Pat

I would think obviously pregnant would trump regular. That's a woman who needs to sit down.

It's not really the same kind of cookbook as the examples, but I have one from Roberto Donna: http://www.galileodc.com/shop/detail_cookbook.php

Waitman has it, more or less . I suppose I'm attuned to looking for patterns, and I started to see a pattern. I'm not sure if I should expound further on my thoughts at the risk of putting my foot in my mouth. (mdt, it's no problem. I assumed I hadn't been clear enough in what I wrote.) I guess I'm saying that, at some point, idiosyncrasy becomes something different, when enough people are doing something similar. I don't like the word "trend" because I don't think the people involved are trying to be trendy, but I don't know what the correct word is for what I'm trying to describe. I'll leave that to someone else

I'm not sure what you mean by "calling out," but my comments weren't intended to be negative. It actually seems to me to be a deliberate move on the part of restauranteurs to be reclaiming something. I don't think that's a negative point.I can't call the service at Comet good or bad since I haven't been there. I'm sure it's frustrating to people who have been there and have thought they've gotten bad service or an experience not worth what they've paid, but people tend to have different expectations for neighborhood places vs. destination restaurants. That's part of what I was getting at in what I wrote.

Usually I reheat leftovers, or incorporate them into something else that requires minimal cooking, the more comfort food-y the better. If there are no decent leftovers, I generally go with pasta and cheese and some kind of sauce. I didn't have an especially bad day yesterday, but a long one, which involved driving about 4 hours in the rain. I was also inexplicably tired all day, like I was getting sick.For dinner, I reheated some oyster stew with root vegetables that was in the refrigerator and made a fairly quick skillet dinner of egg noodles topped with sauteed shallots, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and cubes of leftover poached chicken, in a creamy cognac sauce. (The cognac was the dregs of a bottle in pantry, and I used it rather than try to figure out if I had a decent cooking wine somewhere to open. The result smelled and tasted heavenly.)

I haven't been to Comet yet, as I rarely get to that part of the city, but watching this discussion and others on the board, it's seems that this is part of a (I hate to call it) trend of sorts in which restauranteurs are reclaiming restaurants for their own vision and not adhering to conventional standards of what people expect (e.g., not keeping regular hours and answering the phone). It seems a natural progression from the impression I have of Buck's and places like Colorado Kitchen, the two Rays, and new Eammon's and PX (maybe even Bebo). You get what you get: a joint or a speakeasy, a place where reservations are taken only under certain circumstances and the menu changes a lot, a place where they they have limited food options and may run out before you get there. It's anti-"fine dining" and taking all this food stuff too seriously. I'm probably cluelessly stating the obvious here.And before I submit this, I think the whole notion that I haven't been there because I don't live in that part of the city is part of this phenomenon as well. It's a reassertion of the neighborhood restaurant, a place you're not going to drive 30 miles out of your way to get to. It might be closed. They might be out of what want to eat.

I think they use Saval

I'm working on oyster stew with roasted root vegetables. It will be served with a salad of romaine, tomato, cucumber, feta, and olives, plus cheeseburgers on whole wheat buns, topped with some reserved tomato slices and lettuce. I'm thinking the burgers might be overkill, but leftover stew and salad will be good since I won't be here to cook dinner tomorrow night.

We're headed to my husband's aunt's house tomorrow for the family Thanksgiving. I've got one loaf of bread left to go into the oven. So far, I've made cranberry-orange bread, a whole wheat boule from the NYT no-knead recipe, mktye's Tabasco Cheese Bread and her Salami-Provolone Bread. The last to go in is the fast-rising white bread from the New JOC. I've also made two batches of spiced honey nuts (with additional cinnamon and nutmeg)

Last night was a Burgundy beef stew and green salad.

Hefty has some. The ovenware ones can go into the microwavehttp://www.pactiv.com/Products_NA/Hefty/He...ware/index.aspx When we had no kitchen for about 8 months and the only real water source was the laundry tubs in the basement, we used the microwave a lot, and plastic utensils and paper plates. Can you not even wash out a few dishes in the bathroom sink, hv? we found that the loss of the kitchen sink was the biggest inconvenience of the entire renovation The prepared foods at Whole Foods are expensive but serviceable. There are a number of soups (mostly Asian--a lot at Trader Joes) that just require the addition of hot water. Trader Joes also has boxed tuna curry that just has to be heated in the microwave. We ate a lot of that. There used to be a frozen microwave rice called Rice Expressions that started to be hard to find that was a quick starch to go with the curry. I haven't looked for it lately.

Two more things I like about Bebo: They put a salt/pepper grinder on the table. While I hardly ever (if ever) add salt at the table, I do sometimes like to be able to add pepper. This is a gesture I appreciate. They did not try to sell us bottled water. I'm sure we could have gotten it if we requested it, and that's the way it should be (IMO).

I'm making a friend's recipe for Burgundy beef stew. It's been cooking for some time now and smells heavenly. We're still recovering from our gluttony last night at bebo, so I think it will just be this and a simple red leaf lettuce-cucumber salad with vinaigrette. (I have some white anchovies and olives that might find their way onto the salad as well ).

I used to store mushrooms in a paper bag that way and sometimes they would dry out before I used them. A few months ago, a man who worked in the produce department at the old Alexandria Whole Foods (Pinecrest, before the Old Town store), told me the best way to store fresh mushrooms was in the plastic bag with some holes punched in it, laid out flat on a refrigerator shelf. I was a little apprehensive, but it worked really well. I've done it with a number of types of mushrooms, but I'm not sure if that's included chanterelles. (We had the conversation because he was encouraging me to buy loose buttom mushrooms instead of prepackaged, and I said that when I bought them loose, they often got disgusting before I could use them, but if I put them in a paper bag they dried out.)

I hope you're feeling better. For any kind of respiratory flu, I like hot and sour soup (and have been known to make my husband go out of his way to pick some up ). It seems to spur my appetite when I don't have one, and the heat opens my sinuses.I'm going to reheat some vegetable soup for me soon, and my husband gets the leftovers from last night's meal at Bebo.

I'm not a big bloody mary fan, but how would taking a gazpacho recipe and adding vodka work? There's a Cholula dry chile-lime seasoning I like (found it at WF, I think) that works to my liking as a bloody (or virgin) mary mix, but it doesn't thicken the product. I'm not very fond of vegetable or fruit juices, except for tomato and grapefruit, so I drink a decent amount of tomato juice for my vitamin c.

My husband and I finally got to Bebo last night. The food was wonderful, and we ordered a lot of it to try as much as we could. The service was basically good, though it was uncoordinated in places and a couple of things got forgotten. The breads were delightful, and I probably should not have indulged as much as I did before having having ordered any food. The crusty bread was addictive, but the sweeter, cakelike bread was awfully good too. My husband got an appetizer of baked polenta with sausage ragu, which he devoured. (That may have been a special.) I got a little bite and it was, indeed, a very satisfying dish. I got a salad of radicchio, endive, and (grilled?) onions with balsamic dressing, which was different from what I expected. I loved it but hadn't expected it be a warm salad. I like a little surprise with my meals, and it was fabulous warm. That will make a nice winter salad. It was also a bit bigger than I expected and I hung onto it throughout the meal, thinking I would eat more of it. In the end, I got about half of wrapped up to come home. (ETA: I just found the menu online. I neglected to note the first word of the description: roasted. I also ordered the pasta fagioli, which I think was my favorite dish of the night. When I go back, I want to try more of the menu, but this is one thing I will definitely be ordering again. And for $5.25! Because I had ordered both soup and salad, the waiter carefully questioned me as to in what order I wanted them brought or if I wanted both at once (which I opted for). While I had decided that I wanted to order the bucatini all'amatriciana--probably my favorite Italian pasta preparation--for my main course, I was also tempted by the squash-filled agnolotti special. To resolve this dilemma, we got one order of the agnolotti (in a sage butter, I think?) and split it, which they kindly brought out on two plates. Getting the 3 (or 4?) pieces did enough to satisfy my curiosity and left room for the bucatini as well (well, some room; part of that came home too). My husband got the braised pork ribs with cannellini beans, which was a filling main course. He finished it all, though I got a little. I particularly liked the flavor of the beans. We were too full for dessert, though I wanted to order the hazelnut cake. Next time I'll have to be more restrained, and maybe that will leave room for dessert. When we got the check, we could not believe how inexpensive such a large, satisfying meal could be (and that was even with my ordering a glass of barbaresco). Looking back at the itemized receipt as I type this, I realize that we were not charged for the agnolotti, so it should have been a little more expensive than it was. On the whole, service was fine. The issues were fairly minor and seemed to be coordination issues, as when they tried to bring us olive oil for the bread when we had no bread plates to put it on or when they brought the dessert menu before our main course had been brought out. There were also times when I thought I wasn't communicating too well with our waiter. At the end of the meal when we declined dessert, he urged us to order coffee. He was rather insistent, so I said I would have a regular coffee (I never know what to call it. American?). Then he asked my husband if he wanted coffee, and he said, "No." A few moments later, our waiter brought the check. No coffee. No coffee listed on the check. I hadn't really wanted the coffee, so I wrote it off as miscommunication. When we were at Laboratorio maybe a year and half ago, a couple near us had an adorable infant with them. After at first being surprised to see a baby there, I looked over at Chef Donna, who was looking at the baby and just beaming. He seemed to take great delight in having the baby there. I didn't know if these were people he knew or not, but he seemed quite pleased to have the baby in the room. Something about that just made me happy. As I sat there, I thought how much it felt like being in a small village restaurant and how suited the chef seemed to that. Bebo seems to be that restaurant.

I had that when I was there a couple of weeks ago. I thought that was a great glass of wine and set out to find a bottle of it. I found it at the Total Wine in Landmark/Lincolnia for (I think) $15.99. I'm looking forward to opening it.

I have to agree with that. The blog is a separate issue from this board until someone uses a name that invokes the blog to talk about the restaurant on this board and refuses, upon inquiry, to disclose his/her affiliation. Even saying there is no affiliation would have answered the question.The blog and this board were separate issues until that point. I read a few restaurant blogs, and I've always thought that waiter, with his emphasis on the allegorical, must be using poetic license to change details to tell his story. That strikes me as smart, whereas giving very specific details that can be tracked seems inadvisable. If I were someone who liked to pray in a restaurant before a meal--whether one of those ladies or not--I would be horribly offended by that blog entry. If there is a fraction of a % of a chance that you can be identified from your description of your job on a blog, it behooves the writer to be very careful to minimize identifying details.

I didn't throw it away! I'm so happy Searching through endless boxes of old recipes and clippings to organize the mess, I found it. It's is my handwriting, not hers. I thought she had written it out, but it's in pencil in my youthful handwriting and is so faded I can barely read it. Either I copied it from something she had written down or she dictated it. I'm leaning towards the latter from the way I've recorded it. It's rather cryptic and isn't even titled. I don't remember it using celery, and I don't put that in. The only meat bones I remember her using were a package of short ribs. Beef Vegetable Soup 1 1 /2 quarts water 1 can tomatoes 1/4 cup barley (extra) salt and pepper celery onion parsley flakes meat bone Simmer one hour. 5 potatoes, diced 3 carrots Cook another 1/2 hour 1/2 pkg. limas, peas, cut corn, cut green beans (mixed vegetables)

leftover meatloaf and roasted potatoes

Thanks! (And, I doubt it needs clarifying, but the tare feature is not a separate button on my scale. That's why I forget it's there. I used an analog scale before.)

Thanks. Is there much variation between different types of flour in terms of weight? Yes, it does, and I forget about that. I'm not really that mathphobic, but it must sound like it I'll give weighing flour a try when I make bread next.

I have one but generally only use it for recipes that call for ingredients by weight. I don't know how good a job I'd do at converting from volume to weight. (And the one I have is fairly small with a flat top, which means I also need to account for whatever container I put the ingredients in to weigh them.)

One other thing I noticed from the video is that he scooped the flour into the measuring cup, rather than spooning it in. For baking, I generally spoon the flour into the measuring cup so it doesn't pack down. For bread, since I add extra flour as I'm working with the dough, I don't want to have excess flour to start with. My dough was a little stickier than his but did have a decent amount of stringiness from the gluten. I was pretty impressed that I ended up with a decent loaf even after my mishap . My husband thought the bread was great.