Tropicalsenior

It all looks delicious and I am particularly interested in how you make the fish cake. It looks like sliced fish loaf. Whenever I make fish loaf it always falls apart and doesn't slice beautifully like yours does. How do you do it?

I am sorry! Someone sent it to me just this morning and I didn't realize that it had already been posted.

Not to be outdone by the pigs.

As long as I had the griddle hot I had to give it a try. These are lousy tortillas but they are the only corn tortillas that I have. They came with the take out chicken the other night but they give you the idea. Nice flavorful little flecks of brown but still pliable enough for tacos.

I don't understand that at all. You don't want the cast iron screaming hot. I just heated my little griddle and at two and a half minutes it was the perfect temperature.

This is what I use on a burner turned to medium high. Heating them in the microwave will work but you don't get that puff that gives you the nice flaky texture. The trick is to have the griddle hot enough to give you some nice brown spots in just a few seconds instead of black spots. The Griddle is made by Lodge. Edited: A comal will work perfectly fine. I used to have one but I find The Griddle to be a much more versatile tool which is important when you have a small kitchen. Let me tell you, it's almost impossible to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a comal.

I want to preface this by saying that none of my children had food allergies or special dietary needs. The dinner options were, when we eat together we all eat the food that is set on the table or when we eat together we all eat the food that is set on the table. Special meals could be requested when they had friends over or for special occasions. As a single mother raising four daughters oh, I had neither the time, energy nor money to be catering to four different diets. Our meals were served family style and when they were old enough to put the food on their plate they were allowed to choose how much they wanted of each item. If it was something that they particularly hated, they weren't forced to eat it.

Since my two housemates are from Nicaragua I hear a lot about the difference in the food and the produce that is available to them. One of the strangest, to me, was the preference in the tomatoes. For years, all that was available in Costa Rica was the little round tomato. In Nicaragua, all that was available was the Roma variety. Thankfully, now they are both available here. Many people here call the tomatos on the right Nicaraguan tomatoes.

Here in Costa Rica it is just the opposite. They call everything here a lemon but the true yellow lemons can only be bought occasionally at our very best supermarket and they called them Persian limes. Go figure! I'm told by Nicaraguan friends that yellow lemons are very common just across the border.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist adding this. In my humble opinion, it has more to do with the modern attitude about raising children. They're not children they're just small adults and they must be reasoned with instead of disciplined. If you discipline them they will not be your friends and they will not like you. In every case that I've seen, without rules, guidance and discipline the inmates are soon running the asylum. I'm glad that @Duvel has weighed in. He is raising a truly adventurous eater.

Must have been very popular in the time of Henry the 8th.

We both have. And once was quite enough, thank you very much. Not my favorite pasta, anyway.

In one of our favorite restaurants in Seattle, the grandmother came in three days a week just to make their pasta. Many fine Italian restaurants have one person just to make the pasta and the speed with which they can turn them out is incredible. At my age, the speed with which I can get a package down from the grocery store shelf is good enough for me. However, if I could figure out how to make orzo it might be different.

To me they look a little bit like Orecchiette. Here is a pretty decent video from YouTube. I made them once and that was enough for me. If they are truly a type of macarrones they probably used some type of extruder. This also can be made at home but it's not easy. The consistency if the pasta dough has to be so precise.

The two things that send me to drooling the most are the perfectly prepared beef by @Ann_T and your orzo. I haven't seen any here for 10 years.

And I might add to the above, they love pasta in any way shape or form. But it must be cooked into submission. Unless it lies flat and flabby, it's not cooked. When we moved here years ago, one of their favorite recipes for spaghetti was plain spaghetti dressed with ketchup and chunks of Bologna. You would think that that would cause a lifelong aversion to spaghetti but many people here still love it that way.

Again, we can talk about culture. The Costa Ricans eat a ton a vegetables. The only way that they know to cook them is to cook them until they are done and then cook them another half hour. Their only seasoning is salt. And they all love it that way. That's one reason that I don't like Chinese restaurants here. The vegetables have to be cooked to mush or the Ticos won't eat them.

I have a feeling that the Chinese have a much healthier attitude toward food. It seems to be not just a means of life but a point of pride in preparation and in many ways is an art form. Over here it has become an obsession, a means to fame or a practice of shaming others for their eating habits or cooking methods. Did you ever wonder what percentage of the internet and social media is strictly food related items?

In my day, everyone hated spinach although I doubt that most of us had ever eaten it. It was just the food that everyone hated. I even read once that the creators of Popeye made spinach his power source as a means to counteract this. My own children loved broccoli as well as brussel sprouts, turnips and rutabagas but they sure hated peas in any way shape or form. I don't suppose that you ever heard about the Great American broccoli scandal when in 1990, President George H bush said this. "I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States. And I'm not gonna eat any more broccoli! ... For the broccoli vote out there, Barbara loves broccoli. She's tried to make me eat it. She eats it all the time herself. So, she can go out and meet the caravan of broccoli that's coming in from Washington." — George H. W. Bush[4]

Well, back to the topic if possible. Fussy, picky children. How do they become that way and is it more prevalent In some cultures than in others? Most of the fussy, picky eaters that I have known are just plain spoiled brats who refuse to eat the same thing that everybody else does and have parents that will indulge them in whatever they want. After all, we mustn't say no or they might not like us. There are some children who get physically sick from one thing or another and they know their own bodies and refuse to eat that thing. Many parents ignore this and force food on them causing them to become overcautious about everything. Others get hung up on one food item or refuse to eat things based on color or texture. I'm no doctor but it seems to me that this would be classified more as an eating disorder. Is it more prevalent In some cultures than others? Definitely! Many other cultures still sit down to one meal a day and everyone eats the food that is set in front of them. Children don't know any other way. Countries with huge supermarkets and internet and television influence have a surfeit of choice. Children are bombarded with advertisements and enticements. They no longer want to accept their parents as the final authority on what they should eat. It's a vicious cycle and it is only going to get worse because picky children grow up to have more picky children.

Article information PLoS One. 2015; 10(4): e0123664. Published online 2015 Apr 13. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123664 PMCID: PMC4395402 PMID: 25875004 Yong Xue, 1 Ai Zhao, 2 Li Cai, 1 , ¤a Baoru Yang, 1 , ¤b Ignatius M. Y. Szeto, 1 Defu Ma, 2 Yumei Zhang, 1 ,* and Peiyu Wang 1 ,* Jacobus van Wouwe, Academic Editor 1 Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China, 2 Department of Social Medicine and Health Education, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China, TNO, NETHERLANDS, Competing Interests: The investigation was supported by China Mengniu Dairy Stock Company Ltd, This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. Conceived and designed the experiments: PYW YMZ YX. Performed the experiments: YX AZ LC DFM. Analyzed the data: YX LC IMYS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AZ YMZ YX. Wrote the paper: YX AZ LC YMZ PYW BRY. ¤aCurrent address: Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China ¤bCurrent address: Food Chemistry & Food Development, Department of Biochemistry, University of Turku, Turku, Pori, Finland * E-mail: nc.ude.umjb@uyiepw (PYW); nc.ude.umjb@iemuygnahz (YMZ) Received 2014 Jun 13; Accepted 2015 Mar 6. Copyright © 2015 Xue et al This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Articles from PLoS ONE are provided here courtesy of Public Library of Science

I found the article interesting until I read their conclusions or non-conclusions. Total gobbledygook! I just kind of wondered... The West has picky eaters so China must have them, too?

I found it very interesting that after all the information that they provide on the danger to children who are picky eaters, they conclude with this. "Moreover, there is limited knowledge of the eating behaviours of Chinese pre-schoolers".

My guess would be, the demise of the family dinner table. I would guess that with the pandemia, the idea that everyone sits down and eats together at the same time has come as a shock to a lot of people. Maybe it will also change some families' eating habits.