True, once you get past Smirnoff, a decent mid vodka, you are paying for a fancy bottle. However, really cheap vodka, the kind in plastic bottles, is drek.
Belvedere bottles are beautiful. I met a Pole who told me about the Polish presidential palace. As he explained he began crying; a combination of homesickness, patriotism, and the bottle we had emptied.
Nostrovia!
You know those places were around before the Mad Cow hysteria right?
Here’s my rule on this. There’s nothing wrong with putting ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago. They got pumps right there at Wrigley and Soldier field. However, a Chicago dog, by definition, does not have ketchup on it. So as soon as you put ketchup on a Chicago Dog, it becomes a hot dog with ketchup.
Are you mixing up deep dish with thick crust? Good deep dish pizza should not be doughy at all. The crust isn’t really that much thick than a New York slice.
I’ll expand the rule and say that any mixed-meat dish is a waste of either of the meats.
I like casseroles.
There’s a trend for high-end cheeses to be made from a mixture of different types of milk (cow, sheep, and goat). Some are even made from all three types. I’ve tried them, and they lack character. Each type of milk has its own properties, and mixing them results in a sort of generic, uninteresting cheese.
Meyer lemons are fine for marmalade, but they’re not as good as regular lemons for most purposes.
Yes. They were very odd. Despite liking both grapes and cotton candy, I didn’t care for them.
Oh my poor child. Do you have no sense of taste? Nothing should be served so hot or so cold that you can’t taste it properly.
Yes, this guy gets it!
That sounds delicious. I’m not willing to work a third that hard for a burger, but feel free to invite me over.
Me too, me too, kayaker. I’ll bring pie.
That’s not how it works; the garnish doesn’t define the drink. It’s also still a martini if you use a lemon twist or olive as well, with the lemon twist actually being the most authentically genuine garnish.
The martini is a combination of gin, dry vermouth and orange bitters- all 3 things, not 2 out of the 3.
Vodka drinks in general are for amateurs IMO; if you’re going to drink something with spirits, why get the one that is intended to be tasteless? Almost every vodka drink could be done with either white rum or gin just as well.
It’s in the same league as those clowns who buy expensive bourbon or rum and then drink it with Coke! You may as well buy Jim Beam and be done with it for a lot less money.
<small voice>I like Jim Beam.</small voice>
They now say that Meyer Lemons (which I have drunk gallons of lemonade from in my day, since I was not without a prolific tree from age ten to age sixty) are not really lemons at all, but hybrid of the Citron and an extinct cultivated species in China which also gave rise to the sweet orange. They do have an entirely different taste than lemons do.
I love this snipping about martinis. I’ve never even seen a martini except in films. I don’t a soul who drinks cocktails except one friend who made it a mission one year to make all the drinks in some mixology book. The next year she had to give up drinking entirely because she realized she was becoming an alcoholic but that’s another story.
Well, depends on what formulation you’re going for. Yes, the early recipes did have bitters in them, but the standard IBA (International Bartenders Association) martini does not include bitters; just gin & vermouth, and a garnish of olive or lemon twist. I’m sure now that curiosity of historical drinks, the rise of mixology, and the contemporary fondness for bitters, has perhaps reintroduced bitters into the equation, but in my prime drinking years, they were all bitters-less.
In the 60s, there was even a tongue-in-cheek paper that outlined an American Standard for Martinis titled K100-.1-1966 American Standard; Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis that calls for three ingredients in martinis: gin, dry vermouth, and olives, and has very strong opinions about the inclusion of onions, calling it an “unpardonable form of perversion” and “the unholy abomination produced by the introduction of one or more pickled onions into a dry martini cocktail.” 
(They also have strong feelings about the inclusion of lemon peel, calling it “lemonade” and “there is no place for the rind of any citrus fruit, or its oils, in an American Standard dry martini.”)
Obviously, that’s not to be taken seriously (and I totally disagree with a lot of points in that paper, especially regarding the dryness of the drink), but I am making a point that even in the 60s, orange bitters had dropped out of martini recipes. They don’t even seem to be mentioned in that paper, implying to me that the martini’s bitters connection had long been forgotten by that time in the mainstream.
As for the gibson, yes, I’d consider it a subset/type of a martini. Your feelings on pickled onions will determine your feelings about calling it a martini, but I can’t see a way to argue that it is not at least a type of martini or a martini variant.
Damned skippy, and tofurky is the work of the devil. Chocolate sugar free tofutti [fake ice cream] was actually amazingly good though. Worked because the tofu had no real taste so the chocolate was the dominant flavor.
Rochester area kid, to us Genny Cream was the cheap local spew … amused the hell out of me the first time in a bar in Norfolk VA when I saw it treated and priced like a premium beer … snicker
I love a good butter cream when it is made with butter instead of palm shortening …
Agreed, with a great steak, classic bake and something like either creamed spinach or asparagus with hollandaise it is part of the classic steakhouse experience. Though someone else commented that iceberg is just crunchy water, I like it plain just a wedge eaten a leaf at a time when I am bored, want a snack and don’t feel like dedicating many calories to said snack. Salad wise, I prefer a mix of romaine, spinach and butter lettuce.
I explain this by using one of my childhood comfort foods and linking to a pDF of a particular archeological interest with a recipe that is moderately able to be considered the historical ‘original’ of my comfort food, and I can even discuss where the variances between the two recipes wandered in historically… page 10, brush off your German … the way Mom grew up making it was the american midwest depression era available locally ingredient version of a family recipe from at the latest 1635 [when the family emmigrated over here] and rather obviously wasn’t a new recipe back then … but I base my version with hot italian sausage or keilbasa as the protein, I use the ‘classic 3’ of onion, carrot, celery, add as much garlic as I figure it needs, cabbage, spinach [my mom liked mustard greens] potato or turnip [though parsnip, rutabaga or skerrit is also good] great northern beans or cannelloni beans, barley or hata mugu ‘barley’, millet or flax, pepper, summer savory, thyme, parsley [or italian herbs if I am lazy and out of something] and defatted homemade chicken stock. Protein wise, you can use whatever you can hunt or harvest - had it with everything from squirrel to bambi, beef, pork, salt cod [just say that was not a good experiment … but fresh salmon chucked in last minute worked well] and various forms of sausage. It roughly works out if made right to the proper 10 parts vegetable, 3 parts carby stodge and 3 parts protein - it would not be uncommon for me to put a pot on the night before and simmer all night and have it as everything I eat the next day [in proper nutritional pyramid cashion]
ROTFLMAO sounds about right.
And I adore our sous vide setup [anova wand, 12 qt tupperware bin and lid with tiny round hole cut out, metal rack in the bottom to hold bags]
The thing I like the best is that I can chuck in a piece of dead animal and set the temp, wander away and it will hold at the final doneness and temp for hours and hours and hours which for us is good - if we can’t set down to dinner at the instant it is ready, no issue, when we get around to it is fine. It makes the best poached fish or chicken, steaks come out at a perfect 130 degree f blood rare and all it need is a bit of fast maillard browning. I make egg custard in a 1 pint mason jar, 2 cups milk, 2 eggs, splenda to taste, chuck in vanilla or almond extract and some nutmeg, pop the yolks and shake til blended, pop in at 130 f for 90 minutes starting cold and when it is done, pop it into the fridge after popping the seal on the jar, and I have perfect egg custard. Not to mention you can actually hot can stuff in it without needing to hit boiling - just the 160 degrees for the proper time … I also have an air fryer and an instant pot, all tools in the kitchen [just like there is more to a tool box then a hammer, a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench, though you can easily manage a lot of different jobs, sometimes you need different tools]
And yes, I can and have cooked complete medieval style feasts for 60 plus people over an open fire, appliances are nice.
On the other hand, it’s not that unusual for cocktails with very minor variations to get different names. Like a Greyhound is gin (or I guess vodka these days) and grapefruit juice; add a salt rim, and now the drink is a “salty dog.”
Define “properly”. Coffee is designed to be drunk hot, so saying you can’t taste it properly when it’s hot makes no sense. Might as well say ice cream can’t be properly tasted while it’s cold.
Yup. You ever read the story of Grey Goose? They came up with the name and designed the bottle, the last thing they did was find the vodka to put in the bottles.
Is this what that Kardashian was talking about? My favorite morning news host quoted her as saying having cereal with milk was life changing for her, she grew up without it. I assumed that meant she ate it dry. Can’t even imagine that.
My weird thing is ketchup on my cottage cheese. Had it for years, then found out Nixon liked it also. Not sure how to feel about that.
You could have ended that with “I might have never been to Chicago.” And if you have never been to Chicago, you don’t know. You think we export the good stuff? Come to Chicago and visit The Art of Pizza on Ashland. They sell deep dish by the slice and it’s amazing. Whatever you do, ignore anyone who tells you to visit Unos, Due or Gino’s East - all are mediocre tourist traps. Heck, Giordano’s and Edwardo’s are far better than those three.
The first three are a slightly different style than the last two. And the original Uno’s and Due’s are fine. I haven’t been to Gino’s since college, so can’t comment on it.
Giordano’s sells stuffed pizza. Stuffed pizza has an extra very thin layer of dough on top. It was invented by Nancy’s back in 1972 (going by memory. I might be off by a year.) Edwardo’s is also known for their stuffed (and, IMHO, much better than Giordano’s, but I don’t like Giordano’s, which I suppose could also be a controversial culinary comment. I’ll take Uno’s and Due’s over Giordano’s for sure.) I know I’ve seen some pizza place that actually sells both deep dish and stuffed on their menu, but I can’t remember which one.
But, as mentioned before, a proper, standard deep dish (or even stuffed) should not be overly doughy. It is not like your typical pan pizza or a Detroit style pizza or a Sicilian style pizza or a Digiorno’s rising crust frozen pizza. Those all generally have quite thick crusts. All those styles are far doughier. Depending on the place, though, the edges can sometimes be a bit on the doughy side on a deep dish.
That said, it is a heavy pizza, especially if you get the Malnati’s “disc o’ sausage.” I’m not the biggest fan of the style, but once or twice a year I do get a hankering for some deep dish.