prasantrin

Some people have severe knee or hip joint problems that make walking (and therefore using much of the equipment at a gym other than the pool) very difficult, and parking right in front is sometimes a necessity for those people. Just as, perhaps, someone with severe carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, or rotator cuff problems may not be able to grip and shake a cocktail shaker, so this kind of tool might be helpful. I'm stretching on that one, but I'm quite serious about the gym thing.

Crap. You'd think with all the apples around, you'd be able to find some apple cider! I even checked the Tengu website, and and my local organic store, but nothing. I wonder if I could make my own...Or just doctor up some regular apple juice?

Related to Japanese apples, has anyone found apple cider in Japan? Not the alcoholic version, but the non-alcoholic type you can get in Vermont in the fall. A friend and I were talking about it the other day, and it made me want to make some mulled cider. But I'd have to find the cider before I could mull it!

Update: Korova cookies with chocolate-covered candied orange or lemon rinds instead of chocolate are awesome! I might try candy canes next. I love peppermint and chocolate together. Or maybe chopped up homemade peanut brittle.

What's the crispy looking thing in the foreground at 6 o'clock-ish? It kind of looks like crispy duck skin, or the crispy fatty part from roast beef. And btw, my birthday is May 10, just in case you feel like making a b-day dinner for me in absentia. I'll gladly eat it virtually (I'd like a fatty piece of beef, please).

Ummmmm...I'd like to say yes, but I don't really remember. I do delump my baking soda before throwing it into the rest of the dry ingredients, so I don't think I have lumps of baking soda in there. At least not large ones. I might have some small lumps of flour, but the bitterness definitely didn't taste like flour. I have three bananas left, so I thought I'd try again. But now bananas are a heck of a lot darker than they were last week. Could overripe bananas be bitter?

I froze my banana muffin batter for about a week in muffin tins lined with cupcake liners. I took it out and left in the fridge for a couple of days (in the muffin tin). I baked it this morning, and the liners stuck to the tins! It took a bit of prying to get them out, not without some minor damage to the muffins. Then, the muffins stuck to the liners! Can't get them out without major damage to the muffins. It doesn't bother me so much, since then I can put some butter on the crumbs and mix it all in, resulting in a very high ratio of butter to muffins, but I can't give any away now! What did I do wrong?

I've decided to turn this into a banana bread failure topic, since my question doesn't seem to fit anywhere else. Sometimes when I make banana bread, it get little bits of bitter spots. I thought they may be from leaving in the very top (bottom?) of the banana (sometimes there's a bit of harder black at one of the ends), but this time, I was very careful not to include the black bit, but I still had a spot or two of bitterness. I was thinking that it might be from the inside of the banana peel--sometimes a thread or two of the inner peel comes off and gets mashed in to the bananas. But I used to eat the inner peel when I was a kid, and I don't remember it ever being bitter. Does anyone else have experience with bitter banana bread? It's not the entire bread that becomes bitter, just spots here and there. So i don't think it's that my bananas are over-ripe. any other ideas?

Elisa Roche, from the 1st season of Jamie's Kitchen, wrote an article on sexism in the kitchen. From Wiki (FWIW, Jamie's Kitchen just started airing in Japan a few weeks ago, so it's all new to me!)

I think Chiu Chow is an area in China, so in this case, it refers to the style of cooking predominant in that area. As I understand it, the cooking there is simpler than, say Szechuan cooking, allowing the flavours of the ingredients stand out. Check out this Wiki article for more (though hardly complete) info. Lee Kum Kee has a cooking sauce called "chiuchow" or "teochiu", but I've never tried it so I don't know what's in it or what it tastes like. But if you're curious about chiuchow cooking, it might worth trying. ETA--LKK has Chiu Chow Chili Oil, not a cooking sauce. I thought I had seen a cooking sauce at Costco (in Japan), but perhaps I was wrong.

So, 6 is better than 7, and 8 is probably better than 7, but not necessarily better than 6? I just checked the Winnipeg Public Library, and they have the 7th and 8th editions, but no 6th. If I'm home next summer, I'll check them both out and see how they compare, then go with whichever I like best. I'll just pretend the 6th edition doesn't exist What I don't know won't hurt me!

Another question about CIA's Pro Chef books... Over in this topic, Fat Guy mentions that although he has Pro Chef 8, he's still using Pro Chef 7. Is there a big difference between the different Pro Chef editions in terms of the recipes they each offer? Intrigued by the corn bread recipe FG mentioned, I'm thinking of getting a copy--but do I get 7 or 8? Does one edition have more/fewer recipes than the other?

Use the method given by David Lebovitz on his website--no unopened can to worry about, and it will take just an hour or so of your time.

Oooohhhhh! I wish you had blogged two summers ago! I was in Stockton for a couple of weeks, and had I known of all the wineries in Lodi, I might have borrowed (or rented) car to take myself there. As it was, I had a very disappointing visit to Napa (it wasn't disappointing because of the wines, but because of my traveling companions, who really weren't all that interested in wine or food). I hope to see more kitty pictures out there! I was a bit surprised that Lucy doesn't much care for cats. Most lab-types I know get along relatively well with cats, or are at least indifferent to them. (My cat doesn't like any other animals, but she tolerates their presence quite well, and only gets into trouble when provoked.)

I reread your original question, and it sounds like the recipe asked for tapioca balls, not the powdered one, which seems odd to me, but what do I know? Do the crunchy little balls have any kind of flavour to them? If they don't give the pie a bad flavour, then I would suggest sprinkling something sweet and crunchy on the pie, so people won't be able to tell the difference between the flavourless crunchy bits and the sweet crunchy bits. They'll just think the pie is supposed to be crunchy! As long as the crunchy tapioca balls aren't crunchy enough to chip a tooth, of course. Who was it that catered a wedding for a bridezilla, and put fresh flowers on the cake only to find that the flowers were infested with snails, which then made their way around the cake? But the bride quite liked the crunchiness, and the "scrolling" on the icing. That was one funny story, and I'm envisioning something like that for your pie (creative camouflaging).

I think you may have used tapioca as in the little balls one would use to make tapioca pudding. It's quite different from using tapioca starch, which would be in powder form (I think), except maybe you could grind the tapioca balls to make tapioca starch. Regardless, I think you're stuck. But maybe as your pie sits, the tapioca will soften a bit to make it easier to eat?

Just in case you can't find another source, usually, if you email with what you're planning to order, plus your address, they'll give you (or at least estimate) the shipping costs before you order.

Cool! She actually ranks Assumption Abbey as #1, though she does write that Gethsemani is her favourite (and is also the fruitcake of her childhood, so that could, in part, be why it's her favourite). I like that she even tried Hickory Farms fruitcake. Now that's dedication! She ranks Our Lady of Guadalupe above Collins Street. My mother says, so it seems they might have similar tastes. Next year I'll have to do Assumption Abbey, Gethsemani, and Holy Cross Abbey--the three of which are ranked above OLG and CS. Jaymes--I loved your writing! And I love that your grandmother added even more alcohol to an already alcohol-laden fruitcake! I think your grandmother and my mother would get along famously!

Well, I was way off, so I'm glad I didn't guess! (I thought it was chocolate pudding or coffee jelly)

The closest thing to a recipe that she posted was this: from http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=444978

My mother tried the Collins last night. Here's what she says: So, in terms of flavour, it looks like the Collins wins out over the Claxton. But according to her, the Collins is not really a fruitcake, just a really good cake.

I like the little bars best, too. If I have a big bar, I'd have to eat the whole thing or most of it would go to waste (I tend to forget about food I've put away). That's either a whole lot of useless calories or a whole lot of wasted food, and I can rarely eat a whole large bar of chocolate. With the little bars, I just eat one or two and be satisfied. I'm not a big chocolate fan, though, so that's part of the reason I can't usually eat a big bar of chocolate. If we were talking potato chips, though...the bigger the bag the better!

If I bake directly from frozen, for how long would I bake it, and at what temperature? I finally got around to freezing some muffin batter last night, and I still have 3 very brown bananas I want to make into muffin batter. I'm going to have a lot of frozen banana muffin batter!

Clockwise from twelve o'clock: Meiji Almond Crunch, Cookies and Milk KitKat, Special Matcha KitKat, and Vanilla Bean KitKat. I love chocolate-covered almonds, and the Meiji ones are my favourite. The Almond Crunch ones have a crunchy layer between the almond and the chocolate. I really like them (you can see the box has been opened, and it's empty!). I'm eating a Cookies and Milk KitKat right now. First, the box is nice, but I really like the wrapper inside. It's very pretty in a plain sort of way. Second, the kitkat isn't so bad, either. I like it more than the vanilla bean one, and it really does taste more like what it's supposed to taste like, than most of the white chocolate-based kitkats do. Most just taste like white chocolate (i.e. yucky), but this tastes a little of the cookies part, but not so much the milk part. Inside of the special matcha kitkat If only it tasted as good as it looked...

When I'm feeling very lazy, I use puff pastry for quiche. I use weights, but don't dock, and I don't get too much puffing when I parbake. But I usually have a problem with the edges--even if I dock them, they still puff too much, and I can't really put weights on them. Haven't quite figured out how to solve that problem.