shiv

Chez Louis had some sour cherries when I stopped by yesterday afternoon. Not many left, though...

I would second the biscuits. Biscuits and gravy are the ultimate comfort food for me, and heck, I'm not even from the South! I would also add baked beans to the list.

potatoes broccoli bread maple syrup would be a veryclose fourth.

I sure hope this doesn't get my eGullet membership revoked... Mushrooms Chocolate ice cream Nuts in baked goods, especially brownies Mayonnaise and anything that contains even trace amounts of mayonnaise Mustard Relish Pickles Raw Tomatoes Coffee (though I *love* coffee ice cream and frappaccino-type drinks) BBQ potato chips Cream cheese EXCEPT in cheesecake and frosting Discernable egg yolks, especially when they're runny and leak onto other things on my breakfast plate. Scrambled eggs are particularly vile to me, in part because of the smell. As a child, my grandmother would hardboil eggs and we'd share them - me eating only the whites and she eating only the yolks. I'm not a big fan of cheese, at least when it's not melted. Pass on over all your unwanted Mexican food, whipped cream, bananas, watermelon, potatoes(!!), cilantro, pancakes, maple syrup, and brussels sprouts, though.

This drives my husband crazy. It's not that I want a huge volume of food - I would happily halve the individual portion sizes, in fact - but I love variety, usually in the form of side dishes. A few of the places that we're regulars at know this and will give me small portions of a few different sides. My boss is a chronic over-orderer of the absolute highest magnitude. We'll all order our meals and then he'll order several extra sides, especially if he knows someone at the table has a particular fondness for something. Then, if he doesn't think we've ordered an appropriate assortment of appetizers, he'll fill in the gaps as he sees fit, always ordering enough food for a party at least twice our size. And then comes dessert. We usually don't even get to order our own specific desserts - he'll just order 5 of this, 4 of that, 2 of these, a plate of these, etc. for everyone to split. On the one hand, it's gluttonous and terribly, terribly wasteful. On the other hand, I get to sample so many different things that it's hard to complain. And he extends the same principle to alcohol, so by the end of the meal, it's hard to really care about much of anything! :)

Any roast chicken is a good roast chicken in my eyes and I love to experiment. However, we keep coming back to the butterflied High-Heat Roast Chicken from Cooks Illustrated. It's simple, quick, easily changed up with different spices, and the chickeny-flavored potatoes it produces are to die for. Come to think of it, that's probably more my favorite roast potato recipe than it is roast chicken...

It was my grandmother's steak (and every other meat but poultry), but the experience was the same. I grew up refusing to eat ANY beef, lamb, or pork because of this, and dammit, I feel like I've been cheated! I've only recently started eating these things again, and it's like a whole new world has opened up to me. With the exception of carrots, celery, onions and potatoes, I don't recall ever having much in the way of fresh vegetables in the house, always frozen. We're Irish AND from New England, so boiling - and boiling, and boiling - was the cooking method of choice for pretty much everything. Thinking back, the only food that I can remember being consistently excellent were the potatoes. Fried, mashed, baked or just boiled, they always hit the spot. Could just be that they were the only edible part of most meals...

My family's huge and when everyone was around (usually on Sundays and all holidays, birthdays, etc), we had to use the dining room to fit all those people. By the time I came along, a lot of people had already moved out, so most week-day meals were eaten in the kitchen. Family gatherings were (and still are) common, though, so the dining room gets plenty of use. Now that it's just my husband and I, meals are split between the dining room and in front of the TV. We've got an island in the kitchen of our new home that would be great for eating, but we haven't found the right stools yet.

A pipe dream or am I just not looking in the right places?

I didn't think tomatoes were good for dogs...

Add another vote for ginger Altoids. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find them in the Montreal area, and have to stock up whenever I'm in the States.

In my (decidedly blue-collar) neighborhood, we referred to preppy rich kids as "cake eaters". And if you have a tendency to drop things, you might be referred to as having "butter fingers".

Grandparents were from Ireland and settled in Boston in the 1940s. We're a large family, so we always had a variety of desserts. As far as pie goes, it was usually just apple though occasionally mincemeat would make an appearance (in addition to apple, never as a replacement). There was invariably some chocolate creation, too, though rarely a pie. I don't recall EVER seeing a pumpkin pie on our TG table, and have never heard of cranberry pie.

I saw purple "Harry Potter" cauliflower at Marche l'Ouest over the weekend.

Growing up in Boston, Crunchies were a rare treat for us, usually brought by relatives visiting from Ireland. I sent them home regularly for a while after moving to Montreal, until my family politely informed me that they were able to get them at any of the local Irish stores.