tammylc

According to the article, the Gourmet Standard tri-ply 10-inch (their best buy) costs $73.36. Here's what they say about the Sitram: There are pans on their "recommended with reservations" list that also have discs rather than being fully clad, so I don't think that alone can be the reason for the difference.

I've been curious about dinner times. I assumed that there's a set dinner time and people just show up at that time. But, what happens when dinner is ready early or late? Are you just being metaphoric or is there actually a bell to ring to let people know when dinner is ready? ← There is an actual bell. The kids vie for the opportunity to ring it. It's only somewhat helpful, because it's not loud enough to be heard if you are inside with your windows closed, for example. But in the summer, when I'm outside playing with my son before dinner, it's great! If dinner is just a few minutes late, then people just hang out in the common house and wait, pitching in if that's helpful. If a cook knows that dinner will be especially late for one reason or another, then they might send an email message out to let people know. When a meal is ready early, the food generally just sits and waits until people arrive. The last couple weeks it's seemed like people are really drifting in slowly, so sometimes half the people don't show up until 6:30. That's annoying for someone like me, who works hard to make sure things are being served at optimal temperatures. I certainly think so. If you (or any other reader, for that matter) are every in the neighborhood, let me know - I'd be happy to have you come to dinner and check it out!

Doh! I totally forgot about my promise to try to take pictures. Which is really too bad, because tonight's dinner was particularly colorful. I had 28 meat eaters, 3 vegetarians and 15 kids signed up for dinner. The total cost was $143.93, which worked out to $4.96 per adult (including the pantry fee). The menu was baked tilapia with two fruit salsas - peach-tomato and blueberry-corn, boiled potatoes with parsley and olive oil, salad, and Texas Sheet Cake for dessert. My neighbor works for Zingerman's, and there's been a Zingerman's partners meeting at the common house that morning, so I was the lucky recipient of a couple of their lunch leftovers. One was a big bowl of cucumber salad with feta and mint. The other was a half bowl of peaches with chiles. Instead of buying peaches for the salsa, as I had planned, we just chopped up the peaches from this instead, and mixed them with tomatoes, green onions and lime juice. It turned out okay, but didn't have the bright fresh flavor I had been thinking of. But on the other hand, I didn't have to pay for peaches! The blueberry-corn recipe is one I got right here on eGullet and it was the surprise hit of the night. It's very simple - just corn cut off the cob and quickly cooked, blueberries, chiffonaded basil, and a vinaigrette of olive oil, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper. Crunchy and fresh - definitely more than the sum of its parts. I got 12 lbs of tilapia, because I had to order a couple days in advance, and I expected more people to sign up. So there was definitely enough for everyone, and some leftover. I baked it in the oven, and that worked out great - much less work than standing over the stove pan frying like I do for the pecan-crusted tilapia! In fact, I expected that with two big sheet pans of fish in the oven, it would take extra time, but in fact, it was all cooked in about 15 minutes! So I actually rang the bell for dinner early, because when fish is done, it's done! I'll know for next time, if I do it again. The fish itself is quite mild (which is good for the kids), but the salsas made it much more interesting. For the vegetarians, I used some flying saucer squash that were leftover from the Heartland Gathering this past weekend, and made an interesting stuffed squash recipe. The veggies seemed to like it, and the little bit of filling I tried was tasty, and that was before I added the manchego. I also had too much Texas Sheet Cake - I made two, and probably could have gotten by with just one. Of course, people are usually happy to take leftovers home. (My husband tells me that there was some left when he was done cleaning, though - so I'm going to go get some to snack on.) But people liked it, and it sure was easy! I don't cook again until September, so I've got a lot of time to plan my next meal...

I have occasionally done some advance work. But I only get work credit for four hours, so I try to limit the amount of time I spend to somewhere in the that ballpark... And I usually only cook two Thursdays in a month. That Thursday/Sunday back to back was unusual, and caused by my trading off shifts with someone. Managing cooking space is definitely one of the big challenges of this kind of cooking - sounds like you've got it even tougher than I do!

Thanks so much! I can't believe you read it all straight through!

Hey Scott- I misplaced the reciept you gave me with the cheese names on it - can you tell us what's what?

More pictures (taken by my neighbor, Jillian) Ric Jewell and my neighbor Elph opening wine bottles. Wine tasters. Another shot of oh-so-adorable Dylan helping Randi with the fish. My excellent team of sous chefs, helping me get the squash trio components prepped. Fat Guy plating his contribution to the squash trio. Plating moosnsqrl's soup sweintraub does arcane things with Absinthe (see my gallery in ImageGullet for the entire Absinthe action sequence).

Maybe I'll try this Shortbread Pie with Lemon Filling from Alinka's foodblog: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1249230

First I've ever heard of such a thing. What's the story behind a Texas Sheet Cake? The recipes look good and way easy. The only problem is that I'm going to be using the common house sheet pans for cooking fish on. But I do have a couple at home I could loan...

They were just regular red skinned potatoes. Tomorrow's meal should be pretty relaxed, so I will do my best to take some pictures for you all. The menu: Oven-baked tilapia with peach-tomato salsa and blueberry-corn relish Parsleyed potatoes Green salad Dessert TBD - anybody want to make a suggestion? I'm thinking chocolate rather than fruit, because I'm already using peaches and blueberries in the savory part of the meal. But I'd also like something cheap, since the fish is relatively expensive.

I forgot to report back in after cooking the market basket meal. It went really well. We had to work quite steadily for the time we had available to us, but we got it done and served dinner on time. I got worried that I didn't have enough potatoes and tomatoes, so I bought some back up ones from the store. I should have cooked the back up potatoes, as we were a little short, but I just forgot about it. I totally did not need the back up tomatoes. And there was lots of salad, so it's not like people didn't have enough food. Speaking of salad, beets, blueberries and goat cheese is quite a tasty combination. The caprese stuffed squash were beautiful to look at, and apparently tasted good too. Cost per person worked out to $4.19. A bargain, says me.

As implied upthread, there is a movement afoot to hold next year's event in Cleveland, which should be very exciting. We're all hoping this will give Michael Symon the incentive he needs to get Lola open again. I'd strongly encourage other eGullet members to think about holding your own member-organized event. It doesn't have to be as elaborate as this one was (although elaborate can certainly be fun!) and as you say - the opportunity for in-person camraderie is wonderful. As is the chance to learn from one another in person the way we do online!

They're also much cheaper at the Farmers' Market here in Grand Rapids, on the other side of the state. My impression is that the cost of living in general is higher in Ann Arbor than in other cities in Michigan. I should add, though, that the quality of life is higher, too. ← Yeah, the going rate on blueberries in Ann Arbor is $6/quart. Ann Arbor definitely isn't a cheap place to live - a couple of years ago Forbes Magazine rated it the 7th least affordable city in the US! (Through some measure that compared average salaries for the area to expenses.)

The amount of food consumed was obscene, even by eGullet Society members' standards. I believe this was due to a mathematical error: for each course, enough food was prepared such that if the whole meal had consisted of just that one course then it still would have been enough. It was exhausting. Everybody was full before the first actual course was even served -- we had gorged ourselves on fried calamari and butter-tossed fries at lunchtime, tasted 21 wines in the afternoon, flirted with the green fairy, consumed about a hundred dollars worth of cheese, bread and pate and, oh yes, there was the matter of Ronnie's charcuterie spread. That was before dinner. Then we ate an excessive meal. And when we finished with the meat course, a whole fresh crew of folks moved in to the kitchen and started producing desserts and, somehow, like five more cheeses appeared. Wish you had been there. ← I think Fat Guy overstates things a touch. I actually thought that most people did quite well at portioning, and as it turned out, the overly generous courses were served family style so that people could only take as much as they wanted. We talked a lot about portion sizes in the pre-gathering cooks email and at least some of it sunk in. (Although the beef was appropriately sized only by accident - Nancy and Bob and Edsel all thought there was going to be a chicken course, and would, they told me, have bought much more if they'd known. They were worrying about it right up until their dish was served!) I for one never felt overly stuffed. However, I was busy in the kitchen when the cheese and charcutrie were out, so had only small nibbles of both, and that probably made the difference. Had I had the opportunity to gorge myself on Ronnie's pastrami, I certainly would have done so.

Randi, can you post a link to the cookie recipe? They were really great - the texture is amazing! I was the lucky recipient of the leftovers, and enjoyed two of them this morning with a cold glass of milk. Mmmm.

Did anyone talk about the giant bottle of wine yet? I hope there was a picture taken! NancyH and Bob won a chili cookoff recently and their prize was a double magnum of wine. That's 3 liters for the wine speak impaired. It was very cool to be able to pour all 33 people a glass of wine from the same bottle to start their dinner!

Oh, and I wanted to let people know that our leftovers were greatly appreciated. The Sunday night cook was able to use all those extra greens and cucumbers for her salad. I sent a message out about tino's bread, and it was gone by the next time I was in the common house. (Although I did take one of the whole loaves of honey whole wheat home for myself. It made an excellent breakfast toasted and topped with passionfruit curd.) Oh, and people were apparently coming in all day yesterday to seek out the trifle! I took the 3 half bottles of white wine that were left over for dinner last night, so now I just have about a 1/4 of a bottle of Pinot Grigio left, and almost an entire bottle of Burgundy - I wish the weather was more appropriate to making beef burgundy!

OMG, that picture of Dylan is SOOO cute!

Yep, that was the "party pack" of duck and foie gras pate a friend gifted me with upon returning from France last year. It was very good, and I was very glad to have a gathering large enough to merit opening up such a large container! My two-year old thought it was great too - I gave him a bite of mine, and he ripped the bread out of my hand, stuffed it in his mouth and asked for more!

Alex = Palladion Candace = annarborfoodie Danielle = daniellewiley Edsel = edsel Joshua = destroit Judy = moosnsqrl Kristin = torakris Lisa = kitchen chick (her blog, not actually an egullet name) Nancy = NancyH Bob - with Nancy, not on eGullet Randi = Calipoutine Ronnie = ronnie_suburban Sam = Sam iam Joyce - Sam's wife, not on eGullet Scott = sweintraub Deborah - with Scott, not on eGullet Shannon Elise= Shannon_Elise Steven = Fat Guy Tammy = tammylc Eric - Tammy's husband, not on eGullet Tom = tino27 Vicki = VickiA2

The thing everyone needs to know about Zingerman's is that you can taste pretty much everything they sell. So you didn't luck in to getting to taste it - it's all part of the Zingerman's experience! It's so great to see everyone getting their photos and reports up. I was *there* and I'm still not wanting to go to bed so I can see the reports roll in. How crazy is that?! Thanks everyone for making this such a great weekend for me. I had a great time. A neighbor saw me at dinner tonight and commented that she was surprised to see me looking so "fresh" yesterday, given how busy I'd been organizing. But I really like doing this kind of thing (I also run science fiction conventions) and actually find it energizing rather than draining. So if I "aw, shucks-ed" a lot when people were giving me prodigious praise for putting this shindig together, that's why - it didn't feel like work at all to me!

Thanks for saying this Ronnie. I worried sometimes that the level of focus and coordination required to put together the meal would seem too onerous and like it took away from the fun and social aspects of the event, so I'm really glad to hear it was a highlight for you!

While we're waiting for the people with the pictures to get back to their computers and get things uploaded, I can tell you about the wines we tasted. I've been going pretty regularly to the monthly special dinners that Zingerman's Roadhouse hosts, and I've always been really impressed with Ric Jewell's wine selections. So when I was thinking about events to include in our weekend, asking him to host a wine tasting was a no-brainer. I gave him a pretty small budget, so was amazed to see him putting 21 different bottles of wine on the table! Thanks to Ric and Zingerman's for donating the difference. I'm mostly just going to list the wine names here. But I'm taking those names from a detailed 10 pages document Ric created to accompany the tasting. The wines are from all over the world, and the breadth of grape varieties is huge. Ric was kind enough to include a few of my favorites from previous wine dinners. Oxidized 1. Vin Jaune, Henri Maire au Chateau Boichailles, Reserve Catherine de Rye, Chateau-Chalon AC, Jura, FR 1986 2. Bodegas Alvear, Carlos VII, Amontillado, Montilla-Morales SP, NV White 3. Arrabako, Xarmant, Arabako Txakolina SP, 2004 (Ric - smartly - didn't even try to pronounce the full name of this one! It's a Basque wine.) 4. Vin de Savoie, Pierre Boniface, Apremont, Savoie FR, 2004 5. Bodegas Cerrasol, Esperanta, Estate, Rueda SP, 2004 6. Claude et Bernard Greffier, Chateau Tertre de launay, Entre-de-Mers AC, Bordeaux, FR, 2004 7. Domaine des Cassagnoles, Reserve Selection, Gascogne FR, 2004 8. Cusumano, Sicilia IT, 2004 9. Tokaj-Oremus, Mandolas, Tokaji HUNG, 2003 Rose 9.5 Rose de Pinot Gris, "Les Rouesses" Domaine des Rouesses, Reuilly, Loire FR, 2004 (Re. the 9.5 - Ric was only planning on serving 20 wines, but somehow this extra rose slipped in. Pinot Gris is usually vinified as a white wine, but this version is an incredibly pale rose with huge flavor.) 10. Les Domaniers de Puits Mouret, Ott, Cotes de Provence FR, 2005 Red 11. Domaine de la Chanteleuserie, Cuvee Beauvais, Bourgueil AC, Loire FR, 2003 12. Domaine Charles Joguet, Cuvee Terroir, Chinon AC, Loire FR, 2003 (11. and 12. presented a really interesting comparison. Although they are from two different ACs in the Loire, the vineyards are only about 20 (or was it 30?) miles apart, and the both used the same grape - cabernet franc. In the hot 2003 year, one wine maker decided to work to create a wine that's more typical for the region, where the other went with the flow of the incredibly ripe grapes and produced a wine that's far more New World in style.) 13. Weingut Gernot Heinrich, Burgenland, Neusiedlersee AUSTRIA, 2004 14. Villa Zorilor, Vinarte, Estate, Dealu Mare ROMANIA, 2000 15. La Posta del Vinatero, Estela Armanda Vineyard, Guaymallen, Mendoza ARG, 2003 16. Counoise, McCrea Cellars, Red Mountain WA, 2002 17. Cheatue des Erles, Cuvee des Ardoise, Fitou AC, Cotes de Languedoc FR, 2002 18. Quinta de Roriz, Prazo de Roriz, Douro PORTUGAL, 2004 19. Scala Dei, Cartoixa Reserva, Priorat SP, 2000 20. Azienda Agricola Cosimo Taurino, Notarpanaro, Salento IT, 1999 Fat Guy and I took turns going round the room pouring out splashes of each wine into glasses while Ric talked about the wines. We had about 30 people attending the tasting, so they were really just splashes. But splashes of 21 different wines still add up, especially over the course of just an hour and half, so I for one was quite giggly by the time the tasting was over. And given sweintrub started pouring out the absinthe shortly after the tasting, the fact that we pulled dinner off so well becomes even more impressive!

Fat Guy understates his contribution to the squash trio - I was planning to stuff the squash with smoked salmon, and he just "wasn't feeling it." He suggested combining something pork fat-y with something sweet. I did send him off to Zing to get pancetta, but the guanciale was calling his name. It was salty, but the portion size was small, so it wasn't overwhelming. We finished brunch a little while ago and there's a group of about 8 people over touring Zingerman's Coffee Company. I'm not a coffee drinker, so I decided to spend some quality time with Liam (my two-ear old) who's been missing his mom this busy weekend.

So, the only thing wrong with Heartland eGulleteers is they all go to bed too early. It's not even midnight yet, and it's just tammylc, NancyH and Bob, and Edsel still holding down the fort. Of course, it was a very long and busy day, and we'll be at it again tomorrow with bruch at 10...