Margaret Pilgrim

We seem to have been dining planet friendly for years. Small places, around 24 seats, no tablecloths, short menus featuring low carbon footprint products. Odd bit animal parts are considered "smart", are wonderfully transformed by kitchens and eagerly ordered by diners. There is much conversation about sustainability as well as 100% use of product. Portions are often available in two sizes to lessen waste. In our area, water shortages have made "water on request" rather the norm. All this is, of course, at moderate price point places. Of course, there is still lots of excess use of plastic, packaging waste, large portions only partially consumed, high-on-the-hog proteins and out of season produce consumed. And I still look for a napkin, good sized and of good material.

In general, it will be spicy. Sometimes with fennel. These regional designations are probably pretty loosely applied by commercial sausage makers.

I would just polish the bejesus out of it and let it tell its history. Our dining table is an old French farm table. Seats 8 easily, more, no. It has cigarette and hot pan burns, gouges from kitchen implements, impressions from grinders having been screwed onto it. I polish it to a high sheen and think its just fine.

Not yet. Thanks.

Dried cranberry beans, paccheri, Calabrian sausage, Swiss chard.

I ordered Six California Kitchens from my library and picked it up today. i feel it was written by my doppelganger. Roughly same age, eerily look-alikes, both self taught from Betty Crocker and Julia, similar palates. Except that she became someone! Reading her recipes and reflecting on how she chose each one was like reliving my life through those eras, I loved that I could taste each dish, and in fact had tasted many. One extraordinary standout for me was the Oxtail Terrine. That will definitely find its way onto a fall or winter table soon. Like everything in her book, so very simple but so absolutely on flavor target.

er, how did you confuse the two?

Husband grew up with an occasional baked salmon loaf served with (hard boiled) egg sauce. Canned is certainly the way to go, although I have saved bits and pieces of fresh salmon from other uses. Also canned for salmon cakes.

Also, as bd reminds me, kids love detail. Pouring over complex pictures.discovering and rediscovering minutiae. Learning the names of things and their joy of remembering them in subsequent reading.

While I adamantly support metric and social justice, I’m not so keen on Kenji. But my major lack of enthusiasm for this book is its comedic and stereotypical portrayal of the characters. We introduce different cultures to children in this way then are offended when they exhibit bias as adults. Maybe I’m just too buttoned-up but I’d like a straighter representation.

I am loathe to suggest another wildly successful if vulgar series, “Fancy Nancy”. The kids love them because of Nancy’s excess and gaudy taste. Mothers appreciate the language expansion while I nod to the implicit moral story behind each book.

Our group has always been on board for boots on the ground instruction, so we've not sought out kid cookbooks. When they have made a dish, we copy out the recipe, put it in a plastic sleeve and they take it home to add to their binder. But here is a very sweet book that all three have enjoyed from probably age 4. Cooking With Grandma which chronicles a week of a young girl staying with her grandparents. And the kitchen mischief she and her grandmother get into.

An excellent question. My group are into a different level reading now so I am out of this loop. But what we tried to imbue them with were books that portrayed different cultures in more realistic, rather than cartoon, portraits. And instruction more straightforward, We tend to talk down to our kids. They don't need it and it is in the long run a disservice. Let them reach. They CAN.

Apologies for appearing to be a curmudgeon, but as the grandmother of three for whom I have bought a zillion books, and who are now all avid readers, I find both prose and most certainly illustrations over the top. Engaging young readers is a good thing, and appealing to their sense of hilarity is am effective tactic, but I think we underestimate their ability to follow a thread as well as their attention span. It's a cute book, but I'm not sure that a simpler approach might have achieved the same thing, if not as many sales.

Totally agree. Like tartare.

I love that book. (also his Pasta)

It occurs to me that there a wide open professional niche for dietician/nutritionist with a chef's imagination and palate. There is no reason that healthful food needs be tasteless, textureless, colorless. in fact, it could and should be the opposite. Is there this emphasis in the field today?

Did you note my comments above? Quite decent American Chinese plates a la carte. FWIW, the most vile and expensive hospital food I’ve encountered was in Paris, Who’d have thought?!

How can hospital Asian dishes be so fresh, decently prepared and well seasoned in the US while lacking in your community?

That’s second seating.

I LOVE oxtail, but as you suggest, while it looks trencherman, it takes a lot of pieces to make a satisfying plate. I've served it at several dinner parties and for a table of 6 or 8, a small herd of ox need meet their god.

My experience has been with California Pacific (Sutter Health) and over the course of 20 years the food has been excellent. As I wrote, there are quite decent Asian offerings. Restorative jooks at breakfast, fresh and simple stir fries, dumplings. I am judicious on the regular menu, rather like I would be at Applebee's. KISS. Order the same way you would on an airline...except that the hospital food is better. Don't get carried away by descriptions. Don't expect rare meat. Last time, rather superb "goulash". As important, serving pieces are insulated so that hot foods stay hot and cold , cold. Coffee and tea stays hot for half an hour.

I have faith in your hospital food. Ours has several pages of Chinese dishes at the end of the menu, the best things out of the kitchen. But best you're back to your own cooking. Soon.

WORD! Sure, it looks clownish, but this is, iMHO, hands down the best mill out there. We have one in town, one in the country and son has absconded with at least one. Super easy adjustments. We had ours for probably 40 years!

I always use creme sherry, like Harvey's Bristol. When thinking of trifle, I always recall hosting people from Montana. The husband was a no-nonsense food guy. Keep it beef and potatoes and apple pie. But I served a sherry-tipsy trifle. He took a bite, lit up like a Christmas tree and hooted, "What IS this?" And had seconds. Maybe seconds' seconds. Maybe... There were staying here so driving wasn't an issue.