Thanks for the Crepes

Okay, I can't let @robirdstx's post go with this resilient little Texas burger joint. Oh my God! She always seems to hit on places I want so badly to go. This image from Yelp says it all. I was looking at the other photos and I thought, you know, these burger buns look perfect, fresh and homemade. Guess what? They are! And look at those Happy Hour specials that go til closing on Mondays! My dinners have been kind of boring compared to finding a great burger place in the midst of all the destruction in TX, but this is what I've been eating anyways. Recently I've eaten store bought cheese ravioli with marinara sauce that was pretty good. I served this with another Greek salad and very good garlic bread. I'm going to freeze the rest of the feta in single servings for future salads after helpful advice from @ElsieD. Then another night, I had vegetable spring rolls bought from the hot Asian bar at Harris Teeter, followed by shrimp fried rice with frozen shrimp and rice. It also had peas, carrots, spring onions, soy sauce and egg. Tonight was tacos and refried beans with copious and untraditional cheeses. I used premade crispy taco shells, fried up my ground chuck with a Hatch chili, minced green onions, mild chili powder, salt, and black pepper. The toppings were shredded lettuce, Campari tomatoes, shredded cheddar and sour cream. I put the sour cream on the plate and garnish with more of my good mild chili powder. Tacos are messy enough, the way I overstuff them. Sour cream on top just makes for a huger mess, so I pick it up with a fork from the plate while I eat. The refried beans were La Constena brand, as usual, out of Laredo, TX. If you aren't afraid of a little pork fat and can get these things, just do it. It made me completely change the way I cook pinto beans from dried. For single folks, the La Costena refried pintos come in a 20.5 oz can. I split them into three portions, freezing two of them in 8 oz. Daisy sour cream containers. I can't tell the difference when I thaw them the next time. I write "Frijoles" on the lid with a Sharpie and reuse the lids after washing in the dishwasher which takes years to wear down the Sharpie's permanent marks. On top of these beans in an individual casserole, after getting them pretty hot went hot sauce around the perimeter of the dish, a circular slice of provolone, and a few sprinkles of grated cheddar, with a little minced green onion on top of the cheeses. It was heated just enough more to melt the cheeses and served with house made tortilla chips from Esmeralda Grill restaurant that were leftover and taken home last time I ate there. Provolone is not at all traditional for frijoles refritos, but I just love the way it strings out when it's hot like a very good pizza. Eating it with the chips I had heated in the Dutch oven was an experience. I would pull up a bite of frijoles, smear it on the chip with a fork, but then have to circle the chip like ten times with the fork to finally break all the strings of cheese and wind them around both the chip, loaded with beans and cheese and the fork would have some strings of cheese wound up on it too. Good stuff!

I would love to taste the Shrimp and Crab and Black Pepper Beef, sans corn and mayo for my order, please. I'd like to add a little thin sliced onion to the Shrimp and Crab along with a little garlic. I want to add a few hot peppers and more thin sliced onion to the Black Pepper Beef one, please. I love reading menus. So many food fantasies going through my admittedly warped little mind. Have you tasted any of these, liuzhou? If so, how are they? Seafood on pizza seems weird to some, but I have made Pepe's (New Haven, CT) clam pizza on homemade crust to Micheal Stern's (Road Food) description of it for many people, and they love it. My beloved nephew was skeptical, but pronounced that I'd "pulled it off" in spite of his doubts. Sooo good.

Host's note: this post, and several responses, were split from Anybody know of any serious blogs or websites that recreate weird vintage recipes? Yes Shelby, lots of fun to be had there. I don't think it's very serious, though. I will ask @frigidlizard at this point if you would like some recipes, I have tried and still make in regular rotation from the Better Homes Cookbook 1968 and the Betty Crocker Cook Book 1969. I also have some recipes that are pretty old in my copy of Joy of Cooking. None of them are like the gelatin salads that get the laughs. I'm sort of a retro cook at times, and so is @Kim Shook, who might be another resource. There was also a poster from down under that was intensely interested in food history @The Old Foodie, but they haven't posted since 2009 so they probably lost interest here. You might want to search for some of the old posts though, as they always caught my interest.

I used to do that too, lindag. That is how my freezer became my enemy instead of my friend. Even in high summer, you can clean out your freezer. Just do it the day before your scheduled garbage pickup, or maybe in rural Montana, the day you will haul your own trash to a centrally located dumpster or a town dump. Been there, done that with both of those garbage disposal methods. I realize with the kind of wildlife you have in Montana, setting it out for them would be very dangerous. I have many more times than once, been digging through overfull freezers, looking for something that was in there, putting everything on the counters. I would set the item aside when found and begin putting stuff back into the freezers. I'll be damned if I haven't crammed the target item back in there, simply because there was no room on the counters to really set it aside. It gets quite insane. If I did this again, I'd put the target item in the fridge until I put everything else back. My freezers may return to their usual unmanageable and wasteful state, but I sure hope not.

Do you have real wood cabinet bottoms like I do? Even some very expensive newer cabinets have those chip/composite? board bottoms and that stuff will not take moisture for long at all. There's a lot a of stuff wrong with my house, but my beautiful real wood cabinets with antiqued brass pulls and hinges sure isn't one of them. It was one of the things that roped and tied me to this place. I still don't think I'd want to be steaming them all the time, though. The humidity is crazy high here anyway, and it just doesn't seem like a very good idea. How has it worked out for you so far?

Erm, if I wanted to go with this recipe, I'd just use Jello brand pudding mix (for me the sugar free) and make it to the pie filling directions, which uses less milk and sets up firmer. I actually like this better than my own homemade, because I'm not a fan of the skin that forms on homemade puddings. To some that is the best part, but not for me. I use Jello pudding to make Southern style banana pudding. They make a banana flavor, which I have tried, but it tastes artificial, and the real bananas with the regular vanilla one bring plenty of natural fragrance and flavor to the party. I like to let it chill for about twenty four hours to let the 'Nilla wafers (generic at half the cost for me) soften and the banana flavor permeate everything. Jello chocolate pudding sets up into a pie that can be sliced and served neatly for chocolate pie too when made with the reduced milk pie filling formula. Like @Kasia, I think this substitution would work just fine. It won't be blancmange, but it will work. If anyone's interested, I'd be willing to transcribe a pretty interesting history of blancmange from my old "Joy of Cooking" about how it morphed from capon breast, almonds, cornstarch, breadcrumbs into vanilla pudding, still going by the same name. At one point some years back the name was dropped completely in this country, and only older folks have even heard of it. I really think this will work fine @oli. Good luck with it.

@shain, phenomenal-looking pizzas! @Katie Meadow, That was the second reference I read today to pizza having a skirt today. I had never heard that term before. The first time was this article about Ashley Christensen (a hot Raleigh chef) on a tasting tour in Italy in preparation for opening a new Neopolitan pizza place in downtown Raleigh and there's a reference to her inspecting the skirt of a lovely margarita pizza. We need to get with it. @rotuts, Great looking burgers. I don't care much for the plastic grinders either, but all of mine are openable and refillable. I have TJ's Himilayan Pink Salt, Smoked Sea Salt and Rainbow Peppercorns. I also have a Mr. Paulson's White Peppercorns plastic one. All are designed so you can grasp the collar under the grinding mechanism and unscrew it from the plastic bottle holding your spice. Yours might be different? @robirdstx, It's amazing T.J. Reed's was able to reopen so quickly. You can't keep a Texan down! And those onion rings ... *drooling* I will be entertaining/torturing myself further shortly while I peruse their menu and the Yelp reviews and photos.

That really sucks and sounds like something that would happen to me. I hope your fingers aren't burned to badly, and I'm sorry for the demise of your blender. I had the clumsy dropsies day before yesterday. Everything I touched seemed to turn into a mild disaster. I didn't wind up actually breaking anything, but had a lot of unnecessary additional cleanup during dinner prep. "Way to go, Grace!" I thought the third time I messed up. Probably said it out loud (OK, I did). Living alone without even a cat to talk to will do that to a person. Oh, and today, I managed to ruin a stainless teaspoon that had slipped into the garbage disposal. The noise scared the bejesus out me! I know better then leaving short silverware in that sink with the disposal. Thank goodness the disposal itself is still okay. Go away, evil kitchen spirits!

Another story that convinces me I do not ever need a mandoline.

Where is the Mr. Yuk icon? I'm aging myself by actually remembering this commercial. Seriously though, if millions of people like corn on pizza so much, it might be worth a shot. Mayo, probably not so much, although it seems to work with Mexican street corn. I'd also be interested to hear how @Katie Meadow's corn and zuke pizza turned out.

So sorry you were injured. I was really concerned when the first description of a squash ball (not familiar) came up in what I carelessly read as CM so the translation came out as 15" diameter. I was like, "That's not a lump. That's elephantiasis!" Sorry. I quickly found it was really MM and converts to an inch and a half that I'd have described as a ping pong or golf ball. Still very serious. We're too old for such adventures these days, and I hope you can figure out a way to avoid a repeat. You live alone like I do and that puts a whole new scary meaning on getting seriously injured at home. It's been decades since I've lived alone. I am very careful these days in the bathtub and coming up and down the stairs. I used to get thrown from a horse and dust myself off and keep going. Those days are over for me. I'm hoping you're going to be okay and didn't wrench your neck or something in addition to the head trauma. Take care.

I like to put a little grated zucchini that has most of the water pressed out into cheese and onion enchiladas to lighten them up a bit. I got the idea from Torero's Mexican Retaurant here in Cary that uses zucchini as part of a veggie medley they put into their vegetarian cheese enchiladas. I put it in uncooked, and by the time the cheese is melted, it is fine. My favorite way with zucchini is planks either grilled over charcoal or dusted in flour and fried. I can eat a surprising amount of it either way. There used to be an appetizer dish at Ramada Inn in Memphis that was called Zucchini Lyonnaise that was nothing more than zucchini and onions cooked in an individual casserole dish with butter and salt. I became a regular at the bar during summer time, always ordering this dish and a few margaritas. Then I would stroll out to the pool, take off my street clothes in the ladies room and stuff them into my gym bag, taking out the towel I'd brought from home. I had worn a swimsuit underneath, and then I would swim in their pool like I owned the place. My story to the chatty bartender was that I came into town frequently on business. It didn't hurt that I tipped well. This strategy was so effective, that the bartender eventually told me to pick up the phone at poolside and order my drinks brought out there, and they could be charged to my (non-existent) room. Needless to say, I declined. I got up to some stuff when I was younger, but nothing that ever hurt anyone. I've tried several times to make this zucchini lyonnaise, but mine never comes out as delicious as theirs. I think I have a tendency to overcook it a little. Theirs was quite al dente. Or perhaps it's just that I was always dieting and famished back then. This was the lowest calorie appetizer they had.

The Hatch I've been getting at Harris Teeter have been fresh and not wilted at all. You can buy them loose, as many or few as you like at $1.29 a pound. Once cooked they have that distinctive Hatch flavor I had only experienced with canned ones before. The fresh ones are better, but they are the same pepper.

Your polenta looks very creamy and most excellent, Anna. I'm glad you found your way with it.

They are in the local Harris Teeter across from Cary High School now. Mine are very hot too, but don't seem so initially. I chop a couple of jalapenos without gloves regularly. I won't touch a Hatch again without gloves on. Yikes! I added them to a veg curry the other night where they were very good and made a delicious green chili cheeseburger a little later. Yah for Hatch season! I'm thinking of making meat stuffed ones covered with cheese. I think I'll be alright if I deseed and take the membranes out first.

Taco Bell has been doing a low end version of the Cali burrito for some time, and also has a couple versions of burritos with something like tortilla chips in them. This first one has Fritos and also has rice. The second has some kind of tortilla strips that seem to be artificially dyed red. I haven't tried them, and won't be doing so. I'm sorry that I'm not being very helpful, but these things are available in North Carolina, so they can't be unheard of. God help me. I do get a craving for Taco Bell from time to time. Personally, I do not like rice or other carby things in a burrito. The tortilla wrapper has plenty of carbs for me. I just want meat, maybe some beans (which do contribute carbs, but also protein) and veggies like fresh jalapenos, flavorful tomato, onion, cilantro, and shredded lettuce. Maybe some sour cream or crema.

I soldier on with two plastic cutting boards. A small one for meat like slicing or mincing for stir fry. I do my kitchen butchery of bigger cuts like parting out a whole chicken, slicing slabs of ribs into more manageable smaller slabs or slicing steaks from a whole rib eye into steaks in my just cleaned stainless steel sinks. Then I carefully clean the sinks again. I have a separate larger cutting board, also plastic, for veggies. The one I use more is the veggie one, and it has silicone or something?feet on it that keeps it from sliding on the counter. They are both light, but the smaller one for meat has a grab handle design which infringes on the total usable area, so if I designed it, I would eliminate that "feature" on this small board. It does allow me to hang it near a sunny kitchen window though, and I like that. It also goes through the dishwasher just fine. Both of these were really cheap, and the small meat one came from Dollar General. I can't imagine spending hundreds of dollars on a cutting board. My cheap cutting boards are both easy on my knives and have lasted me years without a lot of grooving. It helps that I almost always use a razor sharp boning/fillet knife for all my knife work. I can cut stuff all the way through with this knife and barely contact the board. The most grooves I've added to the boards are right after I've sharpened the knife and use a little more force than needed until I get used to it. I feel it pulling through the plastic, though, and quickly correct myself. This knife that I love over my Old Hickory high carbon steel set is stainless steel and cost all of $2.00 at Dollar General. Oh how I wish I'd bought another one, just in case. It's marked "Pinnacle stainless Japan". It will be truly traumatic for me if something ever happens to this beloved cheapass knife. Oh! and when I did the hydrogen peroxide test to see if both my boards were sanitary, they both failed to bubble up at all. My freshly washed fingers did though. It proved that the boards are sanitary, my peroxide was still effective, the peroxide test works, and I am a living, breathing bacteria factory.

Yep! This is the best place to get culinary help I know. I learn at least something new every day here. Sometimes many things. Good luck with your Cuban bread, and it would be great if you can find time to report back with your results.

Some of you eG members who would like to help Franci and are members of Facebook, Pinterest or some of the other sites that allow you to share her videos, may want to go to her videos on YouTube. They are autofeeding now, so it would be easy to like them and share them with sites where you are a member. Just a suggestion, of course, but I feel that I'm not the only one who wishes our own Franci much success. These things start slowly, but once they take off on the web, it can become big quickly. We can help. When I liked her video on YouTube a whole bar of different sites I could share it came up. Unfortunately, I'm not a member of any of them, but some people here that I think might want to help her are.

@BeatriceB, Sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you continue to get better. Yes, my freezer was in much the same shape as yours. I dumped all the old inedible stuff last Tuesday for garbage collection the next day except for some stuff I know my little raccoons that live in my yard would enjoy, and am setting portions I know they'll eat out to thaw religiously when I start dinner prep. I add any dinner leftovers I don't want to save to the coons' food and take it out to them in a place at the edge of the woods where they can find it. It's always gone the next day. They even ate a little Greek salad I couldn't finish. I am so grateful for this thread, because I now have clean freezers with only fresh foods I know I will eat, and have been doing well at not adding stuff I won't eat, expecting it to improve with time in the freezer. I can find everything easily and my freezers have gone back to food storage of usable food. Bonus! slam packed avalanche freezers do not even work efficiently because the fan circulation is impeded, so now my stuff is keeping better. My freezer/fridge has not peed on the floor since the clean out either, in spite of our typical very high summer humidity. Yah! I'm so thankful to @Anna Nfor starting the thread. It took me quite a while (since January, so 8 months) in fits and starts of trying to eat stuff that was too old, but I finally faced up to my waste guilt, and hopefully have a place to go forward from much more intelligently from here. We'll see.

@Franci, I also enjoyed this video, and think you're doing a great job. I find it difficult to talk while thinking about the task I'm on during cooking, especially baking, where every ingredient and step can be crucial to a successful outcome. I admire anyone who can multitask as you seem to be able to do so easily. You are also attractive and very cute on camera. This has the potential to really take off! You might put a note somewhere for American bakers about how this cake is leavened with eggs. The only thing I ever make leavened only with eggs is popovers, which are so delicious. I bet your sponge cake is too. I don't think we have a lot of baked goods here leavened with eggs, so some might be suspicious of a recipe with no leavening. I really liked the inclusion of the crumb shot of your cake. It shows the eggs definitely work, but some Americans still might think you forgot to list baking powder in the ingredients. Your videos are autofeeding since the one before this, so interested people will be easily able to find more of them. That gives you more exposure and time to build enough interest to get them to your website. You have also slowed down your speech a little to where I think more folks will understand exactly what you're saying. What do you think @Toliver? I love the way you say oven, Franci.

Our ethnic markets tend to be non-chain mom and pops. No stockholders to please, and I think that allows them to price things lower too.

Yes, our government must wet its beak or you will be destroyed here. It's such a shame that individuals like this tea man, David Lee Hoffman, are so often crushed under the wheels of the machine of it. I think it's actually the cause of our ineffectiveness anymore. When motivated people were able to act freely, we came up with some really impressive innovations. Not so much anymore. Lyme disease is harsh. I had a young friend in his twenties that got a replacement all metal hip because of it. The docs said the plastic wouldn't hold up in a person as young, and he would have to face other surgeries. I haven't heard from him in years, but I think about it every time those ads for law firms suing over metal replacements run. In a kinder world, our government would be trying to help this tea man instead of tear him down.

Unfortunately, this may be a case of the blind leading the blind, but I am interested, and I will try. Getting old sucks. A lot. So fortunate to still have your mother around. I so wish mine was.

You are very lucky to be able to ask your mom, and I'll be interested in her answer.