sebetti's Profile
Miffed by Coffee Elitist Barista
When I want less milk in my cap, I ask for a short pour. The milk remains the same, I just receive less. It works for me.
Most Disgusting Cereal, Ever.
Now with the multiple flavors, they're even more disgusting.
Weird/Bad Food Related Dates
I'm a transplanted midwesterner living in the Pac NW and I can assure you that garlic, salt, cream cheese, spring onions, and large lumps of real crab are a lovely indulgence.
I also wooed my equally midwestern husband with these as a college student about 20 years ago using real crab...in Iowa.
Kid friendly with food that doesn't suck in Portland?
I think I agree with you in spirit but not in practice. I took my 4 year old to Lauro a few months ago and although I count the evening as a success (i.e. no other patrons were disturbed and nothing was broken or spilled), it was just too much work and we didn't get the relaxing evening out that we wanted.
Also, we checked out Ken's Artisan Pizza a few weeks ago to check out the wait time and I swear the whole room gave us the look of death when we walked in with a child...probably because it was cocktail hour on a Saturday but still...
Kid friendly with food that doesn't suck in Portland?
Country Cat is good if you're on the east side. The kid menu is tasty and well balanced. A bowl of seasonal veggies that is large enough for the whole table is available at a very reasonable price (reasonable = cheap)
Kid friendly with food that doesn't suck in Portland?
Also, the playroom is out of visual range of most tables (unless they've remodeled in the last three years)
How many people buy supermarket chicken and meat?
The problem I have at my local Costco is that the don't seem to employ any real butchers and the meat they put out is always wildly unevenly cut and pretty hacked looking. It's a shame because my alternatives are much, much pricier.
Kids' menus at restaurants. Really? [From General Topics]
Sadly, school food in some places has passed from simply not very healthy to possible dangerous.
I would advocate higher taxes in order to insure that school children didn't have to eat hamburgers made from the remaining bits cow bit ammonia slurry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html
Done with KitchenAid, any suggestions for a replacement?
My husband quickly killed two KA mixers when he started getting into baking bread - an artisan and a Pro (this was approx. 10 years ago). He now has a Bosch which is perfect for big doughs. Unfortunately, I don't use his mixer as it is much too large for most of the smaller recipes I make.
Although my husband dreams of owning a Hobart, it's too ridiculously large to even consider.
We've had the Bosch for almost 8 years now and we've never had any motor problems so it's a winner for us.
Great mail order food gifts you give
Although two years later, I want to thank the Dairy Queen for the nun caramel link - I've haven't lived in Iowa since 1993 and had simply forgotten that they existed.
I'll add my own link:
http://www.vdrf.com/index.php
Van de Rose Farms - I've only had their Duroc Ham but it is simply lovely. (fair warning - the website does not look like it's finished but you can see what they have to offer and pricing but you'll have to order it over the phone)
Are kaffir lime plants illegal in the US? (grow your own lemongrass!)
and as a side note, the majority of the Keifer lime leaves you find in US markets are now grown in California.
Sockeye or King salmon
Note that many of these toxins were legal to use in the past and disposal methods were often not regulated. Also, many of these toxins can and do migrate through soil and groundwater over time which means that old plumes can reach new places.
Oh, and I prefer sockeye - king is too fatty for me.
Bad service in the Twin Cities [Moved from MSP board]
I understand the point you're making but I think your supporting argument is a little weak. Food preferences does not determine whether or not you you can be a good server - as long as they're honest ('sorry, I don't eat beef so I can't really tell you but I know it's very popular among most of our customers') or helpful, they'll do just fine.
what can't you get?
I remember walking into a grocery store in Custer 10 years ago to get groceries for the dinner my husband and I wanted to make for our hosts. We went through the whole store and had to change our plans radically - there was nothing to buy!
Thankfully over the last few years it seems to have gotten better (at least in Custer), the produce seemed much, much fresher and varied when we visited this summer (but, still, thank god for the guy selling Iowa sweet corn out of the back of his pick-up at the True Value).
Nostalgic Recipes
It's worth asking at any local grocery stores - I've had more luck finding it at traditional mainstream stores rather than specialty or high end grocery stores.
I've found it year round at some very mundane places - like Safeway and Albertsons (just assumed that they WOULDN'T have it). Not all stores in a chain will carry it, but some do.
Just be careful to check the expiration dates.
When you first started cooking away from home, what were some of your disasters?
"I realized I wasn't the natural cook I thought I was and have since started following recipes."
My mom is a very good cook and taught me quite a lot before I left home (and I did cook some dinners) which served me well but also gave me a greatly exaggerated confidence in my own abilities.
It took me awhile to learn that I really DID need recipes. I too made soup pudding (chicken noodle) and the never to be forgotten lentil sludge which we now call our diet soup - we did our damnedest to finish the huge pot but it was so unappetizing that we could only eat small portions - I lost three pounds that week and my husband lost five).
Best inexpensive coffee?
I've basically spent the last year trying to find something drinkable for my office coffeemaker.
The winner, which surprised me greatly, was Dunkin Donuts pre-ground coffee. (the grinder at my work is a re-purposed spice grinder and the coffee maker is a black & decker)
Annoyingly, it was a coffee that I never even considered. I simply assumed that based on its price point and the fact that it was pre-ground that it would be, at best, maybe a bit better than Folgers, a coffee that I rank dead-last. But my in-laws had it at their house when we went to visit and I was very, very surprised. It's not a sophisticated coffee but it has a good mellow flavor with a nice, full mouth feel. It's the kind of coffee that I always wish for when I go out to breakfast but never get.
I tried every offering at Costco (with the exception of 8'oclock) - whole bean in particular and found them all over roasted and too oily. Freshly roasted beans smelly lovely, none of the Costco brands smelled good at upon opening the package.
Illy didn't work and based on the cost, you might as well go for a better bean and Starbucks was a fail as well.
I'll flat out admit it, I'm pretty snobby about my coffee but I simply can't afford to continue to supply my office with the fancy coffee that I buy from one of the best coffee suppliers in the Northwest (ahhhh, Barista, how much do I love thee?) and I don't want to burn out my expensive burr grinder on mediocre beans.
The major flaw in my testing was that I refused to grind any of the beans in my burr grinder at home. There is an amazing difference in beans when ground properly and if you can only afford to buy one piece of equipment for coffee, screw the maker, get the grinder. I simply didn't want to have to deal with cleaning my grinder after every batch that I was testing.
So, contrary to all expectations, the office in the land of awesome coffee is brewing pre-ground east coast beans (the shame...the shame).
Do you smell your food?
Holy cow, the amount of crap my husband has given me over the years simply because I smell my food is unbelievable. He seems to think that I do it because I I'm uncertain if I'll like it or not. Really, I'm just curious about how it smells. I try not to obvious about it and I honestly think he only noticed it was because sometimes we'll share tastes of a meal or he'll feed me something and there's no way to be really discrete in that situation and, in that scenario, he's looking for a reaction.
Really, I don't understand, why wouldn't you smell your food?
refused to eat, out of line?
Yes, but that stuff came from real cows and chickens. Not from an ammonia-beef slurry made from previously considered unusable/contaminated by-products at a plant in North Dakota.
refused to eat, out of line?
There's actually pretty extensive work done once an illness or poisoning has been reported. I think I spent a combined 4 hours over three phone calls providing information after my son got e. coli. I also collected all grocery receipts, listed menus, and sent credit card statements for that time period so they could identify all restaurants and food-related stores.
It was time I was happy to give since my 2 year old ended up in intensive care with 95% kidney failure. Fortunately the outbreak was small and only a dozen people were hospitalized (mostly children) but they never did find out what caused it - too small of a sample to work from. Thankfully my son made a full recovery but it radically changed my once laissez faire attitude.
The oldest expired food item you've come across?
I gave my MIL a spice collection from my favorite spice store (World Spice) for Christmas around 1999-2000. Although I gave her pretty basic stuff, much of it is still unopened yet proudly displayed on her counter (at least when I visit).
Kids' menus at restaurants. Really? [From General Topics]
When I've asked about entrees or menu advice for items that seem to be popular with kids, quite a few places (non-chains, mostly ethnic) have mentioned off the menu options to me. Typically, it's just a less-spicy version or protein substitution but it's usually a winner. I would never assume that I could order a dish not on the menu but I've often been happily surprised by a waitpersons offer or suggestion when asking for their advice.
Idiotic things you do in the kitchen
I just performed the classic 'got frustrated and didn't use the guard for the mandoline' trick last weekend. Six days later and I still have a band-aid covering the dime-sized slice out of my thumb.
I'm pissed because I promised myself that I'd ALWAYS use the guard when I purchased the thing.
In America: ethnic restaurants and kids
This might be heresy on chowhound but you also have to realize that chow-worthiness is no longer the only criteria when dining with kids.
In my particular case, I really have simply stopped visiting some of my favorite restaurants simply because of TIME. I love, love, love Ethiopian food and just assumed that it would be a very easy cuisine to introduce my child to. Wrong, wrong, wrong. My favorite Ethiopian place simply takes way too long. 2 hours for dinner with a 3 year old? Not fun, not acceptable, not going to do it. The best Thai in my town? Husband and wife team and everything is from scratch and they don't start cooking until you order. It's a great place to take a friend you haven't seen in a long time, it's the worst place in the world to take a toddler.
The 'big three' are popular because they can be fast - orders can be expedited, or you can just decide to order simply and know you'll be out the door soon.
Oh, and showing up early thinking that you'll get served faster? Often you run into issues with some food not being ready yet or prepped yet and you're stuck at the restaurant even longer.
In America: ethnic restaurants and kids
Because that is what they eat in non-ethnic restaurants too.
Snarkiness aside, I do the same if the cuisine is new to my child. Yes, my three year old child had Tandoori chicken without much spicing the first time we went to an Indian restaurant. But I also made sure that he got to try all of the other dishes that we ordered and I'll probably do the same thing the next few times we go. I always try to make sure there is one guaranteed item that he'll eat otherwise the dining experience could be ruined due to hunger, boredom, etc.
What is the number? You need to try something 9 times in order to develop a taste for it? Kids have a pretty steep learning curve when it comes to food because all of it is new. Ethnic foods would, I assume, would be even harder due because it would have such a radically different flavor profile than what most US children are used to.
Oh, and one more thing - it's not always about the food with kids - often food is an area where they can assert their own power -somethimes it doesn't matter if they actually like something or not - they just want to assert their dominance by refusing it. I prefer to avoid any potential power struggles when in public - it's simply not fair to the other diners.
What is the best cooking magazine?
I think that if you're more oriented towards the experimental process, Saveur might be a more appropriate magazine -- it's a good magazine for ideas and a nice way to begin exploring specific cuisines to see if you have an interest in pursuing it. Also always good for finding that 'special' product that you would have never known existed (Duroc Ham!).
It's also a magazine that, over the years, has retained my interest. I've had a gift subscription to Food and Wine (from hubby) since 1994 that he's just too lazy to cancel...mostly I read the recipe list but most months I don't get beyond that. Oh, and the advertising is endless.
I do miss Gourmet but other than to recommend their cookbooks, that doesn't really help.
I do read many of the other cooking mags but if I had to choose just one, it would be Saveur.
Greek Gods yogurt: they ought to be ashamed!
I purchased the Greek Gods honey yogurt by accident this weekend (wanted plain for chicken) and OMG is it SWEET. It's really just over the top too much for me. I hope my son likes it because otherwise its going to get dumped.
Foodies dining with picky eaters in PDX
With such a large number of children along, it makes it a little more difficult but Country Cat would work (and they take reservations for large groups) and possibly Lauro Kitchen - although I have not been to Lauro with my toddler, I do remember seeing several groups with children there the last time I ate there. Lauro is my favorite of the two recommendations but I'd want someone else to comment on how kid friendly they think it would be.
I just reread your post and realized that I didn't fit your walking distance criteria - Ah! Kids make it so hard!
