maggiethecat

I adore, love, talk up this book every chance I get . Everything, every recipe, is delicious and it's a very approachable cookbook. The food is down home and elegant. Chic, even. Brooks, I just ordered Cotton Country. I meant to do it three years ago when you first mentioned it. For a Southern Appalachian take on diner cooking Mrs. Rowe's Restaurant Cooking is brilliant. This is the book that convinced my husband, the finicky SuperTuscan who hates white sauces, to try chicken fried steak and salmon patties with white sauce. He's a convert. Jaymes, I'm gonna whip up your squash recipe soon.

I'll play, and I hang my head. This is one primitive list -- check out the purple felt tip on paper napkin. Truth is, I'm not a list maker in any part of my life, and I should be -- maybe I'd accomplish something! I just wander into my tried and true Asian grocery, supermercado or Caputo's and buy what looks good and is on sale. I write a list like this one when there are a few items I can't forget. Viz: Cat food, toilet paper, gin etc. I'm pretty sure this will be the Regrettable Shopping List on this thread.

Yes, yes, a thousands times yes!!! What's next, "fruities" for fruit? Add to that: "sammies" for sandwiches, "breakie" for breakfast (pronounced as if it were spelled "brecky"), "delish" for delicious, and many more examples of the dumbing down of the English language that I can't think of right now. I haven't been in elementary school for many years now and would appreciate not being spoken to as if I were. ← Although I can't be sure, I'm betting that neither of you ladies have a Granny straight from Lancashire. Veggies (or veg), sammie (or sarnie or sam) brekky -- they are classic British slang, and I don't mind them because of my association with Nana. (There's "pikky" for hospital too.) Thing is, most of the words we've mentioned are fine words. The problem lies with the writer. Eschew the cliched, the trendy, the easy word. And run like hell from the twee.

Yes, let's see lots of Montreal. Montreal mon amour -- I left 30 years ago and miss it every day.

I admire the man, but if Bourdain writes "screamingly fresh" one more time in my lifetime I'll advise him to get a better proofreader/editor. Then I'll scream. Like Todd, please no sexual metaphors for food. It might have been naughty and edgy back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. In the oughts, let's just move on. Nothing to see. A nicely placed unctuous I'm all for. It's a word with a specific meaning. Used right, it's OK by me.

Well, yes, it does look better. The thing is, I was presenting the dish as it actually looked, without digital enhancement. This isn't a food photography thread, it's an "Oh my God. This food looks ghastly !" thread. But: I truly appreciate the time and effort you spent toning the whole mess down. "Gynecologist's nightmare." Perfect. I'm getting a David Cronenberg vibe.

Last night we had gum surgery going on, which requires soft food. We also had a pint of cherry tomatoes about to go to the Dark Side or the garbage can. So we did a Pasta Quasi Carbonara. I split the tomatoes and didn't bother seeding them. Tossed them with olive oil which was no extra virgin, and laid them out on a sheet pan in the oven at 350 for about fifteen minutes. They were cooked but still plump. Then I did the carbonara thing -- sweating some bacon lardons, beating two eggs together with some cream, grating a cup of parm. I tossed the cooked capellini, eggs, cheese, parsley and pepper into the pan with the bacon and it's fat. Then I added the cherry tomatoes. I've got to say, it was the best pasta dish I've eaten for a long time. The cherry tomatoes didn't overpower, but they brightened up the standard pasta carbonara.

I'm told that a product like Carnation Instant Breakfast, with added protein powder and ice cream, all shook up, is more palatable and higher calorie than the Ensures and Boosts.

Exactamundo. Think Mario Batali and NASCAR lettuce. A chef has to take care of his old age and failing knees.

Popeyes hands down. Or up. And their biscuits are excellent.

Talk about dayglo... Gack! I remember it tasting pretty good.

It's on our schedule for this weekend. This all makes sense. Will report

Potholders with short loops.

My nominees for an all-pervasive example of rotten design: German knives of the "Wustdent" variety and their pricey ilk. What's with that raised chunky clump at the base of the knife where it attaches to the handle? (The heel?) Its thickness prevents the knife getting really sharp, no matter what method you use, without eventually wowing the blade. The heel prevents the blade edge from lying flat to the board. I've always hated these knives, presents from well-meaning family. My Global, among other knives, doesn't have this stupid bump, so it can be sharpened evenly the full length of the blade.

I'm so jazzed about this blog from Estonia and the Baltic Sea -- romantic, beautiful and so much to learn. (Don't forget the fridge and pet shots!)

Celery update: the very same head I mentioned when I started this topic is hard, crisp, and fab in it's foil suit. Even the leaves look fresh. Hey, it's a saving of 1.69 every two weeks! No octupi. All of you are brilliant. Merci.

For me, Tim's is all about Canadian icon -- I dislike doughnuts and never eat them, and their coffee tastes like pre-Starbucks coffee shop coffee. But for this expat Canadian, a Tim Horton's at a Service Centre along the 401 feels more genuine than another Wendy's or McDonalds. A cup of mediocre coffee and an egg salad sandwich brings back childhood memories of a simpler (and duller!) gastronomic time.

chammeke: Thanks for pointing me towards that excellent thread. I'm taking names . It's great that there's so much Asian food going on in London, and I'm sure we'll hit one of these places. But: have you any recs for what I call a white hair-white tablecloth restaurant? Well prepared meat and veg, comforting, conservative and quiet? I know we'll need a quiet upscale WASPY place for one of those dinners with a good wine list and locovore tendencies Maybe Michaels on the Thames?

I'll be staying in London at the end of September for my mother's interment in the old McArthur family plot in Glencoe. Can anyone suggest a few restaurants? We'll be staying off the Wellington exit of the 401, but, hey, we can wander about for a good dinner, any style or ethnicity. Whassup in London dining?

It was a biggish roast -- a little over three pounds. There are some loose ends I should tie up. Hugh doesn't actually have a recipe for pork cooked this way. Read pages 206-11 for theory. Ours was a combo of the "Sizzle Method" and "The Heston Blumenthal Method" -- very hot for a short time and then very low and very slow. It took about five hours. We pulled the roast after the Sizzle and let it sit on the top of the stove until the oven had reached 225. But I have to say that it took a very long time to reach 165 -- like five hours. Perhaps sticking a meat thermometer in the beastie to monitor the temp would be a good idea. Kerry, funny that you should mention bottom round. Check Daily Gullet sometime this fall for the results of ongoing research. (I'm still not cooking, but I'm excellent at bossing -- er, delegating.)

Me too. I have a drawer half-filled with wee boxes of hotel shower caps. I'll leave the unopened body lotion or hair conditioner, but the shower cap travels home every time.

Hand on my heart. I would never, never tease about something this important. But it does take awhile. Our 3 1/2 pound roast lounged in the oven for almost four hours, maybe five.

Since pork became The Other White Meat, a supermarket boneless loin has become a tragic waste. It's tough, tasteless and stringy no matter the number of cunning slits stuffed with rosemary and garlic. My fallback was the Danish thing: run the sharpening steel through the gloomy unmarbled center, stuff with dried and fresh fruit, braise in wine and cream. Delicious, great sauce, but still, well, stringy. A turkey breast seemed more useful. I have passionate childhood memories of roast pork, boneless or otherwise, capped with a crispy layer of cracking, juicy and tender. And well done! The current restaurant thing about serving pink pork makes me gag. Sorry, I don't like rare pork and pink pork juice. Plus: it's tough and nasty. Good Lord. I'd pretty well given up on pork, except for schnitzel or carbonnades. Enter The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. (Thats a mouthful.) "A meat book with a conscience" and just damn brilliant. Buy this book. He has a method for roasting lean cuts so they're edible, and in fact , fab. If you can roast a beef bottom round, for example, the leanest and dreariest cut of the cow, you know you're on to something. And his method maintains the weight of the cut: if you plop three pounds of meat in the roasting pan, you'll pull out three pounds. The juices won't boil and vanish. Back to our boneless pork loin. Serious Other White Meat. We rubbed it with kosher salt, rosemary and summer savory. Blasted it at 500 for twenty minutes, then, per Hugh, turned in down to 225. We pulled it at 165, and let it settle. No brining. It's the pork roast you remember if you were born, say, earlier than 1980. It made my day, month and year. No fat, no collagen, like a pork shoulder, -- all a reliable personal indicator for sumptuous pork. Ascolta: This was a lean pork loin. With zero effort, it was as good as a Sunday Roast pork gets. (And tomorrow, the unbearable lightness of cold roast pork sandwiches for lunch. mayo, s&p, cornichon.) Hugh da Man.

Wrap your celery in foil and it will last for a long, long time -- crisp and green. Honest. No floppy octopus celery that needs to be tossed in a week. I got that advice from the reader's tips section in Cook's Illustrated awhile back. It's brilliant. (I will pass over the fact that CI didn't accept my mother's tip about laying a piece of plastic wrap over the ceramic ginger grater.) I hang the elastic bands from bunches of scallions and such around the doorknob to the laundry room, so they're handy to wrap up that bag of turmeric or Cheetos. What tiny tips do you have to share? (And trust me on the celery thing!)

I just got off the phone with my father. My sister made Lobster Newburg tonight! This really is some kind of miracle. (She seems to be doing just fine without me. But who knows, down the line I might get a question.) I made a meatloaf sandwich today, but that hardly counts, as I didn't make the meatloaf.