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  1. Good morning, EGulleters! Food before introductions. . . TJ's breakfast: That's Kashi Good Friends CinnaRaisin crunch and Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat English Muffins with peanut butter. My breakfast: That's. . .yeah, you can probably read the labels. Nice to meet you. I'm Diana, 31, living with TJ (the boyfriend) for just over 5 years now. A couple of years ago, we bought a house in St Petersburg, Florida, USA, which is in the Tampa Bay area. All the foodstuffs this week will come from the Bay area, and I hope you enjoy the trip. Goodness knows some of you could use a glimpse of sunshine & warmth right about now. Today's going to be a little busier than usual. . .we've been looking for an excuse to fire up the smoker, and thank goodness the blog opportunity came along. Tomorrow (Saturday) we'll be smoking a brisket and a pork shoulder, so I have to go to the meat market today to get the brisket. Before that, I need to turn a bowl of cookie dough into cookies, and meet TJ & friends for lunch at a great Cuban place over in Tampa. I feel like this requires full disclosure: I love shopping for foodstuffs almost as much as I enjoy cooking & eating it. So this week, I plan to take you all to the Saturday Morning Market here in St Pete (it's like a farmer's market & crafter's market all together); the Italian import shop; and Publix. I think the only place you'll miss this week is Costco, since that's not an every week shopping trip. Grab some flip flops and sunscreen and enjoy a trip to the (near) tropics in the middle of winter! Diana
  2. My name is Andy Lynes and I am a Site Manager for eGullet. I live in the village of Patcham, just outside of the seaside resort of Brighton and Hove on the South Coast of England. I'm 39 years old and married to Gill. We have two kids, George (11) and Alice (7) and a German Shorthaired Pointer named Lulu. My entire life revolves around food. Apart from my duties here on eGullet, I write about it for a living, I cook most days at home, I eat out a great deal and I read everything I can lay my hands on that is food, drink and restaurant related. My interest in just about anything else (apart from music and Uma Thurman) is limited, which can make me tiresome company for the non-food obsessed people in my life. However, I think we're all on the same page here, so this week I'll be documenting everything I cook and pretty much everything I eat. I won't pretend that its going to be a normal week in the Lynes household, I'll be making a special effort in order to make the blog at least readable. So I'll be visiting my local butchers, fish mongers, markets and supermarkets to give you a flavour of what its like to live and cook where I am. I'll be sharing recipes, techniques and general food-musings with you and I'll document the soundtrack to my cooking (there's always music or the radio playing when I'm preparing a meal). I'll tell you how I'm feeling in order to judge if mood can affect what I cook and how well I cook it. I'll be exploring what food means to me and who and what has influenced the way I cook. This week is a particularly interesting one as it will include a visit to Bray to chat with Heston Blumental and a gathering of UK eGullet members for a winter feast in London. I'm looking forward to it.
  3. About a year ago I blindly hurled myself through a week of food blog for the first time. It was a pretty intense experience, opening home and heart to my eGullet friends about one of the most important subjects of my life. But once the week got going, I fell into the rhythm and things generally took care of themselves. It was a little bit like having a guest. At any given point in your life, depending on where you are and what you do, you have special friends who come often. These are friends who know a whole lot about you and accept you even if you’re far from perfect. They know where the sheets are and have their favorite pillow case which you always save just for them. These are the friends I sometimes pamper but sometimes can’t. They bring their own tisane of the hour, they have their own teapot in the cupboard, they fall into the rhythm of the household seamlessly and without fanfare. Sometimes this kind guest alerts me of arrival a day in advance, sometimes a week. There’s no worry that this guest will have a good time. I don’t have to shop and menu plan because I know they’ll have their ideas about what they want to do and eat, and they’ll probably even shop for food or even bring the contents of their own fridges and jugs of things and samples of this and that to add to my larder. They've had my best and also been subject to a few failed experiments, and they're generally ok with whatever's coming out of the kitchen, even if it's plain and simple food. We’ll share stories and wine and food as we while away the evenings talking and cooking. Thank you so much for coming to see me! I'm so glad you're here!
  4. …to Louisville, KY, USA: Home to premium bourbon, beautiful horses and fast women, as they say. Every year in this city, thousands of banners like the one above begin appearing in mid-April draped over anything that’s stationary. If you work in the food industry, that’s your cue to roll up your sleeves, order tons of extra product, and break out your “F.A.B.O.D.” t-shirt to surreptitiously wear under your chef’s jacket. (In case you didn’t guess, that stands for “F*#@ A Bunch Of Derby” – lots of cooks and servers in town own similar shirts.) In typical Derby Week fashion, I’m gearing up here for several 14-to-16-hour days in a row this week. I’m also in the middle of moving house from one part of town to another. And as if that weren’t enough to keep me busy, I offered - in a bourbon-induced moment of temporary insanity, to be sure – to be eGullet’s foodblogger for Derby Week. So saddle up and ride along with me, your intrepid culinary Girl Friday, as I juggle my many hats at two different jobs (more on that later) in the race to feed the throngs of locals and tourists alike during the run-up to “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” - The Kentucky Derby!
  5. Hi all - After many months of procastinating, I am your humble blogger this week. I signed on to eGullet about 2 years ago and remember being terrified to post -- everyone knew so much about food and I wondered what I could contribute. That feeling is even stronger today -- the food blogs so far have been outstanding. I feel like the kid who goes on after Sammy Sosa! I was very inspired by Lucy's blog and finally decided to do it. So here I am today -- the week will be quiet for the most and thankfully so. I will be making shrimp, chicken and much more. I am sure all the recipes and creations will not be Indian so this is NOT the "Real Indian" blog that Soba kept referring to in the last blog! So good morning, welcome on board and in a few minutes I will show you where I live and what I see when I wake up each morning!
  6. In real time, I was passed the torch by balmagowry on Thursday, I believe. But with the schedule being off due to Stinger’s truncated blog, I got to ruminate on my fate for a few days. One would think this would give me plenty of time to think of a schedule of events and write a beautiful, sweeping introduction to my food life. One would be wrong. Mr. Victoria, hereafter known as Keifel, and I have been supremely lazy this weekend so far, aside from dragging the boychick, our son, off to the farmer’s market entirely too early for his liking yesterday. However, I will try to give a little background, since I haven’t gotten around to doing a bio post either. I will try to shorten what could be a long story. My husband and I have been married two and half years, but we have only been living together for about two months. We met online four years ago, fell in love, decided to be rational creatures… oh, wait. Did I mention my husband is from Trinidad? And that he didn’t have a resident visa? Well, we fell in love. He got a work visa. He went to London on business. On his return, he discovered his papers were not in order. He was summarily deported in July 2001. Then September 11th happened. His employer withdrew her support of his work visa. We got married in January 2002 and started jumping through all the necessary hoops to get him here and lo and behold, he landed in Nashville in March and we have been disgustingly happy since. How does this apply to the foodblog? Keifel doesn’t have a work permit yet, that hoop is still flaming. So, currently, I have the good fortune to have an amazingly devoted house husband, who drives me to work and the boychick to school and cleans and does a great deal of the cooking. So what goes on at ms. victoria’s over our week together with the foodblog will involve him and he has been kind enough to be both a good sport and help with pictures. I have only been in Nashville since last November and am still learning the lay of the land. I quit my old job as an associate television producer to find my fortune (or at least follow my bliss) as a personal chef and a writer. I’ve applied to the culinary arts program at the local state school and am working as a temp at another university in the area. Until a month ago, I was also waiting tables but the current temp gig pays fairly well and I wanted my weekends back. Generally, things are in flux, but the good kind. We are still kind of hitting our groove in the kitchen. I tend to be a haphazard cook as far as menu planning at home. I cook what I feel like eating or decide at 8 PM to make bread. We are getting more into a routine of sorts and I am learning meat cookery from my dedicated carnivore of a husband. (Until he got here I was either hardcore vegetarian or maybe eating fish, I have fallen off the veggie wagon and into the omnivore sidecar.) For this week, I do have a little bit of a plan. We are going to have a Trini dinner at least one night and a Mexican dinner on Wednesday to honor Cinco de Mayo. Aside from that it will be catch as catch can and I will only be able to post photos from home in the evening. I am now off to the kitchen to make French toast for breakfast before we go to church (UU if anyone is interested) and the Pottery Barn thereafter to shop for a teapot. Our kitchen (a little messy, right after we moved in):
  7. Good morning and thank you Ms. Victoria, I hope I can do justice to the blog tradition! But first, a shout out to all of us Mothers, mommies, moms, mas, mammys, and mahs: Happy Mother’s Day!! I’m a "here and there" home chef. Right now, here is NY, and there is Italy. My husband and I have spent a quiet weekend at our house in Northern Westchester, we’ve been getting the house ready for spring and summer, planting flowers, cleaning up the outdoor plants…and we’ve been eating rather well. A quick bio: married, 1 son, 2 cats. We’ve been married a long time…20 years…and lived together for a few years before that. Our son is just finishing his first year in college, he can’t make it home for Mother’s Day because he’s working away finishing his last project of the semester. We are going to Philadelphia on Tues to bring him (and his mountain of stuff) home, I’ll still be his mother on Tues, so we’ll celebrate then. Most of the week we live in a loft in Soho, which is in downtown NYC; weekends we try to head up here to Westchester. I’ve had some formal training with cooking, I graduated from an accelerated program at the NY Restaurant school (the school has since merged with some other school, I’m not sure of the name anymore). I thought I wanted to become a caterer, but as this was an early mid-life career change, I found I could make more money working in the garment center, and have weekends off; so now I just cook for family and friends. Some of the high points in my life have been very literally high points: I’ve climbed and stood on some of the world’s highest peaks with my husband and son. We climbed Kilimanjaro, Mt. Elbrus and some peaks in Bolivia to mention the really high points. We are avid downhill skiers. Anyone want to talk about the trials of cooking at altitude?? Now that’s a real pain. I commute to work in the city by bike, which is an adventure in its own right. Hold on: we just got some great news!! Our friend who is an avid hunter, just called to say he finally got a wild turkey!!! Its been a long, dry spell since he’s been successful. Our deal is, he hunts, I cook. He just called from upstate on a scratchy cellphone connection to let us know the good news. Oh boy!! Enough bio. Onto the food. We left work a little early on Friday, so we were able to eat to come up here to the house, and have dinner at home, which is a rarity on Fridays, as we usually have to leave the city late, after the traffic has abated. Friday night was grilled artic char and shrimp, served on a nest of cappelini with a parsley brown butter sauce, and some grilled baby fennel. Need to work on the baby fennel part, it would be great if you had very sharp teeth and were in need of fiber…maybe this is one vegetable that needs to come to maturity before eating. We opened a 98 bottle of Haynes vineyard Turley that was magnificent. A bit overboard for the fish, but it was delicious. And it was Friday night, after all! Saturday lunch was a warm white bean and shrimp salad. Is there any more symbiotic relationship than parsley and garlic? This was served with a Tavel rose that worked perfectly with the bright flavors of the salad. I’ll post photos later, right now, I’m working off a really s l o w dialup connection, but I can post when we get back to the city. Saturday dinner was a TV dinner. That means the temperature dropped, it started to rain, so we had to eat inside. So dinner was served while we watched Sling Blade. Remember, that old Billy Bob Thorton film? It had some serious story flaws, but overall it has held up and is still interesting to watch. We had grilled quail for dinner. The quail had spent the afternoon relaxing in a ginger, garlic, and lemongrass bath. So they were simply grilled and served on a bed of rice, along with some white asparagus, and a terrific watercress salad. The watercress was a type I had never seen before: very thin stalks with oversized leaves. It was firm, crunchy and very peppery. I tossed it with some sliced red onions, micro-planed some orange zest on top, and made a simple vinegarette with EVOO and orange juice. The oranges are very, very, very tart. Sunday morning I made my favorite Sunday brunch breakfast. It has a number of names: salade du pays, survival salad, but it’s a frisee and lardon salad. I’m able to get some nitrate free, applewood smoked bacon in a slab. That gets sliced up into cubes and cooked, frisee salad gets a very light simple vinegarette. This all gets tossed, 2 poached eggs on top, a little toast and you have the perfect meal. We had some fresh squeezed orange juice (need to find some sweeter oranges to mix in with these babies!), and grapefruit juice. Coffee is illy brand coffee, made in the mokka with the foam coming from the chuga-chuga. I honestly don’t know what its real name is, we bought it in Italy, and I just made the motion and chuga-chuga sound to the man at the store, and he instantly produced exactly what I wanted. Anyway, the chuga-chuga is a metal cylinder, heavy bottomed container that you heat the milk up with, the top has a plunger with a mesh screen attached. When the milk is warm, you pump the plunger a few times, and voila! You have perfect foam for the cappuccino. Low tech perfection. Here you can see my dear old Caloric stove. The clock has worked in years, but the burner space is large, the oven is large, its truly an old reliable friend. We have a bunch of people coming for dinner, its Sunday Soprano Supper. Something that has become sort of a tradition, we eat dinner and watch the Sopranos. Of course, we start with the Simpsons, because you just have to love the Simpsons. And for the Sopranos, you need a bunch of people around to keep you up to date on the plot. I need to go and get some groceries, so we’ll be back…!
  8. Good morning, everyone! Guess who's it this week? (Thank you, Judith! I'll try to do you proud.) Actually, I've had a very crazy week, getting ready for our annual wine festival. I was on the phone trying to deal with screwed up orders for stemware, cookbooks, t-shirts and supplies, and I was absent-mindedly lurking through eGullet (my favorite way to relax) when I received a message that I had a PM from . . . hathor ?? Oh no, that can only mean . . . And the little devil tagged me on the eve of a major wine festival! Quick bio: My real name is Mary. I live at Dover Canyon Winery and Vineyard in Paso Robles, California. It's a small winery in an appellation that includes 80 wineries and over 200 vineyards, including some old vine vineyards. I live with my SO, who is also the winemaker, and he loves to cook. (Life is sweet.) This morning we are cleaning up the debris in our home from a barbecue-party last night to celebrate the efforts of our volunteer staff after the grand tasting Saturday, as well as my son's 21st birthday. (It feels very weird to say to him What are you drinking, honey? and have that be okay!) Anyway, we will be grilling appetizers in front of the winery today—lamb ribs rubbed with a mixture of sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper, herbs de Provence, and duck breasts rubbed with a cayenne-cinnamon salt. We get our meat from a local butcher that operates a shop behind his home. He also processes wild game for local hunters—venison and boar mostly. The herbs de Provence come from an herb farm just down the road. I'll take pictures today and try to get them posted first thing tomorrow. As soon as I figure how to do it. We're expecting several hundred visitors today, so I need to scurry, but I will check back later!
  9. Howdy, Y'all. Apparently I got tagged this morning. Thanks Seth! Awesome job, by the way. I'm normally on at all hours of the day, but today was a big cooking day for me, so I didn't check in after my first morning fix. Since the blog is supposed to start on Sunday, I'll try and remember what I ate/cooked yesterday. I'll start with an introduction. I'm Vanessa, and I live in Dallas, Texas. I have a habanero temper and a chipotle smile. I have the pleasure of living with my significant other of 6 years, three cats and a dog. Pictures of said beasts to follow, of course. They are our only children. We moved here just under a year ago from Chicago, where we lived for two Before that we were living in the culturally hopping Bryan/College Station, Texas. Its been an interesting year learning my way around Dallas. There are many delightful foodie finds both on and off the beaten path. I have a passion for several different ethnic cuisines and seem to acquire more the older I get. I'm 32, if anyone is counting. I'm trying not to. I'm just your basic self-taught, home cook. I'm not a picky eater, but the SO is, at least in comparison to me. But that is easily worked around. I cook a whole lotta Tex-Mex and Mexican food. Thats the SO's favorite, and its good to keep the powers that be happy, eh? Fortunately for me, I also love it. In no particular order, my other favorite cuisines are: Indian, Middle Eastern, Greek, and a new one for me, Ethiopian. I'm also fond of French, Italian and American Regional. I just love learning about different cultures, and since I have a culinary bent, thats generally how I relate. I'm going to go gather my thoughts and make some uploads to image gullet, and I'll post again before bed.
  10. I'm it this week. And who am I, anyway? You could check out my bio, if you really want to, but really all you need to know is that I'm not professionally involved with food, although more and more I wish I were. I have amassed nearly 1000 posts here in (I think?) pretty quiet fashion. I mostly take from eGullet-- I learn new things every day, and I'm very grateful. I live in Brooklyn, with my wife Robin and our two children, Leah (2 years old) and Nate (almost 7 months). I am a lawyer, but for the past four months I've been on a leave of absence taking care of the kids. This leave of absence ends June 1. That's right, we are at the beginning of my last week of freedom. (Incidentally, I did a sort of half-blog for a while about new stuff I was learning to make while on leave. You can find it here.) When my leave began, I wanted to tackle a bunch of disparate projects, but eventually I became primarily obsessed with baking bread. I began baking every day, and I eventually got my own sourdough starter (whom I call Ringo) up and running. This daily bread-making has become part of my identity now, and it's going to be tough to part with it. Once I return to work, my daily baking is going to have to end, so I've recently been baking more than ever, trying to cram in what I can before I go back. So this week you can expect some bread from me. And I'll try to show you a few things about how we live here in Brooklyn, U.S.A. We will be traveling later this week. We'll be leaving Wednesday night to go to my mother's home in Maryland. My mother knows not of this eGullet business (at least, so far as I know ), and it might be best if this remains the case. So you may not get much in the way of food photos while we're in Maryland, but I'll give you some reports that you might find amusing. So, on with the blog already! Oh, by the way, I've been instructed to tell you that if you reply to the blog, you're fair game to be tagged as the next blogger. And that you have a moral obligation not to say no! I was apparently the very last choice to be tagged for this week. (They said it was because I live in NYC, where so many of the bloggers have lived, but really...) I've always been picked last since I was a child, so I'm okay with it. But don't put some other loser in my position! Say "yes" when you're tagged! Take it for the team! (Now will anyone dare reply? ) Okay, so dinner this evening was (drum roll, please)....... tuna salad. Behold, mortals! See, I made this poached chicken with aioli on Friday, and there's just a ton of aioli left over, which I love, but I'm having a hard time getting rid of it. Yesterday I assembled a bunch of cooked and raw vegetables for a sort of veggie "Grand Aioli," and tonight I briefly entertained thoughts of a Bourride, but it was so hot out, and like a jackass I had the oven at 500 degrees already for some French bread. The thought of turning on a burner was just too much, at least until we put in our stupid air conditioners. (See Note 1, below.) So it's just a tuna salad sandwich, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's also got a little extra: it's made with homemade aioli on homemade bread. It tasted pretty good. I also put together some Biga (a firm batter of flour, water and a little yeast that will bubble all night, creating flavor for future breads), which I'll use Monday and Tuesday. I got my hands on some actual Italian "00" flour (their white flour), so I thought I'd make a Pugliese and maybe some durum wheat bread with my "00" Biga: For tomorrow: I dunno. I can never plan ahead. My wonderful wife got me this great gift for our anniversary: It's the seven quart Le Creuset (we have an oval five already, I think). Give me some ideas. What should I make in this pot? If I like your idea I'll use it on Monday or Tuesday! Also: I got these beautiful radishes at the greenmarket on Saturday: I dipped some slices in aioli yesterday. What else should I do with them? Put them in a salad? I haven't the faintest idea. Help me out. See you tomorrow (or later this morning, really). It's late. Note 1: This is what most of us New Yorkers do, by the way. We take down our air conditioners in the winter because otherwise we'd freeze, and we store them in closets, or in the corner, or wherever we can, and then when it's hot again we risk our backs picking them up and we install them in our windows, blocking our pathetic views of alleys and neighbors in their underwear. Glamorous, huh?
  11. Greetings, Hopefully I am not stepping on Walt's feet by slipping this in before he has culminated his blog in his final dinner post, but early east coast mornings and late evening California dinners seem to cause some logistical concerns ;). I am not going to actually bother any of you with real content tonight, but I figured I would get introductions out of the way, and then begin my official blog tomorrow morning with breakfast. As far as bios go I am 23 years old, live with two roomates in Bear, DE (a little fake town of strip malls and suburbs) which is near Newark, DE (pronounced as in New Ark, not like that place in Jersey, and which is a wonderful little town with lots of charm, beautiful homes, tons of culture, great restaurants, and is somewhere I would love to attach my address to. Alas, someone built a post office near my apartment and called it Bear, so I can't). Geographically speaking in terms of places people might actually know, I Am around 45 minutes southeast of Philadelphia, and around an hour and a half north of Baltimore (I'll get around to explaining why this has significance). I am a public school music/drama/dance/etc teacher during the year (and I suppose an off-duty one during the summer) but am also teaching summer school for the next week and a half. This means that my breakfasts might not be much to look at for the next several days, but I will try to get something out. Summer school being a half-day activity I will have plenty of time to get home and play around with stuff in the kitchen however. Look forward to laughing at many pictures of me trying to cook, chopping off my fingertips, burning myself with hot oil and cast iron, and generally being a anti-posterchild for the food and kitchen safety movements. I can claim to own four cookbooks in total (one of which was given to me by Ms. Suzilightning, thank you very much) and I'm not positive that I have ever followed a recipe exactly even from them. I have no definate plans for what I will be preparing this week, and am very susceptible to suggestions by eG members. I am prone to using lots of spice, lots of herbs, and probably miss the boat on subtlety more often than not. So as I'm sure you are tired of reading my blabbering for the moment, I will just invite you to all sit back, pop open a cold one, and try not to cringe too much as I attempt not to butcher your favorite dishes as well as my own hands in the coming week.
  12. The warrior-shaman, stripped to the waist, held aloft a stone stained with blood. His skin glistened in the sunlight as he peered down at the girl tied to the rock in front of him. "It is your turn." he intoned "and there had better be meat." "Come on, what if I just promise to be different? I'll do stuff no one else has!" The tattered remains of a black tennis shoe fell from her foot with a thud. "There must be blood!" His teeth looked sharp, and he spit as he glowered. "Um, what about salad? A nice green salad?" She squirmed. "Salad's for wimps. You're not a wimp are you? I hate wimps." "Hey, look! Transit of Venus!" She pointed towards the sun. The warrior turned, shielding his eyes. "What? Where?" When he turned back to the stone, the girl was gone. "Bah.... she'll be back. She'd better bring meat." A voice called out from down the mountain. "Fine, fine - if nothing else there will be fish!." The warrior rolled his eyes. "I totally knew it. Wimp."
  13. Jensen contacted me earlier in the week and asked if I would take over the Foodblog for the coming week. I agreed with the caveat that I would not start until Sunday night. I am still standing by that, but I thought I would go ahead and do some kind of intro as I am at work and have nothing better to do . This blog is going to begin and end with crawfish boils (kind of a compare and contrast thing). It is that time of year down here and everyone with a hundred bucks and an 80 qt pot is having a crawfish party sometime in the next two weeks. They are really fun social events and take absolutely no prep other than getting out all of the cooking gear, cleaning up the yard and the patio/deck/barn/dock, going to the seafood market, and going to the grocery store. All of the action (cooking and eating) occurs outside so you don't even have to spend a day shoving all of your junk into closets and under beds in order to fool your friends (who know better anyway) that you live a "Martha Life". Tommorrow's boil will take place in the backyard of my old next door neighbor (she moved, I stayed) and friend Robin. She has a beautiful house by Lake Pontchatrain in Mandeville and her swell new husband is a great cook (as are many men in Louisiana-it is very common here for men to be the primary food preparers in a household-always has been). This will be a small operation (150 lbs. of bugs or so) and about thirty people. Lots of beer, soft drinks, and laughter. Simple and easy and everyone will help with the set up and the cleanup so the hosts don't have to kill themselves and besides, that's half the fun of this type of entertaining. Next Sunday's boil (end of blog) will be a giant deal. It is my company party and there will be a huge trailer set up to boil TONS of crawfish. There will be a couple of hundred people there along with a band, tents, kid games, and the rest of the trappings of company parties. An entirely different vibe than a party in someone's back yard. Still prety fun, though. In between I will keep you up to date on the daily food doings in the Mayhaw Household. I will be roasting a turkey in a very unusual manner early in the week (so that we can eat it for the rest of the week in various disguises) and then I will take the carcass and make a little gumbo out of it. I will also be making some shrimp ettouffee one night, chicken creole another, and at some point I will be doing a little bbq'd redfish (it depends on when I get the fish). If I take a day off during the week and have the time I will probably do some kind of real BBQ on my open brick pit (that thing is da bomb ) over pecan wood. Probably brisket. I will also throw in some baked goods (I bake alot, much to my wife's and my waistline's dismay) and this week, for the sake of the blog, I think that I will just do the Southern thing-chess pie, pecan pie, peach pound cake, and probably some yeast rolls one night. I would imagine that you will see a fair amount of vegetable sides as the market down the street (awesome veg. stand 2 blocks from my house) is starting to fill up with spring veggies. Fear not- we will have some okra. You won't be seeing much about breakfast food or lunch except on the weekend, as I am not home when the boys eat it (I leave for work at 6 a.m.) and none of us are there for lunch (which is usually, for both my wife and I, a brown bag affair consisting of leftovers) and both of the boys take their lunch to school as well (even though they are both in private schools, the food is uniformly uninteresting and generally awful and they won't touch it). Incidentally-I have been married to my wife Mrs. Mayhaw (Robin) for 20 years and have two boys, Miles (14) and Graham (11). My children are unusual in that they will eat damn near anything (except blue cheese and one of them, inexpicably, does not like okra in any form-and they don't eat escargot-it's a long story) so they are very easy to feed. Frankly, I am not sure that he is mine and have been considering a DNA test to prove paternity ). I will do my best to provide regular photographs but I am not promising anything-even though I make my living using all of the new technology, photo gullet is still something of a mystery to me and I may be pm'ing some expert or another for a little help. Anyway, I am looking forward to the week and I hope that you enjoy it.
  14. I'm not going to start my "official" blogging until tomorrow but, while I've got a few free minutes, I thought I'd at least introduce myself. My name is Jen Jensen and I live in Sacramento with my husband and 14 year-old daughter, Kathleen (AKA the Spawn). We are imports from BC (Canada) and have lived here for 5 years now. I "retired" when we moved here, as I only have a "live" visa, not a "work" visa. Before moving here, I worked as a technical writer on various IT and business process projects. My hobby is dog racing (whippets, not greyhounds) so we also live with four of the five dogs I own. Living here in CA with us are Streaka (AKA Über--as in Streaka über alles.); Tighe (AKA Goober, because it rhymes with Über and matches his personality); Dayton (Dids); and Rogie (meiner Deutscher Junge), whom I co-own with a friend back home. My fifth dog, Derby, is Tighe's daughter and lives with my friend in BC. In the coming week, I'll be eating at home, eating out, and (most exciting of all) eating at Tigh-na-Mara, a spa/resort on Vancouver Island in BC. The trip to Tigh-na-Mara is why I won't be starting until tomorrow ... I want to be able to include my meals there in the blog. Until tomorrow ...
  15. It appears that it's my turn.... I was coaxed into this but had already begun thinking about volunteering. As a single guy I tend to cook only on occasion and thought this might serve as the impetus to have some extra fun in the kitchen and also get out to a few more restaurants. Alacarte had to wrap up early due to personal obligations - I might just as well get a head start on this. My story: Growing up in an Irish household in Syracuse NY afforded me exposure to little other than a meat 'n potatoes menu but a two year stint as busboy and waiter opened a new world of food and drink. Syracuse restaurants have begun catching up to larger metro markets in recent years with more progressive menu items and a wider array of ethnic offerings. Extensive personal and business travel and a recent four year stint living in the NYC metro area allowed me to explore even more options. My currently favored cuisine when dining out is Vietnamese but I remain fond of Polish, Thai, Ethiopian and Afghani food, among others. Syracuse is a city of 150,000 with suburbs perhaps twice that size. Traditionally a blue collar town and now struggling with a failing economy, our options remain limited but recent years have seen a real French restaurant open in the area, two additional Vietnamese restaurants and a contemporary Mexican influenced bistro. I remain hopeful that we'll see continued improvement. We still lack an upscale high end steakhouse, all the Italian restaurants are red sauce joints and there is not one single seafood restaurant in town. Presently working as a sales engineer in the world of network analysis and troubleshooting tools, I've walked a rather circuitous career path. The food related aspects of my carer started off with a flourish - at age 14 I was employed part time by my uncle, a Standard Brands food salesman, to serve as "Mr. Peanut" at grocery store openeings and similar events. The costume was hot and heavy and the pay was low but an unlimited supply of dry roasted peanuts had great appeal at the time. At age 20 I spent a summer working on a tomato ranch - yes Virginia - tomato ranches really do exist! We grew 5,000 acres of tomatoes and as the only gringo among the large force of laborers, I was treated to some incredible homemade food on occasion during the morning "taco break". More recently, I spent a number of years tending bar on weekends for a catering service, primarily serving at weddings and barmitzvah's for the more affluent portion of Syracuse's Jewish community. My interest in quality coffee, something that dates back 25 years or more, was elevated to the status of current obsession a few years ago. At this point I roast my own beans (when time permits), make my own espresso blends and serve up killer lattes on a daily basis at my home espresso bar. I hope to mix it up during the coming week: a farmer's market visit, dinners at a few of our more interesting local restaurants (including a new place in which one of the partners worked front of house at Nobu a few short years ago), an artisan bakery visit and maybe.... just maybe.... some real cooking in my own kitchen. Speaking of my kitchen - after four years of cramped apartment living, I'm more than a bit thrilled to have a REAL kitchen again. The previous owner of the home which I acquired a few months ago was at one time co-owner of a local restaurant. He did extensive renovations - the kitchen has a few very minor quirks but overall it's a great place to work and entertain in. I'll get some better and more realistic photos up later but here are the ones the realtor used to lure me in (the perspective is exaggerated - the rooms are not nearly as large as they appear). View into the new kitchen View from the dining area towards the peninsula
  16. Well today I'm going to start this blog very slowly as I had a very bad night with the youngsters of my family (read too many beers and way too many shots). I'll start with an introduction and then later today I'll post about the mayhem and madness making and devouring Easter lunch My wife is a NYer born and bred - Me, I'm Australian through and through. We met just after 9-11, when I was across here on an exchange with the fire department. AFter spending 3 weeks in NJ and NY together, then my wife (I'll call her V) visiting me for 2 weeks in Australia, we got married last April in NJ - tomorrow's the big one year anniversary. For those of you wine conniseurs, we currently live in the Clare Valley in Australia which is the home of such great wineries as Taylors, Wolf Blass, Penfolds, Barrys and MANY other smaller boutique wineries - god I could spend a day here just writing about the wineries in our area. I believe grand total it's about 120 wineries both big and small, good and bad The unfortunate part of living where we do is that restaurants and supermarkets are few and far between, and sometimes it's just basically a pain in the ass trying to get the supplies I want for a meal. Our family over here actually moved to NJ from the Bronx back in the 80's. They're Italian-American, so food is definitely a thing of importance which is great for me because good food is damn important to me too. I'm the youngest of the "kids" so I get ALOT of perks until it comes to cooking and then they basically shut the kitchen door and leave me locked in there until the food is ready They're slowly realizing that I'm a better cook than the MIL, so every time we come back for vacation I get an email from my FIL requesting various things. One day I'm going to have the nerve to tell him that grilling when it's like 32F outside is just not fun!!!!! Food wise, V and I will basically eat anything - Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Greek - you name it, we'll eat it. OK I'm lieing, the only offal I'll eat are kidneys and V will eat nothing of the sort. Call me a wuss if you like but that's just me, other than that everything's fair game.... those deer and groundhogs in Dad's backyard are looking pretty damn good. Anyone know what groundhog tastes like?? Anyway that's all for now, I have Easter lunch to hook into and make (read create ) and then later today I'll post about dinner last night and lunch today. Cheers Tom PS I hope everyone has a great Easter and just keep on smiling NOTE: sorry guys I'm yet to move into the 21st century so there won't be any pics just verbal descriptions of what we're eating
  17. When StInGeR infomed me that the flame was passed by PM, I was at the office, and my heart was beating, hard. After several minutes of hyperventilating, I came back to reality. I thought I wan't going to start till Sunday! Time note: I am located at GMT +1. I am in Lyon, France. 6 hours ahead of the eastern seaboard, 9 hours ahead of the west coast. 1 hour ahead of London. 6 hours behind Hk Dave. Sorry if my posts seemed to be times wierdly. I am at home in Lyon, I am not traveling. It is my home. We are at the moment doing our best to save money. Therefore just about all of my meals are prepared at home. I think my blog will carry two predominant themes: sourcing and cooking. Blogging makes you want to take pictures of everything. I wanted to take a picture of people on the metro because they looked tired and hungry. I have no idea what this blog will produce but I hope it entertains some of you. I want to do justice to the people that make things possible for me. So, here we go. My first stop after work was to Marechal Center, in the 1eme, where I live. It's a store that also has a caviste, by the name of Nicolas LANGLET. This guy is recognized in the neighborhood. He knows everything about wine. When I arrived tonight he was excited and had a wine to give me a taste of. My butcher, M. THERMOZ, was kind of mad at me when I arrived because he was in a hurry to close. "You're late!" he said. " have no time to talk, I'm closing this place as soon as possible" he said. He gave me my bacon and said - "a demain!" When I got home, I realized my house is a mess. That's normal. I usually leave projects halfway done wherever they have begun. This is my closet. It's all mine. I have built a small bar in it. It's where I try and corral up my cookbooks. They usually are scattered all over the house, and they all don't fit in my closet. It's a good thing I never put everything away at the same time. (my husband's closet is rather orderly and scientific, and contains lots of technologically advanced equipment. It makes for a good balance.) Dinner tonight: Started witha small glass of Clairette de Die tradition, which we got at last Octobers foire des vignerons independants: We ate like pigs yesterday so we're eating very simply tonight. A little paté, polish dills for me and little corichons for the hubby: Salad, and cheese. I will cook over the weekend. Can anyone tell me: What's this fruit??? It's bedtime here, and I'm off, but tomorrow morning it's the market - quai St. Antoine as usual. Things should be really pretty because Spring is really in full swing here now. -Lucy
  18. Good morning!! So I'm pretty nervous to be blogging this week, it seems others have an effortless way of writing and I'm just not so sure that is the case with me. But I'm excited so I hope you enjoy!! I've just been on eGullet since March and am learning so much around the forums. The foodblogs have been so interesting to read that I hope there is something others will learn from mine. My husband and I live in Seattle, WA and we love to cook. We especially like to try to cook with what is locally available and in season. Obviously it's a bit more of a challlenge this time of year but we are still plugging along. We are still considered newly weds. Just celebrated our 1st year anniversary. I was lucky in that the first year of our marriage I didn't have to work. I had a whole year to really work on my cooking. I loved starting dinner at 2pm and cooking multiple couses for dinner. So 1950's maybe but such a great feeling to have your love come home and be so excited for dinner! So now we both are working full time and the all day cooking is reserved for weekends. We still have great dinners every night we are at home though. This week will be a mix of me cooking at home, menu planning, shopping our local markets and a bit of dining out! Wendy
  19. Note: Now that it's Thanksgiving week, this Diary has upped the ante by turning into the weekly foodblog as well. Click here to go down to the beginning of the foodblog. In consultation with our blog Czar over in the General forum, I am going to be writing about the preparations leading up to our big Thanksgiving Dinner which, as most of you know, is just around the corner in a few weeks. I guess it's been around ten years now that I've been doing Thanksgiving dinner partys, and they have increased in sophistication and complexity every year. It was just the usual turkey, dressing, and vegetable sides the first year. Then that grew into Turducken with the usual sides jazzed up a bit. After a few years of Turducken, I started getting tired of that and began moving in the direction of multiple courses. The first time I think we made a lobster bisque followed by a buckwheat crepe filled with a leek and gruyere mixture alongside a bundle of three asparagus spears held together with a strip of bacon, and then a turkey ballotine stuffed with a chicken and foie gras mousse. From there, it just kind of took off, and this is where we found ourselves last year: So the question is, what are we going to have this year? Over the next few weeks I'll post here about the process from end-to-end, from settling on a guest list to picking the wines, to QAing new dishes to picking out wines to dinnertime logistics and execution to cleanup, and more.
  20. Good morning! I think it's my turn and it's a scary thought to follow Kristen and Rachel. I know I can't compete with either of them for their generosity in sharing their experiences but I will do my best to make this as interesting as I can. I have called my blog "Thirteen Steps to Dinner" and will reveal the meaning behind this as we go along. For now, here's The Dane's lunch for today. He HATES taking lunch and would prefer to spend his 10 hours in the machine shop foodless! I worry that anyone operating dangerous machinery on empty is ripe for an accident and so he allows me to pack him half a sandwich. The other half will be my breakfast. This is store-bought white bread (busy week!) with liver paste and bacon. His "goodies" are 2 home made chocolate chip cookies, one home made gingersnap and in the plastic wrap his all-time favourite, a marzipan and dried cherry square. He does not object to the goodies - just the sandwich!
  21. Hi All, It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since I last blogged. My! How time flies! Some very brief background about myself. I am 41 and I live in the northern suburbs of Chicago with my wife and my 7-year-old son. I work in the food industry selling bulk ingredients; primarily 100% natural, processed fruit products. I have a love/hate relationship with cooking. I love to do it and I love to learn how to cook new things but I also reserve the right to "not cook" any time it (or the thought of it) ceases to be fun. My wife is culinarily-challenged and, as such, I am the primary meal provider in our house. There are some nights when after getting home from work, spending time in the kitchen is the last thing I want to do. So I don't. There are other times when after getting home from work, nothing sounds better to me than relaxing by spending time in the kitchen (or out by the grill or smoker) making a meal for my family. I'm not exactly sure what specific factors influence these moods but they will no doubt manifest here, over the course of this blog. It'll be a mixed bag this week for sure...probably about 1/3 cooking, 1/3 going out and 1/3 scrounging for leftovers. I started out this morning (and pretty much every morning) with an Iced Venti Americano (no water, please) from Starbuck's. To this I add 1 packet of sweet and low and a splash of half and half. I really need the caffeine in the a.m. but I'm not a particularly passionate coffee person. When I occasionally come across the good stuff, I'm very happy to have it but I don't go out of my way for it either. A friend of mine roasts his own beans and he will hook me up from time to time. Yes, I can tell the difference and yes I can appreciate it. But honestly, I'd rather sleep an extra few minutes in the morning than spend the time making coffee for myself. When I get to my office, my IVA is waiting for me because one of the guys at the office hits Starbucks every morning. Good deal I spent most of this past Sunday cooking (was really in the mood ) and I brought some split pea soup to the office today to share with my cohorts. I'm sure it'll end up being part of our lunch in some manner but we'll no doubt augment it by ordering carryout from one of our local spots. There are 5 of us in the office and we recently went to a system where each one of is assigned a day to choose the lunch venue. Today, our resident vegetarian will be making the choice so the soup, which turned out quite well, is a solid insurance policy that lunch--or at least some portion of it--will be edible =R=
  22. Good Morning, all. Thank you, Ronnie Suburban, for a great blog! It would be hard to deliver such an appealing display of foods! Hopefully we can provide continuing enjoyment to all, as eG food blogging travels south, especially to those of you who dream of a warmer climate, like we used to! I will start this, and acquaint you with my husband, and his own introduction will follow soon. We are pleased to be food blogging during this time of year, when many think that Florida is at its best (well, except for all the election controversies). Fall does hold some of the best weather in this sunshine state, and the weather affects our cooking and eating almost as much as anything else. We have been having days in the mid to high 80’s, and nights in the high 60’s recently, with mostly clear skies. We hope to show you that Florida is much more than strip malls, the hanging chads of 2000, hurricanes, and who knows what by the time this Election Day is over; and we hope to share some of the joys of being here and living our dream. We will both be leaving for work shortly, and so until we get home and continue posting, we welcome you to our home, our kitchen, and our eating places. Come on in: Here's an outside view of the porch: Our kitchen, as you enter from the dining area: From the other end: And, from the living room, looking across the bar: For those who know me from the eG topics I frequent, especially the Dinner thread, it is no secret that our eating place is usually our porch. What is more of a secret is that we have a TV on our porch and we often watch a lot of sports and some other programs while we eat dinner. Some of our most romantic dinners were with a baseball or soccer game, a NASCAR race, or other sports event on TV, and a beautiful place setting with candlelight and flowers on the table. It’s been a tradition for us for a long time. I often post on eG about the enjoyment my husband and I have in cooking together, or cooking for each other; but as you may have gathered, Russ reads a lot more than he posts. When he introduces himself in this blog, it will be his second post! I asked him to join me in this, since so much of our cooking involves him. (He might say that I threatened him in some way if he didn’t do it.) So after I have introduced myself to those who don’t know me, Prepcook will introduce himself. Then we will proceed to journal our eating! I work part time and he works full time, so most likely I will have more entries and most of his will probably be early morning or evenings. Unfortunately, neither of us can access eG while we are at work, but please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions, and we will respond as soon as we’re back home and online. I grew up in a food-loving home, and my parents were good cooks. They bought a restaurant when my brother and I were teenagers, and spent most of their waking hours there for several years. I first learned about meal planning and cooking from my mom, but she did not teach me about what she did. She was one of those people who, for reasons unknown to me, didn’t share her knowledge of home cooking and kept many of her recipes “secret.” After I was grown and on my own, my mom and I began sharing recipes, and I began developing my own tastes and my own cooking styles. I have loved cooking ever since. Up until our move to Florida, I always worked full time and more, except for the first five months of my son Michael’s life. With rare exception, Russ and/or I cooked a nice dinner from scratch every night, no matter how many practices or games or other activities were going on, and we always sat down to eat together. Some nights back in the days of Little League baseball, Pop Warner football, and all the school teams, we ate dinner at around 10 PM! We all loved it, and our home was where all our boys’ friends wanted to come for dinner, and often did. …All that was making a short story long, to say that I am a self-taught cook. After the boys grew up, and were going to college and all that, my love of cooking and food became a passion. As much as I have always enjoyed cooking, it is even more fun now to cook for just the two of us. We do love the empty nest syndrome. There were a couple of years after I retired and before moving to Florida that I did some food consulting/ recipe development/ food writing/ food and wine education -- mostly for a wine shop where Russ and I both moonlighted. I owned a small company and had a web site called Culinary Passions. However, since moving to Florida, I have only pursued these activities as play, rather than work. This morning I am having my usual black coffee, even as we speak (type). On work days, I rarely eat breakfast and usually not lunch. If I get hungry and take the time, I’ll eat just a little on the run at around brunch time. I’m not sure how today will be, but I’ll keep you posted.
  23. Meanwhile, back in Seattle... I have to admit to feeling a bit daunted following up slkinsey's feast of a Thanksgiving as well as our own little ms foodie's romp through the Emerald City. Still, I will do my mostest. I'm gonna start this up with a bit of an intriduction and some background and will then post on today's actual food and suchlike a bit later this evening, once I finish rooting through today's pics. So, a bit about me and where this foodblog is headed. For the last year or so I've been a cheese-maker here in Seattle. THis came kinda out of the blue for me, as up to that point I'd spent the previous ten years in computer systems and netowrk administration. Maybe two years ago I started to give real thought to leaving IT for some sort of wortk in food. I attribute this desire to a mix of my love of sharing good food with people. In college my best friend and I threw dinner parties for anywhere from eight to twenty-five people very nearly every friday night for over a year. My cooking at the time was rather rudimentary but still impressive enoug to my college peeps. In any case, as I started pondering the idea of food work in that sort of distant hypothetical way (i.e. "boy, it'd be neat to be doing XYZ for a living") one of my closest fgriends , who was also considering such amove, loaned me his copy of Bourdain's delightful Kitchen Confidential. I tore through the book and found that it really humanized the wholke prospect a lot. Showed me the real workaday side of it rather than the pipe-dream what-ifs I'd been podering up till then. So, I started poking around the net for more, stumbled upon this delightful site and was immediately sucked in. About six months later I finally bagged my lousy job at the Evil Empire across the lake in Redmond and decided to search in earnest for work in foodland. I came, naturally, to eGullet for advice and got it in spades. I mentioned that I'd made cheese from a kit and dig it as I've been a cheese-o-phile for many years. I was then told by a certain ms ramsey [ed. actually it was tsquare] who shall remain anonymous that down at Pike Place Market there was a sign up that said "looking for cheesemakers." A month and a half later I was hired and here I am a little over a year later making cheese for a living. Well, cheese, butter and sometimes ice cream. Needless to say, I love it. I see Kitchen Confidential (and as such Bourdain) as the catalyst that started the ball rolling. The rest was serendipity, luck and whatever else makes the world go round. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to thank him in person when he did a signing to push his Les Halles cookbook a few weeks ago in town. It pleased me to no end that night, upon starting to read the book itself, to see him use phrases like "renegade cheesemakers." I am heartened by this sort of encouragement. This sort as well: As such, this blog, along with being a peek into my daily cooking and eating, will also present a look at the day-to-day workings of a new little cheese company. The company is Beecher's Handmade Cheese and at this point my role is assistant cheesemaker and essentially second in command with regard to the day-to-day workings of the production side of the business. I'll post again shortly with today's meal goodness as well as a bit of cheese-production goodness. The title of this blog is a bit of an accidental tribute to Evan dorkin's classic Milk and Cheese comic series. [Edited to correct an attribution]
  24. Thanks to gsquared I will be hosting this week's food blog. This week is more or less like any other week, except for Friday - which is my birthday. We live at the bottom of Napa Valley in California, in a reasonably small town. MsMelkor and I both work from home, so the only time we go out for breakfast/lunch during the week is for work. Almost every day starts with a cappuccino. We are working on perfecting our cappuccino making skills so we each drink 4 or so a day - I make them during the week, MsMelkor makes them on the weekends since her work day starts around 6:30am, while mine starts at 9am. Because it wouldn't be right to start this blog without pictures of the cats here ya go. Texas: Rosie:
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