Comments on: Giveaway! Salt of the earth…the sea…the mountains

By: Vicki

Vicki — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:44:15 +0000

Love new recipes, as well as treasured old ones…..
My mom used to make the best ribs, we called them “Captain Geiger’s Ribs” (Dad was Navy, but no one knew a Capt. Geiger??)…. the house would smell wonderful and warm, and later when I married and had a son, he too loved them. To cut the mess, we put an old shower curtain under his antique (circa 1906) high chair, and let him at it! Talk about a mess, but he loved it!! To this day, it’s a ‘comfort food’, and has made me a really good online email pal, who has become much more than an email buddy!! they even came from Mo. to Fla. to see us!! The power of the ribs!!!

By: inkgrrl

inkgrrl — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:45:09 +0000

Just grabbed the new book – yay! And OMG Black Lava Salt kumquat margars… I have to figure out the ingredients for that. Wonder if it would handle a bit of white cardamom?

By: Barbara O'Neal

Barbara O'Neal — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:39:38 +0000

Elena, that cocktail does sound amazing! I bet it was beautiful, too.

That’s a pretty love-rich dish, too, isn’t it? Thanks for posting it.

By: Elena Geesey

Elena Geesey — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:10:56 +0000

Although the salt has already been awarded, I couldn’t resist the chance to post one of my favorite childhood memories in the comments. (Also, had the MOST amazing cocktail at an upscale local locavore restaurant, a kumquat margarita rimmed with Black Lava Salt! the waitress brought me the bottle to examine and apparently filtered black charcoal, it’s not just for aquariums anymore!)
my mom was a stay at home mom, my dad worked for the government during the day and at his small business fixing cars in his garage in the evenings. So most of my time was spent with my mom, my dad was not so much the caregiver. But when I would get sick, sick enough to stay home from school, he would go in the kitchen and cook up hamburger meat, drain the grease, and scramble eggs in with the meat as a special dish for me that his mom used to cook for him when he was sick as a child. My mom would fuss the whole time about how such food was too rich and too difficult to digest (she was a Here, snack on this sodium free roasted soy nut kind of mom) but he would wave aside her protests and serve it to me anyway.
Scrambled eggs with hamburger meat. Seasoned with love.

By: Barbara Samuel O'Neal

Barbara Samuel O'Neal — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:33:39 +0000

The winner is…..Connie O’Donovan, and Connie, it’s funny that you won with the second post, so fate was on your side with that typo.

Seriously, everyone, I loved these tales. Matzo brie! Hamburger soup (that sounds so homey!)! And oh, heaven….potatos fried in bacon grease.

Check back early next week for the BEST giveaway! Seriously, I’m so excited.

Thank you all for playing, and have a happy holiday week!

By: Katy Cooper

Katy Cooper — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:28:10 +0000

Oh, man! I didn’t think I had any childhood food memories…and then I read the comments, and a few came bursting through.

The first one is from when I was 4-1/2 or 5 years old, coming home from nursery school — I rode the bus, I felt like such a big girl — and my mother making me cream cheese and grape jelly sandwiches. The stickiness and tang of the cream cheese made the grape jelly cooler and smoother and sweeter.

The second one is from when I was 6 and 7 years old. We lived in Turkey — my dad was a U.S. Air Force officer — and in the afternoons, the maids and gardeners in the neighborhood would gather behind our house to have lunch. My brother and sister and I would go out back after our own lunches and beg bread from our maid, Sherifa. I can’t believe she would let us do that, but the bread was amazing: dense and a little sour, the kind of bread that makes you understand “the staff of life” even when you’re a little kid.

My last memory is of the fried potatoes my dad would make. He’d fry some bacon in a cast iron skillet. He’d take the bacon out and saute potatoes and onions in the bacon grease in the bacon fat, then add the bacon, crumbled, before serving. Deadly, but oh-so-good. He was a wing-it cook, making things up as he went along…and I just realized that that’s probably where I get my habit of thinking, “I’ll bet it would be really good if I substituted this for that…” (Like turning a recipe for pumkin bread into a recipe for triple-berry bread…)

By: Mary Reed McCall

Mary Reed McCall — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:18:54 +0000

Ah, your post brings up so many memories of good, home-cooked food, made for a horde (me, my six sisters, our father, and usually a few friends, or in summer two “Fresh-Air Fund” sisters from NYC…)

Ok – one favorite is a simple “Hamburger” Soup my mother always made (from a 1960′s recipe) with warm corn muffins made from scratch on the side, oozing with melted butter pats. The soup used browned ground beef and featured a delicious water-based broth derived from gently sauteed onion, celery with their tops, and peeled, sliced carrot, and enriched with stewed tomatoes and their juices. She also often threw in a beef bouillon cube after she’d added the water. No starch of any kind was needed in the soup at all – but the corn muffins served that purpose (and were great for sopping up the last drops of broth!).

I still make that soup today, but it never tastes as good as when my mother made it.

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane! I think I’ll call my mother now and see if we can squeeze in a pot of that soup while I’m home for Christmas!

By: Barbara Samuel O'Neal

Barbara Samuel O'Neal — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:17:15 +0000

These are so wonderful to read! More, more! (Don’t be shy–none of us care about typos or perfect English, only your story.)

By: Marcy Brown

Marcy Brown — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:11:21 +0000

My dad was – and is – a great cook, so many of my memories are his foods. My favorite weekend breakfast was matzo brie – fried matzo – the jewish version of french toast. I used to always wonder why mine was never as good as his, until asking him, he revealed his secret – he didn’t fry it in butter or margarine – he fried it in schmaltz – chicken fat!

Also we ate it savory, with salt and pepper, as his family did. So I think I can put the salt to good use!

By: diane

diane — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:44:47 +0000

Your delightful post was so perfect for a day like today. It made my memories come alive with a beautiful meal that I treasure. Many years ago my grandmother lived with us and would cook and bake all the great treats and meals. One that I remember vividly was a tasty eggplant parmesan, delicious brisket and veggies and then her most wonderful dessert, apple cake.