Toliver

My family gravitated to pork ribs because the meat-to-bone ratio was so lopsided. Beef bones never seemed to have the meat on them to justify the trouble of BBQ'ing and then gnawing on them. More pork bang for the buck, so to speak.

Now this is something I'd never heard of....a woman I work with is from Vietnam and she said they use the bottom of ceramic rice bowls to gain back a knife's edge. She said you can go into any Vietnamese home and look at the bottom of some of the older, chipped (ceramic) rice bowls (the ones they don't use anymore) and you'll see the bottom rim will be black from knives being sharpened on them. I asked her how the knive edge was used on the ceramic and the motion she showed me was almost the same as the angled motion you use when using a steel. She said if she is slicing veggies and the knife is too dull, she just takes a rice bowl and zip-zip, the knife is sharp again. Who knew? So now I'm thinking of buying some cheap ceramic rice bowls from my local asian market to see if it works (I don't have expensive knives so I have nothing to lose). Anyone else hear of this?

The Conspiracy Theorist in me has me wondering if that was his plan along.

Having only had the powdered stuff before, what is the flavor of real wasabi? How does it taste compared to the green stuff we're so used to (which, to me, seems to have no taste but does provide a "kick")? Speaking of which, does it have the same "kick" as the pretend wasabi? edit: added "to me"

Sadly, this happened to my brother during a recent remodel and it was more like 2 months instead of three weeks. In their contract, the contractor had agreed to complete the remodel job by a specific date. My brother had a list of minor things that still had to be done on the remodel and when the completion date came and went without a peep from the contractor, my brother called the contractor only to be told that he had "forgotten" all about my brother's remodel job! My brother got the last laugh, though. He stilled owed a nice balance to the contractor due upon completion. But because the contractor didn't meet the completion date as per the contract, my brother didn't have to pay him another cent. He ended up negotiating with the contractor to finish what needed to be done and ended up having to pay only half of the remaining balance. Needless to say, the contractor wasn't a happy camper with my brother.

Awww, what fun is that? Minimalist pizza? Fie on that...eat a cracker instead. I like a melange of ingredients, the more the merrier. "Hey, it's a party in my mouth!" I'd suggest a half-and-half, if you're only making one pizza. Give your son his tomato sauce, pineapple, mozzerella and meat (bacon and/or sausage...what!? No ham?). For your half, red sauce, basil and feta...close to a traditional margherita (sp?) pizza. Sounds great! I hope you can post a pic of the final "pie".

Uhm...I've eaten that as a child...on white bread with Miracle Whip...and liked it. Fortunately, that was 30 years ago. And isn't grinding bologna sorta redundant?

We had them in San Diego. The driver's name was Ralph and he would always park just down the street when our elementary school got out. We always got the sweet things, too...Waxed lips, penny Bazooka bubble gum, Abba Zabbas, Now & Laters, Mary Janes, Pixie Stix and on & on. You knew you had bought too much when Ralph gave you a small paper bag for your goodies. Oink!

From the product description: "Shaft, splash guard and paddles are dishwasher-safe."

I'm not a very religious person but I've always believed God has a great sense of humor. It's good to see He's sharing it with others! My condolences on your vacation in food hell...

Something for the cook who has everything And to think my mom just used her four kids to help stir. What was she thinkin'?

Isn't that funny...that's what my mom called me and my 3 brothers! She also said "Who needs a dishwasher? I got four of them!" My mom...ain't she a riot? Edit: Added second part

I have a bottle of Tabasco Chipotle and a tin of ground black pepper hidden away in an office drawer. I am mulling over ordering a mini Magnum for better pepper flavor. Mmmmm...fresh ground pepper.

Though I can see your point (having been the winner, as a child, in a momentous "I'm not going to eat those lima beans and you can't make me" struggle at the dinner table) this sort of advice to not force the issue has led to the ruin of my niece's palate and colon. She is 16 now and doesn't eat vegetables. Period. When she was very young and didn't want to eat her vegetables, my brother never made a big deal out of it because he didn't want a "scene" at the dinner table. My sister-in-law disagreed but said nothing. Now my niece is paying for it. She recently had to go to the doctor because she was constipated due to the complete lack of fiber in her diet. How can someone live on just Mac & Cheese & Meat? Or is that the Atkins diet? She is an avid basketball player and is very good at it but is shorter than she should be (her dad and I are both 6' 5"). We think she has one more growth spurt in her before she graduates high school in two years but will she get the full potential of that growth spurt if she doesn't eat the proper nutrients/building blocks? Afterall, in a physiological/biological sense, we are what we eat. So at what age do you need to make a big deal out of it before it gets out of hand like this?

What is this Food of the Gods? It sounds delicious!

When we were kids, we didn't really have dessert, per se. We'd have what my mom called "snicky-snacks". We'd each get a small aluminum pot pie tin (something else from childhood) and put pretzels or cookies in the tins and snack on them while watching television. As adults, we've graduated to "real" desserts but usually only with the weekend meals. My mom has "The Cake Mix Doctor" recipe book so at family dinners lately we've had lots of cake. Surprisingly, most of them have been very good. edit: to correct spelling

My brothers and I have talked about this subject before and have called it the "What is your 'on Death Row' last meal?". The meals are usually something we never tire of and could eat every day: My mom's chicken fried steak with a mound of from-scratch mashed potatoes (made with a touch of sour cream and horseradish) filled with brown gravy (with onion) with a large pat of butter melting in the gravy and oozing down the sides because you didn't make your mashed potato "dam" as well as you should have. Along with her wilted leaf spinach salad and a hot bacon dressing (recipe from the 1955 Better Homes and Garden Cookbook...omitted from later versions of the cookbook). Steamed broccoli with sharp cheddar cheese sauce. And for dessert, something sinful that we call "The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford"....it has a baked butter-walnut-flour crust, with layers of puddings and cream cheese & whipped cream, topped with more whipped cream and shavings of chocolate. Comfort food to the Nth degree!

Took me approximately 7 days on my computer at work to get through them all. If you have the time, the recipes and menu selections posted by eGulleteers are well worth it. Welcome, tanabutler.

I'm not young enough to know everything about bacon. - J. M. Barrie Bacon rules the world - Napoleon Bonaparte

Just saw a repeat episode of "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS this weekend that had a segment on pepper grinders. They put different mills through their tests and the Magnum Plus came out the clear winner...speak of the devil! They also liked the battery-operated mill I have but recommended the Magnum due to the vast quantities it output with each twist. I just may have to step up to the Magnum. The host of the show did comment that it looked like the "Darth Vader" of pepper mills and wasn't very attractive but that's a vanity issue. As an aside, they also did a blind taste test on pepper and the surprising winner was McCormick's whole peppercorn in a glass jar (the ones in a plastic jar didn't keep their flavor as well). They said to steer clear of any pre-ground pepper as it comparitively had no flavor at all. Vietnamese peppercorns also scored high on the test but they said McCormick was the more economical choice.

Red & Gold organic tomatoes organic garlic an organic red onion Chinese green beans Thai basil shallots incredibly large "champagne" (white) peaches a large jar of local wild flower honey and two pieces of a fragrant spiced linzer tort made by a german woman who lives up in the mountains and cans everything from sauerkraut to apple butter. She also bakes wonderful desserts and breads like the linzer tort, peach pies, scones & streudel. She is a goddess of baked goods!

I'm with fifi. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I put everything in the blender including lasagne. It drove me nuts after a while since it seemed like a constant diet of baby food and I wanted to chew something, anything so badly but couldn't. I can empathize with you and wish you a quick recovery.

I envy you! I am 6' 5" and it gets to be very painful when I do a lot of counter work, the dishes, etc. Some day when I win the lottery (ha!) I'll install a foot rail. It works in bars and the US Post Office (whatta combo!) so I guess that would work for me.

Dave the Cook suggested I revive this thread since I seem to be so full of s…er…stories. I’ve posted some of this in other threads so I apologize if I am repeating myself. What was your family food culture when you were growing up? My dad’s side of the family was English-Dutch and that didn’t have much influence over our family’s meals. He grew up on a farm in rural Indiana where his mother was the shame of the county. She was a farmer’s wife who not only couldn’t drive (if she needed to go somewhere, my grandfather would have to stop farming and drive her to her destination. You never ask a farmer to stop farming just to “play” chauffer) but she also was a farmer’s wife who could not cook. To this day I still associate the smell of burnt, over-boiled-percolated-on-the-stovetop coffee with their farmhouse. My father grew up eating my grandmother’s terrible cooking, which included chicken just about every day. Because of that, he detested chicken and wouldn’t eat it the rest of his life. My mother’s story is quite different. Her parents were from Bohemia (before it became Czechoslovakia, et al). They settled on a farm in rural Kansas and died when she was very young. My mom’s older sister, Mary, took over as head of the household (I think there were 7 brothers, too). Aunt Mary, unlike my father’s mother, was an extraordinary cook. Everything was made by scratch and nothing was wasted. They didn’t have a refrigerator and used the back porch as their freezer during the wintertime. Her ”ethnic dish” was pork roast with homemade sauerkraut, dumplings and potato pancakes. When we were kids, she would visit and make kolaches (similar to Danish pastries), peach or apple for us and authentic prune for my mom. So my mom grew up eating Aunt Mary’s wonderful cooking and, living on a farm, had chicken just about every day and, to this day, loves eating chicken (though I try to steer her away from KFC). Fortunately, my mother learned how to cook from my Aunt Mary so my 3 brothers and I all grew up loving chicken, too. Was meal time important? Was there a pre-meal prayer? Yes and yes. No one could eat until everyone was seated at the table and the prayer had been said. Ironically, it wasn’t quite the religious prayer one would hope for: “God is great, God is good and we thank him for this food (as kids, we pronounced this “fuyd” to make the rhyme with “good”). By His hand we are fed, and we thank Him for our daily bread. Amen.” We were never a religious family but always did say the prayer. Was cooking important? Not as important as it is now that we all have gone our separate ways, for me a separate city. When we gather now, we all cram into my mother’s kitchen to make the dinner and it is truly a loving, bonding experience. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? My father had one heck of a back hand reach. Fortunately, manners were learned early on and the subject usually never came up again. When you were finished, you also had to ask to be excused from the table. Who cooked in the family? In the beginning, Mom, the housewife, cooked every meal. Dad barbecued burgers, cheap marinated steaks and, once in a blue moon, delicious rotisserie chicken (not like what we think of today but instead, chicken parts with bbq sauce in a round metal basket rotating over the coals…devine!). He once cooked a Thanksgiving turkey on his Weber kettle that we still talk about to this day, it was so good. And my mom, not to be outdone, made a similarly legendary turkey noodle soup from the same said carcass that is also recalled fondly every Thanksgiving. As a kid, I was in awe of the Easy Bake Ovens and loved the fact that you ended up with a little individual sized cake. My mom, mistakenly thinking since I enjoyed this little baking that I would enjoy real baking, started having me make regular sized cakes (from a mix) for the family. She missed the point entirely but the deed was done. In later years, she got a job outside the home and we became “Latchkey” kids. My oldest brother (the “black sheep gourmet”) and I (I’m the third oldest) were drafted to start dinner before she got home. Usually, this entailed putting a roast or meatloaf in the oven after school so it would be done by the time my parents got home from their respective jobs. By necessity, she also became a whiz at using a crock pot, fixing one pot meals that would be ready by the time she came home. Every year, thanks to her teachings, I still make my St. Patrick’s Day corned beef in a slow cooker. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? When we were young, restaurant meals were non-existent since we didn’t have a lot of money. My Dad was in the Navy and when he was overseas, my mom would get part of his paycheck and had to make it last until the next month (to this day, she still doesn’t know how she made the money last through the month, but she did). Later, when we were older, we’d go to restaurants for graduations (elementary school, junior high, high school). Even during those rare times when we’d go to Disneyland or to a local ballgame, we couldn’t afford to eat there. We’d always pack our meals and eat in the car which was such a “bummer” for us kids. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? For holidays and special gatherings, always. It was usually just a card table with a table cloth draped over it and positioned near enough to the “adult” table that you couldn’t get away with too much. When did you get that first sip of wine? Beer was tasted first. It had to have been during an evening when my folks had friends over to play cards and they weren’t paying attention as to where they left their open can of beer. Whiskey was first tasted at a family reunion when I was only 9. Wine was first sipped during a holiday gathering, probably Thanskgiving and probably Cold Duck. No expensive wine…ever. Today, once in a while, I will make myself a very dry Sapphire martini, straight up with olives. But normally, if I do have a drink with dinner, it’s whatever “chi-chi” beer was on sale. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? On Fridays, my dad really liked to have a fish fry. We weren’t Catholic but he loved fish and adopted the tradition. All of us kids loved it for the fish sticks, breaded shrimp (both from the freezer section of the grocery store) and French fries, all drowned in ketchup. My dad also looked forward to the next morning when he would take the fish leftovers and make a scrambled egg & Fish breakfast. My two older brothers enjoy this dish even today. Saturday nights were “fun food” nights. The main “fun” dishes rotated each week and included homemade pizza (using “Appian Way” roll mix for the dough, topped with crumbled sausage, pepperoni or slices of kielbasa…aka the Bohemian pizza, with oodles of shredded mozzarella), tacos and tostados, bbq’d hamburgers, Frito boats (homemade chili with Fritos and shredded cheddar cheese and hot sauce, as we got older)…usually these meals were served with homemade milk shakes or soda pop which we weren’t allowed to have any other time. Sundays were the “serious” dinners: Roast beef and mashed potatoes (instant potatoes from a box…in later years, from scratch), the previously mentioned pork roast & sauerkraut (the sauerkraut not homemade anymore but from a store bought jar), marinated cheap steaks and baked potatoes, and so on. My mom also made a killer chicken fried steak using crushed corn flakes as the coating, which I’ve mentioned in another thread. I swear I could eat it all in one sitting and have no regrets! In the early years, when we had no money, mom would often make “budget stretcher” meals… meals that were cheap but also in a quantity meant to provide leftovers for the next night. She used to make a hideous Chop Suey using that canned stuff you get in the grocery store. I still get the “willies” thinking about it. She’d make Navy bean soup with ham hocks along with corn bread (baked in a cast iron skillet) which we used as a delivery system for butter & honey. And then there were the endless nights of Hamburger Helper. As a teenager, I grew to hate these foods but today, as an adult, I find once in a while I get a craving for these cheap meals (except for the chop suey…never the chop suey). How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? I learned to cook from my mom who cooked for six people so now I cook for six people and there’s just me! I do make the pork roast & sauerkraut every once in a while but I have to freeze half of it since I make it in such a large quantity. It's always better the next day, anyway. My oldest brother (the aforementioned “black sheep gourmet”) has the uncanny knack of taking whatever ingredients are on hand and making a gourmet meal out of it. He was making white pizzas & bbq chicken pizzas for us long before the world had ever heard of Wolfgang Puck. We’ve harangued him for years to open a restaurant with his talent (like it’s that easy), but he’d rather not have to work hard for a living. My second oldest brother inherited my father’s skill at barbecuing. He is a zen master of smoking and grilling but thinks nothing of it, as if it’s no big deal. He does have a holster that holds his beer while his hands are busy tending to the grill. My youngest brother can defrost and “nuke” but that seems to suffice for him. I seem to have become a cookbook collector and am on the constant lookout for the next “Great Dish” to bring into our family gatherings. I enjoy cooking. I should say I enjoy the sensuousness of cooking…the rhythmic chopping, the scents of herbs and spices, the sound of sizzling butter and hearing when it changes and knowing what it means, stirring the pot and seeing the ingredients morph and change before your eyes. Lastly, I find satisfaction when all is done and you can say “Hey, I made that” and “You can do the dishes”. My dad passed away almost 20 years ago. Mom is 73 now and has told me that if she never cooks another meal she’d be happy, having had to do it all of her adult life. But then she will cook a meal for me when I visit, knowing that I will enjoy it and that’s why she does it. There’s a line from the Bonnie Raitt song “Nick of Time”: “…Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste.” So I treasure our family gatherings, our communal cooking, knowing that they are ultimately numbered. Sorry, that this is so long…

That makes much more sense than what I was picturing. My thought was that too much tequila would prevent the granita from icing up. That's the lush in me, thinking it would be a large amount of tequila...which is then called a margarita, of course! Thank you for taking the time to explain this.