ellencho

Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen recommended a 30 dollar Forschner Victornox 8-inch Chef's knife. I own one of those myself, but it's so nice I haven't had the heart to take it out of the package, I'm saving it for a special occasion (yes, I am that weird and anal). Amazon has it for 29.99.

Eep! Last I remembered, she works with one of the big bad viruses - ebola or SARS, or something worse. I can't recall. Yikes!

I worked in a lab with a woman who ate fruitflies during her genetics class. She felt badly that they'd grow these flies up and just kill them after the fly's sex and phenotype were identified, so she ate them, to give them a purpose. She said they tasted like dirt.

I'm an ex-crayon eater too. This might sound odd, but ever since I was little I always thought that I could almost taste colors, which is why I tried eating crayons. I usually tried eating the colors I thought looked tastiest, which were usually blue, like JennotJenn did.

I got the chills reading your post. Not only does that bother me but any sort of paper or wood in the mouth affects me like nails on a chalkboards. I know not everyone is like this, so they might not understand how we feel. Regardless... *shivers*.

In Devon there's a little place called "A Taste of Britain" where they serve proper afternoon tea. It's a cute place and the owners are awfully nice. Here's a link to their site.

My mom loves pointing tongue eaters out to me all the time, so I notice them too. It's really quite comical but after a while of watching them eat I become self-conscious of my own eating habits.

Ok, so I'm admitting out loud that I'm not a fan of misbehaving children anywhere, muchless fine dining establishments but I've managed to come up with a way to tolerate crying/whining bratty children that makes my meal a lot more pleasant. Children only have so much lung capacity, so they'll cry/whine for a while, and then when they run out of air, they'll take a deep breath to commence crying activities. That deep breath is what cracks me up. It reminds me of when kids take sips of drinks, and inevitably, there will always be that "ah!" after they've had their sip, and that too amuses me to no end. Yeah, I used to roll my eyes at misbehaving children and their parents and become annoyed, but I realized it's the equivalent of hating and brooding over a person who doesn't even know you're annoyed at them, and concentrating all of your energy on them, and all the while they're going about their lives perfectly happy. So now I try to find the humor in bratty children and their inept parental units. I suppose if the brat factor is turned up to excessive, it wouldn't hurt to contact the restaurant manager.

HI all, I made a second attempt at replicating Total's Greek yogurt. I used 3 3/4 cups of whole milk, 1/4 cup of heavy cream, 3/4 c of powdered milk and accidentally let it boil (no biggie, didn't hurt the final product). Then I cooled it down to 110 degrees, added a big scoop of starter yogurt (1/4c) and let it sit in my salton for 24 hours. Since I overboiled the milk there were some brown burnt milk particles floating around the mixture. When I finally tried it I was pretty impressed. It's tart like Total, not as creamy, but the thickness is pretty close, and it has a tinge of sweetness to it that is not unpleasant. The little burnt brown milk particles aren't a big deal because they sank to the bottom of the container and aren't mixed in with the rest of the yogurt.

Holly - it's more like "what doesn't Ellen have in her fridge". It's quite frightening really, how much one person can have jammed into a medium sized fridge/freezer. Most of my fridge/freezer contents are either dairy or pork or condiment, with a few veggies packed in here and there. My cooking resume? uh, um, [small voice] no formal cooking experience [/small voice] but if I were to be an X-men mutant, I think my mutant power would be the ability to bring out the best in meat.

WEAK! Can you be prosecuted for taking a pic inside of his restaurant? I hope not. Jerks. Although admittedly I am a bit excited at the thought of bbq in Manayunk so close to where I live in Wynnefield Heights. I offer my apt as a safe haven and I'll play innocent if the cops come to my door.

Sometimes it works to your advantage. I recently got a bunch of ramps for 50 cents because the cashier thought they were scallions.

I make s'mores in mine. Yeah, there's no smoky toasty taste, but the chocolate melts and the marshmallow has softened enough that I still enjoy them.

Some of my non-stick cookware and bakeware aren't as non-stick as I would like for them to be, so whenever I used non-stick cooking spray on them, it left a discoloration and further ruined the non-stickedness of my cookware. Does anyone here understand why one should not use non-stick cooking spray on non-stick bakeware and cookware?

I also want to add in my support for Zojirushi. They have functions on their rice cookers for brown rice, porridge, and I'm sure even stuff that I never considered doing with rice. Even the littlest Zojirushi machines have those functions on them. Damn fine machines and they last forever. Yeah, and jschyun that was a fine definition for namul. It's a veggie normally, and it's usually served as an accopaniment/condiment, a little bit salty, and at room temp or straight from the fridge.

Anna N you are so lucky. The retail defroster trays go for close to 20 bucks. I've been wanting my own hunk of aluminum for defrosting for years.

Bibimbap in a rice cooker? I didn't even know there was bibimbap flavoring! I always thought it was just a delicious way to empty one's fridge of leftovers and banchan. We would just make regular rice, add condiments and mix up. Well, I guess it's true. You learn something every day.

Glutinous rice is often labeled as "sweet rice". It is a short grain rice while "sushi rice" or Japanese rice is medium grain like Arborio. You will find glutinous rice only in Asian markets. Funnily enough, at my local Pathmark I managed to procure a small bag (under 5 lbs) of Nishiki sushi grade rice. Perhaps it depends on your area, but it was promising to know that the buyers at the supermarket know about short grained sticky rice.

Same way you'd thicken gravy itself. Use a roux. Mix equal parts flour and butter (oil or crisco if you prefer) and brown in a little pan. Lighter colored rouxs give you thicker gravies and sauces.

I noticed that when I add salt to raw eggs, the egg seems to break down a little bit easier, and become more uniform in texture (meaning there's less stringiness to the egg). Perhaps the salt plays a role in denaturing proteins in the yolk and white making them easier to break apart? So when I'm baking quickbreads, cakes, cookies, I mix the salt into my egg and beat it up. I haven't seen any harm to my baked goods, and my egg/salt mixture has a better, less gloopy consistency.

I'm not sure about cheddar, but annato is what gives Muenster cheese slices their characteristic orangey red outline. Edited to add: Do a recipe search for Arroz con Pollo, you're bound to find one that uses annato as one if its seasonings.

I think the best thing about the Golden Oreos is that you don't get black cookie crumbs stuck between your teeth that are highly visible to everyone around you.

So two days ago I received my Salton Yogurt maker in the mail. I cleaned the crap out of it, and made my own yogurt using FAGE's Total Yogurt as my starter. I remembered reading that adding powdered milk results in a thicker yogurt, so I added 2/3 c to 1 qt of homogenized organic whole milk. Heated the milk to 205 degrees and let it cool to 110 before adding my yogurt starter. I allowed the whole thing to brew for 5 hours and in the Salton and then I put it in the fridge immediately. I tasted it a couple hours later and was pretty disappointed. Maybe it was beacuse it hadn't completely cooled to fridge temp, but the texture was very airy and fluffy, but not as thick as FAGE. The taste was a lot milder than FAGE as well. Can anyone give me any tips for making a more Greek-style consistency yogurt? TIA

I wonder if any of these couples really know how inconvenient it is to have them as guests. Of course everyone has their likes and dislikes, but I'd feel so ashamed if I knew that people were going out of their way to feed me and show me hospitality.

From observing our own mint plants, I've noticed that, depending on conditions, both the leaves and the stem can range from a dark/purplish color to bright green. I would go more by the pointiness/curliness of the leaves rather than the color of the leaves/stem. Are the leaves relatively flat or curved? Your description of oval seems to point towards peppermint. Not overly curved under, but there's a little bit of downward curving. It's defintely oval, with the edges of the leaves curving downward. I hope I'm not confusing you. But they're definitely not flat and there's very little pointiness at the tips of the leaves.