SylviaLovegren

The pork looks easy -- and delicious. How many servings does that savoury bread pudding make? Sounds like a good item for potluck brunches.

I want recipes for everything! Especially the pork in coconut. Yum!

Gorgeous! The picture of the multicolored tomatoes from your garden is just sensational. So far, all I've done with summer tomatoes is eat them in rather boring traditional salads. Your photos make me feel ashamed...but inspired!

Except for the peanut butter, that was one of my mom's favorite "salads". I still kind of like it -- something about the mayo, canned pear and cottage cheese combo that's intriguing... Otherwise, savory all the way. Either plain or with green onions. All my mom's side of the family put pineapple bits in the cottage cheese and it looked and tasted like upchuck to me. (Sorry!) Also, the only cottage cheese I'll eat is the creamy small curd and then only the brands that are tangy. Large curd or dry is yucky.

If you used processed American cheese slices and bread & butter pickles you get the perfect stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth sandwich treat...

Looks just about perfect, except that cold meatloaf sandwiches need ketchup on the mayo. The best possible beverage is a really thick chocolate milkshake. Yum. And sigh.

I made sweet ones once, although there was no cheese involved so technically not a quesadilla. But a flour tortilla filled with marshmallows, sliced bananas and chocolate chips with some cinnamon. Sauteed in butter just till everything started to melt. Kind of good.

Our budget didn't run too high end when we were in Dijon, but we did book a prix fixe lunch at Stephane Debord (one Michelin star) http://gastronomie.jaimelabourgogne.com/out.php?lge=fr&id_site=388 It was a marvelous experience. And they were very sweet to these wide-eyed Americans and especially nice to our teen-aged son who was absolutely dazzled by the food and the experience.

Turkey, monterey jack, and green onions is one of my favorites, served with sour cream and pico de gallo.

Yup! We used to get some really good homemade Lebanon bologna in a Mennonite store in Ronks.

If you go to Pennsylvania you can get real handmade bologna that is delicious -- sweet or spicy. It doesn't taste anything like Italian bologna or standard US boloney though.

You promised pictures!

There's a milk pudding called mahalabia in the Arab countries and malabi in Israel. Mahalabia was probably made in Turkey originally with the salep orchid root. If you wiki "salep" you'll find out that it is illegal to ship salep out of Turkey now because the orchid is endangered, so only artificial salep flavoring is available outside Turkey. Most mahalabias I've had have been flavored with rosewater or have been made with no additional flavor at all, just the milk and sugar. Here's a typical recipe: http://www.nandinisfood.com/2010/04/muhallabia-arabic-milk-pudding.html Maybe one of the middle eastern posters will weigh in with more direct knowledge.

If you want Lemon Chess, you can try Bill Clinton's family recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bill-clintons-lemon-chess-pie/

I had to go look up Jammie Dodgers. Yum.

May I recommend a trip to Bobak's Sausage Company? http://www.bobak.com/ Fantastic Polish sausages, they have a huge store with everything deliciously Polish you can imagine. Next to the store is an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant featuring, what else, Bobak's sausages, along with acres of freshly made Polish dishes, not to mention mashed potatoes. Very inexpensive and completely filling. We were there one August, as well, and it was a hot humid Chicago summer day, but the food was so delicious we stuffed ourselves. Our tablemates were working folks and lots of cops. A unique experience and worth a side trip -- it's out near Midway airport.

No! Really? Are you sure you're not from a different solar system? Creamsicles (vanilla ice cream/orange ice popsicles) are still a craving and I've reproduced the combo with high quality orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream. The idea of them being considered "nasty" is hard to wrap my head around.

I'm terrible at stuff like that and even I could do it -- so go for it! When we had a garden and a bumper crop of squash flowers I got into frying them or tossing them sliced into omelets, etc. My favorite was to stuff the flowers with a bit of soft goat cheese and herbs, give them a quick dip in egg/milk, then another quick dip in flour, then a few minutes in a bit of very hot olive oil. They cook so quickly that you can have them all prepared and then fry them while your guests are standing around with cocktails in hand. Delicious fresh out of the oil with the cheese still all melty. Always met with pleased oohs and aahs.

Yay! Also yum!

Bob's Big Boy used the "special/secret" sauce too, and if I remember correctly they started in the late 40's/early 50's, so they also pre-date Mickey D's. They also did the lettuce/tomato/onion/pickle thing, and the double patties. Sesame seed buns. Sure miss them. They had GREAT burgers, and those shakes were to die for. Bob's Big Boy is gone?!!? That's terrible news. I loved their burgers and shakes, too. Not to mention the statues of Bob. Sigh. Sic transit...

I think of the West Coast burger as what was served at the original Red Robin in Seattle, decades before they became a chain. A big thick hand-formed burger, a good solid bun (not French bread, not styrofoam, but an honest soft but substantial bun), ketchup, mustard, frilly green leaf lettuce, tomato and then with options for avocado, onion, pickle, bacon, cheddar cheese, blue cheese, etc. Hand cut thick fries. That's what I found when I moved to Los Angeles, too -- that was kind of the standard non-fast food burger. A journalist from Holland came to stay with me in L.A. in the early 80s and she was stunned by the burgers, having only been exposed to McD's. She couldn't get over how delicious they were and said she now understood the American fascination with burgers. There were local fast food burgers in Seattle before McDs. The farthest from my high school (can't remember the name) charged 18 cents for a skinny pat of meat on thin bun, ketchup, mustard and an anemic pickle slice. The closer place charged 19 cents for pretty much the same thing, so we'd walk the extra few blocks to save that penny.

PanCan's grandma's recipe is pretty much the same as mine, just scaled up. I think two things are critical (aside from fresh b.p.) -- a light hand (overmixing is deadly) and not peeking. Then it just takes practice to get everything just right.

My mom was an ace dumpling maker. Hers had a biscuity element and her recipe was pretty much this one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/dumplings/ except that she would have used Crisco (white shortening) instead of marg. I've never been able to make the non-biscuit style dumplings without them coming out like lead balloons.

Are you doing it with the pancakes? I've always had it just slightly warm.

Holy moly! I have seen pickle flavored potato chips in the stores in Toronto -- one of the flavors I blocked out of my brain....