Netla, here are some excerpts from my "Better Homes and Gardens Heritage Cookbook" for the "New Amsterdam" section (which became New York). "The Dutch earned a reputation for prodical use of their excellent dairy products. Wrote Peter Kalm in 1749, 'In the evening they made porridges of corn, in the center they poured fresh milk . . . As they ordinarily took more milk than porridge, the milk in the dish was soon consumed . . . After that they would eat some meat left over from the noonday meal, or bread and butter with cheese . . . " Some 200 years later my Dutch grandmother had some kind of hot cereal porridge every day for breakfast. "Cabbage for Coleslaw was only one of the many fruits and vergetabes frown in New Amsterdam gardens. An attorney, Adrian Van Der Donck in "A Description of the New Netherlands," 1653, describes the wealth of those gardens. The kitchen gardens, 'consist of various kinds of salads, cabbages, parsnips, carrots, dill, sorrel, radishes, cresses, leeks, and esides whatever else is commonly found in a kitchen garden. The herb garden is also tolerably well supplied with rosemary, lavender, holy onions, dragon's blood, together with laurel, artichokes and asparagus, and various other things on which I have bestowed no attention. We have also introduced morecotoons (a type of peach), almonds, figs, several sorts of currants, gooseberries and thorn apples . . . " Some of that sounds incredulous to me given the NY climate. But maybe they were just trying a bit of everything to see what would work. Washington Irving in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" describes the bounty of the Ducht table. 'Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives. There was the doughty doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and hoeny cakes, and the whole family of cakes.' The recipes include: Roast Goose with Apples Stuffing Cottage Cheese Coleslaw Dutch Spiced Flank Steak Sweet Waffles Hutspot Buckwheat Griddle Cakes Raisin Almond Pound Cake Oliebollen Molasses Cake Champagne-Rum Punch Tea Punch (Tea with brandy and rum) Gingerbread Men Raised Doughnuts Crullers Nothing in that list that doesn't have its counterpart somehwere else in northern Europe.

Annie and Lou...okay I've got it now...panini is a grilled sandwich and the process sounds like what is called here either a croque-monsieur...grilled ham and cheese on sliced bread or a 'pepito', usually a thin slice of cooked pork loin inside a small baquette toasted on an oiled grill with a heavy lid that presses it down flat. That was a favourite snack food in my daughter's office when she worked here, as there was a sandwich bar across the road, with delivery. Grace your creamed eggs on homemade bread with bacon is making me really hungry! And Lou you are an expert at preparing chicken. I love your deer Lou. I always feel sorry that everyone wants to chase them away, but I guess if they came into my garden and starting eating my roses I would feel the same. At the moment the magical month of May is so beautiful...and the purple larkspur is out and I didn't even plant it! There must have been some seeds in the compost we spread around. Peaches are nearly ripe and roses are everywhere. Yesterday we went to a favourite Italian restaurant up on a hill as I'm doing a review of it this weekend and although I have enough photos I needed some more info on prices and opening times. Wolf loves this place and would like to try everything on the menu but as it was, he settled for a half portion of egg scrambled with smoked salmon and spinach. I took my favourite oriquiette with gorgonzola sauce. Pic of the restaurant below. We sat inside though as it was a bit breezy.

LOL Annie, come on over. Will do ginger ale pancakes puffs here. Lou, we got ONE this morning! LOL But honestly we don't see as many of them flying around as usual. Maybe they spread the word about our new trap and most of them had fled for their life? LOL Those singing frogs are so cute! I probably need a bigger trap to catch them.

When someone can't take the time to even chop a lettuce up for a salad or worse need to order in from one of these companies who deliver meals and on a sliding scale (downward) hit one of the greasy spoon fast food places a number of times a week ........really does anyone wonder at all that these young folks don't know how cope ? I would rather be old fashioned I guess. I somewhat take offense to this and it doesn't really even apply to my family. Signet, you sound surprisingly like another poster here. I'm really not sure why some of you come here as most of us here have posted together for years and have come to "know" and support each other. Not to bash each other. You really have no way of knowing why someone chooses "shortcuts" in the kitchen. There are some here who still have children at home. Those children may have activities such as sports, music lessons, etc. etc. etc. Spouses sometimes work different shifts which make sitting down to dinner together hard. Some here have elderly parents they are helping with, in addition to their own family and home. So sometimes, in order to get a meal on the table, to sit down together, shortcuts are taken. Also, while I have come to love cooking, I remember working, before I went part-time, a long day, a 30 minute drive to/from work. When I got home, dinner was first on my mind, but I rarely felt like cooking a delish, fresh from scratch, full course meal. So I can completely understand why some convenience items help people out. I'm not sure what cooking has to do with how anyone copes??? Sometimes old fashioned is good, most times an open mind is better.