jgm

Alas, the day of reckoning has come. In 2006, I will eat at three or more new restaurants in town. If I did, I don't remember what they were. Does it count if I went to the new location of a favorite restaurant? I did eat at several new restaurants this year, but I don't think they were here in town. EDITED: Come to think of it, I did at least 2: Dona Lupe and that pizza place that's supposed to have the closest thing to New York pizza you're gonna find here. I will make at least one recipe from every cookbook I have, and every magazine I buy. (That ought to keep me busy.) Whatever posessed me to write a thing like that? I will find my canning recipe book. It has to be somewhere. Doesn’t it? It does have to be somewhere. Too bad I still don't know where that is. I will learn to decorate cookies like a pro, so I can make the very very coolest monster truck cookies for my nephew, with that new monster truck cookie cutter I have. Well, I tried. I took classes. My hands have too much arthritis to do pastry bags with either stiff or medium-stiff icing. I will teach my dog nothing, no matter how hard I try. Success at last! I will read the cookbooks I got for Christmas last year. I will. I swear I will. In 2007. Or 08. This is the year I will try at least six vegetables I’ve never tried before. That's a really good idea. Wonder why I didn't do it? I will taste several kinds of salt to see if I can tell the difference between them. Yup. I tasted them. And I can tell the difference. I will use that specialty cake pan I nearly womped that lady to get, in Williams-Sonoma on the day after Thanksgiving, when it was 30% off. I still have 22 days left. I will give more thought and planning to my daily menus. Yeah, I did. Threats from my physician made this easy to get around to. I will stop being afraid I will die before I get to try all the foods I want to try, and just cook as much as I can. Still afraid I'm gonna die too soon, especially after 3 beloved people in my life died this fall. But I am cooking a lot. We don’t appreciate the abundance we have, so I will eat more slowly and more thoughtfully, and pay closer attention to what I’m eating. I think I probably did this a time or two. It's still a good idea. My kids don’t exist, so I can spend all my restaurant money on myself and my husband!

First, tell us what your results were. Then we can figure out how to help you. Upthread, when I had a problem with a too-cold kitchen, I was advised to use a heating pad underneath the bowl of dough. You could put a box over it to hold in the heat. Hearing about your kitchen conditions, I'd start with trying to remedy the temperature in which the dough rises.

While conserving resources and cutting down on pollution are admirable endeavors, it strikes me that there are many, many more obvious ways to do that before looking at where food originated versus where it's consumed. A lot of people on the planet aren't going to have much to eat if we go to the 100 mile 'rule'. Midwestern farmers depend on exporting wheat and other grains to distant markets; if only those within 100 miles of the farm (or elevator? or grain mill?) are 'allowed' to purchase the grains, those farms won't be in business very long. I would assume that many other food producers must also rely on markets all over the globe, in order for their profit margin to provide an income they can live on.

Last night's loaf was made with 1 cup semolina flour and 2 cups AP flour, and my husband and I are extremely satisfied with the way it tastes. It didn't rise as high, so I'm going to try 1/2 cup semolina + 3 1/2 cups AP. Also, I'm leaving the lid on the pot for only 20 minutes, also as suggested upthread, and we like the crust a lot better. Still crisp and crunchy, but not quite as thick. I'm trying to spread The Gospel of the Bread, and so far, people are just looking at me like I'm nuts. But at least I have tried. If the multitudes choose to suffer with lesser breads, it's not my fault.

I saw something this morning about using a flat whisk as a pastry blender. Not having tried it, I can't attest to how well it works. Just thought I'd mention it, in case someone wants to try it. I have arthritis in my hands, so I can't always hold a fork, and sometimes a pastry blender isn't very comfortable, either. I just went to a Pampered Chef party, and they have a new pastry blender out. It's hard to describe; kind of looks like a cross between a potato masher and a pastry blender. Using it, the motion would be similar to pounding one's fist on a table. I haven't decided if I'll try it or not. While not restaurant quality, it does appear to be well-made.

Yeah, I'm the one teaching someone to cook... In addition to "don't do as I do, do as I say", we're going to discuss the act of mise en place, plus the act of thinking about what you're doing, so if you screw up, you can figure out a way to fix it. Your only problem, Judy, is that you lack creativity and imagination. You should have proclaimed your banana bread a "Molten Banana Muffin" and considered yourself a genius. Soon, molten muffins would be served far and wide, they'd be The Latest Thing, and it all would have started in your own kitchen!

This is perfect weather for a discussion about tea. Current favorite is Dragon Eye Ooling from Revolution Teas. At the office, I drink Constant Comment from Bigelow, although I'm sure some on this list wouldn't approve... In summer, I like iced Earl Grey with sandwiches.

I don't remember another thread like this, but if there is one, the moderators are more than welcome to merge this into the old thread. I recently made some manicotti for a co-worker. It was a very simple Weight Watchers recipe that I've made many times; it's remarkably good, so I decided to double it, and put some in our own freezer. It took two trips to the grocery to finally get all the ingredients together. Or so I thought. After finishing the sauce, I realized I hadn't doubled the tomato sauce, but I had doubled the seasonings in it. I had only one more cup of tomato sauce, but needed 3. We had 5 inches of snow and ice on the ground, and no way was I going back to the store. So, in desperation, I took a can of whole tomatoes, whizzed them in the blender, and added that into the sauce, which went back on the stove for a few minutes to let the flavors meld a little. To make things more manageable, I cooked only half the pasta at a time. I got the first batch put together; cheese mixture into the manicotti tubes, sauce over, packaged into plastic containers, and into the fridge for my friend. After a bit of a rough start, things were going well! Of course not. That's when I realized I forgot to put the eggs into the filling. I was not about to try to reclaim the filling from the already-prepared shells, so I decided we'd eat those, and I took the rest of the filling, mixed the egg into it, and it was all fixed. I finished the batch and went to bed. Delivered it to the co-worker the next day. So she comes to work this morning, and told me how grateful she was for the manicotti. "You're really quite the culinary artist, aren't you?" she said. I thanked her and tried to wipe the guilty look off my face. I see no reason why she needs to know the details... So what pratfalls have you had in the kitchen that you were able to rescue, and no one was the wiser?

I've made several loaves now... In response to the request for reports from those not using the towel, here's mine: I used a towel only the first time. It's just too difficult for me to handle. I'm a klutz by nature, and I need the help of something more rigid. I just use my cutting board, and it's working great. Most of my first rise times are around 20 hours, because that's what works with my schedule. I make the dough around 10 p.m., and I'm not home and ready to work on it until 6 p.m. the next evening. It's working just fine.

After finishing an orange at lunch today, I saved the peel to dry it and put it into a container of mulling spices. It made me wonder what other things that normally would be discarded, could be saved, and used?

OK, OK, the alfredo sauce will be the real deal. We'll use the bechamel for other things. This young woman is a friend of mine, not a participant in a program, and I can't tell her and her family what to eat. I can offer information, try to get her to try things, help her explore the unfamiliar, etc., but essentially, as a friend, it's my place to help her, not direct or control her. I'm hoping I can help her save enough money on the everyday meals she WANTS to make, so that she can afford to make Alfredo sauce now and then. If she and her husband are not already fans of tofu, I can make a couple of things with it so that they can experience it, but if they don't care for it, I can't push it on them. I don't yet know what her family's eating habits are. My main push is to help them enjoy the foods they like to eat, as cheaply as possible, and to help them explore other dishes to the extent they desire. If they want to drink soda pop, I can discuss alternatives with her; but if that should be what they want to do, I am not going to lecture her. For all I know, they may already use very little or none of that kind of thing. There is still much I can do for her. I'd like to get her to the point where making things from scratch instead from a box or mix, is second nature to her, and help her develop the skills, depth, and breadth in her cooking so that she can use up what she's got. That will involve learning the building blocks, menu planning, shopping, etc. If I can take her that far, I think she'll be able to feed her family pretty well. And if I can help her develop the confidence to make her own baby food, so much the better. A lot of this is about developing a knowledge base and the confidence to use it. I will also need to help her find the cooking equipment she needs. I've already alerted several friends not to toss or donate anything from their kitchens without consulting me, and they're excited at the prospect of being a part of this, too. Most of all, I want to pass along my passion and love for cooking. She already says she loves to cook, and if I can help her expand her horizons, I think a lot of the rest will fall into place.

John, if you live anywhere near Wichita, KS, PM me and we'll see about getting together for piecrust lessons. I'm like your aunts; I never measure anything and my crusts always turn out well. Here's my method: 1. For a one-crust pie, smack a pile of shortening the size of your fist, into a bowl. For a two-crust pie, two piles, each the size of a fist. 2. Cover with sifted AP flour. Pour about a penny-sized spot of salt into the palm of your hand, and throw it in (more for two-crusts, of course). Using either a pastry blender or the side of a fork, repeatedly cut through the mixture until the largest pieces are the size of small peas. If it looks like all of the flour has been incorporated before that happens, stop, and sprinkle on more flour. Repeat until the largest pieces are the size of small peas. While working this mixture, occasionally run the fork around the sides and bottom of the bowl to mix in whatever's in the bottom. 3. As you start pouring either cold milk or ice water into the bowl, count to 2 1/2 and stop. That's right, 2 1/2. 3 is too far. 2 isn't enough. If you've been using a pastry blender, abandon it now and pick up a fork. Start folding the mixture together. Add more liquid, carefully, as necessary until there's enough liquid to hold about 95% of the mixture together in a ball. The ball should not be sticky-wet. (If it is, get out a second bowl and repeat the above procedure through 1 and 2, but using less ingredients. Then incorporate some or all of the new flour/fat mixture into the too-wet dough.) 4. Turn the mixture out onto a floured board or cloth, and gently start pushing it together into a ball, then flatten into a disk. You can knead the dough up to 3 times, if you feel it needs it. Re-flour the surface, put the disk in the center, and lightly flour it. 5. Roll out the crust: starting in the middle of the disk, roll out to the edge. Repeat, rolling in different directions, turning the disk, and replacing flour underneath it. When it's not quite the size of a pie plate, pick it up, re-flour the board, flip it over, lightly flour the surface, and continue rolling. Maybe something in there will help you identify things you might want to do differently. I've never worked with butter, so I can't help you there!

I'm getting lots of good ideas here. And I'm beginning to realize that also, one of the first things I need to do is sit down with her and find out what she's already cooking, and see where any holes are. I do know, from the e-mail I quoted above, that she doesn't know how to stew a whole chicken, so that will remain a high priority. The eggs are a good suggestion, but they are fairly high in cholesterol. I am having to cut down on that myself--I'm limited to two a week--but my friend and her family are young and likely are not having to watch nutritional problems that closely. And sometimes, instead of a second egg, two egg whites can be substituted in an omelet, allowing the one yolk (from the first egg) to suffice when vegetables or other things are added, so we can also look at things like that. But I agree that cooking eggs is a skill every cook needs, and if she doesn't already have that skill, we will need to work on it. The fettucine alfredo recipe may need to be bechamel-based, because I don't think she's going to be able to afford heavy cream, parmesan, and butter for one meal. I plan to see what kind of Parmesan she currently buys, and if it's green-can Parmesan, I'll probably step her up to a wedge of DiGiorno. (Katie, if grana padano is available in Wichita, I wouldn't know where to get it. I've wanted to try it myself, so I'll continue to look, but I'm not optimistic.) I understand that DiGiorno isn't considered by most to be a high-quality cheese, but it's readily available at our grocery stores here. I don't want to introduce a "hassle factor" of having to run all over town to find ingredients. Wichita is a very frustrating place to grocery shop. It's fairly spread out, and lacks interesting markets and specialty stores. If any of you have read the No-Knead Bread thread, I said in my post there that it's almost a 25-mile round trip for me to simply be able to buy a decent loaf of bread. That is not an exaggeration. I put my address and the store's address into Mapquest, and that's what it added up to. I'll look at the fettucine alfredo recipes in my cookbooks, and if I find any significant variations, I'll bring questions back to the thread. If I end up going with the bechamel-based sauce, I will at least introduce her to the more authentic version, so that she'll at least know about it, but it may have to wait for a more prosperous time of life. Or maybe she'll prefer it, and will simply decide to make it a once or twice a year meal. My friend did tell me that she's not crazy about mushrooms because of their texture. Sounds like she's been eating canned mushrooms. We'll have to address that early on, too!

How about some sort of individual _______ Wellington? Beef is the obvious choice, but certainly it could be done with other meats, or even a vegetable, maybe? Also, think about cold or hot soups served in shot glasses, such as many restaurants are doing as an amuse-bouche... I think even a stemmed glass of some sort might make an interesting presentation. Or maybe you have demitasse cups. Et cetera. I hope you'll take a few seconds to photograph each dish, and post it. A lot of people are intrigued by the idea of doing a tasting menu at home, and would love to see what you do. Edited to ask -- In the first picture, are those pads and pens beside the plates????

OK, I've heard from her. We plan, in a couple of weeks, to stew a chicken and branch out from there. But meanwhile, with the part of this where I try a recipe and then let her taste it before she makes it, she wants to do fettucine alfredo. I'm aware of a few ways to approach this dish. I'm thinking about starting with a bechamel sauce. The Joy of Cooking, I would imagine (I'm at work and don't have access to my copy), would have a bechamel recipe plus variations. (I also have Peterson's Sauces cookbook, which I plan to consult, too.) This particular dish strikes me as an excellent place to start, since all kinds of things can be added to it, so leftover ingredients can be used up. Also, I can teach her about other things that can be made with a bechamel. Oh -- she said she wants a "flavorful" version. I'm assuming that means we'll be using plenty of cheese. Comments? Suggestions for recipes? Suggestions for variations on the alfredo dish, plus other dishes that start with bechamel? I didn't learn to cook by starting with the basic sauces, but have become familiar with them over the years, so this will be a good exercise for me. Here we go!!!

Here's another approach: "We will contribute $__________ towards the wedding. How you choose to use it is up to you." Guaranteed not to make you popular, but it does set some boundaries.

Dorie Greenspan's Korova Cookies, a/k/a World Peace Cookies, feature lots of chocolate and a touch of salt. People love them. The dough can be mixed and refrigerated or frozen ahead of time, and baked the night before. I guarantee they'll be popular. The recipe is available here, on the Splendid Table website. This time of year, people also appreciate things that are healthy. Consider fruit skewers, perhaps with a lovely dip -- you can't beat sour cream with brown sugar and a touch of Gran Marnier. And if somebody brought pralines to a Christmas party, they'd be my new best friend. Don't forget about divinity, too; you rarely see it anymore and lots of people love it.

I'm excited about this, as I have no children to whom I can pass my skills and my enthusiasm for cooking. It'll be nice to share this passion in a little different manner than the sharing we do on eGullet. I'm also excited to get to know her better; maybe I will be able to provide some meals for them around the time she delivers the baby. I think the real limitations here will be her time and energy, but most of all her budget. I hope she'll qualify for WIC. That should help a lot. As I said earlier, I'm willing to purchase things for her, but I don't want to make her uncomfortable. Perhaps with her growing skills and enthusiasm, family members will either help out or pass some equipment down to her.

OK, Here's what I know: I know they are in an apartment. The are of town where they live is not the "trendy" part, but I think it's a decent area of older apartment buildings. It sounds like it's probably as appropriate for their income as they're going to get in this community. It's likely that cheaper digs are available, but those particular digs would come with their own special crime problems. This is what she e-mailed to me on Monday: " i try to find recipes that are easy to do and cheap but i have a hard time as even though i love to cook, i'm still pretty new to it. my mom didn't cook from scratch very often, my granny did and taught me somethings which i treasure, she always said i would be the next cooker in the family, as my grandma also doesn't like to do much cooking. so any recipes would be gladly taken and if i don't know what to do than i could always ask. or if you are up for it sometime maybe we could get to gether and you could show me some, i would really like that. i love chicken items (especially chicken and noodles on top of mashed potatoes ), but have never had to cook a whole chicken so wouldn't know what do with it lol." I don't know her well, but I think this paragraph says a lot about her skill level and her attitude toward this project. I did find out in a later e-mail that her granny also taught her to make pie crust from scratch. To me, that indicates she's willing to tackle projects that are more involved than opening a can or a box and following the reheating directions. I think she shows promise!

I am really grateful to all for the ideas and information. My friend and I are looking forward to working together. We will have to wait a couple of weeks for another paycheck to come in before we can start. I'd be perfectly happy to purchase the items, but I don't want her to feel like she's accepting charity from me. I probably will fudge a little here and there, and bring her certain equipment items and pass them off as something I bought cheaply at the thrift store. Yesterday it hit me, that one of the reasons why I was reluctant to try new recipes during my cash-strapped days, was that if things didn't work out well, I was either stuck eating something I really didn't like, or had to trash a significant portion of the week's grocery budget. So I have offered to try new recipes for her, if she finds something she wants to take a stab at, so that she can taste the results before investing the money. She was enthusiastic about that. I'm waiting to hear from her; I told her to either find a recipe or name a dish she wants to learn, and I'll find the recipe. I figure I'll probably get to try a few new things along the way, so that will be of benefit to me as well as to her. I do intend to hit nutrition topics as we cook, as well as technique topics and food safety topics. One of the biggest things I think we'll work together on, is using up what she already has, which will involve some planning. I'm not very good at that myself, so as I'm helping her to improve, I hope to pick up some good habits myself. I also want to make sure she knows about various resources on the Internet and in the community. I just found out about a good place to buy produce last night, so maybe we can check it out together. I think it would also help her to keep a master list of things she knows how to make and her family likes, so that when she's trying to come up with menus, she can stay out of ruts, and can also flip through it to find ways to use up the rest of something she's purchased. They are living in an apartment, so next spring I may be able to get her started with a tomato plant in a container, and maybe some herbs, but unless she's strongly motivated, that may be as much gardening as she'll want to do at this time. Quite truthfully, looking over all of the suggestions, and looking at the strategies I'm going to teach her, this will probably end up benefitting me as much as it will her.

Mr. Bittman and Mr. Lehay are both in grave danger of receiving a big wet kiss from me, should we ever meet face to face. This bread is a revelation. It is changing my life. I am actually declining to schedule meetings and social activities on certain evenings, so that I can bake bread. And finally, I have good bread to eat without driving 25 miles, roundtrip (literally) and paying more than $3 per loaf. While visiting relatives on Thanksgiving weekend, I decided I wanted to show my sister-in-law how to bake this bread. She was excited when she heard about it. We were several hundred miles from home, and I hadn't brought the LeCreuset pot I bake it in --although I had thought about doing so. (I have a [ahem, well-deserved] reputation in the family for being "high maintenance", and dragging around a heavy pot to cook a special bread recipe in, would just make it worse. ) So my sister-in-law took me to Wal-Mart, and there she bought a 3 1/2 quart "combo" made by Lodge --combo because the lid can also be used as a frying pan --and gave it to me as a Christmas present. It was about $27. It worked beautifully, and the family was enthusiastic with the results as well, which is unusual for them. Just a question... a good friend has celiac disease, and I've found a cookbook that has a wheat flour substitute, made out of a combination of several non-wheat flours. Would anybody venture a guess as to whether that mixture would work with this method? I'll probably try it anyway, but if I can head off potential problems first, that would help.

We've had discussions on other threads about contributing to our communities by teaching people to cook, especially those who are economically challenged. When I participated in and read those threads, I guess I just assumed that if I ever did it, I'd step into a program of some sort. But that's not the way this is shaping up. I have a young friend whose family is struggling financially. Her husband works; she stays at home with one child, and is pregnant. They have just been turned down for food stamps, but I think she's going to look into WIC. (I suspect that if they actually took the steps to apply for food stamps, which most people would not want to do, they must be pretty desperate.) I have agreed to teach her some things that will help her cook more frugally. She has beginning-level cooking skills, and wants to learn to cook. Since I'm not an expert on cooking at all, but only a home cook who is working to improve my own skills, I'm trying to decide how to approach this. I think we're going to start out with stewing a chicken, so that she can use the meat and the broth to make chicken and noodles, chicken pot pie, chicken and dumplings, chicken noodle soup, etc. But I'm not sure where to go from there. I'm thinking about sitting down with her and finding out what her family likes to eat, and then figuring out how to approach it after we get the first chicken dishes figured out. I intend to teach her some strategies, such as prepping ahead, that will work in with a young mother's schedule. I think I'll teach her how to make a basic tomato sauce, and build on it. And at that point, we're reaching some of the limits of my own cooking skills. I've been reading Sally Schneider's books to improve my own cooking, and I want to take an ingredients-driven approach -- and probably learn a lot, myself. I'd appreciate any ideas, strategies, and comments you might have to offer.

Here's what I don't get: we foodies oohed and aahed over all manner of roasted vegetables. Marshmallows, when roasted to a deep golden brown, are incredible. And they're even more incredible than roasted vegetables. Any excuse to eat them works for me; I'd even become a Girl Scout and sleep in a tent again if that's what it took. Yes, that marshmallow/sweet potato combination is quite sweet, but who cares? The sweet potatoes are good for you, and the marshmallows are just plain good. Case closed, as far as I'm concerned!

I like my Brussels sprouts with BUTTER and I can't believe I'm the first one to mention BUTTER on this list!

Do you have suggestions as to what I can do with myself during that 45 minutes? Never in my life have I mustered 45 minutes worth of self-restraint, and doing so with the aroma of freshly-baked bread in the house is unthinkable! While I'm sure that what you say is true, how does one get through that 45 minutes?