"It's spoiled me for..."

[chezlamere]

ahhhhhhhh why did you have to bring up huckleberries and peaches and cream corn. I forgot about those. Every summer up and down the mountains searching for huckleberries, with ice cream buckets tied around our waste. That's probably one of my earliest childhood memories. And huckleberry jam. I remember living through a tornado the first wave squashed my garden (and not knowing it was a tornado) I ran outside and lived through the pelting of monster hail stones and the second wave just to stand the peaches and cream corn back up. Up to my knees in mud and hail stones what a sight I must have been. My family thought I was nuts, but I saved the corn.

[ludja]

For a basic lobster (i.e. not a lobster 'dish') - A perfectly cooked baked stuffed lobster at home...

the meat is perfect in texture and taste when cooked correctly. Our stuffing is just dried breadcrumbs, chopped walnuts, lemon juice, tomalley, butter and salt and pepper.

Hard to get baked stuffed lobsters in restaurants any more and I usually do not like the stuffing--with seafood in it like shrimp.

Almost only eat lobster at home because of this.

[Random Alias]

Teuscher Champagne Truffles.

In some ways I guess it's a good thing I can't buy them locally anymore.

[tsquare]

Baked Quinces beat out baked apples.

[Rhea_S]

Freshly-picked Calhoun County (IL) white peaches and nectarines. The season never seems to last long enough to satisfy me.

[hwilson41]

Freshly picked wild blackberries from the Outer Banks of NC in July. The cultivated variety just doesn't quite measure up, and picking the wild ones is worth the bites from the thorns. Those and fresh summer peaches make a homemade ice cream that will bring tears to the eyes of a strong man .

THW

[SG-]

My spoils for '03

- Really good gelato as previously mentioned by Katie

- Normandy butter, soooo creamy

- Really well made Cappuccino, creamy and dense froth as opposed to the airy tasteless crap you usually get.

- San Marzano canned tomatoes, simple yet profound

Edited January 8, 2004 by SG- (log)

[elivesay]

When I was a kid in Tennessee, my farmer grandparents didn't have dairy cows, but would get what we called "cow butter" (I guess to distinguish it from store-bought butter) from local farmer friends, who churned it the old fashioned way from fresh-from-the-cow milk. I've never had anything else that came close to the taste of that gorgeous butter melted over my Mamaw's biscuits.

[elivesay]

Freshly picked wild blackberries from the Outer Banks of NC in July.  The cultivated variety just doesn't quite measure up, and picking the wild ones is worth the bites from the thorns. 

Yes, yes, yes! My grandfather would send me out as a kid to go pick them, and I'd come back with a purple face and very few blackberries to show for my labor.

[Celine]

I just have only one thing to add to all the wonderful posts that have been made:

Cella's Chocolate Covered Cherries (all the others I've ever tasted were crap).

Celine

[AzRaeL]

my mom's Seville Marmalade.

somehow store bought Marmalade don't taste as good.

[fredbram]

Well-made cappucinos and lattes (which usually means made at home or in Europe) is the biggest--I just can't enjoy Starbucks etc. any more.

Fresh water chestnuts--they actually have wonderful sweet flavor, not just crisp texture.

Good Satsuma mandarins in season, I have trouble eating any other tangerines.

Maple syrup, I prefer Grade B with it's dark flavor, when younger I was perfectly happy with Log Cabin--no more.

[curlywurlyfi]

my mom's Seville Marmalade.

somehow store bought Marmalade don't taste as good.

AzRaeL, you are so right (though I'm talking about MY mother's marmalade rather than yours!) I bring jars of it home after Christmas and Easter and parsimoniously dole out to my friends if I need a favour. They write her thank you letters - I'm not kidding! Hey - wanna have a motherly marmalade stand-off??

[krisdata]

Just one...

Krispy Kremes

The only other doughnut I will eat are the kind you get straight from the fryer at a cider mill or other similar setup.

This is actually a food spoiler from 2003!

[laurenmilan]

But... the ultimate thing that has ruined me, besides fresh-roasted coffee, is homemade hot cocoa.  Even with Hershey's cocoa, which I doubt is at the top of the heap, it's dead simple, quick, and satisfying like comfort food ought to be.  It has the added benefit of, if you serve it on a date and your date isn't weird, you score major points!

Real hot chocolate has me in its grasp too. I either use Droste, Ghirardelli (sp.?) or a nice Mexican bar or dark chocolate (or a nice white chocolate) with whole milk. An affordable luxury.

Maple syrup. You'd think more people would prefer it, but there are so many that only know the taste of Log Cabin.

Peanut Butter. You know... peanuts and salt. I was brought up with Smuckers 100%, and when we lived in a neighborhood that sold it, the fresh-ground hippie stuff. Couldn't get into Jif after that.

Homemade brownies. Using Ina Garten's recipe - 1 lb of butter, 2 1/2 lbs of chocolate, and only 1/2 c of flour included in the recipe. I love brownies, but anyone else's after those, even $5 ones in upscale bakeries, are just "eh".

Whipped cream. Not from a can, but the thick, smooth, goes-flat-after-a-half-hour stuff. Too easy to make, too cheap, to wonderful, to have anything else.

Cheesecake. My aunt gave me her wonderful recipe. So long as you don't freeze it or keep it in the fridge too long, it's a truly great cheesecake. Only better one I had was at the original Lindy's, and I'd had my doubts that it was better than my aunt's until I tasted it. Freshness and perfect ingredients. That's all it's about.

Chocolate mousse. SOmehow, the only good ones I've had are in the home. At restaurants, it's just not as good (hey, usually it's a starchy mix anyhow.)

Pizza. I live in northern NJ, and the pizza in most of the rest of the country is just so bad by comparison. No wonder people go to chains for pizza, it's still head & shoulders above most local restauranteurs!

With me, the "standard" isn't so much about paying top dollar as getting it real, real fresh (and not getting TOO cheap) and from competent cooks.

Edited January 9, 2004 by laurenmilan (log)

[laurenmilan]

Freshly picked wild blackberries from the Outer Banks of NC in July.  The cultivated variety just doesn't quite measure up, and picking the wild ones is worth the bites from the thorns. 

Yes, yes, yes! My grandfather would send me out as a kid to go pick them, and I'd come back with a purple face and very few blackberries to show for my labor.

THe folks in NC have no idea how good they've got it! I picked up 4 1-lb containers at a farmers market near Greensboro last summer, and devoured probably 1 lb's worth myself, and was good enough to share the rest with those at the conference. So large, so sweet, so juicy, I wish I had a kitchen in my hotel room...

Up north we get a paltry crop of them, small, underripe, bitter. Down south they're so cheap you can make huge cobblers & pies out of them the way we do with peaches in NJ.

[ludja]

Maple syrup, I prefer Grade B with it's dark flavor, when younger I was perfectly happy with Log Cabin--no more.

Good one; I will definatelly go without rather than eat 'fake' maple syrup. The worst experience I had was at a little diner in SF that is pretty good otherwise... but the syrup was not even up to Log Cabin (I think, it's been 20 years and I'm sure it gone downhill since then). T think what they served as syrup was actually corn syrup tinted w/brown dye and *maybe* doctored up with a few drops of artificial maple flavoring...

Corn syrup reminds me of another dish that 'spoiled me'. I have a great pecan pie recipe and the filling uses brown sugar, butter and pecans. Now, I can no longer abide pecan pie in which the filling is a pale jelly layer of congealed corn syrup.... Many recipes out there do use this though, but the butter/brown sugar mix is so much better.