chromedome

Me, too. My problem is I want it *all*...I want something the size of the Oster french-door countertop oven, with the CSO's steam function and perhaps some added programmability for the occasional time I feel like messing with it. ...Oh, and I want it to cost $100 Canadian.

Shank and neck pieces are the closest, to my mind, but not really the same. And neck is almost impossible to get in my neck of the woods, unless you know the meatcutter personally.

It's probably the only part of Amazon's empire that's actually susceptible to that kind of pressure at the moment. Amazon as a whole is too big to be deterred -- it'd be like trying to use a popsicle stick as a rudder to turn a supertanker -- but WF as a shiny-new outpost? Yeah, that's a place where some pressure and adverse publicity might get a toehold, and take some of the luster off the acquisition.

For those of you who don't know, my home province of Nova Scotia boasts a small but rapidly maturing wine scene. One of its leading lights is a winery called Benjamin Bridge, noted especially for the quality of its traditional-method sparkling wines. It was in the news this past week because the 2008 vintage of its flagship Brut Reserve has been added to the wine list at Ramsay's 3-Michelin star restaurant in London. This isn't the first Michelin-starred restaurant to list the wine but it's certainly the highest-profile, and should help further elevate the reputation of our local wine scene. http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/we-re-just-amazed-gordon-ramsay-serving-n-s-wine-at-his-london-restaurant-1.3559050 http://www.benjaminbridge.com/acclaim

Oh, yeah. My late wife, bless her, believed that there was One Perfect Way to cook any dish, and that a cook's task was to find that One Perfect Way and then never, *ever* deviate from it henceforward. My feeling, on the other hand (at least, when not in a professional kitchen) is that freewheeling and improvising is the fun part; and that leaving room for serendipity to strike is just good sense. As you can imagine, this led to some heated confrontations between us during meal prep.

Back in the early 80s, oxtail and flank steak were my go-to cheap cuts. IIRC oxtail was then .79/lb and flank was .99/lb. Then, almost from one week to the next it seemed, they were "discovered" and the price rose tenfold. Now, of course, it's nearly twice that. The last time I checked (here in Atlantic Canada) my local supermarket was flogging oxtail at $14.99/lb and flank steak at $16.99. Needless to say, neither is a regular purchase any longer.

I cuss it frequently, if that counts.

I have a large number of the thin, inexpensive ones. Two or three times a year I'll go through them, pick the six most-worn ones, and replace them. I get mine from the dollar store, so my cost is pretty minimal.

My mom still has all four, as well. I've just helped her move, so I can vouch for that personally. She also still has several pieces of the Tupperware I remember from the 1970s, and even one or two that used to be my grandmother's. Goodness knows how old those are.

That smacks of Harry Potter, more than technology.

Oh, agreed. We have a couple pairs of the conventional ones, purchased from Walmart or Dollarama or some similarly downmarket retailer, which get used for things like opening bags and snipping fresh herbs from the backyard beds.

...'cause I do it all the time, and no harm done. So far the worst thing I've done to my ceramic is make kettle corn in my aluminum Wearever pot, which requires constant shaking and therefore leaves a molecule-thick (but surprisingly difficult to eradicate) aluminum sheen on the cooktop.

My dad was a big fan.

My father bought me this pair many years ago, and they've been great. Not well-designed for hanging from a hook, mind you. They've helped me shuck many hundreds of pounds of lobster over the years.

My GF's former foster daughter learned the same lesson last week with ghost peppers. Not a happy experience.

Here in my neck of the woods, the rule is that you make up a fresh batch of bleach sanitizer each day. I used quaternary ammonia sanitizer at my restaurant and mixed a fresh batch...um...monthly, IIRC.

So...granola bars by any other name? I'd wrap them and store them at room temp, but I don't see any reason they wouldn't freeze and thaw perfectly well. They might perhaps be a bit tacky to the touch when you open them up.

When a recipe calls for a clove, I generally use a bulb. ...Unless it's my father's garlic. Then a clove is quite sufficient (often up to 25-30g, or roughly an ounce).

Just got back from moving my mom. We got everything from her two chest freezers (one gigantic, one moderate) condensed down into the smaller one. Once she has eaten her way through that, it will get passed along to my younger cousin and her husband. Alas, a large reason why she can now fit all of her food into one freezer (flush with the top edge, may I add) is that a large proportion of her frozen food now resides in my upright, which in consequence is now also chock a block once again. It's all good stuff, mind you...vegetables from my Dad's final gardening season, berries from their bushes, venison from their backyard, and cod/moose/bear from my relatives in Newfoundland.

Sorbitan is derived from sorbitol, the sugar alcohol used as a sweetener. Its role in yeast, from what I've been given to understand, is to help speed the absorption of water through the shell of dried, dead yeast cells that encapsulates the living yeast.

I've only piped cheese filling or seafood mousse into shells. I've piped ground beef into ravioli, but after I cook it I pulse it in the food processor to make it smoother.

I pipe the filling into jumbo shells from a pastry bag. Zip-zip, no time at all.

(Bows in homage)

There's an explanation on the Amazon page linked, if you scroll down. As with organic maple syrup, it seems to be more about the chemicals (etc) used in the production process. I'm not entirely certain I care that much, tbh. If I was making/marketing certified organic baked goods, I probably would.

I enjoyed most of the episodes, though I suggested to my GF that we should play a drinking game...every time there's a slow-mo shot of the chef du jour striding across the countryside in purposeful quest of that extra-local ingredient, we swig a craft brew.