Hi Jim,

 JW> Cottage cheese is more readily available, less expensive and lower
 JW> in fat than ricotta

 RH> I'm not even sure if the grocery stores in my home town sold it when I
 RH> was growing up.

 JW> They certainly didn't in the rural village my parents shopped at. I

I think meeting Steve was when I first became aware of it; I was 18 at
the time and had grown up on the outskirts of a town of 800 people.

 JW> had never heard of it until we moved to Ottawa when I was 12. My
 JW> high school was at the cusp of several ethnic neighbourhoods: little
 JW> Italy to the east, Irish and French to the south, middle class,
 JW> predominantly English and Scottish to the west with a small pocket
 JW> of wealthy English and Jewish in the centre of it. Successful

I was in a strongly Scotch-Irish area, but there was a strong Jewish
community just about 8 miles up the road. I went to a K-12 school; at
the beginning of my 10th grade year, we merged with the other town's
school so I got to know a few more Jewish kids. Then, the summer between
my 11th and 12 grade years, I worked at a Jewish camp in the area--and
got exposed to lots of good Jewish (mostly kosher) cooking.


 JW> Italians were leaving Little Italy for the suburbs and newer
 JW> immigrants including Lebanese were starting to take their place.
 JW> So I encountered Italian, Middle Eastern and Kosher food for the first
 JW> time, also Chinese restaurants.

There was an Italian restaurant in a nearby town my parents took us to a
few times. We also went to a German restaurant locally, enough times to
know (from both places) that my mom's cooking was nowhere's near
authentic.

 RH> some quese fresco for real Mexican cooking; most often my Mexican is
 RH> more psuedo Mexican.

 JW> There are so many styles of Mexican cooking. Tex-Mex is based
 JW> largely on the cuisine of Northern Mexico.

I know; I've had good Mexican cooking. While we were living in TX, I was
part of a mission team that spent a week on the border doing Vacation
Bible School in Mexico in the morning, Backyard Bible Club in Eagle
Pass, TX in the afternoon. Our final day there, the ladies of the church
cooked an authentic Northern Mexican meal for us. Also, other
places--HI, GA, even here in Wake Forest, we've found some pretty good
Mexican cooking.


 JW>  Re: lasagne

 RH> Mine is more like the Roman, not always with spinach and
 RH> usually meat balls on the side. Occaisionally I'll do a layer
 RH> of cheese, layer of spinach or thick meat sauce, layer of
 RH> cheese but most of the time it's 3 layers of cheese.

 JW> I've never encountered a meatless lasagne with meat balls on the
 JW> side or meat balls in the lasagne.

My MIL always made up a pot of sauce with meat balls, sausage, sometimes
brachole to serve with all of her pasta dishes, including lasagne. My
mom tried putting the meat balls in the lasagne itself--and wondered why
it didn't come out the way I learned how to make it.

 JW> ... When I was a kid if you missed a TV show, you just missed it.
 JW> Forever.

Unless you could catch it on summer reruns. Now they have summer
replacement shows and you have to take your chances you'll find the show
on TVLand, Nicolodean or some other oldies tv channel.

---
Catch you later,
Ruth
rchaffly{at}earthlink{dot}net  FIDO 1:396/45.28


... OH NO!  Not ANOTHER learning experience!

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