V.H.

I've purchased powdered coconut cream at Grand Mart in Seven Corners. Is this the same thing you're looking for? It's in the same aisle as the tamarind soup powder and char siu seasoning packets. It comes in a packet.

We like this place. The service is pretty good for a family friendly place although I haven't been enough to experience the screaming karate kids first hand. I like the thin crust on the pizzas and the light hand with the cheese. One thing I can't understand though is why the kid's pizza comes with no sauce. Are there really that many kids out there who don't like sauce? We usually add on sauce and black olives for the munchkin. For moderate eaters, one of their pies will feed two adults. I agree with goldenticket that the salads are huge and tasty. One is easily enough to serve 3 adults.

We're in need of granite countertops and were wondering if any of the folks on here had places they'd like to recommend. We live in Arlington if that makes a difference.

Mix equal parts maple syrup and soy sauce. Use to glaze salmon while baking. Yum.

I vague remember reading in an Ina Garten cookbook about a recipe for a french pumpkin soup. I think the caveat was that french pumpkins are very different than American baking pumpkins and that butternut squash would be a better substitute. Maybe you could do the reverse and use a french pumpkin in your squash recipe?

We do homemade pizza when we have our 4 yr old's friends over because it's an easy way to deal with picky eating issues. I generally help them shape dough into individual six or eight inch pizzas and then let them go to town on the toppings. My daughter will take all of the olives and pepperoni if allowed. One of her little friends put a piece or two of chopped onion on her pizza and then proceeded to eat the rest of the bowl of raw onion. I also find most kids will inhale a nice steak cooked medium rare. It's tender enough for their little mouths to chew easily. Since it's close to Halloween, decorating sugar cookies for dessert might be fun.

Goldenticket and I had lunch there earlier this week and were very impressed with the quality of the food. We started with the tangy spicy wonton. We had ordered this dish at Temptasian where it was tiny wontons in a large bowl of tangy spicy broth. At Hong Kong Palace, the wontons are bigger, less delicate, but absolutely delicious when swiped in the slick of spicy oil and sauce that cover the bottom of the plate. From there, we moved onto the Twice Cooked Pork with Dry Long Bean and the Old Buddha's Braised pork. The Twice Cooked Pork was very good but the braised pork was a stunner. It was small chunks of very fatty pork braised with peppers and dried shitakes in a fragrant brown stew. The five spice flavors complemented it without being overpowering and every bite was luscious with all that good fatty porkness. I think you could stew shoelaces in this sauce and they would be amazing. Because my 4 yr old was with us, we also ordered the bbq pork with snow peas off of the americanized menu for her. Unlike many places, the bbq pork here was juicy and tender, showing that the restaurant's attention to quality does not lie solely within its traditional menu. The only downside to this place is the service. They have a small staff and probably only one or two people back in the kitchen. This quality food does not come out quickly so you should plan for that if you're eating with kids or a large group. I went back there today to get some takeout and talked to the hostess about the tank of live tilapia in the back. She pointed out that the fish were prepared whole on the menu in three different ways, including a whole fried fish served with a spicy black bean sauce. I had already placed my order for the chengdu kung pao chicken (spicy! awesome! not like other places!) but now I know what to get the next time I'm there.

I would try some of the large Asian grocers in the area since pork belly and fat back are common ingredients in Asian cooking. I know I see pork belly all the time at Grand Mart.

I bought a box of Honeycrisp apples yesterday at the Arlington Farmer's market (for a mere $15!) and am thinking about canning some of it as a pie filling or chutney. Anyone done this before? Google has found a lot of good information but if someone has any good recipes they'd like to share I'd be grateful.

I find that an excellent combination for a good meal is to head way down Lee Hwy into Falls Church to hit the Lebanese Butchershop for a fine assortment of marinated meats and then grab your sides at the Lebanese Taverna Cafe on the way back home. It only takes 10 minutes to cook up the meat on the grill and you solve the problem of buying expensive overcooked meat at LT.

My sister in law lives in Pawley's and the only restaurant I've really liked in that area is Chive Blossom Cafe, located on Hwy 17 (9428 Ocean Hwy). They are attached to a health/organic food store and the food is very different from what you'll find along the rest of Hwy 17. The last time I was there I had a scallop cake served with a side of orzo that was fantastic. The orzo was done risotto style with a chicken stock and white wine base. It was very creamy and studded with asparagus, shitakes, and a couple other veggies I can't recall. The scallop cake was crisp on the outside with perfectly cooked scallops in the interior. I can only guess that they chill the cakes well before frying so that the scallops don't cook beyond medium. They also offer several different soups daily with a flight of three soups available.

I line my rack with unglazed tiles (too much of a minimalist to store a pizza stone) and preheat for at least 30 minutes at 485 degrees. I find that the hot tiles radiate plenty of heat to keep my oven nice and toasty while I slide a pizza in. My MIL has had problems using this technique only when her dough is too thick or the toppings have been piled on too thick. The mktye trick of making your pizza on parchment and sliding it into the oven with parchment and all also makes for quick and speedy pizza transfers.

I just picked up about some very lean eye round roasts today to make some homemade jerky. Usually I freeze for a bit, slice them about 1/8 inch thick (with the grain), marinate, and dry in the oven at the lowest possible temp until they are dry but still pliable. The last time I made a batch I asked the guy at the meat counter to slice for me and I ended up with kind of thick slices, about 5/16 inch thick. I ended up drying those for a couple of hours, taking them out and cutting them into inch wide pieces, and putting them back in to dry the rest of the way. When I dry, I move my rack up so that the meat will be suspended in the center of the oven, skewer the meat onto barbecue skewers, and lay the skewers across my rack so that the meat hangs down vertically. I only do this for the first couple of hours because the meat tends to dry more at the top but when I start the drying process, the wet meat takes up too much surface area and I can't lay it all across my rack. After a couple of hours, I take it off the skewers and lay the now smaller, dryer pieces directly on the rack to finish drying. I am looking for any tips anyone may have to improve my process or any great marinade recipes. I'm generally pretty happy with the quality of my finished product but would love to make it even better.

It gets better when they get older and more predictable. We took our 3.5 yr old there in April for my husband's birthday. She was incredibly well behaved but the little eating machine ordered the lamb loin and proceeded to eat the entire thing without sharing. Meanwhile, the birthday boy had ordered the roast chicken thinking they'd go halfsies and was left high and dry.

Thanks Zora for the reminder about Consumer Reports. I signed up for a month's worth of online access and confirmed that many of my choices were good ones. I did change my mind on the Thermador cooktop I originally chose in favor of a similarly priced Viking one that had much higher ratings. I'm going with a Viking hood and there are options for a 400, 460, or 600 cfm interior blower or a 900 or 1200 cfm exterior blower. We have a small house and the our bedrooms are just around the corner from the kitchen. For that reason, I was thinking the 900 cfm blower so that I don't have to smell dinner in my bedroom. The guy at the appliance store thought it would be overkill and recommended the 600 cfm interior blower. He also thought that the exterior blower would be loud and annoying to the neighbors. Thoughts?

Okay everyone, gather round. I have some questions for those who have been there, done that, or are about to and have done loads more research than me. I need recommendations for a fridge, hood, and wall ovens. I'm inclined to go with GE for the ovens because I just don't need much more than good basic functionality. I'm debating between a side by side config for the fridge vs a bottom freezer design. I'm planning on purchasing an additional basic GE fridge for the laundry room so maximum capacity in the kitchen one is not as important. Lastly, I'd like a hood with good flow rates, variable speed design, and relatively quiet operations (at least at low speeds). Thoughts?

My husband has accidentally overwhipped cream to the point of creating something like butter. Could you do this on purpose to make butter?

We ate there for dinner on New Year's Eve and every 10 minutes it seemed like someone was coming in for a party platter. What was the pricing like? Was it a platter surcharge on their a la carte pricing?

I believe the Arlington location was not impacted by the activities at the Wheaton location.

No high chairs but they are otherwise child friendly. We used to get a bowl of rice with a couple pieces of tamago (egg omelet) on top when our daughter was a wee toddler and it would keep her occupied until we finished our dinner.

We love the look on people's faces when our 3 yr old informs them that baby animals are the best because they're so tender and juicy. This came out of a discussion one night when she asked us what animal lamb was. She of course wanted to then know why we don't see grown up sheep meat for sale at the grocery store.

Grapes and by association raisins, a result of watching my siblings peel grapes, stick the slimy eyebally looking things on the tips of all of their fingers, and ceremoniously slurp the eyeballs into their mouths one by one. I thought I should have won mother of the year award the first time I bought grapes for my toddler and cut them for her. It really made my stomach turn. I'm mostly over it now but still won't eat them.

We were headed to a friend's house for dinner last night so I picked up some of these much discussed bourbon chocolates to share. My husband and I don't drink bourbon but thought these were fantastic. Our friends do enjoy bourbon and were equally enamoured of the chocolates. Since I don't drink bourbon, my perception may be a little off but I thought what made these so delicious was that you had the mellow flavor the bourbon without the sharpness of the alcohol. It could also be that the 18 year old Elijah Craig bourbon is just that smooth.

I love anything with butternut squash and pureed. My basic recipe is to peel, seed, and cut a butternut squash into big chunks. Throw into a soup pot with some chopped up veg. We go with whatever is in the fridge. Last night it was a big green zucchini, carrot, and some yellow onion. Saute this in a bit of olive oil to caramelize everything, then add chicken broth to cover the veg. Wrap a head of garlic in foil to roast in the oven. Simmer veg until tender. Squeeze soft garlic into the pot and puree the whole thing with a stick blender. Add more broth to thin to your liking, finish with some heavy cream.

I've been really fortunate that Lily is a pretty good eater. She's gotten a bit more picky with some things like fish but is quite the carnivore and will try just about any kind of meat. The one exception is steak cooked beyond medium rare. She's a bit of a snob about that and rightly so. Probably the only meal that she can prep by herself at the age of 3 is pizza. We get a big ball of dough from the Italian store, I snip off a piece and give her some parchment to work with. She's gotten pretty good with stretching it out with her fingers and the dough is resilient enough that we don't end up with holes. Her two favorite toppings are olives and pepperoni so if we're not watching, she sometimes will load up the pizza a bit too much. Her favorite restaurant right now is probably Kotobuki where we have to be pretty quick if we want any edamame for ourselves. She's tried the california roll and eel but keeps going back to the tamago nigiri (egg omelet). She loves the little strip of seaweed around the nigiri and even more so when she found out that the green stuff under the sea in the Little Mermaid is also seaweed. From those with the kids cookbooks, can you recommend some that would be good for the 3-5 year old range? Lily has pretend ones that she brings into the kitchen to help me with cooking and might enjoying having a real one of her own.