maggiethecat

I do this all the time! Low lights, a couple of trivets and Bob's your uncle.

My great-aunt Chi gave me a dozen enormous double-damask napkins she'd received on her wedding day in 1917. I pull them out for the Big Ones, Thansgiving and Christmas and so on. I try not to worry about wine, gravy and lipstick, but stains happen. After a multicourse dinner for twelve and the dishes thereafter I'm not in the mood for all the otherwise excellent Martha Stewart advice about salt, embroidery hoops and pouring boiling water from a height. I do as my mother does-- and she is a serious collector of vintage linen. Take it to the cleaners the next day, explain how much you care about it and have it laundered and pressed, not dry cleaned. We've both discovered that a decent professional cleaner often has staff who adore beautiful old linens as much as we do and take special care at no additionalched cost. Edited to add: Storage. The laundry will send tablecloths and runners, starched if desired, draped over coathangers, encased in the usual plastic dry cleaner bag. Hang 'em up in the coat closet. I tlore smaller pieces, including the napkins, in an old pillowcase in the linen closet.

My mother loves her cheap Chinese cleaver and I swear she can peel grapes with it, then carve the Last Supper into every green globe. I lack the knack. Same mother gave us a wildly expensive Teutonic cleaver. It's whacked some turkey bones for stock and spatchcocked a couple of chickens untill we decided that 2.99 Ikea plastic-handled paper scissors did a quicker, neater job. It seems I'am not a cleaver person. Chad: How the hell do I sharpen that freakin' Wusthoff? It weighs about ten pounds and is dull as a butterknife. It is scary-looking though, so, following Tim's example I might keep it in the drawer of the bedside table, the better to terrify intruders. K8, thanks for the tip about frozen cheesecake.

dockhl: I am reduced to saying: word. TJ's is about getting fun stuff at a good price. Geez, how bad can that be?

Ronnie, there's no twelve step programme that can help you! I love the idea of just winging it although sometimes charcuterie is as finicky as pastry. I think it's important to remember that sausage was a way to use odd bits of stuff. We're old-time sausage makers -- a hand cranked meat grinder is sitting in the garage-- and sometimes our projects got better results than others. But the product was always edible. I just love the feta and pepper sleeping under the skin, and the way the cheese melted when you grilled it. Oh, yum!

My usual destinations feature kitchens at least as well stocked as mine -- my son-in-law bought himself every edge Global makes, stored in the accompanying block. As I've mentioned before, my mother's freezer contains homemade veal stock, chicken stock, demi glace, soft bread crumbs, toasted bread crumbs... Grocery shopping in LA with my daughter is one of our chiefest pleasures--I guess acorns do fall close to their maternal oaks. Our endless drive from Chicago to the parental home in Ottawa is more like a forced march, courtesy of my husband. We are allowed three gas stops: one is near Jackson, Michigan and includes a potty break and take out at Burger King. At London , Ontario, more gas and a soft drink. Near Kingston we bail for the facilities, gas and a nosh (anything will do at Tim Horton's. It's just about survival.) I am not so dead to shame as to compare this to Bataan, but at mile marker 800 I'm dreaming about the filet mignon topped with Roquefort Mummy has waiting. When I travel for business, which is rare, I pack a swoon bottle of Scotch in my luggage, poured into a plastic travel cosmetic bottle. I also pack a corkscrew. I find brewing that dreadful coffee from the gauze wrapped discs in the bathroom coffeemaker makes me feel as if I'm roughing it -- having an adventure. The low quality caffiene helps me try to figure out the hair dryer bolted to the wall. When it's air travel I abandon myself to airport food. At Midway, my preferred leaping off place, I buy a gyros to go, or a breakfast panini from an "Italian" coffee joint. When I unwrap them over Nebraska my poor aislemates moan. But always, in my tote, I have two bottles of water and a pack of Doublemint gum, along with a paperback thriller and every girlie fluff mag that I can haul. Parenthetical note: Any pig pickin' attendee has had a chance to see the travelling kit of our esteemed Director of Operations. It's the biggest, reddest toolbox Sears sells, and contains knives, measures, gizmos and enough things with probes to launch an alien invasion. Closer to home, when ronnie_suburban or guajolate travel the thrirty-five miles to my house, he wheels out chest freezers that contain the culinary equivalents of Alladin's cave. These men know how to travel.

Can't help you with the iron surface, shelora, because I grew up in Trois-Rivieres with a gluten intolerant lactose intolerant Mum. But she did go all out with the poisson d'avril. She'd poach it and serve it in a broth which was half and half Ex and Curacao.

The microwave is fabululous at heating plates, except for those with a metal rings. I was given a Salton Hot tray as a wediing gift (are they still made ?) and they warmed up my newlywed plates. If you are warming plates for plenty of folks, run them through the quickest dishwasher cycle . Or: Just throw them in the oven at 250.

One word: grits.

I just know that the upcoming weekend will find you guys doing the final polish on your blogs. I'll extend the deadline to midnight, April 2nd.

I agree, and that's TJs. It's for the things they do really well and as a great place for good cheap fun stuff. Go twice a month for things you can't get anywhere else for the price, like cheese and chocolate. And, as I've said so often -- don't spurn the frozen fish and veg. Best anywhere.

George, I don't know why that made me ROTFLFAO, but it did. I rarely order a combo but I think it's a legit sandwich. But then again, I haven't had Veal Parm in twenty years and it sounds good tonight. In from the Italian I live with, a (former) chronic combo guy: You're absolutely right. Too many meat flavors are confusing---it's neither sausage nor beef. It's carnivore gluttony.

Go with the euphoria, Chad -- most heartfelt congrats. This is a book that needed to be written and you're just the dude to do it. Be happy, jump up and down, and yell "Medic!"

Priscilla: great score on the Cotton Country Collection! But, you see, your good karma begets cookbook karma. That's 107, 990, including a new one for me: Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen which arrived today. I'm excited! I've been cooking Mexican from her Serene Highness Diana Kennedy for all these years, always worrying that her eagle-eye would spot some minor inauthenticity, and I'd have to stand in the corner. After browsing Rick for sixty pages I feel fearless and confident.

Shudder. 4:30 am is when REM sleep begins. I envy your guests, and I never ever could imagine saying: "I want warthog for brekkie!" before reading your eye-opening exotic blog. Now I do. Your guests are lucky.

I actually misplaced my calculator, so I'm thanking Miss Mitchell, my third grade teacher and adding it up with a pencil and paper, the old-fashioned way. 107, 882. Welcome gaines! It makes me happy that so many folks choose this thread to make their eGullet debuts. Let's hear lots from you on all kinds of topics. etalanian, you are an official heavy-hitter.

I'm sure your PM mailbox is about to be bombarded with messages from hopeful girls. Good Luck!

I think I'm not the only person at eGullet who wants to change profession/location/LIFE with you. It's not just your writing, pictures, talent and, I guess what could only be described as "lifestyle" that is making this such a memorable blog:it's your enthusiasm and pleasure. Thanks for sharing, and be mindful of your wonderful life.

"Aspirational" is a word that implies hope and desire, two words that nicely sum up my life as a cook, grocery-shopper, hostess and -- not frequently enough -- diner out. I long to discover new culinary landscapes, maybe Wales and Nepal? I hope to continue to suss out even more variety in my beloved immigrant food markets: shop with a group of people who still speak a foreign language as their first language and the variety and quality of ingredients goes up, while the prices go down. I'm confused and lazy about much of my life, but I redeem myself in my kitchen because planning and cooking dinner is still the most important action of my day. Every day. I aspire to be confused with Charlotte Rampling or Catherine Deneuve as I age: a slim woman in a vintage St. Laurent trouser suit and sunglasses, drinking wine and eating steak frites outside at a cafe table, my companion an Alain Delon/Marcello Mastroiani type in some serious Savile Row tailoring. I'm picturing a lazy spoiled lapdog yapping at my beautifully shod feet. Sigh. A girl can aspire.

Off the top oif my head, I've got to say that pastrami is leaner than smoked meat. I think smoked meat is typically fatter and milder --- and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've got another cryovaced corned beef in the fridge , so I'll be continuing the experimentation.

I asked a tomato and she bridled and blushed and said: "Jeez, that's one hecka a menu." Great BC ingredients interpreted a l'Asie. That is an gorgeous example of an outie, but as the unwitting contrarian on this thread -- apart from the ingredients, where's the Occidental culture and terroir? Trust me, I'm from the same staunch Canuck Wasp stock as you are, and I'm wondering why and if BC chefs from the same gene pool come up with anything half this inventive. If not, why not? They have the same beautiful ingredients. Are our forebearers no longer paritcipants in the Canadian culinary mosiac? And I don't mean to be Vancouver exclusive here -- it could apply to any outie city.

Dear Sandy: I agree and disagree. Take a stoll with me along Argyle on a Saturday morning if you don't think Chicago is a magnet for migrants. But I agree that Chicago's culinary verve is inward looking. By the way, jamie, is being an innie automatically bad? Seems French and Italian cooking would be dissed automatically if that were true.

I've been thinking about your subject since the nanosecond you posted it, jamie. A couple of stiffies later, I'm no further ahead. Although we have a better-than-vibrant tradition of outstanding immigrant cuisine here in Chicago, if we look at what's hot and happening here (and that's a lot) I guess the physique of my city features Big Shoulders and an innie. Innie in that the innovative chef class here looks inward to its own invention. (Boy, I used the letter combo "in" more times than I intended.) I suspect my other beloved city, Montreal, may also be an outstanding innie, but I've been away too long to be au courant. LA is an outie, a glorious pierced and glittery outie.

This is our Tim Hayward's's opinion, and here's one man who doesn't think grilling is manly. Link to "Barbies for Boys." Oh, I laughed!

--- Tim's definition of an EVULU. I have an enormous paella pan I've used twice in twenty years, and can't bear to part with.