As a cook with more ambition than skill, I have my share of kitchen regrets, like that time I ruined a jambalaya by taking Bill’s advice to add uncooked rice to the simmering pot rather than cooking it separately. (Some people can pull that off, but it didn’t work for me.*)
I spend considerable time reviewing and saving recipes, ultimately trying maybe 20% of what I’ve flagged. I’ve noticed that like any other topic on the internet, when you’re researching various types of cuisine or looking up specific dishes, you can go down lots of rabbit holes.
Over the years, I’ve seen appalling things, sights that will haunt me for the rest of my days, like the unholy turkey desecrations on the Chefclub** YouTube channel. Yesterday, I ran across this image of sad bologna taco thingies, which I showed to Bill with exclamations of disgust:
He was unperturbed. His Polish American grandma used to fry bologna and add leftover mashed potatoes to the pan, and he says it was tasty. I can believe that. I’m not a food snob. I ate lots of bologna sandwiches with American cheese and mayo on white bread while growing up in Florida trailer parks. I still get a hankering for that and other gross childhood foods, like Underwood Deviled Ham on saltines.
But my people never innovated by frying the bologna. I only discovered that delicacy as an adult, when I married a man from Buffalo. In that city, fried bologna is on restaurant menus and featured as a specialty at some joints. I was astounded by that at first, but now I respect it.
***
One internet food rabbit hole I never regret falling into is the Pasta Grannies channel.*** It was created by a Brit, Vicky Bennison, who scours the Italian countryside for nonne who handmake pasta. It’s the greatest YouTube channel ever — that one channel justifies the entire enterprise, and by that I mean the YouTube platform with all its horrors and the internet more broadly. For real. Here’s a sample from Sicily:
Inspired by the grannies, I recently acquired a pasta board to try to make my own pasta using the nonna methods. I had to order 00 flour since it’s unavailable in our little town, and it’s arriving today, so I’m sorting through recipes again.
My Italian American mother-in-law is coming over for lunch on Sunday, and I briefly considered making pasta from scratch for her. But I quickly realized how ill-advised that would be since I’m a novice. So, we’re having club sandwiches and chips, which is well within my wheelhouse. We’ll try pasta another day.
Open thread!
*Before somebody cooksplains where I went wrong with the rice, I assure you I researched it and will never again know the heartache of spoiling a quantity of lovingly fried andouille, expertly sauteed holy trinity, perfectly cooked and shredded chicken and admirably pink and not overcooked shrimp. I won’t be undone by $0.38’s worth of rice ever again. So advice or admonition here would be gratuitous — and cruel. Read a room, FFS!
**The Chefclub channel should change its name to “Food Crimes” or “WTF, White People?!?” I’ve staggered away from their videos nauseated and bewildered more times than I can count. For some reason, it reminds me of that time Cole had a question about a character on “The Sopranos” and googled “Big Pussy.” You’re just innocently seeking information and BAM, YIKES and OMFG!
***A kind soul here or maybe on Twitter directed me to the Pasta Grannies channel, and though I’ve forgotten who it was, they have my eternal gratitude!
NotMax
Bologna is sausage which flunked the entrance exam.
;)
Anonymous At Work
Bologna Tacos are also called “Cincinnati Tacos”.
E.
I’m sure your 00 flour is going to make great pasta but so will standard all-purpose flour. Do a comparison. You’ll see.
Tony G
@NotMax: My mother, who I loved dearly, was known to fry bologna (actually baloney) from time to time. My sisters and I were pre-teenage kids in the sixties, when the words “healthy” and “eating” were seldom said together, and we ate all kinds of stuff. My mother (like all parents in those days) had grown up during the Great Depression, and the attitude was “if it looks like food, eat it”. There was, in my perception, a palpable change in the culture around 1970, coincidentally when I became a teenager, at which time “bizarre health foods” like yogurt and whole wheat bread started to enter the mainstream.
WaterGirl
When I look at the photo of the food atrocity that did not bother your husband, I find myself making the face I would be making if I had just stepped in squishy dog poop. It’s a good thing he has so many redeeming qualities, or this might have to go on his permanent record.
sab
Sorry Betty. you have shared your recipes before, and they were excellent, but I do not understand. Mashed potatoes in taco shells?
karen marie
Bologna can be very good. Unfortunately, most of what is available is all beef. That shit is nasty. What you want is beef-pork bologna. Boars Head makes it but even stores that carry that brand rarely have it. It suffers from the problem of being thought of as a shitty kid’s lunch.
I did my sophomore year of high school in Las Palmas, Gran Canarias. There were about 20 boarding students, myself among them, and we had a most excellent, if often drunk, English woman who “supervised” the boarders and cooked for us. We had access to the kitchen after hours and would often come home after drinking in town on Friday and Saturday nights to do a fry up. There was gorgeous whole bologna that we would slice thick and fry. It was wonderful! For dinner, there was always a soup course accompanied by lovely rolls delivered every morning. I considered it a lucky day if I managed to be on the front porch when the bread man arrived in the early morning to get a still warm roll to eat straight out of the basket.
Bad bologna is one of my pet peeves.
NotMax
Artichokes and maple syrup? Intriguing.
@top
Yeah, I’ve collected, and continue to collect, more recipes than I could prepare in a dozen lifetimes.
raven
Years ago I sent my jambalaya recipe to Tamara and I think she posted it. I learned how to do it at the New Orleans School of Cooking 40 years ago. I’ve done it for 1000 people and never cooked the rice separately
https://www.cooks.com/recipe/ag1uv7ny/joes-jambalaya.html
Quaker in a Basement
Yeah, that sounds on-brand.
Quaker in a Basement
@sab: Look again at the taco “shell.”
TaMara
North Omaha Cat Lady on TikTok is a must-follow for food atrocities.
Betty Cracker
@E.: I almost went with standard AP but read something that convinced me 00 really is better for pasta. Probably fake reviews from from the 00 flour people. ;-)
Anoniminous
If you had problems with cooking the rice mostly likely at least one of the following happened:
Betty Cracker
@Anoniminous: JFC, did you not read the footnotes? ;-)
FelonyGovt
Those “taco” things are truly nauseating.
Question for you, Betty (and other recipe collectors)- how do you save recipes you’ve found on the Internet? I’ve used a premium version of Evernote forever and I find all I use it for lately is to save clipped recipes. I would like to end my subscription and save that money. Is there some program or other secret?
realbtl
Here’s your song about fried bolognahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUPqASrmeYs
MattF
@Anoniminous: Or didn’t use a rice cooker.
ETA: I apologize! I apologize!
Alison Rose
I don’t cook so I don’t have any stories of Bad Kitchen Decisions, but an infamous one in my family was the time, I think when I was in middle school, that my mom randomly decided to try a new stuffing recipe on Thanksgiving which called for adding raisins. I was the only one of the five of us who liked it. (I have learned from the internet that I am a complete weirdo for liking raisins.) My parents and brothers all spent a few minutes painstakingly picking out the raisins from their servings. Looked like they all had little piles of rabbit droppings on their napkins.
wjca
One of the rare occasions where I was ahead of the curve. We were doing whole wheat bread (and yogurt) at home in the late 1950s. Gotta say, if you’re accustomed to whole wheat, white bread is almost inedibly tasteless.
Lapassionara
Years ago, I had jambalaya at a restaurant in a small Louisiana town, and I still remember the deep rich spicy taste and the ice cream scoop of rice in the middle. It was well-known at the time, but I don’t recall the name now. It definitely converted me to the “cook the rice separately” school.
we had plenty of baloney as children. I didn’t find out that it was bologna until much later. We also had sandwiches made from Vienna sausages. Ewwww!
AliceBlue
There are places in the south (notably rural Alabama) where you can find fried baloney biscuits.
Scout211
My mother used to surprise us occasionally on a Saturday with fried Spam sandwiches for lunch. We thought they were gourmet and oh, so special.
We had many bologna sandwiches for lunch over years but never thought to use bologna for taco shells. The mashed potatoes and peas look yummy, though. That’s always been a favorite with my kids growing up. But how can you ruin that perfect side dish of mashed potatoes and peas by stuffing it inside a slice of bologna? Noooooooooo!
Fried Spam sandwich, though, that was a sandwich full of love. 😊
NotMax
@Tony G
Ah, tiptoeing into the granola years.
;)
raven
@Lapassionara:
Louisiana cooks are like midwestern farmers, they all do things a little differently.
E.
@FelonyGovt: My secret is to print them out and put them in a 3-ring binder, but I’m old and strange.
Alison Rose
@Scout211: My dad told me once about his mom sending him and his sister to school with Spam sandwiches. He insisted they weren’t that bad, but when I asked if he’d eat one now, he said “Oh, not on your life.”
wjca
Totally OT: looks like Biden has decided to send ATACMS to the Ukranians. Finally!
trollhattan
Spouse loves, loves, loves the pasta grannies!
Those bologna tacos will haunt my dreams for weeks. Thanks a heap.
Gravenstone
I could see the bologna potato “tacos” tasting acceptable. But yeah, lacking in the appearance department.
Lapassionara
@AliceBlue: oh my, but what do you expect in a state that makes its BBQ sauce with mayonnaise.
M31
Pasta Grannies is very fun.
Another favorite youtube show is “Jacques Pepin cooking at home” — very recent videos where he just makes a simple thing (usually) and the videos are very short. The guy is 85 years old and still has amazing skills and is very comforting.
though my favorite youtube food spelunking is to start by searching for something like “Singapore Street Food” and then clicking on ‘related videos’ until there is nothing in English. THERE is the real street food. Probably would get a million health inspector violations but tastes amazing and cost a dollar 25
Jay
Dear Betty,
pasta is probably the easiest thing in the world to make at home, and it’s fun.
Save the 00 flour for certain breads or thin crust pizza.
Last night, because I am now the Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Ladybug Herder, and I was getting a bit bored with what I have been making, I made Butter Chicken with a tiramisu for desert to cut the after heat.
Gravenstone
@Alison Rose: Fried Spam is good, albeit salty. Spam straight from the tin, like meat Jello. Granted, I’m the sort of person who made Slim Jims palatable in college by rendering the fat from the with a lighter. So make of my judgement what you will.
Scout211
Well, being old school, I print out my favorites and file them in a ring binder with sections for each type of dish, you know, cookbook style.
I don’t think that was exactly what you were looking for, but still . . .
ETA: E. @26 does this, too!
wjca
If you want lots of varied uses of spam, visit Hawai’i. It’s a staple there.
Another Scott
Pasta is an amazing thing. I still vaguely remember seeing someone make hand-pulled noodles on some late-night show (Tomorrow?) in the 1970s or so.
A modern take – How to make hand-pulled noodles (9:16).
Cheers,
Scott.
FelonyGovt
@E.: I’m old and strange too… my problem is I have my own binders and portfolios with printed recipes I’ve collected over the years, PLUS recipes from the Internet, and I usually can’t find anything
ETA and @ Scout211 #35
Doc Sardonic
Dammit…..now once I clear this cold/flu, first stop is gonna be the grocery store for some Underwood
spotted dogFastEdD
Here’s a video by my friend Antsy McClain entitled “Fried Baloney.” It is a true classic. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ltp1J_G8Ac
NotMax
Speaking of mashed spuds…
Hawaiian celebrity chef Sam Choy ran a chain of restaurants, one of which years and years ago opened up on Maui (didn’t last long). Swear to FSM every dish came with mashed potatoes, to the point we’d speculate that you’d find a scoop of them atop a slice of pie for dessert.
Friend and I ate there once, both ordering the bouillabaisse. Which arrived in a generous portion with – no joke – a Mauna Kea sized mountain of mashed potatoes smack in the center of the bowl. Wrong on so, so many levels.
Carlo Graziani
@Betty Cracker: 00 flour will probably yield a slightly softer dough, but the end results will be close enough to what you would make using AP flour. I do tend to use 00 by preference for Italian recipes, but that’s mostly so that I don’t have to fiddle with water ratios, and because 00 is easy to find here. I sub AP with no qualms if I’m out, though.
Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking has an extensive section on fresh pasta, including on tools and technique. I recommend it highly to anyone getting started.
Alison Rose
@Gravenstone: I mean…I’m a vegetarian. There is nothing you could say to make meat in general sound good to me, and most especially not Spam. “Meat Jello” sounds like a literal nightmare.
sdhays
@wjca: Hallelujah!
FastEdD
That funky smell has all but gone away …
Misswhatsis
I also grew up in Florida trailer parks and one of the few things my fourth-generation cracker daddy could cook was fried bologna. I’m interested that it was unknown in your family.
Anoniminous
@Betty Cracker:
By all the currently available evidence: Nope
Doc Sardonic
@AliceBlue: There used to be a food trailer at Darlington Raceway that served up the best fried balogna sandwich I have ever had. He had two versions “breakfast”, which had eggs, fried or scrambled or “lunch/dinner, which had a slice of onion(optional) and heaping spoonful of chili.
jackmac
My late father LOVED fried bologna. I never cared for it and it never seemed filling. As I grew up it chalked it up as one of those Depression meal things — taking a very cheap ingredient and making a meal of it.
Scout211
@FelonyGovt:
Mr. Scout has copied his favorites over the years into word documents or.pdf documents and keeps them on his computer. The thing he realized after many years doing that is he didn’t organize them into type of dish or type of meat used or really in any way of organizing them at all. So he now struggles to find what he wants to cook because all he sees as a long, long list. So if you do file them on your computer, find a way to organize them for an easier search.
zhena gogolia
Mmm, Underwood deviled ham on saltines! Haven’t thought about that in years!
Jay
@Gravenstone:
Spam used to be a key ingredient in “fennel”, also known as whatchamacallit soup.
At the end of a Scouting trip, Minute Rice would be cooked on the side, and then everything canned left at the end of the trip, (spam, Irish stew, beans, peas, corn, mixed vedge with lima beans, etc) and stewed for a bit.
It would be ladled out over a heap of rice in your bowl.
It wasn’t tasty, but we were ravenous.
Ken
Drawing on my extensive Midwestern cooking background, what they need is to be put in a casserole dish, have a couple cans of cream of whatever soup poured over them, top with breadcrumbs and half a pound of shredded cheddar, and bake at 350F for thirty minutes until bubbly.
Betty Cracker
@FelonyGovt: Most I just bookmark in a recipe folder online, but the ones I’d be super-sorry to lose I also copy-paste into a Word doc that is backed up along with the rest of my digital crapola. I also have a dozen or so recipes that I’ve written by hand, mostly to capture heirloom recipes from family elders (95% other people’s family elders — mine were/are not great cooks). These I keep in a wooden Grey Goose box, which probably isn’t the safest method.
AliceBlue
@Lapassionara: Ah yes, the “white barbecue sauce.” Never tried it and never intend to
Mel
Dammit, Betty, you made me look at ChefClub, and it truly is the stuff of nightmares. Don’t want to look; can’t look away…
Brat-and-cheesey-potato balls seem on par for horror food with my childhood nemesis, my mother’s “Crunchy Velveeta Italian Delight”.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Hahaha. I would never try that dish without making the rice separately. (Haven’t made it in years.)
Old School
@Anoniminous: Thanks for not reading the footnotes. I was wondering what could have gone wrong, but didn’t want to ask.
E.
@Betty Cracker: There is so much horseshit on the internet about “artisan” foods. Sourdough is the worst offender, or victim. If 00 flour were readily available I guess I would use it but I make pasta about once a week and used to make it (hand rolled on a bench!) professionally and I don’t think I can tell the difference. If you want to be fancy, do your last roll on a wooden cutting board or bench with a wooden roller. This roughens the dough so it holds the sauce marginally better. (I am assuming you are using steel rollers in a pasta machine.) That will make a bigger difference than the grind of the flour. Don’t skimp the resting stage and good luck! I wish I was coming for dinner!
Ruckus
When I was a kid and both parents worked I had to learn to make actual food. I found out that there are a lot of “foods” out there that are, at least in one human’s concept of food, are, absolutely, unequivocably, without any doubt whatsoever, inedible. Also there are foods to some which are absolute poison to others. I give you Brussels’ sprouts. I’ve seen people eat them, at least I was led to believe they were human. But I have my doubts.
zhena gogolia
@Gravenstone: Me too.
AliceBlue
@Doc Sardonic: I actually like fried bologna, so I may have to try my hand at making those!
OzarkHillbilly
Guilty! I was at the Wally World the other day picking up a few groceries. I came to the lunch meat cooler and I saw the bologna and was suddenly overcome by a hankering for fried bologna. I haven’t eaten bologna in years (my go to cravings are for salami and braunschweiger) and I haven’t had fried bologna since I was a kid.
But I succumbed to my baser urges.
KSinMA
OMG, I’m in love with Pasta Grannies!
Anoniminous
@karen marie:
It is a complete bepuzzlement to me why Americans are fine with food companies lying on food labels Feta cheese made with cow’s milk. “Sharp” Cheddar Cheese that isn’t. Weisswurst made with pork instead of veal.
cope
@Quaker in a Basement: Not unlike the time my wife, looking for a picture of Vin Diesel to make a birthday card for a friend, started her Google search by typing in XXX. She is still traumatized by the results twenty years later.
Doc Sardonic
@AliceBlue: His trick was the bologna slices were about 1/4” thick so they didn’t curl. I f they had the temerity to start curling 4 quick whack with a knife around the edges took care of it.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Brussels sprouts aren’t to everyone’s taste. But for those who do appreciate them, roasted they’re a little bite of heaven.
Roasting also elevates string beans to a whole new level.
Origuy
I am not the cook in the house, but I watched the Pasta Grannies video thinking it would be good practice for learning Italian. The narrator doesn’t talk over la nonna, so I could hear what she was saying. However, I think Maria was speaking in Siciliano, not standard Italian. Some of the words were not what I expected from reading the subtitles.
trollhattan
Storm Shadow over Sevastopol.
geg6
My mom’s 1960s era seeming good atrocity is actually pretty damn good and my sisters and I still crave it every now and again: tuna roll. Basically, you sauté onions and celery in butter until soft and let it cool. Mix an egg and a large can of tuna in a bowl and then add the onion and celery and mix well. Make the basic Jiffy Mix crust recipe on the box and roll it out into a rectangle. Put the tuna mix down the middle and fold and seal the crust on all sides. Brush too with an egg wash. Bake until crust is golden brown. Meanwhile, heat up a can of cream of mushroom soup with a half a can of milk. When tuna roll is done, slice into 1-1/12 inch slices and drizzle the soup over the top.
This was a staple on our menu on Fridays. It tastes much better than it sounds.
Ruckus
One of the benefits of Italian heritage is learning to cook. I had a great aunt that made me fried squash flower once. Absolutely amazing. Of course everything she made was amazing. Even better she taught me how to improvise and try things.
Mel
@NotMax: Baby brussels sprouts roasted with some garlic cloves and olive oil. Yep.
MattF
@NotMax: Current varieties of Brussels sprouts roasted on a sheet pan are delicious. And I speak as a former sprouts hater.
WaterGirl
@FelonyGovt: I just downgraded to FREE Evernote because they are doubling the price, plus they fucked up with the last big upgrade…
and you can keep the FREE version and still upload a crazy amount of stuff in a month.
Let me know if you want to know how to downgrade to FREE
edit: with FREE you can’t sync unlimited devices, but you can sync two, which is good enough for me.
Betty Cracker
@Misswhatsis: That’s weird and fascinating! I’m 7th generation, and we ate bologna all the time but nobody ever once thought to fry it — and they fried most things! If our friends and neighbors fried bologna, it somehow escaped my notice.
Suzanne
Baloney already grosses me right TF out, and the idea of frying it even more so.
I found a recipe for coq au vin, but in the slow cooker. I am curious to try it.
Geminid
There is a “cheese shop” in Stuart’s Draft, Virginia that I used to hit a lot when I lived in the Valley. It was run by Mennonites who ordered tons of high calory foods from their Pennsylvania brethren. I once counted seven different kinds of baloney there, including the fabulous *ring baloney*. Mm, mm!
Yarrow
And here I thought the fact that I actually cooked pasta was a big deal. Good for you, BC.
geg6
@Ruckus:
OMG, I LOVE BRUSSELS SPROUTS!
Halved and roasted with olive oil, maple syrup and bacon. Heaven!
Mousebumples
I like Samsung Food (*formerly Whisk) for organizing recipes. Can sort them or search by ingredient. Lets you multiply (or half) the recipe and usually gives approximate nutrition facts for those on specific diets.
Bookmarks are fine, but works for me on my phone. I can also leave notes (👍👎) and photos if you’re so inclined
https://s.samsungfood.com/dWji9
⬆️ My profile, I think.
WaterGirl
Two things.
First, you guys are making this thread hard to read with all the talk of the fried pink circles. I nearly gag at the though.
Second, have I ever mentioned how fun it is to have everyone tell you you’re doing it wrong?
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: In case you were still interested and hadn’t seen it, I responded to your question in your thread yesterday.
wjca
Turns out it is possible to make Brussels sprouts edible. Not a trivial task, certainly. But my sister manages it somehow. Involves frying, bacon bits, and other arcana.
AliceBlue
Well, I had to do it. Took a peek at ChefClub and I can’t quite process what I saw.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Any thoughts on head cheese?
:)
Jay
@Ruckus:
that was my trick to avoid having to leave bags of zucchini’s on neighbor’s porches and inside unlocked cars.
zhena gogolia
@geg6: Sounds great!
Suzanne
@geg6: I like Brussels sprouts now, too. I hated them as a kid, because my grandmother would steam them until they were limp and slimy. I roast them with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
You know what my weird food opinion is? Bacon….. totally not as good as everyone says it is. It’s fine. It’s adequate.
Greg Ferguson
A very good friend in college (NJ native), would fry whole slices of bologna until the casing contracted and the center puffed up – *voila* “Fried Hats! Immediately post-grad cuisine on a budget, but I always loved that. She’s been writing/editing for the Miami Herald for decades now, so I am sure all that has been left behind, but it was fun. 🤠
trollhattan
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“Hi I’ve, uh, been in an accident and I’ve lost my jet.”
“Your pet, do you need animal services?”
“Not pet, jet.”
Not exactly how it went, but close enough.
Bad day at the office.
Carlo Graziani
For anyone interested in making classic potato gnocchi, I offer the following tip, based on a long search for techniques to make made-in-the-US gnocchi not suck.
Gnocchi are made by mixing mashed potatoes with flour, kneading the resulting dough, then rolling the dough out into ropes and cutting little pillows, like that Nonna does. The flour needs to be kept to the bare minimum required to make the dough manageable (i.e. not a sticky mess). Too much flour and the gnocchi turn into little bricks on boiling. The problem is that US potatoes are far more watery than Italian potatoes, and require an ungodly amount of flour to soak it all up.
One day I read of a Good Trick in Cooks Illustrated for dewatering potatoes for latkes, and suddenly choirs of angels burst out of the sky, singing about new gnocchi possibilities…
So, take some Russet/Idahos (nice and starchy), peel them, and shred them through a food processor shredding disk. Rinse the starch off to keep them from turning brown, and maybe spin them in a salad spinner if you have one (not crucial).
Now, place a big wad of shredded potato in a dishtowel, join the corners of the towel, twist them tight, and squeeze the potato wad as hard as you can. A truly remarkable amount of water will come pouring out (oh, yeah, do this over a bowl, or the sink). Repeat with the rest of the potato shreds.
Now place all the dewatered potato in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high until it is tender—time varies depending on the amount. When the potato is cooked, carefully take the bowl out and dump it on some surface to cool. When it can be handled, put it through a potato ricer (basically a giant garlic press) to get lump-free mashed potato.
Return it to the bowl, and now start adding flour a little at a time, mixing and testing for stickyness. When the dough is manageable, stop adding flour. You’ll have added maybe a third of what would otherwise have been necessary.
On boiling the shaped gnocchi, they’ll sink, then come soaring up to the surface in less than a minute, which is the desired behavior, and not really obtainable with watery potatoes. They should be light and fluffy, and can be sauced immediately.
eclare
I grew up in the south with bbq bologna, fried in a pan.
Barbara
@Carlo Graziani: You must really like gnocchi!
NotMax
@Carlo Graziani
Made carrot gnocchi as a side dish one time for a dinner party. Serving bowl was practically licked clean by the end of the meal.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Same. Mom murdered them as with any vegetable and so they were just limp, bland, teeny cabbages.
Fast forward decades and I tried them at our best Italian place where they were oven-roasted then drizzled with delicious things like balsamic vinegar.
Heaven, what even are these things?
Turns out we also have the Dutch to thank:
“In the 1990s, Dutch scientist Hans van Doorn identified the chemical in Brussels sprouts that made them bitter. According to findings published in van Doorn’s 1998 study, those chemicals were sinigrin and progoitrin, and once they were identified, Dutch seed companies were able to breed them out.”
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Everyone is different and growing up with a depression era mother where absolutely nothing is allowed to go to waste, like it or not, did at least teach me that I could exist on less food than I thought possible.
I can and have eaten a wide variety of foods and some things are just not eatable for some humans. I don’t know what dog poop tastes like but I imagine that brussels sprouts is damn close. I say this because I’ve seen dogs eat both. I also survived 3 1/2 yrs in the USN and only 2 months of that was the food in any way seemingly food. The first 2 months on board the ship I served on for 2 yrs, the person in charge of the food was absolutely the best at making minimal grade supplies into actual eatable food. You never questioned what it was, you took all of it and ate every last bite. Then he retired. I have a concept of what hell would/will be like from the next 22 months of “food.”
Carlo Graziani
@Origuy: Yep, Sicilian dialect.
wjca
Bacon: Come for the fat; stay for the salt.
Miki
@FelonyGovt: I’ve been using Paprika 3 for years and couldn’t live without it. It costs a few bucks up front for phones and tablets -$5 (and more for Mac or Windows – @$30), but it’s a one-time charge and more than worth it. I have it on my phone, my Kindle Fire (that I cook from), and my laptop.
You can create your own categories to organize recipes (e.g., cooking method, cuisine, general ingredient category, etc), search by name or ingredient or source, create shopping lists, plan meals by the day/week/month, plan menus, bookmark food sites in the Paprika browser, and effortlessly save and share recipes in the app.
There’s a bit of a learning curve but it’s not especially steep. And there’s tons of online help if you want it.
eclare
@Misswhatsis:
Same. Except my dad is a way too many generations Mississippian.
cckids
@wjca:
I guess it depends ;) As a parent, I was full-on whole wheat, low sugar, less processed foods, the whole shebang. When my son was in first grade, he had a sleepover with his best friend. Came home and told me “Brian’s mom makes the BEST grilled cheese in the world!” Ok, I thought mine was good, but what’s different?
Kid: “I wrote down the recipe for you!” In his 6-year old scrawl, it says “Velveeta Cheese. Wonder Bread”.
Ok then. So much for whole wheat and real cheddar.
Karen H
@FelonyGovt: There’s an app for that.
Paprika.com
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: I’ve read that whether you must use OO or not depends on the type of pasta you’re making. This person says you can use semolina flour, OO or all purpose to make cavatelli.
Someone on Mastodon posted a few times about making cavatelli, and it sounded – and looked, from her photographs – so lovely that I ordered a cavatelli machine from Amazon because it was relatively cheap – $29, but I still haven’t made any. So much food, so little time!
Delk
Heh, the last time I had a fried bologna sandwich was the first time I got drunk enough to toss it back up.
dc
Dark Brandon goes to Detroit:
https://mastodon.social/@indivisibleteam/111110852331989765
Jay
@wjca:
good bacon, (thick cut, naturally smoked) is wonderful.
cheap bacon might as well be made from rice paper soaked in salt and fat.
eclare
@Mel:
Add some parmesan cheese…
karen marie
@FelonyGovt: I email links to myself. I start an email with a subject like “chicken” or “bread,” then keep adding to it by “replying” to the original email with links to recipes that fit the bill. I try to include with the link any ingredients that are not staples so that when I’m looking for a recipe that uses particular ingredients, I can just search the folder where I store all my recipe emails.
Once I actually make something, I convert the recipe into a Word document and save it in the appropriate “recipe” subdirectory, including info on when I made it and any issues that might want to be addressed.
Kay
Ha! Love him.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
There are a lot of foods that can taste amazing with the proper preparation, especially food grown in the US because most of the food is grown for speed and volume here and doctored up to taste somewhat acceptable. My great aunt that I talk about above grew all her own veg and her family owned a chain of 5 grocery stores and raised their own beef. Eating at her house was absolutely nothing like any place else I’ve ever eaten. And I’ve traveled extensively, 46 states and large segment of northern Europe. Many places in Europe were very close, very few in the US came close.
New Deal democrat
Pro cooking tip from Buffalo: when you fry bologna, make one cut from the edge to the center so that it doesn’t warp like an old vinyl album left in the hot sun.
I’ll see myself out now.
Jay
@cckids:
whole wheat sourdough, old sharp cheddar, swiss, provalone and caramelized onions,………. sometimes ham as well.
narya
I blame my grandmother. (The Italian one–apparently the German one was a notoriously bad cook.) She was a spectacular cook, and my mother is, too, so I grew up eating very well. Not expensively–we weren’t wealthy–but well, so I just know what good food tastes like. Going to pastry school was, you’ll excuse me, icing on the cake. All of that makes eating crap fast food difficult; it all tastes like sugary salty pre-chewed mush. I also have cooked for myself for a very long time, which means I am able to waste very little and make a meal out of damn near anything–and now I have access to game, so I’m extremely fortunate.
With regard to pasta: I like to use about 2/3 whole wheat flour, because I like the added chew.
With regard to gnocchi, there’s a Lucky Peach recipe that transformed my gnocchi skills.
With regard to bologna, I’m from Jersey, so there’s the whole Taylor ham/pork roll debate, into which I refuse to wade. I haven’t had it in years, but I did like it.
Also with regard to bologna, I found a recipe for beer-braised cabbage (Cooks Country, I think?); instead of adding regular bologna, I add some venison ring bologna; mmmm.
Alison Rose
@Carlo Graziani: Unfortunately I can’t direct anyone to the best gnocchi in the nation, or at least the Western seaboard, because the restaurant that served it closed in 2021 after being in SF since the 1890s. Good gnocchi is a really blessing. Add a little pesto and it’s like magic.
Sphex
@FelonyGovt: eat your books is an app, and it lets you store online recipes!
NotMax
@Ruckus
One year (for whatever the reason was) the long time* female cooks at the summer camp where I worked could not make it, so a new one was brought in. African-American gentleman probably 6’5″ and weighing in at 300 if he was a pound.
Long story short, as a treat and to showcase his culinary skill, at one meal he made short ribs for 200+. Which ran out sooner than expected. At the same time, he’d been roasting a humongous turkey in one of the industrial scale ovens for the former owners of the camp, who lived each summer in a cottage on the premises and were expecting a party of guests for dinner.
Without blinking an eye when realizing the ribs weren’t going to stretch to the kiddies craving seconds (or thirds), he pulled out the turkey and carved it into servings.
When the elderly Quaker wife of the former owner hobbled down the hill to fetch the turkey, imagine her surprise when presented with an artfully arranged platter of cold cuts and cheeses instead.
*One of whom had started working in the kitchen there during the 1930s.
Delk
@FelonyGovt: I use an app called Paprika 3. It strips out all of the unnecessary stuff and saves the recipe and ingredients. It also allows you to scale the recipe.
Paprika 3
edited for link
karen marie
@Scout211: I do this but I organized it. Main directory: recipes, subdirectories: appetizers, bakery, meat main dishes, seafood main dishes, pasta, etc. Within those subdirectories are subsubdirectories, such as “bakery,” with subsubs for cookies, cakes, coffee cakes, muffins, etc.
I can either scroll through a directory or just search for an ingredient.
This works for me much better than printing and putting in a binder, because I can print a recipe as I need it, make notes of any changes I made or issues that came up that I can then add to the saved document for future use. Also, I don’t have to worry about spoiling the printed copy with spills. After I’m done, if it’s a wreck I throw it out. If it’s not, I cut it into quarters and add it to my scrap paper stack that I use to make grocery lists and other notes.
gratuitous
Somebody’s being gratuitous? Lemme at ’em!
Redshift
My wife’s father grew up in a Massachusetts mill town where the population was partly English ancestry (like them) and partly Italian. Ms. Redshift’s aunt (as I like to describe it) married an Italian and converted. As I heard the story, she had to learn how to cook Italian food well enough to satisfy his mother before they could get married. Her tortellini was to die for.
rikyrah
Somehow I fell into Nonna TikTok, both here and in Italy. I love watching them cook
The care they take when making fresh pasta or sauce💕💕💕
cckids
@Jay: Yum. But try selling that to the 6-year-old
karen marie
@NotMax: Roasted string beans are HEAVEN!
I got a big bunch of them at the local veg store and roasted them. Then I made mac and cheese (with cheddar, provolone, parmesan, and goat cheese). It was really good with the now cold roasted string beans. Like really good.
NotMax
@karen marie
Attempting organizing recipes on the computer is my version of the Winchester house.
:)
Papa Boyle
You know you’ve spent too much time on the Pasta Grannies channel when you find yourself craving a cheap but durable nonna knife.
NotMax
@Papa Boyle
Locally produced TV show in Minneapolis-St. Paul featured an Italian cook, Mama D.
Her go-to not so secret ingredient for most anything she referred to as SPOG.
Salt, pepper, oregano, garlic.
karen marie
@NotMax: This is something I’ve long struggled to understand. As a transcriptionist, I have always organized my directories simply out of self-defense. When I used to work directly for official court reporters, I would have to deal with their disorganization. Some allowed me to create a directory system for them that they used, others not so much. I had one client who saved literally everything in c:/.
Her computer crashed on the regular.
It’s a pain in the ass to get everything organized if you’ve been disorganized for a long time, but approach it slowly in that case. Set up your system and then, as you have time/inclination, move things into the appropriate folders.
It really does make life easier.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@MattF: I’ve been a lifelong brussels sprouts hater, but my older son finally convinced me to give them another try. He made me read an article about how the nastiest taste had been bred out of ’em. It’s true! They tasted good! at least roasted with bacon and maple syrup, but I’m not sure anything roasted with bacon and maple syrup would taste bad.
Jay
@cckids:
the trick is, you just make it.
My brother is rich, but cheap, with 5 kids, and a fundi. He could make an okay fettachini as his “date dish’, (jar sauce, dried pasta, ham, peas, no parmisan) back when we were single, but he lived off instant ramen.
So, back when we were still fraternal, he was always saying, “The Kids Won’t Eat That!”
And yet they did. 8 baguettes of Texas Garlic Bread, made with hot Ukrainian Garlic, gone. Choppino, gone, Jay Salad, gone.
Other than Thanksgiving and Xmas, when we would visit them, supper was often fried spam, white rice and frozen corn.
narya
I like Brussels sprouts roasted with a little olive oil, salt, and a splash of balsamic vinegar.
NotMax
@karen marie
Maybe once a year I get a bee in my bonnet and start tackling them. After a dozen or so i lose interest in the project until the next time the whim strikes.
Do have an ancient wooden file box of hand written recipes on index cards. Only organization there is each is filed alphabetically by name of the dish.
Really, half the fun for me is searching for a recipe and coming across something else yummy which had totally forgotten saving.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Your opinion on bacon is invalid.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUV4e58SkXc
NotMax
@NotMax
Oh, and a second file box with now yellowing recipes clipped from newspapers or magazine taped to index cards. Also filed strictly alphabetically.
All that in addition to a yard long shelf of cookbooks.
sab
Didn’t see the recipe but I saw the picture. I am horrified, but my husband would scarf up the whole tray.
Redshift
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): It’s true! Even without bacon and maple syrup, they’re good now!
When I was growing up, I would eat almost anything (unlike my siblings, who were pickier.) The only things I wouldn’t eat (after trying them once) were brussels sprouts and anchovies. But now brussels sprouts are fine in general, and can be good if cooked well, like most vegetables.
sab
@narya: Sounds delicious if you don’t have the HATE cabbage gene. I don’t have the hate cabbage gene,
Redshift
@NotMax: My mom finds it amusing how many of “her” special recipes we fondly remember were clipped from a magazine or on the box of some ingredient.
Mel
@karen marie: Yum! Would you be willing to share the mac and cheese recipe? It sounds delicious.
Ken
@dc: @Kay: We knew that already, right? There was that great campaign video where the spokesperson said Biden was the most pro-union President of the last fifty years. Then the other spokesperson said that what FDR started with the New Deal and LBJ advanced with the Great Society, Biden intended to complete.
(OK, it wasn’t exactly a campaign video, it was a bunch of MAGA types saying those things as if they were bad. But these are people who don’t like Mr. Rogers.)
Redshift
@sab: I don’t have the hate cabbage gene, but I seem to be more sensitive to bitterness than most people. So I like sauerkraut and cole slaw, but I don’t care for the raw red cabbage that gets put into too many salads.
Another Scott
@wjca: Speaking of fat and salt…
A few months ago I wanted to try out our Ninja Foodi indoor grill that we got as a gift. We don’t eat beef very often at all, so I looked for a decent package of fresh chicken. I found a package of organic chicken breasts with the skin on. “Hmm – this looks promising”…
Preheated the grill, opened the chicken package, rinsed it off, got a bowl and poured in some olive oil, added some
artisanal salt mined by monks in the hills of TurkmenistanMorton’s iodized salt. Plopped the chicken pieces in, sloshed them around in the oil and salt, both sides, then put them on the grill. Cooked them as instructed.Nicely browned, smells good.
Zooks! It was fantastic!! Chicken hasn’t tasted that good in decades. Whoever decided that chicken skin is death-inducing may be right, but man does it make chicken meat taste good.
Cheers,
Scott.
wjca
Free range, rather than raised in factory sheds, is a real plus, too. Amazing the difference a healthy environment makes. (Also for milk, eggs, chicken, beef,….)
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@cckids: My mom had a degree in dietetics. We ate nutritious, if thrifty (and not necessarily creative),food at home. My sophomore year in high school, 1964-5, I talked her into giving me lunch money for my school lunches. Then a friend who had lunch the period before me left half his bologna/Wonder bread/Hellmann’s mayo sandwich and a boy bought me 2 milks every day. That $.35 a day added up and meant soda money on the weekends.
UncleEbeneezer
Most recent/best cooking tip I learned, when making Vietnamese pork chops (with fish sauce, lemongrass marinade): use kitchen shears to cut 1-inch cuts in a radial pattern into the chop (making it look like a sun with rays shooting out), and then smash the pork chop as flat as you can get it. It helps it get super-marinated and since it is thin, you can get it nice and crispy on the grill without drying it out. A similar approach (without cuts) works well for Korean smashed cucumbers. The smash really helps get the marinade in there.
Doc Sardonic
And if that chicken skin gets crispy, but not burnt……….words fail
Gretchen
Someone recommended Nailed It on Netflix. She says it’s a very funny show about incompetent bakers.
Jay
https://nitter.net/francis_scarr/status/1705157558590169494#m
Hazmat
Growing up in northern Florida, one item in the semi-weekly school lunch rotation was the “flying saucer,” which was a piece of fried bologna with a scoop of mashed potatoes in the middle and a square of melted cheese on top! Betty, I don’t see how you escaped it!
@Betty Cracker:
sab
@Redshift: My sister (Episcopalian) married a Catholic guy in Massachusetts twenty five years ago. We are English Irish Scottish and Swiss.
The local padre who did marriage counseling was mostly concerned about marital tension if mother-in-law wouldn’t share her recipes. Apparently that is an issue in Italian households.
My British- American sister marrying into an Irish- French Canadian family didn’t want any recipes, and was sure her mother -in-law would have given them if asked.
I agree, but I would have asked for the recipes. My sister isn’t much interested in cooking.
narya
@Redshift: I love all of the brassicas–broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc.–but I cannot eat any of them raw. My body informs me that this is not acceptable, and I listen.
NotMax
@Redshift
If you’ve ever a mind to venture again into anchovy world, a good starting point is with cans (never jars) of anchovy-stuffed olives. Zero fishy taste. Only drawback is the darn things are addictive as bar peanuts.
Experience has shown that so long as the can is labeled “Product of Spain” you can’t go wrong. Serving them chilled preferred, IMHO.
Jackie
@Kay: That wouldn’t be the day TIFG shows up, would it?😉
sab
@Hazmat: Missed that in Daytona, but I could feed that to Ohio spouse tomorrow. He loves fried bologna.
Kelly
My standard wilderness breakfast was fried spam on sourdough rolls. Swab the rolls around in the grease. Ate the whole can, belly was the only place to store it. All that fat would keep me warm snow camping or winter whitewater. Yum, when I was under 30.
Mart
reminds me of that time Cole had a question about a character on “The Sopranos” and googled “Big Pussy.”
In the early internet days a salesman asked me if I had a sexual harassment in the workplace policy he could use. Think my favorite search engine was mama. Type in the query and thirty seconds later the IT woman (in the office in the good old days) is running down the hall screaming – Mart! what the hell are you doing?
RandomMonster
Betty, if you ever travel to the southern parts of Germany, go to a butcher shop (Metzgerei) and order a Leberkase. It’s basically fried bologna and it is something that approaches heaven.
CarolPW
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s what I do when I make pork schnitzel! It works really well when I am angry for something to take the energy out on. They become thin enough to see light through. With mango chutney they are sublime.
Betty Cracker
@Hazmat: I don’t know how I missed those culinary wonders either. I would have eaten that, dammit!
Speaking of school lunches, ours had horrid sheet pan pizza weekly — you’d get a rectangular slice with poor quality tomato sauce, bulk sausage and cheese. It was awful and yet glorious.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: Who doesn’t LOVE gnocchi?
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Alison Rose: my husband has been putting nut and raisin mixes out for our squirrels and they gobble up the nuts but leave the raisins. Eventually a bird will eat them. I thought squirrels would eat anything but obviously I was wrong.
Hazmat
@sab: It was pretty good! This was the 70s in Tallahassee. Seeing Betty’s comment to follow, yeah I remember that awful pizza too, but in the “school lunch” context it was appreciated.
Hazmat
@Hazmat: Awful and yet glorious captures it exactly.
karen marie
@Mel: I just make mac and cheese. I don’t use a recipe, because I been making it a looooong time.
But, basically, you start your pasta while you make the cheese sauce.
I’ve been trying harder lately to not let my cart get too far out in front of my horse, so I’ve been making smaller batches – like maybe two or three servings.
For each serving, cook approximately 1 cup of pasta. I like penne because the tubes fill with cheese sauce. Nom!
For each cup of pasta, melt one tablespoon of butter in a saucepan. With the heat not too hot because you don’t want to scorch anything, make your roux by adding one tablespoon of flour per tablespoon of butter and stirring it slowly for a couple minutes to cook the flour.
At this point, before you add the milk, you can add other dry ingredients – like dried mustard – 1/8 teaspoon per serving – ground black pepper, red pepper flakes if you’re feeling frisky. Then turn it into a white sauce by slowly stirring in one to one and a half cups of warmed milk per serving. Half and half is all I use because it keeps longer once open, and I mostly just use it in my morning coffee. Adding the milk slowly will serve to prevent lumps.
You don’t want your white sauce to be thick because the cheese will thicken it quite a bit.
I can’t give more than vague amounts for the cheeses because it depends on how much white sauce you’ve made and what cheeses you’ve got. If I had to guess, I’d say at least 1/2 cup of cheese per serving. You have to just eyeball it. I throw cheese in until I think the thickness is right. I like a fairly loose cheese sauce because it tightens up quite a bit, especially if you bake it – which is THE BEST!
That last batch, I had sliced provolone left over from something else. I diced up two slices for the two-serving batch, and threw that in with a couple or several handfuls of grated cheddar, maybe 1/4 cup of grated parm, and a couple big spoonsful of goat cheese. I love goat cheese in there because it adds a delicious creaminess. I don’t even really count the goat cheese in my guesstimate of 1/2 cup per serving, because it doesn’t cause any thickening. When heated, goat cheese loses most of its tanginess, so ignore the haters and put it in.
By now your pasta is probably finished cooking. Add it to the cheese sauce, keeping an eye on the pasta/cheese sauce ratio. You want the pasta in the cheese sauce to be fairly liquidy, because, again, it will tighten up. There are few things worse than a dry mac and cheese.
If it is on the dry side, you can add more milk at any point.
You can either eat it now or bake it.
To bake it, I make bread crumbs using whatever bread happens to be languishing in the back of the fridge by running it through the food processor, then bathing it in melted butter. You don’t want to toast the bread crumbs because you run the risk of them becoming too dark.
If baking, preheat your oven to 350.
Pour your mac and cheese into whatever containers you like – individual serving bowls or a larger oven-proof dish – then liberally cover with the buttered crumbs and shove into the middle of your preheated oven for the time it takes to get the cheese sauce bubbling and the buttered breadcrumbs toasty. It will take a minimum of 25 minutes, depending on size of the container.
The real key to a great mac and cheese, in my opinion, is tasty cheeses – and that’s entirely personal – that have a high meltability. That little bit of dried mustard adds a je ne sais quoi without making it taste overtly mustardy.
If you can make a decent white sauce, you can make an excellent mac and cheese.
PS: Salt. You might wonder why I didn’t mention it. I forgot. Taste the cheese sauce before you add the pasta (which should be cooked with a fuckton of salt – I fill the palm of my hand and add that much to the pasta water) and add salt as needed. Depending on what cheeses you use, you’ll want more or less added salt.
Chetan Murthy
@FelonyGovt: I typically CTRL-P and save to PDF, then mail the PDF back to myself. Or stuff it into Google Drive. For simple recipes (or where I don’t need all the discussion/images), I cut-and-paste into a Google Keep note.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Another Scott: I always use chicken thighs in recipes because it’s really hard to overcook them. The extra oil in thighs is the secret. I don’t like chicken breasts because they overcook in 2 seconds and then taste like cardboard.
mrmoshpotato
As someone who enjoys many, many YouTube cooking channels, I’ll be sure to steer clear.
OMG! BWHAHAHAHA!!!
Can one of the old guard dig up that post?
mrmoshpotato
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
PREACH IT! I don’t remember the last time I bought chicken breasts.
NotMax
@karen marie
Venerable feed, Horn & Hardart Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese.
Admittedly will often omit the tomatoes and cut back accordingly on the sugar.
NutmegAgain
Fell down a rabbit hole with those Pasta Grannies videos. Fun!
NotMax
@karen marie
Boiling the pasta in diluted chicken broth (like 3 or even 4:1 water to broth) noticeably ups the yummage.
satby
@FelonyGovt: Honestly? I just look them up again. I found myself doing that rather than rooting through the ones I printed, or even ones I had saved in my docs file.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: You should ask Steeplejack. His google fu is excellent.
billcinsd
@Doc Sardonic: My mom put a radius size cut in the bologna to stop the curling
billcinsd
@NotMax: The growers also did some grower things to make them taste better about 20-30 years ago
RSA
Those videos are an abomination. Okay, I guess they’re parody? but whenever I’ve watched one, and it doesn’t matter how long, I’ve thought afterwards, “What a fucking waste of time.”
There’s another genre of food videos that gets me unreasonably annoyed. A woman in the kitchen starts by saying, “This is sooo easy, and it’s sooo good.” She loads up a casserole dish or slow cooker with packaged food, where the measurements are given in terms of bags (“Use the whole bag of shredded cheddar”), or cans (“Two cans of Campbell’s mushroom soup”), or other containers–apparently it’s possible to buy chopped onions and such in little plastic containers at the supermarket. I understand that people have busy lives and may want to just assemble food and heat it up rather than play chef, but these recipes could be better conveyed in a few photos and a list of ingredients, because there’s no skill involved at all.
p.a.
The weather may be a pain in the ass here, but I’m happy to live where mortadella con pistacchio is as easy to find as bologna.
And yes, any fried pork product is gonna be a-o-k.
Alison Rose
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): MORE RAISINS FOR ME THEN, DANG IT 😬
UncleEbeneezer
@mrmoshpotato: I grew up eating mostly breasts because my parents bought heavily into the idea of them being healthier so they became our default. When I eventually started eating thighs they were too greasy for me. And I never really cared for legs (though I love wings). So my feelings are exactly the opposite of most. What everyone else thinks is too dry, is to me, what chicken is supposed to be (especially if they are coated in yummy fried skin because the slightly dry texture combined with the greasy skin gets just the right balance). I also love breasts because I find it much easier to rip the meat off them quickly without getting gristle or other weird crunchy parts in the mix. To each their own. Anyone who doesn’t like them, can pass those breasts my way.
UncleEbeneezer
@satby: I bookmark many. But I don’t use bookmarks on my phone and I’m often away from my computer when cooking so I just end up Googling the recipes again and usually recognize them immediately.
Or if it’s a recipe my wife found, I ask her for the millionth time “where was that recipe?” and get ready for extreme eye-rolling.
UncleEbeneezer
@CarolPW: Mmmmm…schnitzel… :)
gwangung
So pissed at Seattle police. Third incident by police department members being asshats to members of the Asian community.
NotMax
@UncleEbeneezer
Fairly cries out for nomination as a rotating tag.
:)
karen marie
@NotMax: I’ll boil the pasta in chicken broth – though I’m not sure it’s not sideways to the essential flavor of mac and cheese, but there is no way in hell I’m putting either sugar or tomatoes in my mac and cheese.
That’s just wrong.
Tony G
@Jay: Tucker Carlson really should move his personal ass to Russia A.S.A.P. He’d be much happier there.
NotMax
@karen marie
If in a particularly adventurous frame of mind, Beer Mac and Cheese.
Tony G
@NotMax: That’s right. 1970 was also the year that the girls in my high school stopped using hair spray and adopted a Joni Mitchell look. The days of fried baloney were over (at least in public).
NotMax
@Tony G
Remember back in the early to mid 60s when some secondary school girls would iron their hair to emulate Mary from Peter, Paul and Mary?
Mel
@RSA: See Sandra Lee and her infamous Kwanzaa Cake video for what might be the most offensive example of this. Wow. Just awful in every way, on every possible level. Terrible, glopped together pre-made food, along with lazy, disrespectful social ignorance, served with a side of cultural appropriation.
Kayla Rudbek
@FelonyGovt: I use the app Paprika on my iPhone and it works pretty well. I may have to go ahead and buy the desktop version.
Kayla Rudbek
@Ruckus: Brussels sprouts have been bred to have better taste in the last 10? years or so so they are not as bitter as when you or I were younger.
RaflW
@NotMax: Also, if one hasn’t had a brussels sprout in, say, 20 years, they actually taste different now. They’ve been selectively bred for over decades to be less pungent and with a higher sugar content (which makes them taste better, and caramelize more in the oven).
FelonyGovt
Just getting back to this thread. THANK YOU to everyone who shared their recipe organizing tips!
JAFD
@Ruckus: I like Brussels sprouts. They don’t like me. I eat them for dinner, they hold a protest march around my guts at 3 AM …
JAFD
@FelonyGovt: Have you tried ClipMate ? Extends the Windows clipboard to unlimited size – 50,000 items in mine. have been using since ’96, wouldn’t be without it – organizeable into folders & subfolders, searchable. Downloadable at thornsoft.com – 30 day trial, will nag you if you don’t pay the $35
bluefoot
I know this is a dead thread, but having grown up in Buffalo, I didn’t know that fried bologna wasn’t a thing in the rest of the country. It’s quite tasty – at least my younger self though so.
Logan Brown
@raven:
I love how many veggies are in this version. It seems like most of the recipes I have go lighter on them which goes against what I remember from my time at Tulane
SWMBO
I follow several cooking “shows” on YouTube.
This is a Canadian that used to be on their public tv. He gives you easy to follow directions and he has several different things he does. One is cocktails. One is “what’s on sale in the grocery store this week”. One is the Old Cookbook Show. One is Sunday morning cooking. Different recipes and techniques and he’s just so easy to follow his instructions. Glen and Friends Cooking
https://www.youtube.com/@GlenAndFriendsCooking
This is Chef Reactions. He watches videos and comments on what is being cooked. He rates the food and whether or not he would try it.
https://www.youtube.com/@chefreactions
The Anti Chef is a guy who picks a cookbook and tries different recipes. He has a whole string of Julia Child’s The French Chef recipes including ones he couldn’t get to work. He will show what happened, how he worked around it, and then tastes it on camera. He screws up like I do so I like him a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/@antichef
One that I discovered recently was Crazy Korean Cooking. It’s a Korean woman and her parents trying different cuisines and comparing them to their own cuisine. I love watching them look suspiciously at food then their faces light up when they try it.
https://www.youtube.com/@crazykoreancooking
CiCiLi cooks Asian and she is really good at explaining what she’s doing. She has an English channel and an Asian one.
https://www.youtube.com/@CiCiLi
That ought to be enough rabbit holes for today.
SWMBO
@SWMBO:
Crap I nearly forgot Nonna Pia.
https://www.youtube.com/@nonnapia2896