Arey

I remember years ago reading articles on game, one game bird you were supposed to hang until its skin turned greenish, another recommended hanging one sort of game bird by its tail feathers, and when the bird fell off its tail feathers it was ready. Do people still hang game birds, and if so how has it changed from Victorian/Edwardian days?

My point is, you don't need a "setup" to take excellent pictures. My "setup"? a single CFL bulb with a kitchen plastic container, a tripod and a camera. dcarch I understand the simplicity - I'm just thinking the 'setup' pic would help, because in my minds eye I'm imagining your plastic container somehow taped to the ceiling light fixture in your dining room... I assume you're using a tabletop lamp or ? It would also probably be very illustrative for a photographic neophyte to see the results of a pic with & without the diffusor if you'd be so inclined. I'd also like to see how it's set up. I was thinking in terms of a swivel arm floor lamp with a cfl bulb and the plastic container put over it. Years ago I posted pictures to egullet but its been years since I uploaded one. I was never particularly pleased with the pictures I uploaded. My best one was the Salade de Limace photo in the snails and slugs thread.

Do you use any sort of photo editing software such as Paint Shop Pro?

There is a long running food photography thread on which people could post questions if their photographs don't do justice to their food. In view of the amount of time and effort some posters put into the preparation and plating of their food it's a shame when the photograph doesn't do justice to the food. Of course, there's the other side of the coin - really good photographs of food you wouldn't feed to a feral cat, but that's the sort of comment that I don't feel is appropriate for the thread.

In the Asian Supermarket I go to in a nearby community, the cashiers wear those blue disposable gloves. Only they don't dispose of them. They use them over and over again until they're almost black. Yes, it's disgusting, but if I want my Lee Kum Kee Oyster Sauce , chive dumplings, and MaMa Sita's barbeque sauce where else am I going to get them?. It's almost 60 miles to Philadelphia. In a similar vein, I frequently order 16 chicken drumsticks, skin off at my butcher shop.When peeling them. they reach under the butcher block, grab a very much used, and frankly, filthy apron and use it to yank the skins off after they've peeled the skin down to the bottom of the drumstick. When done they then wipe off the butcher block with the same apron, and throw it back down under the butcher block. Several years ago there was a food blog from an eguletteer who had returned to their hometown in India and was posting fascinating pictures of street food they were eating. They did however caution people that if they hadn't grown up eating this food in this community they might not want to eat it. Well, I feel the same way about my butcher and his aprons. I've been going there for almost 40 years and have built up an immunity to anything I could catch. But those cashiers in the Asian Supermarket with their coal black once blue gloves give me pause.

The creamsicle and the dreamsicle are not the same thing. They are two closely identical products, except the dreamsicle has ice milk for the center and the creamsicle has vanilla ice cream for the center. I grew up in creamsicle country. I only obtained this bit of minimally interesting information when I googled "dreamsicle" to find out why posters kept on misspelling "creamsicle" Basically orange sherbert and vanilla ice cream are one of those marriages made in heaven, although Martha Stewart does a very tasty variation involving orange sherbert, frozen vanilla yoghurt and pistachios. In my teens I would occasionally have a fudgesicle and dill pickle as an after school snack. It was every bit as bad as it sounds.

Recently there was a topic started on the Best National Dish.Tonight while having my dinner of Turkey Loaf (don't laugh I make a really good turkey loaf) Corn picked up at my favorite farmers market and generously slathered with Land O' Lakes unsalted butter, and glistening with salt, and a sliced Jersey tomato from the same farmers market (they grow their own of course) with Genovese Basil (I grow my own Basil) and dribbled with vinaigrette (Julia's basic vinaigrette), I was thinking that while it would presumptuous to think of listing the best national dishes, what about the best local dishes. What dishes can you get in your locality, that are seasonal and you can't get any wheres else. By the end of next month my basil will be shot, the only available corn will be in the frozen foods aisle of the local Acme Supermarket, the tomatoes will be those wretched plastic things, and my favorite farmer's market will have been given over to pumpkins and chrysanthemums. Will you miss produce that's not from Peru, China. Mexico, Holland or California, but from a place just down from the road from you?

I am an American. I live in the US, have been cooking ever since I was old enough to flip a pancake (using Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix) and have made Macaroni and Cheese over the years, and finally got it the way I really like it. However, if I served it to a group of four people, one them would probably say "No, no, no. That's not how you make Macaroni and Cheese. This is the way I make it and everyone raves over it." One would start telling the first what wrong with his recipe ,another would say he hates macaroni cheese and can't even stand the sight of it and ,the fourth would probably say "Why go to all the trouble, when Kraft in the blue box beats all". Edited to add that I really wouldn't think of Mac and Cheese as a national dish, much as I like it.

The factors you cite may have accelerated it, but changes I'm referring to began after WWII long before the internet and long before worldwide communication. The transportation infrastructure in So. Jersey dates to the 1950s and is in dire need of repairs. However, I do believe that television has contributed a lot to the disappearance of regional cuisine. In the "50s television and radio ads were continually pushing the idea that cooking and other housework was the most boring drudgery a housewife had to do. Why spend the afternoon slaving away in a hot kitchen when you could just pop a Swanson's Fried Chicken TV dinner in the oven (pre-microwave days) and serve it to your happy family on a TV Dinner Tray while watching Lucy? Look at all the work you saved yourself!

If you google "spaghetti worms" you will learn more than you want to know about the worms in fish. I stopped buying speckled trout because of them. I told my fish monger that when I look at what I'm getting ready to cook, I don't want it looking back at me, and lobsters are the only exception to that rule. If it's any consolation to you (it isn't to me) spaghetti worms only thrive in unpolluted water, so the fish you're eating probably comes from clean water.

On the next island down from Long Beach Island, if you don't count Little Beach,The Rod and Reel Tavern, the last fisherman's and local's dive on the island was inundated by Superstorm Sandy and will not reopen. I grew up in So. Jersey too, and can remember the squashed tomatoes littering Broad Street in Woodbury when the farm trucks were going from the farms to the Campbell's Plant in Camden. Our garbage was collected by an old man called Old John who rode around in a horse drawn wagon collecting garbage. There was always a stream of milky colored fluid leaking from his wagon. He took the garbage to the pig farms in New Sharon and fed to the pigs.This is probably one of the reasons my mother always cooled the hell out of pork. The pigs were wiped out by hog cholera, and the truck farms were wiped out by real estate developers. I have all the So. Jersey prejudices. Miracle Whip is good. Tasty Takes are far superior to anything Hostess makes, This is the only part of the whole country that produces real Italian Bread When you say you're going to the city you are, of course, referring to Philadelphia..

2 a day. 1 around 4:00PM and 1 after dinner.

In an issue of the Atlantic City Press this week there was a letter from the chef of an Ocean City NJ restaurant, criticizing restaurant patrons for using alleged allergies to get special treatment. One example was a customer who wanted to substitue something for the broccolli because she was allergic to broccoli and another who wanted to substitute french fries for mashed potatoes because of being allergic to potatoes. The letter ended with an ultimatum to the public to stop using so-called allergies to get special treatment. Naturally, the chef waited until the tourist season was well over before venting, but from the tone of the letter I got the impression that the chef must have bitten their tongue so often between Memorial Day and Labor Day that it was still sore at the end of September. Ocean City is a dry town, and an initiative to allow byobs was once more defeated recently, so it's not as if restaurant customers can mellow out over a bottle of wine or a couple of beers before ordering their meal.

Whenever I would cook thanksgiving dinner, by the time it was on the table, I didn't feel like eating. I used to want to just clean up the kitchen anb have a turkey sandwich and a glass of wine later. I also have a small un-airconditioned kitchen, and some days this last summer the temperature in the kitchen would be in the 80's before I even started cooking. I do have a small but powerful ceiling fan in the kitchen.

I always thought that Charles II's fave dish was Nell Gwynn. Or maybe he just wanted her oranges.

How do you plate dog food? I once had a sweet and gentle natured Airedale, but when I put her food bowl down, I had to get my hand out of the way very fast. Some years later I had a female Boston Terrier who savored her Jerky Treats. She'd hold it upright between her paws, and take a bite, and chew it slowly;she was a slow food advocate. The problem was her mate, my male Boston Terrier would be hovering around her waiting for an opportunity to snatch the Jerky Treat. There was once a very pretentious , but short lived , cafe on the island. One night when my dinner was served,tThere was a small charred object on one side of the plate. It puzzled me. I wondered - is it a garnish? - am I supposed it to eat it? - or should I call the waiter over,and tell him I want my dinner on a clean plate? I comprised, I didn't eat it,. and I didn't ask for a clean plate. As Julia put it, once "I don't like architectural food".

My dentist once told me that olive pits lead to a lot of dentist visits, so maybe healthy means they're pitted.

At the local produce store today I noticed a bottle of imported Greek tzatziki. It was $4.57 for a 3.5 ounce bottle. I asked the produce lady, if this was a joke, and she said no, sometimes people will buy 2 04 3 bottles at a time, and they sell about 17 bottles week. She said people don't cook anymore. So out of curiosity as I continued shopping I noted down the prices of ingredients you'd need if you wanted to make your own tzatziki. Generous sized cucumbers were 69 cents each. Fage 2% Greek yoghurt was $1.99 for a 7 oz container. Lemons were 3 for $1.19, Garlic was $2.99 a lb, and wine vinegar and olive oil were available at several different prices. Fresh dill and parsley were $1.99 a bunch. Why would anyone pay $4.57 for 3.5 ounces of tzatziki? If they didn't want to make their own? there are a lot of grocery stores, and supermarkets where you can buy it, and several Greek restaurants in the area will sell you their own freshly made tzatziki at what I considered an exorbitant price until this morning.

You probably never put lot of time and trouble into making soup from scratch only to have your Mother say "This is almost as good as what comes out of a can".

If you're eating wild striped bass in NJ that you bought at your favorite local store, you're in violation of the law and if the store gets caught selling wild striped bass you may need to find a new favorite fish store. Even if, as an amateur fisherman,you caught the fish yourself and were within the limit but had an extra fish, you can't sell it. A local bait and tackle store owner told me that what some amateur fishermen do is give the fish to a chef who then cooks it for them for their dinner. The only wild striped bass filet I've had in years came off the back of a neighbor's pickup who'd been out fishing for the day. Just recently there was an article in the paper about one of those charter boats that take people out on ocean for a days fishing. Apparently they were catching out of season black sea bass right and left. What they didn't know was that NJ DEP officers were mingling with them, and over 3 dozen summonses were handed out, 800 out of season black sea bass were confiscated and the captain of the boat is under investigation.

In the Proencal author Jean Giono's short story "The solitude of Compssion" which is set in Provence a cure has been given a bundle of pig tripes by his brother. His housekeeper initially starts it sizzling in fat with "bits of purple liver like flowers and rice on the stalk". When the cure asks his housekeeper what she's making she responds "it's a picoche", and than pours a a "thin stream of thick wine with the smell of wood root" into the pan. Can anyone tell me what the housekeeper is making

Thanks for the the information. The French lentils I have are shown below. Sorry about the blurryness, but I took the picture on my dining room table using my macro lens without using a tripod. I'll have to look around the internet for a better quality lentil to plop my salmon down on.

I buy bags of "French Green Lentils" at a local market, the only place that has them where I am. They are mostly tiny dark green lentils with dark blue blotches, mixed in with equally tiny dark brown, and tan lentils. On the internet, I've found Lentils du Puy which are more expensive, and Le Puy Lentils (AOC) which are the most expensive ($11.95 for 1 lb +$9.95 shipping and handling. Is there enough difference in the quality and taste of the generic French green Lentils I buy and the Le Puy (AOC) lentils to justify the expenditure? I have a very poor sense of smell, and a not particularly sensitive palate so I don't like to buy expensive food items where I might not be able to tell the difference anyway.

Since I'm only cooking for one, when I make rice I use 13 3/4 ounces liquid, 6 1/2 ounces white long grain rice, and have enough for that nights meal plus three 1 cup servings frozen in freezer containers for later. Right now I have saffron rice, rice with peas and mushrooms, and plain rice in the freezer section of my refrigerator. Eventually I'll make rice pilaf with parsley and pine nuts, and curried rice and freeze some. The only drawback to doing this is the amount of time I spend rubbing the outside of the container with mineral oil to get the residue from the label off.

I live on a NJ barrier island about 1/2 mile from the ocean and three blocks from the back bay. In preparation for huricane, I threw out several items such as a quart carton of milk with half a quart of milk in it, and some other things mentioned in a thread about things that can cause a lasting stench in a refrigerator when the refrigerator loses power, and during my last power outage , which lasted 32 hours despite living in a metropolitan area, I removed all the perishables, put them in a box and pushed them down into the 2 foot drift on my porch which had been left by the blizzard which caused the outage. This time in preparation I filled freezer containers with tap water, didn't put the lids on, and crammed as many as I could into the freezer and filled the ice cuber holder in the freezer with a lot of ice cubes , and filled a large but awkward space in the freezer with a ziplock bag filled with iced cubes. Lastly, I filled a shopping bag with all the fresh vegetables and salad greens in the refrigerator, and took them me with to my brother's house in western central Jersey. I left my house because of the mandatory evacuation order and stayed at my brother's in an area where there should have been a voluntary evacuation and was on the fringes of an area which should have had a mandatory evacuation area. Unless you count the empty beer can from my neighbor's recycling bin which had been blown onto my lawn I had no damage. The local municipalities, county governments, and state government tried to play it safe this time around, and after what happened the next time they'll probably play it really really safe, and issue a mandatory evacuation order for the entire state of NJ.