maggiethecat

One of the biggest regreats I have about my long-ago summer in Dalhousie NB is that I never made it to PEI -- me, a girl who could live on oysters and potatoes! Thanks for the letter and the pix;we're seriously considering a Maritimes Grand Tour next year (including Newfoundland)and your letters will be hugely useful.

I understand the specific difficulties of a PNW cafe owner worrying that his restroom might turn into a shooting gallery. But I'm in the "cut the public some slack" camp. A coffee shop's WC in New Orleans spared me a public, humiliating, intestinal incident. The times on the road I've pulled into a McDonalds to use the facilities, not the counter are countless, and when driving across rural Michigan, priceless. It's just good restaurant karma.Without them I'd have been , er, up to my ass in trouble. Don't get me started about Santa Monica, "The home of the homeless" where businesses have signs saying "No Washrooms." Not just at restaurants, but at businesses like Borders. I understand their issues with hobos in the Men's, but c'mon!

Another vote for Marcella's tomato/butter sauce. And more applause for your blog-- the cooking you've done this week is riveting, and your humor and writing skills are just plain fab. Thanks!

175,155.

Most definitely. (They're good frozen!)

Minus Alex's 50, that's 175150.

I'm red in the face. My source for the puff pastry recipe I prefer is from The Grand Central Baking Book, not the non-existent one from Acme. D'oh!

I was chatting with friends about frozen puff pastry -- the excellent product from Trader Joe's in particular. I've bought it, I've used it, I think it's swell. But I'd rather sacrifice a pound of butter and a couple of hours and make my own, because it's so easy and so much better than even the TJs product. I started making puff in my twenties, thanks to "Mastering the Art" -- which is the real deal, tonnes of turns. Later I made Jacques Pepin's Quick Puff Pastry, and now I'm besotted by the method in "The Acme Bakery Cookbook." Whoa, that's some perfect Puff! For me, even the best commercial product lacks the lift, the crispyness, the buttery bath of home made, um, "artisinal" puff pastry. I prefer to roll my own. I buy bacon from the supermarket, but I know people who proudly smoke their own. I have a friend whose garage looks like a set from an Italian movie, so many hams and salume and sides of bacon hang from the rafters. Trust me, this guy is rich enough to buy any fine pork product in the world, but he rolls his own. Do you have a kink about making something you could buy, probably cheaper and almost as good?

Reuben chowder? I really,really need to know about that.

We had one green vegetable -- Brussel Sprouts, and one orange: mashed carrots and rutabagas. Like you, I'd never eaten this casserole until I was forty. Lord, check out the Internet: everyone from Alton Brown, Martha Stewart, Emeril and Paula D. has some kinda fresh green bean/excellent mushroom veloute variation. Bah. The casserole isn't worth making if you actually have to cook! I suck up the sodium, canned green beans and Durkees -- it's a guilty pleasure. But a pleasure nonetheless.

Ok, Andie, that's the nose of the camel poking into the tent, sweet potato wise. I wonder if I'd have like them better sans brown sugar?

Like JAZ, I don't even want to try. The Durkee's onion rings are brilliant, and I'm happy to let a sister-in-law or a guest do the dirty with the canned beans, the Campbell's and the Durkees. Then I eat a lot of it.

Chipotles! You ladies are genius. I can totally understand the beauty of that flavor pairing.

Well, you're not zactly refuting my thesis here, Chris. You're promoting a savory sweet potato. With bacom!

I know that November is the apotheosis of the sweet potato.Enrobed in butter and brown sugar, marshmallows optional -- though not for Julia Child -- she loved them. Finer cooks than I make sweet potato fritters, sweet potato fries, sweet potato gnocchi. In fact, I've made them myself. And I don't like them. Somehow, the sugar content in the sweet potato, when fried, makes for a greasy exterior and a tight, over caramelized interior.If the dish is glistening with sugar and butter (and maybe marshmallows) it's just too sweet. I'm a sweet potato Calvinist. I love them baked (or even microwaved) with lots of butter. I made a sweet potato risotto once (Michel Richard? Ming Tsai?) that killed. I like them in a savory soup. I like them plain. No sweeteners, no fat. Are there any other sweet potato purists like me out there?

Janet, that's brilliant. I might even forget about the Sharpie and just lay the spoon aside and use the color and stickiness as a guide. Or use a cheapo chopstick or long cheapo wooden skewer. Again, brilliant.

Sure beats an Egg McMuffin!

I gnash my teeth with jealousy whenever I read this topic. I'm with you in spirit,Ladies.

I like a chicken pot pie, but I'm not the CPP fanatic my husband is. Great ideas from all of you. I make my own puff, but storebought is fine. I'm a fan of a tender lard pastry as well. What I don't like is using leftover chix bits for CPP. I love the dark meat but it doesn't chop well, and tends to have gnarly bits and bones. I'm all about the poached chicken breast.I think the addition of lots of vegetables thin out the flavor, and the texture of the sauce, but carrots and potatoes are a must. If you're romantic, you can spell out the initials of your beloved on the crust in peas.

Now THAT's a gorgeous pizza.

Smoked oysters are da bomb! They were special-occasion food to be served with cocktails in my mother's house, but they were always wrapped in bacon and broiled. To this day, I love them this way. (Tuna, salmon, anchovies.)

Hey Rona -- as editor, I believe in allowing a letter-writer to write in his/her own voice and use the heritage spelling. (Trust me, it took five years before I stopped spelling "centre" for "center." What I really want is for Erin to wake up half and hour earlier and commit Grand Theft Dumpling.

No sugar. Ever. I mainline coffee, but if it's sweetened I'll go cold turkey. I'm fine with milk or cream, but often that extra trip to the fridge in the morning seems like too much work.

Easy-peasy Erin. I learned this from a Chinese lady years ago. You dip the point of your chopstick in red food coloring and use it as a stamp.

It's the early sixties and I was a little girl in the paper mill town of Gatineau, Quebec. A hot summer, and a new business had opened on the road between Gatineau and Hull called Dairy Queen. It was owned by Paul Anka's uncle! Soft-serve ice cream was an amazing new dairy/chemical compound, whizzed into that perky conical shape. Daddy would pile us into that whale-like Olds station wagon and we'd take a pleasure ride down to the DQ in the July heat and get treated to a medium cone -- Mummy nixed the chocolate dip because of possible upholstery stains. Those jaunts were, truly, a special treat. And to this day I have a soft-serve place in my heart for Dairy Queen.