balmagowry

Oh oh oh, I wish you hadn't reminded me! Thorn Apple Valley used to make a spicy kielbasa that I loved - just perfect for the lentil and sausage salad that, alas, just won't ever be quite the same without it. They dropped it a couple of years ago, for no apparent reason. WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Ah, my search was for popcorn "Maya Maize", hence the different results. Verily I say unto you, ! I don't presume to teach my betters the finer points of Googling, fer sher - but it's amazing how many otherwise savvy people don't bother to refine search strings that way, and since your post implied a long and arduous search with the pot of Mayan gold only at the end of a very loooooong rainbow, here I thought I was being, ahem, helpful, while showing off at the same time. Oh well :deep sigh:. No good deed goes unpunished. :nother deep sigh accompanied by martyred expression which fools nobody:

No, there is no need to confine oneself to That Time of the Month! Thank you, hathor. I did write the next installment, sorta:here. (shameless slef-promotion department!) Shameless self-promotion, my foot. Obviously I haven't examined TDG closely enough, because I had missed seeing this piece. I for one am grateful to be pointed toward anything of yours, so no false modesty, please.

Cool! See you there!

You have the Marine model! Too cool! I found that page the other day when I was looking these things up, and the sailor in me immediately went into lustful overdrive. So what if my boat isn't big enough to have a galley? I could rig something in the cockpit... it'd be worth it for a gorgeous implement like that. Who cares that in boating weather the most you'd ever want to cook anyway is a fish or a burger on a cantilevered hibachi? A marine pressure cooker simply cries out to be owned by a sailor, right? RIGHT...??? Wrong. But what a beautiful thing it is. Give you joy of it. Yes, yes, I'm working on the course outline.

Fiends... fiends... you people are FIENDS! (Ooooh, a Fagor, eh? Well, I'm curious to see how it's different from the ones out there now, but there's no special urgency - I really only asked because I wanted to get a sense of how many of these fancy brands people were actually using. BTW I myself still use the old Presto for the foreseeable future; I have myself tallked out of the Kuhn Rikon for now, on the grounds that I have absolutely no need for it.)

Oh, it is. Both. Either. I myself, having been perfectly happy with my good old Presto 6-quart for lo these (count 'em) 30 years, have now gone completely to hell in the name of "research." (Curse you, Carolyn Tillie, for putting this eGCI idea into my head. ) It started innocently enough, with a reprint of the Papin treatise on the original digester; then today I started thinking I really needed to broaden my horizons with different designs and varieties. I've just bought (oh hell, I've been curious about these ever since they first came out) a microwave pressure cooker; I'm eyeing an electric one as well. None of this comes to big bucks... yet. But I'm dreadfully afraid that Kuhn Rikon set on eBay is going to be my downfall. Someone (one of you, no doubt) seems to have bought the 12-piece set, but the 6 (which is what I was really considering) is still there, and unless one of you rushes off and buys it out from under me, there's no telling what I might not do in the name of "research." Hey, thinks I to myself, self-justifyingly, at least the guy's in New York, so I could pick it up and save the shipping. Oy, eGullet, what hast thou wrought!

My pleasure. 55,593. (Thanks for the heads-up on the Soyer!) My great pleasure. I had no idea it existed - just goes to show that it pays to go back and check old sources more often. Found it listed at Foodbooks, a site I had forgotten all about for the past year or two - glad I remembered, because they keep current with the productions of both Prospect and Southover Presses. Bought it via ABE, where I also found his Culinary Campaign, which I've long coveted. Going a little crazy....

True. But when I googled it my search produced only two results - that being the second. The key was putting "Maya Maize" in quotation marks - then narrowing the search by adding "popcorn" outside the quoted string, on the assumption that if that was what it was for, that was what a good hit would probably mention. Saved a lot of scrolling! Yup. It's pretty handy - finds quite a few things Google doesn't... but misses a lot too. But it makes a great adjunct to other search and shopping engines - it always comes up with hits that no one else finds.

Good luck. I googled to no avail and I also have a couple of "Why do we say it and expressions and their origins books, and I couldn't find it. Not exactly definitive, but I found this: BY GEORGE – “…Many of the milder oaths listed below follow the old Hebraic and Middle English tradition of avoiding the use of sacred words, such as God, by substituting words with the same initial letter. Thus for God the oaths substitute George, ginger, Godfrey, golly, gosh, gracious, gravy, grief, etc.” From “I Hear America Talking” by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976). Ahem. OED to the rescue. First literal citation 1731, Fielding's Grub Street Opera: "By George, I will make an example of him!" Earlier citations (earliest 1598, Ben Jonson) in the forms "for George," "'fore George," and "by St. George," which does seem to support the dragon connection. I just got one on eBay, but meanwhile I'm borrowing one tonight. I just can NOT wait any longer!

Log two more for me, please! I've just received the Dover edition of Alexis Soyer's Pantropheon, which looks utterly delicious; and last night in a fit of enthusiasm over the idea of the Pressure Cooker course I was thrilled to discover that there's a facsimile reprint of Papin's A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones. Ordered it at once, of course - mighty cheap, too. Very exciting: this will be my third Mallinckrodt. Oh - and BTW Lorna Sass's To the Queen's Taste arrived yesterday. Don't tally it - I reported when I ordered it; but I just wanted to mention that it's a delightful little volume, intelligently researched and put together. A culinary historian after my own heart, Ms. Sass. Must take a closer look at her Tom Jones.

Try here: Bearfoods. There seems to be something wrong with the main site, but I think all the info you'd need is in the doc.

They still have 'em here, and you can still buy them off the trucks in NYC. And they still taste the way they did when you were 10. Now you know where to go for your next vacation.... (BTW, the prune whip yogurt was Dannon - back in those days they were the only people trying to sell yogurt at all.)

And boysenberry - don't forget boysenberry. I'm afraid that is but too true, proven a thousand times over.

They do, ohhhhh they do. Sometimes when feeling decadent I also put in some chunky apricot jam. Very naughty. Sooo good. Think I have to have some NOW. (BTW I think it wasn't actually lekvar but prune whip, which is a slightly different animal - lekvar makes a very good substitute, though.)

Yes! Yes! I thought I was the only one who remembered it. I make my own now, with lekvar in a jar from... from... somewhere. It's good, but I haven't found the perfect yogurt to go with it - the texture isn't right yet. Shall go back to the yogurt thread and study more closely.

It come from My Fair Lady and was the writer's way of paying tribute to George Bernard Shaw's original Pygmalion from which My Fair Lady was adapted. (I think). It certainly does appear in that context, but it goes back farther than that. Hmmmm - this bears investigation. By George, I think I'll look it up and get back to you.

Goodness, no. IAC, where did I read recently that we were originally designed to ovulate only 3-4 times a year? I forget the ramifications, but the gist is that monthly courses aren't necessarily any more natural than quarterly ones. Yes, this had occurred to me, of course, especially in light of the fuss one's insurance carrier would make! One Per Month is all they will consider - that's their story and they're sticking to it, and they sure as hell won't stand for anyone confusing them with the facts. Yes, this all makes a great deal of sense to me - as a dancer I am already a bit too free with NSAIDs, and I know it, so anything that would help me need fewer of them for my quality of life is distinctly a Good Thing. My only question on this - and I know it's one that doesn't have a hard and fast answer, but I'm certainly interested in your educated guestimate - is whether all this still holds equally true for someone who is at statistically high cancer risk. Yes, aren't we all, I know; but I come from a particularly cancer-ridden family. My mother's two breast cancers were not the only ones on her resume - in the course of 42 years she had eight separate cancers. My father has had two. Both my maternal grandparents died of cancer, as did my paternal grandfather. I sort of have to figure it's only a matter of time anyway... so I need to weigh the priorities. Oddly enough, despite the above, I'm not a big worrier over these things - I like my creature comforts (I too am not about to give up coffee!) and enjoy living well and am not haunted by the future - but one wants to try to be reasonable.

Like a sharp pang to the heart, suddenly remembered this from up-thread and am now haunted by my freezerful of last year's plum tomato harvest. Ooooh, Mudpuppie, please - tell us more! (Discovered yesterday that I don't have crockpot after all; used to have one of those orange jobs with the lobsters on it but now remember it fell to ex's share on the divorce - good riddance, too - so last night I bid on, and won for about 5 bucks, a charming little 2.5 qt. Rival Chefmate crockpot. It has Pretty Blue Flowers on it, I'm afraid, but I figure I can always superimpose a canada goose or two as inspired by the design on the Crockpots thread. 2.5 qts is small, I know, but something about this one talked to me, and I just had a feeling it would come in handy for all sorts of things. There's a lobstered one coming up in a couple of days - cheap enough that maybe I'll go to hell with myself and bid on that too.)

Wouldn't much surprise me if it had something to do with St. George (he of dragon fame). Crying, God for Harry, England and Saint George!!!! On the construction thing, I really think we have to test it empirically. Expressed theoretically, both ideas have advantages and potential disadvantages. But there are some things you just can't do on paper, and making a confit-cheeseburger has got to rank high among those. Hell, where's the fun of designing it if you don't get to EAT it afterward?

Funny, I was thinking of it sort of engineerily too when I said underneath - but then I think I was picturing the confit more as little lumps, like mushrooms, than as a smoothed layer. Now I'm torn. No, I think I still like the confit next to the meat. Otherwise you have the slippery problem in reverse. And I've never had any problem about the extra juiciness soaking into the bread! It does that anyway, I find - except for a few drops which need to fall on the plate so you can have the pleasure of wiping them up with a squashed french-fry or two. Well, obviously we will have to try it both ways. I am always happy to agree with someone who agrees with me, but you've just presented further good reasons. I hadn't really thought about any other candidate than cheddar because I started there and was happy to stay there. But every alternative you've mentioned has indeed just confirmed the soundness of that original instinct.

Oh damn, I'm drooling again. I think it depends on where you want the marriage of flavors to happen most intensely. I have a feeling that putting the confit under the cheese will make for a marvelously-modulated meeting (where the hell did all this alliteration come from?) between confit and meat juices when you actually start to bite into the thing. As for what kind of cheese - I've always preferred a good cheddar for burger purposes, but I can't swear that will still be the right choice when the confit comes into play. But on reflection I don't see why not. I bet the smooth sweetness of the confit and the clean sharpness of the cheddar will balance each other charmingly. Hmmmmm. My great indulgence in this regard is usually a big rare juicy burger with good cheddar and plenty of bacon (thread convergence! comfort foods and PMS cravings!), and there of course the bacon generally goes on top of the cheese, though with bacon it probably doesn't matter quite as much. What about mushrooms? Those usually go on top of cheese, no? But I bet they'd be very interesting underneath for the same reasons suggested above - mushrooms (or confit) held in place and snugly sealed to the meat surface by that blanket of cheese. Of course, you have to do a lot of deliberate savoring to appreciate the subtleties of this under-vs.-over question. But I'm sure we are up to the job! Hey, Fifi! and Marlene! I just thought of something. You said you found your confit disappointing when you made it with bacon. It suddenly occurs to me why this is right: maybe it's a premature pairing. I'd be willing to bet that the match made in heaven would be the finished confit (the appproved version, I mean, made with butter and EVOO) with bacon that has been cooked separately. IOW, maybe the salt of one and the sweetness of the other are just muddying each other if you combine them at the cooking stage; but once each of the elements is finished and perfect in itself, it seems logical that they might counterbalance each other beautifully. Damn, it's enough to make me wish I'd gotten moving and made up some confit when I first landed on this thread, instead of just mouthing off in a vacuum. Serve me right. Well, I will set about remedying this as soon as I reasonably can - meanwhile, someone please take pity on me, try it and tell me if I'm making any sense.

Oh. neatly done! Thank you, Marlene. I definitely fall into this category. How my SO managed to stand living with me during those crucial few days every month - before I went back on the pill, that is - I cannot imagine. The evil and despairing hag that I became... well, it was almost an out-of-body experience, being her. I often liken it to the fairy tale where the nasty step-sister was placed under an enchantment that caused a toad to fall from her mouth (that's food, sort of, right? ) every time she spoke. I would watch myself saying unbelievably awful things, howling in hysterics, doing anything and everything I could think of to spew the venom. I didn't lose my reason; the watcher in me never failed to understand precisely what was wrong about everything I said or felt or did - but for the life of me I couldn't get That Deranged Creature (i.e. myself, insane with hormones) to pay the slightest attention. She was determined to wreak all the havoc possible. And oh, she was so good at it. It was like being in the audience of a badly-written horror movie: you crumple down into your seat and mutter, "she's going to... no, I can't believe she's giong to... oh hell she IS going to... I can't look!" and you sink even lower and cover your eyes but of course your mind's eye can, and does, still picture the devastation. And now... it's pretty thrilling that during Those Days I get a bit depressed and whiny and cranky... and that's ALL. Let's hear it for Better Living Through Chemistry! Yup - this is exactly what concerns me. I'm at very high risk for breast cancer: my mother had two of them (entirely separate - no metastasis), as well as a handful of other cancers, so she had to give up any hope of HRT early on (with the result that she suffered terrible debilitating hot flashes for the last 25 years of her life). My GYN knew and loved her well, so she's au courant about my concerns. And I trust her completely. OTOH, according to her the pill I'm on now doesn't pose an unacceptable risk, so the question I don't know how to evaluate is whether taking it or its equivalent on a full-time basis would increase the risk, and if so how dramatically. Indeed! Very much so. Yup - this definitely gives us plenty to chew on.

And who knows how to write about it. Hell, if that don't constitute cred, in these parts, I'd like to know what do. But hasn't the state of the art improved greatly since then? I thought that was rather the point of the recent research on this approach - lower doses, fewer side effects, more consistent hormone levels, better overall control, better understanding of the cycle etc. etc. Certainly my experience of the newer generation of pills is that they seem to require much less acclimation than the old ones from 20-odd years ago - if that's anything to go by. As it is I have to admit that taking one of these new low-dose jobs 3 weeks out of 4 has in itself made for a big improvement - just ask the SO! OTOH, I'm not sure I want to give up the mashed potatoes. Mmmmmmm, mashed potatoes....

Sounds like bliss, I must say... but then what would we all get together and bitch about?