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Good morning from soggy Toledo, Ohio. It has been raining for days, which the grass and plants appreciate, but we're all getting a little bit sitr crazy! I'm very excited about this week, though I must warn you that it will be far less exotic than laksa's wonderful blog. I grew up in NY (on Long Island), but my husband, daughter and I live in Toledo. To give everyone some reference, we are very close to the Michigan border. We are an hour from Detroit, and about 50 minutes from Ann Arbor. In fact, Ann Arbor is where we do most of our food shopping. We get our high quality supplies (EVOO, sherry vinegar, mustards, capers packed in salt, etc.) from Zingerman's, get most of our meats from a wonderful butcher up there called Sparrow Meat Market, and then pick up the rest of our supplies at Whole Foods. They also have a new Trader Joe's that we have just started to take advantage of. This week, though, we will be sticking to Toledo for all of our food supplies, which isn't as bad as some might assume. One of the things I love about Toledo is its ethnic neighborhoods, all of which have their own markets. We have Tiger Bakery for Lebanese food, Stanley's for Polish food, Takacs and Golden Oven Bakery for Hungarian favorites, Sofo's for Italian food, and La Perla for Mexican food such as homemade tortillas. We also have an excellent fruit and vegetable market called Rhode's which I will be visiting today for inspiration. I won't have my week's menu planned until after that trip, but here are some highlights that you can look forward to: This evening for dinner, we will be heading out to the annual German American Festival in Oregon, Ohio. Today is the last day of the three-day festival, and I'm excited about my pig hock with potato salad. I am sure that my almost-three-year-old daughter Dylan will want something resembling a hot dog, so I will try to introduce her the "wurst booth". Stay tuned this evening for lots of photos of this crazy event and the food we eat there. We'll also go out to eat one night this week. I used to be the food critic in Ann Arbor, so I thought it would be fun to "review" a restaurant for you guys. I'm leaning towards one of the Lebanese favorites in town. The Lebanese population is by far the most prevalent of all of the immigrant groups here, so it seems like a good choice. Dylan, my daughter, is a big fan of the place we're going to go, because they allow you to order a side dish of olives. She loves olives. Finally, I'll end the blog on Saturday with a breakfast tailgate at a University of Michigan football game. My husband is a U of M alum, and we have four season tickets. This is the first game of the season and it starts at noon. The breakfast tailgates are always my favorites. So, that's the deal with me. I'm going to try to get back to my coffee and NY Times now before my daughter comes home. She had her first ever sleepover at Grandma's house, and I need to take advantage of my remaining free time!

14 Sept 2004 8am Cambridge UK I've been tipped again to do the foodblog. Last time was Christmas and New Year. This time is Rosh Hashonah, which seems fair, so you will have to suffer my awful typos for this week. "L’Shona Tova Tikosaiv v’Saichosaim". "May you be written down for a sweet and good year in the Book of Life! " to all First of all coffee, mail and eG's overnight messages. The coffee is dark roast Java Sumatra, made in a press pot, and is breakfast unless otherwise noted. The mug is a Microsoft give-away. My desk, unusally tidy, and the view from the window in front of me. Sunny but windy. While I am not religious myself, I did have an othodox Jewish upbringing, and still like the food, so I guess some will figure this week. This week is fairly busy, and today is the calm before the storm. Main highlight is our annual apple pressing party on Sunday, weather permitting. We have open house, and expect about 100 people to come and pick apples and help press them into apple juice. We fire up the wood burning bread oven and bake pizza and things. . What we eat and talk about on the rest of the week is to some extent up to you, an I hope for a lot of interaction. If I get time I'll try and rig a webcam, as an experiment. Current fixed points: Today is fairly quite. Probably Bangers and Mash for supper Wednesday we are going to friends for supper to celebrate another friends birthday. Thursday a freind of Jill's (my partner) is coming to stay. Being Rosh Hashonah I plan a Brisket Tzimmes, with a pototo kugel. Friday start prep for the party, and start the bread doughs Saturday Fire the oven and bake breads etc Sunday Apple pressing Monday I'm hosting dinner in College The house is built in an old orchard, with about 20 of the original trees still standing. There is a newer orchard, maybe 30 years old, with 30 trees. Here are some pictures taken this morning of apples. The identification is noit certain, but were done by The Brogdale Trust. . Joan Morgan's The New Book of Apples (ISBN0-091-88398-9 is definitive. Regular eGulleteers may remember that many of apple trees were severely ringed by the rabbits last winter, and I feared for their survival. I'm happy to report that they seem to have pulled through. Some, like the NewtonWonder, are biennial bearing and are off this year with only a few apples, but most have a large crop. However since we have not pruned or reduced the fruit numbers the apples are mostly small. They are mostly cookers or eating apples, rather than cider. I've tried making cider from the juice, but it is thin and weedy stuff, but more of that anon. The apple juice is lovely, an we freeze it in plastic bottles, straight from the press. Allington Pippin (my favourite, good general purpose apple) and Newton Wonder (cooker, said to be derived from the apple tree that dropped and apple on Newton's head) Lord Derby (cooker) and Tydman's Early Worcester Orelans Reinette (russet); Queen Cox and Ellison's Orange Other apples are Charles Ross, Laxton's Fortune, Cox (poor trees), Grandier (cooking) and John Standish (late red, not yet ripe), Also pears and Quinces, again a bit early. Late purple plums (Marjorie's seedling?) and Damsons Dog rose hip and Brambles (wild blackberries) in the hedges

Good morning. Those cheers you heard this morning were from me, as I put the last of the three kids on the bus. I have loved having them home all summer, but I really loved the peace and quiet when they left. I celebrated my first day of freedom with a trip to the Minneapolis Farmer's Market. Before we moved to our new home, I was only about 5 minutes away. Since it's now a 20-minute drive, I don't get there as often. I stopped by my formerly-local Kowalski's market on the way home to get some Hope Butter. I do miss the very close and easy (most often biking distance) to a wonderful local supermarket and lots of Asian markets, but I am adapting. For breakfast today, I had several cups of really strong coffee and an Old Gold. Oh, and I had 1/2 piece of toast. I'm not a big early morning eater, and have noticed that as I've aged, I do not want to eat anything sweet in the morning. In fact, my sweet tooth in general is not very strong, except for fruit. I tend to have my first real hunger of the day at about 11:00 am. My eating patterns during the day will be quite different than they were up until last week, when there were three kids who wanted breakfast and lunch, not the frequent "little" meals I gravitate toward when I am home alone. So, now, I will go and grab something to eat and attempt to fix whatever happened on the computer to my camera program when Paul installed a new operating system. Hopefully, it will be an easy process so I can post photos of the bounty I acquired this morning.

here's what i ate/cooked with today. can you guess what i made? water salt cucumbers shallots red onions turmeric red wine gummie bears 1/2 & 1/2 gerolstiner green coffee (guatemala antigua) bay leaves pepper pork cutlets Val's Bakery wheat bread brown sugar goat cheese eagle river bourbon flour sage butter olive oil grapefruit juice yellow beans garlic rice POM wonderful carrots chicken stock cider vinegar diet coke mustard seeds roasted coffee celery seeds thai bird chilies more details later. at some point i'll declare a winner, who will get a prize

Ahem. Is this thing on? I'm it! I have to admit that I'm very nervous about this week. Kris is a tough act to follow. A little background--I'll try not to bore you all with "too much information," but you might like to know where I'm coming from. I live in a small town in Wisconsin with my husband Jason and 7-year-old son Daniel. I used to be a court reporter and my family's main provider. A chronic illness has caused some major setbacks, and after a hospitalization in January my healthcare providers told me very bluntly that I needed to hang it up and stay home. That was a kick in the head. I spent a couple months sitting in a recliner, staring dully at Court TV (yeah, I'm real proud of that)...that is, until an acquaintance told me that I reminded him of Rachael Ray (don't ask) and I decided to turn on Food Network and check this chick out. Now, I had taught myself how to "cook" over the past 10 years, but my "cooking" revolved around Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup recipes with a side of canned corn. I was a vegetarian in the first 8 of these formative cooking years, so that limited me even more. I loved to read cookbooks, but they were all the "Working Mother's 5-Ingredient Recipes" types of cookbooks. I got hooked on Ray's show at first, watching in awe--you mean you're not supposed to chop your vegetables with a steak knife? Why does she put salt and pepper on everything while it's still cooking? What the hell is fennel? My Food TV watching started to extend to Sara Moulton's show, and others. Over time, it dawned on me that I could learn to cook--I mean, cook with fresh ingredients, cook complicated dishes, cook food that was really, really impressive and not just edible and filling. I could perhaps try out recipes that I used to skip over, recipes that were "too hard" or "too weird." And it might even be good! I might even be good at it! I realized that I may be limited by health and lack of funds, but I have been blessed in a backwards way--with lots of time. So here I am, several months later. I've been introduced to so many foods: capers, shallots, jalapenos, Kalamata olives, chorizo, fresh herbs, curries, swiss chard, fresh tuna, shrimp, things that you all probably consider very basic, not exotic. I am savoring my novice status, where everything is fresh and exciting to me, and I don't want to become jaded. Jason is enjoying my cooking. He doesn't really get into food like I do, but he'll eat anything--and eat it fast, which is a good trait when my experimentation doesn't turn out so well. Daniel is another story; he has his own menu, and I don't know if I'll get into that with this foodblog. I went through a period of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants menu planning, but I found that it was very difficult to keep within a budget that way, so I've gone back to selecting a menu. This week I'm going to be making something from one of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks, several selections from the new CIA cookbook, and more--I might even roast my first chicken. Each recipe represents something I've never done before or eaten before; I try to plan meals like this whenever possible. You will see where budgetary concerns come into play--especially when you see pictures of my ratty kitchen equipment. I'm acquiring nice things little by little, though, and that's fun too because I'm still at the point where a new Oxo vegetable peeler makes a huge difference. In other words, I'm easily amused! Hope you all are amused this week as well!

Three days in iambic pentameter....

Give us some clues, ok? Inquiring minds want to know. Soba

Well - Fifi has tagged me so I guess I'm it. I hope my bizarre eating habits aren't too dull, or too revealing of my other *ahem* idiosynchracies. Started today as I always do. Big cappuccino from the dining room. One of the advantages to working for a restaurant is having the cappuccino machine downstairs at all times! Makes the long hours pass with a much higher level of alertness. Otherwise getting my synapses to fire in the absence of caffeine is like trying to spark a campfire with wet wood I've had a couple of North Star Farms peaches so far. Late summer peaches are SO good! Not terribly hungry today as lunar cycle issues are making me feel a bit queasy. Also like I'm birthing a small litter of porcupines, but this too shall pass when the painkillers kick in. Then I assume I'll be back to my usual hoovering self. Am I the only woman that feels like any foodstuff that isn't nailed to the floor isn't safe in my presence at "those" times? Particularly anything chocolate, fried or carbohydrate loaded. I'm having visions of a big plate of mashed potatoes... More later...

Suzanne F tagged me so here goes. The subtitle refers to the fact that I love to cook but I don't eat much. I like to eat, just not much quantity. (So why am I so fluffy?) Therefore, this thread may include what I am THINKING about eating as much as what I actually put in my mouth. I am starting this now because I am expecting everyone to notice the time. This is a lesson in dedication to BBQ. Gotta go start the fire and crank up the magic bullet. More on that later. This should get interesting. We are in the middle of tropical storm Grace. Think the rain planet in Star Wars. Coffee, Melitta brand Columbian, brewed strong, evaporated milk and sweetener added. A Keebler Club cracker... because it was there.

Oh, shit, I guess I tagged myself. I warn you all: don't expect any gourmet tap-dance. Okay, yesterday, Monday, August 25: vitamin pills, with instant iced coffee (Bustello dissolved in boiling water, ice cubes, water, and skim milk. No Sweet 'n' Low this time) 1 Le Petit Ecolier 70% Extra-Dark Chocolate-covered cookie Lots of tap water (mmmmmmmm, NYC water) "Lunch" (around 3pm): salad with balsamic vinaigrette, left over from Saturday's dinner, kind of limp but not yet slimy, with some kasseri cheese microplaned on top, and freshly ground black pepper. Dinner: Only one glass (!) of La Gitana fino sherry Lamb and artichoke stew out of the freezer, plus chickpeas (canned ) and artichoke paste. Potato-plantain spatzl (how's THAT for fusion? ), also from Saturday. Stir-fried green Swiss Chard The ever-present salad, with doctored Marie's Feta Dressing (extra feta, oregano, dill, and yogurt) 1/2 of the bottle of Wagner (Finger Lakes) 1998 Cabernet Franc That's it. HWOE finished off the Lychee and Lime sorbet that Rachel and Jason brought to the potluck, but I was too full.

Here we go. Fasten your seat belts and try to remain awake. Emma woke at 1am after having a bad dream, then it was Ian's turn at 2am, just as we had fallen asleep again. Woke this morning at 6:30 feeling less than refreshed. Breakfast: 2 cups of hot coffee, more or less. I can never keep track because as soon as what's in my cup cools off, it gets poured out and replaced by fresh. I large chocolate chip cookie - snagged before Scott whisked the rest off to the office with him. Fixed pancakes, orange juice and sliced banana for the kids. One slice of cheddar and half an apple as a midmorning snack. Eaten because vitamins + coffee + empty stomach is a recipe for disaster. We put off grocery shopping yesterday, so it will have to be done today with both kids along. Ack!

Hi everybody! Schneier has tagged me to be next up for foodblogging. I'm afraid my blog won't be nearly as "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" as his. More like "10 weeks pregnant and surrounded by boxes in our newly purchased house." 10 weeks pregnant being the reason for the "Schocking Amounts of Food" subtitle - I'm eating for two, and have to eat about every 2-3 hours or my tummy gets very unhappy. Today I had my usual breakfast - frosted mini-wheats with skim milk. Then it was off to my first appointment with the midwife, where I got to hear my baby's heartbeat for the first time. (Insert gushing "awwww" noises here.) There's a baby in my tummy, and it goes "whumpa, whumpa, whumpa." Then they drew a whole bunch of blood from my arm, so clearly it was time to eat something to top it back up. I was voting for a Chicken Fajita Salad from Red Robin, but Eric (my husband) wanted breakfast, so we ended up at Denny's. Here my blog moves rapidly away from anything you read last week - I don't think Bruce would be caught dead in a Denny's... I had a hamburger with lettuce, tomato and mayonaise, with hash browns instead of french fries. And a Coke. I rarely drink caffeine in any form, but I haven't been sleeping well lately, and needed a boost if I was going to be able to make it into work. More later...

Traveling is always tough. I had my first bite to eat on Northworst en route to Minneapolis, aka "the Kremlin" to the oldtimer Nortwest employee. It was a Quaker oat and raisin Chewy with a cup of luke warm black coffee. Turbulant flight over the Dakotas. The next segment of the trip I opted for the turkey sangie. It came with that Hellman's Dijon Mayo, small bag of Fritos, a tiny sealed cup of Spring Water and an apple. It was dinner roll sized, but not all bad. The apple was sour. Alaska Air was dismal. "Juice" service with salty Beer Nut brand peanuts. The juice was in these little 3 ounce sized portions. I felt like five years old again while taking a sip from these. I opted for the apple juice. I sat a bit in Seattle and people watched. One of my old regulars from Sitka's Pioneer Bar was on board the same flight! I got to Sitka and had the worst watered down Belvedere Martini, up, I've ever encountered. Back up plan -- my favourite Alaskan Amber, but somehow it wasn't the same beer I adored a couple years back when I lived here. Maybe it was the pint glasses and excess soap (from washing and not a thorough rinse) killing my enjoyment. But before the martini flop, my aunt and I took a brisk walk through town. New food happenings here. A new sushi place appears days away from a Grand Opening! My friend's Mojo moved (a small cafe that used to have odd operating hours). It still looked quite styling in its new location and remained as ecclectic as its artistic owner. In the old Mojos was a new place called Luigi's. It looked postively charming. Must stroll by when I'm not power walking and huffing and puffing to catch up with my very cardio in shape aunt! What a gloriously sunny day. I thought it looked odd that many of the pituresque mountains didn't have any snow on their caps. Nor the volcano. *yawn* It's late. Good night y'all.

Okay, it starts with a 9AM coffee from WaWa and a 10AM medium sized muffin me papa bought that was lying around the house.

Hi everyone! tammylc tagged me for the next week and I'm starting today since my menu will be a little more interesting since it's (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house. Starting tomorrow, however, you will be following me as I peruse the supermarket aisles looking for whatever's cheap, on sale, and halfway edible. I've been lurking on egullet for awhile, so I guess I should introduce myself. I'm a 4th year English major at UBC currently living in sin as I am staying with my boyfriend. Right now, we're trying to support ourselves while saving up for an apartment, and one area where we've had to drastically cut down on spending is groceries. I'm in school full-time, and work part-time as a private English tutor. I also work Saturdays at a tutoring center for peanuts. Anyway, onto Thanksgiving. I've been preparing food for tonight's dinner since Friday! It's my first time making an entire Thanksgiving meal by myself. I guess I should mention that though I'm on a shoestring budget, I do appreciate good food. I live in Vancouver, and my bf and I have dined at some of the nice restaurants like West and Lumiere. I enjoyed my food at West more. (BTW: I hope David Hawksworth reads my thread...he is my hero ) Today I woke up late and had to grab breakfast on the run. I ate 10 sourcream Timbits (from Tim Horton's, a sandwich/soup/donut chain in Canada) and a few fun-sized chocolate bars (Mars, Twix). I should mention that today's menu might shock some of you b/c of the plethora of junk food consumed, but I assure you I don't eat like this all the time. I just got caught on a bad day. Tim Horton's sourcream donuts are my favorite. The sourcream donuts are very dense, with an almost creamy interior. Not covered in a cloying sugary glaze. I brought donuts for my student...raspberry-filled, a couple of chocolate ones, some chocolate and coconut. Mmm... After our 2 hour lesson, I drove to Save-on-Foods to buy a pumpkin pie. Yesterday when I was there, I ate 8 samples from the (unmanned) sample tray. (BTW: That was basically yesterday's dinner. I told you I was poor. ) Today the sample trays held pieces of supermarket-quality Black Forest cake, birthday cake, olive and asiago ciabatta bread (which I love) and garlic toast. I had a sample of the Black Forest. Bleah. Got home, and ate a large piece of pumpkin pie. Since then, I've been picking at the rest of the pie every few minutes. I've already eaten more than a quarter of the 9" pie. No one else in my family will go near pumpkin, so I buy myself one every Thanksgiving. Also ate a handful of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. I then got started on a pistachio sponge cake and the cornbread. Cornbread doesn't seem to be very popular in Canada; I've actually only eaten it twice in my life. For the cornbread, I combined ingredients from 3 recipes that I found earlier in the week--1 from Epicurious and the other 2 right here in the egullet recipe archive! (I used mamster's Yankee cornbread and Rachel Perlow's skillet cornbread). Both the cake and the cornbread look good. The turkey is in the oven and I just poured 2 bottles of beer over the big pan of veggies. This is what I'll be eating for dinner tonight: -turkey/gravy/cranberry sauce -sausage, artichoke, sourdough bread, cheese stuffing--found the recipe on Epicurious, and I followed it but doubled the amount of sausage -cornbread (thanks mamster and Rachel) -taboulleh salad -garlic bread (No veggies or roasted sweet potatoes for me when there's so much better-tasting stuff around). For dessert, I made the pistachio sponge cake and I'm serving it with whipped cream. I also made this Cappucino-Fudge cheesecake on Friday for tonight's dessert. Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=106231 I used Callebaut chocolate since you can get it in the bulk section of Superstore for 99 cents/100 grams. Unfortunately, my cheesecake doesn't have a pretty lattice top since my (cheap) pastry bag exploded when I was trying to pipe the ganache. I bought the pastry bag for 6 bucks! What a waste of money... I had to instead pour the ganache over the top of the cheesecake. Decorated it with chocolate covered espresso beans.

Gulp. Missed my cue, did I? So be it: keep up with me if you can, kinfolk... Monday breakfast didn't happen. Running too fast... Monday lunch, inhaled at the desk with a micromanager hanging over my every bite, was sushi: couple kinds of nori rolls and Diet Coke. Monday dinner: consoled myself with leisurely saute of cut-up tomatoes/crimini mushrooms/asparagus/small amounts of chopped parsley, basil, oregano, all over penne pasta with Parmesan. Good chunk of good bread (can't complain; I baked it, back on the weekend). Hess Select Chard to drink. This is the last meal I will be able to cook until Saturday, for a variety of reasons which will become clear to y'all during the week. Tuesday breakfast...didn't happen. I blush. But I needed the sleep more than I needed to eat. Tuesday lunch is what I'm eating now, at the desk again: a more-than-merely-decent attempt from downstairs White Hen at a chicken Caesar salad. Produce is surprisingly nice -- but gotta lose the oversalted pink gloop they think is salad dressing. A dark-chocolate Dove candy bar provides both consolation and blood-pressure medication. Can I rationalize or what? But the RFQ (Request for Qualifications) I was hacking out got done. Correctly. It's notarized, duplicated and in the correct City of Chicago agency's hands, a sumptuous hour and a half ahead of deadline. Gah. Tonight, lugging a seven-point-six pound notebook full of mostly hand-copied and/or multiply photocopied music, I will go to sing a three-hour rehearsal at a local Conservative Jewish congregation, as a member of their choir for the High Holy Days. Dinner is gonna have to be fast, cheap, and commercial, at a nearby IHOP (International House of Pancakes). To be continued...

Since Nero kindly passed the torch on to me, I'm going to start with what's happened so far today and update as the day progresses. I'm afraid I'm neither as entertaining as Nero or as poetic as maggie, but I'll try. Tuesday, 19 August 2003 LOTS of Poland Spring or whatever bottled water happens to be lying around throughout the day. Breakfast was plain Dannon yogurt, a banana, and a Granny Smith apple. Cup O' Soup noodles for a pre-lunch snack. Ever since our corporate cafeteria from hell was closed for renovations and a total redesign, I've been relegated to food hell of a different sort: takeout, sausage sandwiches and scrounging around in the wilds of Lower Manhattan. The cafeteria opens tomorrow, starting with breakfast. Ooooh I can't wait. Gone I suppose will be the radioactive looking frankfurters stewed with peppers, bologna, onions and ketchup that they serve for breakfast. I kid you not. The joke was that someone donated a shitload of hot dogs to the kitchen and they had to get rid of it somehow.... Went to a deli-food court across Water Street and got some minestrone soup (for an afternoon snack), and salad bar fixin's. Pretty good -- steamed brussel sprouts with butter, stir-fried snow peas with garlic, cauliflower and broccoli salad, yogurt marinated grilled chicken, and a couple slices of luscious roast pork. Berry, banana and apple smoothie to wash it down. Just had the minestrone. Nice mix of veggies and penne pasta. Dinner will probably be leftover takeout from Chola (see the Dinner thread for the gory details) unless I decide on something different. Soba

Grab your Alkaseltzer tablets and hold on to the backs of your toilets, folks, because by request, here comes my Foodblog. Wednesday, August 13, 151 lbs.: In the morning, before class, I drank 3 cups of W.J. Upson's coffee (beans purchased from my friends Lin and Larry Czapla, purveyors of the fantastic Upson's Wine/Coffee store in Kalamazoo, MI). Then I ate something called a Turkey and Swiss on Rye that I bought out of the vending machines at school for $1 USD. The Garde Manger class wasn't giving up the goods, so I had to take emergency measures. The sandwich was remarkably tasteless. I think it had a *hint* of rye. I think (but don't want to believe) that it had margarine on it as well. During class (Baking 101), I ate a spatula full of Vanilla Pound Cake batter. My finished cake was rather flat, as I had not incorporated enough air into the batter. Oh f***in' well. Then I ate a Devil's Food Cupcake with Chocolate Glaze, and a piece of Chocolate Chiffon Cake with Raspberry Filling and Chocolate Glaze on the top. Then I drank a Mountain Dew! During lecture, I ate three pieces of the aforementioned Pound Cake--one with all butter, one with all shortening, and one with half butter, half shortening. Just to taste the differences. I had a Wintergreen Life Saver somewhere in there as well. Also during lecture, we had a Product I.D. Quiz, which means I ate wet-fingerfuls of each of the following: Cream of Tartar. Baking Soda. Cinammon. Iodized and Kosher Salt. Granulated and Powdered Sugar. Nutmeg. Allspice. Vanilla. Vegetable Oil. Cornstarch. The Chef *insisted* that we taste each product before we identified it. Cream of Tartar tastes so bad, I refuse to believe you can't get a buzz off that shit. Then I had another Mountain Dew to wash it all down. After class, I had dinner with my mom, her friends, and FRITZ BRENNER. But before dinner, I drank about 5 glasses of Crow Canyon Chardonnay. I also ate several cracker-thingies with some sort of cheese. And cold shrimp, but the condo had no cocktail sauce fixings, so we bogarted a sauce out of ketchup and caper juice. Yum! And I had another Devil's Food Cupcake. Dinner was a leg of lamb in a port-wine glaze, fresh-picked green beans with a bit of butter and salt, warm baguettes, and a salad that had beets and some other stuff in it. We had red wine with dinner--I think--probably Fat Bastard. I ate only about 5 pieces of lamb. After dinner I had some more wine, maybe 3 more glasses, and another piece of Chocolate Chiffon Cake, and then I went home. As a midnight snack, while reading "Poland" by James Michener, I had a handful of Ruffles with Ridges. Thank you for your attention. I won't be able to post again until Friday, when I will post today's intake, which is shaping up to be *quite* heinous.

I arrived at work this morning to discover Shiewie had tagged me by PM simply because nobody had done a foodblog from Australia before. This week will not be a typical week of eating because husband is on afternoon shifts (2.00pm until 11.30pm) so will be raiding the fridge whilst I am at work an eating everything I was planning to cook that night!! We are currently experiencing Spring (an exceptionally chilly one at that) following on from a drought. I should explain that I live in country NSW (New South Wales) at state of Australia in a city of about 60,000 people half way between Sydney and Melbourne (each are about 4 1/2 hours drive away) so we don't get quite the variety of restaurants, markets, food quality etc that you would find in either of these cities. That said, we do have an excellent farmers market once a month, have a great butcher and fabulous wines!! A girl could do worse. Being a food blog I suppose I should mention food. Had I known I was being tagged I would have had something more exciting for dinner I had steamed asparagus spears with a poached egg and parmesan cheese on top (actually to be truthful there were two poached eggs just to make sure I had enough runny yolk to be scooped up by the asparagus.) I made a poor mans tart for dessert by using frozen puff pastry cut into a circle and thin slices of fresh mango arranged on top. Sprinkled with dark brown sugar and cooked in a hot oven. I ate this with whipped cream into which I had mixed some crushed fresh ginger (I love ginger and mango together!) Later that night whilst I watched a stupid film on tv I had some pistachio nuts and finished off the bottle of charddonay. Am going to find something to eat for breakfast from the bakery now

Hi, I'm Bruce. Looks like I got tagged for this week. I'm going to start with today, because I'm not sure I can remember yesterday in enough detail. Last week I flew to Hartford, CT on Wednesday, to San Diego on Thursday, to New York on Saturday, and home on Sunday. Karen met me in San Diego, came to New York, and we returned home together. The reason that's relevant is that there wasn't much food in the house when we returned. Yesterday we did a quick shopping trip at a co-op we had to drive by. I like co-ops, but it can be hard to get normal food there. The selection of breakfast cereals is pretty bizarre: nothing normal, only various brands of Healthy-Os. Tuesday Breakfast: Spelt flakes and milk. If quinoa is the super grain of the future, spelt is the regular grain of the past. It's got a nice nutty flavor, and it's not too sweet. (For more information, visit www.spelt.com--where else?) Oh, and a banana. (Sadly, you can also visit www.banana.com. "The banana plant is not a tree. It is actually the world's largest herb!" The Internet knows everything....) Do people still eat cereal and milk for breakfast? (Looks like www.breakfast.com is still up for grabs.) Bruce

Aaargh!! I've just come back from a horrid lunch and realised I've been tagged by herbacidal for this week's foodblog. And I had happily been lulled into the thought that it would be ronnie suburban or bergerka from her earlier post. Here goes: Monday Was late for work so breakfast was a Nature Valley Crunchy Peanut Butter Granola Bar and a kiwi fruit at my desk. Got hungry a little later so snacked on some salted fava beans in the common food stash that we have in our department. Just finished lunch and it was one of the most awful meals I've had in quite a while. A colleague was driving out to pay some bills so a few of us trooped along for the ride. As usual, we couldn't decide where and what to eat. The choice was dim sum, a cafe-type place, hawker food at local coffeeshops, Thai, Chinese vegetarian or Taiwanese noodles. There was a small voice next to me that suggested Burger King but that was ignored by the rest in the car. We settled on Chinese vegetarian out of deference to the driver who is semi-vegetarian (he still eats seafood for now). Haven't been to the restaurant before and I'll definitely not go again. Chinese vegetarian with its multitude of ways in cooking soy by-products as mock this n' that can be interesting. Sigh but the flavour of the day at this place was bland, bland, bland. Chose a "sui gow meen" - green (chinese spinach) noodles in a light broth with vegetarian dumplings, yau mak (sort of like Romaine lettuce), slices of dried Shitake mushrooms and some crunchy dough bits (mock pork crackling bits?!). The noodles were ok but the dumplings were doughy and tasteless. Also had half a guava that I bought from a fruit stall nearby...and that was tasteless too. Feeling most dissatisfied now. Edited to correct typo

It looks like I've been tapped by Soba to do the next foodblog in this thread, so here goes... Lunch was wonton and roast pork soup with udon noodles and truly first rate cold sesame noodles at "Spade's Noodles, Rice, & More" on 37th and 3rd. A very cheap, surprisingly good Chinese restaurant for a quick lunch in Midtown East. Dinner was my version of pasta puttanesca: tomato, lots of oil-packed anchovies (there were no salt-packed in the house), lots of capers, gaeta olives and Sicilian colossal olives (pitted by me using the "whack with the flat of a knife" method), onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and plenty of fresh minced parsley. As I sat down at the table, I realized that I didn't have any pecorino -- my grating cheese of choice for this sauce -- and so I grabbed a chunk of bottarga di muggine... That sent it right over the top and into another category of deliciousness entirely. I probably would have made a salad, but was busy playing with the ferrets and didn't have time. Dessert was Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch -- my favorite. Tonight the ferrets are having a little bit of a whole chicken (including bones, skin, fat, giblets, etc.) that I ran through a grinder and lightly cooked. Perhaps I'll give them a whole gizzard or two as well so they can tear something apart.