mcdowell

Maybe I'm dense, but what's the "sitting-in-the-pipes" problem? Is there something wrong with the pipes in your house? Or is there something in the water in NYC that makes it turn stale? What would you consider the "freshness" point?

Interesting. I don't know why we always did it with rice. Perhaps because it's easier to make? My father's family comes from both East and West Texas, though, and I never got the impression eating it with rice was all that unusual. I'm from Texas gulf coast rice country and it wasn't unusual (or suprising) when I was growing up to serve it with white rice, good milk gravy smothering it all, a biscuit or roll to sop it all up. Fried okra was also almost always on the plate when mom would cook it up. Double the starch, double the grease. It's a tradition I carry on today. And I second the call to not try your first one at a Denny's. Of the chains, Chili's has a passable version.

Let's also point out that Whole Foods very clearly labels their fish as "farmed" or not. Not all retailers do.

There's a bit of information in today's San Francisco Chronicle on Per Se in Walden's The Inside Scoop column: At 65 seats, it's about the same size as French Laundry, which has 62. It will be open for dinner nightly and lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- the same schedule as French Laundry. Per Se will also offer fixed price menus, as does French Laundry Goes on to say that the French Laundry will close after dinner service on New Year's Eve, reopening next April or May.

Are you sure it wasn't Menudo? That stuff works.

I'm with you, Batgrrrl. Indian food does it for me too, pretty much every time. I've also been known to get it up over well cooked southern food, especially after a really long drought from Chicken Fried Steak and fried Okra... my girlfriend reeled me in with her cornbread.. man.

I've never heard the expression, but had to dig: Booty Food n. Any food that causes weak knees, accelerated heartbeat, tingly body parts, and other symptoms traditionally associated with falling in love.

I'm heading to Sam's for Thanksgiving. I'll be waiting for a PM with directions.

I may be dense (and that's probably the case), but I don't get the "Table Dance" reference in the title (or in the others in the series). It certainly conjurs up images other than those culinary.

It's about that time of year, in the US, where we start thinking about Thanksgiving and all that goes along with it. Each year we quest for the perfect bird. I've done my duty and tried all the tricks, attempted all of the variations (including a deep-frying incident once on an upper level apartment balcony where, as I should have posted in the "what i will never do again" thread, we failed to account for the mass of the bird when filling the pot with oil, not realizing our bourbon-induced mistake until the bird hit the hot oil, much to the downstairs neighbor's horror). Or, rather, I'd believed that I'd tried all the tricks. Browsing through Steingarten's It Must've Been Something I Ate the other night, I ran across this passage: He goes on to say that it doesn't work for a goose. Has anyone tried this technique?

Everyone has passions, some secret, some not so. To criticize any seems shallow to me. The only person to ever raise the questions you offer up has been my father, with his eyes rolling high, wondering just why in the hell his oldest son is wasting time doing that in the kitchen when the oil needs changing (car, not deep-fryer ), or the garden needs tending. You can buy good mustard, don't make your own, and you don't really need to eat food any more complicated than good fried catfish and okra, he offers up. This is when I remind him that he smokes his brisket and tends that fire for ten or twelve or fourteen hours -- which I believe he sees more as something that one "just does", rather than dare admit to the craft of it. To forestall some comment and ridicule from close friends, I do tend to hide some of the extremes of my fanaticism. Making my own ingredients? Well, I think I'll just keep that to myself. The finished dishes cooked with it, however, that gets shared and shared again. As for what drives the urge, the passion (the original question, I believe), it's hard to define. Preparing food, much like playing music or printing pictures or baking bread or even writing, brings me to a zone that I can't imagine living outside of. It's an area where I don't feel terribly self-conscious, and don't have to work too hard at (these days) to be successful with, yet challenge and growth remain a daily benefit; I do it for me. Apart from this message board, I don't really talk about it. It's not about external validation, but about the internal; it's about the resting of the soul after the labor in the kitchen and the consumption of the result. Everyone needs this, whether its food or art or some other craft. To live without seems a waste.

Putting on my bibliophile hat for a moment - It's "scarce", not "rare", and is worth (assuming condition is good or better) roughly $700 signed. My girlfriend adores this book, and I nearly bought it for her last Christmas, but I couldn't find a copy in the right condition. Off-topic, I recently saw Dali in a best-forgotten movie from 1970 called Myra Brekinridge (based on Gore Vidal's book). He (Dali) kept turning up at parties, sitting and smoking. Movie also had Rex Reed (who knew he acted?), Mae West, Tom Selleck (playing a stud to Mae West), a very young Farrah Fawcett, and a very beautiful Racquel Welch. It was a terrible, terrible movie, but campy and fun. And it had Dali.

I've never been to a California (or the Carolina's, my other big farmer's market experience) farmer's market where there wasn't sampling...

inflated one figure, deflated the other, I presume?

Cook the beans with espazote (a herb native to Mexico/Southwest). Note that it may be hard to find in certain parts of the country. You can also use a few drops of beano.

Any idea of the derivation of "blue John?" Milk with the cream seperated out has a bluish hue, hence the name. I've never bought skim milk, but I imagine that it's 'corrected' before being put into the carton these days.

No offense intended towards our Northern readers, but why in the world would you take gravy making advice from a Yankee?? Likewise, I would take advice on making New England Clam Chowder from a Mississippian with an equal grain of salt.

That's a great idea for Saturday lunch. We can eat on the grounds of the B&B. That's a great way to eat when you're on the road period; breaking the monotony of the whole restaurant thing is always a secondary goal for me, especially when there's great ingredients local. We spent labor day weekend up in Mendocino and took two meals outside, out of a bag, nothing but good bread, great cheese, and a variety of smoked fish from a little smokeshop up in Ft Bragg.

Those big storms, that far up the east coast, they scare it out of you...

For those interested, there's more detail on Mongolia in the CIA's World Fact Book here. (always my first source for in-depth country information). 2.7 Million people, and only 100,000 telephone landlines (another 100K cell phones). 40,000 internet users - any on eGullet??

I did a two-day hunt at the British School of Falconry at Gleneagle, Scotland, about two years ago, where we rid the local sheep pastures of rabbit. It was a truely amazing experience. The guy who ran the school had two caged eagles, captured in the Mid-East, that he would take out and hunt with. It was a magnificient thing to see, him working those birds. Very majestic. As for us, we used Harris Hawks. Great story Ellen. Really enjoying it.

And Mario weighs in, saying that he thought "The Restaurant," the show about young cook Rocco DiSpirito, had been "arrogant," and added, "Bobby Flay has to love Rocco DiSpirito, because he is no longer the most despised chef in town." (half-way down the page)

What's interesting is that cilantro (and cilantro oil) is apparently effective in leeching mercury (and maybe other heavy metals) out of the bloodstream. Maybe folks who have 'off' tastes of cilantro have some sort of heavy metal imbalance? Or there's some relation? Love a good mystery.

But embrace bourbon and Leonard Cohen.

It's ritual for me. First, I write poetry. Really awful stuff that provides outlet for the emotion. Nothing you'd ever want to read. Then I bake bread. I zen out and knead out whatever the issue is while working the dough and the oven. It takes hours, and the time is good. Finally, I eat. The bread. Some cheese. Smoked fish. If that doesn't work, I get drunk and sleep with a stranger and bake more bread the next day.