chromedome

Don't sweat it, Cutter. There'll be back-and-forth on a lot of threads, and what sometimes will appear to a new arrival as a flame war may actually turn out to be an established brand of banter between very good friends. Asking the question is always better than walking away still wondering. Ultimately, smooth vs. serrated is not likely to be your issue. Either a smooth knife or a serrated one can work, and in most cases a dull knife or even the side of a spatula works fine. If you're having trouble getting neat cuts with a cherry pie or any other pie, your best bet is the sharpest knife available, in any style. That being said, I'd stick to knives with small rather than large serrations, just because large serrations can catch and lift the crust or solid pieces of filling, instead of cutting them.

The only reason I see is if the pie contains nuts or some other firm element in an otherwise soft filling (ie, pecan pie). Then you might lean toward a sharp blade over a blunt one (ie, butter knife) in order to make cleaner slices. Otherwise there's not really any reason to choose. I have an aluminum pie-slice lifter, designed specifically to rectify that "first-slice" conundrum. You put it in the pan before you assemble the pie, and bake with it in situ. When it's time to serve, you cut that slice first and lift it out (the handle rests underneath the edge of the crust, and protrudes slightly). It's not bulletproof -- I've had the slice stick to the lifter itself, on occasion -- but works pretty well, if/when I remember to use it.

Sooo... basically a coffee eggnog.

I'm with you on Team Raisin. Chocolate just doesn't work for me in an oatmeal cookie; it's always a huge disappointment to pick up one of those by mistake.

The phrase "liquid chicken" will forever remind me of a particularly unfortunate incident involving the back corner of my fridge and three weeks away from home. It took a long time to get the smell out.

My sister did nine days in London with just her purse and a carry-on. Her travel companion brought a purse, backpack, carry-on and two checked bags, and went home with four.

The place I was chef in Edmonton did a lot of catering, and often after a function I would bring home a few packaged meals for lunches and suchlike. Walking down to the bus often meant passing panhandlers, so I gave out a lot of meals. One guy was utterly floored when I handed him a meal of duck breast and wild rice...turned out he'd been a line cook before the drugs and alcohol caught up to him. We may or may not have known a couple of the same people back in my punk days in Vancouver, but it was hard to know for sure.

I entered. Can't really justify buying one at this point, but free is always good.

I haven't worked with it myself, but my daughter has just discovered that many of her chronic illnesses appear to be due to wheat or gluten (she's awaiting her appointment for testing/confirmation). I'm curious to know how you're getting on with it, and whether I should buy it for my daughter.

Here on the East Coast "tin" and "can" are both used, but with the passage of time it seems that "can" is becoming the predominant usage.

About.com has been broken up into a handful of new sites, including The Spruce and Verywell, which are focused on specific subject matter (in those two cases, "home" and "health/wellness"). A lot of the old links will redirect, a lot will not.

I'll cop, too. It's been a while, but I've needed them off and on over the years despite my desperation-induced ingenuity where food is concerned (I routinely fed my family of four for a month on what our friends spent in a week, even during the good times). I've said for years that time and money exist on a continuum...the more you have of one, the less of the other you need to expend on your food. Over the past decade I've come to recognize that basic cooking skills are often a part of the equation as well, and when I moved here to open my restaurant I thought I might volunteer a few hours to teach those skills at a group home or some other charitable organization. That was before I realized my regular work week would total 110-120 hours, of course. I've been teaching basic kitchen skills to my GF's daughter and a few others who fall within my social orbit, but perhaps it's time to revisit the notion and see whether I can make something of it now that I'm self-employed and have flexible hours.

I'd never had any issues either, but looked at it closely after tripping across this thread. Sure enough, it was developing fine, hairline cracks. I haven't discarded it yet, and may keep it as an emergency backup, but I wound up not using it while I awaited the replacement.

A Dutch acquaintance of mine had a similar quote from his grandmother, to the effect that "crumbs are bread, too." They don't seem connected, but that was the gist of it...take care of the little things, and they add up to big things.

A 21-foot upright? I can only assume you have cathedral ceilings...

We used a combination of the vacuum cleaner's crevice tool, its brush tool, and a long-handled bottle brush. I don't remember how many times we emptied the vacuum before we were done, and there was a lot to sweep up as well. It's amazing how it builds up.

I brought my Mom up to my place for Easter weekend. Last week marked a month since my Dad's death, and Friday would have been his birthday (it's also the anniversary of my last day with my late wife, before she died unexpectedly in her sleep). I reckoned it was a good time to not be home alone with her thoughts, especially given that my GF's little granddaughter had a birthday party this weekend. Nothing like a bit of "toddler therapy" to cure a case of the blues. She did have one small breakdown over the weekend, but overall it went well for everyone. We did ham and scalloped potatoes and all the usual trimmings, including an apple pie made from apples I'd scavenged from trees around the neighbourhood last fall.

Windows phone ownership in a nutshell, alas. I had high hopes for Ubuntu Touch, but that project has now been cancelled, so we're basically stuck with the Apple/Android duopoly for the foreseeable future.

That's more or less how I do it too, though I might not go a full 30 seconds depending on the thickness of the crust and toppings. Works pretty good.

(Fruit) pie for breakfast is an honoured and long-standing tradition in my house. I reckoned it was a healthier option that most of the neighbours' kids were getting.

I've used leftover fries in frittata-style breakfast casseroles. When you have a restaurant with a fryer, leftover fries are one of those path-of-least-resistance ingredients at the end of a long day. (Yeah, I ate a lot of "breakfast for dinner")

I had trouble getting my bakers to roll things to the correct thickness, so I bought strips of square dowelling at various thicknesses and had them use those as rolling guides (the dough goes between the sticks, at a spacing that matches your widest rolling pin). It works until they get the hang of it, and then afterwards as a quick self-check.

I'm not a huge fan, mostly because I hate the mouthfeel and cloying flavour of 'em when made with cream cheese. I'm okay with quark, mascarpone or ricotta. Yeah, I do prefer a bit of acidity. Doesn't have to be citrus, necessarily.

Filet o' Fish is just about the only thing at McD's that doesn't lead to unfortunate...consequences...for me, so I eat them when I'm dragged into one. I usually order mine without tartar (I'm not a fan) and usually get it with tartar anyway. Can't be bothered to complain about it, so I just eat the damned thing. I don't adhere to the cheese/fish dogma anyway, but by my reckoning the major use-case for processed cheese slices is melting them onto something fried. The notion of it being (originally) fish doesn't really matter.

Just to clarify (because I'm intrigued) how coarsely or finely would you grind the beans?