lperry

^ I've had an inexpensive, Bonjour brand French press for nearly 20 years. I can't even believe that, but I remember when I got it and just did the math. The teapots I've seen are made of glass that seems much more fragile, and I also doubt it's borosilicate. The reason I want one is that my students and colleagues in China found out that I enjoy tea, so I have been gifted all sorts of interesting things that move and unfurl in the water, and watching the leaves dance is part of the teamaking process. I found a little one at Super H the other day for a mere $6 and picked it up. If I break it, I won't be too upset about it.

The American cheesemakers need a mascot. Like Wedginald. He lived his whole life on a wood board.

Are wines and vinegars going to be aged only in stainless because wood barrels can't be cleaned properly? Why pick on cheese? It's the Velveeta mafia.

I watched the motorcade go by while I was getting my hair cut this afternoon. Our guess was that he had gone to the Dairy Godmother with his girls for an early Fathers' Day celebration. I wonder if his staff research boards such as these before they choose the restaurants.

Risotto with roasted cherry tomatoes (freezer) and radish greens (garden), finished with goat's milk cheese and a little pecorino romano. Daiquiris. I'd be making mojitos to help wipe out the mint region of the yard, but my ice crusher broke. I need to go buy a meat pounder.

Sounds like bacterial growth, probably from all the rain. So sorry.

Hey, FDA, that's not just crazy, it's bad science.

Di Bruno Brothers in Philly ships, and they are so close that there would be very little transit time for the ice packs to thaw. At Christmas years ago, I would order a wheel of stilton for my Dad and a nice olive oil for Mom from Di Bruno when their area of Florida was a bit of a food wasteland.

Sweet potato noodle salad with carrot, shiso, and mint, in a peanut, sesame, lime dressing. Passionfruit daiquiris.

Spicy arepas, stuffed with sautéed crimini mushrooms and radish greens cooked with red wine, sprinkled with fresh goat's milk cheese.

I haven't tried it, mostly because I make different sorts of teas, and the usual is green tea mixed with various berry and citrus teas. I use PG Tips for Mr. lperry's tea, and put in cubes of Meyer lemon juice form the freezer. I could probably get by with doing that one with cold water. Thanks for the idea.

It's pretty easy to be a cheapskate here with all the online buying places. I liked the article in part because it supported my evolving opinion that rosés from Provence are especially enjoyable. I've been able to get a few deals from the closeout places, particularly Cinderella Wine at the wine library, so there are a couple of cases in the cellar for the summer.

We have been lucky and only needed a plumber for installing a humidifier on our furnace. I made several calls and hired Kesterson. They did a great job, and were honest enough to eat the cost of a mistake they made. They didn't check inventory at their supplier and were unable to get the humidifier model they used in the bid, so they installed a pricier model but didn't charge us more. It's worked beautifully for five years now, so I couldn't be happier.

I had to look up OCR, so the short answer is, I don't know. You can make clippings of recipes from web pages, so if you can open it in a browser window, maybe it would work? Mariner Software is the developer if you want to ask them. You can print, and make cookbooks, and export, and various other things I probably won't use. For an extra $3, you can put an app on your iPad or iPhone, access the cloud, and get your recipes that way, too.

Mine is (was) a Creuset, and the battle seems to have been lost via a few chips in the enamel, probably from being set back on the cast grate. I was looking at a BPA-free electric kettle, thinking that, with my gas stove, there would be less heat generated in the summer when I make iced tea almost daily, and it may be faster as well. If it takes just as long, I probably don't want something else on my counter top. If you want a Creuset or something like it, you may want to consider stopping in at a HomeGoods store. They almost always have them, and they are discounted enough that you'd probably be able to get it for what your cheap one cost.

On the heels of the teapot query, it appears I have nearly worn through the base of my ancient, enameled-steel tea kettle. Electric kettles boil water in a flash in Europe. Is one worth considering here where the voltage is 110?

Exactly what I thought after Pat pointed out the Provisions section.

I'm loving MacGourmet. The best feature thus far is 1. the import button that, within a single hour, reduced an inch-high stack of torn magazine pages into nearly 100 recipes in the database. They are scalable, and I can make shopping lists. It is also easy to edit so I can keep track of what I changed and what worked or didn't. I'll keep going through my notebooks and adding recipes, and, last night, as I leafed through a Bon Appetit, I pulled out my laptop and, with the click of a couple of buttons, imported the recipes that caught my eye. No more trying to find the recipe, or struggling to remember the title to search online, or rifling through a stack of pages. Such a time saver. 2. The "chef view" mode puts the recipe full screen and disables the screen saver so you don't have to tap the thing with messy fingers. The text is big enough that I can read it from across the room. 3. They have a cloud server, so I can sync recipes between my desktop and laptop in a flash. The laptop is what I use in the kitchen. Finally, 4. because I tend to finish my work day at the computer, I find myself opening the database and putting in a search word for something I have in the kitchen that needs cooking. It's the little push of inspiration I need, and the search function seems to be Mac OS driven, because the recipes are sorting as I finish typing the word. If I had known, I happily would have paid full price. What I have not used yet are the places for notes on wines, beer, and cheeses.

And done! Good luck!

Well, telemarketers *are* fracking annoying.

A nice article in the WSJ this morning.

Don, I agree with your first statement, and would add that I think this conversation would have been completely different had I thought enough to change "cigarette butt" to "Coke can," "potato chip bag," or "plastic cup," none of which I think people would deliberately throw into the river that is the source of our municipal water supply. I don't particularly care if people want to smoke or not, but I do care about fouling our own nest. The neighborhood where this occurred is adjacent to ours, and is known for civic pride. If the guy had been standing instead of walking at something of a clip, I'm fairly certain he would have been bludgeoned with strollers and artisanal dog biscuits, then given a talking to. Now that I think about it, there's probably zero chance that one of these people didn't head straight over to the restaurant later and let someone know.

Got one, in a neighborhood where people care about keeping things clean. The people most angry were pushing prams or were with little kids. Perhaps it was a teaching moment. I think this is the point, no? Littering the neighborhood is something easily within peoples' control. I don't particularly want management to do anything, as it is not a place we patronize. Having spent quite a bit of time on this board hearing about how management wants to know of problems, if some place saw a drop in sales because of a passel of pissed parents, maybe they want to know why?

Mr. lperry and I happened to see a restaurant employee, dressed in uniform (OK, it's a T-shirt, but the logo is unmistakable), on his walk to work. He threw a still-burning cigarette down, and there was a trash can a meter away. Perhaps 120 cm, but still, well within reach, and it even has one of those things on the top where you can stub out a cigarette. Said piece of garbage was flung into a storm sewer with a prominent "No Dumping, Drains To Potomac River" sign on it. People still litter? Really? Passersby looked on with a mixture of shock, horror and disgust, and, based on the conversations that followed, this is the type of neighborhood where there are enough choices that something like this will have an impact on where people choose to go. So. Is this one of those times when the management wants to know, or do we just let it lie?

A nice piece in the Post food section this morning.