CompassRose

I actually tried the Velveeta fudge. It was on sort of a dare from another board. Amazingly enough, it is not so bad. (Although I used unsalted butter. I think it would be a bit over the edge with salted.) The salt, or maybe the confectioner's sugar, makes it taste sort of "from a mix", but it certainly isn't the worst kind of "instant candy" I've ever had. It is very non-Velveeta, at any rate. I brought it to work, and it was devoured by ravening hordes, who told me it was "fabulous". Me and A. ate our fair share too.

I tried fudge again last week. This time, I thought I'd make absolutely sure it had reached temperature, so I left it at two hundred-whatever degrees for a minute -- yep, overcooked fudge crumbs. Then I made another perfect batch of pralines. me no understand.

I'm shocked and appalled at those who scoop the runny bits out of soft mouldy cheeses like Brie and Camembert. The rind is my favourite part!

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte of course! (You'll have to pit them though.)

Well, I wouldn't snap my shiitakes or my asparagus pre-buying -- however, I am certainly not going to pay for semi-liquid strawberries. No grocer should be selling semi-liquid strawberries. Hulls are acceptable waste -- rot is not. Same deal as eggs; I open the cardboard egg packages there in the cooler section, and I buy one that does not include eggs with cracks. If I happen to klunk the bag on the door frame on my way into the house and crack one, it is then my problem. And the gods help anyone who picks me out gungy produce. The farmers' market here is the same way -- you no toucha, they pick out your items -- but I keep an eagle eye on them, and am ready to channel my mother (my mother is German, survived the war, and was once described, quite fairly I think, as a "Valkyrie" by a friend) at any hint of substandardness in the choices. (I'm not quite as fearsomely direct as she is. According to her, the greatest benefit of being old is that she can say anything she wants. Her local merchants tremble at her approach. I still smile politely as I tell the perpetrator to remove that last pepper and choose me a better one.)

No... but it sure sounds like my dream alma mater.

I pick through the baskets of strawberries, and oust all the nasty ones lurking in the bottom, to make me one perfect basket. I don't put the nasties back in other baskets though, just leave them lying loose in the astrograss bin. I once saw a woman going down the condiment aisle, opening jar lids of different chutneys. She'd stick a finger deep inside, and then the loaded finger in her mouth. Eventually, she chose a winner for her cart.... ...ever since that day, I always take a jar of anything from the very back of the shelf.

The Curse of the Meaningless Garnish. Squiggles of Brown Syrup or Red Syrup randomly written under my cake, whether or not it is a sort of cake that would harmonize with Brown or Red Syrup. Dried parsley, or paprika, shaken about the borders of a plate. The Curly Parsley Sprig (which I am convinced gets picked off each plate, rinsed off and reused, since as everyone knows curly parsley is really made in Japan). If it's going to be garnished, make it a good, edible one that goes with the dish. Otherwise, I'd just like my food, please.

He must know that stupid "recipe" for fruitcake that at least six wiseacres email me every Helliday Season.

There's an essay of M.F.K. Fisher's -- I think in fact she is describing her trip to Mexico after "Chexbres" died -- in which she describes in-flight food, and the passengers' reactions to it. It's... um, very funny, and one of the meanest things she ever wrote. And Fisher's a woman who could write some pretty scathing stuff.

I used to be an inveterate cart-watcher, but I've mostly given it up since my bout with disordered eating. I'm too diet-conscious. I want to shake the very large women with very large children and carts full of pop, sugary cereal, and snax, and drag them to the produce aisles. "Look! It was the first thing you passed when you came in! How could you miss it?" However, what really stops me is the painfully skinny, rather pallid girls, very pretty if they weren't so thin and chapped round the hands, with carts loaded to the brim with ice cream, cakes, chips, and floods of diet soda. They make me want to cry. There are two universities in my town, so I see a distressing lot of them.

This has nothing to do with grocery checkouts but BWAH HAH HO HOO HAHAHAHAH HEEE! Ahem. Back on topic. As a shopper, I lurve the self-checkouts. As a human, though, they make me anxious. You realise what they are, don't you? Like instantellers, they are going to eliminate yet another round of nonspecialised jobs. More profit for the big boys, less employment for the little people. I dunno; is it worth cheaper arugula?

Those weird plastic containers, usually with deli-type things in them, that have a little snap-off tab on the side that you need to pop before you can crack the lid. Those are a pain, and the tab usually wings off into the Great Beyond, to be painfully stepped on barefoot days later. Pull-tab flat cans of fishies. An oldie but goodie, guaranteed to produce at least one deeply slashed finger per three or four cans opened. If not, naturally, the tab neatly pulls off sans lid, leaving you with a conundrum that defies the can opener and must be riskily pried with an unvalued knife. And those deadly sawblades on rolls of wrapping material. Ow. Memories of bleeding!

If you're not vegan, why would you eat them? I've had some delightful vegan desserts. Like the avocado chocolate terrine at Fressen in Toronto. And some very decent vegan cakes made from recipes in the Millennium Cookbook. I've also had some very bad non-vegan desserts. Some people just can't make a good cake or cookie, with or without extract of cow.

I'm a sugarbug too, and it sometimes gets wayyy out of control (only I eliminate other things from my diet to make room for the junk ) I cut sugar out completely for three months leading up to the competition that I did, and it wasn't really that hard. Mind you, I had the motivation of roughly six square inches of Lycra velvet to keep me going! I think that's the key, really being committed to it. Since then, in the post-comp rebound, I've made occasional half-hearted attempts to cut back -- but, y'know, I don't wanna. Yet. I know I'll be cutting again starting in August, so for now, I'm not going to get too tightly wound. However, for me, any kind of sugar substitute, Splenda included, is not a good way to cut back. I find it just as bad for inducing cravings. For my comp diet, I ate six times a day (keep the blood sugar even -- also important, since my cravings are strongly related to hypoglycemia). Each meal was around the same size -- a mini-meal -- and low-ish carb (about 40C/40P). No refined sugar, at all. No refined flour -- all whole grains. No added sugar -- I eliminated even condiments with added sugar (made my own salsa even), no fruit, no dairy (which is very high in lactose, mostly). And I didn't really run into much of a problem (except that I had a mad yen for chocolate -- not the sweetness, but the real, crisp snap of it between my teeth and the dark chocolatey taste. Sugar alcohol=all bad news! Yuck.) I did use lots and lots of other strongly flavoured things, and more hot'n'spicy stuff than ever before in my life (and I'm the one ordering things with three little peppers beside their names off Thai menus). S'matter of fact, think that helped too.

Christopher Walken? If Christopher Walken did a food show, I would get cable. No, not like that. Stop it! The peculiar thing is that I have been told I look like him, when my hair is cropped. Some people want to be told they look like Gwyneth Paltrow. Christopher Walken? Why thank you, let me just grin maniacally for you! I'm more into literary celebrities' cooking, myself. The Nanny Ogg Cookbook, now that's genius stuff.

Unless you are very overweight (what is defined as "obese"), if you are losing more than a pound or maybe a pound and a half a week, you are most probably losing muscle mass. Not. Good. Watch your resting metabolic rate drop, kids! Eat less, stay where you are! Add another decimal point to those statistical dieters who've regained all the weight back and then some! A half-pound a week by a method sustainable in the long-term is excellent progress, I'd say.

So it would seem. Two hundred and seventy-five in the actual cookbook shelves. Another -- at least, hm, ten or so lurking about in other areas of the house (e.g. the Sherlock Holmes cookbook, which sits peaceably next to the Doubleday two-volume edition, and the Christmas cookbooks which are in the basement with the file of special holiday-edition cooking magazines). Another four folders full of mixed magazines, including Vegetarian Times, Cooking Light, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Cooks' Illustrated and selected issues of Martha Stewart Living. Several hanging files full of recipes in my cabinet. And, of course, four (and counting) electronic cookbooks in Mastercook.

It's not a vegetarian thing. It's a suffer for your diet thing. As is evident in the "I don't wanna eat with my Atkins friends!" threads. It's easier to suffer martyrdom if you can convince yourself it's morally superior. Symptom of those who insist on restricting their food for reasons of ethics or vanity, but who refuse to actually take sensual pleasure in what they do eat (or who are too inexperienced in the kitchen to actually produce anything pleasant). Buy the annoying segment of your vegetarian friends a really good vegetarian cookbook, and see if it helps.

Cake from mixes, and that nasty icing made of grease and confectioners' sugar. Blee-yech. Many times, the only reason I go out to eat is for dessert. Make it worth my while! The strange notion that no matter what a dish may lack, it will all be resolved if the thing is covered in about five servings of melted cheese. Um, no. Not even if it is goat cheese.

My mother refuses to watch the Urban Peasant, after seeing him slice up a raw fish on a cutting board, then use the same knife and cutting board to chop some herbs for garnish. I have only heard about this, I've never seen the episode, but is it true that Julia Child, on air, once dropped something she was plating on the counter, scooped it back up on the plate, and said that "if it happens in the kitchen, no one will ever know"?

reesek, I hear you! The people who don't understand why I'd want to cook an elaborate meal after working all day -- they don't understand that the cooking is fun! It's relaxing. It chills me out! I'd much rather be cooking (even in my hopelessly inadequate kitchen, with cats meandering inconveniently underfoot) than sacked out in front of some mindless TV show or whatever. A few years ago I was in the Amateur Play from Hell. It was awful. From about the third rehearsal to closing night, a nightmare. And after every evening of rehearsal, I'd come home (this at nine or ten o'clock) and bake something more or less elaborate, because I was simply too wound and cross to go to bed. "I didn't know when I met you," my husband once said testily, coming bleary-eyed downstairs at one in the morning, "that I would be marrying the Midnight Betty Crocker. Are you ever coming to bed?"

If I'm remembering right, if you can search up any menus or reviews from Eigensinn's Farm (it doesn't really sound like a "restaurant" -- not that I've ever eaten there (me and the moths in my wallet!) just read about it), they might give you food for thought. He seems to work with the finest of what is seasonally available and what he grows, and sometimes to play with them throughout the courses of the meal. Here's a review by estufarian. I've seen others elsewhere, too. Of course, I'm sure there are other chefs who do the same thing, only I am too food-illiterate to quote them by name!

Well, A. complains that every time we get together with friends for something (movies, a day at the beach) that "you're only interested in what you can cook to share!" He also can get a little testy as I plunge into my fourth or fifth potential supplier of, say, genuine grits on one of my Epic Ingredient Quests -- which usually involve, for starters, an hour-long drive to the nearby Great Metropolis of Toronto with all attendant headaches, followed by hours of downtown driving/walking. Or when I insist that after doing grocery shopping at one place, we need to go to a wholly different place for three things which can only be purchased there and that I simply must have. He doesn't, however, complain very much about my need to go in and purchase samples from every small pastry-maker or independent chocolatier -- particularly since I'll usually get three or four must-try things, have two bites from each to get the idea, and pass the rest on to him!