Seriously, the stems are the sweetest part of the broccoli! Just peel and steam them, or peel, shred and steam them, then sauté in a little butter and top with toasted walnuts and salt.

Yes, I keep trying to convince my husband and son that the stems are much sweeter than the florets, but they don't think they're edible. Oh well, more for me. When I steam broccoli, I take only the stems for myself and leave the florets for the picky people who want pretty broccoli.

When a fish is fileted or a meat is boned, you are paying more for the labor (boneless chicken breasts cost more per pound than bone-in ones, for example), so I don't think it's reasonable to ask them to weigh it again and pay less after they've done this work for you. Last week, for example, I needed a boneless pork shoulder, but they charged me a slightly higher amount per pound after they boned it for me, which was fine. They did the extra work and should rightly have been paid for it.

Here in Massachusetts, most supermarkets have a trash bin for corn husks during corn season. I really appreciate this, not because the corn contributes to the weight, but because it is so messy to shuck at home.

I buy the 365 brand of organic mustard at Whole Foods. It's still crappy yellow mustard, but it's *organic* crappy yellow mustard, so we can all be proud serving it to our bbq guests.

Who wants to consume a toxin that doesn't get you just a little bit happy?;)

Okay, when it comes to food, I get this, but what about condiments, sweeteners, and drinks? I've had guests who love my coffee, but they want it with stevia instead of real sugar, so I keep the stevia around (and hope it doesn't rot or decay or whatever those non-nutritive sweeteners do when they die.)

And we keep hard liquor for older guests who grew up drinking that instead of wine. This seems reasonable to me, and not wasteful, since these things don't really go bad as quickly as food.

Hard liquor. Stevia and other low calorie sweeteners. Decaf tea and herbal tea (although my daughter drinks these.) When my mom is visiting, iceberg lettuce.

I adore cumin. Nothing better than carrots roasted with cumin and salt.

I used to adore tarragon, but grew very tired of it after eating it in a carrot and banana side dish I used to make to accompany broiled fish. It was really great the first 54 times I made it, but now, not so much...

My mom used to put it in her bread and butter pickles.

Don't love fenugreek, either, although it's fine in curry powder. I like cilantro in balance, but everyone in my family thinks it's like nerve gas and one molecule will kill you, so I rarely use it.

And this is what scares me about posting bad reviews. If a place truly sucks, there is likely some serious dysfunction in the kitchen and/or management, and I wouldn't want a psycho owner to hunt me down just because of a bad review of a single bad evening.

This may seem like a cop out, but I value my privacy, my family, and my life, and there are some very twisted people out there. (We had a very nasty experience a few years ago with a crazy house painter from hell, so I'm a little burnt from that.) If a restaurant or craftsperson is that bad, I just warn people verbally.

That's hilarious!

I review restaurants on Yelp and Trip Advisor, but I usually only do so if I have mostly positive things to say. If a restaurant is so horrifically bad that I have zero confidence in their ability to do anything right, then I just won't go back and will warn my friends to stay away, but I won't post anything.

On occasion, though, when a restaurant seems to have gone downhill, I will review it and mention what I've observed. And like others on this site, I tend to look at the food more than the service, unless that is consistently poor or rude.

Beef tenderloin, especially this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/foo...
It isn't difficult, but it is very costly: if you get the size tenderloin you need to make the recipe, you can spend over $100 on the meat alone. We only have this on special occasions.

I made sfogliatelle once. Never again. There are some things it's better to buy.

Spanakopita. I make this maybe 3 times a year. I have the best recipe I've ever tasted, but it's such a pain to work with filo and so easy to let it dry out.

I make a Christmas tree bread that also takes forever. You have to roll out a very buttery yeast dough and cut out a tree-shaped triangle, then cut out 25 donuts, laying these out on the triangle, filling each hole with currant jelly. The "holes" from the donuts are used to make the tree trunk. It's gorgeous and delicious, but takes two days to make.

My mother used to fry fish in an electric skillet on rare occasion. She'd put the skillet out on the deck so the house wouldn't reek for days. We could hear every dog in the neighborhood barking once that fish went in the hot oil.

I don't deep fry much but I certainly pan fry and stir fry. I had no idea what a mess it made until I noticed a bit of dirt on my ceiling and proceeded to wash the entire thing. It was quite shocking!

I don't use much profanity (unless you count words like suck as profanity--I inherited that word from my kids and now my 75 year old mom uses it!) either in speech or writing, but I've had many posts deleted on this site.

In general, I think the mods do a decent job here, even though I don't always agree with their narrow approach. I wish other sites, particularly the news sites, would police as well.

I changed my kids several times on dirty floors. All I had to do was put down some paper towels, then the changing mat, then the kid. Neither one caught anything horrible, though I do apologize for killing all those trees.

That's way too politically correct for me.

Actually, what's worse is when someone says they don't want dessert, but then proceeds to attack yours when it comes. Get your own if you think it's so delicious!

I always ask for it on the side, even when I know the dressing is good. That shouldn't count as a special request.

I have always thought white pepper had a dusty sort of flavor, so I never use it. Hmm, maybe mine actually is dusty, since I never use it.....

My daughter, soon to be 18, was the same way at that age, and I would love to attribute this to our excellent parenting, but really, I think it was the luck of the draw. Although my husband and I love good food and wine and have tried to impart these interests to our kids, our son, 16, is just not interested. Food is simply survival to him, nothing more. So sad.

Those parents you describe are very fortunate and I hope you do get to encounter the family again.

"she just asked for what she wanted and got it!!"

Sometimes with a side of something else she didn't want, I imagine. I wouldn't want to routinely annoy anyone who was alone with my food!

While I believe in being gracious even to difficult people, one reason they become so difficult is that few people ever stand up to them. I realize it's not your job to convert her into an easy person, but if she's making your job a misery and isn't really contributing to business, then you need to tell her that the new policy of the restaurant is that there will be no substitutions.

When she runs out of restaurants that will accommodate her, perhaps she will transform into an accommodating person herself, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I guess the moral of this thread is that wise people should expect air travel to suck and have lousy or non-existent food. Therefore, when possible, they should plan ahead by bringing their own food, and having very low expectations. That way, they're unlikely to be disappointed.

It's not a tragedy, but there was a day when I had the bad luck to get on a plane with no food (boston to dallas, major screwup on the part of the airline), then had to run for a connecting flight (dallas to SFO) and didn't have time to buy anything at the airport, only to board another plane with only chips and limited snacks. Had a killer headache, but I survived.

And even then, I'm not sure I would have accepted food from a stranger unless it was in a sealed wrapper.