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Book a Week 2015 - W15: Haiku for you


Robin M
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Jenn, if you have access to good white fish or clams, you can make it yourself. Might be easier than traveling across the country. My family does it this way: You fry a piece of salt pork, then fry some onion in the grease. You boil some potatoes until they are just barely soft. Use just enough water to cover the potatoes. You gently poach the fish in a little water until it is just done. You put all that together, including the water, and add milk. If you want it rich, you can use part cream. Heat the whole mess, being careful not to boil it. (That spoils the texture.) Cool it and then reheat it when you want to eat it. If you use clams, you steam them and take them out of their shells first. You eat it with chowder crackers. We make the oyster stew for Christmas Eve about the same way but using oysters and no potatoes, unless you have children who won,t eat oysters, and you eat it with donuts then. We make a cheat version using a couple of pieces of bacon instead of salt pork when we have leftover fish.

My family doesn,t have much of a down east accent but even we go pretty lightly on that last 'r', so it really is chowdah.

 

Nan

 

It might be easier to just fly to the east coast and wait for you to come rescue me from the airport!

 

We've never poached fish or steamed shellfish of any kind.  Any and all seafood gets grilled at our house...

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It might be easier to just fly to the east coast and wait for you to come rescue me from the airport!

 

We've never poached fish or steamed shellfish of any kind. Any and all seafood gets grilled at our house...

(Jane happily envisions eating chowder with Jenn and Nan...)

 

Not being a pork eater, I use turkey bacon in my chowdah. It was one of the things that I made sure The Boy had before departing for the Midwest.

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Poaching is easier than grilling. You just rinse the fish (assuming it is in edible form), put it in a pan width a little water, and simmer it until it is opaque. I,m fuzzier about clams. I haven,t eaten those at home as an adult. We prefer mussels and we don,t make chowder out of them. Around here, the fish markets sometimes have something called cheeks which make really good chowder and are cheap but any white fish will work. Or salmon. My sister just grilled a whole salmon for her mil,s birthday and is going to make chowder out of the leftovers. Lobster stew is similar. It is usually just leftover lobster, butter, and milk, in my house. What do you do with leftover seafood? Most of ours goes into chowder.

 

Nan

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(Jane happily envisions eating chowder with Jenn and Nan...)

 

Not being a pork eater, I use turkey bacon in my chowdah. It was one of the things that I made sure The Boy had before departing for the Midwest.

If I am making the chowder for just me and my husband, I fry the onion in butter and skip the pork part. It isn't,t quite the same, but we like it anyway.

 

Nan

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Poaching is easier than grilling. You just rinse the fish (assuming it is in edible form), put it in a pan width a little water, and simmer it until it is opaque. I,m fuzzier about clams. I haven,t eaten those at home as an adult. We prefer mussels and we don,t make chowder out of them. Around here, the fish markets sometimes have something called cheeks which make really good chowder and are cheap but any white fish will work. Or salmon. My sister just grilled a whole salmon for her mil,s birthday and is going to make chowder out of the leftovers. Lobster stew is similar. It is usually just leftover lobster, butter, and milk, in my house. What do you do with leftover seafood? Most of ours goes into chowder.

 

Nan

We use cheeks in fish tacos. I have a great source for local clams so I regularly make chowder and clam sauce for pasta.
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I just found out that it's Educator Appreciation at B&N and tomorrow is the last day. So go tomorrow! I stopped by this evening, but didn't get to spend much time. Picked up a new set of Bob books, a how to draw knights and castles and how to draw dinosaurs books, a Calvin and Hobbes, Kumon workbook, and the Hardy Boys set. 

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(Re: The Magician's Book) --

 

Can either or both of you elaborate on that part a little bit? I'm curious because I've always been loath to read The Outsiders as an adult because I loved that book so much when I was a middle-schooler. It holds a really special place in my mind & heart, but I'm slightly afraid if I read it as an adult, the spell will go away. Kwim? Has anyone else here done that?

 

I can't elaborate on The Magician's Book as I haven't read it yet (put it on hold  :laugh: ) but I'm a big re-reader -- so I've reread many, many of childhood favorites as an adult.  Some of them many times.   Some of them hold up and some of them don't -- and some of them held up for many years and then suddenly don't.   Ironically some of them only fell apart for me since I had kids of my own (late compared to many).    But even when they don't hold up for me any more I don't feel like it has ruined my childhood memory -- it's more like it just makes it so I don't want to reread that particular book again.  An example -- I reread An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott many times (every 5 years maybe?) -- then suddenly the last time I read it her moralizing really got to me and I haven't reread it since.  But I still have fond memories of this book.    Same with LOTR, I read that almost once a year for many years, and then went down to every few years, and then not at all for maybe 10 years -- and when I just reread it I kept thinking "geez, he's so wordy and over the top about everything!" -- but I still love the 'story'.   (FWIW I haven't had any 'shockers' though where I had missed some 'adult content' -- that kind of thing might really change your opinion!)

 

Along these lines, I have found the same for certain adult books.  A book might fascinate me for a number of years -- matching something in my psyche apparently.   And during that time I reread it often.  Then it slowly loses it's luster and I stop rereading it.  But I still remember fondly -- I just don't reread it anymore.  I'm looking forward to seeing what she says in The Magician's Book and whether/how her theory matches my experience.

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Smoked salt?

Fish tacos?

I love corn chowder. And succotash. We make that with the leftover corn on the cob when we can get shell beans.

 

Too bad it's Sunday and the fish market is closed. Now I want chowder. : )

 

Nan

 

ETA I,m a big re reader, too.

Just finished Final Curtain, skipping all the cat bits.

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Nan-- I have to ask because Google didn't really answer and I am curious....Are chowder crackers different from oyster crackers? Looked like maybe a shape issue. Obviously there is one beloved brand that calls itself a chowder cracker, but other then that do people just use oyster crackers? Homemade?

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Nan-- I have to ask because Google didn't really answer and I am curious....Are chowder crackers different from oyster crackers? Looked like maybe a shape issue. Obviously there is one beloved brand that calls itself a chowder cracker, but other then that do people just use oyster crackers? Homemade?

Yes. In my experience, anyway. Oyster crackers are salty. Chowder crackers aren,t. Usually, we just have oyster crackers, since that is what stores carry. Sometimes we can find pilot biscuits, which I like much better. Chowder crackers (or biscuits) are hard round balls. When you do find them in stores, they tend to taste stale, so you might be better off going for the pilot biscuits unless you live somewhere where people buy them all the time. I,ve never tried making them, but I,m lazy about food. That,s why I like chowder. : )

 

Nan

 

ETA I am SO not an expert in chowders or traditional New England foods. My family has clung to some recipes (I use the word loosely lol) - bread, Johnny cake, chowder, succotash, thanksgiving pudding, a Christmas dish called Judge Peter. They tend either to be special holiday dishes or really everyday things like chowder or bread. I know our chowder is like other people,s home made chowder because I,ve eaten it at other people,s houses or church suppers. My experience isn't,t very wide, though. : ) Opinions on crackers and things probably vary a lot.

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Well I have made oyster/chowder crackers before (just learned that there was a difference).  I found a cutter for them in my husband's family's New England cottage.  Looks like a mini biscuit cutter.

 

About chowder in general:  New England uses cream or milk, Manhattan is tomato based.  There is also a Carolina version with neither. 

 

Here is a recipe:

 

http://www.carolinadesigns.com/blog/hatteras-island-style-clam-chowder/

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Well I have made oyster/chowder crackers before (just learned that there was a difference).  I found a cutter for them in my husband's family's New England cottage.  Looks like a mini biscuit cutter.

 

About chowder in general:  New England uses cream or milk, Manhattan is tomato based.  There is also a Carolina version with neither. 

 

Here is a recipe:

 

http://www.carolinadesigns.com/blog/hatteras-island-style-clam-chowder/

 

Actually, neither are chowder. They might be a damn fine fish stew, but they aren't chowder.

 

 

I have put my little squirrel foot down!

 

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