Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I did one last weekend that came out great -- the standard Marcella Hazan Roast-Chicken-with-Lemon-inside (poke holes in lemon with fork, stick in chicken). This time I took a few pieces of preserved Meyer Lemon that I put up a few weeks ago (any Moroccan Preserved Lemon will do), threw them in the mini-chop with a couple cloves of garlic and enough olive oil to make an emulsion. Zip until it makes a nice thick sauce. I painted it on the outside of the chicken and threw it in a 425 oven (breast side down in a hot cast iron pan for 45 minutes, then flip -- I'm at altitude so a chicken takes a little longer than at sea level). It was great -- the combo of lemon and salt and olive oil and garlic made for the kind of crispy skin you just want to pull right off the bird when it's hot, and the juices made a great pan sauce. Yum.

That piece was written by Bonnie Powell of Ethicurean (http://www.ethicurean.com/). If anyone wants more info, she did an interesting post about the math she used to develop the numbers: "Wired’s Infoporn on mapping the price of a calorie" (http://www.ethicurean.com/2007/12/28/infoporn-on-calories/).

Spelling aside -- so did I -- I want both Besh *and* Symon to be Iron Chefs -- they're sort of complementary (and I am weary, weary of Bobby Flay and have always been bewildered by Cat Cora).

My favorite part was always sorting the haul and then hoarding it. I kept mine in an old doll trunk and my brother and I competed every year to see who could make theirs last the longest -- if you got to Christmas with anything other than those horrible Circus Peanuts (really, those people just hate children) then you won. Our mother would also steal the Butterfingers, and one year she had to pull over to the side of the road driving home (we lived on a farm so went to our cousins' house in town to trick or treat) to throw up. An instructive lesson kids, see what happens when you eat too much candy. Because our county is largely rural, and because it's always cold on Halloween, all the kids congregate on a 4 block stretch of Yellowstone Street -- when I was looking at houses my realtor warned me that those houses get 4-5 hundred trick-or-treaters every year -- our local community thrift store donates money to homeowners to buy candy. But it's fun and you get to see all the kids at one time.

But I think if we're trying not to alarm people who find the concept of going organic frightening, then urging them to buy a side of beef (unless they live out here in Montana where that's totally normal and everyone has a freezer) might be aiming a little high. I liked the approach of this article, even if I did quibble with some of the details -- if we can get people to start switching to organic potatoes alone -- the pesticide load not only on the food but on the land is so toxic -- that would be a good start.

make Chicken Paprikash. Prolly not spelled right.
Cut the chicken up. Salt and pepper it generously.
Brown the pieces a little on each side
Remove it from the pan
Add 3 Large Red/Green/Orange/Yellow (you decide) bell peppers (fat slices)
Add 2 onions (kinda thick slices)
Toss those around in the fat left over from browning the chicken for a minute or two.
Put the chicken back in the pan. Add about 2 or 3 tablespoons of paprika (i like hungarian)
Add a half cup of water.(It doesn't sound like much but the chicken is going to give off more liquid and if you add too much you'll end up with too much liquid for the sour cream to thicken and you'll get soup. Toss well. Cover. Cook till chicken is done. Stir a few times. Add another tablespoon or 2 of paprika. (note: the flavor of cooked paprika dissapates when cooked, hence adding more fresh at the end of cooking perks it back up).Turn the heat down low. Add a whole pint of sour cream. (note: if you're looking to save some calories, use low or no fat sour cream) If you want some thickening insurance mix a tablespoon of cornstarch into the sourcream.
Heat through. How hot? Depends on if you used cornstarch or not.
Serve over egg noodles.

My mom has always been petite (about 110 pounds on a 5 foot frame) but she never seems to diet or go hungry, which I didn't understand because our family eats rather fat-laden ethnic food, and my father, while a healthy weight, has always had a belly. I never noticed my mom's unique eating habits until I myself became conscious of eating healthy, in my later teens. I suddenly noticed her eating habits and I can't say I was surprised anymore about her healthy build. My mom always ate at regular mealtimes, never ate between meals, consumed her food very slowly and deliberately, flavored her food strongly, never skimped on fat and grease, ate smaller or fewer portions than the rest of us, and always had a small, rich dessert before bed.

I will never be a slow eater, and I skip way too many meals to adhere to regular mealtimes, but I've learned a couple useful things from watching her (she always encouraged us to eat frequently and didn't teach us her eating style, so I learned most of it from watching). I've learned from her not to eat between meals, so I get good and hungry before mealtimes. I then try to make large, full-fat, complex meals that satisfy me at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.The rule of thumb I learned from her was, If you're hungry between meals, you didn't eat enough to satisfy yourself at mealtimes, so don't skimp during meals because it'll backfire.

I don't think her advice fits everyone, though. It is truly suited to a particularly Asian style of cooking and eating: long, multi-course family meals with several helpings of rice to fill you up and a variety of heavily flavored, non-low-fat toppings, sauces, curries, and stews to satisfy all your taste buds, heavy on vegetables with meat or seafood served once a week.

I think there's an important connection missed here that relates more to generation gap than portion size. Our parents - those raised in the earlier part of the century - who struggled to attain even middle class status, would always comfort themselves that they had enough food on the table for their family. Although the quality was great - like my own Jewish mother's home cooking - if you didn't leave the table "full" you weren't fed enough. And at family gatherings, that same Jewish mother would be scooping out and dropping another large dollop of mashed potatoes with onions on yur plate even as she asked "would you like more?"
To take less was an insult to the cook and the house!
Food to them was not "art" - it was life, wealth, happiness.
And here comes Passover!

@Dave try concentrating on mingling with friends at parties and always have a glass of mineral water in your hand, this way if you want to pick at the food you have to conciously put down the glass. ;)

Ed, I don't know how old you are or what generation your parents grew up in - but I was the child of Depression children...and if it went on your plate you were expected to clean the plate of every morsel so nothing went to waste...poor children in India were starving because you weren't eating your food. Very bad child-rearing. Definitely setting up kids to overeat. I on the other hand was so picky that they had to force me to eat. I swore I would never do that to my kids...and I didn't. But then they wouldn't eat what I cooked - and I wasn't a bad cook. Now that they are grown they claim I never fed them and their palates are all very expensive/extensive.
So I guess the moral of this story is that you'll blame your parents no matter what they do. Great job on your diet. Lose a few pounds for me!