laurenmilan
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Posts posted by laurenmilan
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One word: "Snausages!"
That dorky little commercial from the 80s warped my fragile little mind. I'm an adult and I still say it. Hell, my fiancee and I are both Italian-American, and we BOTH say it!
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Chocolate-Orange Mousse (from Barefoot in Paris cookbook)
ooh, yeah, I'd been making that recipe over and over during the summer (on its own or as I pie filling) and it's my new standby. I had one recipe from a tattered french cookbook that I'd always used, but the 1/4 c. of grand marnier was very persuasive
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I think there's a big difference between not choosing to cook every single day and night, and not being able to cook. To state that women can't cook is patently ridiculous.
I actually have seen a lot of women my age (& some baby boomers) who view my cooking skills, amateur though they may be, as a sort of sorcery. They are completely flabbergasted as to how food gets from shopping cart to serving platter, as if my hair should go white from my "life force" being drained out of me by the magic of cooking.
I know that over a century ago, critics were lamenting that young women were getting their recipes from Fanny Farmer instead of their own mothers & grandmothers. So the disconnect from family tradition ain't exactly a new phenomenon. And it seems like with a lot of baby boomers, including my mother, there's a sort of defiance against time in the kitchen, like it's a form of slavery, or something they don't have time to "waste" on. And with my generation... a lot of us did not see our mothers cooking, and so for some, I can only guess that it appears to be a skill well beyond the scope of mere mortals!
Because of this, I really can't be offended in the least by GR's accusation, it seems quite spot-on with what I see around me... namely, folks watching TV Food Network like it's the Discovery Channel: "Oooh, lookit that, how the hell did they do that?" as they just watched it BEING DONE for the past 20 minutes.
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Can you provide a price range? How many expensive, splurge dinners, if any, and what area/s will you be visiting? I think we can get some good suggestions going if we have a bit more information.
Well we'll probably want at least 1 splurge dinner, of course, but we're also interested in exploring the regional cuisine rather than Japanese or continental cuisines. I'd be very interested in at least one or two of the local lunch spots/trucks that you recommend, there are so many that I have no idea which ones I should try. My fiancee and I are both Egulleters and fans of regional US cuisine, and we're looking at this honeymoon as another learning experience
I'm a big fan of Roy Yamaguchi's cookbooks, but have heard that i should avoid his restaurants, is this true?
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My fiancee and I are planning a honeymoon on Oahu, and are looking for recommendations for terrific restaurants to visit while we're there. We're more interested in regional cuisine than flash (there's plenty of luau's out there for that!) and I'd love to visit at least one okazuya while I'm there. Any recommendations?
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This is our menu for Thanksgiving. My sister is bringing the turkey/dressing, canned cranberries, and homemade dill pickles. My niece will be bringing some sort of godawful dessert, store bought white rolls, and I've been told not to bake anything because it will make the niece feel bad.
There's another modern-Thanksgiving cliche... the storebought pies/desserts! What the frackety-frack, people, dontcha know that Thanksgiving is National Pie Appreciation Day (well, at least in El Rancho Milan!)
This is the one time of year that folks are supposed to treat their guests to some good, piping hot homemade pie (or pumpkin cheesecake, or at least a very GOOD bakery pie or two or eight.)
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My fiancee turned onto Daisy Cooks, with Daisy Martinez on PBS. She's a lot of fun, and the food's got a lot of flavor!
Oh, that's just the green beans sauteed with a whole head of roasted garlic talkin'.
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I find it amusing that so many "traditions" involve mid-twentieth-century industrial food products. Did the Pilgrims bring canned onion rings and mushroom soup concentrate over on the Mayflower? Maybe they used jellied cranberry sauce as ballast.
Kinda reminds me of the "Matrix" takeoff on the Thansgiving episode of Good Eats: "Alton, do you want to know the REAL truth about the First Thanksgiving?"
It's so very true though, so many of the craptacular canned/overprocessed foods my family insists on using for Thanksgiving make me wonder what the frak it has to do with our colonial beginnings. Interesting note: people served whatever they pleased for Thanksgiving, until Norman Rockwell painted a grandmother serving roast turkey on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, in his "Four Freedoms" series.
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Paging through another discussion on this forum ("Slummin' it!"), I ran across a post that mentioned a product sold at The Vermont Country Store -- My-T-Fine pudding mix.
For years, our trips down to Florida to visit my aunt in Jacksonville, included a supply of MyTFine pudding. She ran a cake decorating business and loved that mix for her fillings. Of course nowadays, she can order it in bulk, but I was always wondering when we'd get held up in airport security for pudding smuggling.
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My Fiancee and I are such garlic fans, we made this dish together literally a few hours after we got engaged!!!
Yep, I just saw this thread for the first time & these good people are giving me lots more yummy garlicky ideas. Garlicpalooza!
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I've paid much closer attention to the artwork since this thread started. Two things - whoever is the photo editor/stylist whatever has a dark, pessimistic or depressed streak. It's getting worse and the Sept cover is an all time low. That cover isn't going to get anyone to pick up the magazine unless they are into " food noir".
Who's their art director, Deter from SNL's "Sprockets"?
"The food... its agony is GOOOORGEOUS! I am as happy as a little girl!"
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Personally, I've come to see that over 99% of the desserts in this classification are the horrifying defeat of quality by quantity... an oversized, cloying, indistinct mass of chocolate-flavored products of mediocre or poor quality.
Take for example, the abuse of Death By Chocolate.. what is actually a relatively sophisticated blending of harmonious flavors and layers of quality sub-recipes (mocha mousse, dark chocolate brownies, mocha rum sauce, meringue) with an interesting contrast of flavors, textures, colors and even temperatures. A fitting dessert... for an entire table, of course.
This literally 3,000 calorie creation has been bastardized by chain restaurants and "Taste of Home" magazine devotees into slapped-together piles of processed subpar ingredients, including such crimes as chocolate cool whip, storebought chocolate cakes, jarred hot fudge, instant puddings, oreos, you name it.
One bite, and it's easy to hate the phrase "Death by Chocolate" and its variants strictly by their association to these frightening takes on the pastry arts!
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Huge portions are so common nowadays - and so much a part of the identity of bad chain restaurants like IHOP, Denny's, Red Lobster - that I've come to associate a large portion with poor quality, and small or tiny portion with good quality. If they can offer that much food, they're severely cutting corners somewhere.
I guess if you're of the mindset that it ain't better unless it's bigger, you can taste the difference between egg product and fresh eggs anyhow...
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All I know is I decided to go along with a group of friends to try a local place called "The Thirsty Moose" for a birthday celebration.
Damn! And I was gonna host your birthday dinner there!
Seriously, I am a "native of those parts" (northern NJ) and did the thirsty Moose thing a few times. It's considered a "big night out" meal for the good people of Jefferson, but then again for many folks, so is Outback Steakhouse. The place gave me the fantods each time I went there, but my dining companions, and many others at the restaurant, were cooing at the menu like they were at Aquavit.
Hey, I guess a night away from the crockpot is a night away from the crockpot, right?
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Covering a big bowl of bland greens with a mixture of reconstituted dairy, dried herbs and lotsa preservatives? Cool.
Using said mixture to dip bland cut vegetables in? Delicious!
Putting a pat of butter mixed with Roquefort on a steak? OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT'S BUTTER AND CHEESE ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?
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I have a 2 kilo box of SB 70% bittersweet here, and now I feel the need to ration it... considering that Godiva went downhill when it was bought out by Hershey, I do think that SB may surrender to the bottom line, and soon will be a great chocolate in reputation only...
Ironically, SB's rise was partially due to its popularization on TV Food Network
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"Jersey Girl Cream Puffs"...
Fresh zeppoles from the boardwalk, split & filled (or whole & injected) with Kohr's Frozen custard (also fresh from the boardwalk!
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I'm not very hungry having had some nice lamb loin, chanterelles and tomatoes stuffed with ratatouille and ground lamb for dinner, but I could eat everything I see photographed in the July 2005 issue of Martha Stewart LIVING. Those images bring new depth to the meaning of "looks good enough to eat."
You know, the August issues of MSL and Gourmet are out, and both have the same general cover: a fruit crisp with a close-up of riped oozing fruit. I could actually put the covers side-by-side and make the comparison.
Martha's was a soft pink background with splashes of sensually rich red fruit peeking out under a warm golden bed of streusel. Very comforting and snuggly-looking food.
Gourmet turned a blueberry crisp into a tribute to the Exxon Valdez spill. Sort of a wierd blackish ooze, all the warm tones are absent in the crisp portion. Just feels very stark, very cold. Very wierd, kinda like those ultra-dark, lit-by-an-Indiglo-watch photos of tumorous-looking meats in the Gallery of Regrettable Food.
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By now if your average US consumer asks for chai, they expect masala chai. If they want plain tea, they as for tea. Again, just the way it has been adopted into the language, no real reason to change it...
That's ok... most folks are so trained on powdered chai mixes that they really don't know what masala chai actually TASTES like!
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"You should buy pre-made/frozen items from a wholesaler"
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OK, so it's not just me, huh?
As a subscriber who was "hooked" by the incredibly sexy cover of the June 2003 issue (deep silky shades of purple, depicting blackberries and blackberry sauce draped over vanilla ice cream a woman would go to jail for), I hafta say... those newer covers feel kinda like the b&w photos from 1930s cookery books. Stark, stark, stark.
I know we're supposed to be hip and minimalist and all, but this just looks like PUNISHMENT. No lushness, no lustiness. No bounty.
It's the difference between panning Nigella Lawson's lush & enviably ample silhouette, and close-up shots of Sandra Lee's scrawny hands and saggy, baggy cleavage in her concave chest.
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I always have a great time at the Dynasty on route 22 in Green Brook, terrific full Dim Sum 7 days a week.
I recommend the clams in black bean sauce and the crab claws.
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One of my co-workers, who is actually a fantastic baker, kept going on all week about how she was bringing the best dish and that we were all going to be blown away... it was that Pilsbury veggie pizza thing. You know the one... cresent roll dough spread out on a pan, slathered with cream cheese, and sprinkled with broccoli and other assorted veggies. God, my throat's tightening up just thinking about it. If this is what I'm up against, it's ON! The next one will be in July and I'm coming in loaded for bear.
Hey, Lesfen, I didn't know you worked with Sandra Lee.
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We don't have a local Target but I prefer to drive the 45 miles to the nearest Target than shop at Wal-Mart for ALL the reasons you mentioned. What's even more terrifying is that our dirty and dark Wal-Mart is about to become a Superstore. God help us all. We'll lose at least one grocery store because of it I have no doubt. You couldn't pay me to shop at our Wal-Mart now, but I won't shop for food there - ever. Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl.
I have a Wal-Mart 5 minutes away from me... I go in there maybe one every 2-3 months.
About once every other month, I make a huge provisions run, spending around $100-200... at the Target 30 minutes away.
Why? Quite simply, you go into Target, everything's clean, orderly, and there's a lot of cool, stylish stuff. Going to Wal-Mart puts a knot in my stomach. Annoying people hanging out in the parking lot and the front entrance, the place is always overcrowded, the aisles packed and messy, and the employees, even by retail standards, are dumber than dirt. My local Wal-Mart doesn't have a grocery store, but I cannot imagine how bad it would be considering what's already there....
"I want a Krispy donut!"
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
This marriage is gonna be freaky-deaky, ain't it?