voyager

Mary Risley, one of SF's top cooking instructors, simplifies Thanksgiving in this irreverent video.

+1!

You can’t leave us dangling. You’re moving out of Brooklyn. You’re filing for Medicare. You’re having a double wedding with small h.

Actually, my favorite order! Albeit usually deboned, rather than your autopsy version.

Ours sells food, wine and flowers + a handful of own-brand toiletries. I certainly couldn’t call it a supermarket.

Hmm. I remember first encountering this in a midtown French restaurant late-60s as a crepe filling. Love at first bite. Have to admit I had little idea what I was ordering.

Dijon and Brussels are blessed in heaven. Sprouts in mustardy vinaigrette have converted dozens of BS haters.

Okay, dukes up. To be honest, bagels are simply too heavy for me. Putting cream cheese on top of one of these lead balloons is the same kind of perverted logic but practical solution as putting whipped cream on chocolate mousse to "lighten it up". I can actually see how getting rid of some of the heft would create a decent filling base, but if that's your thing, why not just go for a baguette? Why try to make the proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear. I'll concede that a bagel warm out of the oven has its charm, but hours later, no go. But this is true also for bread in general, Poilane, Acme and Tartine included. Just my picky bread opinion.

"...at that point you have to just admit you don’t really want a bagel at all.” Yo!

Another aside. Tests are such an arbitrary screen. Our son always tested easily, without stress and showing his best self. Simply his nature. A friend of his told how he had to press his knees together to keep his whole body from shaking when taking a major test. Again, simply his temperament. Doesn't seem fair to award either of them on the basis of the same test.

An aside, San Francisco had for 100+ years a superb academic public high school. VERY difficult to get into, even from the most rigorous private schools. Recently, it was proposed that it was too heavily weighted toward Asian students, put to a vote and its requirements and curriculum modified to suit a less rigorous norm. So now we have no free, public high school recognized nationwide for excellence. If there's a win here, I can't see it. FWIW, for some 30 years my aunt was the Latin teacher at this school. She joked that she loved teaching Latin, not just for its discipline, but because since it was not a required course, she had no qualms kicking an obstreperous kid out of class. When I got to college, many kids were from this school. When they heard that she was my aunt, they were in awe. Apparently she was herself an institution.

Yes.

Absolutely! The problem was with the mismatch of student and school. His high school college counselor shook her head and said that this was an utterly foreseeable disaster, that she/we/he should have realized how totally foreign this school would be for an "outside the mould" kid from a super-liberal California city.

This kind of attitude is worth noting. Our son was wooed by and given early admission to a small ivy league that that year was deemed No 1 in the country. City born and bred, he found himself a fish out of water in the minuscule New England town, finally yelling "uncle" near end of first year. "Get me out of here!" Wound up in an enormous urban school, where he flourished. BUT, although he had accessed counseling at the first school, once he expressed a desire to leave, not one outreach from school staff asking for reasons or offering help. "Pack your bags, kid. There's hundreds waiting for your spot!" eta a favorite anecdote. He told how he realized how out of place he was when in chemistry class, he looked down the aisles and counted 23 pair of Sperry Topsiders and one pair of yellow Converse hightops.

That's not entirely a bad thing. It starts the "We are not they" conversation early on. Our son went to lower and middle with the likes of Gettys and other lesser but incredibly wealthy names. He came home from an early play date with the comment, "Funny family. David has four mothers and three of them have brown faces." He didn't know about housekeepers, cooks and nannies. And/but he soon understood that some people live very differently from us and from anything to which we might aspire. And that some of those people are "perfectly nice" and others of them are not. LESSON: don't get sucked in by the latter.

D-i-l texted last week from dinner at Le CouCou. No report on the food yet. She was excited to be there since we had taken her to several dinners at two of Daniel's restaurants in Paris.

I'm not a big spender but I've seen many starters no larger than the infamous shrimp that are priced at/near $28. I boggle that this was unfamiliar to Sietsema. Are food critics allowed to carry chips on their shoulders?

I dunno. IMHO this article parallels Eater's latest hit piece. I can't say that I'm convinced.

Ah! codfish cakes! A childhood memory and favorite.

It's hard to single out Single Thread as guilty promoting “luxury visitor dining at the expense of local residents.” The entire Sonona/Napa area has become both destination and retirement residence of the loaded.

Tripas is very prevalent in NorCal taquerias. As you say, no relation to tripe.

In today's journalism, it's (fill in the blank) "The writer clearly doesn't know the difference between ____ and ____." Apply to your favorite category.

Get a Bamix immersion (stick) blender. Rinse under hot water, stand to dry, put away.

High of 91 here today. TOO HOT for me. No relief until Sunday/Monday.

In France, when it's 'too early" for me for wine, I order panaché, French shandy. Not very sweet, a good drink.