Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Hooray, my favorite NY spots made the list - Spuyten Duyvil and The Angel's Share. Spuytin Duyvil is the best beer bar I've ever been to, and The Angel's Share is the kind of hidden, classy joint that makes me feel like a millionaire everytime I walk in. Quality establishments, for sure.

I stumbled on that page before Christmas and decided that would be my homemade gift for my friends this year. Foolishly, since I was too lazy to try and convert all of the measurements for the Pocky sticks recipe into imperial, I used a different recipe, and my finished sticks were so brittle and fragile that it was virtually impossible to keep them in one piece for dipping and wrapping. So, I ended up snapping them all in half and ending up with twice as many smaller Pocky. Not quite right visually, but the flavor definitely translates. Next time I'll use NQN's recommended recipe, thanks to Planet Green's conversion, and I bet they'll be perfect.

Ridiculously enough, that spinach dip you make with a packet of Knorr vegetable soup mix. Its nothing even resembling interesting or original, but lets face it, everyone loves the stuff (including me!)

I also get requests for homemade pickles, marshmallows, and cookies on a regular basis (and no, not all together!)

I don't care about who gets served first, who gets their menu first, who's asked for orders first, etc... that stuff is trivial. What DOES irritate me is that most of the time when I go out with my bf I'm paying, and 9 times out of 10 the waitress will take my card with the check, and then automatically hand it back to my bf for a signature. Why does everyone automatically assume he's paying? Its not that hard to look at the card, notice the name, and figure out its mine. That bothers the hell out of me.

How's 19/20 sound? :-p The only one I missed was the Cracklin' Oat Bran, probably because it was the only one I've never eaten.

I used to eat a lot of cereal as a kid. Not so much anymore - now that I have to buy my own food (darn adulthood) its just way too expensive for me most of the time. Besides, I try to avoid buying pre-processed, pre-packaged food as much as possible. Breakfast in my house is usually fruit or a homemade bagel.

Well, having grown up in the New Haven area of CT, I'm sad that Ashley's ice cream seems not to have even been mentioned. However I've never been to any of the other locations, and however good I may think Ashley's is, its entirely possible that they just don't measure up. Its probably just nostalgia more than anything else for me :)

Am I the only one who never, ever wants to see any of these people get their own show? I haven't even watched more than 5 min of NFNS and I've had enough of them. As if Food TV needs anymore fluff shows... they've got plenty already that have bullied most of the really GOOD chefs off the air (or at least off the prime tv spots) and if I see one more super-perky Rachel Ray or Sandra Lee wannabe, I think I'll cry.

I really can't think of an ingredient I'd call a deal breaker, mostly because I figure there is almost always something I can substitute to get a decent result (this comes from having food allergies to a lot of really common ingredients, like peanuts and bananas and lentils). In terms of technique, deep frying is usually a deal breaker, partially for health reasons, partially because of the inevitable mess during and after, partially because of the inherent difficulty and danger involved in actually doing it right. If a recipe calls for some complicated technique to make something that's essentially a garnish or whoe result is entirely aesthetic (ie not crucial to the taste of the dish) I'll generally skip it, but it won't stop me from making the recipe. Anything that requires tools I don't have (a pressure cooker, meat grinder, or a food processor larger than 2 cups, for example) has the definite possibility of being tossed, if I can't think of a way to fake it manually.

All things considered it takes a lot for me to shy away from a recipe - I like to think I'm pretty adaptable in the kitchen and do a decent job of winging it.

As someone with a similar, though not quite as long, laundry list of food allergies, I can totally relate to these women and what they were trying to accomplish. My peanut allergy is the worst - I don't dare go to Thai restaurants that I don't already know are safe (I have found a few here and there) because even if I communicate to my server about my allergy, the cooks invariably are not as attentive to the matter as they ought to be. I almost never venture to get anything anywhere that's deep-fried, for fear that peanut oil would be the frying fat of choice in that particular establishment.

The commenters on that article are jerks... not everyone ends up with food allergies because they were over-protected as children (I certainly wasn't!) and its not our fault that we have them. Its something we have to live with, and although I understand the frustration on the part of restaurant managers and chefs when confronted with these issues, implying that they were being unnecessarily demanding or saying that they're hypochondriacs is incredibly unfair.

Anyone who'd ever experienced a severe allergic reaction to their food because of a dangerous ingredient that they didn't know was there would never react that way.

The Aerogarden is great but a little touchy - our first two attempts with herbs were very nearly dismal failures aside from the basil plants that WOULD NOT DIE. I've determined that it was an issue of placement rather than a problem with the system itself, however - we first had the system set up on sort of a rolling cart underneath a window, and as our windows are old and not well-sealed, I believe the air that may have been seeping around the edges had a negative effect on the plants (as well as allowing bugs and parasites to get at the plants). Now we've set the system up away from the window in more of a central area, and our current crop of hot pepper plants are thriving. We'll definitely retry the herbs in the new location - I believe we'll have more success this time.

seadkdc: Well, I suspect the local spots that I consider "pubs" are not in the sense that folks on the other side of the pond would define them. In my experience (in the U.S.) a pub can be a family spot during the day, but at night it'll more-than-likely become, for all intents and purposes, a bar. And I've seen more young children in these places full of adults, after dark, sitting next to parents clutching beer bottles or martinis, than I can count. I'm sorry, but that's inappropriate.

I don't doubt it's different elsewhere, I'm just speaking from personal experience.

I'm actually upset about this, I really enjoyed the breakfast sandwiches. Thought they were better than the ones at Dunkin Donuts, anyway. Sigh.

But I still love their coffee, way more than any other chain coffee shop/fast food joint. I'll keep going there, sandwiches or no sandwiches.

Jarlsburg swiss, caraway havarti, or Prima Donna (which I've only ever had once but it was some of the most delicious cheese I've ever tasted)