Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Anyone know where it hangs out?
And sorry but since I have friends and family with SERious, at times life-threatening food allergies and sensitivities who are not just being "whiny" let it go ok? Sheesh.
Sometimes the veggie option just appeals too. Damn. It's not just about Meat Meat MEAT all the time. I'm really happy to live where there is such a wide range of stuff available.

" Free coffee is free coffee"

no it's not.

A free Mcdonalds mocha is not a free Starbucks mocha is not a free "my local espresso bar" mocha. Yeah, i do live where there is VERY good espresso. Maybe if the only place in town to get coffee were McD's but I don't eat their hamburgers either.

arundathi expressed my concern and i appreciate the alternative suggestion. That is a lot of buter/ghee though if it truly serves 4, then the breakdown isn't too bad (1/2 cup divided by 4 comes out to roughly 2 TBS of butter per person. still, i would not mind the alternative as long as the flavors are affected and i wouldn't expect them to be.

i never did understand who said it would be okay to sell coffee in 12 oz packages. But then I'm still baffled by the hot dog/hot dog bun mismatch.
Seriously, going ballistic over the two "hippies" Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield bothers me a tad. What's your problem with them, that they aren't European? (and yeah, with a fake name?) Yeah, I believe B&J sold to a large corporation and that saddens me, but what does their alleged "hippiedom" have to do with the decision by a competitor to make the "pint' smaller. I think HD is doing something deceptive. There's nothing deceptive in the package ingredients listing. And there's nothing deceptive about Ben and Jerry's being started by two guys named Ben and Jerry.

I like B&J and I like what they do in the community and the world. I like HD because no one makes a dulce de leche like they do but I guess I'm going to have to give that one up, at least til prices stop going crazy. Meanwhile, er, chill?

Prices appear to vary, yeah. I got stung for $4 a box, although I saw $3.50 on eBay, so I assume it was a local attempt to retain more money.. I really DO hate that the troop sees so little but as a former Girl Scout who did her share of cookie-pushing, I always feel like I gotta. I spend years sending mom and dad to work with order forms (you have to be MY age to remember that) and I still love Thin Mints and tend to buy the "heftier" ones, not the 8-to-a-box versions. (I liked the tea cookies, am trying the "dulche de leche" this year).

I try to buy at least some from "real" Scouts, not just the parents It might be agony talking to adults from behind a card table, but I like to at least TRY to get them to make eye contact (easier now that i'm shorter, using a wheelchair).

The bakers take 30% off the top. In reading about this on CNN's website (from March of 2007) I was amused by what the organization claimed that Scouts learned from this "voluntary" activity. The CNN piece states that of the 70 retained, 12 to 17 percent is kept by the local troop. Yikes! That's all?

And um, er where do you live where you get Girl Scouts door-to-door? We haven't seen that in at least 18 years around here. In our city, you buy cookies when a) a scout's mother puts out an email b) a scout's mother leaves an order form on her desk in the office or c) you go shopping and encounter a card table outside the grocery store/discount store etc. staffed by 4 Girl Scouts and a mommy or two (okay once I saw aan adult male. Once.). (I wish they did still come to the door. We don't have a car, so delivery would be so helpful.

Of course i buy them. I was a Girl Scout and there's nothing, like guilt to encourage purchasing something. And I can't imagine life without Thin Mints. Even some of the newer "tea cookies" were okay. Ooooh, cookies....(sorry, did I slobber?)

But sorry Mrs. B, I never learned "salesmanship" from selling GS cookies. And I never learned "responsibility which I believe I already understood. i do think that the latter is a good goal for girls. I do not think "salesmanship" is something I'd want my daughter (if I had one) to acquire as a Scout. I didn't learn "nuttin" from selling cookies (though that was decades past) and think the grandiose explanation offered is plain silly. the spokeswoman claimed that the skills helped girls become leaders later in life thanks to "cookie activities" which apparently included planning, team-building, "speaking up" making decisions, problems solving....and on and on. Wow. Pardon my lifted eyebrow. I think training girls and young women to become saleswomen should be the job of Junior Achievement.

Oh yeah, and my mother was a "cookie captain" at least once. Back when we did go door to door taking orders and delivering boxes when they arrived a few weeks later, we were the staging area for the troop. Cookies here, cookies there. Oy, did we have cookies!

We've been eating frozen shrimp lately thought we've bought fresh (often already cooked) and while we've done everything from just eating it with cocktail sauce or salsa as juliebugs offers, we've been relying on "add shrimp" to this and it's been great. Most recently we tried a bottled etoufee sauce we got from a big cajun website. We're changing up the proportions next time, but it was simple and tasty. Same thing with packaged jambalaya. Simple stir frying with shrimp, bok choy or spinach (whatever we found at the farmer's market), some garlic, and a light sauce can't be beat. i've never gotten sick from any form of shrimp i've ever eaten (and shrimp is my favorite food) . I don't mean to minimize your fears but I do wonder how common such illnesses really are. ASK the vendor or the grocer or follow the instructions on the package and you should be fine!

This west coast Obama household is planning a small "watch the returns" party. i really wanted to come up with something Hawaiian-Indonesian-Kenyan-Kansas-Chicago to reflect the background of Senator Obama but had to stop when my brain showed signs of leaking out my ears!

And yes, this is a definite "swallow before reading" list.

And I decided to go with the feed-a-crowd standard. Pasta (but not spaghetti, too messy) with meat and non-meat sauces, bread (garlic and non, and salad (no arugula but yes, lots of little leaves and spinach).

Remember, vote early and vote often!!!!

Ken needs to come on more iron Chef or Andrew Zimmer. Wouldn't you just love to see Ken knocking back some sauted bugs or something? Or having to cook geoduck clams (hey, has that been on Iron Chef yet. Should be. Iron Chef, the grossout edition!)

And then we could have Barbie Deen! the refrig full of Miracle Whip, butter, cheese, more butter...

i mean do you LOVE Barbie's refrig here? The cute little "personal" watermelon? Bet she got new boyfriend GI Joe to put it in there for her since she can't exactly bend down to that level.

Oh I so adore this. All the more so because EVERY SECRET THING is a truly brilliant novel and yeah yeah, the author is my friend but I'm not that much of a suck-up. Laura will be Guest of Honor at this year's Bouchercon and a couple years back won Maryland Writer of the Year, which I know thrilled her because it was given by librarians, and one of her parents was a librarian.

Reminds us of the wonderful time we had at the minnesota State Fair years back. Watcing the butter sculptor sculpting the fair queen and her curt. They sat in a cooled, see-through little studio. there she was, gown, perfect make-up and a parka, pulled down just past her shoulders.

Ah midwest state fairs. Food on a stick and surprises everywhere. We still tell the story about the amazing "seed art" pictures we saw. Truly amazing work - not so much the "Garrison Keillor" but the "sampler" was beautiful. And the seed art "Frida Kahlo" portrait was a knock-out.

I'm with the "return it IMMEDIATELY" crowd. When you consider how much butter costs nowadays, i would never for a minute accept butter that tasted/smelled of soap. That's disgusting. i don't care what the explanation might be. With butter going at prices like $3.50 and $4.00, it's precious stuff. it needs to be of an expected quality.
But then I do bring things back and i do complain (just sent in an email to an on-line business going "no, I never signed on for your service. I want proof or a refund NOW.")