Chit-Chat: What's On Your Mind Today?

[PRgal]

18 minutes ago, oliviabenson said:

Now I want lasagna haha

Me too.  I've only made lasagna twice - once using oven-ready noodles and the other, using matzoh sheets during Passover.  I'm too nervous that I'd fail.  The oven-ready ones were okay, but not as good as restaurant or frozen.  

[oliviabenson]

20 minutes ago, PRgal said:

Me too.  I've only made lasagna twice - once using oven-ready noodles and the other, using matzoh sheets during Passover.  I'm too nervous that I'd fail.  The oven-ready ones were okay, but not as good as restaurant or frozen.  

Frozen lasagna is fine by me. I don’t cook lasagna anymore. I used to. 

[Gramto6]

I just discovered that Rao's makes a frozen lasagna! I tried it and like it the best of all the frozen lasagnas I have tried! Last time I was in the another grocery store, I found Rao's frozen Raviolis too, I hope they are as good as the lasagna.

[oliviabenson]

9 minutes ago, Gramto6 said:

I just discovered that Rao's makes a frozen lasagna! I tried it and like it the best of all the frozen lasagnas I have tried! Last time I was in the another grocery store, I found Rao's frozen Raviolis too, I hope they are as good as the lasagna.

I saw Rao’s frozen pizza. I tried their frozen meal I forgot which one. It was okay.

[Gramto6]

16 minutes ago, oliviabenson said:

I saw Rao’s frozen pizza. I tried their frozen meal I forgot which one. It was okay.

No question, fresh made lasagna is the best.  But for one person, the frozen is my go-to.  I thought it was pretty good and much better than the other frozen options.

[Caoimhe]

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

No one makes Irish food in my husband's family. 

There aren’t that many decent foods to make! Aside from when the family sends us a breakfast box (rashers, proper sausages, black and white pudding, brown bread) we eat the same stuff here that we did back home. I might bake some brown bread or scones once in a while but that’s about it.

[peacheslatour]

11 minutes ago, Caoimhe said:

There aren’t that many decent foods to make! Aside from when the family sends us a breakfast box (rashers, proper sausages, black and white pudding, brown bread) we eat the same stuff here that we did back home. I might bake some brown bread or scones once in a while but that’s about it.

My mom used to make corned beef and cabbage on St. Pat's Day when I was a kid. And there is my extensive knowledge of Irish cooking.

[EtheltoTillie]

I love soda bread, and I love corned beef and cabbage, I must say.  But on my husband's Irish side, there was one person, his father, who died long ago.  He was not a cook LOL.  There was no extended family. 

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, peacheslatour said:

My mom used to make corned beef and cabbage on St. Pat's Day when I was a kid.

So did mine, but I didn't care for it; I'd eat a little bit of the meat, but mostly just eat salad and whatever the side dish was.  I like cooked cabbage now, although I prefer it raw (I love cooked Brussels sprouts, though), but as a kid I didn't, and I'm not into corned beef.

1 hour ago, Caoimhe said:

There aren’t that many decent foods to make!

Very true.  Ireland has a lot of things going for it, but its native cuisine is not one of them.  I like soda bread and a few other things, but so much traditional Irish food is way too meat and potatoes for me. 

I love this, from Kathleen Madigan's Bothering Jesus special, about friends who love Hawaii asking her - who goes to Ireland as often as they go to Hawaii - if they would enjoy Ireland:

Quote

Well, they’re both an island.  Ireland, however, would have no vegetables or sun.  I don’t know if those two things interest you, but they are fresh out.  It is not a healthy place.  That’s why I feel at home there, and that’s why I like it there.

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by Bastet

[shapeshifter]

9 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I love this, from Kathleen Madigan's Bothering Jesus special, about friends who love Hawaii asking her if she - who goes to Ireland as often as they go to Hawaii - would enjoy Ireland:

Quote

Well, they’re both an island.  Ireland, however, would have no vegetables or sun.  I don’t know if those two things interest you, but they are fresh out.  It is not a healthy place.  That’s why I feel at home there, and that’s why I like it there.

It’s getting cold and dark here in Rochester NY. I miss Hawaii. My parents lived there for 30 years. At least half of those years I went there for a couple of weeks. I haven’t been in 8 years and never will go again.

[Caoimhe]

1 hour ago, peacheslatour said:

My mom used to make corned beef and cabbage on St. Pat's Day when I was a kid. And there is my extensive knowledge of Irish cooking.

That’s what is served to American tourists.  There is such a thing as spiced beef but it’s not all that popular, I think I only had it once in my life!

[peacheslatour]

4 minutes ago, Caoimhe said:

That’s what is served to American tourists.  There is such a thing as spiced beef but it’s not all that popular, I think I only had it once in my life!

It's kind of funny because my mom's dad's family came from Dublin. She and my aunt always wanted to go there but my dad preferred the Continent so they never went.

[oliviabenson]

Anyone else has a sore throat/coughing? As soon as I got over my last bug I came down with something else. Sigh.

 

[roseha]

In regard to Irish food, I have visited Ireland twice the last two years - Donegal and Galway, and what I love the most is the Irish Brown Bread and the Seafood Chowder, neither of which I can get here in the US.  I believe the brown bread uses a different kind of wheat flour than ours?  And seafood chowder is so wonderful but no one around here seems to think it's worth the bother of making it.  The one other place I've been that consistently has it seems to be Newfoundland, perhaps the idea came with their Irish immigrants.

There seems to be an Irish bar every few blocks in Manhattan but you seem to more likely to see nachos on the menu than the food I liked in Ireland!

Of course they have good fish and chips which you can get here, but I should add that their scones are so much better than the hard sugary ones they have in NY.

I agree though that I don't remember anyone in my family having a recipe handed down from Ireland, though my grandmother who was born there lived on a farm in the Midwest, so far away in every sense.

[Quof]

During my vacation in Ireland, I don't believe I ate a single vegetable (besides potatoes).  I did eat a lot of soda bread, cheese and lamb. 

I was determined to find a perfect soda bread recipe when I returned home. 

A colleague moved from Ireland to North America and I made some for her. She got teary eyed and said "That's the best bread I've had since I left home." 

[ginger90]

According to my familiar knowledge of Irish dishes, corned beef and cabbage isn’t an Irish meal. In Ireland pork was a more popular meat to use. Cows were sacred, and beef was expensive. Lamb was the meal for Saint Patrick’s Day. Corned beef was actually something Irish people came to afford here, since they made more money here eventually, they purchased it at Jewish delis, and cabbage was cheap.

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, ginger90 said:

According to my familiar knowledge of Irish dishes, corned beef and cabbage isn’t an Irish meal. In Ireland pork was a more popular meat to use. Cows were sacred, and beef was expensive. Lamb was the meal for Saint Patrick’s Day. Corned beef was actually something Irish people came to afford here, since they made more money here eventually, they purchased it at Jewish delis, and cabbage was cheap.

In the 1960s, one of my best friends, who lived a few blocks away in our nuevo-middle-class Boomer suburb, was one of 8 kids in her Irish Catholic family. They had moved to the burbs from Chicago when we started high school. When I was invited to stay for dinner her mom remarked with surprise that I was apparently enjoying the corned beef and cabbage.
It's not so different from corned beef on rye with sauerkraut on the side. 😉

[oliviabenson]

Corned beef used to be $1 a pound lol. Now it’s $6. 

[oliviabenson]

Why does the store need to scan my id to buy cold medicine??? I’m about to have some and hot tea. 
 

Getting older sucks, everything hurts and cracks. My knee hurts and I didn’t even do anything.

 

I want to be 20 again.

[TattleTeeny]

 

5 minutes ago, oliviabenson said:

Why does the store need to scan my id to buy cold medicine??? I’m about to have some and hot tea. 

Meth.

[peacheslatour]

2 minutes ago, TattleTeeny said:

 

Meth.

My son once found a bag full of empty Sudafed boxes, like there were 30 or 40 of them. The bag still had the receipt. I called the cops but they just said to throw the boxes away. 

[TattleTeeny]

Did you tell us this once before? I feel like I remember a similar story -- though I suppose yours is, sadly, not the only one just like it. Or maybe I am having a weird deja vu!

(Also, PSA: Walgreen's does not appreciate drug jokes when you need allergy meds, haha!)

Edited November 17, 2023 by TattleTeeny

[Anela]

People get pretty down on English food, but I love it. Some of it. Roast potatoes, with the Sunday roast. Yorkshire puddings, that I'm going to try to make this year. I don't like mince pies. I don't like fish, but I miss the chips. apple pie and custard. real fresh cream doughnuts. 

I can't remember what I used to like as a kid, though. I thought date buns were one thing, but I also thought they were rock cakes, which contain raisins. I should ask my aunt. 

This should probably go in the food forum. I saw these little cupcakes with raspberry filling, and a raspberry buttercream frosting. I might make them without the frosting, because those two sticks of butter can go somewhere else, and I'm not going to parties. sadly. There is a cookie exchange at the library, so I might join in with that. 

[peacheslatour]

2 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

Did you tell us this once before? I feel like I remember a similar story -- though I suppose yours is, sadly, not the only one just like it. Or maybe I am having a weird deja vu!

(Also, PSA: Walgreen's does not appreciate drug jokes when you need allergy meds, haha!)

Did I? I probably did. 

[TattleTeeny]

7 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

Did I? I probably did. 

No shade -- just wondering! And it's so crazy too, especially that they wanted you to just throw it away. Yeesh!

Edited November 17, 2023 by TattleTeeny

[peacheslatour]

4 minutes ago, TattleTeeny said:

No shade -- just wondering! And it's so crazy too, especially that they wanted you to just throw it away. Yeesh!

I thought with the CREDIT CARD receipt, they'd at least want me to bring it in.

[TattleTeeny]

JERKS!

[annzeepark914]

Well, Swedish food, at least what I've had, is nice but it doesn't have the wide variety of Italian...don't think any cuisine can top Italian! Swedes do have lovely desserts. I went to Hair Cuttery the other day as I just wasn't up for washing/drying/styling my hair (arm in brace for muscle strain). The hairdresser is from Iran so of course I immediately started talking about my love for all the foods from that part of the world. We exchanged tips on great ethnic restaurants. And, my hair looks really good 🤗. I'm going back on Wednesday so I'll look good on T-Day. We're going to my cousin's for dinner.

[shapeshifter]

Has anyone here ever used Shutterfly to print a kids board book?

I just spent most of the day uploading and formatting the scans of paintings that were used for a book published a couple of years ago. The so-called author and I had creative differences, heh. 

Anyhoo, after 🙃 I completed my order I did a quick check of reviews, and found this review from PC Mag:

Quote

Shutterfly Review
Expensive prints, so-so quality
THE BOTTOM LINE
Shutterfly's prices are higher than many of its competitors and its print quality is lackluster. The service has a good website, however, and if you use the mobile app, you get free prints.

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/shutterfly

I'm hoping the hi-res images I uploaded will improve the quality. 

I was going to check out this site: customboardbooks.pintsizeproductions.com
but then my daughter said she had used Shutterfly and I should too.
The next thing I knew I was in my techy-art zone for about 5 hours. 😄
(It's an alphabet book, so over 26 pictures, and I discovered I hadn't transferred them yet to my new laptop. So that's done now too.)
Shutterfly had about a 30% discount, and then when I signed up, I got free shipping too, so, how bad can it be?

Edited November 17, 2023 by shapeshifter

[Bastet]

5 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:

don't think any cuisine can top Italian!

I love it, too, but love both Thai and Chinese far more.  If I had to make a top five, I'd probably say:

1. Thai
2. Chinese
3. Mexican
4. Italian
5. Indian

But ask me tomorrow and four and five might be different; even making a top ten is difficult.  And that's just keeping it general; start ranking regions within each of the ten broad categories and it would be way too hard -- just bring me all the food (but hold the potatoes!).

I'm off today and all of next week.  We can't make our trip for Thanksgiving this year due to my mom's health/mobility issues at the moment, which is a huge bummer, but I would only have been able to join them for a short time due to my cat's medication schedule.  So I've decided to embrace the extra time to shop for and prepare food, and make a nice, leisurely break of it all, hoping everyone is alive and healthy to do the usual next year.

Accomplished so far today:  Had a Bloody Mary and popped a spinach pie in the oven (a variation on an Ina Garten recipe, which is basically spanikopita on steroids).

The rest of today's to-do list:  Meal plan and make grocery list.  Read book in backyard.  Watch a couple of screwball comedies in bed with the cat. 

Weekend:  Football.  Food.  Booze.  (So, the usual.)

Lots to do; back to it I go.  😄

[Caoimhe]

16 hours ago, roseha said:

In regard to Irish food, I have visited Ireland twice the last two years - Donegal and Galway, and what I love the most is the Irish Brown Bread and the Seafood Chowder, neither of which I can get here in the US.  I believe the brown bread uses a different kind of wheat flour than ours?  And seafood chowder is so wonderful but no one around here seems to think it's worth the bother of making it.  The one other place I've been that consistently has it seems to be Newfoundland, perhaps the idea came with their Irish immigrants.

There seems to be an Irish bar every few blocks in Manhattan but you seem to more likely to see nachos on the menu than the food I liked in Ireland!

Of course they have good fish and chips which you can get here, but I should add that their scones are so much better than the hard sugary ones they have in NY.

I agree though that I don't remember anyone in my family having a recipe handed down from Ireland, though my grandmother who was born there lived on a farm in the Midwest, so far away in every sense.

I try not to eat bread any more but my old brown bread recipe uses whole wheat flour along with added wheat bran and wheat germ to give it the right texture. I’ve made it here in the past and it’s a decent substitute.  (I did succumb to the McCambridge brown bread on the flight back here last month! My husband doesn’t like it so I got his slice too.)  I only bake scones once a year or so.

One thing I really miss are the packs of assorted smoked fish that I always used to make a seafood pasta.  There just isn’t the same sort of thing here.  I have made seafood chowder but these days I just don’t cook enough to bother with it.

[emma675]

I'm going on a big, bucket list trip the day after Thanksgiving and I've been getting the recommended vaccines for the past few weeks. The typhoid vaccine has kicked my ass. Luckily it's the last one and hopefully my immune system and my lymph nodes calm down soon (one has popped out in the front of my neck, ugh). I want to put up my Christmas decorations and I need to run errands ahead of next week. 

My top five cuisines would be:

1. Italian 

2. American (I like cheeseburgers, lol)

3. Mexican 

4. Chinese 

5. English 

[Browncoat]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Has anyone here ever used Shutterfly to print a kids board book?

I just spent most of the day uploading and formatting the scans of paintings that were used for a book published a couple of years ago. The so-called author and I had creative differences, heh. 

Anyhoo, after 🙃 I completed my order I did a quick check of reviews, and found this review from PC Mag:

I'm hoping the hi-res images I uploaded will improve the quality. 

I was going to check out this site: customboardbooks.pintsizeproductions.com
but then my daughter said she had used Shutterfly and I should too.
The next thing I knew I was in my techy-art zone for about 5 hours. 😄
(It's an alphabet book, so over 26 pictures, and I discovered I hadn't transferred them yet to my new laptop. So that's done now too.)
Shutterfly had about a 30% discount, and then when I signed up, I got free shipping too, so, how bad can it be?

I've used Shutterfly to make several books of photos from vacations, and I've been quite pleased with the results.  I've found it to be really easy to upload photos, and to arrange them on pages.  I don't let Shutterfly do it, though -- I do all the layout myself.

[JustHereForFood]

2 hours ago, Anela said:

People get pretty down on English food, but I love it. Some of it. Roast potatoes, with the Sunday roast. Yorkshire puddings, that I'm going to try to make this year. I don't like mince pies. I don't like fish, but I miss the chips. apple pie and custard. real fresh cream doughnuts. 

I can't remember what I used to like as a kid, though. I thought date buns were one thing, but I also thought they were rock cakes, which contain raisins. I should ask my aunt. 

This should probably go in the food forum. I saw these little cupcakes with raspberry filling, and a raspberry buttercream frosting. I might make them without the frosting, because those two sticks of butter can go somewhere else, and I'm not going to parties. sadly. There is a cookie exchange at the library, so I might join in with that. 

I like it too. There are fewer dishes that I can eat now that I'm a vegetarian, but I used to like all of those meat or fish pies before. And there are several side dishes and desserts that I love. Interestingly, it was a bit hard to find a good cookbook for British cuisine. If I remember correctly, I only found a good one in Britain, while there are always several for almost every other cuisine in bookstores everywhere. I can't stand food that is too spicy, so several foreign cuisines are immediately out for me. I like food that many consider bland, lol. Although, most of the stuff I can cook is just very general, probably not specific to any country. 

[Caoimhe]

13 minutes ago, JustHereForFood said:

I like it too. There are fewer dishes that I can eat now that I'm a vegetarian, but I used to like all of those meat or fish pies before. And there are several side dishes and desserts that I love. Interestingly, it was a bit hard to find a good cookbook for British cuisine. If I remember correctly, I only found a good one in Britain, while there are always several for almost every other cuisine in bookstores everywhere. I can't stand food that is too spicy, so several foreign cuisines are immediately out for me. I like food that many consider bland, lol. Although, most of the stuff I can cook is just very general, probably not specific to any country. 

Delia Smith’s was one of my go-to cookbooks.  I had it out recently to do a lamb tagine!

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, Browncoat said:

I've used Shutterfly to make several books of photos from vacations, and I've been quite pleased with the results.  I've found it to be really easy to upload photos, and to arrange them on pages.  I don't let Shutterfly do it, though -- I do all the layout myself.

Right. It took a long time because I wanted to be sure the pictures filled each page with no bits of white on any edges, but also I didn't want to cut off any of the picture unnecessarily, and I forgot until it was done that I had baked into the layouts some room for edge loss. 
So it would have been a lot faster if I did regularly.

They have a lot of color in the backgrounds, like:

   
  I just hope the quality of the printing isn't cheap looking.

Edited November 18, 2023 by shapeshifter

[Browncoat]

It does take me a while when I set up a book, for the same reason -- I want it to be just so.  

My books have all turned out well, and I don't think they look cheap.

[peacheslatour]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Right. It took a long time because I wanted to be sure the pictures filled each page with no bits of white on any edges, but also I didn't want to cut off any of the picture unnecessarily, and I forgot until it was done that I had baked into the layouts some room for edge loss. 
So it would have been a lot faster if I did regularly.

They have a lot of color in the backgrounds, like:

   
  I just hope the quality of the printing isn't cheap looking.

No, these look great!

[roseha]

@shapeshifter your images look lovely. 

My only experience recently is with a company called Presto Photo, I made a small square soft cover book of some of my photographs with them two years ago.  It would cost about $15 to make it again (it was 20 pages).  I liked the print quality although mine were black and white so I don't know about doing color.

 

[EtheltoTillie]

On 11/17/2023 at 5:36 AM, Quof said:

During my vacation in Ireland, I don't believe I ate a single vegetable (besides potatoes).  I did eat a lot of soda bread, cheese and lamb. 

I was determined to find a perfect soda bread recipe when I returned home. 

A colleague moved from Ireland to North America and I made some for her. She got teary eyed and said "That's the best bread I've had since I left home." 

Please post the recipe!  I'm want to perfect a soda bread.  I'm still working on challah too. 

On 11/16/2023 at 11:47 PM, roseha said:

Of course they have good fish and chips which you can get here, but I should add that their scones are so much better than the hard sugary ones they have in NY.

 

Sheesh NYC scones . . . hockey pucks. 

[Quof]

https://www.crumblycookie.net/2010/03/21/brown-soda-bread/

[annzeepark914]

32 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Sheesh NYC scones . . . hockey pucks. 

Really? Hockey pucks? What happened to all the great bakeries in NYC? Can you city folks still get hard rolls? I left NYS in '76 & have sooooo missed hard rolls (without the poppy seeds on top, of course!) They were so good for breakfast with sunnyside-up eggs & bacon. Also good with cold cuts. I wonder if anyone still makes them.

[EtheltoTillie]

1 hour ago, annzeepark914 said:

Really? Hockey pucks? What happened to all the great bakeries in NYC? Can you city folks still get hard rolls? I left NYS in '76 & have sooooo missed hard rolls (without the poppy seeds on top, of course!) They were so good for breakfast with sunnyside-up eggs & bacon. Also good with cold cuts. I wonder if anyone still makes them.

Well, here's a multipart answer:  Where are the great bakeries?  Many traditional bakeries are gone, but replaced with other types.  This has nothing to do with scones.

Scones were never a NYC thing until maybe the 80s; I never had one until maybe the 70s or 80s.  So this is not a lost art.  It's an art that never got established.  Starbucks sells them, and other coffee houses, mostly.  Starbucks scones are passable. 

Hard rolls:  Hmm, do you mean a Kaiser roll?  If so, they're still around.  Egg on a roll, roast beef on a roll.  A deli or coffee cart staple.  But they're not hard, so maybe that's not what you mean. 

[EtheltoTillie]

2 hours ago, Quof said:

https://www.crumblycookie.net/2010/03/21/brown-soda-bread/

Well, that's not the bread recipe I was expected, but it must be something traditional that your friend grew up with, and I'll give it a try. 

[peacheslatour]

9 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Well, here's a multipart answer:  Where are the great bakeries?  Many traditional bakeries are gone, but replaced with other types.  This has nothing to do with scones.

Scones were never a NYC thing until maybe the 80s; I never had one until maybe the 70s or 80s.  So this is not a lost art.  It's an art that never got established.  Starbucks sells them, and other coffee houses, mostly.  Starbucks scones are passable. 

Hard rolls:  Hmm, do you mean a Kaiser roll?  If so, they're still around.  Egg on a roll, roast beef on a roll.  A deli or coffee cart staple.  But they're not hard, so maybe that's not what you mean. 

Maybe they meant hard French rolls? I'm having a hell of a time finding them here in Seattle too. And don't even get me started on French dip rolls. They seem to have gone extinct.

[Quof]

In NYC, my go to scone is the cherry cream at Amy's Bread. 

[peacheslatour]

28 minutes ago, Quof said:

In NYC, my go to scone is the cherry cream at Amy's Bread. 

Not this Amy?

 

[Quof]

No 

[EtheltoTillie]

I’ve never been to Amy’s. I will try it at some point, but their locations are a little out of the way for me. 

[annzeepark914]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Hard rolls:  Hmm, do you mean a Kaiser roll?  If so, they're still around.  Egg on a roll, roast beef on a roll.  A deli or coffee cart staple.  But they're not hard, so maybe that's not what you mean. 

The crust was like the crust on French bread, crispy. But inside the roll was soft and had the taste of French bread (real deal French bread!) I heard a while back, from people in my section of the mid-Hudson area, that those bakeries that were so popular back in the 50's--70's, are gone. So maybe that's happened in NYC as well. Those family-owned bakeries would make hard rolls, Black & White cookies, onion rolls (now called bialys but back then they were just onion rolls), a roll we called White Mountain rolls that were soft with a sprinkle of flour on the top, wedding and special occasion cakes, coffee cakes, donuts, various pastries, etc.