maggiethecat

165, 124. That's a lotta cookbooks, but I know it's nowhere near the true figure. C'mon, guys. Fess up. [Moderator note: The original Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 4)]

Autumn = hard squash to me, whether roasted, sauteed, pureed into soup with frizzled sage atop, braised...

Check RecipeGullet. I remember that Jaymes posted a dynamite recipe, which I made to great acclaim, a few years ago. It's perfect. Here's the Recipe Gullet Help Topic:Enjoy!

Thank God I haven't been tragically hip about bacon or anything else for 30 years. And yes, I've seen the nitrite tsunami coming at us for the last two years. Kerry Beal's chocolate bacon is sublime. I like candied bacon too. I love tiki stuff like rumaki. I like bacon cheeseburgers. But I mostly love bacon with its classic Fred and Ginger partner, the egg. A shark would just mope away when sniffing bacon, eggs and toast. (Well, maybe I am a fanatic. My Band-Aids are shaped like bacon and eggs, and I have glorious bacon wrapping paper.)

Hey Shalamese -- Interesting topic, although it took me five read-throughs of your initial post to try to make sense of it. It's late, and I may not have sorted it out yet. I'll let alone slk's limited personal knowledge (though genuine) of Italian-American cooking, and I'm all over the place about pizza. I love and revel in many styles and ingredients. I'm still not sure what absolutist means to do with steak v. Keller chicken. And why does it matter? Eat what you want, enjoy it, and don't parse the experience to death. I eat what I can afford and do a pretty fair job cooking dinner every night. I'm not comparing my (Excellent, Roman style) pizza to your opinion's and Sam's about what a pizza ought to be. Why would I waste my time or care what you or Sam or anyone else thinks? My dinner is, I suppose, relative to everything, but i don't give a care. And, as I suspect I'm older than you, my early absolutism became exposed as the ignorance and snobbery it was.

Peter, I'm with P the Eater -- cue the 007 music: "Nobody does it better." Thanks for bringing on Bangkok.

"boys and Barbies" might be my favorite food story ever. Perhaps I can throw something over the transom?

Basil is an herb best served fresh, scattered over summer salads and soups. Pounded into pesto. Conjuring Keats -- or was it Shelley? It's the sensuous scent of summer. And it's a bitch to preserve. All that pesto in your freezer will resemble cow pats, grim and grotty. Drying it is better than buying dried basil, but what's the point, really? Basil's meant to be eaten fresh. So let me tell you about what I'm calling Basil Buds. I saw this technique demonstrated by a ladtywhose name I wish I could remember, about a month ago on the Martha Stewart Show. Bring a pan of water to the boil. Blanch the basil for no more than ten seconds, then plunge it into ice water. Dry it off. Stick it into your blender with a cup of olive oil (I cheated --half and half with canola) and whiz it up. It will be a lovely fresh green. Freeze in ice cube trays, then pack away in your freezer in a baggie. The color is just gorgeous. Throw a couple into a soup or a salad dressing. A lovely sauce for a simple fish dish. Always green, and fresh flavored. That's my tip for the summer.

I adore the cheap molds bento box Moms can buy to turn hard boiled eggs into Volkswagon Bugs.

It should be just fine. Here's a horror story from someone who once worked at the "deli" of our local Target. (That's another story, and a good one...) The Target fryer contained a couple of gallons of canola. It stayed at 350 ten hours a day, frying chicken and potatoes. It was left to sit for more than a week -- by Friday it was black. A new batch went through the rotation: doughnuts, then chicken, then potatoes then fish then shrimp then scallops. It was filtered once a week. Nobody died.

And we could have steamy scenes of nineteenth century New Orleans, because that's where Charles started cooking in the U.S. My daughter loved the movie and she was almost as interested in the Julie saga as she was in Julia's life. She's a very busy thirty-something blogger herself, and she thought the Julie bits were amusingly accurate.

Good work, mes amis! 163,639.

That cinnamon-flavored meat is a perfect example of being pulled out of my North American/European comfort zone. I remember thinking: "What the hell? I don't want meat that tastes like Christmas." But, of course, I ate on. And I got it. It will never be my favorite, but what the hey -- it got me thinking. I've eaten long enough and widely enough to know that I don't love offal -- the exceptions being lamb kidneys and foie. But I've put in time and effort tasting liver and tripe and I've learned. Just eat up. I give myself the rule I gave my daughter when she was little: try two bites, if you don't like it you don't have to eat it. And she grew up to have a madly adventurous palate and has eaten (and didn't mind) supershudder, dog.

Right about the popularity of deviled eggs, although I've noticed that indeed you can get creative with them. Folks will eat practically anything, including stuff they wouldn't otherwise touch, if it's mashed into a hard-cooked egg half. ← Deviled eggs are my fall-back dish for work potlucks, especially in a workplace dominated by very young men whose idea of ethnic dining is Houlihan's. Likewise popular are a big pan of chicken wings and (of course) home made mac and cheese.

Not only am I a blasphemer, I suspect I may get burnt at the stake on this topic. Bring it. I get my tea genes from my working class English granny, a tea imbiber if there ever was one. Orange Pekoe in teabags was just fine for her -- though she always heated the teapot and took the pot to the water, not the water to the pot. Weather meant nothing to her: "A lovely cuppa" was served in August jungle heat and February deep freeze. She was open to oolongs, Lapsong Souchongs, whatever, and had her tea strainer, but in fact she preferred OP in teabags. The weather made no difference: tea two or three times a day. Iced tea didn't cut it.But I love UNSWEETENED ice tea, and (please respect me in the morning)I think Constant Comment and handfuls of mint and lemon verbena makes extraordinary iced tea. It's good as real tea too. ETA: Troubles? No troubles. Tea is infinitely easy, fluid and forgiving.

Do your thing. Do what you wanna do. Trust yourself and your cooking experience. In this case, I'd peel. When I read a recipe I always think "Hmmmm. Do I really have to do this?" If the answer is yes, I do it. If I know better than the recipe writer I feel free to take liberties.

Santa Maria! Pecorino Romano is a brilliant cheese. Peppery, sheepy, salty -- that's what I love about it. Try it in shavings with groups of grapes. And for general kitchen use: don't add too much salt to your pizza dough or your ragu. That's not gastronomical rocket science. I like "overpowering overwhelming eating cheeses." What, it's a bad thing to say Kraft Medium Cheddar tastes like paper compared to Balderson's 8 year old? Pec isn't Parm, and it isn't Asiago. So what? (I'm not pre-eminent in anything, but I think Jenkins doesn't get it.)

We talked a lot about Pollan's article this week, and especially Mr. Balzer's take on fast food. On Tuesday Burger King runs a special -- Whopper Jr.s and Spicy Chicken sandwiches 69 cents, add cheese, 79. In a horrible way, this is cheaper than buying the raw ingredients and making lunch oneself. While I deplore Mr. Balzer's comments, I'm saddened to say I agree with his long-term forecast. (I do enjoy darning socks, but no one wears out wool socks anymore and few knit them.)

I don't know how tomorrow's schedule looks for other PBS markets, but here in Chicago Channel 11 is running Julia all day. (There was a cute clip showing what seemed like a 14-year old Rick Bayless teaching Julia about ribs.)

First thing: Read Mark Twain's "The Appetite Cure." It's out there on-line. People have had your problem for a long time. (And it's hilarious.) I've been there. For me, I just simplify. Salads, sandwiches (like the one Holly described above) and soup. It's corn and tomato season;eat lots of both. Keep ambitious cooking and eating to to the minimum. For me the classic Appetite Cure Meal is lunch at the Zodiac Room at Neiman-Marcus. Very plain and old-fashioned and well executed: beautiful chicken broth and a basket of popovers to start (and they're free) followed by a chicken salad sandwich. Delicate, undemanding Ladies Who Lunch food. Yeah, travel would be great.

I'm thinking Toronto, if there's anyone to plan and execute. Excellent food scene, exotic Canada, and I can stay with my TO foodie cousin. Toronto is pretty central, too. Any Hogtown eGulleteers open to the idea?

I suspect that Obama, like Crowley, is a wine guy, not a beer guy. But "We're all getting together to sip wine" doesn't sound populist or Manly to the general public. (I have no problem with it.) At the All-Star Game, the POTUS was spotted with a Bud Light. Maybe he just likes it.

In the western burbs of Chicago we spend about 150.00 a month for food -- wine and beer might push it to 200.00. We're frugal, and I can squeeze an 89 cents a pound butt until it oinks. We have tremendous ethnic groceries where the price of good produce is risible. We never eat out. We don't eat meat every night. We eat well, but not a lot. In our twenties we'd eat a ribeye apiece. I can't now imagine eating that much meat -- much as I love it -- and these days we'd split that steak. My biggest extravagance is good cheese.

As usual, I'm the dope on this topic. However. my North of England grandmother gave me the DL on washing teapots (In her case, A Brown Betty.) You don't. A swish under hot water, no soap, no scrubbing. Ever. It would kill the pot and kill the tea. I have a pretty white French teapot, and sometimes I'll clean it with a vinegar solution, just so the interior looks nice. But mostly, with a teapot, less is more. And for heavens sake, mes amis, tea is tea.

Pfui. I can make you a Matisse sweet bum apron. Any time. But I'm jealous you got to learn so much so fast, and eat it. That's just a gift.