Mjx

My own mother isn't a bad cook, but she ran to experimental ideas (with which I can sympathize), and one of the gnarlier takes on vegetarian and health foods, so I was frequently not in love with the results. She's given a lot of that up over time, but I'm careful to not be around at Thanksgiving, when nut loaf still takes centre stage. Brrrr. My boyfriend's mother is a very sweet and honest (therefore trusting) woman who is unenthusiastic about cooking, and has a touching faith in the reliability of any recipe in print, which makes for some sad little disasters (the other night we had some dessicated stuffed pheasants, because The Recipe indicated that browning the pheasants, then roasting them at 200C for as long as it took for the mostly ground pork stuffing to reach a safe temperature, would work out fine). Artificial sweeteners, skim milk, and brown food colouring make frequent appearances.

I'm a fiend for bread chocolate. Straight from the box. We cannot keep the stuff around... my boyfriend keeps pointing out that eating the equivalent weight of good-quality chocolate bars would actually be cheaper than scarfing these sheets of crap-o almost-chocolate, but do I do that..? No. I do not.

I was thinking of something like this, but was going to recommend Fairway. Even if the weather is filthy, you can always find various covered areas in the park. For added entertainment value, I recommend eating by the lake, where you can watch clueless people trying to row boats

I'd round up some weights and a plank/slab at least the size of the board, and either run the board through the dishwasher again, removing it as soon as it stops washing, or fill the sink with boiling water, shove in the board, and let it sit a while, possibly letting out a little water, and topping it up again to keep the heat high. Then, acting very fast, yank it out, put it on the counter, cover it with the plank, and evenly distribute as much weight over it as you have available (I'm thinking 20-50 lbs of the plates off my weights, or something similar). I'm not certain that this would work (you may just have to chalk this up to experience), but hey, since you've satisfied your curiosity regarding the effects of boiling water on the board in the first place, you may as well try one more experiment, and round out your knowledge

Risi e Bisi is a classic Venetian dish of peas and rice, very good stuff, but the quality of the broth and peas is key. The one thing I'd recommend doing differently is adding the peas right at the end, so they're heated but don't lose the freshness they've got going for them. Just squish this through babelfish: http://virgiliovenezia.myblog.it/archive/2010/05/24/risi-e-bisi.html (you get a recipe + Vogon poetry).

Ditto! They're ugly as sin, but incredibly useful.

Years ago, my then-boyfriend and I were employed to care for an elderly man who was dying very slowly of a selection of things. I'm about the least nurturing person I know, and the man was a complete stranger to me, but my reflexive response, as far as preparing meals went, was to consult him carefully (tricky, frustrating, and in a sense useless, since his senile dementia was advancing rapidly) about his preferences, and take tremendous care in preparing his meals, even though he often had difficulty recognizing food as such. And I kept this up for as long as he was able to actually swallow. I didn't do this because I felt helpless, since there was plenty to do in terms of nursing (he was catheterized, among other things, which needed a lot of attention), so I wondered whether the urge to feed others who are in very bad shape exists/persists because in some cases (going back to early humans, and groups that still have access to little medical care), it actually helps (obviously, not in the case of terminal illness).

Add Milan, Parma, Bologna, and Bolzano to that list. Also, the parts of Switzerland I visited. I've only seen this done in supermarkets and similar places, where the customer selects and bags the goods (in Italy, at least, small greengrocers do not like the customers touching the produce at all, and do the bagging themselves. They'll hold up and turn each piece for you to inspect however, if they're in the mood/you ask). Not a Walmart thing, hm?

Well, my favourite coffee shop is in Florence, and the first thing you see when you go in is the pastry and sweets display. In my opinion, that would be hard to top.

Well, it's inert, but that doesn't matter so much if you're not talking about cookware. It ages pretty well, if you discount the fact that it gets mucked up pretty easily. If you can manage to, I recommend not thinking about it too much, as long as it's essentially clean (i.e. reasonably sanitary) I've heard of several cleaning products that keep stainless looking nice, IFF you keep on top of it. I spiral into obsessive behaviour very easily, so I've taught myself to not think about finger marks and so on, and to accept the fact that the stainless surfaces in the kitchen often look as though an unsupervised three-year-old went amok in it.

Since chefs are people, they're bound to vary as much as any other group; the noisiest ones may convince the media and the public that whatever they do is characteristic, but somehow, I doubt any of the cliches can be trusted as being even remotely universal.

Helen, I spend a lot of time in a city with a canal going through it (Åboulevarden), along which are heaps of coffee shops and restaurants. I did an online search for Århus + Åboulevarden (or, Aarhus + Aaboulevarden, if your keyboard won't do an 'Å'), which yields lots of images of the coffee-shop-and-restaurant-side of the canal, including some decent close-up shots of the furniture. If you have a specific national feel in mind, you could just plug in the city + body-of-water-of-your-choice, and get nicely pinpointed results.

Seasoned peanuts. The MSG is like crack.

The fabric is really pretty, but to me, covering anything always looks like you're trying to hide it; I think committing to whatever properties something has tends to work best. I didn't mention, but all the shelving in our flat was the Metro stuff, and even in the living room, where it functioned as bookshelves, it worked (this is down to personal taste, obviously). The white just sort of blended into the walls, and our things sort of floated, visually. It looked minimal, but not aggressively so.

Where did you get them? I hunted all over NYC for a set of these, and couldn't find them (although quite a few places had the supplementary set with 1.5 T, and so on).

It's a possibility (but in the case of the milk, I hadn't noticed a cardboard-y taste until I switched back from glass, it wasn't something I'd noticed previously, so I wasn't expecting that at all).

My gut reaction is NO. I have to suppress nearly-homicidal feelings if people chew with their mouths open, make repulsive sounds while eating, talk with their mouths full, or engage in post-prandial oral hygiene at table. Also, at my end, my TMJ makes a bizarre creaking noise when I chew, which is audible if it is quiet (not usually a problem in a place with communal tables, but still), and I prefer to not have to explain this/subject others to a sound that is not unlike someone briskly snapping small chicken bones. In actual fact, however, the few times I have shared a communal table have been perfectly pleasant, so I'd have to say, that I'd take this on a case-by-case basis.

It may not make sense, but I've definitely experienced what you describe. The threshold for perceiving these substances must be very, very low. I remember noticing a distinct cardboard flavour to milk packed in a carton, when I'd been drinking milk bottled in glass for a while; that made no sense, because the cardboard carton is sealed in plastic, so if any off-note was detected, it should've been that.

Have you already bought the shelving? I had Metro shelving in one place I, but it was the white enamelled version (we wanted the shelving to sort of merge into the white walls behind them), which doesn't look particularly industrial. We got some plywood with a white industrial finish, and cut it to fit the shelves very precisely. You could also try shelf boards in various colours, which would further soften the shelving units' industrial edge.

If this is an extra fridge (not your daily use unit), try letting it air out (unplugged, door open) for a week or so. Unless it's applied directly (difficult on slick, vertical surfaces), neither baking soda nor activated charcoal can do much.

One option for adding the scent of the beans to a recipe would be to wrap them in a thin piece of paper (e.g. a square of toilet paper), and put the little packet in a jar with the sugar to be used in the recipe, then letting that sit for a couple of days; only the aromatic compounds would infuse the sugar.

An idea although I'm not sure where to get one where I live. It might be something which I'll get around to...or not. Thanks. The folks at Indigo Instruments should be able to set you up (they appear to be located at the NY/Ontario border).

Get a graduated 25 ml pipette, and use that to measure the volumes into your spoons.

Denmark does not seem to be a particularly well-known country, especially outside of Europe (the best response I got, when I mentioned to someone at Newark airport that I'd just come from Denmark was 'Oh... yeah... the capital of... Amsterdam?'). Even those who know perfectly well where Denmark is, are unlikely to be familiar with any of its cities other than Copenhagen (although Odense, home of H.C. Andersen and an internationally familiar brand of marzipan is its 3rd largest city). Danish restaurants? 'Noma, of course! What do you mean, "other restaurants"?'. This is not so surprising, because Denmark is small, has about 5.5 million people, and by and large, Danish food is... edible. Anybody who thinks that Noma is even remotely representative of Danish cuisine needs to try shopping for food in Denmark. However, there are other restaurants in Denmark that are reputed to be innovative and excellent, including Malling & Schmidt, in Århus (the 'Å', alternatively written as 'Aa' is pronounced like the 'a' in 'draw'), Denmark's second largest city. I haven't eaten there yet, since my dining-out budget is in the takeaway sandwich bracket, but my boyfriend did (business dinner given by a deeply satisfied manager), and was duly pleased and impressed. We were discussing it the other day, and I wondered whether Malling & Schmidt is known outside of Denmark; I had my doubts. However, my boyfriend felt fairly certain that among those who take food and dining seriously, the name would be familiar, at least on their radar. What say you? Have you heard of Malling and Schmidt? And if so, where are you located? For the curious, they have a blog, where most of the updates to their menus are posted (also a video of them in action at Madrid Fusion 2010; that's Rene Redzepi of Noma, there at the beginning); English language option is in the black bar at the very top of the page.

I always bring a bag. In Denmark, this is almost inevitably a rucksack, with an extra shopping bag tucked inside, in case I come across something not on the shopping list, but that I don't want to pass up (in NYC, just the shopping bag, because the rucksack poses is a problem for security staff). I've never brought hard containers to fill, but often do reuse bulk bags when I'm anywhere that sells bulk (very rare, here). I also save a goodish number of tiny spice bags, which I refill with bulk herbs at Integral Yoga, when I'm back in NYC.