These are fabulous; I had good success with them the first night of a big group camp out we do each year. I like 'em with sausage, onions, hash browns, a splash of beer...maybe some cheddar.

Banana boats are awesome...I prefer them to s'mores. They are especially good with butterscotch chips :)

Whoa! I forgot all about Greg Patent. I think I went to high school with his kids.....I need to check these donuts out. They sound amazing.

Welcome! And your rolls sound great...my husband can't have gluten and I really miss baking yeast-baked dishes (I can wrangle pretty good GF substitutions for things like muffin and cookies). I'll bake bread sometimes but rolls seem like pure torture. You've inspired me to try the next time he goes out of town :)

I love the CI boeuf bourguignon recipe, but it is very time intensive. Totally worth it, but it doesn't happen very often (especially if you have to peel the pearl onions).

I love that so much...do you have a favorite recipe?

Oh, that sounds amazing! Recipe?

Thanks, all. We went with Wildwood, even with the lukewarm reviews here, just because it is one of Mom and Dad's favorites. All in all, it was a great experience, though the food was uneven. One of the biggest perks of the restaurant was that it was right across from the parking lot from the hotel (and can I highly recommend Inn at Northrup Station here? Fabulous hotel...free parking and breakfast, rooms are huge and funky with full kitchens, wonderful service).

Re Wildwood...the service was really friendly and fabulous. I had a great crispy artichoke app, and their bread and butter were wonderful. I went with the samosa for my entree, which was meh. The steak and chicken and halibut all had raves from the rest of my table, and my teenager was thrilled with her cheese pizza. Portions were oddly huge.

Dessert was amazing. I had the butterscotch pot de creme, which was one of my favorite things ever. It was surprisingly a cube, not in a pot, and was incredibly flavorful and light, covered with a chocolate ganache. Amazing.

I'd probably can it instead...but I can imagine perhaps cooking it in a sugar syrup and then dehydrating, so you end up with edible little dried treats.

I believe I cook and strain, just as if I was making vanilla or ginger syrup. By the time you're done, the rhubarb has really given up all its flavor to the syrup, and I believe (though I may be wrong) that it keeps a lot longer without the solids in it.

Very curious about this...it sounds great and very reasonable.

Interesting! I'll have to keep my eye on the herb thing if he starts having problems again. My husband's doing pretty well, with his weekly Humira shot, but always have to be on the look out. I think the gluten actually bothers his psoriasis more than the Crohn's, but it's hard to tell...too much auto-immune stuff going on :(

Trying Rick Bayless' Tomatillo Pork Braise from COTM...it was very easy to throw together, and the reviews have been great, so I'm hopeful. Bought four boneless pork roasts from Costco recently so am always looking for new ways to cook them (thought Momofuko Bo Ssam is still my very favorite). I'll serve with good corn tortillas and cotija and maybe some roasted asparagus that I need to use up.

Interesting, Julie. My husband has Crohn's, too, though so far the only real thing we've pulled from his diet is gluten. He is much less spice-tolerant than he used to be, though-I don't notice that a lot in our everyday cooking because we also have small children. Does cilantro bother him specifically? I'd never thought of that one. I make a wonderful frozen corn-you cut corn off the cob and roast it with butter and half and half, then freeze-and that was the last meal that really bothered him. Of course, he completely gorged on it :/ which is probably the real reason he had a flare up. Still, a bummer.

This sounds fabulous, and yay, found a recipe online! (My copy is still on hold at the library-hope it comes in before the month is up).

http://ellysaysopa.com/2010/02/10/gua...

Rhubarb syrup! It's a beautiful pale pink, and it makes wonderful gin and tonics :). Or pink soda!

That sounds like a perfect lunch for my kids and I. Salami is a great idea...Trader Joes has good prices, and my kids devour it.

Toddlers love to dip, so anything dippable is awesome. Pretzels and celery with peanut butter, for instance. (And I get the allergy worry but it's just not ever going to be possible to scrub the outside world clean of danger...just clean his fingers well before he runs and touches anything, I guess). Will he do hummus?

Those little reusable tupperware dip containers are genius-ranch, PB, hummus, etc, in one, another one with goldfish, another with cut up fruit, then some veggies on the side.

The laughing cow cheese wedges are yummy and don't need to be refrigerated.

One of my kids' favorite lunch is "snacky lunch"-they each get a 6 hole cupcake pan with something different in each compartment-so we'll have goldfish, cut up cheese, pieces of chicken, carrots, grapes, and marshmallows, for instance. You can easily adapt that for your lunches-keep a few of the snack containers ready to go, fill em with whatever you have on hand (ooh...leftover plain noodles is huge with my kids!) and then throw in a bottle of water, half frozen, or a frozen juice box.

Now I'm feeling motivated to do this more myself this summer :)

We'll be having a surprise celebration for my dad's 70th in a couple weeks, and are looking for a great night out. We'll be staying at the Inn at Northrup Station, and our ideal would be something in that is close there. My folks have always been fans of Wildwood, so that's our fallback, but am wanting other ideas.

Looking for a special occasion place that's not too stuffy, with a wide range of dishes. All organ meats and sushi won't go over well with this group, but other than that, we're pretty eclectic. Thanks!

After saying I'll skip the meatloaves, I ended up making them tonight..we've been on a meatball kick lately :). I thought they were pretty bland, though to be fair, I used homemade plum ketchup, canned when I had wayyyyyy too many plums last year, instead of her topping. However, my husband and kids liked them a lot. They were great comfort food, with regular mashed potatoes and roasted cabbage. I like the technique of making meatloaf into large meatballs and plan to do that with other recipes.

Tacos, definitely! Way more likely to get eaten in my house than mussels, what with the children and all :)

That sounds fabulous. Recipe?

We used to do pizza Friday nights, often quick and easy homemade-now husband can't have gluten so it's much less simple :/. Lately, our favorite Friday night activity has been walking to our favorite local Mexican restaurant-our three kids plus our old friends with two more-and splitting some fajitas and having a margarita for husband and a Negro Modelo for me :).

Ooh! That's a thread I started so I'll be stalking you for your report :)

I'm so sorry, Linda. We are all thinking of you guys. Stay safe!

Tonight I think I'm making Ellie Krieger's chicken satay with peanut sauce, brown rice, and roasted broccoli. I normally work Fridays but have today off, so will have time to do a little cooking. Nothing fancy, but my little kids love it, it's pretty healthy, and I'm happy with anything that has peanut sauce on it :). Camping this weekend, possibly...so probably simple food for that.

I'm in Oregon...I don't know that I've seen that brand but I will look! Thanks so much for the rec.

OK, I prefer this in soft corn tortillas, but it's awesome anyway, plus super easy and great for a party. Single most flavorful crockpot dish I've made.

One boneless pork roast, that fits in your crockpot. Put it in and dump a jar, juice and all, of pepperoncinis over. Cook all day til pork is shreddable. Shred. Serve with cotija cheese, cilantro, avocado. A little sour, spicy, fabulous.

I made two batches of this last year and it was a huge hit; probably the most popular preserve I've ever made. Awesome mixed with cream cheese for a dip with tortilla chips. I have a bunch of strawberries still in the freezer and I need to make more of this before strawberry picking time comes round again.

Here's the recipe I started with:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/jalapeno...

I think I later went on to make a second batch using the Pomona pectin, which I prefer since you can control the amount of sugar you add.

So glad to know the gratin wasn't just my problem. And, just as an FYI, I've had better luck using ground up slices of GF bread than any other breadcrumb substitution, though I love almond meal on lots of other recipes.Thanks for the feedback re the meatloaves; I'm not a fan of a ketchup glaze typically so I'll skip this.

I would really like to try these....but it'll either need to be on a night where husband is out of town, or I'll have to miraculously find GF shells, which I've never seen.