MGLloyd

I do not believe that the overall brown patina can be explained by baked on food, spatters or smoke and oil vapors. Stainless steel cookware is commonly known to change colors with prolonged exposure to high heat. One sees a similar phenomenon with stainless steel gas grills. I have several stainless steel cookware pieces that I use in the oven, and they often develop a color patina on the surface. I am able to clean it off using a paste of stainless steel cleaner and water, or barkeepers friend and water, along with a 'no-scratch' scrubbing pad. I do this only for esthetics, insofar as it does not really effect the metal of the cookware.

Although I make no claims to fame, I know what I like in a good carrot cake: spicy, moist, raisins, nuts, pineapple and coconut. However, when making this cake for parties, I generally leave the raisins out since so many people seem to dislike raisins. I have over the years developed and refined this recipe for my family: Michael Lloyd’s Carrot Cake 5 eggs 2 ¾ cups sugar (2 cups white and ¾ cups brown) 1 ¼ lbs. shredded carrot 1 ½ cups vegetable oil 3 cups all-purpose flour (dip and sweep) 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup raisins 2 cups chopped walnuts 2 cups shredded coconut 20 oz. crushed pineapple with juice Zest of one orange Mix together: eggs, sugar, carrot and oil. Stir together: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and blend into carrot mixture. Stir in raisins, walnuts, coconut, pineapple and orange zest. Spread into a greased 9” x 13” baking pan or divide evenly amongst three greased and floured 8” pans. Bake @ 325º for one hour and 10 minutes or until tester in center of cake comes out clean. The cake will be moist. Cool on rack and spread with frosting. Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting ½ cup softened butter 1 cup powdered sugar 16 oz. cream cheese 3 tablespoons lemon juice Beat together until smooth White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting 1 cup softened butter 16 oz. cream cheese 12 oz. white chocolate Melt the white chocolate and cool until lukewarm. Beat the butter and cream cheese until well mixed. Stir in the melted chocolate and beat until fluffy.

So anyone reading this posting who is part of the Gypsy experience should feel free to add my wife and I to the email list! We would love to come! Hint, hint.

Back in the early 90's, my wife was stationed in Groton, Connecticut for 2.5 years. When she had time off, she spent a lot of time going up the Atlantic coast to Maine. She still talks to this day about the number of 'shacks' on the waterfront all over New England that sold clams in every possible permutation and lobster rolls. And very cheaply, too. She recalls that the most common type of lobster roll was pure lobster with a mayonnaise binder served on a top-sliced hot dog bun. Then she was transferred to San Diego and then Puget Sound, where she has never been able to find a lobster roll, and indeed, virtually no one has ever even heard of the concept unless they are from the New England coast or spent time there. And don't even get her started on the 'pork tenderloin sandwich' as made in the Midwest, which she also cannot find out here..... Edited to add: Hmm, finding fresh lobster here in Seattle is both difficult and pricey. I wonder if anyone sells chunks of frozen lobster. Costco or Trader Joe's, are you listening? I wonder if one could make a pale fascimile of a lobster roll using something like that.

Trader Joe's sells the one pound bag of 31-40 peeled and deveined shrimp for $ 5.99 per bag. Also excellent quality, and they also stock additional sizes for equally reasonable prices. For me, when I have a shrimp fix, it is easier to stop at the Everett TJs as opposed to the Silver Lake Costco, where I never seem to exit the place for less than $ 100.

Afterwards, yes. I am not so sure about before or during.

I heartily endorse the recommendation of the Nissan travel mugs. I now have several in 14 and 18 oz. size. They fit in the cup holder, keep the coffee hot, do not spill, and since they are stainless inside and out, clean up nicely.

Drinkboy is spot on regarding the special ordering of single bottles from the WSLCB. Many a time I have gone to the Mill Creek store and asked for a particular item. One of the staff looks it up on a computer and can (usually) tell me immediately if any of the stores or the main warehouse has it. If it is already somewhere in western Washington, I can get it in a few days. If it is over the mountains in Spokane or somewhere, it can take up to a week. I have at times apparently ordered the very last bottle of something in the inventory system, and the bottle arrives covered in dust, and in one case, spiderwebs! I have never ordered a special item by the case insofar as I am usually looking for just one bottle for cooking or drinking purposes. I did try once to order a bottle of Everclear to use to sterilize my homebrewing making fittings. It apparently has too high of an alcohol content to be legal in Washington; but the next time I was in Portland on business, I stopped at their state stores and they carry it. One bottle has lasted me about ten years now, and I have probably only used about two ounces.

I have lived in Washington pretty much my entire life, and have often special ordered single bottles from the liquor store. Possibly the most interesting thing I ever ordered was for a gag gift: a Dutch liquor called Advocaat. Without going into details, let me just say that it was full of eggy goodness.

If you truly want the freshest coffee right out of the roaster, learn to roast your own. It is simple and much cheaper compared to buying roasted beans. For a good source of info on the subject, check out Sweet Marias or Coffeegeek in the home roasting forum.

Since I homeroast my own coffee, which I then use for drip, press or espresso, this has gotten me thinking about using ground coffee as the flavoring agent. I wonder just how successful that would be, in terms of the liquid base extracting the flavor components from the ground coffee. Best to mix the coffee into the custard base as it cooks, or to mix it into the base as it freezes? Hmmm.....

Somehow, I have found that going to the Duck after a full day of snowshoeing or cross country skiing really seems to improve the quality of the food. Breakfast is our favorite meal to eat there.

My wife and I have gone to the Winthrop\Twisp area fairly often, and usually stay at Sun Mountain. We have eaten at most of the restaurants in the area, including Freestone and Sun Mountain. Sun Mountain is probably the most 'gourmet' of all the available offerings in the Methow Valley. The food is good, but they have quite the markup on wine prices, and you will be paying close to downtown Seattle prices for the food and beverage. Freestone is cheaper, but the food is not as good. We generally eat breakfast or lunch elsewhere, and we are quite fond of the Methow Valley Brewing Company on Highway 20 in Twisp, and the Duck's Brand in downtown Winthrop. The Mazama Country Inn is also pretty good. The Virginian and Three Fingered Jack's in downtown Winthrop are classic greasy spoons with mediocre food.

I would open up a pastry cafe selling a variety of fine desserts, coffees and teas. It would be open 24/7. Many is the time after coming back from the theatre, the game or the social event have we looked for a nice place to get a good coffee and dessert.

What we are doing over at the co-op is we ask the importer\broker to send us a pound or two of a coffee we are considering buying. The sample is split, sent to several people, roasted and cupped. There have been several lots of coffee we have declined to purchase after the cupping results. In addition, we have found that Atlas, Royal, InterAmerican and Dalton to be very helpful, and provide us with their own internal cupping results as well. So we have removed a lot of the 'blind shot in the dark' aspect of buying coffee by the bag.

Was this the Rosario Resort, by any chance? Sounds too upscale for Olga's or the Eastsound Cafe.

The sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's are also not half bad.

Chinook's in Ballard and the various Seattle-area McMenamin's do a decent fish and chips, as does the little tugboat-shaped stand at south Lake Union.

Well, they did work with Redhook up here in Woodinville to create an espresso stout. The first few batches had a bag of ground coffee steeped in the wort after the final boil; the subsequent batches used a liquid coffee concentrate prepared and shipped over by Starbucks. It actually was not half bad. So creating a Kahlua-like product seems like a logical brand extension.

If civets are unavailable, too expensive or uncooperative in your area, a reasonable fascimile of Kopi Luak coffee can be obtained by feeding the coffee cherries to your local cat. A slotted scoop works well for retrieving the beans from the litterbox.

So THAT'S who that was a few months ago! Almost made me drop my sweet peppers, I was so startled!

By the time I had gotten there, things were pretty well picked over. Nothing very exciting for sale from the culinary perspective.

Interesting.......they both live in Northwestern Washington now. I was at Graham Kerr's garage sale in Stanwood about a year or two ago. The man has clearly aged, and I think he may have had some significant health problems in recent years.

The degree of exterior oiliness on a coffee bean has to do with two things: the degree of roast (most important) and how long ago it was roasted. In brief, the darker the coffee is roasted, the more oil is on the exterior. After a coffee is roasted very dark, oil will continue to migrate to the surface over a period of time. So if you have very oily coffee, it was probably roasted to a dark roast a few days ago.

Geez, read the rest of the thread, will you? I live in Seattle and read every day in the local paper about Mr. Smith's legal troubles at the time. The first allegations as to Mr. Smith's activities came out many years after the time they allegedly occurred. None of the victims made any criminal or civil complaint at the time of occurrence. Under Washington state law at the time, the statute of limitations for bringing criminal charges had passed. Period. The decision to not bring charges had nothing to do with the merits or demerits of the case, and should not be interpreted as a statement on Mr. Smith's guilt or innocence on any criminal charges. Under our law back then, criminal charges for these allegations were barred by the passage of time and could not be brought.