms, both foods I love and likely exposed them to early.

Interesting. I have a Wolfgang Puck stainless skillet, 12 x maybe 3 1/2 inch, with lid, that I'm quite satisfied with. Don't use it a lot because it's not often I need something that big, but it's always been serviceable when I've needed it. My cookware is a mixed bag. I have the Tramontina set @Kerry Beal purchased on my behalf from Canadian Tire when they were closing it out two or three years ago, and I've been quite happy with that. I have a couple of non-stick Calphalon saute pans that are workhorses for me; I've replaced the smaller one once because the nonstick coating got scratched and I feared it was about to start flaking. And I have my beloved Lodge iron skillets, and a couple of Darto pans.

That's the way my grandmother used to peel and chop potatoes. I swear her hands were a blur.

You can also water-bath can it if you've a notion.

Welcome, @farcego. I, too, am interested in, if woefully unknowedgeable about, cheeses. I do know one of my favorites is manchego. What little Spanish food I have had, I have loved. Anxious to hear some of your favorites. Recipes are appreciated!

That is a thing of beauty. Thanks for sharing it.

I've said it before, but this kid is just too cute for words. It makes me smile every time you post his pic.

Or, if you're not in the notion for any of the leftover uses mentioned above, try this.

Yep and not confined to areas in the USA. No housing. I'm astounded at real estate prices everywhere I'm familiar with. House down the street from me that's comparable to mine (4 br, 3 bath, 2500 SF) but with half the yard (mine's on a double lot), sold last month for $100K more than what we paid for ours. And sold in three weeks. My kids recently sold their house some 30 miles south of Nashville for 50 percent more than what they paid for it, and that on the weekend it went on the market. They're trying to buy a house in the Memphis area, but have had three contracts fall through; looks like they'll be homeless for a little while. My catsitting may be extended. Thanks, as always, for the Cape photos -- both beach and food. I always so enjoy them.

I do, for a fact. That's a regular in the fall. Although, oddly, I had trouble last year sourcing baby lima beans! So very strange. But I generally always have pulled pork in the freezer (you don't cook just a little barbecue," and while barbecued or smoked chicken is nice, I've done just fine with poached thighs or meat off rotissiere birds. Recovering from road trip, haven't cooked much this week. Ripe tomatoes are in, so there have been BLTs. Some with avocado. Some with slaw instead of lettuce. Some just bacon and tomato. I have finally ALMOST perfected the copycat chicken salad from the place up the road that makes the most MARVELOUS chicken salad. One uses about 1:2 pineapple juice to mayo, lots of green onions, and I add sliced almonds, chopped apples and dried cranberries to mine. I also added tarragon, which didn't show up much originally, but now two days later, with the added chilling, has a really nice flavor. Cooked burgers Friday night, with assorted salads (cole slaw, bean and corn salad, potato salad) and baked beans. Been eating leftovers from that and the chicken salad all weekend.

First ripe tomato of the year.

In general, I think you're right, but individual taste comes into the equation as well. Else I would not have declined turnip greens in favor of making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I would happily eat calves liver and onions; but I did and I won't. Both were regulars on the table when I was a kid. I still use bacon fat as my seasoning of choice for lots of things, a holdover from childhood (fortunately, I have excellent cholesterol). I have an autistic grandchild. He will eat fruit (except strawberries). He will eat peanut butter, if it's smooth. He will eat grilled cheese, pancakes, French fries and chicken nuggets. He will eat some sweets, but prefers crackers or potato chips. About the only vegetable he'll touch is a dill pickle. And he will cry with hunger before he tries anything else. We keep trying, and hoping we'll eventually get him to expand his horizons. My other two grandchildren, by contrast, live in a home where there's never any junk food on hand, and rarely is anything prepared with sugar. Their mother has celiac disease, so bread is something of an afterthought. The eight-year-old's favorite snack is raw bell pepper strips. I try not to retch at that. The 10-year-old will eat three over-easy eggs at a sitting. With bacon.

I'm convinced the part (the unit it is for is quite old) is being fabricated by monks in Tibet and transported via mountain goat. Or maybe carrier pigeon. It really hasn't been bad. Temps have been cooler than normal for June. We just topped 90 for the first time in three or four weeks yesterday. Humid as heck, though; it's been overcast and raining a lot.

I guess my mama's cranberry salad.

They make the best garlic aioli in the world.

I am winding up Week 2 with a broken air conditioner, and it has finally gotten uncomfortably warm. I ain't having anything that can't be assembled out of the fridge or delivered or picked up. I'm thinking tonight will be falafel salad from the Middle Eastern food truck. Lunch will be summer sausage and cheese, with fresh peaches and blueberries in yogurt.

This joins my collection of "favorite beach photos purloined from eG members." @liamsaunt and @robirdstx are other frequent contributors, though they may not know it. Sometimes I open the folder and just browse through and look; it always makes me feel peaceful. After this, I may have to start a folder of "favorite purloined mountain and village photos." The scenery is beautiful. I will go to Greece someday. I will, I will, I will. The breakfast spread looked enticing, as well.

I had at one time a recipe for scalloped pineapple that had grated cheese and I forget what else in it. I looked for it, but it's not in the book I thought it was. I recall it being pretty good. Ill look for it. Because they taste the way the ocean smells, early in the morning.

Don't know, but I know my peanut butter recipe is the same way, as is my sauce for candied sweet potatoes.

The important stuff from the NYT article: I bought pints of various berries, divided each batch into two samples, and heated one by immersing and swishing its plastic basket in a pot of hot water. I emptied the heated sample onto towels to cool down and dry. Then I repacked it, and encouraged both baskets to spoil by wrapping them airtight and letting them sweat on the kitchen counter. After 24 hours I counted the moldy berries in each basket. The strawberries fared best when I heated them at 125 degrees for 30 seconds. In two samples from different sources, this treatment gave a total of 1 moldy berry out of 30, where the untreated baskets had 14. I also treated some bruised berries, including one with a moldy tip. After 24 hours none were moldy. The tip mold not only hadn’t spread, it had disappeared. I tried the same treatment, 125 degrees for 30 seconds, on raspberries and blackberries, and got the same good results. There were many fewer moldy berries in the heated samples. For thicker-skinned blueberries, a Canadian study recommended a 140-degree treatment for 30 seconds. I tested it twice, with samples of around 150 berries each time. That heat took the bloom off. It melted the natural wax that gives the berries their whitish cast, and left them midnight blue. It also cut the number of moldy berries from around 20 per sample to 2.

In my last, very cramped kitchen, I screwed two magnetic strips parallel to each other on the underside of the wall cabinet above my main prep area. When I moved here, I went to a knife drawer.

Sweet (mild) sopressata. Summer sausage. And I'm fond of Lebanon bologna, which appears to me to be neither Lebanese nor bologna, but I sure do enjoy it in a sandwich. One of my very favorite cured meat products is Lomo, cured and smoked pork loin. Sort of like Canadian bacon, but different.

I have four of those: 1. The ice cream maker. I don't use it a lot, but it's nice to have when you want ice cream. The world would not end if I didn't have it; there's an excellent frozen custard shop down the street. 2. The honey dipper. It came with the pottery honey pot when I bought it at a studio in Georgia, so I used it. It works. So would a spoon. 3. Silicone egg-poacher thingies. I've honestly never tried to poach an egg without it, always tending toward over-easy for preparations that call for a cooked-but-runny-yolked egg. These work. I wouldn't die if I didn't have them. 4. Coffee grinder. I use a whirly-blade one that I have had for at least 20 years. I have a burr grinder in the pantry that is against the day the whirly-blade quits. I also have as a matter of last resort a spice grinder I could clean out and use if push came to shove. I ain't giving up my fresh-ground coffee.

Being a Tennessean by birth, I know from country ham. As you noted, it's dry-cured, but generally not smoked. I have added the "smoked" flavor, when it was needed, by tossing in a few pieces of smoked (uncooked) bacon. You can render the fat in whatever it is you're cooking; it imparts a bit of a smoky flavor. I keep packages of frozen smoked pork shoulder in the freezer; those serve the same purpose. But I find in most soups and stews, a cured hock that isn't smoked imparts the flavor I want; the smoke is not really imperative. If you want both, consider ordering from Broadbent's. They do good smoked, cured products. Real good. And they sell "seasoning packets" -- end cuts of bacon and ham. Good stuff. www.broadbents.com.

We're coming on to the end of strawberry season (late this year), and not far from blueberries and blackberries. I must go to the pick-your-own and pick some blackberries for jam. Last time I went, I took the grandson, who was maybe 4 or 5. I picked two gallons in 20 minutes. He picked and ate at least a pint in that period of time. My apple tree, which was barren last year, is loaded this year. There will be apple butter! There will be dried apples! Apple pies and apple crisps!