Terry B's Profile

To me, garnishes have come a long way since the parsley on the plate (and I honestly don't remember seeing that anywhere in a long time). Now it's still a visual element, but it also adds to the flavor. And being added at the last minute, it holds its distinct character instead of having been cooked into the dish. Even the formerly silly parsley garnish brings a fresh flavor to the plate when finely chopped and sprinkled over the food.

This is totally my aesthetic taste, just not my budget.

Great tips on Craigslist hunting! I've only found a couple of things there, but they've been biggies. First, tickets to a sold out rock show the day of the concert and, even bigger, our current apartment.

I remember reading a story somewhere about a family trying to recreate a deceased grandmother's glorious chocolate chip cookies. She had never written the recipe down, and various family members did everything but hold a séance to contact her spirit to figure it out. Then someone baked the recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chips package. Bingo.

I don't have an answer about your specific problem, but in a sort of related direction, never store onions and potatoes together. It will hasten the spoiling of both of them.

The late, great Charles Brown, of course, singing Merry Christmas, Baby. And a nice, shiny piano black would be lovely.

Just google hotel towel rack and you'll find numerous suppliers. We bought an 18" variety, which took some doing to find, but we had a narrow space. Can't remember where we got it [sorry], but we like it a lot. Here's a link to a 24" model. Keep in mind, the overall width is slightly wider than 24", which is the width of the shelf itself.

Good luck!

In looking for apartments in Chicago, I would call phone numbers in ads or on signs only to hear a dozen beeps or more of people who'd called and left messages before me. So I developed this tactic. When I left the message, I would say, "I realize you're getting tons of calls about this apartment. Here's why you should call me first." Then I would quickly market myself--good job, reliability, "I love the neighborhood" [so they know you're not going to show up and reject the place because of where it is], I've lived in my current place X years, etcetera. It worked. I found one place where we lived for 10 years, and we're in another great place now where I used the same technique in an email responding to a Craigslist ad.

I had the pleasure of meeting Nupur at a blogging dinner event in Chicago this summer. I'm happy to report she's just as charming and smart as her blog is!

We have a couple sets of flutes--well a whole one and an earlier partial set that caused us to buy the new one [we couldn't find the old style anymore]. We also have a set of white wine glasses and five glorious red wine glasses from Tiffany's, the remainder of another couple's wedding present. They NEVER drink wine [the missing sixth glass broke in a move], so passed them along to us. They are so thin and light, like glass bubbles, it's almost like drinking from air.

The last time we bought white wine glasses, we found some in open stock that were very close to the remaining ones we had, so we were able to just buy some replacement glasses. Our initial plan had been to buy two or three similar but obviously not identical styles to mix it up at the table. But they weren't different enough, and it just looked like a mistake. Still, I wouldn't mind to try to do that again sometime.