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fondue

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Everything posted by fondue

  1. I used to order eggs sunnyside down, medium cooked, and they'd arrive as runny as sunnyside up eggs 50% of the time. I got tired of sending them back, so I stopped ordering them that way. I don't want to wait longer for food. Only twice in my life have I sent a dinner back. By the time the entree arrives, darn it, I'm hungry. Sending back a less than perfect plate of food? I'm grading on a curve that includes my subjective discomfort.
  2. Southern MN has a small production of a line called Spring Valley soda. Made with cane sugar. Every one of that line is my favorite, and yes, there's a cola. A close runner-up is a Santa Fe, NM line called Blue Sky soda. The cola, root beer and dark cherry are so, so good!
  3. This is true all over Florida too! Some of our retirees prefer not to wear hearing aids, and breakfast especially seems like a lively shouting match!
  4. Yes, sorry, I should have clarified: Economy class was the group I was describing. Business/First Class passengers tend to be the ones who support the cutting edge restaurants.
  5. I'm of the opinion that airline food is not trying to be all things to all people. It's not swinging for the fences, aiming for a Michelin star. No, it's aiming to be inoffensive to the greatest number of people and within budgetary confines. Consider your neighbors and co-workers: You, the e-gulleter, are the biggest foodie among them, yes? Your specifications are two standard deviations removed from the mean. I guarantee if AA or Delta could partner with a fast food chain, they'd do it in a New York minute.
  6. YYMV, but we generally order 1-2 dishes fewer than persons at the table. A soup is essential, dumplings are a lot of fun, and then we get into the importance of seasonal vegetables, stir-fried with garlic, braised with oyster sauce or what have you, and white rice is culturally essential. We like to order different kinds of meat: seafood, beef, pork. What kind of meal are you looking for? Homestyle or banquet? How many people? Maybe others with more experience are more qualified than me to answer.
  7. Living in a new place, it's a new relationship to food for all of us. Last week, I saw my son's face pale with distress for various reasons: The bodies of the quail were too small; the dressed rabbits, "had eyes"; the prepared frogs legs, "looked slimy"; and when I lifted the soup ladle at the Chinese restaurant from the crock of duck soup and voila, a ducks head? "Please put that away, Mom." He was willing to eat it, he just didn't want to see the evidence. I'm hoping this is a phase. Anyone else?
  8. The country just celebrated its 59th birthday; there are many grandparents around who remember being colonized by France. As such, there are many, many opportunities to try high French cuisine. What surprises me is the variety of alternative cuisines: Lebanese, Pakistani, northeastern and Szechuan Chinese, and lots of Italian. Here's something else curious: Many styles are missing. Not one Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurant in a city of three million people. No Cambodian or Russian, no Mexican or Uzbek are available either. Perhaps as the middle class enlarges, and the continuity of a stable government continues, these will come..... Any thoughts about what makes a place hospitable for a new type of cuisine?
  9. Thank you so much for this! It sounds like a perfect homestyle meal!
  10. Thanks much for the welcome! The haiku version of how we got here is that my husband and I met as flight paramedics, then started our own medevac company in New Mexico. Five years ago we moved to Palm Beach County, FL. to organize evacuations out of the Carribean of the sick and injured. Met a business contact through the 'net, and got invited by the government of Madagascar to organize a medevac company here. It was as much because we valued bringing up our boy as an expat (and our own wanderlust), and I'm a geeky birder that made this impossible to turn down.
  11. Thanks so much, Teonzo, for these recipes! They give me hope for wrapping my arms around the new. I can get anchovies, coarsely ground corn for polenta, capers, and all the fresh lemon juice I could want. I'm terrible at butchering, but excellent at tipping those behind the counter who wield the knives! 😄
  12. I've recently moved to Madagascar, which has forced me to adapt, improvise or overcome some basic provisioning shortfalls. While I can find eleven different brands of fermented fish sauce, sesame oil is not to be found. Nor is hot chili oil. White bread in all its glorious baguette-y forms can be had even at gas stations, but just try to find pumpernickel or rye. So how about you? Where are you located and how does it affect your food supply?
  13. That's hilarious! Also, I suspect my mother would not willingly be separated from okra! It's funny you should mention the lack of things I'm used to. There are many. Everything that's not locally grown or harvested has to be flown in via Nairobi, Paris or Istanbul, or it comes from ships. Because the country lacks a large middle class, the second highest source of fees for the government is import taxes. The law of unintended consequences is that whole classes of foods you'd find in your local store are missing here, because the fees make them too expensive. Grape leaves, garlic chili sauce, aged black vinegar, sesame oil, Jell-O!! Nobody has them. (A corollary to this is that to camouflage the scarcity of choice, there will be five different packagings for chocolate rice crispies and three different packagings for corn flakes, and nine different variations on bologna.)
  14. I would try, if only for the novelty. Does the cone have a story too? It looks very dark.....
  15. I have so many photos I'm having to post sequentially. There was a fourth kind of Pringles that I tried but did not photograph and that was an Emmentaler flavored one. First it hit you with a corn syrup note, then redeemed itself with a savory-cheesiness. I'd eat them again, but not my first choice. The pizza flavor was awful - I don't know where that flavor engineer came from, but it wasn't Italy or the USA. The ham and cheese one was too sweet: Start, middle, and finish, as if black forest ham was the model. The BBQ one? Flavors of liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce and more salt. It was endured more than enjoyed. It's hard to tell if Africa is an emerging market where things are tested, or where failures in other places are sent to die. Could be both.
  16. Open air fruit markets? Bundles of grumpy chickens? Bike racks stacked high with hundreds of eggs? Woven grass bike panniers restraining confused geese? Happily and easily shared! I'm currently in the International Snack Foods Section figuring out that skill now.....
  17. I'm a recent expat from the USA to the capitol city of Antananarivo, Madagascar, and the culture shock around food is *fresh*. I'm a longtime lurker, and figured this would be a good place to find people who know what to do with a large ocean eel, or mango achar, or a freshly prepped rabbit. I'm trying to feed my family in a place where the water will kill you, if you're lucky enough to have water pressure at all. Happily, my son will try anything once, and my husband will eat anything I made with gusto. Madagascar has unbelievable seafood, tropical fruit, and rices, and I'm loving their French history. With every charcuterie board and every salade nicoise, I grow more attached to The Big Island, as they refer to themselves. I've lived all over the USA, and several times had the opportunity live in Europe and Asia as a single person. Now I'm trying to do it "en famille ". I love cooking Indian, Chinese, French, northern New Mexico, slow-cookers and baking. I can't make pastry or temper chocolate to save myself. (Does doing it in a microwave oven count? I thought not). I admire the words of wisdom I've read during a decade-plus of lurking. I'm so glad to join you! Best Regards,
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