Pat

Last night was a margherita pizza on a whole wheat crust (well, part ww), with mushrooms. I intended to put sopprasseta on it as well, but I forgot .

If it's because of the students, you'd think by now they'd know when to anticipate that happening.

There are some posts earlier in the thread about the stock at the location becoming seriously depleted at times, especially on Sundays. Since many GW students shop there and classes just resumed, they may have recently restocked their larders and emptied out the store.

Aha! Maybe I'll call this taco dip then .

This morning was a cup of hot tea (Lipton) and the last of the leftover meatloaf.

I discovered a new use for leftover meatloaf: crumbled taco beef for 7 layer dip. Dinner plans changed rather at the last minute, and the 7 layer dip with tortilla chips (some homemade--the bag of them ran out) was quite good. I'm not even sure what goes into 7 layer dip, but we had that number of layers with no cheese. I realized we were lacking shredded cheddar after we'd already eaten, so I'm not sure what the extra layer was . Maybe it was the meat . torn iceberg lettuce chopped tomatoes chopped black olives crumbled meat loaf black beans sour cream guacamole

I had three of these chicken sausages, drizzled with a little maple syrup, for breakfast this morning. They were excellent. I made mine a little smaller than the ones in the recipe and got 15 out of a pound of ground chicken instead of 12, so each patty has just over 1 oz. of chicken.

Homemade applesauce topped with chopped pink lady apples, sliced almonds, and golden raisins Pork stroganoff with cremini and white button mushrooms, over wide egg noodles, garnished with chopped parsley

I don't know if this still applies, but i recall years ago asking someone who worked in fish wholesaling where the best place was locally to buy fish. I was wary of Maine Avenue and was trying to figure how to sort out my options. I asked about Maine Ave and Eastern Market specifically. The answer I got was to go to a high volume Giant or Safeway. That response surprised me. Things may be different now--BlackSalt was not open then, among many other factors--but that was the answer then.

I like their tapioca pudding.

After anticipating the meal for some time, I was less impressed with the food on my belated return trip to Locanda than on my initial visit. My husband, who had not been there before, was much happier with his food (manchego soup and maccheroncelli with truffled fontina) than I was with mine. We were both disappointed with the bread, which I recall liking on my first visit. The second basket they brought us was slightly better than the first, which seemed almost stale. (We were hungry and eating it despite that, but I had almost a full slice abandoned on my bread plate and there was still a piece in the basket when they offered a refill). I didn't care for the flavor of the olive oil, though my husband thought it was ok. The arancini I loved so much before is no longer on the menu, so I ordered the fried calamari, which I had seen praised here and in another thread. I didn't like it very much. At first, I just figured their way of preparing it is not to my taste, but, rereading the descriptions in other posts, I think they may have changed the method of preparation again. Possibly the difference was just who was cooking it last night. I don't know. The breading seemed dense and heavy, and the calamari was deeply browned rather than golden. I did not like the green dipping sauce at all, but did like the pimenton aioli. I also had the Maltagliati with Duck Ragu, which was not what I expected. Again, I don't know if their way of making this is not appealing to me for reasons of taste or if something was amiss with the particular serving I got. The presentation of the dish was striking and quite appealing at first glance. The wide shavings of pale cheese (Parmesan?) over the top mimicked the shapes of the green pasta, and it looked lovely. When I began eating, I thought there were black beans in the dish, but the small bean-shaped nuggets turned out to be the duck. I had figured it would be shredded into a sauce or something...else. The broth that pooled in the bottom of the dish was wonderful, especially sopped up with stale-ish bread, but this was not what I was expecting from duck ragu. We're not dessert people, but the chocolate and orange semifreddo sounded appealing. We split that and enjoyed it. I think it was my favorite part of the meal. The service was quite good, and the place was packed on a Saturday evening. I still haven't ordered from the seconds menu, and I think I will try that next time in combination with a pasta and skip having an appetizer.

Hmm. "Little known outside of Massachusetts...."

If it's termed "Boston Baked Bean," that may mean it's not from Boston. It sounds similar to British baked beans on toast to me, except I usually think of that as open-faced.Google brings up numerous recipes (searched without the "Boston").

I've only been to the first two, so that's all I can comment on. Both are wonderful. The only major thing I can think of to distinguish the type of meal is that you get a lengthy series of bites at Komi first (at least an hour's worth) and then a few more small courses (or more with the degustation). At Eve you get the 5 or 9 (do I have the numbers right?) courses spaced in a more "standard" way (not that there aren't any amuses but not to the degree you get the bites at Komi).

Baby romaine salad with yellow bell pepper, grapefruit and cucumber, topped with poached salmon; vinaigrette Meat loaf larded with bacon Baked potatoes

I saw this article posted elsewhere reporting that Liefmans Brewery has declared bankruptcy. I can't read the article myself, but the Belgian who posted it mentioned that the article said the chances they will continue to brew beer are slim.

My tendency has always been to put too much liquid into the crockpot. When I consciously tried to scale back, I ended up with not enough liquid a couple of times, but I can't remember for what. In my case, I think it's leaving on high too long.

Perhaps it's connected to the current fashion for things being kept simple and done the way they used to be, merged to some extent with concern about being environmentally friendly. (I have no idea, though, if handwashing dishes is "greener" than using a dishwasher. How much electricity is used to heat the water to wash dishes individually vs. what is used in a dishwasher? How much water is used in the two methods? I'm not terribly efficient at handwashing dishes and probably waste more water washing a dozen items than the dishwasher uses for a full load.)There are a few things we handwash but not very many.

For years, I used a large steamer pot (had two inserts--one a small basket and the other the size of the pot) for multiple cooking uses. I boiled pasta and potatoes in it, made soups, steamed vegetables, and other things I probably am not remembering. It was actually probably too thin for some things I used it for, and at some point I acquired a metal dutch oven that had thicker sides and was somewhat smaller and used that for a number of the same purposes.I have some Le Creuset now but managed years without it. Of all of the LC I have, I think the oval dutch oven is the most valuable. Another item I got a lot of use from (and I still have one, but it not's going to last much longer) is a large nonstick RevereWare skillet with a glass lid. I see that item covered in various ways upthread.

Pyrex and Corning Ware do shatter unexpectedly. I posted an anecdote in one of the kitchen mishaps threads about having nested Pyrex measuring cups shatter when I lifted them off a shelf. The amount that they could have banged against each other was negligible, but if there is any kind of hairline crack anywhere, it doesn't take much to make them explode. Those shards are very hard to clean up.My most recent kitchen disaster was an exploding overhead light. The whole thing just blew out and all over everywhere. After cleaning the floor and counters carefully in the whole area, I was still finding tiny shards in odd places a couple of days later. Fortunately, I had no open food out at the time, or I would have had to throw it out. I once had a Corning piece fragment all over and had to throw out pork I had been simmering a long time, since I couldn't be sure no glass got into it .

That recipe looks good, especially with the pepper component. I bookmarked it to try. I rarely make stroganoff. It's not something my mother ever made. I don't think I ever ate it until I was an adult. The stroganoff I make most often (which is quite infrequently) is a recipe for meatballs stroganoff from Good Housekeeping, ca. 1960.Last night I experimented with making a dish I saw described and pictured in an eGullet blog: fettat hummus. Once I had constructed it, it struck me as being akin to a 7 layer dip, but focused on hummus. Since I didn't plan ahead and hadn't soaked chickpeas, I used canned. I hadn't made hummus in ages and couldn't remember what recipe I usually use . I went with a Jane Brody recipe, mostly, with a nod to Moosewood, so the hummus had parsley in it and chopped scallions on top, paprika, cumin, and a couple of slugs of tamari sauce (in addition to tahini, lemon juice, and garlic). The 19 oz. can of chickpeas was the perfect size, as the Brody recipe calls for 15 oz or 1 1/2 cups, and that left just enough over for the chickpea layer. This is how I assembled the dish: Layer in a glass serving bowl, fried pita (small rounds, cut in quarters, split in halves) chickpeas hummus thick (i.e. Greek) yogurt with garlic and mint pine nuts (toasted) olive oil (drizzled over top) Serve with additional fried pita quarters. When I searched online to see if I could get more information on preparation, I saw an Iraqi recipe, which had only chickpeas and not prepared hummus as well. That called for baked pita and drizzling liquid over them on the bottom layer, so I drizzled some reserved chickpea liquid over the bottom layer of pita. Anyway, this was excellent. We both loved it. The remaining portion is in the refrigerator for tonight. I fried up some extra pita chips, so we're ready to go.

He is using it rhetorically, but I think he's oversimplifying. I have to finish the book, but I disagree with his premise that reformers looking at bodily health via food is a relatively new phenomenon. The language of the "science" has changed, and maybe the proportion of how much is fresh air is how much is food, but I don't see it as being that new.

I know practically nothing of my family's food history. Whether that makes me unusual or not, I don't know. I only knew one grandmother, and she died when I was 9. I have vague recollections of cooking with her--pancakes for breakfast when I spent the night. She used Bisquick. (This was in the 60s). She used to make a roast of some sort for Sunday dinner--usually beef, but ham or turkey at the holidays. Often we'd have Friday lunch with her, which was grilled cheese (Kraft cheese slices, I think) or tuna fish sandwiches. She's the only "cook" I'm aware of in my family, on either side.She made cookies from scratch, mostly sand tarts for Christmas-New Year's (a butter-sugar cookie recipe that came from her sister-in-law, who was from Amish country). That is about the only "family" recipe we have. She made cakes that always came out uneven but tasted good. I have her cake pans still. The bottoms come out rather than the side coming off in a springform. They're got to be well over 50 years old by now. I also have a meat grinder from my father's side of the family. There are no recipes from them and I have no idea what they ate, but my father refused to eat a number of foods that they had to eat during the Depression (my FIL is the same way). I know that my maternal grandfather bought black market meat during WWII rationing. He had some contact at Reading Terminal in Philadelphia. At some point, I recall asking people who were older what they remembered about food rationing in the US. That was kind of interesting. My mother got some recipes from her mother when she got married. i think I still have them somewhere. They're not terribly explicit in many of the measurements and instructions. My mother didn't like to cook but turned out perfectly fine basic food. She didn't bake, except the slice off the roll chocolate chip cookies and brownies from a mix. Her sister baked the sand tarts after my grandmother died, but I don't recall her cooking anything else. Both she and the only other aunt I knew (one of my father's sisters) worked long hours their whole lives, weren't married, and didn't cook. I learned some basic food preparations from my mother--baked chicken, meat loaf, roasted potatoes, etc. She came up with the idea of baked frozen peas in a casserole (from a magazine maybe), which was pretty good, but I always seem to overcook them when I try. Anything I know about cooking measures, terms or techniques, I've learned myself through cookbooks, magazines, and trial and error. I don't think my grandmother used measuring spoons, but my mother had some.

I agree. I think using the great-great standard only works to a limited extent, as he's directing it to people of a variety of ages with different family backgrounds. Even if it's just referring to anybody living in a certain time period, it's a pretty broad generalization. In order to have a healthier diet and one less stressful to the planet, keeping in mind the advantages of simple foods prepared simply and kept close to their original form is good, but I wouldn't have wanted to be restricted to the foods my relatives ate in the 1830s. Everything "then" was not pure, often not even water, depending on the case. Diets were more limited to foods that either could be canned or transported within a fairly short distance while kept fresh. Vegetables that didn't grow in a certain climate couldn't be brought in fresh from thousands of miles away. An area that supported livestock but not much else would be a diet heavy in beef. If your diet was based on one food because of an inability to manipulate the environment to grow a wider variety of crops, and a blight hit your potatoes, things got really bad.There were packaged foods being sold well back into the 19th century though not as a central feature of most Americans' diets (not as much as a century later, certainly). One reason Graham promoted his bread in the 1830-40s was that white bread (with all kinds of awful additives) had become part of people's diets in the increasingly urbanized economy. He wanted people to get back to whole grains and fiber. I think Pollan underestimates the degree to which reformers in past times were concerned with bodily health as regulated through diet. Now I'm confused about which thread this should go in.

I don't have a fancy way of describing it, but tonight's meal was really good. It was very flavorful and had a comforting texture. The cooked cauliflower broke up like mashed potatoes, so it gave a quasi-potatoes-2 ways effect. Potato-cheese gnocchi* and cauliflower with sage brown butter, golden raisins, and cremini mushrooms, topped with toasted almonds and pine nuts. *bought premade