All Activity

Refreshing!

The best ways I've found to keep a board from warping: 1) put feet on it. All wood boards will warp if they spend any time in puddles or sitting on damp counters. 2) when you oil them for maintenance, use the same amount of oil on both sides.

A tale of two blueberry cakes. Une tourte des Pyrénées / tourte myrtilles... Read about it here (although I made this one with an added 150g blueberries and some pearl sugar). Sometimes these simple, 'maman'-style cakes are surprisingly good, but, apart from looking quite nice, this was just too close-crumbed and ultimately disappointing. With the rest of my myrtilles I was hoping Nigella would save the day with her Blueberry Polenta Upside-down Cake... It was good. The blueberries cooked down into a jammy consistency, and the cake had a slight rubbly texture from the polenta. (Recipe in the NYT or here.)

Lazy dinner: DIY hot dogs (please disregard the chaos behind) … For me: “classic” … … and “chili cheese”.

These were available at the sample table not too long ago. Overly sweet. Cookie description according to Trader Joe: The base is a butter Cookie. (We do mean this literally!) Butter is the second ingredient (after flour), and makes up 24%—almost a quarter of the recipe. A variety of fun, multi-textured Things are mixed into the Cookie dough before baking, including corn flakes, pretzels, marshmallows, semisweet chocolate chips, and crispy rice. Once baked, these circular, golden-brown confections entice with a sweet, buttery aroma. Each crunchy bite may lead to a piece of salted pretzel, or a cluster of rich chocolate chips. The marshmallows have taken on an almost toffee-like candy character. And the corn flakes and crispy rice bring a lighter, crisp crunch to the whole experience. This cookie is excessive in so many ways. It exemplifies the lack of subtlety and the style of excess that so many foods have taken on. If some is good, then more - much more - must be just right. Demasiado!

this cookie seems to be new : of note , some of the tubs had cookies baked longer than other tub\s. avoid this cookie at all costs ! they are delicious and lethal. if you try them , have some ice cold milk available these are soo sooo soooo good they had a similar cookie many many years ago. then it disappeared . maybe this one will disappear soon ? they are irresistable on the sweeter side , very good crunch and flavor. caution advised.

over here : https://forums.egullet.org/topic/155098-instant-pot-multi-function-cooker-part-5/page/80/#comment-2455280 I made a slightly different version of my Pork Ragu ' iPot ' , and had it for dinner a la Linguini : looks very similar to earlier versions , but this one was better than the usual very very good . much more intense pork falvors after some time in the InDoorSmoker. a keeper for sure !

Like so many people I have rather negative memories of lima beans. Many years ago there was a man who sold fresh shelled butter beans in very limited quantity at the Berkeley farmers' market. They were fabulous. At the time I had no idea they were either closely related to lima beans or were actually lima beans by another name. I finally tried the RG baby lima beans. I cooked them very simply with onion, a little minced celery and carrot, and garlic, in vegetable stock. They cooked surprising quickly and a bit unevenly, and some did not retain their shape. By themselves in a soupy bowl with generous salt they were delicious. A drizzle of Frank's didn't do them any harm. They were really creamy, but not potato-like, more silky. I had intended to use some for a succotash, and I did, but I think for that purpose they might have been better if I had cooked them less, so they had more integrity. I think they would be great cooked with ham stock I think they are too delicate and cook to fast to make good use of a ham shank or smoked pork neck. My marriage to Domingo Rojo is now an open one..

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/fsis-issues-public-health-alert-ready-eat-ham-salad-products-containing-fda

Last of the Oaxacan chorizo with roasted orange bell pepper an over-easy fried egg. Sauce was a paste of long red chiles, shallot, garlic, and cumin, plus the last of the "super spicy" kimchee, fish sauce, and a squeeze of lime. Mrs. C is going back to the fishmonger - I hope they have more chorizo.

Mountain Lion!!!! I'm impressed and thanks for the explanation on hunting, quotas. We saw one once at Bandelier National Monument in NM (west of Santa Fe). It loped in front of our car, moving slowly with one glance at us. When we told the Park Ranger at the Entry Gate, he was so jealous. He said he'd worked there 20 years and never saw a mountain lion, though his colleagues had.

We had our annual summer bbq party this weekend - I did a boneless suckling pig and a whole lamb shoulder on the Yoder. really happy with how the pig turned out, just wish I’d left the lamb go for another hour as it wasn’t quite to pulling consistency. Flavour was spot on though

Maybe that would happen if I were doing heavy duty knife work. But as I said, just 2 in my household, so chopping or slicing half an onion or shallot, or 2 apple, a beef steak tomato, halving grape tomatoes....it's literally 10 to 30 seconds per veg or fruit. Not enough time to infiltrate the paper plate. If I was cooking for a family of 6, it might not be feasible. Most of the proteins we cook are already portioned by the seller or by the protein itself. In MX at home we mostly eat shrimp (which I buy deveined and shelled by hand at local fish shop), or salmon which the purveyor slices to my specs or I buy a fillet that I grill whole then portion with a fork to plate. . About the only meats that need post-cooking slicing at our US home are lamb racks (I separate into ribs) and duck breasts that I slice. For these I have an old wooden board (going back to our marriage in the early 1970s).

New shipment from Rancho Gordo. It’s a good thing Im not part of the bean club, I do a good enough job of getting myself into trouble on my own. Insta-Pot, which I previously said I had no use for turns out to be super at making beans which then go into other dishes. Still don’t like it for pot beans. Anyway, this has put a run on Limas and garbanzos. Hence the order. Made Lima bean curry again, but forgot to snap a pic after I added a bundle of Chinese yard long beans from the CSA

Mountain lion in peanut ginger garlic sauce with veg and a brown rice/quinoa mix. (Yes Mountain lion/puma/catamount is edible, in fact many hunters will say it's their favorite game meat. It's very reminiscent of lean pork, inoffensive raw scent. My partner hunted it, there is a quota where we live, and this was a 100lb male) and Saturday night pizza with sauerkraut, ham, onion, tomato, and green olives with Brazi bites

No direct knowledge of rubberwood for cutting boards. Based on your post and looking about my house I have come to discover I have some furniture, brought by Mrs Dr Teeth to the marriage, made of rubberwood. It’s a hardwood but less hard and durable than materials usually thought of for cutting boards. It’s also a good bit less expensive. I try to never tell other folks how to spend their money. I would personally be more interested in rubberwood for a freestanding board where I’d be less upset if it didn’t hold out and I had to chuck it. Maybe if the table is more a storage thing that I cut on occasionally or that I put another board on top of.

Yes, I'm beginning to think that I should look on it more as a countertop and just put a cutting board down on it if I want to use it that way. Probably safer and certainly cheaper than needing to replace the island every so often because the top is warped.

I'd never heard of rubberwood until this post of yours, so I can't say anything from experience. Based on my quick reading, it looks as though you'll need to be diligent with the maintenance in order to prevent it from warping. For what it's worth, I find that to be true even with my maple Boos Board...and, I confess, I always put a protective cutting board atop my Boos Board to protect its surface! 😁

There are some amazing colors in the photos above, @liuzhou. I'm used to seeing reds, oranges and yellows on mushrooms, but I don't recall ever seeing the blues and greens -- at least, not without some putrefaction. I especially like the teal tones in the first photo of the post above.

I am looking for a small rolling kitchen island for the new house in order to expand my storage/prep space. It needs to be small and fairly inexpensive. I find no stores in the area that have more than one style in the store to see, so I need to order online. I am going to show my ignorance here. I kept rejecting many that looked good because it said the cutting board top was rubber wood. I thought they meant it was some sort of manufactured fake wood-look thing. I finally Googled it and discovered that it actually is wood and is supposed to be sustainable, etc. My question is, do any of you have experience with a rubber wood cutting board? I don't want to buy it thinking I can use it as a cutting board, only to find that it isn't really a good choice for that purpose.

Saturday, my sis and BIL brought me more home-grown tomatoes. Sadly, they were already badly split and very soft. I had one Saturday night and there is another I can slice to eat if I use it quickly. The rest, I peeled and chopped the best I could (not easy when they are so soft). I put in a little EVOO, some shallot, garlic, seasonings and capers and had it over gemelli (because there was a little left in the package and I want it gone). I failed to keep up with photos after I added stuff but this is the beginning.

Beef Tomato Tajine with “Spiced” Rice - beef chuck is braised with diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, ras el hanout, cumin and cinnamon in beef broth. Finished with some apricots and cilantro. Basmati rice is cooked with cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, turmeric and saffron

Here is the Guardian's Felicity Cloake's take on it How to make piri piri chicken – recipe | Chicken | The Guardian

There were a few days that were very dusty. One day in particular was so dusty that you could see it rolling over the hilltops. We all had itchy eyes and sore throats from it, so spent most of that day indoors reading. That’s the nice thing about going back to the same place regularly…if you miss some days due to weather or whatever it is no big deal. The dust really does help with suppression of tropical weather too. There was a tropical wave coming that had potential to develop into a depression by the time it got to us, but the dust and winds broke it up before it arrived. It rained a bit most late nights which I think helped to clear the air as well.

Titanium. Idiotic idea. I do buy this. Seldom use it, but it's very cut resistant and seems kind to my knives. Handy in emergencies.