V.H.

The beef jerky here is top notch, very tender and flavorful. What I really enjoyed though was the cuttlefish jerky. Sweet, spicy, and tender but with just the right amount of chew. I appreciate that everything is sold by weight, more opportunities to try different items.

I saw packages of salted duck egg yolks today at Great Wall. It was maybe 10 yolks for $5.99. Are they for congee?

I believe this is a New England thing. My coworker's wife is from Massachusetts and I remember him saying something about always ordering the seafood stew at a restaurant for the blueberry muffin alone.

El Chapparel across from the Clarendon Whole Foods has it in their meat case. Just saw it there last week.

Lebanese Butcher Shop and Halaco should both have it and are located just about across the street from each other in Falls Church.

I've been buying basa at Hmart and it is popular at our house as well. I cut a knob of ginger into matchsticks, mince 3 cloves of garlic, and saute that in a little veg oil. Add maybe a quarter cup of soy, a teaspoon of sugar, a tablespoon of red pepper paste and about 3-4 green onions, thinly sliced. We add about 1.5 pounds of basa to this and cook the fish in the sauce. The soy gives the fish a beautiful color and it's great served with rice and a green veggie.

I have one of these pans. Sometimes I put a little batter in, dollop of filling, and then a little more batter. It's a fun pan and I'm getting faster at cooking these but it's not something I'd want to do for a crowd, just too time consuming.

They are not quite open again yet. My daughter goes to Saturday school down the street from there and we saw the "Coming Soon" sign open in a space across the street from Halalco. I peered in and it looks like they are starting to move in their refrigerator cases. I'm hoping that perhaps next weekend?

Meals in Asheville over the last two weeks: Breakfast at Tupelo Honey-great biscuits, homemade black raspberry jam, entrees were HUGE, tasty, and did we mention HUGE? I ordered the kid's little sweet potato pancakes for my two year old and what he got were two eight inch wide, half inch thick rounds of yumminess. Dinner at Early Girl Eatery- you need to get the braised local lamb shank, so awesome. I'd skip dessert though, we were not impressed with the slice of German chocolate cake we got to go. Dinner at Lexington Ave Brewery-good beer, okay not great food. Two dinners at Bouchon, one with the kids and one without.-they were very sweet to our kids but the menu was a bit of a bust for my kids. Great frites and lots of stuff on the menu that we loved though. African Queen dessert is not to be missed and Mon-Wed are all you can eat moules nights. Really fun casual place. Thai Basil-okay Thai but not great by DC standards. It scratched our itch for something with rice though. Chocolate Fetish is locally acclaimed but I must be missing something, it was just okay. A little north of Asheville in a town called Weaverville is the Well-Bred Bakery. Go there. Order a bunch of desserts. Eat while enjoying their free wi-fi. Repeat every other day until your whole family is gloriously fat or your two week vacation is up, whichever comes first.

In Pascagoula, I try to get to Bozo's Grocery (2012 Ingalls Avenue) every time I'm in town. They've got a sandwich counter where you can get po-boys but I can't resist going to the back where the seafood counter is and getting a pound of crawfish boil. It's priced at something like $2.79 a pound but when you buy a pound, you are served a large scoop spicy crawfish that is usually somewhere between 1.5 to 2 pounds of crawfish. I usually split a po-boy with a coworker to go with my "pound" of crawfish. This place is great, with holes in the middle of the tables and large garbage cans underneath for you to drop your shells. I will admit though that I stay in Mobile so that I have better dinner options.

Me too. My two year old son does not like to touch wet things with his fingers so whole grapes it was/is. Let's see, lunch ideas that worked for us last year in first grade: -Homemade mini-challah rolls (make a big batch and freeze them, then take out a couple out as needed), buttered and stuffed with a couple slices of salami or prosciutto, or spread with Nutella -salami/tortilla roll ups, cut into pinwheels and skewered with fun picks -fresh fruit that's not too juicy because it gets messy in the lunch cube. Fruits that work for us include blueberries, whole grapes, strawberries that have been hulled but not cut up, apple slices or plum halves with a little Fruit Fresh rubbed on the cut edges to keep them from browning -edamame -corn cut off the cob (it still sticks together in large pieces that are easy to pick up with fingers) -blanched snow peas -cold chicken -carrot sticks with peanut butter for dipping -we're still doing milk in the thermos although when the weather turned hot she was asking for fruit juices and lemonade instead -pancakes, cut up with a little container of maple syrup -muffins (we make batches a couple times a month and freeze them, a frozen muffin will thaw by lunch time) -ham roll ups skewered with a fun pick -a small handful of cashews, almonds, or peanuts I'm a big softie and usually include a little treat of some sort, emphasis on little. They could be 4-5 M&M's, some chocolate covered raisins, a few chocolate chips mixed in with her cashews, or a small cookie. I'm with bookluvingbabe and just strive for a balanced lunch everyday without worrying about any particular component. This means that some days her lunches were an unorthodox combination like a banana muffin with a side of salami, edamame, and milk but it was balanced and all things she would eat. I love the idea of doing veggie sushi for lunch and will have to try that this year. I can't believe that school starts in another week and another year of packed lunches is ahead of me. At our public school in Arlington, most of the first graders wore still bringing their lunches although there were a few more who bought than last year in K. We did get a flyer from the cafeteria staff last year saying that they were in the process of outfitting the kitchen to allow them to cook lunches from scratch every day and that the more school lunches we bought, the faster they would achieve their goal. I talked to some other moms about it and the details seemed very vague so we weren't sure what to think.

My hubby and I would love to do this if there is space. Just came back from a 2 week vacation and saw this.

Roast pork buns... Mmmmmm... I also like to stir fry with Chinese broccoli

I'm in need of duck legs to make confit and would like to find a reasonably priced source for them in either DC or NoVa. Anyone have a source?

We stopped by tonight around 7pm and there were a couple of families there but overall it was pretty quiet. The sign at the register said cash only today and I didn't feel like finding an ATM so we were only able to buy a single pepperoni pizza. There was a nice char on the bottom of the pizza and the flavor was really fresh. Definitely a good option for the summer months when we can't stand cranking the oven to 500 degrees at home for pizza. I'm looking forward to getting back and trying more of the menu since everything coming out of that oven looked great.

Yes, this works quite well with the Bread Baker's Apprentice dough recipe. I use my thumbs to rotate it around but try to let gravity do the actual stretching. I also find that partitioning my dough into individual balls and then giving them a good rest minimizes the amount of manhandling needed.

I've seen these at Arrowine but never purchased any. Thanks for the post, I'll be sure to try it now.

I picked up a 2 pound bag of key limes at Grand Mart in Seven Corners this morning for 99 cents. What to do with them?

I bought a Naked coconut water from a Whole Foods in Massachusetts and dumped it out after two sips. I thought it tasted like over the hill coconut water, it was really awful. My friend drinks a lot of Zico and Vitacoco and agreed that it was a far inferior product.

Sorry for such the late response on this but I have Earthboxes, which are the same concept. I absolutely love them, especially for my tomatoes. I did a side by side experiment with tomato plants last year and the Earthbox tomatoes did lots better than the ground ones (which died because i didn't keep up with watering them). We don't have great soil in the one sunny area of my yard so the Earthboxes were a lot cheaper than building a raised bed and filling with good soil.

I had a great time meeting everyone and eating on our little Eden Center eating expedition. I agree that our small group worked really well for the progressive meal approach. I'm glad to hear that Banh Mi So 1's sandwiches held up well. I'm a big fan of getting them plain and stuffing with pate at home as well. They are also amazing spread with some salted Kerrygold butter and filled with slices of salami. We came back from an overnight trip today and stopped at Eden Center for dinner takeout. On my mother's recommendation, I got bbq takeout from the place in the front window of Cho Saigon, the grocery store that faces you if you enter through the main entry to Eden Center and drive straight back. I got a pound each of the roast pork with crispy skin and the Xa Xiu pork (also known as chinese Char Siu pork) as well as a container of marinated carrot and daikon radish pickles. I normally get my Vietnamese bbq from the place in the interior corridor but Cho Saigon's was far superior tonight. Both kinds of pork were moist and tender. I tend not to get takeout Xa Xiu because it can sometimes be a little dry but this was perfect. The shredded pickles were served as a light little slaw to accompany our meat and rice. They have a little hand written sign in front of the cash register by the bbq area with prices. The two roast porks were $11 a pound each and they'll ask you if you want it chopped or whole. Don't be shy about pointing to the portion of the pig you want your meat cut from. They also had four or five roast pork heads available for $5 a piece for those who are into that kind of thing.

Dean, your description is very accurate. I think calling it Surryano was what threw me for a loop as I was expecting it to be something like a smoked Serrano ham, which it is not. I'll have to give it another go with some biscuits.

You can get it sliced to order at Arrowine. I tried it and it was just not my thing.

Sounds great. I've never done the tour guide thing before so please let me know what kinds of things you're interested in. In addition to the banh mi tasting mentioned above, I was thinking a stop at Thanh Son Tofu for a tofu tasting and to a couple of the delis to sample their prepared food offerings. The main problem I see us running into is that I think only one of the delis actually has anywhere for us to sit down and eat. I'll scope out the logistics before we get together.

My company intranet is blocking the ability to reply to PM's so I'll reply here to say I'd prefer the 25th at 1pm.