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  1. @Alleguede and I are in the lounge awaiting our flight to NYC. Saturday is the Fine Chocolate Industry Association's Summer Elevate Chocolate event. I will likely spend a day at the Fancy Food Show this trip. Only one specific plan this time - we have reservations for Dessert Bar - Michael Laiskonis's new dessert place inside the bakery Recolte
  2. Hello, oh wonderful eGulleteers! I know I've been away a while, but at least I'm coming back in style. Not a whole lot has changed here in Ecuador - it's still definitely paradise, and the big Market still runs on Sundays and Mondays. I'll be off towards that shortly, to shop for the week and also to search out some of the food I want to feature in this blog - namely, the quick breads and munchies on the go that Latin America is justifiably famous for! So what am I waiting for? It's time to EAT!
  3. It's that time of year again, after just getting back from our summer vacation. This year, we went to Yogyakarta which is a city in central Java, Indonesia. The title of the topic comes from the fact that most people there call the city Jogjakarta (pronounced jōg-ja-karta), although some people (depending on background) do call it yōg-ya-karta. This is a special place in Indonesia - Indonesia is a mostly Muslim country, however, the region around Jogjakarta was declared a special region as it is also a Sultanate. It was the original home to the ruler of the island of Java, and once democracy came along, the Sultan still lives there and has some kind of power in the region, as well as with the government as a whole... It's confusing - and I would say that I'm still a bit confused, but that's ok. Anyway, all this leads this region to be called the cultural and culinary capital of the island of Java, the most populous island in the archipelago, some of the reason it is extremely popular with domestic tourists - I'd say the vast majority of the tourists there are from other parts of Indonesia, with the balance being mostly Australians, and some Europeans and very few North Americans. Food-wise, we found Jogja interesting because it is the first Muslim area we have seen in SE Asia, which means (with very few exceptions) no pork. There are tons of chicken dishes - many using what is called kampung chickens, or extremely free range chickens which tend to be relatively scrawny, a little tough but with a lot of flavor. There is also some beef, some mutton/goat and fish. Like a lot of Indonesian food, the use of sambal(s) is key - many times you will have a selection of sambal that you would use to accent or add spiciness to a dish. Some of these sambal are crazy hot... Another thing interesting thing about being a mostly Muslim area is the seemingly ever-present call to prayer. In the city, typically 5 times a day, the Mosques will have their best singer sing the call to prayer (which lasts about 20 minutes) over the loudspeaker systems. If you are in an area with a few mosques, you will hear 3 different versions all going at the same time. Some of these calls are at inopportune times - like 1:30AM - so most hotels provide ear plugs so you won't be woken up in the middle of the night. Like we do on all our trips, we take Benadryl as a sleep aid to help get us over the jetlag... so we never needed the earplugs as we were sleeping very soundly to say the least! I think I'll sum this up by talking about how relatively inexpensive this city is. It is probably the cheapest area that we have seen on our travels so far - you can get a luxury hotel room for about $50 per night, and a 40 minute taxi ride across the city doesn't cost more than $3-4, at the current rate of exchange. Local food is really cheap too. I took some photos of menus to show pricing - keep in mind that the current rate of exchange is about IDR14,100 to US$1. What can be much more expensive is some touristy things - foreign tourists are charged a different rate from domestic tourists, and in some cases will have a separate entrance (and usually a much shorter, or non-existent, line).
  4. So here we are once again on the road. That would be Kerry singing.. We remembered Kira. And behind Kira is our stash of stuff we’re taking with us.
  5. Host's note: the initial title of this thread was "Swarvin' in ???" as a teaser. Once the destination was identified as Newfoundland, the title was changed to reflect this. The initial comments were based on the ??? In the title. And we'll soon be off.......culinary adventures to follow.
  6. As times and available resources have changed, members have started their own food/travel blogs. These are not listed in the eG Foodblogs index below. You can find them, though, by searching with the tag "foodblog". The tag search box is near the upper right corner of the Forums Main Page. It looks like this:
  7. Hello again from south of the equator! As you may or may not have heard (because the international news media isn't really giving the situation much coverage), Ecuador is in the grip of a major social protest movement. This started on October 1, when fuel subsidies in the country were abruptly struck causing the prices of gasoline and diesel to more than double overnight. Transport and heavy haulage unions immediately went on strike, and blocked the main roads of the cities with their vehicles in protest. The indigenous movements of the central Sierra, beginning in my province, Tungurahua, joined the strike on October 2, and the President quickly declared a State of Emergency that restricts movement, freedom of the press, and freedom association. The indigenous took over the road blockades on October 3, cutting the cities off from the world; Ambato became an island overnight. It is now October 8, one week into the blockades. Shortages in the fresh markets and supermarkets began on Sunday, as people realized that we were in for a long-haul of protest and possibly an overthrow of the sitting government. Ecuador's indigenous have a long history of deposing governments in this way, and it's not a fast process. I'll be blogging informally throughout the National Strike, to document how the inevitable food shortages affect the city and my own table. These first pictures are from Sunday, October 6. In the Mercado Mayorista, a place I've always taken you along to when I've blogged from Ambato, the cement floors of the naves are visible in places where they have never, in my experience, been exposed. The fresh corn nave is all but abandoned - this is because all of the corn in the city's stock has been sold. I'll remind you: a nave in this market is about a thousand square metres of space. This is also missing the big trucks that come to trade fresh grains in the parking lot, because they couldn't make it through the roadblocks. Most of the Mayorista is in the same situation - stocks are selling off fast. The supermarkets are even more dire. The meat coolers are completely empty, and the produce shelves are diminishing quickly.
  8. We love Japan ! I don’t know why it hasn’t been on my travel radar until recently. The people, the places, the culture and history, and especially the FOOD. There will be no Michelin stars in this report, nor will there be names of restaurants. We ate mainly at isakaya, (local restaurants where there were often only four or five seats), markets (including supermarkets) with a few larger restaurants for balance. There is food available anywhere and anytime if you know where to look. Rather than large meals we tended to snack our way through the day. Some of the best things we ate at “standing bars” no chairs provided. Karaage chicken with salad and miso was first up. The window displays are amazing, you can walk many city blocks underground through various shopping malls, handy when it rained our first day. At a local place. Chicken teriyaki, grilled peppers, potato salad, pickles. Charcoal hibachi. Grew to love sake.
  9. @Alleguede and I are in the lounge at Pearson awaiting our flight to Vegas for the IBIE (International Baking Industry Exhibition). I got the usually bomb sniffing swab done on my electronics - @Alleguede got the 3rd degree at customs. Anyone know what a carnet is? I believe I got that lecture the last time. Made myself a little cocktail, Maker's Mark, Grand Marnier, vintage port. I've had better! Not a lot of choices to eat since it's rather late (not that earlier would have helped) - they also have pasta salad, Italian Wedding soup, Cream of mushroom soup, corn chips and salsa. There appear to be some cookies there as well. I'm trying to low carb as much as possible so I'm avoiding most of it.
  10. Hi everybody! I'm Jake, I'm 26 and from the United Kingdom. I've recently left a career in science teaching and I really hope to pursue my true passion, food writing by becoming either a recipe developer, a food journalist, or both! I've launched my website today so thought it was a good time to get active in some online forums and say hello! I look forward to meeting and interacting with you all ❤️
  11. It's one o'clock on a warm summer's day in Florence, I'm on my way to get ingredients for lunch. The sun is high in the sky, the cobblestones are warm under my feet and the aroma of something delicious is in the air. My mind starts to drift to the onions, celery and tomatoes I need for my pasta sauce, oh and don't forget something sweet for dessert...this truly is la dolce vita. My thoughts are soon interrupted by an unwelcome "chiuso" sign on the door of my new favorite deli. The blinds are closed and the friendly owners are nowhere in sight. The reality of having my favorite pasta dish for lunch was slipping further and further away. What a nightmare! How can this be? A local passing by must have noticed my frustration. "Signorina, è riposo. Tutto è chiuso!" Of course! How could I forget about the sacred Italian siesta? A siesta or riposo, as most Italians call it, is a time of rest. This time is usually around midday, or the hottest part of the day (very inconvenient if you're craving a bowl of pasta.) No one can really say where the tradition of the siesta originates, but many say it's all about food (no surprises there really). For many Italian families the main meal of the day is lunch. This heavy meal in the middle of the day is attributed to the standard Mediterranean diet: A minuscule breakfast of a coffee and pastry , a heavy lunch and an evening meal around 10 o'clock. The logic is that after such a heavy meal one would surely be drowsy and need to rest, no one can work efficiently on a full stomach! Post offices, car rentals, supermarkets and even coffee shops (in some smaller towns police stations too) all close their doors for a riposo. Everything comes to a standstill as every Italian goes home to kick of their shoes, enjoy a homemade lunch with family and bask in the Italian sunshine for three to four hours. This is serious business. One would not dare work for 8 hours straight. After their riposo most businesses open again around 4 o'clock and stay open till 7pm. Its the perfect balance between work and play and does wonders for your digestive system! "Grazie!" I thanked her for the reminder. The midday sun started to become unbearable. The streets had cleared with only a few tourists braving the midday heat still around. I thought about the strawberries I bought from the market earlier that week. Strawberries for lunch on my shaded balcony and maybe a nap afterwards sounded like my perfect riposo. The pasta will have to wait till 4.
  12. I'm a Brit. I'm also a closet Frenchman. To cap it all, I'm happily retired in Bangkok, the city of a street food culture that's second to none. The Thais are healthy and slim. I'm just this side of alive and far from slim. Lockdown has me fantasizing about my days working in London, Paris and New York, an existence, if one could call it that, revolving around gastronomy of one kind or another. They paid me, not so very much as it happens, to do what I enjoy doing most in life. We all get to do it, but I was one of a fortunate few who made it his metier. Well all that's in the past now, but I still dream of my time in Paris when lunch was a tad short of 2-hours, little-known local bistros remained affordable until the day they were discovered by La Bible (Michelin Guide) and the students were revolting - this was the summer of '68, for heaven's sake. Someone should open bistro here in Bangkok with a table d'hote of Soupe a l'Oignon gratinee, Blanquette de Veau, a stinky Epoisses and Tarte Tatin to finsih with creme fraiche. Ah, it's back to lockdown and pad Thai.
  13. I was thinking of doing a food blog of my recent trip through parts of New Zealand's south island. Most of the food we had was nothing spectacular, but the experiences and various scenery we had over the trip were amazing. Is there any interest in this?
  14. Well, here I am again. It’s been just over 5 years since I last did a food blog. I’m excited and looking forward to doing this one just as I was in 2007! First, an update in general: We’re all well; Linda, Rupert and I. I’ve had a couple of minor strokes, but the magnificent French medical system saw me through those with no permanent damage. We’re still living in France and still loving it. We have moved though; all of about 6 miles. Our farmhouse was just too big and too expensive to run so we sold it. Linda & I now dance a little jig when the energy bills come in. It makes up for the lousy exchange rates! Our ‘new’ house is modern and somewhat smaller than the farmhouse. We still have 1 ½ acres, a pool and plenty of room. We are extremely happy with the move. Our ‘new’ village is just great very friendly. It’s unusual in that it’s actually laid out on a square grid. 400 year old town planning in action. We have a good village shop/ bakery. They made a really nice whole grain loaf in addition to all the normal sizes & shapes of French loaves. We also have small restaurant. Not likely to get any Michelin stars, but one can get a nice meal. They make a wonderful bread pudding. Our newest addition is a small food boutique, only open two days a week. They sell only local produce, fruits, vegetables, sun flower oil, pates, fois gras, a bit of wine and a few herbs. Local enterprise at its most local. I make a point of going in every week. More later, but let’s talk about food. I’ll start by going to the Sunday market in Saint Antonin Noble Val. St Antonin is a very old, very beautiful town right on the Aveyron river about 15 minutes away. Their Sunday market is great, but to be avoided during the summer months due to the crowds and lack of parking. Once we get to October the crowds thin out and the locals return to shop & to gossip. Gossiping being the great French pastime as it is in most countries. I’ll post about the market visit with pictures separately.
  15. Hi there, fellow eGulleteers, and welcome to my second foodblog! As Kerry says, we're on the road this time, which means I get to show you some of the best food Ecuador has to offer. Why, you ask? Well, because we're going on a road trip to the beaches of the coastal province of Manabí, which is recognized across the country as well as in South America for its seafood dishes. We'll be based out of the little fishing village of Puerto López, about two hours south of the province's capital, Manta. Fishing in this area is all done by men in small, oar-propelled boats with handlines and small cast nets - I'll try to get up super early one morning to find out what the catch of the day is (and possibly buy something for breakfast, if they've got Pargo Lunar in the catch....) The area is also known for its Langostinos and Langostos (giant estuarial crawdads and spiny blue lobsters, respectively) and those are often sold by their fishermen from buckets. What Heidi had to say about "buy something fresh from a guy walking down the beach with a bucket" is very true of most beaches in Manabí. At the tail end of the road trip, I'll be visiting the world's largest indigenous food and craft market and will be eating a tilapia caught from a glacially-fed crater lake - round trip in fish! I will be attempting to not eat anything twice in order to show you the immense variety available on the coast. (Meaning, if I have the encebollado you won't see me eat it again on this trip). First off, though, a bit about the teasers. The first one was indeed Roselle / Sorrel / Flor de Jamaica, the bracts of Hibiscus sabdariffia - something that I have only recently started drinking but of which I am completely enamored. A friend in the Amazon has a plantation and sends me fresh bracts (which is what's shown). I base most of my summertime iced teas and whatnot on Jamaica. Peter the Eater was quite right - it's two happy guys and a perciform fish, with a large body of water and some volcanic rocks. This photo was taken on the beach at Canoa in Manabí, and was a location teaser. Those two happy guys? They're casting simple baited handlines into the Pacific off the rocks, looking for their lunch. They called the fish they caught a "bonito" but I'm pretty sure they weren't referring to the type, but merely that it's big and beautiful (a Bonito down here is a type of mackerel and resembles a small tuna). The waters down here have an amazing variety of fish, and I'm willing to bet that what's on the line is actually a Bocachico (smallmouth striper). They were holding out for another, and didn't share, so I can't confirm that. For the curious, the volcanic rocks are a 500+ year old remnant of the last eruption of Volcan Cotopaxi, which is more than 250 km away in the Sierra - the lava hit the ocean here and gave Canoa its signature black sand beach. This is Encebollado de Mariscos (mixed seafood and onion soup) - and although it's a staple of Manabita cuisine, I ate this one in a restaurant in Ambato! Shown in the bowl are a small Langosto, a larger Cangrejo (crab), and some Concha (inky mangrove clams, something I have only eaten in Ecuador); for the curious, it's popcorn and lime in the background, and those are patacones floating in the bowl with the seafood. Encebollado de Mariscos has a strongly red-onion flavoured broth with hints of red curry and peanut; done well, it's spectacular. These are Limeño bananas that I grew myself, something that was thought to be impossible at my 3,000 meter altitude in the Sierra. And this is the starting veg for any respectable Lazy Bastard Beef Stroganstuff or similar stovetop casserole. I thought it would give me away, since nobody else here has cobalt blue tile countertops! I'll be back in a moment with photos of my current kitchen - I've moved since I last blogged, and I'm making quinua-herb and cheese minibagels in there today.
  16. It feels a bit strange to say 'Welcome to Denmark!', since I'm not Danish, did not grow up here, and find Danish food culture (my boyfriend, who is Danish, began laughing when I told him about wanting to reconsider traditional Danish food this week) kind of elusive. However, this is where I'm blogging from, so... welcome to Denmark! I'm afraid that first teaser image threw people off track, although Kerry was right, it's a rape-seed field in bloom, the dominant note in the Danish landscape in late spring. I took the picture while sitting on the pillion; just leaned a bit to the side, so I could see around my boyfriend's helmet, and took the shot (that's his hand you see). The second image is the Roosevelt Island Tramway station on the Roosevelt Island side: I was born in New York City (making me a third generation American/New Yorker), although my parents moved to Italy when I was a baby. I grew up in Florence, and the Tempio Maggiore is one of my favourite buildings; we often walked around its garden, on the way to a nearby park. Growing up in Florence had a major effect on my food preferences, the way I shop and prepare food, and the way I feel about food (having American parents who became vegetarian and inclined to health foods affected the way I think about food). Next image: My boyfriend gave me Modernist Cuisine for my birthday! I've only had it for a month, and I'm still in the 'Oooooh, look...' phase (although the 'Holy crap, how do I afford even the smallest pieces of necessary equipment?!' phase has begun). That's essentially my entire collection of cook books, there. I also have a stack of Cook's Illustrated, and some small books on Tuscan and Florentine cooking, but that's pretty much it. I have a really strong aversion to things that just take up space, so I don't get a cook book unless I'm quite certain I'll really use it. The globule on the plate is one of the more successful 'spheres' from my first effort at spherification. Mostly I got a lot of weird looking slime, but it was fun, anyway, and I learned a something. I'm thinking of giving this another go, this week. The last image is from Grenen, up in Skagen, which it is the northernmost point of Denmark. Virtually every one of the people standing in the water got someone to photograph them standing approximately where the guy nearest the horizon is, then went home to show their friends and family, and explain that they were standing in two bodies of water at the same time: the Skagerrak to the north, and the Kattegat to the south (the turbulent area is where the two bodies of water meet). The two seasons in Skagen are 'inhospitable', and 'packed to the rafters with tourists'. Where I am is a good way south of here, on the east coast. My cooking tends to have Tuscan roots (simple, lean) overlaid by a thick slab of experimental geekery (currently curtailed because the kitchen I'm using is not my own), and adapted to accommodate local ingredients/conditions, sudden whims, and a complex array of food sensitivities and preferences (mine and my boyfriend's). So that's the background. To fill in a bit more about where I am, Denmark runs to cool, wet summers, which means that things like home grown tomatoes are still off in the future. Our plants haven't even set flowers, yet (we did start them a bit late): We also have a couple of chili plants. One seems to be going all out with blossoms and is setting fruit, the other has not a one, which may be entirely normal. The kitchen situation here is a little unusual. We're temporarily staying with my boyfriend's parents, since we sold our flat, but are still hunting for a suitable replacement. Here's their kitchen: I try not to take over the kitchen, so I plan around what and when my boyfriend's parents use it. Also, I mostly use my boyfriend's parents pots, pans, and utensils, since our own kitchen is mostly in boxes, apart from the little bit I've unpacked (there just isn't room to unpack much, and packing and repacking gets old really fast). I tried to take some shots of the inside of the cabinets where I store the things I did unpack, then realized that I wasn't able to get more than about a half metre back from them, and couldn't get a clear shot (there's the also thing with needing a flashlight to see things in there). This setup presents a few challenges, so most of what I cook these days is not particularly ambitious. To be honest, I've let myself fall into a rut, which I'm planning on hauling myself out of, this week. You can probably count on at least one spectacular culinary disaster (if that doesn't happen, I will happily share my images of the apple pie fiasco of this past New Year's Eve <<<shudder>>>). If you have questions or suggestions, fire away!
  17. Hi everyone! Or, to play into an often frustrating - but almost always endearing - stereotype: Howdy, y’all!* My name is Rich, aka Rico, and I’ll be taking you through a bit of my culinary life in Dallas this week. Incidentally, my eGullet handle refers to the name by which I went in my high school Spanish classes many years ago - and I’m still awful at Spanish. Anyway, on to the teaser photos: Only two things that money can’t buy, and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes (hat tip to Lyle Lovett). We didn’t really have much of a winter this year, so I was brave and planted my tomato seeds at the beginning of February. So far, I’ve had some pretty good luck. Trying out five different varieties this year; we’ll see how that goes. I’ve also got a few different kinds of cucumbers, beans, peppers and herbs going. Unfortunately, this blog will likely be finished before any of them come to fruition - or should I say vegetableition? And Zeemanb, I noted your comment about being six weeks ahead in being able to get a garden going, and I'll just say this - come mid July, when you're harvesting buckets of tomatoes off of your plants, I'm going to be spending my days doing rain dances just so my plants will stay alive in the 110-degree Dallas heat. Take solace in that, at least! My box smoker (wet smoker). This is not the typical sort of smoker I am accustomed to seeing down here. Most of my friends and people I know tend to use the oil drum-style smoker with a side box for the fuel. I do not begrudge that style in the least, but have gotten to know the operation of this smoker so well that I’m not going to change anytime soon. But we will most certainly get into that later this week. A few cookbooks and such. The Neil Sperry Texas Gardening book – the green binding – is ubiquitous in this state but I’m not sure it came through very well. Anyway, those are some of my books. The Wodehouse collections were not left in there intentionally; however, my affinity for the Jeeves and Wooster stories is undeniable. To address the MC volumes briefly – unlike one of the more recent food bloggers, Chris Hennes, my knowledge of Modernist Cuisine is laughably limited. That doesn’t prevent me from trying all sorts of things from it, but I’m probably not going to do anything from it this week; to try my inexperienced hand at it in a public forum might be a major step back in the development of the movement as a whole (kidding (kind of)). All right, then. A few other tidbits, I suppose: Having been born and raised here, I call myself a Dallasite, but for the past three years I have lived in the suburb of Richardson, about 200 yards from the Dallas line. I am fortunate to be in a fine location for a lover of things culinary, as I find myself within a few miles of a Central Market, Whole Foods, Saigon Market, Hong Kong Market, Fiesta, and few standard grocery stores. We can get into what all those are as the time comes, though I would suppose that a most are pretty self-explanatory. My wife will tell you that my approach to food is like a six-year-old with ADD who just had too many Coco Puffs**. I prefer to call it inspiration-driven. Meaning, I’ll tell her that I’m making dinner, and then I’ll happen to see a technique I want to try, spend a while at it, and then she’ll ask me what’s for dinner. “Ummm. Well, in about four hours, we’ll have some really nice dehydrated lime curd! That’s a good dinner, right?” (Note: dehydrated lime curd is never a good dinner). She is of infinite patience. As it is, I’ve got a several places that I can’t wait to show you, and a pretty good outline of what I’ve got lined up for the week . I’m looking forward to it all (and to getting to know some of you better) and hope you all enjoy reading it half as much as I am sure I will enjoy documenting it! *I feel I should explain my understanding of y’all. In Texas, we use it only in the plural sense – as a conjunction of you all – so that in its written form, we substitute the apostrophe for the o and the u in you. It is clear and its use saves a valuable syllable. However, in some southern states I have heard that its homonym can be used to refer to a singular person. It is my understanding that in this sense, it would be spelled ya’ll. I do not understand the reasoning behind this punctuation, and frankly, I do not understand the reason for the word’s use in the singular. All that to say, in this week’s blog you will likely see y’all spelled and used only in the plural sense, if indeed you see it at all. **This also applies to my writing style. My lack of focus and/or patience means I cannot proofread my own writing. I just can't do it; my eyes glaze over and ... well, all I can ask is that you bear with any typos, run-ons, tense disagreements and things of that nature.
  18. Welcome everybody to the Principality of Monaco! Monaco is a very small Country located halfway between Nice in France and the Italian border (they are about 15-16 km from here or 10 miles if you prefer). It feels like France but the Italian influence is very strong due to the proximity to the border and the large number of Italians residing in the Principality. In fact, although I’ve been living here for almost 3 years, speaking both Italian and English, I have not managed to learn French yet. My name is Francesca but my husband and my family often call me Franci. I was born and grew up in the South of Italy, which I left for studying at age 19. Since then I lived in Milan, then moved to the States (San Francisco, Hanover NH, NYC), then back to Europe in London and for almost 3 years on the French Riviera. As some of you might have read on the dinner thread, we are an American/Chinese/Italian family. My husband was born in Shanghai and moved to the States with his family at age 10. Our origins and our travelling greatly influenced my cooking over the years. I studied business in school but I’ve always enjoyed cooking a lot. While living in NY, I enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, going to school at night and working in banking at the same time. That has been one of the best years of my life and I truly enjoyed the experience. After that I went for an internship in a good restaurant in NYC and shortly after I moved to London where I completely gave up working in banking and became a commis in a luxury hotel. The experience was short lasted and because of relatives health issues and later on my pregnancy I gave up the idea of cooking professionally, at least in a restaurant kitchen. Now I have two small children, a boy almost 5 years old and a girl, the little one you have seen in the picture, who is almost 15 months old. This equals that I had to reconsider a lot of my cooking, keep it really simple both in the preparation and in the presentation.
  19. I'm up working in Little Current again for the next 5 weeks. Thought I'd take the opportunity to share what I'm making with you while I'm here. I had asked them to put a couple of things in the fridge for me before I arrived as I'd have the rug rat with me and she's not very portable. I wanted to be sure I'd be able to feed her a little something after we got off the ferry. A couple of nice fresh eggs fried up with some old cheddar and a bit of kimchi (brought that along with me). She managed to hang on to a bottle while I made her dinner for her. Took Andie's advice and found a Senseo coffee maker at a thrift store for a couple of dollars. With the addition of a Coffee Duck to hold the grounds it was the perfect way to make a quick cup. I was on call the day after I got here - so needed to bake a little something to take. Discovered that I had no flour in the cupboard (5 bins of stuff in the cupboard - no all purpose), but I did have some whole wheat atta flour (semolina flour) that I had brought along - so used that. So butterscotch squares with atta flour - quite satisfactory! So Saturday I finally got a chance to head out and procure some necessities. I hit the farmer's market in town where I got rye flour, red fife flour, rolled oats and whole spelt as well as some garlic scapes. A trip out to Max Burt's farm yielded a nice little strip loin and a couple of packages of pork chops. I also grabbed some maple syrup from him. At the market the vendor who grows strawberries had run out - so I went out to their farm later in the day and picked up a basket. Some pumpkin seeds for bread and picked up the thyme that one of the nurses had brought from her garden for me to add to mine. I brought a few things like thai basil and mojito mint that I knew I'd have trouble finding here - got them all planted up. Realize that I need to get someone to bring me some parsley as well! Looks like all the herbs worth buying have been bought up already. Gotta love wild iris. Anyway - off to take a fish hook out of someones finger - when I return I'll put up the pictures of the strawberry balsamic breakfast cake from Food 52.
  20. At the end of our last stay on Manitoulin, Tri2cook mentioned how much he had enjoyed the latest instalment of 'Kerry and Anna's Excellent Adventures' so it seemed an appropriate title for this trip. We travelled in a car rather than a phone booth to get here. I picked up Anna a few minutes after 7 yesterday morning - we enjoyed our breakfast en route. Our "carcuterie" plate. We stopped in Owen Sound at the farmer's market and grabbed a few things - but also at a surplus store where I managed to obtain a bunch of great little bottles - the better to bottle bitters to share. We made it in time for our ferry reservation - given the very small numbers on the ferry this time if year - it wasn't really necessary to have a reservation. For lunch - because the ferry doesn't serve calamari - we both had the chicken wings. Can't beat wings with a view. It was a bit rough initially on the crossing - Anna looked a touch green for a few minutes. We had plans for a particular cocktail last night - however the booze is still packed away in the cupboard so we had to make do with the ingredients we had brought to replenish our stock - we had Dillon's white rye - which tastes like a spicy version of genever, aperol and candy cap mushroom bitters. We adapted the intro to aperol recipe using these - first sip was intensely raisiny - but it smoothed out to quite a nice little drink. We had to shake it in the first capped container we could find in the cupboard - thank god there was ice in the freezer. Which reminds me - I'd better get some more cubes going. Think we'll call it the Mother Hubbard or the Mother of Invention. Dinner was cooked on the gas BBQ (or at least started on the gas BBQ and moved to the broiler because the wind was interfering) - some lovely little asparagus spears and a rather thin rib eye. The view from my plate - Ended up with this picture because I'd accidentally switched off the noise that my phone makes when snapping a picture - by the time I figured out what I'd done I had quite a number of picture of my feet and fingers.
  21. In selecting a week for an eG Foodblog, I agonized over finding a normal week during which to blog. You know, a week during which I’d be at home living my normal life, eating the way I normally eat, etc. It was only after trying and failing so many times to schedule such a week that I had the realization: I don’t have any normal weeks. That’s the life my wife, Ellen, and I chose almost a decade ago when we got out of the corporate world (I was a lawyer at a big firm, she was a marketing manager at a big publishing company) and started careers as freelance journalists. Today, we both work at home or in whatever hotel, car or other person’s house we happen to find ourselves at any given time, and our schedules are quite flexible – some would say chaotic. At this point, with our baby only a year old, we’re not even bound by school schedules. We were planning to be at home for the coming week, but a few days ago my sister called and invited us to stay with her at a place she’s renting in Wellfleet, MA, which for those of you who aren’t New Englanders is a vacation destination on (in?) Cape Cod. The place she rented for the last couple of weeks of August comes with a little guesthouse, to which we’ve been granted the rights for the coming week, though we may also, we are told, opt to stay in the main house. We’ll see. So it looks like what we’ll be doing this week is a Cape Cod vacation blog. Then again, maybe not. We’ve got a situation with a very ill relative, and it’s possible that one day this eG Foodblog will just end without warning – if so, you’ll know what happened (or it could just be me having my much-anticipated nervous breakdown). Anyway. I’ve packed my trusty old pre-exploding-batteries Dell Inspiron 8100 notebook computer, my cheapo Canon A620 digital camera (sorry, I’ll be doing the photography this week – Ellen deserves the vacation) and my Motorola V325 cell phone (the place we’re staying doesn’t even have a phone, so I’ll be connecting via the Verizon NationalAccess network, which is, on a good day, somewhat faster than dialup but nothing close to broadband), along with clothes and such, in the family Honda Odyssey minivan, so we’re good to go first thing in the morning. The plan is, in rough outline, to depart for the Cape on Monday morning, stopping first in New Haven, CT, to visit the inlaws for the day and continuing the drive at night for a late arrival in Wellfleet. If all goes well, we’ll probably drive back on Friday night. Chances are, my main posts will come late at night each night, after everybody else goes to bed and I have time to write and upload photos. I’ll also try to check in each day a few times, when possible. The cast of characters: our family consists of me, my wife Ellen, our one-year-old son PJ and our bulldog Momo; my sister’s family consists of my sister, her husband, her two teenage boys and their cockapoo (poodle-cocker hybrid). I don’t know yet how much they want to be involved in the blogging effort – this is all very last-minute, so maybe you’ll hear more about them or maybe you won’t. I’m really not sure what we’ll be eating and doing. We’re going to bring some provisions with us, and maybe a few pieces of cooking equipment (vacation rental kitchens typically have awful equipment), but I don’t know if we’ll be dining out, cooking at home together, visiting other towns, staying close to our place or what. We’ll find out together during the coming week.
  22. I am pleased to welcome you to Swisskaese's second eG foodblog. Click here to view the previous blog brought to us by her and Tapenade. This very interesting foodblog was long in the planning. In fact, Swisskaese was scheduled to do this blog many weeks before the mideast crisis was taking place as close to her home as it is now. It is because of the unrest that she and I decided for me to post the opening to her blog. Under these circumstances, there might be an increased potential for viewers to post politics-related comments or questions, or post something that would lead discussion in that direction (perhaps unintentionally). I remind us all to follow the eG Society's policies and guidelines. Please pay particular attention to the Decorum and Topicality Guidelines and give much consideration to what you post, in order to maintain a focus on issues pertaining to food and drink. Please understand that the blog will be closely monitored. We will moderate as necessary to maintain the focus on our core subject of food and to assure that it remains civil. We hope you enjoy this very special eG foodblog. Swisskaese's country's terrain is made up of five vegetation zones: Euro-Siberian, with plantlife found in Europe, Russia and Siberia; Mediterranean, with conditions similar to those in other countries on the Sea; Irano-Turanian, with land similar to the steppe-lands that stretch through Iran, Turkestan and Inner Asia to Inner Mongolia; Sahara-Arabian, pure desert of the kind found in the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of southern Iran; and Sudanese, which has tropical vegetation, confined to small enclaves and oases. This widely diverse landscape offers ideal home environments for a particularly rich assortment of plant, animal, bird and insect life.
  23. Good morning! I guess no one guessed it was me I just arrived from Paris and am now back home in Weesp (I have to work ) . Let's get the introductions aside: I'm Mei, 21 and am an au pair in the Netherlands. I am Malaysian (Baba& Nyonya from Melaka) but took a break from college to be an au pair here for one year. Of course being Malaysian automatically means I love food. So much so that I never lasted more than 7 hours on a diet in my entire life. I never cooked simply because Mum did the cooking and the kitchen back home wasn't a erhm.. condusive enviroment but I really like the kitchen my host family has so I recently started baking and will be trying out some dishes this week (let's see if they turn out ok...). Back home, my friends and I ate out a lot because we were probably better off than the average Malaysian teen (only because we worked and studied and they preferred to focus on academics!) but here , I eat home almost everyday. Not counting McDonalds and Chinese, I've probably only had dinner out 4-5 times! Oh , now I date a man who only ever eats things he's familiar with (like ham and cheese sandwich or babi panggang at a Chinese restaurant) which can be very very difficult So there you go! Here's where you can watch me fail or succeed with my cooking experiments! We'll also drive to Oberhausen (or maybe Dortmund or Keulen, my boyfriend and I haven't really decided) on Thursday or Friday and then it's off to Budapest at 7pm on Saturday! After this: Pictures of Paris (I just came back this morning)!
  24. Welcome to my second foodblog here at eGullet. The first one was entitled So, you want to remodel your kitchen? and described the results of a recently completed (at that time) renovation of our kitchen. I also showed you some of the weirder stuff that lives in my kitchen (like basil seed and mastic) and invited you to guess its provenance and purpose. This time I'm going to continue in that vein, and ask you questions that are food-related, but not necessarily about items in my kitchen. The first question's already been posed, in the eG Foodblogs: Coming Attractions thread. Here it is again, just in case you didn't see it: The questions accompanying this image are "What is it? And what has it got to do with food?" The question's already been answered by azureus: So, brava to azureus/April, and more about the image. Not technically a cross section (which implies that one has taken a section, or slice, at a particular angle relative to the long axis of the critter or organ in question, and bone marrow doesn't have much of an axis of any sort) but rather a very, very thin slice of bone marrow that's been fixed (so that it won't decompose), decalcified (so that the bone is soft enough to be sliced with a microtome) and impregnated with paraffin (so that the marrow itself will be firm enough to slice in this manner). The tissue slices thus obtained are so thin and flimsy that they are generally handled by floating them on the surface of a water bath, from which they can be scooped up onto a a glass slide, where they will stick. The paraffin is then washed away with solvents, and the remaining tissue is stained with chemical dyes so that you can distinguish the different sorts of cells and their components. There are lots of different sorts of cells in bone marrow, and some of the most important are stem cells (which can't be identified using only a microscope, unfortunately), the cells that are the primitive starter cells for lots of different tissues in our body, and that's why I'm using this image as the "beginning" of this blog. In order to see it in this much detail you have to use a microscope, of course, and so the camera has to be mounted on the scope as well. The term for this sort of picture is a photomicrograph, and I'll be showing a number photomicrographs in the course of the blog. And what it has to do with food is that it's delicious roasted and spread on toast. What exactly makes it delicious roasted and spread on toast is pictured above: the "holes" in the photo, which aren't actually holes at all, but adipocytes, or fat cells. Each hole represents a single cell, stuffed with fat, and so bone marrow is not only fatty (so like butter) but very soft, as there's very little connective tissue (apart from bone, seen in this image as the large pink ribbon in the left of this image) to get in the way of your enjoying it. Time for me to go get breakfast. While I'm away feel free to pose additional questions about this image.
  25. Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose Mum used to take her out for Report Card Dinners, beginning with Grade 1, the onset of thirteen years of straight As (...then university happened. Let’s not go there ). We would go to fancy places when we could afford them, and less-fancy places when we couldn’t. My palate wasn’t too discriminating at the age of 5: I was happy to go out, period, and had as much fun at Le Champignon as I did at The Old Spaghetti Factory (I have an abiding love for spumoni and pistachio gelato to this day) or The Noodlemaker (watching the koi madly swim beneath the little bridges, summoned to their dinner by the gong--was there ever anything more enchanting for a child?). The waiters at Le Champignon were charmed by my nascent French-language skills and always gave me extra desserts off the pastry tray. The Report Card Dinner underwent a few changes over time, as circumstances and location changed (when we moved to the East Coast to live with my stepdad, the economic situation meant that an RCD was more likely to just be something special, home-made, than a dinner out in NYC or, later, Philadelphia), but the concept of good food as a reward for good behaviour or good marks was set. When I have something to celebrate, the first thing I want to do, still, is go out for a good meal. Fast-forward 30-something years, and I’m back in Vancouver, living in a flash condo just outside of Yaletown, with a gas stove and granite counters... cooking now and then, baking a lot of homely but tasty birthday cakes for my co-workers, finding eGullet thanks to Jamie Maw’s column in Vancouver Magazine, finding some bosom pals who appreciate food the way that I do...real estate goes insane, I decide to sell my condo, take my profit and run, and buy a little house in East Vancouver. The little house has an enormous problem, though: the kitchen is a joke. It comes complete with an electric range and a built-in banquette, reminiscent of an RV. Just my style....NOT! It just so happens, I know this kitchen designer... I decide I need a new kitchen, dining room, and refurbished bathroom upstairs (the living space is up, bedrooms are down). I hire a guy I know to act as my General Contractor and do this work for me, with kitchen design, cabinetry and so forth from Daddy-A. Now we come to the matter of the title of this blog: Power, Convection and Lies. Some of you may recognize a riff on a favourite 1980s New Order album. I’ve kind of always wanted a big fancy range, somewhat for snobby reasons (I mean, let’s be honest here!), but also for practical reasons. I got a real jones on for Power when I took the Serious Foodie cooking class at Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver. Then I had a dinner party which brought home to me the utility and desirability of two ovens and an extra burner or two... So I’ve sold my soul to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for a 48 in. Wolf range with 6 burners and a chargrill--and two ovens, one of which is Convection. My first! we'll see what it does to my baking. That brings us to the Lies. I know that construction is always later than they say it will be, and I mean they’ve only been working on the 300 sq. ft or so of the renovation since the beginning of March ...everyone told me the millwork would be late, bla bla bla. The first thing that was supposed to be finished was the bathroom, since it’s rather inconvenient running down and upstairs all the time, and I didn't have water available upstairs for about two months. Then things were to be done as much as possible so that the millwork could come in, the countertops could be installed, the appliances could be installed, and Bob was supposed to be my uncle.... Well, I rescheduled my blog when it became apparent that the earlier date would be impossible. The millwork was right on time, the countertops were early, the appliances came in a week ago...and they’re still not completely installed. The other rooms are in even worse shape! My contractor has a habit of saying "I’m going to do X tomorrow, Deborah," and then not only not doing X, not doing anything. If I had more money, I’d fire him and hire someone a little more reliable, but I won’t go into the whole rigmarole. Suffice to say that, while I thought about calling this blog Power, Convection and Size, Lies seems more appropriate just now. So here I am. Blogging. My house continues to be a work in progress, but I hope it progresses rather quickly as I have invited 7 Gulleters/spouses over for dinner on Saturday The menu is sort of set; the wine has been bought; the crystal has been unpacked and I just hope I can get my house in shape in time! Aside from Saturday dinner, we’ll do some Vespa shopping (I commute to work on my new Vespa, Enzo, every day ), go to the first Trout Lake Market of the year (since my house conveniently backs onto Trout Lake ), hit a luau, and I’ll show you a couple of my favourite restaurants. With luck, God and the electrician willing, I’ll even be able to do some cooking in the midst of all this! and watch some hockey! Go Oilers! I will have more pics in the morning. Well, a few. Everything is still pretty topsy-turvy, but I am determined to make my coffee in the new kitchen tomorrow, for the first time. Time for bed. Good night, Gullet!
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