Moopheus

Cool. $150 a pound for cinnamon. Now there's a good racket.

I presume that means we're probably not too far from seeing the active ingredient marketed in pill form. I guess that means that a dish of cinnamon ice cream every day won't lower your cholesterol.

It would make me wonder if I were getting dessert or someone's student art project. Why not just say "Peanut butter cake", with a description underneath? Chocolate cake is still basically chocolate cake regardless of what the fillings or toppings are. Does it need a title?

There was a time not too long ago when I was living on a food budget of about $10-20 a week, and I recall that it involved a lot of spaghetti (homemade sauce, much cheaper and better than jarred) and chicken quarters. Tuna fish and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. Yes, stay away from packaged foods, generally more expensive than making it yourself. Also, make things like soups and stews, gratins, lasagna that can be stretched for several meals. Good old rice & beans. Classic 'peasant' foods were developed for a reason--stretching limited food resources as far as possible.

I thought we were talking about food here.

I always thought that coleslaw must be one of the most uneaten foods (as in it appears on your plate unbidden, and returns again from whence it came).

So, did I, at least in part. The advantage of fresh ice cream is that's fresh, and you get to eat it before it's degraded by the freezer. Oh, duh (need forehead-slapping smiley here). Yes, you're right, that should help. Can I get that with some marshmallow creme topping?

You're not the first to say it.

Wasn't that sort of thing already happening in India, during colonial times (Indian chefs working for Englishmen and creating dishes to suit their tastes)?

Beer. And, yeah, Krispy Kremes are way overrated.

A couple of weeks ago I had some excellent steamed dumplings at a local vegetarian restaurant (one which doubles as a Buddhist shrine), but it is true that they are often gooey and tasteless.

It could be expensive in any case, what with the price of cream what it is this days. One thing that annoys me is that in my neighborhood I can't buy unadulterated cream; I have to go across town to the Whole Foods to get cream that usn't ultra-pasteurized and without gums and/or polysorbate-80 added. My mango ice cream is still a work in progress, though. I've been trying to make it taste like a frozen lassi, and I can't get the cardamom flavor strong enough. I've been infusing pods in the cream, but the flavor doesn't come through in the finished product. I think I have to try using powdered cardamom. I still think that Neil's formula sounds more like gelato than American-style ice cream, not that there's anything wrong with that; a well-made gelato is a wonderful thing. It's not the only way to make good ice cream, though. Commercial ice cream, feh; a low standard. Certainly nothing in the supermarket is going to be like fresh ice cream, and good ice cream shops are few and far between.

I forgot to have scientists perfectly balance the mango-yogurt ice cream I just made. Maybe I shouldn't eat it. Oops, too late. Gone now.

The main exception being Italian gelato recipes, which often have little or even no cream, but sometimes a lot of egg. For home use there's no reason not to just rely on cane sugar and egg for the emulsifier. Egg white is sometimes added to sorbet as a stabilizer when there's no butterfat to trap air bubbles, and it would behave similarly in ice cream, though it isn't really necessary; most ice cream is made without.

I've been using this "fair oil" on the butcher-block top of my kitchen island, and it works great, easy to apply and dries quickly. Dave is right; if the wood isn't too badly damaged it can be brought back, and a good board is probably worth the effort. You may need to reapply oil a few times over the first few weeks if the wood has become very dry.

Only 8%? Jeez, that's practically ice milk. The federal minimum for packaged commercial ice cream is 10% butterfat; anything less can't be called "ice cream".

I guess that would depend on what you're reading; if it's the Times, you probably won't hear that. In our culture we're not supposed to question the ideal of limitless self-indulgence. Guess I'm just tired of being told that somehow my life is impoverished because I don't want to spend my money on lavish extravagances, at the same time knowing full well that what I do have is well beyond the reach of a large portion of the world's population.

Perhaps nothing, in itself; nor am I against the idea of restaurants generally. It's just that this aspect of the 'fine dining' experience (and the attendant 'extravagant' cost) was sidestepped by Grimes. His argument was that guilt over the extravagance was a denial of pleasure, which I think is not true.

I wonder what those Talmudic scholars would have thought if they'd been around in the age of the microscope. Most of the really worrisome things are not visible to the eye.

I don't buy it. Getting pleasure from food (something I try to do as much as I can) doesn't need to be expensive. For most of human history the best food was the exclusive preserve of the wealthy aristocratic classes. Only recently has this begun to change. Spending very large amounts of money in restaurants is as much (or perhaps even more) about being made to feel like an aristocrat as it is about the food itself. Isn't that part of what you're paying for?

The film on the spoon may be more from the egg than from the cream. You don't get that with eggless ice cream. Heavy cream is usually on the order of 36 to 40 percent fat. So you might have even more than 20% butterfat, which is pretty high. (commercial "premium" ice cream is usually 15-18%). Generally, very high butterfat levels are avoided because it can make the body of the ice cream chewy, and not smooth. But it is possible to make perfectly good ice cream with a lot of cream; if the results seemed otherwise good to you, I'd try leaving out the eggs.

Strawberry ice cream. Nice berries are starting to show up at the farmer's market, so some had to go into the ice cream freezer.

The first time I walked by this place I thought the window said "tranny's". Glad to hear it is only selling pizza. Sounds like we will have to give it a try.

I used to live near the original Steve's shop (gone now), and the mix-ins were a fun complement to what was very good ice cream (Steve Herrell still sells good ice cream at Herrell's). Didn't mind waiting in line for it. I've never seen a Cold Stone Creamery, never even heard of it before it was mentioned on eGullet, but it sounds pretty dreadful.

Thanks for deciding what I'm going to have for dinner tonight! That looks real good. Yes, the asafoetida smells like something you might find on your shoe, but remember you usually only need a wee little bit. I don't find it affects the smell of the finished dish in any negative way.