mags

Good lord. I would adore that. Mamster, will you think about it?

Yes, it sure is. And my god, Ling, if that's you in the pics, you're a screaming knockout!

That sounds seriously good. I, too, would love the recipe. Please to post?

Had to sub at the bookstore, so dinner out at Otto, viz: Preserved swordfish with pickled ramps Duck sausage Sauteed broccoli rabe Celery root vinaigrette Much more of my pal's gelato than I should have eaten

Now wait a minute, Linq. Cheesecake? Stuffing? Turkey and gravy? Tofu pudding? What happened to that forlorn can of sardines and all the (gulp) Jello? Not to mention the dying broccoli.

Thank you so much, Pim. I must tell you, I recently finished writing a report on the Thai economy, which involved reading a huge amount about the country, and I am now dying to visit Thailand. It sounds like just an extraordinary country, in so many ways. At any rate, thank you again for the recipe help.

That list reminds me of the conversations I used to have with a friend in L.A. who was on one of those weird-ass food-combining regimes. He would call me and say "For dinner I can have three prunes, 6 oz. of monkfish, and all the kelp I want." And I'd tell him to throw it all in the blender and call out for a pizza. Actually, I don't think your list is all that dire, but my suggestion would be to eat a frozen dinner and then pick up some cheap pasta and some garlic and onions. The garlic and onions will doctor the tomato sauce, and you can toss it all with the tuna and some pasta. I'd think you could get away without the pasta, even -- make a sort of tuna-and-tomato (or sardine-and-tomato) frittata, with some steamed broc on the side -- but I do think the onions and garlic are kinda key. I'm sure the Jello will come in handy for a crafts project.

The Thai restaurant in my neighborhood used to make an incredible dish they called Ped Krapaw -- which was basically very crisp and unbelievably garlicky shreds of duck. Not being a rice-eater these days, I used to order that with a salad, and then toss the duck on the salad like little protein-n-fat croutons. Then the restaurant disappeared overnight, and I am in Ped withdrawal. I only have a couple of Thai cookbooks, and they don't seem to have recipes for anything similar. Any ideas?

Grilled boned chicken legs that were marinated overnight with olive oil, lemon juice, crushed scallions, and masses of fresh thyme. Grilled artichoke hearts Summer squash sauteed with tomato and marjoram Creamy lemon dressing

What do you teach the peanuts to do?

Chicken rings? What mean chicken rings?

Cite was the unofficial club of the company I sort of used to work for. Ate there I don't know how many times. Good but I don't think great, and rather too noisy for my tastes. For a steakhouse, I'd opt for Michael Jordan's or Strip House, if a trip to Brooklyn isn't on the agenda.

Two of'em. One was about 12 years ago, during the first Bush administration. My then-fiance's brother had come into town, toting his usual popsie-of-the-moment, and declared that he was taking all of us for dinner at the Four Seasons. I remember some really good duck, but what I mostly remember was that we started with a magnum of Opus One, and went on from there. And what I really mostly remember was the even-drunker quartet of Republicans sitting at the table next to us, and loudly bemoaning the fact that the United States could not seem to appreciate the true greatness and scintillating intelligence of Dan Quayle. As they ploughed through the bottles -- at an even faster rate than us -- the bemoaning got louder and louder, and I ummmm...... I behaved badly. Specifically, I offered the neighboring table my opinion that Mr. Quayle was a moron of the first water. One of the ladies at the table offered to bet me that within five years, Mr. Quayle would be roundly recognized as one of the finest elected officials this country had ever known. The stakes: Dinner for four at the Four Seasons. We wrote out the terms of the bet on a paper doily It is with profound regret that I tell you I have lost the doily. The second drunken meal was with the same fiance and his other brother, this one married to an extremely nice woman with all the culinary skills of a muskrat. She lives in Cincinnati and once, in an effort to duplicate the city's famous chili -- but lacking some of the necessary ingredients -- she happily dumped into the pot several handfuls of miniature Nestle's Crunch bars left over from Halloween. At any rate, it was Christmas, and all four of us had received bottles of wine -- several bottles of wine -- from the other, show-off brother at Christmas breakfast. We repaired back to Dave and Debbie's house, sat around burping Christmas breakfast for a while, and eventually decided to start cooking dinner. But first, a little drink. We cooked for a very very long time. Dave made biscuits, I think. I made something complicated and messy with phylo dough and figs. ANd Debbie decided to make duck. Unfortunately, the duck was frozen, but that didn't faze her. She just kept basting that sucker -- with 7-Up, I think -- and poking at it, and we all just kept knocking back the wine. I do remember that at around midnight, Jim and Dave and I embarked on a lengthy, heavily harmonized version of "Chapel of Love." We sat down to eat at around two in the morning. Jim carved. He tried to carve. He kinda hacked at the duck. He sorta bashed it on the table. Finally he picked it up, braced it against his chest, and wrenched the thing apart. As might be predicted, bits of duck went flying around the room. We ate a lot of biscuits and I woke up the next morning swearing that as God was my witness, I would never get drunk again.

Damn, this thread always makes me feel like an utter slacker. Tonight's dinner is kheema with spinach and tomatoes, and an eggplant-and-yogurt raita if I get ambitious.

That really does sound terrific. Many thanks.

Man, that roasted-corn-sprouts-and-pig-fat thing sounds divine. I mean, what could be bad? You got maybe a recipe?

The only side dish that has a permanent place on my Thanksgiving table is the Spiced Puree of Butternut Squash from the Frog Comissary Cookbook. It's hands-down the best sqash I've ever eaten, and guests snaffle it up. I'm not sure whether I can post the recipe publicly, so it's sent PM.

<dubiously> Well, there is that place in Bar Harbor that makes lobster ice cream. But it's extremely disgusting. The ice cream, I mean.

Is this an obscure Britishism? I thought vegetable margarine was, well, vegetable margarine.

I went to the website and I have to confess, I'm kind of mystified as to what you saw that you found so distressing. Yeah, maltitol can cause uhhh...."gastrointestinal distress" in some people, particularly if eaten in quantity. But so can almost all the sugar alchohols/polyols. Personally, I'm hugely sensitive to the lactitol that's used to make Hershey's sugar-free chocolates: One of them little bitty Reese's peanut butter cups, and I'm unfit for human companionship. But maltitol... doesn't bother me. If you want to steer clear of the fake sugars on the grounds of their being fake, I can certainly understand that. But I don't see anything about maltitol that's worse than any of the others. And no, I don't have any financial interest in the stuff.

Thank you. It occurs to me that the heart of the debate here -- or one of the hearts, like cows have multiple stomachs -- is what differentiates a "personal choice" from a religious conviction. It's been suggested that, so far as dietary restrictions are concerned, religious conviction involves a specific, non-negotiable set of rules, while "personal choice" is more flexible. But I'm not at all sure that distinction holds up. Leaving aside the "I'm a vegetarian but I eat chicken and the occasional cheeseburger when it smells really good" people, both Kashruth (and, I'd imagine, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and other religions with dietary prohibitions) and vegetarianism have some very basic, immutable tenets. Kosher-observing Jews don't eat pork or shellfish, and they don't mix milk and meat. Vegetarians don't eat meat or fowl or fish. Beyond those basic rules, any number of permutations have evolved, ranging from absolute orthodoxy to degrees of laxity that make the orthodox apoplectic. My friend who keeps a Kosher home will eat in mine, even though I don't separate milk and meat dishes, and happily keep bacon in my fridge. She'll eat ice cream after a meat-meal, though only after waiting an hour. (It's been suggested that she's confused Kashruth with the equally firm Jewish tenet that one must wait an hour after eating a tuna sandwich before going swimming .) She'll eat in non-Kosher restaurants. But she won't eat pork or shellfish, and she's never had a cheeseburger. And Jewish family-legends are full of people who would never eat bacon or ham or shrimp cocktail, but happily pigged out (literally and figuratively) at their local Chinese restaurant, on the theory that I Don't Know What's In This Stuff So God Probably Doesn't Either. One friend claims that his grandfather used to go to Chinese restaurants and -- by way of covering his bases -- ask the waiter if there was any "treyf" in the dish. After checking with the kitchen, the waiter would duly report that the dish was free of "treyf," and the grandfather would dig in. He conveniently neglected to mention to the waiter that "treyf" means "non-Kosher food." Anyway, these people all base (based) their dietary restrictions on religious conviction, however tenuous. And I don't really see how their restrictions are any more rigorous, tightly codified, or deserving of respect than the convictions of people who have opted for vegetarianism -- or any other form of dietary restriction -- for reasons that have not been sanctified by an Official Religion. Of course, the PITA factor is very real. There was a thread here a while ago about people's imposing their dietary restrictions on their hosts -- guests who accept your invitation to dinner and then subject you to a litany of the stuff they won't eat. And in that thread, as well, people tried very hard to draw distinctions between folks who "couldn't" eat such-and-such out of religious conviction, and those for whom avoiding pork or pasta or whatever was "purely a personal choice." I tend to feel that with both restaurants and dinner parties, both host/restaurant and diner/guest have an obligation -- the former to provide a meal that meets the basic needs of the guests (no pork/pasta/meat entree) and the latter to cope politely and discreetly with any demands of orthodoxy that extend beyond those basic needs. All of which is to say that if you go to a vegetarian restaurant, you have the right to expect that there won't be any meat on the premises, but if your brand of vegetarianism requires that any milk-products come from farms where cattle are never slaughtered for meat, you need to order a salad or go to another restaurant. Pheww! Sorry for rattling on so long.

Thanks a lot, Fifi. I had never thought of basting with coconut milk, and this really looks great.

My concern is less about calories than about carbohydrates. It's been made extremely clear to me that my health depends on my monitoring them fairly closely. While I don't make many sweets -- mostly because I don't much want them -- I like to invite people over to dinner, and dinner guests expect dessert. So my choices are making something and not eating it -- which you, as a professional may be able to do, but I, as a semi-professional eater, have a lot of trouble with -- or working to make something tasty that I can share with my guests. I guess the third alternative is saying the hell with it and eating the sugar. God knows I do that plenty, but I always pay for it, and I would prefer not to do so, if I have the choice.

This is so interesting to me, Suvir. Thank you. I was brought up to believe that proselytizing, while not exactly sinful, was about the rudest thing one could possible do, the most extraordinary breech of courtesy. I still believe this, and I also believe that it indicates a stunning lack of respect for the person to whom one is proselytizing, the assumption that you know better than he what his life lacks -- and, indeed, that your life is inherently better (closer to God, more authentic, happier) than his. At the same time, I do have some friends who are Southern Baptists, and I understand that for them, proselytizing is a form of sacrament. It's the way they serve God, just as I think I serve God by honoring others' religious beliefs, at least to the extent of not telling them that mine is better. It's a very difficult conundrum.

Oooof, I do. Years ago, I was touring with a troup of South African vegetarians. We all shared a house. And one day Chico the Cockney Drummer put a packet of pork chops in the refrigerator, and one of the veggies went round the bend, hollering about how meat fumes were contaminating her broccoli. FWIW, I don't think the woman's having brought the damn babyfood into the restaurant was such a crime -- as others here have pointed out, she probably just grabbed the nearest jar, without checking to see whether its contents were in accord with her lunch plans. And -- and again, this is purely MO, I think the server should have said "I'm sorry, we can't prepare anything with meat or chicken in it," rather than inventing a clumsy lie about a broken microwave. But all that said, I still think that people who go to a vegetarian restaurant have the right to assume that the kitchen will, indeed, be meat-free, and that includes the microwave. I may think the "meat fumes contaminating the broccoli" contingent is a little nuts, but they still have a right to expect that meat fumes will not, in fact, contaminate the green leafy vegetables.