Pat

When I'm not making standard deviled eggs, I like this recipe from Bon Appetit that was published last year. I find it usually needs a little extra garam masala, but last time I made it, I didn't account for the fact I was opening a new, fresh bag of spice, and it was far more powerful than what I'd used previously. (I don't use a whole lot of garam masala.) The doctored leftovers made some kickass egg salad to stuff a pita.

The Old Town store has signs up at the registers and in the elevators (maybe elsewhere too) explaining that they will be asking for your home phone number this week at the end of your transaction (I think the dates they gave were May 10-16). It's to build a map for their use and they won't share the numbers with anyone else. The sign says that only home numbers will suffice. It says they do it once a year in order to serve their customers better...blah...blah. The end of the sign says something like, We thank you for considering our request. I was prepared to decline politely, but, at the end of my transaction, the cashier quickly helped get the remaining bags in my cart, closed her aisle and took off. It appeared she was heading to the ladies. Some things are more important than demographics .

The Staffmeals cookbook they talk about is one I reported on in the cookbook challenge thread. The recipes I've made from it have been consistently good. The design of the book is quite appealing as well, and the commentary interesting.

Last night I made French bread pizza from a baguette I had gotten at Marvelous Market earlier in the day. I cut two long sections from the widest part of the loaf, enough to be split and turned into four decent sided boats. I used a little leftover marinara for sauce. The toppings were garlic, red onion, dry Italian herbs, buffalo mozzarella, alfonso olives, salami, bacon, and hot pepper flakes. I forgot that I had mushrooms, but I guess there were enough toppings without them . The advantage to using a fairly heavy duty bread like that is that it can hold a lot of toppings and still be manageable and not soggy.

Sounds good to me. I always do a double take when recipes trail off that way. Sometimes I'm even smart enough to make a note so I don't go through the same thing all over again next time I make the recipe. When I made the hush puppy fried chicken Friday for the Nats tailgating, I realized that I had made a note in the digital recipe file that the recipe tells you to cook bacon at the beginning to render fat for frying the chicken (the rest of the fat is butter ) but doesn't say what to do with it after that. The recipe just says to drain, crumble, and reserve the bacon. (I have no problem finding a use for the bacon .) It's hard work putting a book together, and things slip through. I always try to read recipes to catch things like this, but I'm not so great on followthrough.

The Marvelous Market across the street is donating 50 cents from the sale of every baguette to the fund to rebuild the market. I asked an employee what the time frame was on it, and she didn't know of any planned ending date. Apparently, it's a promotion for the indefinite future.

skillet fried chicken corn on the cob with butter, pepper, and Parmesan baguettes with cheddar, bacon, salami, shallots, garlic, and Parmesan--run under the broiler

I may regret saying this, but I suspect the logic that led to their thinking making a blog and bumper stickers about Washingtonian would be good for business is the same logic (or at least logic by the same people) that has caused the service/management issues to begin with. I love Roberto Donna's cooking. I really wish the execution of the dining experience were better and more consistent. (I found the service at Galileo lacking too. For those prices, I should be sitting down at a table with crumbs all over it and a waiter who is MIA?)

And they'll want us there, too, because we bring good luck .(Thinking about it, I think that's only about maybe the third time I've seen them win.)

When I needed slab bacon for something a few months ago, I went to Whole Foods and asked for however much it was I needed--totally airheaded and off in space somewhere--and when I got it, I realized the bacon was sliced. I had wanted it as a slab. I asked if that was all they had, and that was it. By coincidence, I was going to be near another WF the next day and asked for bacon as a slab, and they say they don't carry it that way, only presliced. I'm not sure if that's all WF or not, but it was the case for the two I went to looking for it.There's always Niman Ranch. Oddly enough, that's one product I remember I used to buy at Provisions, which was a gourmet shop near Eastern Market in the 80s-early 90s.

Oh, wait, Tortilla Cafe on 7th is open by 9AM. ETA: They're open at 7AM on weekends.

LOL I've been to Henry's for brunch but am not sure when they open on Sundays. AOL cityguide says they open at 10 AM.

I find the Sizzling Express on the north side of the 600 block of PA Ave. to have a decent breakfast buffet selection. It's not fine dining by any means, more a cafeteria/buffet hybrid, with the buffet food priced by the pound. It can get pretty crowded Sunday mornings with people coming from/going to church. I find it cheaper and less frustrating than Bread and Chocolate, but B&C is a sit-down restaurant with servers, if that's the kind of thing you want.

platter of tomatoes and hard boiled eggs, and baguette slices with olive oil for dipping sauteed zucchini and salami with garlic au gratin potatoes NY Strip Steak

Probably not any time soon. Westaqua, among other things, provides fish products for pet food.It seems like no one really knows what goes into the pet food or where it comes from. Maybe they want to take that a few steps further.

I love that stuff. I always have a bottle on hand.

That's one of my favorite ways to make steak, though I think the recipe I use calls for beef stock . I sometimes will do a mushroom sauce. It depends on what I feel like and what else I'm making for the meal.

I can't really come up with a most intimidating, but I sure was nervous the time I had a friend and her now ex-boyfriend attend a dinner party. He has a really severe potato allergy, and I was convinced I was going to do something inadvertent with ingredients and send him to the hospital.

I've got no medical background, but that sounds like ebola .

The transcript from yesterday's FDA/USDA media conference is here. I really don't take much comfort in being told by the "food safety czar" that they're not really sure what they're looking for in contaminated food,

Today's Post reports on farmed fish that were fed the contaminated fish meal. The NY Times focuses on the cyanuric acid aspect of this story. One of the bloggers who has been covering the story from the beginning weighs in here.

There was just another FDA/USDA media teleconference. The FDA has discovered that melamine-contaminated products labeled wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate were actually wheat flour. But, THEY'RE NOT TESTING WHEAT FLOUR because the contaminated products weren't LABELLED as wheat flour. Kill me now...or just feed me pet food. (ETA: Farmed fish ate the contaminated feed too--by way of wheat flour sent to Canada and turned into fish food that came back to the US--but the FDA isn't worried.)

Last night I made (minus the appetizer and dessert) "Fish Dinner for Four in Half and Hour," from Julia Child's The French Chef Cookbook. There were only two of us, so it made enough for a nice meal plus some leftovers. Because it was designed as a menu for a 30 minute meal , the recipes were intertwined with each other to make maximal use of time. I suspect this worked better for a tv demonstration than it does reading it from a book. I've made other recipes from the book but don't recall doing any that were menus before. It took me longer than half an hour, and that was only making 3 of the 5 meal components. It was quite good, though: Tranches de Poisson a la Barbouille (Fish Steaks with Eggplant and Tomato Sauce) and Noodle Shells (buttered pasta shells). I skipped the Cheese and Artichoke Appetizers (frozen pastry shells, cream cheese, and canned artichoke hearts) and Baked Apricot (canned apricots, banana, bourbon, brown sugar and peanuts it was the 60s...) dessert. I used swordfish steaks (one of her options) for the fish. I wasn't sure how the sauce would match the fish, but it was delicious. There's enough fish and sauce for dinner tonight (there were also shells and sauce, but that was my lunch ). I'm going to make 3 components of another one of her 30-minute menus to round that out. They probably don't really require recipes: a cold hors d'oeuvre platter with watercress, salami, hard boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and tomatoes; sauteed zucchini; and sauteed potatoes.

From Julia: Swordfish with Eggplant Tomato Sauce (La Barbouille) and pasta shells with butter Very satisfying. Advertised as taking half an hour, but, uh, no. Still worth it.

The USDA is letting those 20 million chickens go...to the marketplace. Even though the chickens apparently ate the feed with contaminated pet food in it, the sample testing USDA did didn't find melamine in the feed. Given that the amount of melamine that showed up in testing of raw materials varied, I'd really wonder about whether some samples at this level might show nothing and others show something significant. http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/i...734189520070507 I realize that if they had held the chickens to test and not said anything, word would have leaked out and fueled rumors and conspiracy theories. Once they made their uncertainty about the quality of the chickens public, however, I don't want to be eating them. I especially don't like that I have no idea where they're going. Some accounts I had seen indicated they were from small farms and intended for smaller businesses. I have no idea if that's true. I found a couple of bags of chicken wings and backs in my freezer yesterday. They were leftover from what I'd bought them from Market Poultry a couple of months ago to make stock. I had gotten to the point where I was suspicious of chicken I was seeing, and that was the last place I trusted to buy chicken. Maybe that's my own neurosis. I'll be making a big batch of stock soon, or maybe some stock and some wings, but, otherwise, I'm not so keen on chicken right now.