fifi

Comfort Me... Your child is definitely the exception. I would say that my daughter would have qualified for that scenario (and in fact did at some "ladies lunches"). My son, with the same training as his sister, just didn't have the temperament at that age. Two kids, same rules, but they are very different people. We had the good sense not to push it. Jaymes... I love your scenario. I never went through it because I knew that is what would happen to me. How I knew, I don't know. Mother and Dad just had "that look". I did "remove the body" to the car once when my 2+ yo son threw a screaming, writhing in the floor fit when I wouldn't buy him candy at the checkout in the grocery store. I picked him up by the cover-alls and hauled him out, kicking and screaming and tossed him in the car. The car was parked in front, small town, knew the manager and he kept an eye on him until I finished. I took my time. When we got back to the car, his sister told him... "Well, THAT was pretty stupid." He never did it again.

I would say that Elyse's cotton candy craving qualifies. Suzilightning's chicken McNuggets probably qualifies. Orange juice does not. Also, cravings that repeat on a regular basis do not qualify. We are talking WEIRD here, folks. Just an update... My craving for corn dogs has NOT returned. I went through three cans of corned beef hash before I got past that one. But I don't think that is qualified. After all, my mother used to fix it when I was a kid and it was always a special breakfast treat. I would occasionally get it if it was on the menu at a great breakfast place. I just hadn't thought of it in a while. Not incredibly strange.

Our collective reaction to this one cow, which was apparantly born in Canada before the "cannibalism ban", would be amusing if it weren't so sad. What is it about us that seems to demand a zero risk existence? That has never been part of the human condition and will likely never be. Put yourself in a hermetically sealed bottle, go around in a state of anxiety, don't enjoy anything that might have some risk, if you want to, but that is not living really. (Oh, and given the number of people killed on golf courses by lightning, don't play golf, either. Then we wouldn't have to cover up perfectly good farm land with turf grass. But that is another rant. ) Oddly enough, just last night I was reading one of Robb Walsh's essays in Are You Really Going To Eat That?, Keep on Shuckin'. He doesn't discuss BSE but he does discuss attitudes toward risk. He is in a venerable "joint" just down the road from where I will build my house and he is there because he can get all the raw oysters he wants, anytime, and then he can enjoy a rare cheeseburger. What is pertinent here is his discussion of cultural differences and differences in attitudes toward food safety and risk between Europe and here. I don't want to get into a debate about cultural differences, or unpasteurized cheese. I think that this just illustrates that some other folks in the world seem to be a little closer to a realistic attitude toward food safety and relative risk. Given the statistics on BSE in cattle in the UK, their reaction to it was probably not all that extreme. Our reaction to ONE COW seems a little extreme. Someone put out a book not long ago on the real statistical risks for things that happen to us and our irrational reactions to them. I can't remember the details. Maybe someone here has read it. I gotta go get some steaks.

Riding the streetcar down to Canal Street always thrills kids. Just don't try to go at rush hour. Then you can go to the aquarium, go et them run around on the levee and look at the big boats. Chasing the pigeons aroung in the square in front of the cathedral makes for some good pictures. You might want to think of having this thread moved to Louisiana. You will probably get more hits.

The mind boggles.

EUREKA! gotta love eGullet

I had to work at it to not answer the phone. Remember that it hasn't been THAT many years ago that there was no such thing as answering machines, caller id and other technology available to help manage communications. There weren't any telemarketers, either. I am sure that there are those of you here that don't remember those days. A missed call was just that... missed... with no clue as to who it was or what it might have been about. For most folks, that was too much of a mystery.

It is ALWAYS Moral Season in the Bible Belt. (Though I don't necessarily subscribe. ) If theabroma checks in maybe she can tell us about morels in Texas and start a thread on that. I don't know that I have ever eaten a fresh one. I have friends in Bellingham and they have promised to take me to some of their "secret patches" if I am ever up that way during morel season. My sister has a country place at Chapell Hills and goes into Brenham to shop. We will definitely check that out.

Welcome Waterlogged. I have friends with teenagers and unplugging the phone is just about the only way, short of chaining them to their chairs. Cell phones get turned off. Off-topic but it is just too funny not to share. A friend of mine had a daughter going through the "sulky" phase. About the third time the daughter flounced off to her room and slammed the door, my friend instituted a creative solution. Daughter got home from school to find that the door to her room had been REMOVED. With the doorknob removed, the door was in a prominent place in the garage with a big chain through the doorknob hole and a big padlock on the chain.

There is always the possibility that I have been hanging out in the wrong places. I certainly haven't looked to buy them and smoke them myself. Now I am beginning to think that that is "the right thing to do". My most vivid memories of them are the ones Grandpa brought home from Otto's. Then, later, from the BBQ place in Luling where I would go with my dad when he had to go there to get something for the country place. Haven't been there in years. Does anyone know if they still serve them?

I would be interested in this as well. I have the same gap in my book collection as well as knowledge between my ears. One of the things I want to do in 2004 is to learn more about Indian cooking. A good recommendation for a beginner would be nice. In the best of world's that book would also address the regional differences.

Well... I don't think dining at home is anything like a high end restaurant. It isn't "worse" or "better". It is just different. So, I can't make the restaurant analogy work. When I said that my son and I dined with the TV off, that meant 95% of the time. If we wanted to catch a program that we had a particular interest in, usually a documentary, then we would have it on and commenting on what we were seeing really added to the conversation. The same was true with a really important news event. Neither one of us are sports fans but I can see that sports fans might make the same exception for events that are important to them.

(Bless his/her heart!) I'm gonna <insert whatever here> if it hairlips every cow in Texas. (I have heard this one since I was young and it still makes no sense. It is useful for driving Europeans crazy.)

I had one of those culinary experiences in Cozumel that haunts you years later. I don't know if this will be any help since it has been several years since I was there but I will describe it anyway in case you can find something like it. The location was San Francisco Beach, a little way south of San Miguel. This was a popular public beach with decent snorkeling and concession stands. There was an outdoor grill under a palapa and they were grilling fish. We ordered and got 2 or 3 grilled fillets with rice and black beans. HO-HUM you say. Not so. The fish was actually griddled. The griddle-master had a container of oil that he sloshed on the griddle before putting the filets on. The filets were perfectly cooked, crispy and lightly browned on the edges and perfectly moist on the inside. Some of that yellowish griddling oil flowed over into the beans and rice on the plate. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I found out later that the "oil" was actually mojo de ajo. This is finely diced garlic that is slowly toasted in oil or a mixture of oil and butter. Then the oil is used for griddling. I now make mojo de ajo regularly and it is one of the staples in my fridge. I have tried doing fish with it in my cast iron skillet and have come close. But I have never achieved the perfection of that griddle-master on that particular day.

"must rinse leeks well" got me.

I was at friends' house last night for a lovely dinner. They gave me Best of the Best. It is an anthology of the best 100 recipes from the best cookbooks of the year, put out by Food & Wine. This is a fun book and I am flipping through it now.

Thanks for starting this thread, Suzanne. I will expand a bit on how this "rule" started. When my son came to live with me while finishing school when he was in his 20s, we made sure we had dinner together, at the table, no TV, whenever possible. That was before the "no-call" lists were available. We were both what I will call compulsive phone answerers. A... Ringing... Phone... Must... Be... Answered. Having our meal repeatedly interrupted by telemarketers, as well as clueless friends and family, we suddenly woke up. All of our phones, 2 land lines and 2 cell phones, had answering service of some sort. We had a discussion. Why do we feel compelled to answer the phone? We decided that it was a "learned response" and could, therefore, be un-learned. The experience was quite liberating. We let family members know that this was our new practice and that if there was an emergency they should announce that on the land line answering machine where we could hear it and we would then pick up. (Never has happened.) We laughed a lot for the first few days of this new rule because we would automatically start to answer the phone and then check ourselves. Then I finally got on the user id bandwagon. Now I don't even always answer the phone ANY time, not just meal time. BWAHAHAHAHA! I have taken back control of my life.

When the kids were growing up, dinner was at the table every night, whether at their dad's house or my house. It was just how we were both raised so they were, too. We really didn't think much about it or plan it, it is just what happened. They learned their manners and family traditions that way. No TV. Dinner was for conversation and manners were learned a little at a time, one correction at a time. They really don't remember not knowing how to act at dinner and that served them well later. Then my son lived with me for a few years when he was in his 20s and finishing school. When he moved in the dinner at the table was reinstated. No TV and let the answering machine answer the phone. Friends and family soon learned not to waste their time calling around dinner time. Funny thing... I found myself asking my son "May I be excused" if I finished first and had something to do.

OK... This extraordinary turn of events is going to require an expedition to the great Pacific Northwest to investigate. Um... Irwin, When is morel season?

Uh... Irwin... None of the things that you refer to have anything to do with Texas "hot links". None of the examples you have cited are anything like the original Texas hot links. You had to be here 30 or 40 years ago. They are a very special thing.

Thanks, foodie52. Now there is an idea!

Thanks for the link but I am with you. Those just don't look right. "Not too spicey"??? When speaking of hot links, that is heresy. GET A ROPE!

Over in the Louisiana forum, the subject of "hot links" came up in the jambalaya thread here. When I was a kid, my grandfather would go to his office on Saturday mornings and then stop by Otto's BBQ on the way home. He always brought an assortment of goodies. That assortment included hot links. In this case, the hot wasn't just that they came off the smoker and when you bit into them they just about popped and juice got all over your chin and shirt. There was a pretty darn good dose of pepper in there. I can picture those things now. looking through the translucent skin you could see the flecks of red pepper and a lot of black pepper. I haven't seen those on the menus of the usual BBQ places here in Houston now that I think about it. Sources? Occasionally, grandpa would also bring me a couple of BIG whole beef ribs. He called them dinosaur ribs. (I was an early dinosaur freak.) Haven't seen those, either.

Jacob's in LaPlace! My favorite source. Though it is getting a little more difficult to stash some in the carry-on. It looks like sticks of explosive in the x-ray and when the TSA folks see what it is they "confiscate" it... probably for lunch. Hasn't happened to me, yet, but has happened to friends.

The Aidell's was pretty good in the flavor department, decidedly bland in the cayenne department. I compensated by adding cayenne. I have tried various andouille available around here (Houston) and don't find any that are as hot as hot links. (You are right. Those are getting hard to find.) I am sure that those do exist but it doesn't seem to be the norm. But then, what I call "nicely spicey" someone else might call "inhumanely hot".