prasantrin

Have you ever used jouhakutou for things that require it to be melted? When I lived in Tochigi, I used it all the time for baking, but I rarely made sweets other than cookies or cakes (pound cakes, carrot cakes). But for things like making pineapple upside down cake, I had a very hard time getting the sugar to melt when making the glaze/syrup part, and the couple of times I tried, I ended up having to dump the whole thing (including all the butter I used!). I'd like to use it for making caramels and such, too, if I can, since it's so much cheaper than granulated sugar. But I'm too afraid to take the risk...

I can only think of two things: encourage her to cook more often when she's at your home (or whenever you're together, or encourage your husband to cook more often in those situations. In either case, you may end up eating bland or bad food, but at least you can't be blamed for it. And in the case of your husband cooking, because he's the son, he can stand up to her (if he chooses) and go against her wishes. You can't (without major grief).

Oh man, I definitely do NOT want to be near you when you burp that stuff up! I probably shouldn't admit this, but I ate a Costco-sized bag of Ruffles potato chips in three days... And I don't even have PMS, but am I ever craving salt!

I have an Oxo jar opener and it sucks. I do like their salad spinner, though I don't necessarily think it's any better or worse than the other salad spinner I own, it's just prettier.

And if something happens to the cake, you're going to be dealing with that hours before you're supposed to be married (on one of those TLC shows, the groom made the wedding cake and it toppled while being transported). If you have someone else make it, then it's their problem. But I think you should go for it.

Teaching?

She has never mentioned it, but it wouldn't surprise me if the quality were not consistent there. Last summer, they were seriously understaffed--not just FOH but BOH, as well. Once they started to get busier, the food would have to suffer unless they got more staff in, and I'm sure there have been many slip-ups like spilling oil over everything. I've been craving dim sum lately. I can't wait to go home next summer, but in the meantime, I've made more char siu for char siu bao!

Sometimes I cook something that I think will be amazing, and then it makes me gag. I made a much touted pot roast recipe recently, which I could barely keep down. But having spent $15 on the beef used to make it, I couldn't just throw it away, so I stuck itin the freezer. Two months later, my mother came to visit, so I asked her to try the pot roast. She loved it. She said it was one of the tastiest pot roasts she had ever had! And it still made me gag. Sometimes, foods will just make you gag. I noticed the more tired I am, the less I want to eat (or the more I think whatever I cooked sucks), so maybe that's what happened to you, too. Plus in my case, I've since realized that I have trouble digesting beef, so perhaps that is another reason it made me feel like gagging. Maybe you have a sensitivity to one of the ingredients that was in your mu shu.

I get emails from Women's Health (and other health or fitness-related websites), and one article said this: I'm wondering, for low-carbers who have tried other methods (WW, etc.) that didn't work, do you think you might be high insulin secretors? Or do you have the body shape they suggest indicates high insulin secretion?

May I make a suggestion (that's a rhetorical question, by the way )? If you're thinking of serving family style (since it's more authentic, anyway), you might want to throw the soup in with the rest of the meal, rather than serving it before the salad. In Thailand, soups are usually served along with the meal. I suppose, though, the order in which you're serving may also be based on serving dishes. If you have regular US-sized soup bowls, rather than smaller ones (like Thai or Chinese ones), then it wouldn't make sense space-wise to serve the soup with the meal. If you're looking to throw another cocktail snack in there, further in the Thai direction, khao tang na tang is one of my favourites, and can be made ahead. You can find the potcrusts at Chinese groceries, so you don't have to make them youself. Just make sure you get the plain ones. I also love krathong thong--the shells can be made ahead by baking spring roll wrappers in mini-muffin tins, then just crisp before filling. The traditional filling uses chicken, but I prefer one more salad-y (more similar to the one I linked to) and served cold. Gewürztraminer is the common wine served with spicy Asian food, and I'd ditch the kimchee. I don't think it will go as well with the rest of your dishes.

I've read both this and Carlovski's two topics on vegetarianism, but I'm having trouble narrowing down the cookbook field. If you could only choose one of the following vegetarian cookbooks, which would it be? *The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus for Family and Friends (Anna Thomas, 1996 version) *The Vegetarian Epicure (Anna Thomas, 1972) *A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen (Jack Bishop, 2004) *Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (Deborah Madison, 2007) Some issues: Living in Japan, I'd like to use ingredients that are easy to find and relatively inexpensive, so a cookbook heavy into squash blossoms, endives, beans (which I dislike, anyway), grains and the like would not be as useful to me I'm looking mostly for easy recipes that hold up over a few days, and transport well. I usually only make a couple of large dishes once or twice a week, and then alternate them for my lunches. I don't want to replace meat in my diet, I'm just looking for ways to add more vegetables into it.

Chris--Lop yuk sounds good, but this stuff is almost all fat! I'll save that project for my next pork belly, which hopefully be before it gets too hot to hang meat up in my very small apartment. Dejah--Salted fat! I'll take one of the wedges I have (I have three) and do me up some salted fat! I might not make sticky rice for a good while (I still have 3 1/2 left from my first batch), but I think it might be a nice addition to regular fried rice! I decided to buy some pork shoulder to make more char siu (for what else, but char siu bao ), and I'm going to use my other two fatty pieces of pork belly for that. Pork shoulder is too lean for char siu bao filling for my tastes, so I need a bit of belly to fatten up the filling!

Ah, a procrastinator after my own heart. I'm just glad you took the pictures and posted them, no matter how long after baking the pictures were posted! Suprisingly, I saw cherries at Costco the other day! But at $25/kg, I decided to pass (I assumed they weren't very good cherries, though if they had been good, I would have bought them!). I'll look for some dried cherries. I'm making some shortbread cookies this weekend, too! I've already made the dough, but then I saw your picture and recipe and thought, "Crap! Why didn't she post this earlier!" But no worries, I can't do any kind of cookie dough piping right now (It's only 7C inside my apartment, so I can't get the dough soft enough to pipe), so I'm not that angry with you. More, more! (Like you haven't posted enough...there's never enough!)

You'll get more hits if you google oyakodon. Oya=parent=chicken, ko=child=egg (parent and child donburi).

Use a neti pot twice a day, take super duper doses of ascorbic acid, and some zinc! I don't know if those things really work, but in combination, I find my colds don't last as long when I do the routine regularly (as soon as I start feeling sick), than when I don't, and I haven't had a single bout of nasty bronchitis (used to get it annually) since I started doing it! Thanks for answering my question about ethnic eats, despite my confusion! I was thinking of Boston, in particular, because I think we might visit sometime in the next couple of years, and when we travel, we like to find foods that we can't normally find (good Middle Eastern, Burmese, Malaysian, etc.). But I'm a sloppy writer (with too many thoughts in my head), which is probably why the NE got thrown in there! I love your basket, by the way! I keep toying with the idea of buying one (and one of the roller ones for my mother), but I'm not sure I'm ready to part with $50 to get one (the approximate price in Japan). I really like the ones that you can double as a bike basket, too!

I love onsen tamago, but if I had to make them myself, I'd never have any. The beauty of living in Japan...store-bought onsen tamago.

I don't know about the tuna part, but it sounds like the type of arare on the right side, second to the bottom, but fried and without beans. When they're fried, they're usually quite light (and the ones with beans are my favourite snack!). I usually buy the plain ones in the Y100 snack section.

Most of the pieces in a set are quite small--would definitely be a choking hazard for a young child. They're not meant to be played with, but are more for display. There's another topic somewhere in Egullet about these--sometime around 2004 or 2005. I have a few sets from then.

Good gracious, man! Those are beautiful pictures! I wouldn't mind at all if you posted pictures from the rest of your eats! (Especially the bakeries and Pierre Herme )

Great minds think alike! If you have an R 1/F in a department store around you, try their kani cream croquette. They don't have it all the time, but when they do, it's very good (and comparatively expensive, too!). Years ago, a friend asked me to help him pick out a suit that he was going to give his girlfriend, and he mentioned how much he hated shopping for clothing. I asked why and he replied, "Well, how would you feel if I asked you to go to a hardware store???" He looked at my expression and said, "You like shopping in hardware stores?" Going to Beaver Lumber with my dad was a real treat when I was a kid! So, I, too, like shopping anywhere! Especially grocery stores and markets!

Yumberry! Isn't that one of those "new and exciting" food fads? It's supposed to be quite healthful or something like that. I really enjoyed it. I expected it to be tart, like umeboshi or a raspberry, but it was sweet. Hmmmm, from my point of view or my mother's? We both loved Koyasan, but we were quite happy we didn't do it at the very beginning of her trip. I think once one experiences the crowds, litter, etc. of the average big city, one appreciates Koyasan all the more. It's a beautiful place, but even more beautiful when comparing it to the city. From my point of view, I could have done without going to Horyuji. From an outsider's point of view, I think unless you're well-versed in Japanese history, the temple, itself, really doesn't seem that different from other temples. My mother really enjoyed that trip, though. That being said, I think she enjoyed it more because of the people she met than because of the temple. As for food, we never tire of Katsukura (which I still think is one of the best examples of katsu around). Aside from the Italian place near my apartment, Katsukura is the only restaurant my mother has wanted to return to in all the times she has been to Japan. I think we've eaten there three of the four times she has visited me. Last spring we ate at the shojin-ryori restaurant at Tenryuji, and although we're both happy we tried it, in terms of food, it could definitely be skipped. If you go to Koyasan, the meals you get there will probably be tastier. And if you're a chocolate fan, go to Ek Chuah! I just tried another very expensive chocolate place last weekend (Palet d'Or, which charges a whopping Y1400 for their chocolat chaud), and Ek Chuah blows it out of the water!

Why of course I mind! I mind that you didn't share any of those delicious sweets with me! And I'm sure you have more pictures in your backlog--post those, too! Even though I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, this one really speaks to me! It forced me to look up the recipe on the internet (I'm a big fan of Emily Luchetti recipes--I've never tried one that hasn't been a success--but I have none of her books!), and now that I have it... Where did you get your cherries for this recipe at this time of year? I don't even think I could get frozen cherries in Japan right now (though if I could, do you think I could use those if I drained them well?). Do you think some sort of dried cherry substitution would work for the brownie? I could soak them in kirsch to plump them up if I had to. No cherry garnish, though.

I do that, too! And I sure hope I don't qualify as an "older woman", yet! Although I think I probably do... Megan--I thought the brownies with caramel were perfect for your theme, too. The lemon apricot bars kind of looked the part, too, I thought, with the apricot jam being the glue that holds your bricks together.

Since you're headed out Cambridge way, any chance of hitting Burdick's for dessert? :smile" What do you think of the "ethnic" food in Boston (Boston proper--not including suburbs)? When was in VT, my sister (who lives in NH) took me to Boston once or twice for Chinese food because it was "the best in the area". I thought the food kind of sucked, but I suppose when you had a craving, it would do. I remember talking to someone in Brattleboro and when I asked about Chinese food she said, "If you want good Chinese food, drive up to Montreal! Even Boston doesn't have good Chinese food!" My point...I got the impression from my experience as well as from what locals were telling me, that "ethnic" food in the NE pretty much sucks. Would you agree, or are there exceptions out there? ETA--I forgot to ask this earlier--do you plan to change your diet at all when you start training for your marathons? I often wonder about how athletes eat, and I remember a friend in junior high school (competitive swimmer) used to have the weirdest diet before competitions--she'd eat carbs and proteins on alternate days, so she'd have something huge like spaghetti for lunch one day, then only a couple of hard-boiled eggs the next. I hope you consider doing another blog around the time of your marathon, because I'd love to see how you eat during that time!

Over in the bake sale topic, Tepee made a number of bar bookies that might meet your needs (and they all look delicious!). And Randi made some dulce de leche brownies once that are a different take on brownies, based I think on some brownies that Zingerman does. The recipe is on her blog, but my employers block blogs, so I can't link to it.