jgm

This isn't much of an answer, but I definitely associate pecan pralines with the South. But they're a candy, and not a dessert. I'm sure there are all kinds of desserts that can be made with crumbled pralines, notably ice cream.

There was a pizza place in the town where I went to college, that served the most amazing blue cheese salad dressing. Pizza wasn't bad, either, but I was madly in love with the salad dressing. Years later, the recipe was finally published in a local newspaper. They combined equal volumes of blue cheese and vegetable oil, and allowed it to soak overnight. This lovely combination was then folded into whipped cream (yes, it had been whipped). That was it. Spoon onto a salad and top with plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

I think this season's highlight of that nonsense was during the cookie show... when they showed footage I'd seen on one of the other programs, about making peppermint pigs. The pigs just looked like red candy pigs. They didn't look like cookies at all, and I couldn't figure out what in the hell they were doing in a cookie show. Besides cutting production costs by taking up the time they would have had to fill using fresh footage, I mean.

More, actually. I started reading this thread for the first time last week, and couldn't stand it. Friday night I headed straight to the grocery from work. Used 6 large white onions, 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt. Cooked in crockpot for over 15 hours, but only part of that was on high. Finally dumped all into a pan on the stove and kept reducing. Added chicken stock and reduced it down... now I have something wonderful. Tried it last night with short ribs. Big plans for tonight!

I have an opposite contribution. For several years, I worked in a coroner's office. The coroner was appalled to hear that a colleague, on the witness stand, had compared the consistency of a gunshot victim's brain (a week after the shooting, when he died) to... well, never mind, but it was a food. Boss said the first thing they learned in her specialty, was that descriptions of anything found at autopsy, should never include comparisons to food. For obvious reasons. And I can't help throwing this in: one day the deputy coroner was drafted by the county for whom we worked, to cook hamburgers at the employee picnic. He had intentions of wearing a button that said, "I didn't bring the meat" but I forgot to ask him whether he actually did or not.

Mine isn't a particular food; it's a restaurant...actually, a building. When we first moved to the neighborhood, it was a delightful waterfront seafood place, which served a wonderful brunch on Sunday mornings. Then the tornado hit, and the seafood place didn't reopen. The building was vacant for awhile. Finally, another restaurant opened in that same building, but it was a much different kind of restaurant. It lasted a couple of years, obviously because the food was pretty mediocre. When the next restaurant openened in that building, my husband and I tried it out one Saturday night. His meal was unremarkable; mine was barely edible. Something about chicken marinated in yogurt served on rice. Everything was off-white, and it had no flavor whatsoever. When I saw it on the menu, I figured those were the main ingredients, but it turns out they were the only ingredients. We were not impressed. Later that night I became extremely ill. Who knows whether it was flu or food poisoning. Two other restaurants have opened in that same building, but I cannot bring myself to walk through the front door, even though the owners, managers, staff, furniture--you name it, everything has changed. Doesn't matter. I can't drive by the building without an uncomfortable twitch in my stomach.

I'm getting tired of the same old lunch stuff. Please help! I like to bring a lunch that will be something to look forward to all morning. (All afternoon, I look forward to going home and cooking.) Here are the parameters: --I am willing to spend up to 1/2 hour in the morning preparing a lunch to take to work, plus additional time the night before, if necessary. I'm willing to cook the night before (no time limit) and have things to pull out of the fridge or freezer. --After arriving at work, I have a refrigerator and a microwave at my disposal. Any kind of sandwich grill or other appliance, is out. No place to use it and co-workers don't appreciate cooking fumes. --Sometimes I have a table available; other times I have to sit in a chair and eat off my lap, with a small table next to me. I never know more than 5 minutes in advance, what will be available. I've brought a soup mug to work, so that I can comfortably eat soup. --I live in the midwest and do not have access to specific products found in specialty stores, although I can find some specialty products here and there. I'm looking for sandwich combinations, freezable soups, and anything else that will hold at least overnight. I'm also looking for ideas or recipes for cold salads, such as pasta or potato or any other salad that will hold for ~4 hours. Thanks!

Ditto the Vaseline; it really is excellent. The only thing I would add is, you may want to smear it over wet or damp skin. That seems to help. I used to throw pots and the clay would dry my skin out terribly. Everyone I knew at that time, used the Vaseline on wet skin method. Forget fancy and expensive lotions, except for times when you're not working and having greasy hands would be unacceptable. For those times, I recommend Lubriderm; if you can put it on about every 30 minutes or so, so much the better. And while at work, I think butter, indeed, would be a good idea.

I don't know if my opinion matters much... I've never worked in the industry; I'm just a foodie who cooks at home. If you are in a kitchen in which the equipment and/or food is really, really below par, all I can say is GET OUT OF THERE. As soon as possible, find another job. After being in the workforce for 30 years, I can truthfully say the worst mistakes I've made have all involved hanging onto a losing proposition waaaaaay too long. Building a stable resume/track record can be a very good thing, but sticking with a genuinely substandard situation only stifles your growth as a professional. Adversity can teach you how to cope and how to problem solve, but when it reaches the point where your supervisor doesn't know the difference between demi made from veal bones, and whatever-it-is that comes from canned beef stock, it's definitely time to polish up the ol' resume. Standing up for yourself is always good, and if you can do it with substantial self-respect, you may be able to make some headway. But if the people you work with are jerks, it won't matter. Those people have to become afraid of you, in one sense or another. Sometimes you can get co-workers onto your side by developing a reputation for being very good, and a very good coworker, in terms of helping others out when you can. But if the people you work with are jerks, it won't matter. They will never have any respect for you because they have no respect for themselves, and they will never appreciate anything you do for them. When the going gets rough, try to get to the mindset where you're working for YOU, not for your boss or for your customers. I know that's easier said than done. Been there, tried to do that a lot. It eventually required a lot of growing up and soul-searching on my part. Meltdowns are human and very understandable, but they're a lot more effective if the person having them is someone known for always striving for excellence. (Not perfectionism; there's a difference.) And there is no other person who deserves excellence--only you. Your boss doesn't pay you enough to earn it from you. Customers deserve excellent food, but they only see your products one at a time. The kind of never-waivering, never compromising, never slacking excellence that lets you walk out the door every day with a clear conscience --you're the only one who deserves the benefits of that. May I add?-- you guys have my absolute respect. Until I read this thread, I never imagined what kinds of conditions you work under. I'm currently listening to Ruhlman's "Making of a Chef" on tape; the chapter on baking is awesome. Go read it. Ruhlman even talks about not fully understanding what a baker does, because he's a cook, not a baker, and he knows he doesn't get it. It'll probably be a very soothing, supportive dose of respect that you could use along about now.

Okay, this is taking things in a little different direction... but how about an evaluation of recipes and cooking techniques? I realize many people on this list don't use recipes at all, so that discussion might be a little difficult. Have any of you actually made any of the dishes you've seen made on TV, the way the program host has made them? So my question is, what do you think these people *literally* bring to the table? Their job is to teach people to cook. Are they accomplishing that? Here's an example. A few weeks ago, I was watching Giada's show. She was cooking pasta. She insisted the water had to be salted with sea salt... and lots of it: "Make it salty as the sea." My problem with that is, that there are very few (maybe none) people with palates sensitive enough to detect whether pasta has been cooked with sea salt, kosher salt, or any other kind of salt, as long as an appropriate amount of some kind of salt was added. So, in my opinion, the whole sea-salted-pasta-water business is just catering to a current fad, and it's not teaching people important information about cooking. Feel free to disagree. I'd love to hear some evaluations of the actual cooking. Whaddya think?

Another indulgence comes to mind, but I had to go to the neighbors' house to get it. Our neighbor, when frying chicken, would take the leftover egg/milk concoction and mix it with the seasoned flour, and drop wads of it in the spaces between pieces of chicken frying in the pan. Her five well-behaved boys always waited until the chicken came around at the table, and each took only his share of the "crumbles." The one time I was able to convince my mother to do it, they were all gone by the time the chicken was cooked, and my sister and I were sent to our room for fighting over them. This same neighbor also used to allow me, when I was about 3 or 4, to sit on her kitchen counter while she was baking, and didn't mind at all when I dipped my fingers in the cake batter, cookie dough, and icing. God, I miss that woman.

I know I'll watch it, whenever it doesn't conflict with football. (My husband is bigger and meaner than I am, and he fights dirty.) It'll be refreshing to see some actual cooking on the Food Network.

I can't believe I haven't seen this yet: When my mom made pie, which was a couple of times a month, she'd put the trimmed raw crust on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, and bake it along with the pie. And I must confess, I did that last week when I baked pies for Thanksgiving. And to be really honest, what I really prefer is raw pie dough. Oh, man!

Sounds utterly dreadful. I don't watch any of the other reality shows, so I doubt I'll watch this one, either. Ugh.

My new mainstay comfort food is Julia Child's potato and leek soup, except I back off on the water a bit to make it thicker. I'm getting a cold and it's what I'm going to have tonight, with creme fraiche in it. Every time I eat it, I marvel at how simple it is, and how good it is. I've enjoyed reading about other favorites, and now I have new ideas to try. One of my other mainstays is a soup served at Olive Garden; I think it's just called Tuscan soup or something like that. It starts out with chicken broth; Italian sausage is browned separately and then simmered in the broth, along with a pinch of dried red pepper flakes, for about half an hour, if I remember correctly; then sliced potatoes are added. Just before the potatoes are done, add kale that's been torn into roughly bite sized pieces. Finish with a little cream. Very simple, substantial, and good enough to make me forget it came from a chain.

Good to know. I will try it. The beautiful thing about the silpat is, that it's so easily transportable. Given my particular family configuration (a nice way of saying my father-in-law does not cook, and if I want a holiday dinner, I have to bring everything and cook most of it myself), I make pies away from home a lot. Maybe I can rescue the silpat solution, after all. Thanks!

I took my silicone mat with me to my father-in-law's house for Thanksgiving, for the purpose of rolling out pie dough. After rolling out 5 crusts on it, I've decided I will go back to using a pastry cloth. On the silicone mat, no matter how much flour I used, the crust still stuck, and was very difficult to roll out evenly because of the sticking. Some spots were too thick and others were so thin that holes were created, and there was no correcting the situation. It was a mess. The most effective apparatus I've found for rolling out pie dough is something I ordered from QVC a few years ago, but I think other ways could be found to produce the same thing, without ordering what I have. It's a large plastic oval, and a special cover is made for it from cloth; the cover is constructed much like a shower cap, with elastic stretching along the edge, so that the cover fits over the plastic oval. (I don't seem to be able to articulately describe things today. Please bear with me!) The cover is made of a fairly thin white cloth. So I guess what I'm saying is, you could take a large woven, non-terrycloth kitchen towel (or just a piece of cotton cloth; muslin would work well), fit it around a large cutting board and safety pin it together in back, and replicate my setup. If it wobbles or creeps, take a terrycloth towel, wet it down and wring it out, fold it (to provide a little padding) and put it under the cutting board. I'm betting it will work really well.

I feel your pain. I'm in a similar situation, and I have to constantly remind myself that this particular meal is about family, not about culinary excellence. Still, I pine for the wonderful-looking spreads I see and read about in cooking magazines, and I deeply regret that this year's left-over turkey was put into a pot pie with frozen mixed vegetables and Cream of Chicken soup. And I am thankful that the stuffing-in-the-turkey, without benefit of thermometer, did not make me ill. I have a couple of ideas. One is to introduce new dishes, one at a time. If people are confronted with a bunch of unfamiliar food, they're going to balk. But one "new" dish may gain some fans. That's how special family favorites are created. The second suggestion is to do your own turkey-based meal at home, a week or two... or more... before Thanksgiving. You'll have time to preserve the leftovers for later, and you can fix whatever you please, however you please. Invite a couple of adventurous "foodie" relatives or friends. Your heart's prayers will be answered, and when the real Thanksgiving rolls around, you can relax and compromise like crazy without feeling like you're missing out.

The only thing I can think of, is to make applesauce out of them, in combination with other varieties of apples. Or combine with 2 other varieties--tart and flavorful--and make a Waldorf salad.

Misery loves company, so here goes. Heading to father-in-law's house in a very small town (pop. 1700) that is 500 miles from anything of decent size. Will be there Wednesday thru Sunday, although Wed and Sun are travelling days. One restaurant in town; it's inside the grocery store and everything they serve is fried. Sister-in-law is planning to stuff the turkey and a little quizzing reveals she isn't worried about what temperature it will reach. Vegetables are the kind that come frozen with cheese sauce. Potatoes will be good. Gravy will be decent. Biscuits will be from a box or a can. Upside: I'm making the pies, and they will all be from scratch. I'm taking a stash of other food. Downside: I will have to take ALL of the ingredients for the pies, and all of the equipment to make them. Upside: Family consists of lovely, easy-to-get-along-with folks, even if they aren't cooks.

If you go to www.dean-deluca.com, they have spices in tins, and you can also purchase their rack if you like it. I use these tins and I really like them, and I think they're available from several sources, including Martha Stewart. The only downside is that they do rust if you splash water on them, but that doesn't affect their ability to keep spices fresh. If you call D&D, they'll sell you the tins individually, and I bet they'd pack everything you wanted in their larger tins, which I think hold about a cup. I refill mine from a local store that sells spices in bulk. I also have D&D's test tube spice rack, but I store it in the cabinet so that light won't affect the contents and just pull it out when necessary. At first, I worried that the product might get packed into the tubes and be difficult to get out, but I've had the rack several years and haven't had that problem. The tubes are actually very convenient to use, for those spices that I use often.

The fast food AND the restaurant industry share PART of the blame for our obesity epidemic. Over the past 20 years, I have gradually forgotten what I've always known, and allowed restaurants, fast and otherwise, set the standards for what I eat and how much I eat. The result: I'm quite overweight. But the wording of that one sentence is crucial: I have allowed this to happen. But I didn't realize I was doing it. I just knew I was getting fat, without realizing that this was the mechanism for it. Denial probably helped a great deal. After much struggling, I'm finally getting a handle on things. I eat sugary items once a week or less. I'm becoming reacquainted with vegetables, and acquainted with some I've never had before. I'm cooking every doggone vegetable I can find. And trying new (to me) lower-fat recipes that deliver as much flavor and satisfaction as possible. In my opinion, the way out of this mess is for government and private organizations to educate the public and help people find their own way out. Lawsuits are ridiculous, but so is the fact that various fast food places continue to introduce new offerings that are too large in portion size and too high in calories and fat for one portion, even if the portion size were adjusted. Yes, personal responsibility is the answer, but a lot of people will not be able to exercise it effectively without education and support from organizations that want to change things. We have had to learn from similar organizations, to stop smoking, exercise, lower our blood pressure, avoid certain kinds of foods to stave off heart problems, etc. etc. and the obesity problem is no different. The food industry is not going to police itself, either, but the answer is not regulation or litigation. The answer is for the industry to change in response to a changing market, and we're already seeing some of that. Personal responsibility will increase with education and awareness.

I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion here. TV is harder than you think. (I've done it, but I wasn't cooking.) Most of the people mentioned here are cooks first, TV people second. And they're speaking pretty much extemporaneously, which can get a person into trouble, fast. (Just watch small market TV reporters who are live on a scene. They often look and sound as if they have no brains whatsoever.) I suspect that many of the show hosts are people who have had to learn to be a lot more gregarious than they naturally are. The ability to relax on camera and just be who you are, takes a substantial amount of comfort in one's own skin, which is something hard to come by for a lot of otherwise very talented people. And who knows what they've been coached to do. Take a day or two to listen to the people around you talking to each other. The people you're around every day. You'll hear the same phrases over and over from them, too, but it's not as irritating as it is on the screen because the setting is more informal. And whereas most of us might say, "just dump all that shit in the pan" a host has to find a way of stating it that won't be offensive to anyone, and it's often not a very natural way of speaking. It occurs to me that the one person not mentioned in this list of gripes is Sara Moulton. She's an extremely serious cook, but obviously a basically nice person, and it's to her credit she hasn't fabricated a persona to use on the tube. Andrea Immer is someone of whom that could be said, too, I guess. And well, Julia was genuinely Julia, too, and that's why so many people loved her. Here's my point: one thing you DON'T want on TV is 'dead air'. The small silences that are natural when two or more people are face-to-face, are deadly in a formal situation where one person is a presenter and others comprise an audience. That's where all this inane chatter comes from. They're trying to be entertaining and friendly so that you'll keep tuning in. Seems to me that Emeril was one of the first hosts of "How to Boil Water" (or a similar program, I can't remember) and without the showman persona he later adapted for Emeril Live, the show was bo-o-o-o-o-o-ring and probably had about 2 viewers. Ever been on TV or radio? It can be terrifying, and is for most people. I had a several-year broadcast career, and I didn't stop getting the shakes until I realized that I'd weathered several disasters, live on the air. Not only was I still alive, but I couldn't then imagine anything could happen to me that was worse than what I'd managed to handle already. End of nervousness. The Food Network people are, in my opinion, doing a really good job of adapting to the strange world of cameras and ratings. Yeah, they get irritating from time to time, and like everybody else on this thread, I have those I love and those who get on my nerves. But that's the nature of the beast. Cut 'em a little slack, willya?

One of the luxuries/hazards of working in a law office, as I do, is always thinking about liability. No way would I allow a neighbor, especially a drunken one, to use my turkey frying setup. Too many opportunities for disaster, which would surely be blamed on you in a lawsuit. I like the grilling option best, but if you decide to go with the frying option, absolutely do it for him. If he got hurt or set something on fire, you'd get a major ding on your homeowner's or renter's insurance, and you don't need that. And lawsuits are ugly, ugly, ugly things.

My Major Cooking Effort for the week was to try Mario Batali's recipe for stuffed chicken thighs in the Thanksgiving issue of Food & Wine (I believe it's the Nov. issue, but may be Oct. Turkey on the front.). Very, very good; skin was extremely crispy, and the dish was fairly rich overall. Chicken was stuffed with fresh breadcrumbs, parmesan, provolone, parsley, basil, rosemary... at least those are the major ingredients. I've never tried boning chicken thighs before, but it wasn't too bad. The cat kept trying to help and that became annoying. At least he's finally learned that when he wants to be obnoxious, he should climb cabinets and not me. Much less blood that way. A couple of questions: --How could I make this dish a little less rich? I'm thinking maybe I should leave out one of the cheeses. --Does everyone feel like an idiot when trying to tie kitchen string around rolled up, stuffed thighs, or is there a trick to it? I think next time, I will get these from the butcher instead of buying them prepackaged, in hope of not having some that have shortages or strange appendages of skin. I'm really enjoying this thread. Have just started reading it from the beginning, and am up to about mid-2002 now. Wow! What a treasure!