Thanks for the Crepes

lesliec, I'm a native daughter, but I skipped over CCC thinking it was just my negligent reading of something upthread that would explain it. I even went upthread looking to no avail, so I'll be waiting with you for Nancy's explanation, assuming she cares to give us one.

G. Rice, I do not think it was the oils in the rice in my case going off. It was the rice weevils pooping and otherwise sullying my rice. As I said upthread, I was really trying to figure this out, because there was an expiry date on the bag, and it was well within it. Apparently the insects leave a VERY unsavory smell to those who can detect it. All of the candidates, myself, my brother, and my husband sadly smoke, and that is famous for diminishing one's sense of smell and palate. I was right; they were wrong, and I get used to this. Unfortunately they don't. I get hated all the time. I would lay a very large bet, and I am not a gambler, that it would be an easier and happier life to be a stupid person. "It's all 90 percent likabilty." That's a quote from "Auto Focus", the book and movie about Bob Crane who played Colonel Hogan on "Hogan's Hero's". Give this movie a watch, but if you idealized him, like I did, get ready to never watch the show again. ETA: No one likes anyone who's right when they are wrong. It actually makes me wish I wasn't here sometimes.

Glorified Rice, I just saw your request for the recipe for Hormel canned tamale and chili casserole, and I don't really know if it's tongue in cheek or not, but in the spirit of sharing, it's embarrassingly simple, and here it is: 1-15 oz. can Hormel chili with beans or No beans 1-15 oz. can Hormel beef tamales 3 TBSPs chopped onions 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese They ask you to spread the tamales in an 11 x 7 baking dish after removing the paper wrappers. Then pour the chili over and sprinkle with cheese and onion. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 min. I usually place three tamales in some individual casserole dishes I have and split the chile over them when I have a working oven. This dish became a staple in my house after Hurricane Fran left us without power for a long nine days in 1996. I do have a generator, and an electric frying skillet, where you can make these without any power from the increasingly vulnerable grid (cyber threats). The cheese is kept in a cooler with ice. You'd really be surprised what you are willing to eat after culling all the most desirable items from the freezer and cooking them on the grill, and after all the rest of the fresh food has spoiled. If we're lucky enough to have no extended power outages I cook them in the oven before the expiry date, because we can't afford to, and I dislike wasting food. The recipe is on every can of Hormel tamales I've ever seen, and with good reason. The first time I served these to my husband, he said, "Every time I tried to eat these canned tamales, they tasted like dog food. How do you make them so good?" It wasn't me, it was marketing research. andiesenji, I also use instant potato flakes to thicken clam chowders and the like. I make the soups/chowders with fresh potatoes, but use the flakes to thicken. The flakes are also a must for shepards/cottage pie because this is the way it was made in the school cafeteria in VT. I have tried making the casserole with fresh taters, and it just doesn't scratch the comfort food itch like the instant mix version does. I'm sure some of your shelf stable stuff may have been inspired by your earthquake induced extended power outages too. Toliver, Spray Cheese! This became a staple after Fran. I really don't like it much, but I started stocking it during and after the big hurricane. People just don't appreciate how welcome shelf stable protein WITH calcium is in a prolonged power outage. This reminds me that I've become complacent, and need to lay in some more Spray Cheese!, which hopefully, will come close to it's expiration date because we have been blessed by no blackouts and be eaten by the coons. It's hard surviving without power when your used to it. I still maintain an analog phone, much to Ma Bell's displeasure. I get a letter at least 3 x a month wanting me to go digital. My analog was the only phone except for one neighbor on the cul de sac who also had an analog phone that worked. I used it every day to locate ice, propane, batteries, etc. When these things happen, you can drive around everywhere and be told they have no ice/ batteries, etc. Even when you locate an ice delivery over your WORKING phone, you may arrive to stand in line for 40 minutes and watch the person in front of you buy the very last bag of ice in the shipment, as happened to me one time at my local Harris Teeter. No riots, but I can sure see how that might happen. Communication ability still helps immensely. I love fresh food as well as the next guy/gal, and shelf stable foodstuffs may be laughable, but they are survival tactics for some of us.

kayb, Your Easter spread looks amazing! Yeast rolls (drool icon). I looked up my bookmark for Mrs. Mary Lloyd Young's roll recipe on your blog, and was going to make them myself for Easter dinner until I remembered popovers and how well they go with beef. I think I have the same glass plates your deviled eggs are sitting on. From Bed Bath and Beyond? I have really enjoyed them. I usually put chopped hard cooked eggs directly into my pea salad, which I make much like yours, but without the sugar. I even insist on sugar free mayo (Duke's) for all purposes. Your idea of serving the eggs deviled on the side is a great one which may be stolen. Another trick to keep deviled eggs from skating around a slick serving piece is to just line it with lettuce leaves. Iceberg works okay, but green leaf works better and makes the colors pop. The rounds of the eggs settle into the nooks and crannies in the leaves, and are pretty stable.

I'm posting here because it was entirely non-traditional to Easter, but it was Easter dinner, and for my little existence that's special. We had a cookout on one of the very few days in North Carolina when it's not too cold or hot and humid. It was before the bugs really got started, but we had carpenter bees harass us all day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_bee Wikipedia will not tell you everything you need to know about Carpenter Bees. These guys bore half-inch diameter holes into your house. They're the size of bumblebees (should not be able to fly according to scientists and engineers) but shiny black instead of furry. They eat 1/2 inch holes into your eaves, deck boards, whatever, they don't seem to discriminate. I am very afraid of them. Anything that can bore a half inch hole in hard wood without a steel drill bit need to be steered clear of IMO. Insects in NC are a SERIOUS problem. This is just the beginning of the season. So we ate outside on the deck.The guys were talking about shooting the bees with the BB gun. (That's illegal lately in our municipality, but they probably could've gotten away with it, because that little weapon is very quiet.) Fortunately, they just continued to drink more beer. One of those bees got in the truck with my brother when he took off on a short errand and caused some real concern, but for NC this was a good day to be outside. We only have a handful of them a year. It's a very inhospitable climate, always too hot or cold, and whenever it's hot or even warm the insects come out in droves. Today was beautiful. So we ate outside on the deck. We had a shrimp cocktail, which my brother brings as frozen solid cooked shrimp, cocktail sauce in a bottle (not bad), and a whole lemon with a container of Old Bay. So when time came around, I thaw the shrimp in a clean sink of cold water, slice and deseed the lemon. I also had to pre-marinate my brother's shrimp in lemon and Old Bay as per his instructions. I also made a salad with baby organic spinach, green leaf lettuce, a little iceberg, red pepper, radishes, cucumbers, snow peas, and more delicious Scarlet Pearl grape tomatoes. I had made twice baked potatoes the day before with chives and parsley, and cheese buried in them. Then baked them off again today. I made popovers. My brother isn't familiar with them, although I've made them for him at least once before. I think he's starting to become a really big fan. He ate two, and snagged the next to the last one to take home. The entree was really good rib eye steaks over charcoal! SO, SO GOOD. Nothing beats simple beef. My bro even respected my wish for unadulterated steak by insisting on separate tongs for flipping our steaks. His was marinated in some oil and jarred garlic, that frankly reeked. I offered vanilla or chocolate ice cream for dessert, but had no takers. I was going into a food coma while trying to do my nightly crosswords after the cleanup. Yawn. Happy Easter, y'all!

Separate (or non) checks usually come up, in my experience during work outings, and they are a NIGHTMARE. In this area, many of the better value for quality restaurants are mom and pops, and they are cash only. I don't have time in my life to analyze their software or motivation for doing it that way, but I do know that many of these establishments refuse to split checks for large groups, like yeah, co-workers going out to lunch together. Amedeo's: http://www.amedeosrestaurant.com/ and http://www.yelp.com/biz/amedeos-italian-restaurant-raleigh I love their food and the DeAngelis family who have operated their restaurant for over 50 years. I do not love their policies. Whenever a group of us would go out there from the YMCA "family" we would get one check, and it wasn't even itemized per person or order. I learned to bring a pocket calculator to break it down after our first outing. I tend to be thrifty, and I really got stiffed my first time out. So here I am doing all this work to make everything equitable for everyone on what is supposed to be a fun break from work, and with a tiny keyed calculator, when I can run a full-sized 10-key at speeds that impress seasoned accountants. Frustrating in the extreme, and I'm sure I made no friends of what I consider thieves who over-ordered anticipating the check to be split without consideration of who got and ate what. Then everyone changed each others cash between one another, and paid me and I brought it all up to the register sometimes with a LOT of change. GAH! Fortunately, everyone already knew it was cash only. SituationNormalAllF'dUp. I started with the Y in accounting and moved to IT, so it was nothing for these folks to exploit me. They did it all the time. Screw up their computer through operator error, just ruin my day/life, who cares? Support personnel. I would have opted out of these lunches, but anyone who's worked knows that the social events are paramount even for nerds like me if you want to have any chance at success. I'd much rather read a book and eat alone than put up with this crap. It's a real problem when restaurants refuse to split checks when you're dining out with colleagues. That is when you most need them to accommodate this need. It's usually not that big a deal with family and friends you actually want to go out to eat with. BTW: for any "Andy Griffith" fans out there, the Y where I worked in downtown Raleigh is the model for the Y where Barney Fife took his fictitious vacations. There ain't no Mount Pilot, although there is a Pilot Mountain in NC.

I love the concept of sharing food, and do it every day. I hate the concept of of involuntarily swapping body fluids with anyone I'm not having sex with. Family style is usually the way I serve what I cook when cooking for more than just me and my husband. I always make more than we could all possibly eat so there will be a gracious plenty for everyone. Every dish is served with a separate, sterilized-in-the-dishwasher serving utensil. Dips like salsa are served in individual dishes or ramekins. I like double dipping in my own salsa, but wouldn't dream of it in a communal dish in a restaurant. My brother and I had a HUGE blowup over this very issue at my then favorite Tex-Mex place about ten years ago. He used to drink directly out of the milk container too. Why do I put up with him??? The more one knows about communicable diseases and their transmission, the more one will not want to swap spit with anyone. My brother brought a can of salt and pepper peanuts for snacking on to our Easter cookout today. He urged me to try some, and I just told him I didn't really care for peanuts. I like them okay, just not my favorite "nut" (actually they are a legume). The real reason for my demur was that there were four prospective partakers, one of whom I hadn't seen in nearly 30 years. When you take something with your hands (hopefully? clean) and place it in your mouth, especially when it's as small as a peanut, you're going to transfer saliva to your fingers, and back to the communal food. No thanks. I've read about Ethiopian and other cuisines where everyone partakes of a communal dish with their hands with no utensils at all. I've seen videos of them licking their fingers, then going back for more. That is very colorful, interesting, and fine and dandy for them, but I'll pass, thank you very much. In restaurants, especially those that are inexpensive with ample servings, I like sharing just fine, but it must be sanitary, and it must be mutually upon agreed on beforehand. Of course, I'm talking about individually plated dishes. There aren't too many family style restaurants in this area, with a very good Chinese place being the exception. Their dishes are generous and not a problem at all to share cleanly. I just don't eat out with people who would vulturize my plate. People who know me make jokes about me stabbing them with a fork if they tried to take something off my plate. I've been hungry before, and I can still get pretty primal over food, although, as I said before, one of the great joys of my life is taking the mostly cheap ingredients I can afford, turning them into tasty dishes, and sharing with the people I care about. Just don't get your spit in my portion!

Post moved from forums.egullet.org/topic/150905-embarrassing-stuff-in-the-pantry/?p=2012594 Arey, you gave me one of the few genuine laughs I get nowadays. Thanks a lot! I've had pantry moths. They're no joke. I ordered some sweet smelling sticky traps on line, and they worked, after nothing else did. The moths were apparently loose in the house. I still have a sealed package of two of the traps, but I have no idea how effective they would be after more than ten years. You get these pests, grain weevils, pantry moths, and other things from other sources, so I don't see the shame in it. For a while the Jiffy Mix factory based in MI was infested with some sort of fat, more roundish grain bugs, different than the dark brown tiny, slim rice weevils I found in my basmati rice. I no longer use Jiffy mixes, and that's a good thing. That infestation pushed me to go beyond what they offered. I lived in Memphis in the 80's when I talked on the phone to my sister, who lived in North Carolina, and she complained to me about the Jiffy mixes being infested. From that, I had to conclude it was coming from their factory. We both now make killer quick breads, and she is a master of yeast breads. I ate myself nearly into a food coma with some of her ham "biscuits" which are yeast based, in the 90's, and this was the appetizer before the meal. Completely spoiled my appetite, but it was worth it, even though I missed a killer meal. I don't really care if the Jiffy Mix factory got rid of their problem or not. I've never tried them again. Once they forced my young self to buy ingredients and start making my own cornbread (much less sweet) and muffins with real blueberries or strawberries, it was all over. It's easy and very nearly as quick too. Mine are better, and I've never encountered anymore of those flour bugs. My dad told a story of how the flour on his navy ship's flour got infested. I do not have any idea why they didn't just sift them out. Except maybe space is very limited aboard, so perhaps they just didn't have a sifter? Same reason they couldn't just easily replace the tainted flour stock when you're in the middle of the ocean. Bread was baked and served with the pests cooked in. Extra protein? Yuck. My dad went to the captain. He was always very persnickety about his food. The captain showed him his bread. It was dotted with the carcasses of the same bugs everyone else on board was eating.

I don't really care for most of the Pillsbury products. I've tried the biscuits and crescent rolls, and they're just too chemical-tasting. It's easy and quick to make my own biscuits, and even though I'm not willing to spend the time to make my own laminated pastry for crescents, Pillsbury's isn't really laminated either, so I just usually do without. I remember these being better when I was younger, but that may be because my palate grew up. Me and my sibs used to love Spaghettios. Ick! But I would totally give the Indian roti upthread a try. It's worth a try, but with their penchant for extending the shelf life of their products to a ridiculous extent at the expense of quality and taste, I'm not overly optimistic. I'm wondering what you mean, caroled, by "my original Poppin' Fresh"? I have a little stuffed figure of it (him?) that I got years ago as a gift, if that's what you mean. It was much later than '72, probably the early 2000's when my husband got it for me, and I've no idea where he got it. It's very cute, and I love it.

Glorified Rice, How do you cook these Pillsbury roti to get them to puff? Did you get these at a regular supermarket? I have never seen them, but I will keep my eyes peeled for them.

I have to say I appreciate value from a restaurant nowadays, and that's disappearing. I can't afford to eat out often, so I like to look at "food porn" photos, both on eG and places like Yelp or Roadfood. Has anyone noticed that shrimp dishes are now served with five shrimp or even less? I can remember when it was a minimum of a dozen; then it halved dramatically to six, and now the norm is only five. When you peruse posts about oysters, the news is even more depressing. The norm of a dozen on the half shell went to six, and now it's $3 or more each. Yikes! Fortunately, my local Harris Teeter has a dozen oysters for $4.99. My brother just informed me today that these can be done successfully in ... the microwave. I've yet to test what I consider a dubious theory. There are some restaurants around here that offer real value for your money with excellent quality. They are usually ethnic, which just means that they offer dishes from a cuisine that is uncommon in these parts. I do not like to fry at home. It's a huge mess to clean even if done outside. So the fact that someone else does all the prep, serving, and especially cleaning up the mess for fried foods (which I don't eat a lot of, but adore) is a major selling point for me. I also like restos that offer me something at a good price that I can't get anywhere else. A good example is Torrero's (WARNING, this is a .pdf, for those with slow connections): http://www.torerosmexicanrestaurants.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/TOREROS1.pdf You can't buy skirt steak anywhere around here, unless it's possibly Whole Foods or the like which I never darken their doors. This place offers PERFECTLY cooked skirt from $10.95, and I can eat on it at least twice. That is real value these days! Here's the yelp reviews with lots of photos for those who might be interested: http://www.yelp.com/biz/toreros-mexican-restaurant-cary They have old-fashioned deeply padded ample booths to make their customers comfortable too, and $2 margaritas on Mondays. Who could ask for more? It's like transporting (beam me up, Scotty) back to a better time.

Katie Meadow, Thanks for another recipe. I bookmarked the one from Saveur. I'm sure that with all this great information y'all have provided I'll either be able to come to love this dish as so many do, or make an intelligent and informed decision that it's just not up my alley.

Hey Beebs, It should be no shame to get grain weevils. I recently spent $15 on a 10 pound bag of basmati rice (my favorite rice) from a local mom and pop Indian grocer. I was so proud of myself because it was so much cheaper than mainstream sources. Well, I had to eat what was a big loss for me, because the bag was infested. The first time I went to cook some, even though it was well within its expiration date, it smelled off to me, rancid. I asked my husband and brother to smell it, and they said it was fine. I chewed a raw grain, and I insisted it was off, and had them smell it again. They still insisted they detected nothing. So I toasted the rice lightly in a little butter, and then added the water. This is when a few tiny, inert black things started floating to the surface. I thought they looked suspiciously like insects, but they were so small, and sometimes there's some chafe in rice. I took another close and critical look at the bag, and I saw a live one. The bag went out onto the porch and into the trash when it was collected next time. I didn't feel like going back and trying to negotiate a refund with people who don't really speak English, although I could've really used that $15 for something useful.

Sorry FeChef, I didn't understand that you were reporting on your attempt to recreate McD's "Mighty Wings" at home. In retrospect, I should have picked that up by the paper towel backdrop of your photo. I thought you were speaking about your attempt to try the wings at the resto. Can you tell I'm a bit prejudiced toward McD's? I don't care for heavily breaded fried food, but more power to the many that do, and to the millions that have made McD's an economic giant. I will not be joining them. Again, sorry for my comment, and I would never have made it if I'd been more on the ball. My bad. Sorry again

Darienne, Your lop eared bunnies are SO cute! Adorable. gfron 1, Wow! Your nougat brings me back to when you could walk into almost any grocery store and buy Brach's nougat by the pound. (Also orange jelly slices, and a bunch of other really good, although probably not artisan candies, but they still make what's available in the grocers today look like a pure waste of calories.) I just looked online, and Brach's nougat is still available, but I am sure it's nowhere near as good as yours.

Hey Alex, Back on page two, in the last post of that page, you posted a link to a card about Fusilli and Vermicelli that was very amusing, and also a link from the New Yorker from 20 years ago that you said reminded you of the card which depicts a cartoon anthropomorphized rigatoni picking up the phone with the caption, "Fusilli, you crazy bastard! How are you?" I get that one, and the other two food-related cartoons under the main one on the New Yorker page. http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Fusilli-you-crazy-bastard-How-are-you-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i10276284_.htm My question is: what does the third cartoon with the guillotine and the pigeons, with a couple of soldier-looking guys staring at this scene with the caption "The bagels, they just keep getting bigger, no?" mean. I don't get this one, and it's still bugging me. I ran it by my husband, and he didn't get it either. Do you, or anyone else, know?

huiray, Thanks for the info on bamboo shoots, especially the follow-up about removing toxins by boiling, because my standard procedure for testing foraged foods is the ancient method of eating a very small amount raw to see what happens, and then incrementally increasing it. Of course, I would never do this with unfamiliar mushrooms. I looked today for shoots at the ground level and found none. All the new growth seems to be on existing stalks, and that is hidden under winter killed growth from last year. Maybe it's too early. We had a particularly harsh winter this year. Ann_T, Your photography, cooking and plating skills continue to amaze me. Pizza vies with perfectly cooked, good quality rib eye steak as my favorite food, and your pizza (and everything else) always look so perfect! Tonight I cooked beef short ribs for the first time. I wasn't really impressed, although it might have been cook's error, it being my first time and all. It was the first time I'd had them since my mama died when I was eight. I don't dislike them, but for the same money, I can get my beloved boneless rib eyes on sale, two pounds of shrimp, or a beautiful piece of fish, all of which are easier and quicker to cook, and I like better. There's so much waste and shrinkage, they just don't seem like a good value. If I invest that much money and time into a dish I want to love it, and I just didn't. The asparagus was the highlight of the meal to me.

Rokay FeChef, It looks a little slimy and over breaded, but please do tell about this foodstuff? I hope it wasn't left to languish in one of their heat cabinets while the quality of the food goes to absolute Hell. There's a mom and pop Chinese joint where I can get four large whole wings within very easy walking distance of a McD's. It costs less than 5 bucks. These are marinated overnight in turmeric, salt, and I don't know what else? These wings are served hot out their fryer to the point you have to let them cool off a bit, because they're not served with utensils. It takes a good twenty minutes or more to get these, but they are served screaming hot, and are so much more delicious (and cheaper) than anything McD's serves. Can anyone PLEASE tell me why, places like my Chinese joint disappear everyday, and McD's thrives all over the world? People are in that much of a hurry they want to eat out of steam cabinets?

I also use instant coffee (Taster' Choice). It's actually quite good It's to keep peace in the house. The husband trashes the real coffee maker, and I don't care 'cause I don't use it anymore.

jmacnaughtan, I'm absolutely with you on the fresh lemon juice. To me even slight cooking alters the flavor, and not for the better. I sometimes follow traditional recipes like Greek lemon chicken, but I think fresh lemon juice spritzed at the end of cooking would be a huge improvement.

JoNorvelleWalker, To which article are you referring, because they are quite different?

Me too, I'm 1/8 Native American because my grandmother's father was an Indian. That said, I have none of the culture. She was totally southern culture, in a small town in Louisiana, and that's what's been passed down to us kids. All the good sources say that the languages, traditions, and customs are disappearing. Not much can be done about that. Time moves on in the technological age that would make a cave man's or woman's head spin right off their shoulders. Good luck to anyone who tries to prolong and promote the culture of my heritage, but I'm not real optimistic about it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_cuisine

Kim Shook: your dyed eggs are beautiful! huiray: you're so lucky to get fresh bamboo shoots. The ones we have access to here in a can are not so good. A really bad neighbor who's moved away to the big house courtesy of our local police force planted ivy and a small version of bamboo on the property line years ago while cutting down all the trees on his side. The ivy and bamboo are killing my trees (invasive in the extreme), but I'm going out tomorrow to look for shoots from the bamboo. It's spring here, and I'll try to find a silver lining. His machinations killed my blackberry and grape vines. Who knew blackberry vines (very tenacious) could be killed? It's sad that 10 years after he's gone, he's still doing damage to me. Shelby: I hope you can find your morels! I love grilled chicken, and yours looks very good. Maybe if you're going to cook a whole head of cauliflower in the oven, parboil it first? You can definitely salvage it for roasted, which is one of my favorites, although I do not care for it just boiled. Norm Matthews: I think I screwed up a very good dish by using subpar ingredients AND serving as an entree when it's clearly so rich it should be cut in small slices and served as an app as you did. Tonight's dinner was those whopper peppers, which were sold as Anaheims/Hatch at my grocery. Ruh Roh. I think they were Cubanelles, which I just don't care for. They were pointy on the end, which Anaheims usually are and Cubanelles are not, but they were not Anaheims/Hatch. I was bragging about how they could accept a 1/4 beef stuffing, which they did readily. I was so excited about this dish! There were several other errors in the dish though. First, the good quality, non-CO gassed (which is getting harder and harder to find) ground chuck had been frozen for a month and a half. Second, I probably over mixed the seasonings of Adobo and chili powder, and then further compressed it when stuffing the chillis. Third, I don't think that a quarter pound of beef per serving augmented by two slices of bacon because the peppers were almost 8" long, and that's what it took to cover them was enhanced by even more fat and cholesterol when I put grated pepper jack over them after the bacon browned. This was only mitigated by the pepper itself, which if it'd been a true Anaheim or hatch would have upped the flavor tremendously. The only bright side is that my husband ate his entire bacon wrapped stuffed pepper, pronounced it delicious, and was delighted when I suggested that I could make him a chili relleno burrito with the remains of all but the two inches of the small pointy end of mine that I ate and the leftover beans. I much more enjoyed the refried beans with queso fresco. I served them with homemade pico de gallo. Cocoa tomato, white onion, cilantro, and jalepeno only in mine. It's a wonder how my husband who's not a healthy food, or veg/fruit lover always comments on how delicious my pico is. It really is more than the sum of it's parts, and while I often have a hard time getting him (a stroke and heart attack victim) to eat healthily pico is never a problem, it always disappears. I much more enjoyed the bean nachos I made out of the refried beans from a can (more later). You take a tortilla chip, coat it with piping hot refried beans (with queso fresco), spread a little pico, then get shredded lettuce into your mouth the best you can. This usually amounts to chasing it around lots with your fingers, because let's face it, after you've piled all the beans and pico on your pristine and ultra crispy white corn chip, the lettuce is just going to fall off. Okay: now the "later" about the refried beans, y'all. La Costena (with a tilde over the N) IS THE BOMB. "Distributed" out of Laredo, Texas by Vilore Foods, because no one has to tell us where the hell anything is made anymore. This brand of refried beans made me revise my recipe for pinto beans when I cook them from dry, which is pretty often. I used to put carrots, celery, garlic, and sometimes other stuff in there. Now my recipe is theirs, as far as what they reveal on the label (I don't use the soybean oil, nor lard; I use pork meat with it's own fat), and I have to say it tastes the same as what I buy in their cans only meatier. Ingredients from the label: water, pinto beans, soybean oil, onion, salt, pork lard, jalepeno pepper, spices. Simple and VERY good. Mark Bittman would be proud. Do yourself a favor and give La Costena a try if you can find it. The Latino community demand is so high here, it's a staple in our local Dollar General Stores. I'm very lucky to live in such a culinary diverse area. Woopsee, changed tide to tilde.

Thanks MollyB, I have a big bunch of soba recipes bookmarked now, and with huiray's help on prep, including rinsing the noodles with cold water after cooking, I will be able to proceed more confidently on my next attempt. I know some people adore this dish, and I would like to become one of them.

The state of food writing in this area, at least at our local CBS franchise of WRAL.com is pretty abysmal, (example link to follow) and I've seen them do much worse. I thought this article was an exception to that rule: http://www.wral.com/a-round-of-drinks-with-durham-bartenders/14551846/ Here's a small sample of their normal food writing: http://www.wral.com/straight-beef-review-capital-club-16/14539240/ They also regularly "treat" us to videos of "local" recipes, NOT, which would make Sandra Lee blush. I'm not mean enough to burden you with one of those, I just wanted you to see what we put up with here. Intelligent sixth graders could do a better job of food writing than these folks do. It's really sad, because I think we have about a half dozen people nominated each year, including this one, for James Beard awards in this state. Some win. These are also the folks who refused to carry to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show the first year it came out (they still delay it by hours, although less so now), preempt popular first-run shows to show college basketball (sorry MINORITY basketball fans), and otherwise really antagonize their local captive audience. I thought they actually did good on this one, although they obviously used someone else's work by permission. What do y'all think?