porcupine

I was thinking of jumping in but... you totally nailed it. I can add nothing.

where did I dine?

Honestly? I never heard bass in it. I heard a little percussion - tom-toms? - but since that struck me as rhythmic rather than pitched, I concluded a cappella. Maybe I need to adjust the settings on my computer and crank up the volume. ok I just listened again - I hear finger snapping, and an occasional percussive punctuation from what sounds like the toms on a trap set, but I don't hear bass at all. Guess I need to play this on a decent sound system.

cream scones (part whole wheat pastry flour) with dried apricots and currants, slathered in homemade lemon curd

legant, I tried researching your question (I'm curious, too!) but ran out of time. I expect the answer is rather involved, chemically. I think boiling changes the protein structure, maybe causing more extensive networking of proteins, leading to a firmer texture (analogous to way heat-cycling tires causes them to become harder through cross-polymerization). This might feel similar on the tongue to simple mechanical expulsion of moisture, but is really quite different. A more complex protein network would certainly not disintegrate as quickly as one that simple had moisture removed. I would love it if someone could come up with a real answer.

Yes, they did, with some of the same employees. I bought some outstanding fish and shellfish there two weeks ago.

Almost right. Two of the blocks are tofu; the other two are squash. Also, it's not fried rice as such, but a steamed rice salad. Your guess doesn't count. The dish in the foreground might make it to the new menu debuting next week (see my last post in the Mandalay thread). I hope so, 'cause it was yummy. Yes they are. :-)

Peggy Lee's version is interesting because it's a cappella, but the key changes make it awkward.

um... anyone?

Not at all. I enjoy your posts, and love listening to these gems.

In the late 1980s I worked for a company that performed irradiation services - mostly for things like medical equipment, cosmetics, etc., but also for certain foodstuffs. I remember a number of news articles on the subject. People didn't like the idea. They were afraid of the word "irradiation", and there were many who would never be convinced that it wasn't dangerous in some way, like making the foodstuffs radioactive (poppycock), or changing its chemical structure in some way. My objection was that the food was processed in such a way that irradiation was deemed necessary to make it safe for human consumption. A more subtle point, perhaps. I feel the same about GMOs. It's not so much about the food, it's about the broader ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Also, "GMO" is way too broad a term to be meaningful. Dogs are GMOs, too.

There is already a Charlottesville thread; I've moved the recent posts to it.

To my oldest nephew's wife, who has to be one of the most intrepid young women I've ever met. And to the baby, who is home safe through the snowstorm after three days at Johns Hopkins.

where did I dine? (just joking; bored on a snowy day)

I'm a big fan of the California oils sold by All Things Olive. Sadly, they're no longer at Union Market, but do give them a try.

Where did I dine? (poorly framed photo should offer some clues)

Mais oui! I use an old recipe of my mother's; no idea where it came from. White flour, a bit of sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar; cut in butter; add buttermilk. I'll post the actual recipe if you want but I think it's pretty typical. I found the UM biscuit dry and uninteresting, but I only tried it once. Even a poorly executed homemade biscuit is better than any you get at a restaurant, if you're hungry and can smell them baking and eat them piping hot out of the oven.

Beef, barley, and mushroom stew with buttermilk biscuits buttermilk biscuits with maple syrup for dessert, a habit I picked up from my father

The picture shows stages of assembly. Left: ganache spread on a páte sucrée cookie; center: a cutout cookie placed on top; right, the heat-shaped hole filled with cherry pie filling. What do I call them? I dunno... "something I whipped up to bring to my friend who loves sour cherries"? I don't name my creations... except I do actually have one known in a circle of friends as "Erika's birthday cake" (six layers of devils food cake with raspberry buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream icing). Páte sucrée is not my favorite, but it has its applications. I'm nuts for páte brisée, and use it a lot. It's more versatile. You know that we feel differently about this. If you make it a separate thread, it won't get many (or any) replies, won't start any discussions, and will die a slow death as it sinks to the chronological bottom of the forum. It's arcane enough that no one will ever go searching for it. No one is going to go searching for chocolate cherry cookies. (Also, the index is way too crowded with small topics to be useable, but that's a different subject.) However, if you leave the post in the Dessert thread, people will see it every once in awhile as they scroll through recent posts, looking for ideas, which is one thing I do. I do that with the Dinner thread, too. Someone back me up here, please. Separate topics should be for more general things (cake, pie, cookies, etc.) Specific dishes should only merit their own threads if they're incredibly popular or trendy. Seriously, you need to consider the way the forum is actually being used, instead of the way you think people might use it in the future. Your organizational sensibilities aren't going to change users' behaviors.

Yeah, this worked.

Planned for tonight, dessert for a friend who loves sour cherries: mini páte sucrée shells with cherry pie filling (made from sour cherries I froze last summer). I made rather too much páte sucrée, so I cut out some rounds, then cut heart shapes out of half the rounds, and baked. Today I'm going to sandwich them with ganache, then fill the heart-shaped holes with a little cherry filling. Did a test run last night from the heart-shaped cookies; tasted like Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, but waaay better, and with cherry.

Oven roasted root (mostly) vegetables - celeriac, parsnip, kohlrabi, golden beets, fennel, carrots. While they were roasting, I made a sauce from (homemade, frozen) tomato sauce and oven-dried tomatoes, a little onion and garlic, jalapenos, cumin, coriander, turmeric, dill, Marash pepper, dried lemon. Combined everything, then served on steamed basmati rice, topped with crushed cashews and then sumac, and served with thick (homemade) yogurt that was seasoned with dill and really good olive oil.

So what's new and noteworthy in SF? I have three dinners and two lunches to plan.

BreadFurst.

green chile posole (pork, poblanos, tomatillos) with buttermilk cornbread two-minute chocolate mug cake, compellingly awful macarons from Praline