beccaboo

I've made various sprouted legumes and not gotten sick. I think the only one that really has to be cooked is kidney beans--I've read about their toxins a number of times, and think it's probably true.

This is the recipe we like. It's not really hot, but you can increase the jalapeños or add some habaneros to liven it up if you like. It's good with graham crackers and peanut butter as well as with cream cheese!

My first loaf, with only white flour and 72% hydration, had a thin, crisp crust and a non-soggy crumb when it was 208F inside. My subsequent loaves, with different flours and higher hydrations, had thicker crusts. My daughter's favorite was the 50% whole wheat, accidentally 100% hydration, accidentally bulk-fermented for 48 hours--it had the thickest crust, and she liked it.

I had part of a pressure cooker lid melt into the bottom of the cooker, and managed to get it up by warming it on the stove and scraping it up with a razor blade.

For Thanksgiving I made two loaves--one with 34% durum flour (I have better luck with that then coarser semolina) and a sesame-seedy crust and one with 20% dark rye and rosemary, and a kosher-salty crust. People seemed more impressed with the rye-rosemary version, but I really liked the durum-sesame one.

Light molasses is definitely not the same as golden syrup--it's dark and opaque, while golden syrup is transparent and amber-colored. Treacle and dark molasses are similar, but I still think they're different. At least, Bre'er Rabbit dark molasses isn't the same as Lyle's black treacle.

I think it's too much water, too. My pie crust has 5 oz flour, 2.5 oz shortening, 1/2t salt, 1t sugar, and only 3-4T water. (usually 4T if I'm using AP flour, a little less for pastry flour).

This pie is dairy and egg free, and actually really good. My daughter likes it better than the label-label-label recipe, and I like it equally well.

It's a hand-cranked grinder that attaches to a countertop or table. It has a grater barrel, like the mouli graters, and grates the nuts into a fluffy mass instead of an oily mess. Helps to make bery light cookies and pastries. ← I have a poppy seed mill which that sounds similar to--do you think it would work for almonds?

Agedashi looks delicious, so thanks for the suggestion. Funny that you mention ma po tofu - I had that in mind as the destination rather than the starting point. Elder son loves hot/spicy food, but we are building up younger son's chile tolerance. ← You can make ma po tofu with less chile and it's still flavorful from the sichuan peppercorns and things--that's something my daughter (the 'fishfingers and canned spaghetti' one) liked by the time she was 8. When she was little, she really wouldn't eat anything. She wouldn't eat fried rice, or any rice that had anything other than rice i(eg cumin seeds) in it, she only liked the crusts of pies and not the fruit inside, she'd only eat peeled broccoli stems and peeled asparagus ends because she didn't like the 'fluff'and scales.... She's still not a very good eater at 17, but now I figure it's her business and don't feret about it. She's always liked mung beans, though, as long as they're sweetened and in a Vietnamese treat.

I have a Matfer that I like, but when the reviews of the new Oxo mandoline came out I wished I'd waited annd gotten it. It's lots cheaper, and supposed to be pretty nice.

Blackstrap is different from black treacle--more bitter, or something. I'd use 3/4 black treacle, 1/4 golden syrup. Regular molasses is only a little lighter in flavor than treacle.

When my daughter was in the hospital when she was 2, they asked us what she liked to eat. I said, shamefacedly, that she'd only eat junk food. They asked for examples, and said of her favorite dinner, fish fingers and canned spaghetti, that it sounded like she was actually a pretty good eater!

Here's a nice beet burger recipe.

beet burgers Serves 4 as Main Dish. 300 g beets 1 400g/14 oz can garbanzo beans 2 small onions, shredded 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 T tahini 1 T vinegar 1 T buckwheat flour 1 tsp cumin salt and pepper oatflakes oil for frying Boil the beets till al dente, cool, and shred coarsely. Fry the onion and garlic . Mash the garbanzo beans. Mix everything but the oatflakes together and form into flat burgers. Coat with oatflakes and fry on both sides till you get a crispy coating. Keywords: Main Dish, Vegan, Easy, Vegetables ( RG1844 )

Full story here on news.com.au ← I just read in Slate that it's not true! Folic acid is regulated, but only the synthetic, supplemental kind. Vegemite has naturally occurring folate and is okay. Excess folate is mainly bad because it can mask symptoms of B12 deficiency.

I've made the little baguettes with buckwheat flour, and we quite liked them.

Full story here on news.com.au ← Oh no! I just ate a peanut-butter-and-Vegemite toast for my breakfast. I'd better get to PFI and see if they have any more.... Why would they care about folate? It's not one of those things like vitamins A and D that you can get too much of, is it?

It tastes like really strong, salty yeast, and it's not nasty at all--Australians like it because it's tasty. I get mine at PFI--a food import shop here in Seattle--and I've seen it at those expensive shops that sell British Isles/South African/Australian things. Marmite tastes similar (Australians would disagree), and I've seen it at lots of regular grocery stores.

I use silicone muffin pans and like them pretty well. I arrange 3 6-hole ones on a half-sheet pan and don't have to wash the sheet afterwards. The brand really does make a difference. I had some Silicone Zone ones and they were worthless--everything stuck to them. Now I have two Gastroflex pans and a Le Creuset pan and they both work pretty well. The muffins I bake in the Gastroflex ones come out a little nicer-looking, with better-colored, more attractively-rounded tops, but the Le Creuset ones are fine.

I've made Tuscan bread and it came out fine except that it had no salt, which you could get used to. Salt does retard the rising and affect the gluten development, but you just have to pay attention to your dough, kneading it a little longer and keeping a close eye on it while it rises. When I do the autolyse thing, where you mix the flour and water and let it sit for a while before adding the yeast and salt, the effect of the salt is really apparent--you've got a big bowl of mush, and when you add the salt it immediately snaps into shape and becomes dough.

Miss Manners says that all babies are cute and all brides are beautiful, so you never have to lie.

I was looking for "Raw Power" just the other day--first I looked under "I" for "Iggy," then "S" for "Stooges," but I found it under "P" for "Pop." I have my cookbooks arranged in various ways. I have sections for East Asian, West Asian, British Isles, Europe, US & Canada, Mexico and further south, bread, other baking and desserts, general cookbooks, vegetarian, Asian vegetarian, cookbooks too big to fit in their sections, preserving. I think that's it....

Real cinnamon sticks are paler and softer than cassia, and kind of flaky around the edges.

This started happening to me when we got a new oven, and I finally figured out it was because the stone had to be in the upper third of our new oven or it got too hot. I kept it near the bottom of our old oven so there'd be more room, and it worked out fine, but our new oven was somehow different.