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Freezers run best when chock-a-block. Refrigerators require air circulation, otherwise you get unfortunate warm and cold spots. Thermal mass might be useful if you have young 'uns deliberating over their snacks for extended periods with the door open, but I don't know how you'd do that effectively. In an ideal situation, your most perishable items would be surrounded by the milk cartons (or whatever receptacles you ultimately use to hold the water).

Or as it's known in my house, "Crap! How can we be out of sauerkraut again? I wanted a Reuben, dammit!"

I remember trying this once, the last time it was in fashion.* I wasn't especially enamored of the texture, and went back to doing it the traditional way. Now I cook up several days' steel-cut oats at a time (one cup oats, 4 cups water) and just microwave my morning portion. *The 80s, perhaps? I'm picturing Wilfred Brimley television commercials, so I suspect it was the oat bran ("right thing to do") era. I always thought someone should have made an oat bran whisky, and hired ol' Wilf to promote it. "It's the right thing to do...(slurs) an' a damn' tasty way to do it!"

With respect, that's marketing copy. Freelancers like me write that kind of stuff for hours on end. Favorable reviews from people like yourself and the others here, in actual field use, hold more weight with me.

Good call. I haven't seen pre-tested sprouts anywhere here in Canada, but admittedly I haven't been looking. They don't seem to be much in demand anymore, at least here in New Brunswick.

LOL In Calais, ME, there is a hotel restaurant called "Ceasar's," and it raises my hackles every time I drive past it.

As it should be. I like mint and I love lamb, but could never come to grips with the combination. To my mind, the mint simply obliterates the delicate flavor of the lamb. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it originated as a way of masking the muskiness of mature mutton, which makes perfect sense to me.

The Neilsen-Massey seems to consist of ground-up vanilla beans with an anti-caking agent. Most others apparently incorporate varying degrees of sugar.

I'm unfamiliar with the powder, but I would be cautious in assuming it retains more flavour after baking than any other natural vanilla product. I've tried fresh bean vs. natural extract vs. artificial extract in baked goods, and found little/no benefit to using the natural product (this was the opposite of what I'd expected/hoped to establish, just for the record). My "take" was that the flavour compounds themselves are volatile, whether they are contained in the original bean or extracted in an alcohol solution. It might be interesting to pursue this as a group experiment, perhaps.

I'm confused...it gives them crunch, but ruins their crunch?

It's good just used as a syrup. I eat it occasionally on homemade bread, instead of molasses. Both are old-school tastes acquired from my parents.

I didn't believe it either when I first read it, several years ago, but tried the experiment myself and was surprised to find it accurate. That being said, there's some pretty nasty artificial vanilla out there.

Oh, you betcha. Many years back, as a culinary student, I posted a question about an obscure Middle Eastern ingredient. PW responded within hours (from an internet cafe in Istanbul, yet...), to my delight and amazement. I was already a fan of the writer, but her interactions here made me a fan of the person as well.

Those are all good suggestions. McGee is my own touchstone. I probably crack my Larousse a bit more than Smokeydoke does, but yeah...it's a great doorstop, and I've also used it overnight to apply weight to furniture I've recently glued (my "compact" OED works pretty well for that, as well). If you want to have classic French cuisine at your fingertips but in a more pocket-friendly format, the "Repertoire de la Cuisine" is a good choice. It gives you a terse description ("like x, but with quenelles of fish") and it's then up to you to either know it or Google it from there. I'd maybe suggest Pepin for technique, if you want basic knife skills etc in dead-tree form rather than a YouTube video.

(Sigh) Another 2 or 3 weeks before I even start any seeds. More snow last night, and another snowfall for tomorrow night. There's a reason the Victoria Day weekend (right around Memorial Day, for Americans) is our traditional planting time.

I'm in the non-brownie camp myself. Though I've found that a small bit of leftover batter, stirred into walnut halves (just enough to hold the walnuts together, basically) works pretty nicely when baked.

LOL In an earlier edition of Bo Friberg's "Professional Pastry Chef," he apparently suggested raisins as a perfectly compatible addition to American-style brownies, which were a novelty to him. In the fourth edition, he ruefully observed that he "hadn't been in that much trouble since he'd used someone's fabric scissors to cut paper." I'd recently experienced the latter trauma myself, and found the quote correspondingly amusing.

It's ambiguous, but fwiw I'd lean in the "egg" direction. The bunny appears to be holding/presenting whatever it is...to my mind if it was rubbing its belly, the arms should come out a little further. Mind you, I *have* been known to overthink things occasionally.

I was hung up on the brand name, and didn't even see the slogan. "Open a can, and BOOM! Chakalaka..."

Muffin-pan tartlets are the default for home bakers. Individual shells in foil tartlet pans is the commonest "take" commercially, from what I've seen.

I saw that this morning. Personally I'm in the pro-raisin camp, but have had to reconcile myself to barren, raisin-deprived butter tarts for the sake of peace in the family.

The meal-in-a-box thing strikes me as the culinary equivalent of smartwatches...there's a market there, to be sure, but it's not as big as its boosters think it is. Not in this format, at any rate.

Agreed, those came out spectacularly well for a first attempt. The lamination is beautiful, you were clearly meticulous in your layering. Re: first batch vs. second batch...were they in the same bag, or did you separate them by batch and freeze them that way? I've noticed in the past that when I have a quantity in one large bag, and take from them as needed, the later ones aren't usually as good. I don't know whether that's because of air/moisture (I'm in a coastal climate) getting into the bag, or just because they're older. If they're bagged separately, I suppose one bag might potentially have been sealed better than the other. Unless your yeast was brand new, that might have been the issue as well. Less-vigorous yeast might fade more quickly in the freezer, performing well enough initially but then dying away. Lots of variables at play is the bottom line. You'll probably need to repeat the experiment a few times to know for sure. As for the size of the triangles, did you cut a nock into the middle of the flat end before you began rolling? Most recipes mention this, and it helps them stretch. As you roll up the croissant you gently stretch it by easing your hands apart, as if rolling a breadstick (though not quite as vigorously). Once you get the knack of it, you can make the finished croissant quite significantly wider and thinner, giving it a prettier shape once proofed and baked.

Authentic recipes use bones, I understand.

I dunno...half price on racks of lamb is reason enough to backslide, IMO.