GG Mora

Corn syrup is indeed made from corn. More precisely, corn syrup is made from corn starch. An explanation of the process can be found here, along with some brief and biased tangential discussion.

That's where the Dulce de Leche lives.

Well, it's not so much that I hide the sinful stuff from everybody else. I hide certain things from the kids, to protect my husband and me from the effects. A 2-liter jar of chocolate chips, an extra large container of Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa Mix, and a 1-gallon tupperware of homemade granola are stashed in the sweater cupboard in our bedroom. To explain: Because my chocolate chip cookies are requested for every single stinkin' event at the kids' school, I buy large bags of Nestle's chocolate chips from Costco (for more important events, I would spring for better chips, but...). I learned quickly not to keep them on the kitchen shelves, or even in the pantry, since the Adolescent Raiders® hoovered up the first bag in an afternoon and me an' Hub nearly had to tie the kids to their beds to get them settled down at 11 o'clock at night (you can argue all you want about the effect of sugar on children, but there's no question the caffeine in chocolate sets them off). Hot Cocoa Mix justification similar. Boy (13) has shown an alarming early interest in the effect of stimulants in the form of sugar and caffeine. On a field trip with his class last year, his friends dared him to drink as many cups of hot cocoa as he could get down before the Po-leece come (well, before the teachers noticed, really) which turned out to be 10 or 12, depending on who you asked. The fallout wasn't pretty...Can you say "Whirling Dervish"? And so, when he discovered that I'd brought home an extra-large Tub-o-Cocoa Mix from Costco, he decided to repeat the experiment. Best we keep the stuff locked away. Now, granola is just fine for them. That's why I made it myself. Super Mom (well, Step Mom) makes her own healthful granola for the kids! A whole gallon bucket of it on the counter! And the Adolescent Raiders® came home from school and ate an entire third of the bucket in one sitting. I hadn't gotten around to explaining that you eat granola in dainty little servings because, well, oh nevermind. Their well-being depends on my hiding the granola, because of they ever pulled a stunt like that again, I'd fucking kill them.

Oh, Mongo...did I forget to mention my 12 basil bushes? Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. You know, as someone who'll try just about anything in the name of gardening, I can only encourage your basil endeavor. It might fail, but if it succeeds, well....more basil for you and Mrs. Jones, no? A few thoughts: While waiting for the seeds to germinate, I'd keep the pot indoors in a warm spot, away from direct sunlight. You can even cover the top of the pot with plastic to from a sort of greenhouse. I'm guessing the nights are cool in Boulder, so leaving the pot outdoors to germinate is asking a lot of it. Once the seeds have sprouted, take the plastic (if you used it) off and move the pot to a sunny spot, indoors or out, but if you're really serious about growing your own basil this time of year, coddle the pot like you would an old dog: carry it out in the morning once the chill is off and carry it back inside before the heat of the day dissipates. Basil's a warm-climate plant, so fool it best you can. You might consider a small grow light for your plant. I find that really herbaceous plants go spindly in a heartbeat when forced indoors, but a well-placed source of fake sun can do wonders.

It's awfully quiet here, so I thought I'd offer this little update. Vermont has been unseasonably cool for the last few days, and suddenly fall seem so inevitable. These pictures were taken over a week ago, when the steamy heat was accelerating everything (I planted more arugula and beets and mixed greens that evening & two afternoons later it was all well sprouted). Now I'm taking inentory to see what I can reasonably expect to mature before first frost. Lettuce and other greens have outpaced our daily salad consumption since mid-June. That tall spikey thing lower right in the bottom photo is a romaine head that I'm letting go to seed. Mache, arugula, mesclun and about 10 varieties of lettuce...I'm going to build my first coldframe this fall so I can keep the greens coming. The winter squash are slowing down; a lot of good fruit to ripen, but the female flowers are few and far between now. And the pattypan squash, too. I have a nice basketful of 2 1/2 in. fruit to make sense of. Tired of grilled & sautéed, I was inspired by Anna N.'s tomato and zucchini gratin over on the Dinner thread, so tomorrow I'll improvise something in a pert little gratin. All the squash plants have benefitted this season from our synergy with a family of phoebes. For you non-birders: phoebes are small, agile flycatchers and prolifically reproductive (and cute). We have a pair that have returned for 2 years now, and we let them nest under the third-floor deck, where they pop out two broods a season of three or four fledglings each. They all like to hang around the garden, and to perch on the clothesline, the bean poles, the tomato cages, and a few shepherd's crook stakes I have stuck in the ground, from whence they patrol for snacks. In return for our hospitality, they keep the garden clean of squash and potato beetles and heaven knows what else. It's hilarious to watch them swoop and dive, especially the youngsters who haven't quite got the hang of the F-16 they were hatched into. We've eaten through the first harvest of beets. Roasted and paired with mache, some crumbled blue cheese, a few toasted walnuts and just a mist of balsamic vinegar and olive oil....oof. The garlic gave up some delicious scapes – best grilled with just a film of oil and some S&P, and I've just harvested some 80 or so heads to hang for curing. That was one full raised-bed box, 8' x 4', and I predict that garlic will all be gone by Thanksgiving. Me an' hub guess that 5 boxes planted ought to get us through a season. Maybe. This morning's reconnaissance turned up willowy young filet beans that should be harvested tomorrow...blanched and shocked and tossed with shallots sautéed in butter, yes, ma'am, that's how we like 'em. Poblano pepper plants are covered with 1-in. pepperlets, jalapeno plants laden (and the fruit has some HEAT to it), mini-fingerling eggplant trying very hard, brussels sprouts knurling up the stalks of their parents. The big surprise was the green cabbage: I gently pulled away the furled center leaves to check on head-development and found...pristine tight heads of cauliflower. Mismarked at the nursery, but I'm not complaining. We love cauliflower, roasted and (as I discovered a few weeks ago) grilled, like any other decent vegetable. The tomato plants are all groaning with fruit. A few of the Sun-Sugar cherry tomatoes have been ripe enough to sample and they're hands-down the best cherry tomato I've ever tasted. We've had just the right amount of rain for tomatoes this season, so the cherry tomatoes aren't insipid or over-tart or cracking. One fist-sized Marmande is ready for harvest, with brethren to follow within the week. Nebraska Wedding are starting to color, and Black from Tula are giant and starting to show darkening at the shoulders. Tomatillo plants are overrun with little green lanterns, but a squeeze to a few shows they're a few weeks from maturity. 3 rhubarb plants given a mound in June could stand a little harvesting, maybe just enough for a few pints of jam. Leeks looking handsome, shallots vigorous; I poked a hand down into a potato barrel and struck nothing of interest, but potatoes always surprise me at harvest time. It's a happy garden out there, just beyond my office door. My co-workers in New Jersey, Maryland and England have forbidden me to gloat during our Monday morning conference calls, while they sit crammed in their windowless cubicles, and I wander through the garden with my headset and cordless phone, weeding, deadheading, watching the phoebes and listening to the river. "Hey, you guys...can you hear that?".

Mongo, dear...Don't you have a woman who grills?

Ooh...ooh...ooh! Anna N. just decided for me what I'm doing with a basket of not-quite baby pattypan squash: a gratin! Thank you, Anna, bless you. And those ribs? Girl, that's pornographic!

I'd be Walking On Sunshine if you'd decorate the place with 99 Red Balloons.

Don't apologize. So far I haven't quite gleaned the appeal of TJ's, other than that I can get Gerolsteiner by the case, at a cost of 85¢ a bottle, vs. $1.25 () in my hood. And you might begin to understand the appeal of Costco if you had adolescent stepchildren eating you out of house and home.

I used to spend as much time there as possible, but outside of foraging trips to Costco, Tran's, TJ's and Table & Vine, I haven't spent any quality time there in about 4 years. I used to love breakfast at Jake's. One of my favorite dinner spots, The Ladybug Café, is (sadly) no longer. I always liked Green Street. I thought Spoleto was overrated. Sometimes for fun we'd go to a joint called Joe's – an Italian dive on Can't-Remember-The-Name Street. The food was definitely of a certain ilk, but good value for the money. And Siam Street for Thai isn't greatly authentic, but it's a good spot for lunch. Brattleboro? Haven't been to TJ Buckley's in yonks. Max's in West Brattleboro I consider worth the 45-minute drive from home. There's a new Thai place smack in downtown that I haven't tried yet, bet is getting good WOM.

The Whately Diner. Exit 24.

That's very nearly the wisest thing to do. The Dordogne Valley / Perigord is quite beautiful, too, and may still be temperate in November. Also, by November it's less likely to be overrun with Brits – not that the British invasion is entirely a bad thing except that it can make it more a British than a French experience. The Perigord has the advantage of being foie-gras Ground Zero, in addition to all the other duck-goose products (I think nearly everything is required to be cooked in duck fat), the truffles and everything walnut (Liqueur de Noix is a tasty diversion from wine and Armagnac). The architecture in the region is quite stunning, too, with chateaux around nearly every bend, perched on rock faces and in some cases built right out of the rock. In La Roque Gageac, the village homes seem to sprout from the rose-ochre rock wall, and as you look higher up you see the pentimento of previous inhabitants all the way back to the Troglodytes. And the self-flagellating can wander over to Roquamador and scale the stone steps on their knees. And then there's the Basque country, where la France profond rests cheek by jowl with the ritz of Biarritz and Bayonne, and there's opportunity to throw Spain in the mix. My point is that you can hardly go wrong.

You can hop the TGV from CDG and be in Avignon in 4 hours. Pick up your rental car at the train station, and all of Provence is yours. Stay somewhere close to Avignon your first night; St. Remy is less than an hour by car and is a quiet enough place to revive after all that travel, but puts you squarely in rural France. Ile sur la Sorgue, Fontaine de Vaucluse, Gigondas are other possibilites. From there, you can explore down into the Camargue, or through the Luberon and over into the Var (where the Gorges du Verdun is a must-see must-drive experience). And you needn't take food out of the equation; it would be a crime to, since all of Provence is a culinary wonderland. Since it's in the South, the weather can still be quite decent in November.

What good is a salad dressing quiz that doesn't include homemade vinaigrette? And this: Wrong on almost every count. I'm intensely competitive – with myself. Sales? Bzzzzzzt. Tried sales once and was miserable with and at it. I'm just not aggressive enough. Sample exchange: ME: Wanna buy this? TARGET: No. ME: Okay. Dirty secret: I ranch dressing. I don't keep it in the house, only order it in restaurants of a certain ilk. But twice while staying with friends & being begged to make my vinaigrette every night, I myself couldn't get enough of that Hidden Valley Ranch in the fridge.

Coincidently, I just learned that Margo's has closed. My info comes from the younger step-kids, just returned from up north, so while I can be sure the basic news – that it is closing – is correct, I would be loathe to accept the details presented as entirely accurate (or maybe accurate but not the whole story)... "Well, John the cook-guy was making Margo really mad and being a jerk and stuff, so she closed the place and it's for sale." Details to come, if anyone cares.

A friend often offers up this toast.... Here's to the girl in the little red shoes: She took all my money and drank all my booze. She didn't have a cherry, but it was no sin; She still had the box that her cherry came in. OT, I guess, but you were talkin about cherries.

Mmmmm. Sriracha. It keeps me sane in a land of spice-pussies: make it tame for the masses – I can load mine up with Sriracha. Edited to add: I like my goose with a nice, tart apricot sauce.

Interesting that you ask "Does your man cook?" rather than "Can your man cook?". Because mine can but most often doesn't. To be fair, I'll say that my cooking skills are a little intimidating to almost everyone I know, so not many of them would offer to cook in my stead. Which is just plain dumb, since none of them is a particularly bad cook. And so, my husband, while he is a perfectly good cook, only cooks when the stakes are low or I'm not looking. He gets up in the morning and makes breakfast for himself and the kids and packs their lunch for school. He'll make breakfast for the masses on the weekend. If I'm out without him for an evening, he manages to feed himself and the kids well enough that I often hear about it the next day. When absolutely necessary, he'll step up to the plate and cook dinner for all of us – usually an excellent roast chicken and fixins, sometimes pasta (with bottled sauce, but with a fine salad and wicked garlic bread), or maybe a scaled-down paella. He's Paella Man, due to family heritage; he makes a damned good one, one that I couldn't match. I've been trying for the 3 years we've been together to find a way to coax him into cooking more, because I know he enjoys it. He pores over the cooking mags every month and points out stuff that looks delicious, so I'll suggest that he make what looks good. Nope. If the technique seems intimidating, I'll suggest that we cook together (I LOVE cooking with a partner; it's another form of lovemaking). Nope. I proposed that he pick one night a week to be in charge of dinner, so that he could plan ahead. Nope. Bought him one of Bittman's smaller cookbooks for his birthday...He actually tried a new twist on the roast chicken dinner, which was excellent, but since then the book sits gathering dust. He doesn't refuse any of my suggestions; he agress to them but never follows through. And when I ask about it, that old intimidation issue rears its ugly head. Now, I'm not someone that lords it over people. I'll cop to severe competence here, since I'm in good company, but in the real world, I'm pretty fucking humble about it. Honest. Maybe I just need to give it more time. I kinda know how he feels. He's a natural and gifted skier, the kind that can make even the most confident skier want to take off their skis and give it up. Of course, he's oblivious to the effect, and is supremely encouraging to all comers. Nonetheless, I was mortified with self-consciousness the first time I skied with him, and remain mostly so. And I'm a reasonably competant skier. But in the presence of greatness...

Hmph. No mention of ajvar? I keep both spicy and mild on hand. Grilled cheese with ajvar. Meat loaf sandwich with ajvar. Ajvar & chevre omelette. Yup. Ajvar.

Well, dang. I have about 5 bottles of hot sauce in the fridge, some more in the pantry. There goes that masculine side rearing its ugly head again... (yes, I really do have two X chromosomes!) Yeah, but how many bottles in the glove compartment?

Tran's Asia/America Supermarket on Rt. 9 in Hadley, JUST across the bridge that is perpetually under contruction. On the left, in the same dingy strip-lot as the adult video store. Don't be put off. Small but amazing (and I do mean amazing) store, packed to the gills with Asian ingredients in cans, bottles, jars, vac-pacs. It's like a f***ing museum. Or a candy store, if you're into cooking Asian. Unbelievable selection of odd fruits and vegetables – everything from lemongrass, lime leaf and rau ram to pea eggplant and (yes!) durian. Don't miss it. Table and Vine, way the heck out King Street behind the Big Y grocery, has a vast selection of wines from all over the world. Also has good specialty food products and probably the best cheese selection around. And State Street Market, on State Street / corner of Centre St., has a small but well chosen wine selection, and usually has knowledgeable staff.

Mmm, yeah. $50 - $100 sounds pretty extravagant to me. This time of year, I usually bring a big bouquet of flowers from my gardens. Or, if I know someone has plenty of their own flowers but no vegetable garden, I bring a basket of produce – a big lovely head of Lolla Rossa lettuce, a bundle of basil and one of cilantro, a clutch of baby pattypan squash, a small bundle of young beets – basically a slection of whatever's looking fabulous that day.

This sandwich is only worth making with the bestest bestest ingredients, & then it's the bestest sandwich in the world: 8 or 9 inches of baguette (has to be totally fresh and crisp), split lengthwise with a slather of unsalted butter filled with sliced ham (Black Forest, or Jambon de Bayonne, or Jamon de Serrano, or Prosciutto de Parma) and a few slices of cheese – whatever your preference, but make sure it's good. Something in a Tomme style works for me.

Well, since you have two cakes, you could try one of each. To answer your question (rather than suggest an alternative), the difference in flavor between a plain buttercream made with egg yolks and one made with whites is so subtle, I hardly think it would matter to a 7-yr.-old. If she's like most kids, sweet is what makes it good. That said, Sea Foam frosting sounds great.

When I'm lacking anchovies, I use a dash of fish sauce. I've also been known to use a spot of dijon mustard for improved emulsification. I make Caesar Salad fairly often for the family, and add some grilled chicken to make it a complete meal. My 10-yr-old SD was out to dinner with friends and ordered caesar salad. When she got home, she reported her dismay that it wasn't a "real" caesar salad. There wasn't any chicken.