prasantrin

^I was just wondering because it looked (to my eyes) like the brightness had been adjusted just a little, compared to SobaAddict70's picture of the scrambled eggs, which looks like the brightness (and maybe colour) has had more of an adjustment. I love the composition of the photo (was that David Chang's recipe?). It seems to me that a lot of really talented chefs (pastry or savoury) tend to have excellent composition when it comes to photography. Makes sense if you think about the artistic side of cooking. (I don't just mean professional chefs, but also home cooks/bakers, "serious" or otherwise.)

Did you do any processing or is it untouched?

I am lucky to have tasted these a few moments ago. I will cop to some trepidation, being not at all adventurous... but man, they are delicious! The salty brininess of the olives comes through more as fragrance than flavor, and the olive bits in the buttercream have just a hint of meatiness to them. Really wonderful! You tried them? Unfair! Green olive macarons really are delicious, as odd as they might sound.

For how long have you had your Cuisinart? I was itching to buy one when they first came out, but there weren't a lot of reviews from users for them, and the most common comments were along the lines of "A friend had one and thought it felt cheap and flimsy, so he returned it." I'm still sort of drawn by them, though. (And do you have the 7qt or the 5.5qt model? Do you have any of the attachments? If you do, what's your opinion of them? So many questions. . . )

If you go stand in the canned fish aisle, you'll find all sorts of seafoods that you can eat straight from the can--mussels, shrimp, crab, etc. If you go stand in the canned meats aisle, you'll find all sorts of meats you can eat straight from the can--deviled ham, vienna sausage, canned hams. If you'll eat cold canned chili, then canned pork and beans, canned ravioli, etc. are not too far off. Dry cereals come in a box. Make some milk with powdered milk and water, and you've got breakfast. Babybel and Laughing Cow cheeses can go without refrigeration. Just walk up and down your grocery store aisles and I'm sure you'll come up with far more ideas of your own than the ones being shot down here. Plus you know what you like/don't like, so no worries about suggestions of things you hate.

Thanks! I will hopefully get the ingredients together and make it tomorrow. I just have a craving that needs attention. I could just buy some fudge, but it would be more interesting to make it!

We had planned to bus it, but the bus we had planned to take never came. Never did figure out why. I think they might reduce service to the dt area at night, too, because it's so dead. About St. Louis, I think most of the decent places to eat are in the suburbs, or at least far from the dt area. When I look at my Google Map of St. Louis, everything is pretty far from downtown--like Pi (it's just pizza, but it's sort of well-known pizza). Crown Candy Kitchen is not so far, but it's diner-like, and I'm not sure if it's in a great area of town (we never made it there). Someone told me to try Adriana's for St. Louis-style Italian (Sicilian), but we never made it there, either. Or to Hodak's (sort of near Niche, famous for fried chicken, I think). There were a lot of nice-looking restaurants near Bissinger's at Maryland Plaza. It's not close to downtown, either, but it's near a famous church (for sightseeing purposes), and it would have a lot of clean-looking options. And then she could go to Bissinger's! (I thought their chocolates were over-rated, but it's a nice store.)

Would it be a huge mistake to use a nonstick pan to make fudge? That's all I have. I have a thermometer, so I don't have to rely so much on colour (the main reason I wouldn't normally use a nonstick pan). And it's just for personal consumption, so it doesn't have to be perfect or pretty or anything.

I stayed in the dt area last summer (at the Renaissance, not too far from the Hyatt), and that whole area is pretty dead. Roosters was good, but it's a breakfast/lunch place. There's also Nadoz which is open later than Roosters, but it still closes pretty early (around 8?). Niche was good. ETA: The Enterprise Car Rental place is right at the Hyatt. In the long run, it might be cheaper for her to rent a car than to take taxis. We took a taxi out to Niche from the Renaissance, but I can't remember how much it was--$15 one way including tip? That's almost the price of a car rental if you get a good deal.

From a recent article in the Washington Post (bolding is mine) and

Ouch! Not cheap, that's for sure, but beautiful. Before I saw the pries, I thought they'd be nice to have for my mango pudding, but for home use, they're a bit too much.

GOOP has been around for two years or so and has already been discussed to death elsewhere. That it is only being mentioned on eG now tells me that no, she will never be a mainstream food personality. And no, most people will never really care what she has to say about anything.

Interesting. I just searched for "thai tea" and for both text and images, the reference to or pictures of the leaves commonly used for Thai iced tea come up as early results. But it helps knowing what to look for, I suppose. But ya, it's not a powder. The leaves are just so fine it appears to be a powder, but they definitely expand when hydrated.

Google is a great resource. http://www.templeofthai.com/food/beverages/thaitea-3102061126.php You can also find the same tea on amazon and elsewhere. The above is the most common brand of Thai tea used. It says "powder", but it's flavoured tea leaves. I do find that the leaves are finer than good quality tea (but if you're adding a bunch of flavouring and colouring, what's the point of using good quality tea?). I prefer using simple syrup and half and half, but condensed milk or evaporated milk is more traditional, I think.

From a food safety pov, it should be fine, but from a textural pov, it loses its creaminess and becomes clumpy ans greasy when reheated. I use more cheese than most recipes call for, but even excellent restaurant-made carbonara does not reheat well. Still tastes good, though.

Layer it with some strawberries (fresh) and it tastes like strawberry shortcake.

Pesto Genovese is a very particular dish where the basil is the primary and starring ingredient. If an Italian person in Italy were telling you to use cilantro, s/he would not be telling you to make pesto Genovese, but pesto coriandolo or something else. That's not a fair example. In what recipe is epazote a primary ingredient where the entire dish relies solely on its flavour? I'm asking for the purpose of my own edification, as I only know epazote for its use in cooking beans. (And to Chris A., I don't think you could use pineapple in my mango pudding recipe because of the gelatine, but if you really want to try, go ahead. You could probably use pintos in the shortbread recipe, but I would suggest soaking them in simple syrup for a bit, and perhaps dicing them so they're the same size as adzukis. To me, all beans taste alike, so I don't think the type of bean matters so much as the size.) edited for clarity's sake

My position was stated in my initial post in this thread: And to add, I wrote: (corrected a grammatical error and an error in parallel construction, just because they bugged me)I don't really care if people use substitutes or change a recipe to make it more palatable to them, or to use ingredients more easily available to them. I would suggest that if you make my co-worker's adzuki bean shortbread recipe with some other beans that you rename it to kidney bean shortbread or lima bean shortbread, but that's me. And if you want to use bananas to make my mango pudding, that's OK, too, but call it banana pudding, and I can't guarantee the pudding will turn out. I've made it with peaches, and it was pretty good. I'm pretty sure in a discussion on that recipe somewhere, I said something about how my mother prefers alphonso mangos, but that I (and many others) can't tell the difference (that may have been in a different forum. . .I can't remember). But since my mother gave me the recipe, and she likes alphonso mangos, I specified those in the recipe. A better example of a possibility of inflexibility in substitutions would be using ketchup in pad thai. I think it's wrong. But I won't stop you from doing it, though I would prefer you call it by a different name. Because quite frankly, I just don't care enough about the matter, nor do most Thai people. Many would never dream of using ketchup, but they wouldn't stop you from doing so or make a big deal out of it. Mai pen rai, and all that. And I'm not going to call you stupid or say you're full of BS for suggesting the substitution. Anyway, addressing another issue, I feel sorry for Julia Child for thinking a good white vermouth could have been used in place of pinot noir or chardonnay in any dish. What a terrible palate she must have had. Had she spent time on eG, she could have been educated. (More seriously, I wonder if she changed her mind about white vermouth in her later years when affordable French wines became more available.)

Sorry, I was confused because of this part I'm still confused, but I'm left-brained and very literal.

So because some people don't know what an ingredient tastes like, it must not matter that replacing changes the taste of the final recipe? I refuse to buy into that. If there is no reasonable substitute, don't choose an unreasonable one! Again, I did not say that. Or if I did, please point out the words which you are interpreting to mean this. I said a person who has never tried a dish with a particular ingredient won't know the difference if they don't use it. Ignorance is bliss. And I also said if someone who does know the difference is willing to make a substitution anyway, then they do so armed with the knowledge that the final product will be different. Again, they are making a conscious decision to deem the whole topic as trivial. As an example of this kind of unreasonable substitution: Load of crap, if you ask me. There are a few rare circumstances where vermouth can be used to good effect, though of course it will dramatically change the taste of the final product. But she presents it like you can go ahead and do it whenever you want! The fact of the matter is, sometimes you have to accept that if you can't find the ingredient, you can't make the dish. No, she doesn't present it that way at all, at least not the way I read it (though I am very literal, and I don't normally read more into something than what the words actually express). Keeping in mind when the book was written (1961), there really wasn't much choice in the USA in affordable French wines that could be used in cooking and she says as such "As the right white wine is not as reasonable to acquire in America. . ." So perhaps at that time, "a good, dry, white vermouth" really was the best substitute when compared with "the wrong kind of white wine". I don't see at all that she says you can do "whatever you want", but she is stating that for the times, it's a reasonable substitution. And even if the dish was not the same as it would have been if made with the proper type of wine, it probably still made a reasonably tasty dish. I have to wonder, had hundreds or thousands of people not used white vermouth instead of the unavailable white wine 50 years ago, would the revered Julia Child be as revered as she is? And given that hundreds or thousands of people did make the substition and she still became the food goddess she did, then that substitution must not have been all that bad. But according to some, it must have been.

Read again with the bolding added. Perhaps you could quote from a cookbook or recipe that actually says that. I don't recall ever seeing a recipe that offers substitutions while stating that there won't be a difference in the final product if you use said substitutions. They may not state outright that there will be a difference, but I think most people who are intelligent enough to read a recipe are probably intelligent enough to figure that out. And if one has never had an ingredient such as epazote, a person really won't be able to tell the difference in the final product if s/he uses cilantro. But if s/he has had epazote and is still willing to substitute, then they know there will be a difference, and has made a conscious decision to render such substitution as trivial in the greater scheme of things. Which really, it is. Your answer does not really refute what I wrote. Whether a substitution is specious or not is not the issue to which I referred; the issue is whether the recipe states the final product will be identical regardless of which ingredient is used.

I suggest you go read the recipe reviews on allrecipes, foodnetwork, or epicurious (or anywhere else with recipe reviews). There are several of the above types of reviews for nearly every popular recipe. I highly doubt there is a cadre of "anti-substitutionists" out there creating thousands of reviews merely to manufacture a point. P.S. Chris, if there really is a cadre, send me an invite. It sounds like fun. Edit to add PS Next time I'll add a little tongue-in-cheek emoticon to make my intentions clear. But do you really think all the reviews written on such recipe sites are genuine? Some of them really are written just for fun.

Perhaps you could quote from a cookbook or recipe that actually says that. I don't recall ever seeing a recipe that offers substitutions while stating that there won't be a difference in the final product if you use said substitutions. They may not state outright that there will be a difference, but I think most people who are intelligent enough to read a recipe are probably intelligent enough to figure that out. And if one has never had an ingredient such as epazote, a person really won't be able to tell the difference in the final product if s/he uses cilantro. But if s/he has had epazote and is still willing to substitute, then they know there will be a difference, and has made a conscious decision to render such substitution as trivial in the greater scheme of things. Which really, it is. There are, of course, those stories of people who say, "I made that recipe you gave me, but I used A instead of B, and X instead of Y, and then I didn't have M so I used N, and dear Johnny is allergic to T so I just left that out. It was a horrible recipe and I can't believe you recommended it!" But I'm not convinced most of those stories aren't urban myths designed to allow anti-substitutionists to roll their eyes at the stupidity of others and feel superior. edited to change the spelling of my made-up word.

Most suggested substitutes in recipes are not intended to be replacements i.e. exact replicas. Of course they're not going to give the final product the exact same flavour, texture, etc. as the original ingredient and to say they're BS because they don't is somewhat ridiculous. For some people, substitutes are absolutely necessary. There's an eG member who is on a very restrictive low-fat low-sodium diet. I'm sure she remembers what butter tastes like, but she can't use it. Period. So should she stop making anything that requires butter just because it won't be the same? I get that some ingredients cannot equal others and I get the purpose of the discussion, but the tone (people are soooo stupid for recommending X be used instead of Y) is rather off-putting.

I'm not actually sure it's a Nesco, I just assumed so. It's a 1996 model and this is it. It has two dials, but it looks like it has a digitial readout, too. I'm a little concerned about the age, but the woman who owns it says she rarely used it. I was directed to some reviews on Amazon, and there were some not-so-good ones regarding broken arms (the part on the oven, not people's). About the generation of heat--We have an electric oven, but with this oven you don't have to preheat and cooking time is reduced by 1/3, they say, so there should be less heat generated overall, I would think. I wish I could find a cheap halogen-type one. If I decide to look at it (and after reading the amazon reviews, I am inclined not to), I'll check out the noise level.