fresco

"The obligatory food experience in Sintra is the pastry shop Casa da Piriquita (R. Padarias 1, right across the street from the Paço Real with its huge, conical chimneys). It's famous for its queijadas--small, sweet, cheese-and-egg tarts, but my favorite offering there is the travesseiros--a variation on the perpetual pastry-with-sweetened-egg theme, but this has a lighter, flakier pastry and lighter hand with the sweetened eggs than most. They're baked with a dusting of cinnamon and granulated sugar....warm from the oven, they are heavenly. If you want a real meal in Sintra, just a couple of doors up the from Piriquita is an excellent and reasonably priced restaurant, Alcobaça. As always with such places, I say peruse the pratos do dia--they usually ain't the daily specials for nothing!" The pastry shop is an amazing place. Think I have also dined at Alcobaca--the location sounds right. Food was great, although we did get rained on a bit.

"If the Greeks were to use there clout to shut down production of an equally valid, if inferior, product then it really just bully tactics." A better approach would be for Greek feta producers, or others with similar "authentic" products to spend some time and money telling people why their product is worth buying.

A great deal of this involves common sense and being realistic. If you go to a supermarket and buy something billed as Greek style feta for a suspiciously low price, you should expect to go home with some foul crap made god knows where. If you go to a reputable Greek food store, you're likely to find a couple of different types of Greek feta, Bulgarian, domestic and maybe others. One of the reasons for quite awful stuff like this is consumer demand that does not develop in tandem with consumer awareness and a sense of reality. Have you seen some of the stuff that is passed off as balsamic vinegar for a couple of dollars a pint?

If I was seeking a balanced discussion on the causes of obesity, the last place I'd look would be a site devoted to the joys of eating.

Judging by all the lip smacking that is done every time the word "bacon" appears in a thread, many eGulleters are probably already getting 3,000 calories a day from this source.

It has liberated me to worship Space, the Final Frontier. Until we fill it up with other unnecessaries.

According to the USDA, one medium apple has about 80 calories, which would make your daily intake 36 apples. My daily limit is about one, two tops. http://web.ask.com/redir?bpg=http%3a%2f%2f...om%2fbook20.htm

"Eating 3000 calories worth of apples a day will make you fat if you only bur off 2000." Eating 3000 calories of apples a day would probably make you sick or kill you before it made you fat.

It's surprising--to me at least--how few cookbooks stand the test of time. Prior to moving houses last year, we had well in excess of 200, which got down to about 50 in a general book cull. I'm sure this could go to a dozen or less without making much difference, if any. It was a cathartic experience, which finally rid me of a long standing and irrational Book Worship.

The most effective solution for the most people is state ordered starvation, but I don't recommend it.

I've had a change of heart on the whole issue of litigation. It's now clear that just about everything we eat or drink is bad in some way and we should bring on the lawyers and the legislators to sue everything possible out of existence and outlaw the rest. The end result would be millions dying of starvation, but a much slimmer, trimmer population, most without jobs or enough to eat, excepting of course, the lawyers and legislators. eGullet would be headed by a guy called "Bones" Shaw and would be a forum devoted to fooling your belly into feeling full.

Always wondered how Perrier became effervescent.

Can't remember the last time I was in a fast food joint (unless you include Starbucks and various dim sum places) but would strenuously defend my right to do so if I felt like it and to hell with the burger bigots and all their joyless allies.

"nor does anyone seriously argue that fast food is the cause of obesity." Enthusiast, if this is true, what should we make of the anti-fast food tidal wave, including lawyers, legislators, school board officials, Princeton and other researchers and people of various descriptions and occupations on several continents? That they are not serious but are making their cases and their stands for frivolous reasons?

"We have the highest quality of life, and access to more choices on everything, than anyone, ever." An excellent point. Those who want to assign blame for obesity also, I think, face a bewildering range of choices--including a labor force move from fields and factories to offices. What also has to be examined is the role of well intentioned governments and their overlapping attempts to solve or ease a very real problem--hunger--which may well result in the recipients consuming far too many calories, with no one keeping track. Where do you turn after you have sued Big Macs and other currently demonized items off the menu and the rate of obesity doesn't drop, but continues to climb? It would certainly be possible to reduce or perhap even eliminate obesity, but I do not think anyone but the most lunatic fringe of fanatics would find the methods, or the overall consequences, at all palatable. For me, and I suspect for many others, the source of much unease about the whole obesity debate is the prospect of choices, and the ability to make choices, being curtailed.

"It's not a health thing at all. It's just because I no longer have a car." When do you think the first obesity lawsuits will be filed against carmakers?

"Does food purchased at grease-oriented carryouts which are not chains count as 'fast food? ' Or are we discussing McDonalds et al only?" Depends on your definition of "fast". Or "food".

"deranged and the silently menacing" Could simply be a natural response to the surroundings.

"i should note that just about 100% of my fastfood consumption is done at home, in the car, on the road, in the parking lot, or at the office. never in the restaurant itself. oh heavens no." I heard/read somewhere that McDonalds and other fast food chains design their premises to discourage people from staying for very long because profits depend on extremely rapid turnover. Uncomfortable seats way too close together, overbright lights, colors so lurid they hurt your eyes--it makes sense.

There was a time when Walkerton, Ontario, had the worst water anywhere: http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/walkerton_report.html

Pesto made from fresh picked basil. In fact, a whole lot of stuff with fresh basil.

August is getting very busy--there's a trip to Alberta and a pig roast in my future. Don't know what the weather is like in Grand Rapids in October, but that month looks good.

"by the way, did anybody notice the russian figures? how is that to be explained?" Diet, same as anywhere else. Russia has got to be the carbohydrate capital of the world.

What I'd love to see--and I know there are some organizational obstacles--is an eGullet tap water tasting, with best and worst decided by a panel of worthies. This is, I think, the kind of thing this site could do better and perhaps more easily than most other organizations. It would sure generate a lot of interest.

Is it possible that sediments, etc., may actually improve the taste of the water?