mcdowell

Worked for a company with similar policies once upon a time. The loophole was that you didn't need receipts for meals under $15. Travelled to San Francisco with my assistant once, years ago, and between us we dropped about $600 at Flore de Li. We lived on crumbs (and a case of wine) for the rest of the week, then spent two days at a whiteboard with a calculator trying to squeeze the bill into our two expense reports. A three dollar receipt book can make all the difference (your ethics may vary).

I used to think of mustard as just a condiment. There was yellow hot dog mustard, and that yummy Grey Poupon. Then I moved to Northern California, and started shopping at a grocery store that had a wall of mustards, many local. It started an obsession. I was married once to woman who made her own ketchup. That, I thought (and think) was going to far. Ketchup is ketchup, and you'll never convince me otherwise.

So, Steven, it's been six months. Has the novelty worn off? Do you still roast your own beans? Or was this a one-shot deal, and now you find it easier to just grind-and-brew? I'm curious.

The recent thread here of “what would your mother say?” had me thinking about what my mother would say about certain things that I do in my own kitchen. While Mom wouldn’t be embarrassed by my eating green jello with marshmellows over the sink, she is slightly embarrassed by the salami that I cured and have hanging off of my baker’s rack. I well remember the shake of his head and look in my project manager’s eye, that you poor bastard look, the day I told him that I couldn’t work Saturday, because Saturday is the day that I make cheese, and I already had ten gallons of milk reserved at a farm down south. I received the same look from my father when I asked him to help me make a cheese press in his workshop. Yesterday afternoon I sat on my front yard and watched my neighbor across the street perform his near-daily ritual with power saw and drill and hammer, working raw materials into useless objects. He was making an oak monitor stand for his computer, to match the wooden mouse pad he had made a few days before. I shook my head in wonder and no small amount of self-righteous pity at the absurdity of his hobby. That was just before I came into the house to put up the mustard that I had simmering, adding yet another jar to the collection in my refrigerator. I didn’t give thought to the irony until this morning, as I was eating the gravlox that I’ve had curing in tequila and cilantro for the past week. At least I can eat my creations, I offered myself in silent rebuttal, while his wife is stuck with a house full of ugly wood. I’ve stopped telling people about these strange kitchen obsessions of mine, stopped trying to explain, sometimes even stooping to telling lies (“I found that mustard up in Napa at a roadside stand...”) just to avoid that look which invariably comes. We know we’re crazy, we just don’t want other people to catch on, you see. It’s almost like being an addict. Or maybe it’s exactly like being an addict. What do you do in your kitchen that borders on obsession or extremism? The kind of obsession that causes people who don’t cook (and maybe people who do) to look at you with pity and incredulity and shake their heads? And why do you do it? Surely that bread you compulsively bake day in and day out isn’t really better than the Acme you can get at the Whole Foods? Is it? I’d like to hear.

Me too. Staying in Scotland, a friend and I had the hotel car take us to a local distillery where we took the connoisseur's tour of scotch. They started with some rancid rocket fuel called "barrel proof" and walked us all the way to the sixty year liquid nirvana. I have an obsene picture of myself drunk off my ass sitting at this table with fourteen snifters in front of me, all vacant of content (sort of like my brain at the time). "You weren't supposed to empty each glass" the porter said to us. We didn't care. To answer the original question, I eat lunch once or twice a week at a Thai place close to my office. I walk the menu from top to bottom, then start again. It's the only way to do it, after all, who can stomach Pad Thai over and over again?

They also used to make really delicious cookies. Was afraid I was going to have to pay extra to have the crumbs vacuumed out of my rental car.

Xanthippe - As soon as I can figure out how to work this scanner, I'll email you some fry bread (and the enchiladas are all gone, sorry)

I believe that reviewers pick Pad Thai at a Thai place (or Pho at a Vietnamese place) because it’s a least common denominator among dishes that their readers are most familiar with. It may have nothing at all to do with personal preference. We all have benchmarks upon which we measure cuisines, or even types of restaurants (I have a particular affinity for independent truck stops and the chicken fried steaks that they serve, for example, but then I spend a lot of time driving for no good reason). The struggle becomes the rectification between a benchmark’s success and the actual quality of the eatery; does hot and sour soup define a good Chinese restaurant? Maybe, or maybe that cook can’t make hot and sour soup to save his life, but that crispy tofu with black bean sauce? That rocks, man. When going someplace new, I always struggle with that inner voice telling me to order the hot and sour soup, and instead I ask the waiter what the cook makes best. I’m rarely disappointed. Sometimes I get the “whatever’s on the menu, white boy”, and then it’s more of a crapshoot. This technique comes down to personality, though. My girlfriend will order the same dishes everwhere we go, while I won't even order the same dishes at restaurants that we eat lunch at week in and week out. At some point (if this hasn’t happened already) such places are likely to take a lesson from the technology sector and start “tuning” for the benchmarks. Can’t cook worth a damn, but can nail that soup and spring roll and get that review. I spent too much of my life running an engineering organization at a player in the Linux hardware space (Jason – surprised you & I don’t know each other) and we’d routinely tune evaluation machines for the benchmarks we knew that particular press person or consultant liked to run. It didn’t say anything about those machines except that they could pass that test, or that my engineers were good enough to make a lemon machine look good for those couple of weeks. I can see restaurants (especially ethnic places, which tend to have “standard” benchmarks) doing the same. Benchmarks don’t tell you anything, I guess is my point, but its human nature to go down that path. Instead, you should just say 'Fuck it' and read chowhound instead of relying on inner benchmarks and restaurant reviewers – that gang is rarely wrong about good food. *edited to clarify that my intent wasn't to send people away from here and over to CH *

Red Pepper Soup. Made it last weekend from Peterson's Soup book (pretty much). Six large bell peppers, a bunch of pasilla chilies, roasted and ground into a paste, a big handful of garlic, heavy cream, sour cream, broth, vinegar... pureed and strained and chilled. My God.

Spinach/Mushroom/Aparagus enchiladas with a New Mexico Molino chili sauce, black beans on the side. Yum.

Left-over broccoli rice casserole, with some left over meatballs from another night. There's a nice pear on deck. Am I the only sucker for Cambell's Mushroom Soup casseroles? Never ate one until I was 30, but it's a secret guilty pleasure.

Anything by Bonepony, but just because I think it would sound good.. Here's a list of pig-themed songs: Nine Inch Nails - Piggy Nine Inch Nails - March of the Pig The Beatles - Piggy Suicidal Tendencies - Choking this Pig Dave Matthews - Band Pig Sugar Ray - American Pig Eminem - Chokin This Pig I really wish I could make time for this. Sounds like it's gonna be a hell of an experience.

You gonna start that thread, mcdowell?? Myself, I look for road construction sites, particularly in warmer weather. Guarantees a gaggle of perspiring shirtless men for me to, um, "observe" . . . Uh, No Stories like that are best told over meals, where there's less permanence than anything typed... you & yours come on over for some fry bread & margaritas (you can bring the salmon chorizo) and I'll tell you lots of embarassing tales. But I'm keeping my shirt on, thank you very much (and you will thank me), so don't get your hopes up.

Xanthippe - the whole menu sounds really good, but I have a question: Was this chorizo made out of salmon? Or salmon w/ chorizo?

I'm not allowed to cook rabbit, now that we have one as a pet. You lucky dog.

Not just any rice - if it's "white" rice you want, then you need to seek out Texmati. Nothing else cooks like it. I'm constantly disappointed by what I find in the bulk bins where I shop, and most boxed rices too! King Author high gluten flour for your bread. Corn meal, both blue & yellow. Capers in salt's already been mentioned. Anchovies in salt hasn't. And dried pasta, in the cabinet, is never a bad thing.

The Essential Cuisines of Mexico -and- My Mexico are both excellent choices for Kennedy books. I also have The Art of Mexican Cooking, but if you're limiting yourself to just two, you could leave that one out.

I'm an epic road tripper and have travelled almost every interstate in the country, loading up the Jeep or the Porsche with a couple of changes of clothes, a gas burner, and a bag of groceries. I obtained a commercial driver's license (though I've never been paid to drive) so that I could use the free showers and hang out in the driver's lounge at the truck stops along these great roads... I'm that guy that you see in the back corner of the rest stop, backpack burner on the picnic table, sending the scent of mushrooms being sauteed in butter into the air... What do I look for on the road? State highways for one. Interstates are dangerous and mind numbing, the road tripping equivilant to eating frozen burrittos at the 7-11. Staying on the Interstates leads you to chain truck stops, which are good for gas, a clean bathroom, and a quick sugar fix, but not much else. You don't want to eat off of those buffet tables, or at the fast food places that are increasingly wrapped around these places. It's bad for the soul. State highways give you local flavor, and local flavor comes from local eateries and roadside farm stands, ingredients to fill that pan you pakced. There's also mom-n-pop motels, which are still out there, and beat the pants off a Motel 6 any day of the week. Travel should be about adventure, not predictability (my philosophy, your milage may vary with your personality & values). I used to travel from Boston to Long Island about once a month over a two year period, always driving. The first couple of times I made the trip, I took bumpy I-95 and the lack of diversion it offered. Then, one day, I found the ferry across from CT to Orient Point, with the county road trek through Long Island wine country, amazing farm stands dotting the way. I stopped taking I-95 all together, and planned my trips around the ferry and the two extra hours it added. Took longer, but I remember each of those trips (the only trip I remember vividly on I-95 involved a drag race through Hartford and gaggle CT state troopers - I can't drive in that state legally until 2005, but that story's for a different thread).

Mexican Tea - 2 c Tea; strong, cold 2 c Tequila 1 c Pinapple juice 1/4 c Water 1/4 c Lemon juice 1 1/2 ts Aromatic bitters 1/4 c Honey 1/4 c Lime juice 1 1/2 ts Cinnamon; ground Mix, cool, stir, serve. ALSO - celestial seasoning's web site has a recipe mixing their orange zinger tea w/ orange liqueur, and a couple of shots of vodka. (http://www.celestialseasonings.com/whoweare/press/presskit/Recipes.pdf)

Are pig's feet really considered "offal" (paragraph 9)? That's the only thing questionable that I picked up. Wish I'd have known about this ahead of time - would have been worth a quick jaunt to Portland.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves – this is eGullet!! Me, I’m a true renaissance gourmand. I make my own mustard to season salami that I cure myself, to put on bread that is made from wheat ground in my garage, the grain grown in my backyard. I chase down wild boar in the great Santa Cruz Mountains, only to leave them hobbled, their feet pickling in a jar on my baker’s rack. I make cheese from whatever mammal is closest… I do have one weakness in the kitchen, though. A couple of times each year, I will fly to South Carolina (not the sole purpose of the trip, but it happens) and load up on canned boiled peanuts. Mom would be so ashamed. I hang my head.

Alan Rickman used to have a show on that was similar to Best Of that was much better and more focused. With Best Of, I feel like I'm reading People Magazine - not a bad thing, but something I only do when waiting to have blood drawn. I watch FoodTV these days only when I have nothing better to do, or as background noise while doing something else. Cooking shows? Saturday's on PBS, Discovery channel occasionally, and Home & Garden TV late at night. All that said, my 10 year old really loves Unwrapped, where we get to see the same machine every week make some different processed food stuff in somebody else's factory. My question: do the company's featured on Unwrapped pay for the exposure?

Gleneagle in Scotland where, after some basic training, you can take out a Harris Hawk and kill rabbit. The chef will take the rabbits and cook them to order for you, working an exceptional magic. From kill to table in a few short hours. Add wine, after dinner drinks, and a room for the night, and the thousand is gone. I would trade a lot of wine to relive such experience.

We eat in five nights a week, and it is always a sit-down meal that has been lovingly prepared by one, and usually more than one of us (blended family of four, me & my boy, my girlfriend & her girl, both kids aged ~10). The kids love to work bread, or mix salad, or flip the salmon cakes frying in the pan. Very inclusive. We never eat in front of the television, believing instead that good conversation is better fodder for the family, especially since we all lead such active & disparate daytime lives. It's a good time to catch up on what's happened, and plan on what's coming. We almost always play a game or tell jokes over desert, lingering together until it's time for the kids to go up and do their own nightly thing.

Spicy cold cucumber soup (from Peterson's marvelous Soup book), heavy on the yogurt.