beccaboo

A second pan won't really take up any more room, as it'll fit inside the pan you already have--at least it will if you have the kind of regular, cheap grocery-store cake pans I have.

If you're wanting a nice soft focaccia, there's a good recipe for one with potatoes in the dough in Carol Field's focaccia book. There are lots of good recipes in this book, but the one with potatoes in and peppers on top stands out in my memory as particularly soft and moist.

We had that for dinner on Wednesday, and it was good. Easy, too--I thought it might not turn out very full-flavored, since you just boil everything together and don't fry the spices first or anything, but it was a success.

That looks more like dock to me. Here's a nice picture of some broadleaf dock.

I was just there today, and the coffee was disgusting. The whole place is different from how it used to be--less of a hippified atmosphere, and not as much variety in the menu.

I read that article too, I think, and I can't find it either. Here's a similar article, though.

I made "bluebarb jam" once, and it was really good. Just last week I made a pie with 1 1/2 lb rhubarb, a pint of frozen sweet cherries, and a pint of frozen mixed berries. My mother thought it was the best pie she'd ever eaten!

Stupice and Caspian Pink are two that always do well for me in Seattle.

I make a salad with thinly sliced fennel (soaked in ice water for a while, then drained--this crispens it up some), olive oil, grapefruit, a little salt and ground cumin, and some of the fennel leaves for color.

I've never had baby fennel, but I'd expect it to be if anything less fibrous. Try a bit and see!

I've always feared doing something like that, so I hang a tea towel over the oven handle to remind me when there's something in there I don't want to bake.

I grew Koralik in pots last year, and they did pretty well. They're determinate, so they didn't get too big, and they tasted good. They didn't all ripen at once like determinates usually do, either.

Fadge (thin potato cakes baked on a griddle). Apple fadge (thicker potato cakes with thinly sliced apple in the middle).

I like Vialone Nano best if I'm making risotto in a pressure cooker--Arborio always turns out mushy for me, and Carnaroli's not much better. I like Carnaroli and Vialone Nano about equally if I'm doing it the hard way, though....

My mother makes one or two smoothies every day out of frozen fruit, and broke the blades of our Waring! I looked into it and found that frozen fruit is really hard on blender blades--ice, being brittle, isn't so bad--and Vita Mixes are the best blenders to get if you're going to blend lots of frozen fruit. They are expensive, but worth it if you're a heavy blender user.

I often use tofu instead of paneer in Indian food, because making paneer requires a little bit of advance planning. It's not the same, by any means, but it's still good.

We just had spring rolls last night for my daughter's birthday dinner! They're the one thing she has every year--the rest of the menu varies. Anyway, we have them with peanut sauce made of hoisin sauce, peanut butter, garlic, chile paste, and tomato paste. One year it turned out particularly dark brown, and a boy mistook it for chocolate pudding with peanuts sprinkled on top. He took a huge gob of it, and when he realised his mistake tried to hide it under a lettuce leaf on his plate.

I've always heard different stories about this, so I asked the guy at the farro stand at the farmer's market, and he told me that there are two different things called 'spelt,' and one of them is the same as farro. I have my little bag of farro I bought from him, and on the back it says that farro, emmer, and Triticum dicoccum are all the same thing, and that the other kind of spelt is a later development, derived from farro/emmer.

I like jam, or banana and lemon. I'm thinking of making banh xeo tomorrow, though. Do you think they count as pancakes?

Sage is good in bread, too. I made a whole wheat focaccia/fougasse kind of thing last night with walnuts and fresh sage, and it was a real success.

I once made an Indian recipe which was mashed potatoes with cashews, cumin and things in (maybe some sultanas?), wrapped in blanched swiss chard leaves, and briefly baked with a sweet tomato sauce. It was really good, but I can't remember where I got the recipe.

I've only seen beluga lentils there lately, but they're similar.

I use pomelos in Vietnamese salads, and I've made oro blanco marmalade (it tastes pretty much like grapefruit marmalade, but it's really pale).

Vegemite tastes nice with peanut butter....

I keep my flour in gallon jars, and I can fit five pounds in a jar if I shake it down. Since I generally weigh flour when baking, it doesn't matter that it's all compacted.