maggiethecat

I feel like a lucky woman, or a happy moron. Maybe I haven't paid attention to the eating habits of my friends and family, probably because I've had my head in my plate, food touching, eating in no particular order and inhaling everything. (With time out for chat, telling cats they aren't welcome on the table and yacking politics and religion.) If I leave something on my plate it means I'm full. It must be exhausting, counting bites and worrying about food co-mingling. And, I've been known to mingle pasta in a dish if the shapes are about the same weight and surface area. Makes for a cheery dish.

I think they're talking about lovely Lucullus, at 610 Chartres in the Quarter.

My hair coloriste is a young woman who actually cooks, and we chat about food every six weeks when I put myself in her brilliant hands and say: "You are the Holbein of hair. Do whatever you want." Jennifer has told me that she's "picky." She's also seven months pregnant. I told her about a watermelon/tomato sorbet a friend made, and she turned paper white and retched into the (handy) sink. All us ladies with foil on our heads gasped. She returned to me and my head. "I'm so sorry. But I detest any member of the melon family and raw tomatoes mystify me -- so slimy. The thought of eating either of them makes me shudder, even when I'm not pregnant. What kind of sicko would deliberately put them together?" Um, a good cook I know.

There are two genres I can guess don't have much to say about food: Science Fiction and Westerns. I'm no expert on Sci-Fi or Oaters, I admit. Maybe because what I've read hasn't had many food descrpitions?

Isabel Allende in "Aphrodisiac." Any novel by Laurie Colwin Oliver Twist: "Please sir, may I have more?" "A Christmas Carol", come to think of it. Nancy Mitford's books swell with food descriptions. Mark Twain's "The Appetite Cure." The Bible Dave the Cook and I had a week long Daily Gullet piece about food in the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novels here.

Snap! In Ottawa my mother's copy of "Purity" is sitting in the cookbook bookcase in exactly thesame condition you describe yours. I'm wondering how many Canadian Society me mbers have their mother's or grandmother's workhorse copy of "Purity." (The name referred to a brand of flour, I believe, not the nominal chastity of its owners.)

Ah, takes me way back. My grandmother did this when the White Album came out -- just for chronological purposes, altho, come to think of it , Liverpool was 30 miles from where she was born. It was like an "I Love Lucy" episode. We stared, dazed and confused, at the suds rising halfway up the lower cabinets. Then someone turned off the dishwasher and we laughed 'till our sides hurt.

Smoked oysters. Yum. Wrap each in enough bacon to encircle it, skewer with a toothpick, and broil until the bacon's cooked. Back in the 60s this was one off my mother's favorite drinks nibbles: I call them WASP rumaki.

If you plug Ultimate Coconut Cake into the recipe search feature at marthastewart.com, there's a nifty video demo by Robert Carter from the Peninsula Grill.

I’m a pragmatist about how much kitchen storage I have, and a realist about worn out dreck kitchen equipment I’ve accumulated since Creedence broke up. Viz: all those fancy shrimp deveiners kind friends have given me – I just pull out those blue slimies with my fingernails. The odds and sods from numerous sets of china, the orphaned juice glasses, those expensive electric self-contained deep fryers (a thousand bucks down the tube for dross right there!) All those expensive crappy non-stick pots and pans from the early nineties, again gifts from people who loved me. Ditto the gleaming Teutonic steel I could never raise an edge on. (Mind you, I’ll be buried with my collection of pie birds, one of which gets used every two years.) This historical meandering through my kitchen is to establish my cred as a non-hoarder. If it doesn’t work, I 86 it. Flash to dinner last night. We had home made puff pastry (butter has been on sale here) and roast chicken leftovers, with stock from the bits and the carcass. Sounds like chicken pot pie, a tiny CPP. (He did roll it and prick it and mark it with M – in peas.) It was good. A few hours later, after writing and chatting with friends, I finished the dishes and tossed the rolling pin into a drawer whose sole purpose is being a holding place for the rubber mallet, the rolling pin, and some good silver serving pieces that come out at feasts. For some reason I actually looked into the drawer and spotted my honeymoon- acquired at Crate and Barrel “Croque Monsieur” iron. It cost about 3.50, probably 15 bucks in today’s currency, made in France, aluminum. I hadn’t seen it or touched it in twenty years. Given my minimalist approach to kitchen storage and practicality, why in Sam Adams did I still own this? (Well, I bought it a year after a romantic Paris spring, when I ate Croque Monsieurs from street vendors for lunch. Every day.) I have cast iron skillets and a panini grill, should I need to brown and melt sandwiches Oh frabjous day! I’d been feeling a mite peckish, and, what the heck, I had cheese odds and ends, soft butter, and some jalapenos. I buttered the shell-like aluminum crevices with love and a certain “Je ne regret rien” vibe, sliced cheese and jalapenos, found a couple of soon to go stale rolls, and clamped this primitive but pretty item together. Onto the gas flame it went. I’d forgotten that the lip around the edge seals the filling within – which skillets and panini grills don’t – and I felt 21 again. I want to hear about your kitchenware lost and found. When have you kicked yourself for selling a space grabber for 50 cents at a tag sale when you could use it Right Now? Have you, as I did last night, found a Sleeping Beauty and put it to use, thankful that it never hit the AmVets box? And what, against all price and reason, did you chuck because it just didn’t work?

ooh, that sounds good. flour or corn? ← A PMS classic, carbs and protein. I like the flooding part.

I'm no mental health expert, amateur or pro. To quote, (I believe) the "Book of Common Prayer," our food neuroses are an outward and visible sign of our inward and spiritual wonkiness. And as DivaLV says, at what point does a preference become a neurosis? I think Steven's mother's refusal to accept a free carton of brown eggs over white is a teeny weird, unless she's covering them with sequins and gilt and turning out mini Faberge egss a la Martha Stewart. Maybe she'd rethink her prejudice if she was told, as I was, that the shell of a brown egg is slightly thicker than that of a white egg, and is less susceptible to hairline cracks and salmonella. (I don't actually know if that's true.) I have a friend who won't eat scrambled egss, no matter how good, without hot sauce. I mean, he'll freak! That is certainly a preference, but he's so hysterical about it that it might push him over to neurotic status.

Oh Dearie Me. This is indeed an offense to your manhood, and a charcuterie tragedy. As my English grandmother would have said:"Keep your pecker up."

Martha Stewart Omnimedia has acquired the Emeril band for 45 million cash and 5 million in stock. That's for the shows, the books and the merchandise. He'll hang on to the restaurants. Read more :here

I second Chris's roast chicken idea. It's easy and somehow festive for a midweek meal. These days I'm in love with homemade chocolate sodas for dessert -- ain't nothing easier.

So Maggie, do you put that non-functioning dishwasher to other uses such as to store your baking sheets, pan lids, cooling racks, etc? ← I'm not that smart, but I'm going to move some baking equipment tonight. Thanks, Anna.

My kitchen is 5 X 8, and I'm gonna show you how cluttered and crazy it can be during dinner rush -- the flour on the counter is for rolling out the naan. I hope none of you will think less of me by showing you the belly of the Beast. (The dishwasher hasn't worked in five years, but we'll replace it when we have disposable income.) It'll be all sparkling and pretty, like your shots, in a couple of hours. We have decent counter space, and even with its tiny dimensions I've found that three friendly people can be productive. And yes, we hang everything.

Jackal's not a first-time blogger.

I think it's a loving thing if anyone, irrespective of age or gender, cooks for me. Of course it's great if it's a man. But here's the thing: all my best male friends, ex-lovers and husband are real cooks, not simply slap a steak on the Q guys. Heck, even my only brother is a caterer! The men in my life who cook outnumber the women, and I take it for granted: this is the world as I know it. It's delightful, but, well normal. In the spirit of role reversal, some men might find a woman staring at his undercarriage draining his oil sexy. (I think a Boston Cream Pie might get even better results.)

The vagueries of the kitchen design at my parents' house involves a kinda prune colored tile in the kitchen area which bleeds into a white-tiled surface in the en suite breakfast dining room. Mummy was always happy to have prep help --potato peeling, cherry pitting -- to be performed at the table. When hoverers descended when she was finishing the Cumberland Sauce, or the Pavlova, she'd yell :"Off the Purple (Floor) Now!" "Off the Purple!" has entered the family vocab when talking about boundary issues. I'm lucky. The "violators" of my space have been mostly male friends, lovers, and husband, all cooks. Two strong arms to lift the stock pot? A man to admire my pastry technique? Fond hands under my apron? It's all good.

The most interesting food shows have always been on PBS, for lo, these many decades.

Double dipping is rude, but I think the switch hit double dip is legit. I find the dipping, double or otherwise, it situational. I have cute little cocktail plates I put out so guests can scoop dips onto a plate and ingest their own germs. But I think we should think about what's being dipped. A Crispy Thing should have some strength and structure, to support a full load of dip. Think Wavy Lays. Or the Dipped Thing should be small enough to be dipped once only -- no crudites longer than an inch or rounder than a cherry tomato. If you don't monitor your toddler's dipping habits, forget about monitoring your teenager's driving habits. Then there's the Holy Dip into the shared chalice at Communion. I'm a nonbeliever now, but I was a good Episcopalian girl once upon a time. The priest would use a linen cloth between sips -- nothing antibacterial, trust me --and I don't remember the parishioners of St. James, Trois-Rivieres, getting sicker than any other portion of the population. Maybe we should recite the Nicene Creed over the California Dip?

I don't own"Domestic Goddess," but my daughter loves it because "All the recipes work!" I'd go for "Feast." Eclectic, reliable, Nigella talks, and, yes, the pix are lovely.

I'm a good shopping citizen -- I use the tongs or the wax paper or the plastic bag. Then I forget about it. Otherwise, that way madness lies. (I knew a woman who would flush the toilet in public loos with her elbow, even though she scrubbed like a surgeon post pee.) What about the baker with a cold who coughs all over the rolls back in the bakery? What about the cooks in good restaurants, not buffets or food courts, who are encouraged to work sick short of typhus or a heart attack? How scrupulously did the receptionist scrub those apples in the pretty basket at the dentist office?

A dear friend of mine blindsided me last night, saying that whether I talked about Montreal, Quebec City, LA, NO, Ottawa or Sweet Home Chicago, I emitted snotty, elitist chauvinist prejudice about sourcing, cooking or dining out. Kinda weird, because the level of culinary skill in some of the towns eclipse the sweet sourcing opportunities in others, swamped as they are with Tim Horton's. My response was, to make it sound civil, prickly. As far as I knew, I had never done a head-to-head comparison with food in his city, which might be called an aspirational but still second-tier food burg. (Not that I've eaten there or anything! Sorry Babe.) But this spat got me furiously to think. What part of our civil culinary pride --or shame -- is a reflection of what we've read, how many Best Chefs of 2008, how many stars or organic greenmarkets? Local dishes? Sleb chefs? Dollar to bliss ratio? And how much is civic love and pride? The longest stretches in my life have been spent in two cities always spiking the culinary EKG -- Montreal and Chicago. Am I obnoxious to others because I take that kind of quality for granted? Am I just plain chauvinist because I love both these cities so much? I'm interested in how you might feel: is it a culinary duel between Fort Wayne and Indy? Pierre and Grand Falls? (Forks?)How much is somehow verifiable and how much is love? Montreal, mon amour. And my kind of town.