FOOD

This story originally aired March 7, 2018. In this week’s Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I dredged up our earliest memories of food. Nancy recalls wolfing an entire stick of butter. I tell how years later I learned what my grandmother’s “special” soup was really made of. All that plus shopping for live chickens, Nancy’s lima bean phobia, wax flakes in the milk and collapsing straws in this week’s Early Food Memories show.

I wouldn’t say I’ve always hated my broiler. Only when I have to use it. Which is why I dread the recipe that ends with "Finish under the broiler."

Nancy Leson’s raving about Fuschia Dunlop’s update to her classic cookbook “Land of Plenty.” “I’ve been cooking a lot out of 'Food of Sichuan.'"

Even I’m surprised that a mayo maniac like me never bothered to make it myself. But after years of reading how the commercial version was such a pale, pathetic shadow of the homemade, I thought I’d give it a shot. Especially since the recipe I found claimed it was not only foolproof, but could be made in two minutes.

Some people get the cold shoulder. Nancy Leson got the whole shoulder. A complete right shoulder replacement. Now she has to convalesce. Bad enough she’s not allowed her customary daily half-hour on the speed bag. The real bummer is that, for the next month, she’s forbidden to cook! I checked in with Ms. Leson to see how she’s holding up during her month in the No Cook Zone.

Nancy Leson asked me how the horseradish got its name. It's not because of its resemblance to a certain part of a horse. And it's not because horses like to eat it – the stuff's actually poisonous to them. The "horse" in horseradish is just an antique adjective describing anything large or strong. For my taste, the stronger the better.

I didn’t want to do this topic. When Nancy Leson suggested we talk about making fresh pasta I scoffed “Nahhh. Nobody wants to make fresh pasta, and even if you do want some you can just buy it at the store.” Her reply, in the form of a link to a YouTube video convinced me to make some fresh pasta myself.

Nancy Leson and I both love sausages of all kinds. We keep them on hand for quickie weeknight meals and for some recipes better suited to a weekend cooking project. We agree that it's better to buy sausage in links than loose. If you need the sausage loose, you can always have the fun of squeezing it out of the casing like meat toothpaste.

The buzzards circling over the restaurant gave me pause, but we went in anyway. I figured we were all in search of the same thing, namely dead meat, so I looked at them as a kind of endorsement. Like seeing a line of semis parked outside. In a moment of hubris, I ordered a Wretched Excess burger. You know the kind: six inches high and packed with extras. A burger that if you tried to pick up and eat the usual way would dislocate your jaw. "DeGroot," I told my wife. "I've gotta Aunt Pat this

At the end of this encore segment I brag to Nancy about my intention to bake a giant Cheez-it -- and made good! Here's a link to the story about a Cheez-It the size of an LP cover . A man and woman meet in a bar and get along perfectly — same sense of humor, same favorite authors and movies, food, music; they're a perfect match. Naturally, they wind up at her place that very night. There on the living room floor he sees a dead horse. "My God," he exclaims. "A dead horse!" "Well," she shrugs, "I