lizzie

"My dad in law lives in N Myrtle. Try the Outrigger for good seafood. It's nothing fancy but they have some great dishes and the hushpuppies are yummy!" Way delayed response - for many many years my family always had at least one meal at the Outrigger, which offered all you can eat, but not as a buffet, but it fell victim to property values and other factors, and closed in the past few years. We are again headed to MB on a family and friends vacation. We are looking forward to several breakfasts at Dino's and may try Flo's this time. If anyone has found something new, please respond!

My favorite concession is to get tickets for a movie at Shirlington, and bring in takeout from THAI, in the Shirlington strip. We have never been questioned about this since it could be leftovers. It freaked out my kids and their friends the first time we did it when they were along, but now they think it is fun. We do not get anything messy - generally pad thai and other dishes easy to eat.

The perils of letting dirty dishes sit - a spaghetti noodle was stuck on the side of the pot - instinct told me to scrap it with my thumbnail, which caused it it penetrate beneath my fingernail almost to the bottom of the nail. I now know why a form of torture is bamboo shards under a fingernail - the pain was almost near equal to childbirth. Being too embarrassed to call a doctor, I let it go - until I got the tell-tale blood line starting down my hand. The infection that insued required over a month of 2 different antibiotics, along with pain medication. Another adventure happened when I was cooking a roast from the Silver Palette Good Times cookbook, and showing my husband how you pour brandy over and ignite it to get a nice crust. Not thinking that I had been cooking this on top of the stove, and was almost 9 months pregnant, as I ignited the brandy, the flames traveled out of the pot, across the stove and up my belly, since the grease from the roast had sprayed on my shirt. My hair and eyebrows were singed, but fortunately I was not hurt. I have never cooked this way since.

I hope to save many of you both dollars and frustration. Scheduling conflicts kept us limited to the Ballston area for Friday dinner and not having planned ahead kept us out of better options. If considering Pinzimini's - don't do it. One of the single worst dining experiences ever. We were quickly seated, and then never saw the hostess/manager again. Our server appeared periodically - he stood several yards away flipping the pepper shaker we had requested, only bringing it after we signaled him at least 4 times and then finally caved and ate our appetizers without it. Caesar salad was bland and drenched in dressing, with no noticable anchovy flavor. Entrees were underwhelming, to put it mildly. My daughter's steak was overcooked (she had asked for medium rare - it was nearer to well done), and served with "roasted" tomatoes - we had asked that the tomatoes not be served with the dish, a request which was totally ignored. They were just bad - cooked in some sort of vinegar dressing that permeated the steak as well, giving the whole dish an awful flavor. The pasta with meat sauce was mild almost to the point of no flavor. The roasted chicken was quite dry, as was the lamb. Risotto was a bit sticky. although the scallops were fine. A spring-themed pasta was ok, except for the roasted tomatoes that weren't roasted. Although we wanted to send back the steak (the rest we would make do with), we did not see the waiter after he brought the meals, until we had to leave - we found him behind a pillar with other staff watching basketball! After telling him about the steak (which was $38), he only said he would tell the chef - no apologies at all. The only good part of the evening - parking is free in the hotel lot.

I could become addicted to the sweet potato fries at Eleventh Street Lounge.

My kids and I love the different teas from Republic of Tea. At least some of the Whole Foods locations (Tenleytown and Clarendon) are carrying a lot fewer varieties than they had in the past. It took me several weeks to find the British Breakfast. Wegman's does carry more flavors than I knew possible, but it is not at all convenient for me to get to one. Panera usually has a few flavors for sale. World Market has a pretty good selection, but not as many as Whole Foods used to have, or Wegman's.

I am not a huge chip fan, but my standard has always been Dieffenbach's Chips, made in my hometown of Womelsdorf, PA. On Tuesday or Wednesday's they cooked with the "bad" potatoes - the ones with the higher sugar content that resulted in the delicious dark brown "seconds". We would take our tin can and get the chips directly from the conveyor belt. My parents still buy at the factory, but I do not think you can go to the conveyor belt anymore.

One of my favorite cookies is the salty oatmeal cookie sold at Teaism - I have tried several random oatmeal cookie recipes but none get me anywhere near the Teaism cookie. Does anyone have a recommendation for a similar salty cookie?

We have been watching The Deadliest Catch, which is why she is craving this particular dish!

For her 12th birthday (to put this request in context), my daughter wants to go to a restaurant for alaskan king crab. Hopefully someone can suggest someplace other than Red Lobster or Joe's Crab Shack. We have never sought these out in this area. We may end up buying a steamer and cooking them ourselves, if all else fails.

I have an almost 16 year old and an 11 year old. Both cook complete meals. In the summer, they each have to plan one meal a week, shop for the ingredients and cook the meal. We are still working on the cleaning up after yourself part, however. I have always had them help me in the kitchen - for those of you with younger kids, they do get somewhat less messy as they get older. Also, my kids are not at all picky, but helping with the prep leads to a better chance of them trying unfamiliar foods (except for those mussels and oysters - that was not a successful lesson...) I taught the older one to make lasagne when she was 12. I told her it was one of the most important dishes she will ever learn (paired with salad and garlic bread) because now she can cook for a hungry graduate school crowd, many of whom will only know lasagne from a freezer pack, for a very minimal amount of money. My kids are big on making soups, especially anything pureed or anything wtih homemade noodles, whether Italian or PA Dutch (chicken corn soup with rivels is a frequent meal, made just like my great grandmother did with a pile of flour and an egg in the middle.) Both know how to make chicken stock and pick a chicken clean, although they do not really like the picking part (they also know how to clean shrimp - even less a desirable task than chicken). Most younger children can handle a basic cream/pureed soup - and even the youngest can push the puree button on a cuisinart - nothing like seeing that broccoli disappear. We eat little pork or beef, but lots of fish. A particular favorite is coming up with new things to put en papillote - when they were younger I generally had to re-wrap the package, but they continue to enjoy the moment of opening it to see whether the choices of what went in with the fish were a success. Breading of anything is also something that younger kids can help with, as are tasks like crushing plantains after that first deep fry, or flattening chicken breasts with a meat mallet. While my younger one has a collection of kids cookbooks, with the Williams Sonoma line and Marion Cunningham's being favorites, she is graduating to regular cookbooks. She made a risotto with peas and ham last week, stirring it by herself the whole 30+ minutes. My only guidance was when to add more broth. This was an important lesson - the dish tasted great, but was time consuming and tiring to make. I am also working with both on knife skills - VERY IMPORTANT as you all know. My younger daughter has taken cooking classes at the McLean community center, and also attended one of their one week camps last summer. This is for 8-12 year olds, but they also have teen camps and programs for younger kids with their parents. The teacher is amazingly patient and really gives the kids a lot of responsibility- these were not basic kid food meals. I highly recommend it for people like us who live too far from Le Academie in Gaithersburg for those classes.

"They've got the funkiest, queasiest, nastiest smells of godknowswhat " I know what it smells like - Sigma Chi (or which ever frat name you want to insert) at 2am on a Saturday night. I was in RFD one time - in addition to the smell and stickiness of the table, we were please to find large shards of broken glass under our table. Drinking on a fraternities dime, well, ok. Paying to drink in a restaurant, never again.

Has anyone eaten here lately - a friend wants to go tonight; I wanted to go to Bebo. Who should win?

This is a traditional Dutch afterschool snack - the sprinkles are called hagelslag in Holland; one of those great gutteral Dutch words. My family favors chocolate sprinkles but they come in many flavors, inclduing anise. My daughter prefers nutella to butter under her sprinkles.

I have nothing old - we had a fire more than one year ago (in which even my cast iron and Calphalon were destroyed) and are just getting back in our house - everything will be brand new -we own nothing having relied on a full house of Aaron-Rent-a-Center supplies including everything down to the vegetable peeler and spatula. So far we have only purchased some paring knives and dishes. I am restocking the entire kitchen (actually the whole house) - it is like getting your first apartment, but with a much better budget than I had when just starting out. That is the only bright side of this experience.

Since you did not give a neighborhood preference - The Atrium, on School St. in SW - between 4th and 6th St. makes a great breakfast sandwich on any of a choice of breads, including bagels and hard rolls. While it has really long lunch lines, those of us consigned to work in the government hell that is SW Washington welcome the breakfast and lunch sandwiches (fresh sliced roast beef, ham and turkey everyday) and the coffee that I much prefer to Starbucks.

After living in a rental house with a less than desirable stove for over a year and half, I am ready to move in to my rebuilt home with a fabulous kitchen that includes a KitchenAid smooth ceramic (electric) stovetop. I am not sure what cookware will give the best results on this type of stove - does anyone have experience with and recommendations for cookware for a ceramic/glass cooktop?

Attached is a report done by the International Trade Commission in 2003 which describes the US and Vietnamese industries (http://www.usitc.gov/trade_remedy/731_ad_701_cvd/investigations/2002/fish_fillets/final/PDF/pub3617.pdf). There is not much information on farming the fish in Vietnam, although there was in other submissions made as part of this investigation. The trade investigation that looked at farmed shrimp in several of Asian and Latin American countries included much more about the antibiotics added to the ponds where the shrimp are raised. The European Union closely monitors such levels in any imports in those countries. Less has been heard about it in the US.

"Basa" is the correct term. Several years ago, in one of several efforts undertaken by US catfish farmers to regain a market lost to very low priced Vietnamese catfish, the farmers were successful in having a bill pass Congress that required all Vietnamese catfish to be labeled as basa, reserving the label "catfish" for U.S. produced fish from the family Ictaluridae. An antidumping duty order was imposed on the Vietnamese fish at about the same time. Ruffy or bocourti are another names applied to Vietnamese catfish.

Since the repsonses were slim, I will post a bit about our experience in Myrtle Beach. Bonefish Grill was a good choice - but recommend that you call ahead to reserve a table. We ate at one of the bar tables, which was ok. The meal was good - loads of food, but not bad quality. The calamari was lightly breaded and not at all greasy; one of my kids had a shrimp and scallop dish (a special that night) that she enjoyed; the other had a simple grilled salmon with the mango chutney. Much of the marketing of the restaurant is that you select a type of fish, how you want it cooked, and then choose between about 6 or so sauces. I had the shrimp fettucine, which was also satisfying, although not all that memorable. A very good choice was Bimini Bar and Grill on Lake Arrowhead Road. This place has been there for over 20 years, and we had never eaten there before.. It is picnic tables and piles of seafood, well cooked and at very reasonable prices. My girls both had the snow crab, which were not watery or balnd. I had a mix of oysters - served fried, on the half shell or steamed, 1/2 price from 4-6pm), steamed clams, and conch fritters. This is a very casual, local place and was much better for the basic seafood fare than any other place we found in our last few trips. Breakfast at Dino's was diner food as it should be - crisp bacon, tender biscuits, buttery grits, piles of pancakes, and osme of the sweetest tea I have ever had. Places to avoid at all costs - Joe's Crab Shack at Barefoot Landing - bland, tasteless, overpriced seadfood, plus broccoli cooked to a color best described as sunwashed gray-green. And most of all, Senor Frog's at Broadway on the Beach (actually, there is no reason for anyone to go to Broadway at the Beach, except maybe for the Ripley's Aquarium, which was not as good as Baltimore or Charleston, but was ok.) Anyway, at Senor Frog's (I said to my kids, it's basic Mexican, how bad can it be?) you wait outside, because if you waited inside you would NEVER stay for a meal. As you enter, the wait staff is blowing whistles and everyone inthe place jumps on their chair to sing and dance, and then they start dancing around the restaurant. We opt ot sit outside, where we are seranaded by the absolute worst lounge singer I have ever heard - I have heard better things at an elementary school talent show. We wanted to pay him to stop singing, although he was still being somewhat drowned out by the music and what not going on inside. The food, when it finally came, was inedible - we ordered a taco platter, which had ground hamburger (not what was described on the menu) that was of a quality somewhere eblow that of the boxed ElPaso mixes from the grocery store; chorizo that looked like what I feed my dogs, crusty refried beans, and and teeny piece of overcooked lobster; and black bean soup that was tasteless. We ate nothing. As we left, the entertainment inside was calling for all people from Virginia and West Virginia to stand on their chairs for free shots. Waiters walked around literally pouring alcohol direct from bottles into the mouths of parents, grandparents, barely of age young adults, etc. as they sat at their tables with their families. A night to go down in family dining history....

I have one daughter who is a huge Fluffernutter fan, and they continue to make their way into my lunches occassionally, totally grossing out my colleagues. The biggest problem here is finding Marshmallow Fluff, which we prefer to the Kraft brand. My other daughter will not touch Fluff or peanut butter, but is a long time devotee of Nutella.

I was making a roast from the Sheila Lukens Good Times cookbook and explaining to my husband how one adds brandy to the dish on the stove-top and ignites it to get a great tasting crust on the roast, and a nice sauce. What I did not anticipate was that the cooking process had led to some unseen grease spatters on my clothing and when I ignited the brandy, flames quickly rolled off the roast, followed the spatters across the stove and up my 8-month pregnant belly, finally ending with my singed eyebrows and hair. Fortunately I was not hurt, but stunned speechless is putting our reaction mildly.

Heather - my kids go to a school with no cafeteria, so every day since pre-kindergarten (one is now in 10th grade, one in 5th) I have packed lunch and a snack (and frequently breakfast to eat in the car on the way). One year I even wrote a small lunch-packing primer based on a class/parent survey. I will preface the following by saying that my kids are not picky and will eat just about anything lukewarm or cold that most people want heated, so many of these ideas may not fly with your child. We also make frequent use of a high-quality, glass-insulated thermos. I try to include the following each day - an entree, fruit, veggie, a dairy, something crunchy/salty, and something that brings happiness (cookies, fruit snacks, a few Hershey Kisses, etc). Anyway, some long-time favorites include: -noodles and peas with some butter or olive oil to prevent them sticking together. Tortellini is a particular favorite - sesame noodles with peanut sauce -baked potato - mash the insides with some cheese or add broccoli (I throw them in the oven when I wake up and in an hour, the potato is nicely cooked and double wrapped in foil stays relateively warm until lunch) -breakfast for lunch - a bowl of cereal - just add the school-provided milk; hard-boiled egg; - quesadillas - rice and beans or taco fixings in a thermos - wrap the tortillas separately - hummus and veggies with pita (the Container Store has a great container that has a separate section in the middle for hummus and the veggies fit around it, so nothing touches - this is also good for peanut butter and crackers or fruit to dip.) - chicken nuggets/fingers (I always make these from scratch) and the kids like them cold - leftover chinese in a thermos, or dumplings -cold pizza -corn on the cob -muffins - everything from peanut butter and jelly to banana, zucchini, or pumpkin - edamame or sugar snap peas -empanadas -fried rice in a thermos -baguette with any of the following - butter, brie, a sharp cheese with apple slices, or a million other things There is a new issue of the Martha Stewart kids Ideas magazine in the grocery and book stores that has great lunch ideas - these may be on-line as well. We also use the Williams-Sonoma Kids Cook cookbook for ideas. Good luck - and please share any favorites in your house.

We are vacationing in North Myrtle Beach next week. I know how awful almost all the dining options are, but somebody, at some time, must have found a decent meal. We are willing to drive to Calabash at least once, but probably will not make the trek to Murrel's Inlet or Pawley's Island.