The original tiny little Damon's , the one that was torn down along with much of the old Glendale downtown to build the Glendale Galleria (now itself defunct of course), still glows brightly in my mind as the Platonic ideal of a Tiki bar, maybe the Platonic ideal of any bar.

My junior year in college we scotch-taped a Twinkie to the wall in September. It was still soft and mold-free in June. Whether it then tasted "worse" I couldn't tell you.

Plus both cod and swordfish are so seriously overfished that we probably won't have to worry about consuming them for long.

"It read to me like people mentioned the ordinary supermarkets for the ham hocks, not the ham."
I am the poster who mentioned Trade Fair, and yes it was for the smoked ham hocks, not for dry-cured country ham.
People have already given you many suggestions. If you want to be sure, phone ahead.

Trade Fair always has them, Key Food most of the time.

"I swear this exact thread exists somewhere but can't find."
Pretty much:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/288648
Although it was favorites only. As long as we're talking musts to avoid, I guess I'd have to go with the bar where Tralala hangs out in Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Spelt flour (best friend's wheat allergy).

The F-Word is the show I keep wishing GR would do here in the US. And it makes me angry since I know anyone who could do a show that good knows exactly how bad his Fox shows are.

I guess I just have to hope these frozen poblanos make it to my neck of the woods.

While one could make the argument that hunting and gathering save you the money of raising the plant or animal you gather - how is gardening or raising domestic animals "free"?

If it's slimy and grassy tasting , you must have been eating that hothouse imported Chilean gah. You need to try the real farm fresh gah, coming into season in about a week. Then you'll see!

"One theory for the growing and sustainable haul of lobster is the depletion of the cod fish stock in the lobster grounds. "
Yes, and I have read that this is true of crab as well. Thus Red Lobster, etc. can offer Lobsterfest and Crabfest specials. You could add shrimp to this list as well - as with lobster and crab its cheapness comes at what I would consider a heavy price, since the farms on which shrimp are commercially grown are to such a large extent former mangrove forests.

Understood. So these frozen poblanos aren't roasted then?

Hey! How could anybody not like gah?

Yes, I was mostly thinking of the wooden handled ones. Kind of stupid since I'm not sure they even make them anymore.

Actually I have never bought Kerrygold at all. How would you say it compares to the Organic Valley pastured butter, which is what I usually get?

Yes, this technique predates not just the invention of foil but the invention of paper.

I have never seen these frozen poblanos. Are they roasted? Because I always buy them fresh, roast them, then refrigerate them. It would be useful to have frozen ones for when I run out of fresh.
And I love using them in mac and cheese, also in scalloped potatoes.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/e...

Cause everybody knows margarine is so much healthier! Just like artificial sweeteners.

Very true. Of all the pieces you mentioned the only one I don't think is very good is the skillet, as others have said. For one thing if it's like the ones I've seen it can't go into the oven, unlike all the other pieces, which makes it less useful than a steel or bare cast iron skillet. But even with that, you should just use it for a while and see how you like it.
As far as the larger size pieces go, I predict that you are sooner or later want to be cooking large amounts with the idea of refrigerating or freezing for later. And braising isn't just for meat! You're going to be braising beans and legumes even more than an omnivore would, and Le Creuset is great for that.

I think that you are right, that the EveryDay pans are what they're calling the brasier. They certainly wouldn't be a substitute for the ovens, but they'd be a great substitute for the skillets, since they have the regular enameled surface and not that weird black nonstick-type surface that the skillets do.

Thanks so much for the recommendation. The ones I have bought in NYC have not been that great, so I will definitely be checking that out. I see the brick and mortar store is in Buffalo - I have some friends up there, so maybe I can twist their arms into doing some shopping for me.

I also live in NW Queens and while I have never been made to feel uncomfortable as a white customer ( I have in other places in my life, for what it's worth) when this question of discrimination comes up I always think of how shocked I was in the 1990's to discover that the various "Yugoslav" markets/bars/eateries in Queens were actually Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Herzogovnian/Macedonian and how not "cool" they were with each other. Up until the war I had known very little about former Yugoslavia - me and most people who didn't have family roots there. My point being that there are all kinds of discrimination in "ethnic" markets that have nothing to do with the U.S citizenry.
Also that nobody can reasonably be expected to be familiar with the totality of world cultures - just learn what they can when they get the opportunity.

Are you making your own bangers? if not, which commercial brand do you prefer?

I like every vegetable, I think. The closest I've ever come to hating a vegetable was the time I failed to heed my friends' advice about not overplanting zucchini in the garden. I felt a lot of zucchini hate by mid-July that year.

As any Finn could tell you anything is better than a swede. Even a Norwegian.

I also have a basically untouched copy of The Silver Spoon on the shelf (a gift from an Italian-American friend who has lived in Italy for the past 15 years) and I would love to get some more inspiration for using it. This is a book that is greatly loved in the real world, I know, and yet it isn't very popular here on Chowhound. I feel like the problem is more with me than with the book - like I'm not understanding it. Fowler, if you could give me some tips on how to use the book effectively, you'd be doing me a great service.

I agree with Hobbert that the onion is usually not that useful, but the sprouts are very tasty. Sometimes we leave a couple of onions to sprout just to use the sprouts.

I used "protein" in describing a meal component when I was a vegetarian - especially early on when I was strongly influenced by Frances Moore Lappe and concerned that all my proteins be complete - or more precisely, worried that I might not have completed them adequately with my meal planning. Even in that context, it was more in the way of reassuring a dubious non-vegetarian that the meal was sufficient to sustain human life.
I have never in my life described meat or fish as the "protein" in a meal, in fact until Top Chef I don't think I'd ever heard this useage by anyone. I also don't like it, but I do know now what it means in "foodie."

Dang, we ALWAYS have tissues in the house. The only difference between Mom's Kleenex and mine is that mine is always the kind with lotion.