Thanks for the Crepes

I tried and tried to not say anything ... It did not work. I have to smile and roll my eyes at all the machinations over cooking grits. But I know you folks are having fun with it and that is a great thing. At least our Southern grits are getting a wider audience, even if everyone seems to be making such a business out of a simple staple food. When we lived in Vermont in the 70's it was impossible to get grits up there and it was before the internet and online ordering. We got a LOT of mail order stuff from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, but no grits offered. Our relatives on my Dad's side in Louisiana sent care packages with country ham and grits. The grits were the regular Quaker white ones that require no culinary magic to cook.

Please don't assume mosquitoes and other bugs won't be a problem just because you're going to be in the mountains. Make sure and pack your insect repellent. Unless you are above a certain (very high and cold) altitude, at this time of year, you are fair game in the mountains too. Have fun. I hope you have a great time!

@Kim Shooksaid: "I have a terrible time finding fryers that small. My best bet was a store that used to have a small kosher section. They have closed that section and now I'm at a loss. I love the little ones for frying." In the Manatoulin thread. I hear ya, lady. My Betty Crocker Cook Book from 1976 calls for chickens in the 1-1/2 to 2, 2-1/2 to 3 and 3-1/2-4 pound ranges. It's ideal for frying is 2-1/2 pounds and the larger ones are only mentioned for roasting. The two recipes for Cornish game hens call for 1 to 1-1/4 pound birds back then! Due to the Big Ag overtake of chicken farming in this country to the point that countries that care about the welfare of their common people have banned import of our salmonella and otherwise unhealthy and tasteless overgrown chickens, chickens are now grown in hellish conditions covered upthread. They gain weight so fast their poor bones can't develop fast enough to support the weight so they break and deform. They are confined in stacked cages where their wastes fall down onto the next tier. They are in such close quarters it's no wonder that once one is infected they all are. Oh, and the ammonia fumes mentioned above? I repeatedly asked to see a chicken barn that was being managed in these relatively new intensive conditions on a dairy farm in Vermont, circa 1974, and was repeatedly denied. Seems they were ashamed of it. I eventually talked one of the sons into letting me go in and even my young, pink lungs could not endure long in that miasma. I saw enough to know that to make a profit, these animals were going through a hell that would cause a a sentient being to commit suicide immediately. The kidneys work overtime to clean all the poisons out of commodity chickens and they are often obviously pathologic. It is so bad that often that thin bone that cups the kidney (sorry, do not know the name) becomes even thinner and sometimes bumpy and otherwise deformed. One of my nieces helped her then NC State Ag student boyfriend manage a chicken barn like this and they won first place for chicken weight gain. I had to bite my tongue about off to keep from alienating her. It's all about the bottom line and taking advantage of what folks will tolerate for a cheap tasteless chicken dinner. Bonus! You have to treat it like nuclear waste when it's raw! Grandpa was run out of his small dairy business many years ago, but within my lifetime, over ostensible health concerns. It burns me COMPLETELY up that the chicken raising business has been so corrupted to concentrate profits into a few fat cats hands and now it is so filthy here that it is banned in many countries! This was all done by our government to benefit large corporations. Now if you want to raise chickens the right way, you have to appeal to a niche market of wealthy elite who can afford it. You have to work in less than 5% of the market for chickens. I can't afford decent chicken most of the time anymore, so I have to gird myself every time I handle raw chicken for the nuclear waste ordeal and in the end, I get tasteless protein and nothing more. Chicken can be SO much better, more people can make a living out of it and more people would be eating chicken perfume instead of this toxic and sad dreck we find in our US grocers today. Fortunately for the farmers, the animals and us hapless citizens, it seems much harder to funnel all the profit from the dairy and beef industries, so those remain a little more humane and reasonable. They have certainly managed to cut out the truly little guy even there, though. Many of the farmers responsible for running these hell holes for chickens don't make much money off of this operation and are totally at the mercy of Big Ag Corporations like Perdue and Tyson. As a farmer, if your overlords who loan you money to get started order you to do anything, you do it or you lose a lot. I saw one video of a female chix farmer who was under contract and in debt to one of the giants and they wanted her to borrow more money to go to a dark barn that doesn't let in light. Apparently their research showed that model would produce even more meat per unit of food spent on the chickens. She was dejectedly pulling dead chickens out of her chicken house that did admit light, saying 20 or more a day was just "normal". She ultimately decides not to put the chickens in the dark. I hope she did okay, but I doubt it. Many of these individual farmers are not bad people. They have beloved kids and pets. The dairy farmers' operation in VT mentioned above was run ethically with utmost concern for the welfare of the dairy and other animals. That is why they were so ashamed of the chicken house, and why I had to charm one of the sons into letting me even see it. Sorry to rant again. I have done it before and turned some folks off, but this is something I'm passionate about. My Grandpa used to raise chickens for eggs and meat and they were truly free range. Best chicken and pork I ever ate came from his farm. THE GOOD NEWS IS: Cornish game hens, sold now almost exclusively in the freezer section of grocery stores in two-packs are now weighing in at 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 per bird. They are raised in the same Hell, but because they aren't there as long, their respiratory and renal organs don't have as much time to start shutting down. They probably still have salmonella, but they will taste better than the 6 or 7-pounder that has to endure longer. Also I have gotten very good and reasonably priced organic,free-range chicken at Kroger. Unfortunately, Kroger just closed down operations in my area. If you have a Kroger still near you, check out their organic, free-range chicken. It tastes like chicken perfume compared to the commodity ones. That's the way I know it was really raised humanely. They taste different by miles, and you do not need some snooty wine palate to notice the difference. These humanely-raised chickens will taste better to any average Joe/Jane off the street. I am convinced there would be a revolution against Big Ag if Joe/Jane ever knew the difference. It would cost a little more, but once they tasted the difference, it would move into the mainstream and become cheaper again. Like it used to be, where everyone could afford GOOD chicken that wasn't toxic and raised in a Hell we should all be ashamed of, and the farmers doing all the work would be reaping profits instead of being slaves to Big Ag and being forced to mistreat our food animals. /rant ... til next time

Jo, You could have eaten yellow grits down here somewhere. I was just speaking about my limited experiences in my current area, and I can also say that the folks at whose homes I ate grits in Northwestern Louisiana and just over the AR border at my aunt's place, also ate white grits. But I tend not to eat at fancy, expensive restaurants, and can't even remember eating out at all in Louisiana. Different areas of the South have different food traditions, though. For instance, Eastern and Western North Carolina styles of BBQ. Raleigh/Cary is kind of in the middle of the state, but tends to lean mostly toward Eastern BBQ. For the love of all that is holy, do not bring up religion, politics or BBQ style at a civilized dinner party down here! @Katie Meadow, I'm glad you said something about hominy grits. I mentioned them somewhere before, and another member (can't remember which one) said there was no such thing. Well the staple of the common folks I know of, who are not foodies who mail order extra special grits, is the Quaker brand I already mentioned. I have never seen any that were not labeled "hominy" grits. They don't taste like masa harina, but they do taste a lot like canned hominy. As far as I can tell, this is what the restaurants serve too. All restaurants serve this dish because it's cheap and lots of people order them, so good for food costs. With Quaker quick grits, you have to ignore the package directions to make them smooth and creamy, the way I like them. Quaker says 1 c grits to 3 c water, but I add an extra cup. They say they are ready in 5 minutes. Well sure, if you like your grits gritty. I had an epiphany moment at Pam's Farmhouse Restaurant in Raleigh one morning when I ordered their grits because the home fries I had ordered twice before came soggy and not browned. (Don't get me wrong, the home fries are the only thing I don't like from there. They make sublime biscuits that are better then mine any day.) Because restaurants make up a big batch of grits and hold them for service on low heat, they get a chance to become really creamy. So I knew I had to cook mine at home longer than the package directions. I figured out that I had to add more water to do this later, in practice, and started adding the extra cup from the start. Grits hold fine on low heat, and if they start to get too thick, just stir in more water, another reason restaurants like them. Another tip I picked up here from a member is to stir your grits into cold water instead of boiling water if you have a batch that is giving you problems with lumps. Again, this goes against package directions. Sheesh! I can understand people's negative reactions to grits when they try to make them according to the leading brand's directions. And @Kim Shook, have you ever seen anything else that splatters oil so fiercely as next day fried leftover grits!? I didn't own a splatter screen till the day I got popped in the face just under my eye. Now I'm the proud owner of an all stainless steel one, pretty much for this one job. You still have to move fast though and hold the screen between your body and the pan while turning the damned, but delicious, things over. They still manage to get me on the wrists often. Love fried grits, though. Shrimp and grits started out as a humble breakfast dish in the Low Country on the NC and SC coasts, where shrimp was a cheap protein and grits are always cheap. There's as many recipes as cooks, but I am sure that the people who originated it with not much more than the ingredients in the name are astounded at the complex recipes restaurants have come up with today as it has become trendy. I'm astounded at how much many of them get away with charging for it.

I'm not an expert on blue corn meal, but I can tell you that the yellow stone ground cornmeal I've bought for years does not suffer from uneven grinding and it cooks up just fine in cornbread or pone. It's Old Time brand from Wilson-Rogers Mills, Ellicott City, MD. The most common grits I encounter are the white ones that are course ground. I've never seen yellow grits in a restaurant and every one of them serves grits at breakfast around here. The grocery stores all offer white Quaker grits in instant or quick varieties. There may be more on offer, but I always grab the quick ones, making sure I don't pick up instant by mistake. That's a shame about your blue corn meal @chromedome. It sure would make an unusual and pretty cornbread, but if the texture is like sand ... You came up with a clever way to be able to use it anyway, though.

I came upon this fun YouTube video where a guy and his friends try 23 NY pizza slices in 36 hours. It made me famished for good pizza and it's not even 7 AM. It takes about 19 minutes, but if your in the mood to salivate over NY pizza, it's 10 minutes well spent say I.

I found this in rabbit hole on YouTube. It interested me, so others who sometimes get a craving for Subway might also enjoy it. I must say that this is the most inconsistent chain I think I have ever eaten at though. It ranges from crave-inducing to disgusting, depending on the luck of the draw with the management of each franchise. Usually not worth the risk for me anymore, but if I'm ever stuck at Duke Hospital again in Durham, NC, I would try the one in the food court again. As I mentioned upthread, the close franchise that put rotten spinach on my sandwich before my very eyes (I said nothing and picked it off at home. I avoid public conflict.) has very justifiably gone out of business. The Jared pervert thing probably did hurt their business image, but since I pay little attention to marketing and a lot more to quality of the actual food, that really didn't bother me, as far as considering a purchase from Subway. I just can't trust them to deliver edible food across their outlets. Fortunately, we have a lot of local places that do a consistent and great job with made-to-order subs. Harris Teeter grocery store has really good ones, and especially when they are on a special sale sometimes, they're a great value too.

I did not realize this was happening between Jane and Michael Stern, but I guess after the movie "Ambulance Girl", I shouldn't be surprised. (Which I own.) I'm sad to see that they are no longer married. At least they are rich now. I really thought they might pull out of the tailspin, but apparently not. Roadfood site is pretty much ruined, but at least they are rich now. Here is a You Tube of both of them in their older years, not so appealing as either was when they were younger, but who the hell is? You can go backward or forward in the first link, which is Jane's Diary, if you wish.

I just wanted to share a trick for getting rid of slugs or snails which can really devastate your garden plants, flowers and vegetables. I lived in a place where they were just horrible! It was close to a pond that attracted ducks and geese, so I guess the water was part of the problem. In my flower and vegetable beds, I started putting plastic containers of beer buried up to the rims. This worked really, really well! Snails and slugs love beer and fall into the ground level containers by the dozens every night. Just be sure to empty these every single morning, because I forgot for a week and was confronted with decomposing corpse smell. This does work, though. So ... don't forget to empty the container every day. I used to put the used beer and dead slugs/snails in the garbage disposal.

*Sigh* I would really, really like to skip the bleak part of everything. I seem not very skillful at this, but I keep trying.

@ChocoMom, I looked up the Keeweenaw Mountain Lodge on Yelp and Trip Advisor and the photographs of the place are really beautiful! It reminded me of the lodge in the Catskills depicted in the movie "Dirty Dancing". (The real lodge where it was filmed is actually in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.) A lot of the reviews indicate it's sorely in need of new management for this gorgeous property, so maybe the sale will turn out to be a good thing. It has wonderful potential. Sounds like you had a great Fourth, and I'm very glad to see your knee is healing well enough to allow swimming.

Oh, okay. For the great unwashed, like me, Nacho is Bobby Flay's great orange Maine Coon cat, and thence comes the name. I already liked him for trying to bring healthier food to people. Now that I know he's a cat lover like me, I'll pay more attention. Cat lovers are always really good people, in my experience. I have failed to get along with anyone who can't find in their heart to love cats. I think it is a character indicator. I love dogs and other animals too, but folks who can't get along with cats tend to be arrogant, selfish and just demand too much attention. Cats are really very affectionate when you deserve it. Some folks don't deserve it. and I figure that's why they don't like cats. 😼

So ... blueberries on bread spread with cream cheese, but what are the red stripes that would harmonize with all that? And so cool a little kid (future chef) came up with this creation.

I love to eat as much as the next gal/guy. I have to say, though, that I think the culture/society that promotes overeating to this life-threatening extent is extremely sad. 78 hot dogs and buns. Think about it. I don't find it funny at all. Others see it differently, obviously.

Nope, that caterpillar would be deceased under my foot along with any tomato hornworms. Gardeners work too hard to let the predator pests take all the bounty, and this comes from a person who carries "pill bugs" outside if they manage to get into my home.

liuzhou, Are the reddish round things in the image at 9 oclock, the jujubes. They are a fruit I'm unfamiliar with, but when I looked them up, I got these images. To most in the US jujubes mean this. What is shown in your photo kind of looks like the irregular shapes and sizes of small Red Bliss potatoes to me, complete with eyes. Perhaps they are cooked to account for the collapsed look of a fruit that when raw is quite symmetrical in shape? Thank you for your great content, as usual. I know so much more about day to day life in China thanks to you. I just rewatched "Red Corner" for probably the fifth time, and I must say you a are very brave and special individual to live and thrive there so successfully. I would be afraid to even visit your adopted country.

I've been doing it all along since I was twelve, and never cut myself. I use a sharp, thin knife, and use the structural integrity of the ribs and other bones in the bird to come in from the top of the back, through the skin. I grab the tail and just run the blade along either side of the spine away from me. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but it sure works for me. I make the initial incision with the point near my hand which holds tension on the spine. So not much downward pressure to "collapse" the chix. Mostly forward and upward pressure with a sharp, thin knife. I will also say that I do not think I'm bad at cutting up a chicken. It's hard at first to apportion the skin properly over all the pieces, especially the breast, which needs it the most. I can honestly say that when I buy chicken pieces in the store that I usually do a better job with the skin allotment than they do, even though they are working with a bone saw. I sure am interested in how others do it though, because I did not realize my way of doing it was unusual.

Good question. Perhaps mine is the aberrant approach. I was taught by my aunts at a major chicken slaughter operation in grandma's kitchen. I just hate getting scratched by rib bones knowing how unclean chickens can be today, and the outside approach seems to provide more room for leverage and just seems easier. Of course, I have the bird with its breast skin side down on the cutting surface when making the incision beside the spine. Opposite of what you do. Now I am really wondering what other people do and what they think is the most efficient way to do this?

@JoNorvelleWalker, I'm glad you found the likely solution to your problem in your own living room. I have to ask though, what exactly are you trying to do inside the cavity of a whole bird? I always remove the kidneys before cooking, and I have a hard enough time doing that inside a whole bird. A table knife with a blunt tip and very finely serrated edge works best for me for that task. The biggest hassle is to avoid getting injured by the stray broken rib that seems to be so common today in commodity poultry available at the grocery store. I always hope it happened post-mortem. For spatchcocking or cutting up the whole bird, I use a filet/boning knife for the whole job, I do cut on one side of the spine through the ribs. I go at this from the outside of the bird. This knife works fine to disjoint the bird and even split the breast bone in half as long as I start the knife in tip first at the thickest part of the bone toward the middle. I go at this job from what would have been the inside of the cavity with the whole breast skin side down. This operation would benefit from a stouter knife and if I were doing more than a single bird, I'd pull one out. You can't pry with this thin blade, you have to cut and use it as a wedge. I wouldn't try to lop the ends off of drumsticks with it either. If you are crazy dedicated to the culinary arts enough to want to debone a small bird through the cavity, please do report.

I agree about the short ribs I have access to being a horrible value. By the time you account for bone weight and shrinkage, I think you need to almost triple the already expensive price per pound. Way out of my league, but I remember my mom being able to buy good short ribs at a butcher we went to in Chula Vista when I was a little girl. If you can find beef cheek it is comparable to short ribs in flavor and texture and a better value around here at the Latino markets. I love both beef cheek and short ribs, but my goodness! I can buy rib eye cheaper than short ribs even before the waste factors.

I've been admiring and drooling over @blue_dolphin's paleta-style popsicles for years now. When I was a kid we had the Tupperware molds, but just froze Kool-Aid in them. I don't have any molds now, and haven't had any way to get them, but I did find some paleta-style popsicles in the low end grocery store, Food Lion the last time I went and they are really quite good. The brand name is Solero, sounds Mexican, right? Well they are distributed by Iris Brands, LLC Minneapolis, MN. BUT, the ingredients on the box of six I bought (6-2.75 fl oz bars, net 16.5 fl oz, 487 ml) are only strawberries, water, sugar, lemon juice concentrate, carob gum, guar gum. So pretty good stuff. I really like them. They are only 80 calories apiece, so not overly sweet, and you can really taste the fruit and the texture is there as well. Now, they are not tart enough for me, but I really like tart to offset sweet, so YMMV. I think they would benefit from a touch of citric acid to be perfect. I paid $3.00 for my box on sale, and they are normally $4.49 for the box of 6. So much more expensive than the colored sugar and artificially flavored ones, but not even in the same category. They also had pineapple ones in this brand on offer, but I didn't but any. Now I wish I had, plus more of the strawberry ones too! I can really recommend these commercial popsicles, which I would imagine are distributed on a national scale.

Ha! I thought it was some sort of candied fruit loaf. Now that you mention it, I remember my first step-mother, who was from Cambridge Mass making a similar gumdrop loaf cake when we lived in VT. @ElsieD, I don't blame you for not making the long climb to the lighthouse is bad weather. I remember struggling up Sugarloaf Mountain in Heber Springs, AR in my early twenties on a hot summer day. It was a nice view one we got up there, but I still don't know if it was worth all the effort. I certainly wouldn't even think about it now. I still think I would have enjoyed staying at the campground and swimming and diving off the cliffs into the lake more than that climb, which was not my idea. I'm really enjoying sharing your trip and loving on the lobster dinner especially. The cod au gratin looked delicious too, so I looked up the recipes, and it looks like something I could make without too much trouble and would really enjoy. Here's hoping for some better weather for you.

I had the first fresh yellow peach of the season for breakfast, and it was juicy, sweet, tangy and peachy, just like I always hope for from a peach and seldom realize. It had been left of the counter at room temp for six days, and I put the others in the fridge to enjoy later.

@robirdstx, I cook pot pies marked "do not prepare in toaster oven" frequently in the CSO. I put it on the pan that came with that I've lived with foil. I also fashion a pie shield out of narrow strips of foil so the rim of the crust doesn't get too brown and have to be thrown away. Wish I had lined the pan with foil when I cooked lemon pepper wings the other day. The citric acid in the lemon pepper seems to have left stains I can't get out, but it's a cooking pan, not an objet d'art. I like the steam clean function, but you are going to have to wipe it out afterward, and since it's just water, it doesn't really cut grease, so if I've cooked something like chicken or pork chops I'll wipe off as much grease as I can before starting steam clean as well.

Oh yes! I forgot to mention my very favorite diet soft drink: plain sparkling water or seltzer. It's nothing but pure water and carbonation. I used to buy Perrier or San Pellegrino, but those are expensive and no longer in the budget. Now one of my treats is plain seltzer water from Food Lion or Harris Teeter. It runs about $1.00 to $1.19 for two liter plastic bottles, and would be cheap and easy to keep in stock if I could get to the grocery without help. I have four cherished and horded bottles from Food Lion now, and lemons to go with them. I don't need it sweetened. The tap water here used to be very good, but we got a different crowd elected into our legislature and they have allowed development around Jordan Lake, where our water supply comes from. There is so much ammonia and/or chlorine in our tap water now, that I am thinking seriously about boiling before drinking. It is horrible out of the tap, and I have to drink a lot of it. It is laughable that the legislators actually sidestepped federal regulators orders to clean up the lake with these stupid Solar Bees. Everyone knew they wouldn't work from the start. The federal regs have no teeth and I don't ever expect to have good clean water here again, not from my tap anyway.