slowday

We always called it a firehouse egg. Allan

I'd hate to throw it out also. But I'd hate even more getting sick from it. Unless something makes you really desperate to eat it...toss it. Allan

Here's one I always wondered about. When I make Kasha the directions always call for a lightly beaten egg. I'm never sure when I've over beaten the egg. But what difference is there between kasha made with a lightly beaten egg and one that goes past that point? Allan

Just took a waltz over to the kitchenaid outlet site and the deals are amazing. The 6qt bowl lift model is about a hundred off the amazon price for new. And I'm making stiff doughs as regular as I think I will, I should know if the machine is going to give up before the six month warranty wears out. Karen DW mentioned making 5lbs of dough at a time which is really what I was thinking of. I thought that on Sunday during the Football season I would keep the bread machine going making pizza dough to freeze while the games were on. But if I can make the dough in a couple of loads in the kitchenaid instead, that has to be better that tying myself to the beeps of a bread machine for the better part of a day. Plus I never thought of the non-pastry things that the mixer and a few choice attachments would be good for. This afternoon I cleaned out the five dollar unit and gave it a try. And that was that. It worked but it was a very unsatisfying experience. It made bread ...of a sort. For five dollars, I got my moneys worth in entertainment. While I wait for the Kitchenaid outlet to have my wife's choice of colors (she wants red..this may take awhile ) I'm going to take the food processor out of its hiding place and give it a little exercise. But I'll be making dough with the stand mixer before the first frost even if the wife has to give up on the red. Thanks for everything Allan

I think one of the reasons I was curious about the bread machine is the small number of negative reviews on the kitchenaids on Amazon. Even though the number is pretty small, they pretty much run the same; plastic gears, can't handle stiff dough, and not as good as the old ones. That gave me some hesitation; and the five dollars versus the couple of hundred helped lead my thinking. I'm not a tightwad, but I do get kind of frugal in the face of a cheaper, and possibly equal alternative. The food processor is something I've read before in a few books. Always seemed like an off-handed suggestion between hand kneeding and dough hooks. But if it works, I'm going to give it a try. Like of lot of food processors, we got ours for our wedding and its been sitting undisturbed in a cubby somewhere. I just can go faster than a food processor for the small amount of cutting I have to do. I remember it came with a plastic blade and its probably still sitting there waiting for its moment. The true temperature convection oven sounds like something I should get. The range we have came with the place, has a maximum of 450 and I could clean it but I think the caked on grease is what's holding the heat in. Having something accurate to cook in might actually take some getting used to. Guys, thanks for all the advice, all pretty good. I think what I'm going to do is give my wife fifty dollars to start cruising around flea markets looking for a used mixer while I go down to our local appliance dealer and spend a few thousand on a new range. And if the proper mixer can't be found, I get a very dependable bonus after the first of the year to go to a new kitchen aid. And in the meantime, I'm going to experiment with the food processor to see how it matches up against my five dollar bread machine. The processor has a lot going for it. It was free.

I'm sure this was in another thread but I couldn't find it so here I am. I was planning to finally get one of the kitchenaid stand mixers because I want to start making bread come the fall and I don't want to knead by hand. My wife came home with a breadmaker she bought at a flea market for five dollars US. It works and seems to turn out a reasonable dough. But I have a couple of questions. The first is whether there is a difference between the dough from a stand mixer with a dough hook and a bread machine paddle. I don't intend to use the mixer for anything else as I don't really like cookies, cakes or other pastries. If there is not a big difference then I can take the three hundred or so dollars and put it to a better oven. If I stay with the bread maker to make dough, should I use the bread machine recipes for mixing the dough, including the bread machine yeast and special flours. Or can I use any recipe for dough since its not being actually baked in the machine but in an oven. And lastly, about that oven. I'm going to be getting a new oven this fall. I plan to do a lot of bread baking. Does bread care much whether its baked in a convection oven? I went window shopping at the local dealer and there seemed to be a lot of models with a convection oven but I'm not sure if its something I should be concerned with. Thanks Allan

Its a great deal and I'll probably get it, kind of hard to resist. But there are so many other products for sale on the site I wonder how they avoid duplication or covering the same ground in basically the same ways. I recieved the big best recipe book as a gift and liked it a lot. But when I went on Amazon to look for other books like Best Soups and Stews, the reader reviews warned that most of the recipes were already in the Best Recipe Book, which I have. Is it worth it to subscribe to the website or getting the monthly magazine? Allan

When I lived in Alexandria, the Wash. Post ran a article where they tried to find a signature DC dish. Closest they could come was a half smoke sausage on a roll. Not that distinctive of a food, but I did used to enjoy a half smoke, egg and cheese sandwich on toast for breakfast. slow

Oatmeal is one of the things that a Zo does real well. For steel cut oats or any oats just follow the package directions for ratios of water to oats, add a pinch of salt and push the regular cook button. Steel cut oats you can set up the night before with the timer and have them ready in the morning. The other oats like regular, thick cut or scotch porridge oats you should cook in the morning. They take longer to cook than on the stove top. On the other hand once they're in the cooker you can do other things while the its in the cooking cycle. McCanns is good but I'm a big fan of Bob's Red Mill thick cut regular oatmeal with a mashed banana and a bit of sugar. slow

I don't get into too many exotic items, but for basics I like to order from Bob's Red Mill. They have a display at my local supermarket and health food store but I also like to order from them online. http://www.bobsredmill.com/index.php slowday

The Wegmans' here in Hunt Valley, Md were offering kimmelwecks today from on of their hot food stands.

Well, rice cookers, advanced as they are, basically work by measuring the temperature inside the pot. When you put the pot with the rice and the water in the cooker and press the cook button the round disc in the inside bottom of the cooker senses weight and starts the cooking process. Basically what happens after that, the sensors monitor the temperature. At 212 degrees water is still boiling away, higher than 212 all the water has boiled away and it stops cooking and switches to keep warm mode. So if you have too much water at the start, the cooker will keep cooking past the point where the rice is done. It will keep cooking until all the water has evaporated, but since its cooked too long in too much water, it comes out mushy. The more advanced models with the computer chip is capable of some pretty fancy moves. Instead of just turning the heat on or off in reaction to the temperature as in the basic cookers it makes adjustments in the temperature. So if you want hard rice for fried rice, or watery for congee, its able to adjust not only the internal temperature but also the cooking times to acheive those differences. It will even reheat leftover rice from the fridge back to almost perfect cooked by slowly bringing the inside temperature up to the keep warm temp. Mine will even tell me when the reheat only has about ten minutes to go. But the best thing the rice cooker makes is oatmeal. Every morning, Bob's Red Mill extra thick (1part oatmeal-2parts water) or Scotch cut (1 part oatmeal- 3 parts water). Takes a lot longer than on the stove top but its made flat out perfect.

I have a zo 10 cup fuzzy logic cooker which appeals to me because of my own fuzzy logic. When I am cooking any kind of long grain rice, especially the kind that need washing like kohuko rose I use a one to one rice to water measurement. So I can use either the little plasic cup that came with it or a measuring cup or any glass to measure out the rice. Then I wash it in the bowl, making sure to dry the outside of the bowl before I put into the cooker. Then I take the same measuring cup I use for the rice and fill it up with water and dump it in with a some salt; and put it on the regular cooking cycle. Comes out perfect every time. I never bother with the lines for white rice. For basmati. which is not a sweet rice, I wash it in a few changes of water. Then I put a cloth towel on the counter and put two layers of paper towel on top of that and spread the rice on top of that to dry. The paper towel makes it easier to get the rice up. Then I use the same one to one ratio with just a skosh more water. Comes out mostly separate grains. not like in an Indian restaurant but close. My mother who never knew any better , used to make Carolina long grain every Friday night in an open pot. If the rice wasn't done but the water was, she would add a little bit of water until it was. Pretty good tasting rice too.

I remember doing this as a kid making knishes with my mother and how we used to peel them while impaling them on a fork. But what's the advantage of boiling the potatoes in their skins before peeling and mashing, instead of just peeling them, boiling them and then mashing? Also. I'm not living in the chicken fat belt anymore, and not sure I'd want to render the fat to make a handful of knishes. What fat would you use to replace the chicken fat, not that anything else would come close.

I understand the French are trying to have the EU classify barbe a queue as an AOC and that from now on Texas BBQ will have to be know as sparkling grilled meats.