CompassRose

Off-topic -- I love how in these decadent days a 16x9 kitchen is referred to as "small"!! The kitchen of my century house (which desperately needs a redo) is a bare 12x12. And it is by no means the smallest I have had, either.

I don't get any TV at all, either. The irony is that I live three blocks from the big antenna of our local station -- and two blocks from a twenty-story apartment building. As for Chuck-E-Cheese, never did et there, but it is your typical franchise, yes? Well, Med Times is less consistent. No standards for the rubber chicken -- yours will be okay, your neighbour's a little singed. My potato was overcooked and dried out, my brother's had a raw centre. Adds verisimilitude... Along with the Hearty Wenches falling out of poly-cotton costumes inspired by styles two or three hundred years too late. However, the stunt fights -- though clearly stunt fights -- are quite nicely done. And my brother bought me a blow-up mace toy (the heavy weapon, not the spray) as a souvenir.

The first time I made caramel, I did so in one of my fairly expensive nonstick pots. Heavy, yes, and the caramel turned out fine... but the pot has never been the same. Er, d'uh. The third time I made caramel, it boiled over, and there is now a ring of eeny weeny cracks where the sugar went on my beautiful Gemini smoothtop stove. Caramel is my daemon, I think.

Hi, Adele! How exciting. I'll be looking forward to hearing how your pecan pie turns out. (I've never seen a recipe where you cook the eggs first. Whose is it?) Just throwing in my two cents for Cookwise. It's an excellent book, and I think you'd find it very useful -- explanations of how the basic ingredients do what they do, and why, in baking (and other cooking) and how to manipulate them for different results (f'rinstance, she gives a basic cookie recipe, then tells you how to mess with it for chewy cookies, softer cookies, crisper cookies, and so on, and why). When I redo my kitchen (whenever that ends up happening) I too have a baking area all planned out. I want a granite countertop for it... Katharine

Huh. They got rid of the corn-on-the-cob, then. That had me just about spitting with laughter. Although the potatoes aren't so impressive either. The audience is largely kids and parents, so the "menu" is what is euphemistically known as "family-friendly." That is to say, extremely dull.

I've been. Let me put it this way. You do not go to Medieval Times for the food. It was neither authentic, nor good.

I'll add in my shout for Cookwise. Great book, and the Real N'Awllins Pralines have given an extra surge of popularity to my Christmas gift baskets. Let's see, I have a lot of cookbooks... over three hundred at last count, and more bought since then. Out of those, some favourites are: The Village Baker's Wife, by Gayle and Joe Ortiz, for cakes and pastries, and The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz, for breads (I grew my very own sourdough friend from that book!). Both of them have absolutely the friendliest, AND very thorough, explanations of technique, tips, and Useful Stuff. Crescent Dragonwagon's The Passionate Vegetarian has delicious recipes, which branch out a bit from the usual vegetarian fare, and is also a great read -- like a giant autobiography with recipes. If you ever have to feed vegans, I highly recommend Bryanna Clark Grogan's cookbooks, all of them. Vegan food that real people will eat too -- plus she tests everything, and is always ready with substitutions and tweaks to the recipes. For East Indian food, my very favourite is Dakshin, a book of Southeastern vegetarian cuisine. I also like Madhur Jaffrey, but find she goes a bit heavy on the salt. For other Asian, I love Hot Sour Salty Sweet, but haven't yet bought it -- I've taken it out of the library a couple times, but it's SO expensive. I keep hoping to run into a used copy somewhere. For daily use, I turn to the Cooking Light cookbooks a lot, mostly the Complete, the Chicken, and the Five-Star Recipes. I also enjoy Steven Raichlen's High Flavor, Low Fat cookbooks; I've got the Vegetarian, the Italian and the Jewish, and use them all fairly regularly. Other favourites, which I love for sundry reasons, are the Horizon historical cooking pair (which someone else has mentioned); The Grits Cookbook by someone who I forget just now; Gloria Ambrosia's Gloria's Gourmet Low-Fat Muffins; Eleanor Scully's Early French cookery: Sources, history, original recipes and modern adaptations for medieval food; anything at all by M.F.K. Fisher; Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art; Alice Medrich's Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts; and my 1919 copy of Mrs. Beeton.

Nessa has it on the nose. I am not anyone's mother (thank the gods) and it is not my mission to make anybody eat something they do not wish to eat. Or to presume that my Mastery of Cuisine is such that I will convert them to lovers of whatever it is. Their reasons for not wishing to eat it are their own. If I like them, and I'm feeding them, I try and please them. If I don't like them enough to want to please them, I won't be feeding them in the first place.

Sorry, but who benefits from it if you choke down something out of politeness? Your host? Unless I am unconscious or not wearing my contacts, I am going to notice someone doing that rapid mouth-breathing chew -- and it will worry me, because I will not know it is the diced red peppers she loathes, and will wonder whether my guest perhaps ate a hotdog at lunch that disagreed with her, and may shortly projectile-puke across my table. Or else I will think my cooking is at fault, and will be fretfully worrying my own food and thinking "is that something slightly burned? I didn't think I burned it..." My guest? Suppose it did unimaginably slip her mind to mention "red peppers" when I asked my customary "is there anything you won't eat" question the week before. Well, there she is, unable to enjoy the conversation because she's too busy gagging them down, and most likely her whole memory of the party will be overshadowed by visions of red, horrid members of the nightshade family. And, because lots of people are like that, she won't want to mention the red peppers next time, in case I feel bad about serving them to her this time. Thus every time she eats at my house, she'll be dreading their possible appearance. My other guests? Who may well also notice the "polite gag" and be wondering the same thing about the possible lunchtime hotdog? By all means, don't say anything at the table, but for pete's sake, don't eat it if you don't like it. Then when I ask discreetly, later, you can murmur about the red peppers, and I won't do it again.

I would disagree with that. My parents eat almost everything (although my mother has the aversion, common, I believe, to many of her generation, to raw vegetables in any form, including "lightly steamed." She also hates garlic -- meaning I was deprived of the delights of both that and salad for 18 forlorn years.) I eat almost everything, and always have. As a child, I hated a couple things (brussels sprouts, for instance) but when I met them as an adult, in their native green colour and not dissolving from overboiling, I liked them very much indeed. My sister eats most things, though she eats only small amounts at a time (and was always accused by my hearty-appetited mother of not eating enough to keep a bird alive). My one brother, the mushroom-hating one, was always picky, and continues to be; he likes few vegetables, and much junk food. My youngest brother was extremely picky as a child, to the point where my mother taught him to make his own grilled-cheese sandwiches, as that was literally all he would eat for quite some time. Now, however, he has broadened his tastes considerably, and will eat, or at least try, very nearly anything, though not quite with the wild abandon that I will. (I was the only one of us who actually liked my cousin-in-law's durian, and my brothers wouldn't dare it -- though my sister accepted a small morsel which she promptly spat out.)

What is it with prunes? I like prunes. Poor, abused, misunderstood dried plums -- they're so succulent when fresh! My brother is one of the mushroom-haters. He can find the most microscopic speck of anything fungal in anything. Says he hates everything about a mushroom: the taste, the smell, the (he shudders) slimy texture. In fact, it was he who taught me that tempeh is in fact a mushroom -- something which had not previously occurred to me, but which other mushroom-loathers have since confirmed. (Although that doesn't explain why my husband, a vegetarian who loves mushrooms with a passion -- he'll even eat cooked shaggymanes (a.k.a. "black loathesome ichor") on toast with gusto -- dislikes tempeh intensely.)

Although if you buy into the Paleolithic Diet notion, the whole human race started to go to pot when we learned to process things that are poisonous into edible form. Once poisonous, always poisonous, apparently. And they'll make you fat if it's not something you can pluck/kill and immediately eat.

Yi-eee. Although I suppose now is not the time to confess that in my darker moments, during the last weeks of dieting before my last show, I actually contemplated dragging out a medieval recipe I have for a sweet pudding made of pounded chicken breast and almond milk, and seeing what I could do with Splenda.

I dunno... back when I was in uni, I always found it an *ahem* impressive and useful party trick to use my (admittedly freakishly long) tongue to swirl the last drops of Bailey's out of the depths of a shot glass. I can, yes, also do the cherry-stem stunt. But I don't do the tongue-fork thing. Wgh. Shudder. And wiping teeth with a napkin! That's why I stick to the indelible lipsticks, when I lipstick at all. Speaking of napkin jibblies -- anyone else hate the feel/taste of those little flat wooden spoons and knives you get -- or maybe used to get -- at some ice-cream shops and fry trucks? I haven't seen those in a long time. But I remember hating them. Or popsicle sticks. That damp wood.

Oh So Good! had very boring desserts, oh so yes. Blah. Giant slabs tasting of nothing; slices of cake my friends and I didn't even bother finishing. The desserts at Memories on the market, on the other hand, are always very nice.

I'd hardly think that someone who could pull that off couldn't make a real apple pie, no. That sounds cool. Except the cinnamon foam. I'm sorry, foam still isn't appetising to me! Although when I picture it in my head, I keep seeing geometric shards of the Breton shortbread crust sticking out of the glass, even though the directions say "cubes". Is there a picture? I like pictures. Specially of desserts.

"Desecrating apple pie with cheese?" That's hardly new... rather quaintly old-fashioned, I'd say. My father's been laying slices of cheese on his hot apple pie wedges as long as I've known him.

Toronto, about...uhm, three years ago, at the vegan/vegetarian restaurant Fressen. Their signature dessert is a chocolate terrine made with avocado instead of cream. I thought it was quite good, but very, very filling -- a dessert that REALLY eats like a meal. Only I'd already had my meal!

They all look good and interesting, and I might taste and, if so, enjoy them if I found them on a buffet... but I admit, I wouldn't order them. These light, airy, more-or-less fruity desserts do not call to my spare dessert stomach; if I've already eaten, I stay full at the sight of a kiwi. When I order an entire dessert, with intent, I want chocolate. It can be adventurous chocolate, it can have exotic spices and startling ingredients... but give me my Theobromos.

I hate those "funny" chain names that are suddenly springing up all round here: Philthy McNasty, Crabby Joe's. They are strangely popular, particularly for work-related shindigs. Just adds to my stand-offish snob reputation, because I will not go there. There was (maybe still is) a Chinese place in the east end of Ottawa called Hung Fatt. That always provided a big laugh in high school.

Why do I order dressing on the side? I'm a bodybuilder, and I am controlling my "nutrient intake." If I am eating in a restaurant, I am either, A) there under more or less duress, because of some family or business obligation, in which case I will get everything on the side and a plain grilled chicken breast, or B) there to splurge on one particular thing (probably with chocolate in it) in which case I will get everything on the side except the splurge, which will have everything on top. And as I am paying for it, I really don't see that it should be a problem... In the case of A) it had better not be a problem, since I'll be damn crabby already.

Round here, Tim's makes all their doughnuts fresh... or rather, some poor slob making minimum wage at three in the morning makes them fresh... I am not a big doughnut fan, myself, but the best doughnuts I ever had came from a Country Style. Not any Country Style (ech!) but one particular Country Style, here in town. Run by an older couple, who were still, I think, using the original recipes in defiance of franchise regulations. They retired, and it closed two years ago. It is now a Sunoco station or something.

Atkins schmatkins. Krispy Kreme donuts, like American beer, suck. I've said this before, I'll say it again: the average undiscriminating consumer will stuff anything into his or her maw, without tasting it, if advertising has turned on the "yummy" light in the brain. That's the only explanation I can think of for Krispy Kreme. When they first arrived in Ontario, I was excited, having read about them in US online journals. I made a wild lane change off the 401 in Mississauga, me and two friends, when we spotted the sign by the highway. We all got donuts (fresh ones, yes), took them back to the car, and each one of us took one bite, and put it back in the box. Vile, sickly, sweet, greasy and textureless. Yuk. My husband, who was born and bred in Hamilton, home of Tim Hortons -- but who will eat powdery supermarket doughnuts under duress, and probably rivals Homer Simpson in doughnut consumption -- proclaimed them "worst doughnuts ever." If this is your Free Trade, you can keep it!

My brother. I was once over at his house at around the supper hour, and we were hungry. "I'll cook up something," he said. He brought a pot of water to the boil -- not too full, though. Threw in a box of pasta and some salt. Added a bag of frozen vegetables, and some hotdogs. "Don't you... drain it?" I asked, appalled, from the kitchen door. "No!" he said proudly, "that's the sauce!"

Splenda with Stevia powder works very well for me. I avoid any kind of sugar alcohol like the plague, since they have *ahem* very unfortunate effects on me at any dose. Nor do I like acesulfame-K, as it seems to "trigger" me. A very small amount of any sort of real sugar, dry or liquid, works miracles with Splenda, as well. As do "lower impact" sugars such as brown rice syrup and agave nectar, or even the addition of fruit (grated apple, pureed banana...). But I am not a hardcore low-carber; I carb-cycle and (apart from the Splenda) try to stick with "clean carbs". Splenda Liquid isn't available in Canada, to my knowledge. I'm fond of Splenda Granular because, among other things, it will allow egg whites to meringue. I'm interested in the Whey Low. I wonder if I could get it here? Like scott123, though, I'd like to see some hard proof of the caloric impact, I think.