purplewiz

Post Honeycomb. The perfect combination of sweet, crunch, and then the most delightful sogginess. Sadly, it's no longer in the diet. Marcia.

And I am quite thankful he was. Proving that his last appearance wasn't a fluke, he was again quite eloquent about what he was eating, how the flavors worked, and what the texture was like. Whether I agree or not with how the judging turned out (and tonight, for once, I did!), the judges are our only glimpse into the smell/taste/texture results., and I appreciate it no end when they let us know what the dishes are like, too. And I am even more thankful that I ate dinner BEFORE the show aired :-). Marcia.

I have the Polder Cooking Thermometer with Timer & Clock, your second link. I've used it in a 425F oven, I've also used it for roasts on our gas grill. It seems to be pretty accurate, as all the meats I've used it on came out exactly as expected as to level of doneness, including the grilled roasts. All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. As always, your mileage may vary :-). Marcia.

The eating. To be blunt, the only reason I learned how to cook is because I realized early on that I was actually going to have to eat whatever I made, so it had better be good. I've since realized that I do enjoy the process of planning and shopping and cooking, but in the end, what's most important (and enjoyable) are the results and the consumption thereof. Marcia.

I'm taking notes :-). My in laws live in Rio Rancho, and while my mother in law is a wonderful, kind, funny, warm person, she's also a self-admitted lousy cook. If I can find recommended restaurants, it means that several nights we don't have to eat her cooking. The Nana's Enchiladas look simply amazing. Good thing there was a sale on pork recently - green chile stew is going on the menu. With a fried egg on top. Thanks for the wonderful pictures - good thing dinner's almost ready :-). Marcia.

I'm kind of apprehensive about posting this, because I'm sure someone has something more authentic. This is my variation on a recipe I printed from the alt.gourmand newsgroup in 1988. Amounts are approximate - my notes about that at the bottom. 1 cup firm or extra firm tofu, in 1/2" dice 1/4 cup bamboo shoots (about half a can), julienned or shredded 1/4 cup dried black fungus 1/4 cup dried shiitake mushrooms 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated 1 garlic clove, pressed or minced 1/2 lb lean pork, finely julienned (or 1/2 lb ground pork) 2 tbsp oil 1 egg, well beaten 6 cups chicken stock 1 tsp sugar 3 tbsp + 1 tsp cornstarch, use divided 3 tbsp + 1 tsp soy sauce, use divided 3 tbsp white vinegar 1 tbsp sesame oil 1 tsp chili oil 1/2 tsp black pepper 3 tbsp chopped green onion, for garnish Put black fungus and dried shiitakes in two different bowls; cover with hot water and let sit to soften, about 30 minutes. Mix 1 tsp cornstarch with 1 tsp soy sauce, and mix with the finely julienned or ground pork. Let marinate for 15 minutes. Once marinated, stir fry (in the soup pot) in the 2 tbsp oil until cooked through. Add ginger and garlic and stir fry for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add the chicken stock and sugar to the soup pot and bring to a boil. While it's heating, drain the shiitakes and slice thinly, discarding tough stems. Drain and slice the black fungus, discarding any tough centers. (I usually decant the soaking liquid into the soup pot, discarding any sediment.) When soup is boiling, add the tofu, shiitakes, black fungus, and bamboo shoots. In a separate bowl, mix together the 3 tbsp cornstarch, 3 tbsp soy sauce, white vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil, and black pepper until well mixed. Reduce heat to a simmer and add the egg while stirring gently to create egg filaments. Continuing to stir, add the mixture in the bowl and cook another minute. Serve in bowls and garnish with green onions. Notes: I usually start with these amounts, but then adjust after tasting. I know the balance of hot and sour and salty I'm going for, and the amounts required to achieve that vary from batch to batch. I usually double the amount of pork and tofu to make a heartier soup when serving this as a main course. I've also found using half chicken stock and half beef stock makes a heartier soup. Marcia.

There's where we differ - I don't store food in the pot or pan I made it in for various reasons, the two big ones being no room in the fridge for large pots, and I often need that pot or pan for the next night's dinner, by which time the leftovers are generally not consumed. I store leftovers in an assortment of Rubbermaid and other plastic containers, especially if they're going to be frozen (since my pots and pans don't have airtight lids). I put the microwave's usefulness on about the same level as my food processor: I don't NEED it, I can cook many wonderful things without it, but some things it just makes a whole lot easier . Marcia.

Today, it was a perfectly ripe (read: eat over the sink or wear it) pear from a belated Christmas gift. I love pears. Marcia.

I use mine to defrost meat. I'm lousy at remembering to take meat out of the freezer a day or more in advance (that would require planning!), and I've learned how long and in what positions the meat needs to be for maximum defrosting. For this purpose alone it's worth having one. I use it to melt butter. I use it to steam vegetables - I have a glass Pyrex bowl that is just about perfect for it. Put in frozen vegetables, set them timer, no need to have another pot on the stove. I use it to make quick quesadillas: cheese, tortilla, fold in half, nuke 45 seconds - 1 minute depending on the size of the tortilla. I like it for reheating some leftovers, but for soups and stuff, especially if I'm reheating multiple servings at once, I prefer the stovetop. I think it does a better job, although I'll often defrost them in the microwave and then finish up in a pot. I love cooking bacon in it. I have a microwave bacon pan that I got with my first microwave - that microwave is long gone, but the bacon pan is still in service. It catches the grease nicely in case I want to use it for frying eggs. And honestly, I can't tell the difference between microwaved bacon or pan fried - I do it both ways, but keep going back to the microwave. I use it to heat up the cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches. I don't melt it - just bring it up to room temperature so when I grill the sandwich, the cheese gets to melting temperature faster. This avoids the burned bread/cold cheese variant. Marcia.

And when your vacation reports are all about the meals you ate, and "oh, yeah, we hiked some/saw some important monuments/visited some people". When you keep a written list of restaurants you want to try because you keep forgetting them. The trip home from any restaurant involves a full dissection of the meal, including ingredients used, what was better or worse than the last trip, what could be made at home, and what you're going to eat next time. When grocery shopping isn't a chore, it's one of the highlights of the week. When your husband asks you to please STOP talking about food because he's full and it's making his stomach hurt. Marcia.

I'm not sensitive to them particularly, but in general I don't like them much. However, used judiciously in a blend, I wouldn't have a problem. This sounds great - thanks! It's just something like this I would like to use in that pumpkin pie recipe. My experience with sweeteners on the whole is that context is everything :-). I love stevia or sweet n low in tea, but hate either of them in coffee. I like splenda or equal in coffee, or for adding a touch of sweetness to dishes. I don't taste splenda in things like sodas made with Torani sugar free syrups, but I really tasted it in that pumpkin pie. Side note: I use the Torani Sugar Free Vanilla syrup for sweetening many things, from coffee to fruit desserts. It's not just good and sugar free, it's just plain old good. Marcia.

Ok, put me down for the Red Lobster cheese biscuits, too. So greasy, so good, and I generally don't like greasy food. I like the food at On The Border. Yes, I know it's nothing like real Mexican, but I don't care, I LIKE it. Especially the chicken burrito with sour cream sauce and the Ranchiladas. Same with Pei Wei (PF Chang's "Chinese diner" concept chain). It's too sweet and all the dishes are alike, but I LIKE them. Am I absolved if I used some truffle paste in the reduction sauce I made for the steaks two days ago? Marcia.

The sausage kale soup I made for dinner. I had been craving it for days, and things kept getting in the way of my making it - but today I finally made it, and it was GOOD. Marcia.

Soup for dinner tonight - Hot and Sour. When I make it as a main dish, it's more like Hot and Sour stew - I add more tofu, pork, and other goodies than I would if I were to make it as an appetizer. Tonight I did something different: I usually make it with just chicken stock, but tonight I did it half and half chicken and beef stocks. I liked it a great deal - it added a richness that just chicken doesn't have, without making the liquid too heavy as to overshadow the ingredients. I also realized halfway into the cooking that I was out of chili oil, so I used sriracha for the heat. It worked admirably to the point where I may just use that all the time. This is what I love about soup - it's so flexible :-). There's at least one more soup on the menu this week - I guess I'm just in a soup kind of mood. Marcia.

I enjoyed last night's ICA a great deal, and I think they've fixed a number of weaknesses evident in the first set of show. Kevin Brauch did a much better job as the floor reporter - poor Alton got a little help there with the commentary. I also liked the aside Alton did on the chiles, as well as his ending commentary on the people who didn't get to taste. The judges also did a much better job of commentary - ok, some of it was banal, but then again, so was a lot of the commentary on Iron Chef Japan. At least they're talking, and I got some idea of what the dishes tasted like. As I said previously, the judges are our noses and tastebuds - they're the only way us people out in TV land have any idea what this food is like! Yeah, I agree, from where I sat, Bayless was robbed. But then again, I didn't get to taste the dishes (one of my pie in the sky fantasies would be to sit as a judge!), so I can only judge from what I saw, not smelled or tasted. But given the choice of whose dishes I would have liked to have for dinner, I would rather have Bayless'. I also really miss the in studio audience - there are times when it's just too quiet, even with the commentary. And I've found one HUGE problem with ICA vs. ICJ: with ICJ, since many of the ingredients are unfamiliar to me, I can't always imagine what their dishes would be like. But last night on ICA, oh man, I just KNEW what some of them would taste like, and I got hungry. Fast. Note to self: do NOT watch ICA on anything less than a full stomach. (It doesn't hurt that I adore bison.) Marcia.

mushrooms and thyme cranberry and orange (especially cranberry orange sorbet) chocolate and coffee or chocolate and mint, but NOT mint and coffee Marcia.

Is there a site or a chart somewhere with guidelines on blending artificial sweeteners? I ask because for Thanksgiving, I made a low carb nut crust pumpkin pie that called for only Splenda. While the texture was great, and the flavor wasn't bad at all, it was very.... Splenda-y. I'd like to make it again with a blend of sweeteners, but I don't know where to start to end up with about the same level of sweetness. I know I could "experiment", but since there are only two of us the experimentation could take weeks while we consume them . I'd really rather get something close to start with, and tweak from there! Thanks - Marcia.

Face to face, or at right angles. My husband has one ear that doesn't work so well, and even after ten years of marriage I can't remember which one it is, so if we're being seated side by side, we often have to do the shuffle dance so he can hear me. Also, even though I don't have a hearing problem, I have learned how much I rely on lip reading as a back up system to hearing in a noisy situation (like restaurants). We swim at an indoor pool regularly, and when I don't have my prescription goggles on, I have real problems understanding people because I can't see them. The sound so distorted that it's all just noise, and without the additional clues of seeing them facing me and watching their lips, I usually can't tell if they're talking to me. Dining face to face definitely helps with the conversation. And yes, sometimes we hold hands across the table. But without making goo goo eyes . Marcia.

I have a collection of Rubbermaid containers in various sizes that I picked up at various 50% off sales. They're all a little elderly (none are younger than 3 years old), but they get used nearly nightly, which means they go through the dishwasher regularly, and just keep on going. If you're buying containers, measure the spaces you're likely to keep them in (like the height of your refrigerator shelves) and don't get any that don't fit. I have one very nice tall square container that hardly ever gets used because it fits on exactly one shelf in the fridge, and that shelf is usually full. We did use it to transport our now ex-goldfish from California to here when we moved, but that didn't require the fridge. For new containers, I also tend towards the "disposables" because they go through the dishwasher just fine, and some are a pretty sturdy plastic that seems to be holding up well. I'm also a fan of ziplock bags for certain things like cheeses and lunchmeats, but not for liquids, having had one too many "incidents" involving seals that didn't or manufacturing defects. I like them for the freezer because then I don't have to tie up one of my other containers for a long time. Marcia.

My signature dish is......*sigh* brownies. Yes, they're from scratch, but they's almost as easy as from a mix, you basically throw them together, and that's always what people want me to make for them. So I do, but sometimes I want to scream and say "but I can make so many better things!" "Yes, but please make the brownies....." *sigh*. My signature dinner in the summer is grilled steak with chive flower/thyme flower butter, grilled vegetables of some ilk (depending on what's good), tossed salad served less than an hour after it was picked, and some kind of homemade dressing, fruit shortcake for dessert. In winter it's beef stew or a curry with peanut butter that is infinitely adaptable to what's available, what meat preferences the guests have (just made a vegetarian version for vegetarian house guests and it went over well). These are simple choices, nowhere near the most complex things I make, but I know from experience that if I try to cook to impress a guest, I am not only inviting disaster into the kitchen, but opening the door and calling it in from the street. I know these dishes inside out and backwards, so I have a much great chance of serving something edible . Marcia.

Way back when, when I was just starting to cook, I decided I liked eggplant parmesan, so I wanted to make something similar. So I peeled and sliced an eggplant, and layered it with a can of tomato sauce that I'd mixed with an awful lot of sage that I'd collected and dried. And stuck it in the oven. And waited. And waited. And waited until it cooked and the eggplant went all soft.....which took forever. But eventually it got a little less than rock hard, and since I was starving, I took a bite.... ...and it was HORRIBLE. Not only was the texture about what you'd expect, but I used WAY more sage than any one recipe would ever call for. So it was chewy and sagey and still had that awful raw canned tomato sauce taste. Blech. I don't remember what I ate that night, but it wasn't that mess. And it was years until I tried cooking eggplant again, after learning about things like broiling it before casseroling it. Then there's the recent stew that I threw a turnip in...before tasting it. Nasty, bitter mess that ruined the whole stew. Marcia.

This soup is my "emergency entree" - I always have the ingredients around. Proportions are approximate at best, and items can be added or deleted as necessary. The soup: If you have any chopped onions in the freezer, sautee them in some olive oil in a soup pot. Add a little garlic if you have that around, too. If not, if you have dried onions and garlic powder (look, it's an emergency!), you can throw them in later with the spices. Add two to three cans of chicken broth. Or 4-6 cups of water and appropriate chicken base or bouillon or whatever you have around. Add a can of diced tomatoes with juice. Add some Italian spices, or oregano, or basil, or some of all. I dunno, tbsp or two? A little handful. Bring to a simmer. If you have frozen meatballs, throw in a handful. Or if you have a can of chicken, throw that in. Add a package of frozen tortellini (it's what, 8oz? 16oz? Something like that.). Or dried tortellini. Or ravioli. Or whatever other pasta you have around. But tortellini is best. Simmer until the pasta is almost cooked. Add a package of frozen spinach (if you have frozen kale or turnip greens or whatever, they're good, too). Simmer until pasta is cooked and the greens are heated through. Salt and pepper to taste, if you can find them in the dark. Serve. If you have parmesan, throw some over the top. It's very hearty, very flexible (!), and uses mostly frozen and canned ingredients, and measured by the handful, so it's good for cooking in the dark. I hope your power returns long before their prediction! Marcia.

I also go out. That's what restaurants are for. I also keep a backlog of frozen leftovers for nights when I Just Can't Face Cooking Again. Putting a piece of foil-wrapped eggplant lasagna in the oven or nuking a container of chicken soup and opening a bag of salad doesn't really qualify as cooking in my book. Marcia.

It was an interesting article, but even though they did address the amount of time needed to prepare each meal (and I'm assuming that's active prep time, not actual start to eat time, since it mentions averaging 15 minutes, and I don't think pot roast cooks in anything even close to that time), they did not address the time and expense of acquiring the foods. They don't mention how close the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is to where they live, or the McGehee family of Okema, or the Stepp family of Hinton, or Dennis Garret of Eufaula. Assuming that these are all different towns (as a quick Google search seems to show), you can't just discount the cost of transportation there (either public or by car) - it adds to the overall cost of the food. Then there's time. I wish they had mentioned how long it took to do all this shopping - and if these specialty providers are open past traditional business hours. For people with a full time job, these are critical issues - at one point, I wanted buy my meat from a local butcher, but he was open only Monday - Friday, 9-5. This precluded me from doing so most of the time, simply because I needed to be at work while he was open. Safeway was open 24 hours. There's a lot more I'd like to pick at, but I think the summary is that while yes, it's possible, it's not exactly practical. Marcia.

Worse, after they've cleared their plate, they look at them and say "and would you like to order dessert?". What is the server going to do, bring his dessert before I'm done with my dinner? (Probably.) Fortunately my speedier-eating dining companion always says "I will wait until she's finished, and then we'll decide". There's also the flip side: if everything that is brought to the table is brought on Yet Another Small Plate, please be just as diligent about taking them away. Last night we ended up with a huge stack of them - if we hadn't stacked them up, there would have been no room on our table to place our entrees. Other things to stop: - multiple hour waits at ok but not splendiferous chains like PF Changs. - individual portion sizes that would serve a family of 4 - cooking magazine profiles of Ferran Adria. Marcia.