maggiethecat

Liar, liar, pants on fire! I've eaten your delectable chicken pillows. I groan when I read a recipe that suggests that I have a candy thermometer handy.

Confession of a late-blooming Poetry Geek: I celebrate Poetry Month, which is, fittingly, April. Shakespeare's Birthday is in April. Daffodils bloom in April. Oh! to be in England, etc. I read a poem at breakfastime. I send my love a snatch of verse every day for thirty days ... unless, of course, I forget. "O! How this spring of Love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day." Enough of this English Major stuff. April ain't just Poetry Month, folks! It's International Guitar Month. National Anxiety Month. National Humor Month. National Garden Month. Math Awareness Month. National Welding Month! And, oh, the Food Holidays in April. Click on your Calendar and start typing. (Sorry, we missed April 2 -- PBJ Day) April 14: Pecan Day April 16: Eggs Benedict Day April 17: National Cheeseball Day April 19: A High Holy Day -- Garlic Day April 22: Jelly Bean Day April 24: Pig in a Blanket Day April 25: Zucchini Bread Day (Er, in April?) April 26: Pretzel Day April 29: "Shrimp Scampi " Day Here's the challenge: Choose one of these Food Festivals and pretend that it's a bank holiday, a day off holiday, an over-the-hills-and-through-the-woods kind of day. Are there traditional songs, sides and sports on TV? How do you decorate the table? Do you pull names for the family gift exchange? Have a wonderful month, you amusing (but anxious) math-aware, guitar strumming, gardening, poetic arc welders! I know what I'm using for a tablecloth on the 24th. Get festive here.

make Zucchini Bread. (Bill, forgive me.)

Lisa: All your questions are on point, and you are the last thing but dumb! Yes, Round Eighteen has been judged, and winners chosen. Getting them posted to the Daily Gullet requires some time from a busy person who both understands the mechanics of our content manager and can find time in his/her life to actually push the announcements to the Front Page. (Um, I am not one of those smart tech types.) Someone is working on it right now, and Watch That Space tomorrow. About the deadline: In theory, it's midnight Sunday a fortnight after the competition has been announced. This has worked, oh, 75% of the time. But there's always leeway -- if a topic is particularly popular, I might let it stay up for another week. OTOH, if a topic starts slowly and builds towards the end of the second week, I might extend the deadline. Short answer: It just depends.

Madonna! How could I have forgotten one of my absolute favourite food mispronunciations -- it's become the correct pronunciation in my family. My Nonna-in-law always pronounced radishes reddishes, and yes, she kept the final a on mozzarella.

That's funny! And bleu, "Flaming Yawn" has now entered my personal lexicon --great story! (Um, soft a.)

I'm calling time on this Smackdown at midnight tonight, in a time zone of your choice.

I do! It was a girlhood favourite. Didn't she have a sister called Clover? (Pretty name.) Then there are the accidental mispronunciations that stay in the language forever because we're fond of them. My sister Julia pronounced "Chinese Food" like "Shiny Boots" when she was little, and it's Shiny Boots to this day when my parents get carryout. A friend still calls confectioner's sugar "affectionate sugar" and now I do as well. Another gave up on hors d'ouevres -- so I call them hoover doovers too.

This lapsed Episcopalian (aren't we all?) shiksa loved this article, and the recipes, Missie Katie! I married a lapsed Catholic, but attended many the Passover feast with a series of hunky Jewish boyfriends. Would their Dads have had this article handy when it came to the pairing part. Wonderful.

Maruchan noodles from those 10 for a buck packages. I toss the "flavour" packet and munch them raw. Burger King Rodeo Cheeseburgers.

56,060. 10.61 miles.

Pray. I've been married foralmost thirty years, but a dinner with my father-in-law is fraught with stomach-churning stress, political argument, and the spectacle of my husband reliving every father-son conflict sine 1962. This battle precludes any comment on the dinner I have really, really worked on for three hours. Yes, these guys have "good table manners."

No. And Alex, with you professional qualifications, you know disease when you see it! 56, 057.

All right, you lucky ducks who have eaten at moto and posted here: You've got my attention! The sense of play, and, well, invention is exhilarating to hear about, and that fish-in-a-cube thing reads like Jules Verne. Very, very cool. Felicitations, inventolux and Hobbes -- and to all those non-eGulls involved.

Just beautiful writing, Brooks. Your little town may become a tourist destination for foodies and hedonists, should they about read it here. I lived for way too short a time next to salt water -- Dalhousie, New Brunswick. You reminded me of the fifty cent lobsters off the dock, the fried clam stands (yes, gritty little suckers that came in a greasy brown paper bag) and platters of ridiculously fresh Malpecques. You gave me a big blast of nostalgia although the sea critters and the weather couldn't be more different.

Heaven forbid! Parents who lead by example will also teach their children about tolerance and curiosity.

Oh man, this is a subject close to my heart. Teaching table manners -- and using them --is one of the few battles we can wage to preserve civilization as we know it. My mother is a zero-tolerance kinda gal. Because we were (and are) in awe of her, she never had much policing to do. The very thought of, say, putting ones elbow on the table was unthinkable, in the same felony range as misplaced apostrophes or confusion over transitive and intransitive verbs. A curlicue she added (to the list of rules mentioned by all you fine parents) was this: enforced appreciation. After asking to be excused (and before doing the dishes) we had to push our chairs in smartly, stand behind them, and say: "Thank you for that delicious dinner." Fortunately, it was usually a damned delicious dinner. Note: My adorable sister Julie (Downs Syndrome) astounds everyone with her dainty table manners, and expert chopstick technique. And, operaphile that she is, Julie doesn't simply rattle off the "Thank you for the..." thing -- she gives my mother a standing O and shouts "Bravo!" She blows kisses towards the head of the table. Oh, that we all could receive such affirmation. I was a tiny bit less rigid than Mummy in schooling my daughter in the fine points of table etiquette, because Honor seemed born with a JD and questioned every rule from the time she could construct a sentence. Happily, she spent most summers with my parents in Montreal, so any sign of backsliding was instantly corrected by her stern but adoring Mummy-Dee. She now has a job which includes writing, dining and schmoozing rich folks from whom she needs to extract money. Early training pays off.

Nice piece in today's New Tork Times food section about Glenn Roberts and Anson grits. This guy not only stone grinds the stuff, but he's tracked down all but extinct antebellum strains of corn and raises them himself. Trotter, Keller et al keep them on their menus. I'm going to empty the piggybank to order some; does anyone have first-hand knowledge of Anson grits?

I'm resonating like a men and boy's choir in Durham Cathedral, or a single voice in a tiled locker room. Fat Guy Invitational; Love it! Gimme an event.

Including YKL's 300: 56033.

Hie thee, Dear Balma, to Recipe Gullet! You'll find two recipes therein: Red Velvet Cake. I have made Jaymes's, (twice.) Yum.

Yes. I made strawberry shortcake yesterday, and as the KA bowl was occupied by rising focaccia dough, I was happy to haul out the hand mixer. Please, don't toss it! The day you do, you'll need it.

OK, it's too late for Athens, or even Beijing. But let's enter a couple of demonstration sports for the 2012 Olympics. Perhaps we could have a warmup (quick pass under the salamander) on a tennis court in Raleigh in October. Where would an eGullet brigade sweep the medals? At what events would we excel? How will we ensure that it's the eGullet Ensign that floats above our heads at the winner's stand? (Extra points if you provide the eGullet international anthem.) Name the event, the scoring system, the uniform. the equipment -- yes, there will be points for Artistic Expression here at the Smackdown. Men's Synchronized Spatchcocking? In Speedos? Team Turnip Tournee? I bet we could get Cauliflower Curling into the Summer Games. Beat the stopclock, or the kitchen timer. Post 'em here! (Props to the ever-fertile brain of Chad Ward, who gave me the grain of this idea back on the Writer's Block Smackdown)

Get into your blocks.

The scales have fallen from my eyes. I have seen the light. I cooked up the above coarse ground yellow grits in chicken stock, not water. Yes, lashings of cream, butter, cheese, pepper, cream, butter. The nice coarse grind and all the additions made it the best polenta I've ever had in my life -- I say polenta, because nowhere was hominy mentioned on the label. Then I made my first ever Emeril sauce ("Spicy Tomato", from NNOL and coddled a bunch of my first brined shrimp therein. Served the shrimp on a corny snowdrift of grits. (Polenta?) Amazing. Coarse ground yellow grits rule. So does Emeril. I love it when I'm wrong.