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  2. Tropicalsenior

    Dinner 2025

    I just wanted to add my latest tip for livening up potato salad. I've always put onion and chives in my potato salad but because of Carlos's severe allergy to onions I've had to leave it out and every potato salad that I have made tastes flat to me. The other day I was desperate to find something that would give it a kick and I grabbed a bottle of Italian Sub Dressing that I make. It was great. I later used it in pasta salad and it was also delicious. And, by the way, it is the very best dressing for Subs. I do want to say that I only had to add a few tablespoons to the regular dressing to give it whole new flavor.
  3. @weinoo thank you for the tip on the balsamic. I decided to get the smaller bottles , of the 1 , 2 , and 3 stars version. once I work w these , as I bet they are very interesting I can imagine going back to a small 4 star. thanks.
  4. liuzhou

    Breakfast 2025

    you've mentioned 'Asian basil'. before. I'm curious as to which Asian basil. There are a few.
  5. Today
  6. Ice cream mentioned in above post...still some of our favorite, and available from a bodega around the corner.
  7. Giving a couple of "modestly priced" Balsamic vinegars a try...these are IGP, not DOP, so while not top, top quality, supposedly quite good. The 3 gold meals - on the left: (tried this one last night on some Vanilla ice cream - it was quite good). Made from sweet, sundried grapes and aged in oak barrels. The aromas and flavors of plum jam and red fruits blend with hints of honey and vanilla, creating a dense and sweet product. Ideal as a fresh dressing for both savory and sweet dishes. The one on the right: Aged for a long time in acacia barrels, it offers a deeply aromatic flavor with scents of ripe fruits, accompanied by notes of tobacco, roasted coffee, and hints of wood and honey. Giusti
  8. Yes, that's the one. For some reason I frequently confuse Yellowknife with Whitehorse, at least when remembering as I certainly know the difference. In any case, I love the remoteness and sparseness of the general area. Explored it a bit when I drove to Alaska in '93. Thanks for the link. The pics bring back fond memories.
  9. I think you mean north of Yellowknife, NWT. (Whitehorse is in the Yukon Territory.) Maybe you are thinking of the ice house in Tuktoyaktuk? I lived in Yellowknife for a couple of years. I sent my brother a sweatshirt that said Univ of Tuktoyaktuk and below it said "Tuk U". It was considered witty at the time. There was no university there, of course. 🙂
  10. Sicilian vanilla gelato made with milk, sugar, cornstarch and vanilla. I’ve previously made this style in my Il Gelato machine, but used the Ninja with good results. I used the gelato setting and then two respins. This is from “ Pomp and Sustenance “ but there is a very similar recipe at 101 cookbooks. An oven roasted rhubarb and raspberry compote was the accompaniment.
  11. C. sapidus

    Breakfast 2025

    Leftover red cabbage with creamy scrambled eggs. Long red, jalapeno, and bird chiles for heat. Fermented black beans and fish sauce for salt/umami. Onion, cilantro, and Asian basil for aroma. Mexican crema and feta cheese for richness. Apologies for the not-great cell phone pic.
  12. Spring Brings New Businesses to Commercial St.
  13. There's a community ice house with which I'm familiar up north of Whithorse in Canada's Northwest Territory. It serves a small indigenous community and has about 20 rooms - one for each family in the community. It's dug down below the frostline, I don't know for sure, maybe 40 feet below ground level. Even thugh the community has electricity and mechanical refrigeration, the use of the ice house keeps power usage down and cuts down on greenhouse gases. The Northwest Territory Power Company provides the electricity which is produced by Diesel generators, so you can see how the ice house is an important part of the community.
  14. @Tropicalsenior, I love the look of your buns. Thank you for sharing the recipe. I've been looking for a nice sandwich bun. Today's bake. This dough was 7 day's old. Made on May 15th and went directly into the fridge after the last stretch and folds. We left on the 18th to spend a few days in Victoria. Totally forgot about this batch of dough until yesterday. Took it out of the fridge last night and left it on the counter for 8 hours. This was a 700g flour batch at 70% hydration with just 1 1/2 grams of yeast. Baked two loaves, a boule and a batard.
  15. Shel_B

    Dinner 2025

    Sometimes I'll make potato salad for a meal. It's not just for picnics and BBQs. The last time was about a week-10 days ago,and I made a variation on a Japanese-style potato salad.
  16. We had an ice house when I was a kid. It looked very much like this one. It was probably built around 1902 when my grandfather built the main house. It was used constantly until the 50s when my parents got a refrigerator and no longer needed it for an icebox. We had a small lake on the property and every winter they would periodically harvest the ice with huge ice saws and pack it into the ice house in about 2 ft square blocks. It was packed in straw to keep it insulated. As I remember it was about 12 ft deep. My Grandmother had a cold room that was about 12 ft below the level of her basement. Because it was below the permafrost level it was cold enough to store meat all summer long and during the winter it was as cold as a deep freeze. One house that I lived in in Lake Tahoe had one 4-ft cabinet that had a cold shaft that went far below the permafrost layer. It was heavily insulated and kept things as cold as any refrigerator. I was told that house had been built in the 1890s. So yes, long before the turn of the century, refrigeration was a common thing. Our ancestors were pretty ingenious people.
  17. @GRiker, sorry to hear that. But I suppose a dose of reality is always useful.
  18. Finally got around to replacing the old behemoth which was also a Panasonic and which gave us more than twenty-three years of good service. It would have cost more to fix than many contemporary new ovens, and while it was hard to let go, the time had come to replace it. I've been without a microwave for about eight months, and surprisingly I didn't miss it very much. The only thing I really missed was not being able to heat up my favorite TJ's frozen entrées. The new oven cost less than half of what a repair to the old one would have. It's not quite as powerful (900 watts vs 1200 watts), and while it's just about as big inside the outer dimensions are quite a bit smaller. Bought it directly from Panasonic and, OTD, saved about 12% compared to Amazon.
  19. Maison Rustique

    Dinner 2025

    Did not take pix. A friend brought me some potato salad that was nice and mustardy and not sweet. So Supper was potato salad with some tomatoes and dill pickle spears. Delicious and very filling!
  20. Indeed. And I read the article when it was first published a year ago. At that time, I thought the same as I do now. Freezing food was not so ephemeral as made out and remember, the climate was very different in ancient times. Natural ice is still available year-round in many parts of the world and I don't only mean the poles! And that meal for sure wasn't the first banquet to feature frozen food. It was an early 20th century marketing ploy. Interesting though.
  21. The point was that the food was stored a long time (more than a year in some instances) and using mechanical refrigeration, which was new and frightening to some people. It was mentioned that refrigeration (by natural means) had been used before. “Until we figured out how to use machines to make cold, we were reliant on this very ephemeral, unreliable thing that melted.” In many areas of the United States ice houses had been used. As a kid, I encountered them in upstate NY in the 1950s. A couple were still in use at that time. The ice was obtained by harvesting from frozen lakes and ponds during the winter months and was then stored in ice houses which were heavily insulation to keep the ice frozen through warmer months. Some ice houses were built underground. I'm sure the Egyptians, and even the cavemen, had similar setups, although the Egyptians and many early cultures also used other methods of preservation. And I'm sure both Atlas Obscura and Twilley were and are very much aware of the history of refrigeration, and stated as much in very bold type posted in the middle of the article, and which I copied above. I believe you're aware of all this.
  22. Dante

    Dinner 2025

    It was a local event that was supposed to happen on Saturday morning but got rained out. People gathering in a local park and bringing garlic bread to share.
  23. Honkman

    Dinner 2025

    Marsala and Mushroom Pasta Bake & Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad from Michael Symon’s Simply Symon Suppers - the pasta bake was made with cavatappi pasta, white mushrooms, shiitake, onions, garlic, thyme, flour, parsley, marsala wine, vegetable broth and milk. Topped with mozzarella and finished in the oven. The salad was simply shredded brussels sprouts, scallions, pine nuts and pecorino with vinaigrette made with lemon juice, mustard and olive oil
  24. While I have no reason to believe that this banquet didn't happen, that it was the first to use refrigerated food, is definitely wrong . Food has ben refrigerated since ancient times - the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all stored ice for refrigeration and built ice storage rooms. None of these cultures were unappreciative of the odd banquet or five. Prior to those classical times, food had been stored in ice for millennia. The banquet in the article may have been the first to use refrigerated food in America (highly unlikely), or perhaps the first to use foods refrigerated using mechanical refrigeration. Note: I haven't read Ms Tilley's book (but will if I can find it) but Gastro Obscura is not infallible. PS: Were the cigars on the menu refrigerated?
  25. I saw mostly 4 for $5 in my walk thru Chinatown yesterday, a slightly better price, but definitely smaller specimens. I didn't get over to the stands where your favorite stuff is (Canal?); I was only as far north as Hester Street.
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