Katherine

If you have two types of beans that take different lengths of time to cook, you would need to parboil the longer-cooking one, otherwise you'd end up overcooking the quicker-cooking bean. Not that mushy beans are always wrong, but not cassoulet-like.

The high induced by eating pot is mostly psychosomatic. It doesn't have a very good taste or texture, which makes eating a large quantity unpleasant, and the leisurely pace at which the desired compounds leach into the system via the stomach and intestine render the psychedelic effect negligible at best. For gastronomic consumption hashish is a much better choice. In powdered form it's easily added to baked goods. You might even contend that the flavor goes well with chocolate; hence the popularity of hash brownies. The slow absorbtion rate previously mentioned actually enhances the experience since hashish is a heavier, more contemplative kind of high if compared to marijuana's more giddy type of high. SB (or so I've been told) You was told wrong. The effect is definitely proportional to the dose. As far as eating it directly, nobody does that, because you can put it in brownies. But the brownies, which mask the flavor quite effectively, should not be too irresistible, otherwise certain hearty eaters will consume too high a dose and be unable to walk afterwards. Nevertheless, a campsite full of very happy campers.

Jenny, My initial thought was that your chicken stock had turned. Almost got fired from a kitchen job for not checking the stock before putting it on the line for sauces. Many years since my last restaurant job, I still taste EVERY liquid in the kitchen before using. Since the bitterness died down when you added more, not that. My next culprit would be the curry powder. How old is it and what are its storage conditions? The stock (although not old) IS a possibility - I used two different sources. Neither are older than two or three weeks. Is that reasonable? The curry was bought a day before. Your stock was two or three weeks old? That's too old for safety, let alone quality cooking. From now on, store it in the freezer.

Does a photo show it golden brown? I think you need to get over your discomfort with the fact that the cakes are acting "uncooked" in the center at the recommended cooking time, and try it once. You've got a liquid pocket in there, it's not going to act solid. Hit it with a torch afterwards to brown it slightly on top. I've had trouble removing small molten cakes, so I cut a small piece of baking parchment to line the bottom, with a tag to pull it out by. Then, when the cakes are baked and completely chilled (in the fridge) I run a butter knife around the edge to loosen and pull each out, still cold and shapely. Refrigerate til you need them, then put on a plate, 15 seconds in the microwave, and it's all liquidy again. If the cakes are really rich (mine are) their butterfat may be cementing them to the walls and bottoms of the baking pan. I put the foil-covered cold pan back in a hot oven for about 3 minutes, which melts any surface butter without warming up the cakes.

Have you ever eaten a cake made with salted butter? There's a helluva lot of salt in a stick of salted butter. Actually, American baked goods, pastry included, have traditionally been made with salted butter, and then the recipe called for adding even more. So I seriously doubt there is anyone reading this who has never had a cake, cookie, or brownie that was made with salted butter. There's no place in European-style cakes for salted butter, especially in buttercream. Yes, yes, yes. I know that salted butter doesn't have as much salt as it used to, and I think they've cut back on the salt in English muffins, too, which means that they're totally blah unless you salt them. Actually, my favorite table butter is made at home from glass-bottled cream, and I can control the salt exactly (grind kosher to a powder first).

I've boned out lots of birds, but never a quail. Easy, but tedious for someone who does not have the background of Jacques Pepin. I can't imagine boning out 12 at the same time. Plan on taking at least four times as long as you could ever imagine, and have a lot of your favorite music playing, to help you keep sane. Skip the wine, you'll be drunk before you finish. Very sharp knife.

Salt acts as a preservative, so for two butters of the same age, likely the salted is fresher. This has been my experience buying butter in supermarkets, which is the only source available to me locally.

Two problems I see with wine: relatively low alcohol concentration, and rule #3 of backpacking - "ya pack out what ya pack in". Humping out an empty wine bottle would be a drag. Consider the upscale "bag in a box" wine. No glass at all, and the trash weighs nothing.

You know, I saw the title of this thread, and I thought it was someone looking for recipes like hash brownies, or madjoon.

I never know where I'm working, or whether I'll have access to either refrigeration or a microwave now. But I know I'm never going to have more than 20 minutes to eat. So I eat a good breakfast, then slap together some homemade yogurt (extra butterfat to be more filling), nuts, a few dried cherries, splenda, and flavor. By the time I get home, mid-afternoon, I'm ravenous. Carb-free cheesecake time. Then off to my night job with a plate of meat and vegetables.

Like when I go to the drive-thru at the credit union to get some cash, write myself a check, put it in the carrier and hit send. Five minutes passes, and the voice comes out, "Just cashing today?" I'm always tempted to say back, "No, after you cash that check, I want you to deposit it right back in the account." But I never have.

I'm in the wrong business.

Cheese, glorious cheese! I went through a health situation a while back that led me to believe I had developed some sort of a (serious) allergy to dairy products. I was never so relieved as when I discovered that it was coffee that was causing my problems.

Funny, Saturday I was at one of those stores that seems to sell steeply marked down stuff that nobody wanted, and I saw an odd brand of white enamel cast iron dutch oven listing at $99.99, marked down to $49.99. My financial situation is gradually reversing, but I wasn't sure if I should shell out yet. The next day, a brisket begging to be cooked, I went back and bought it. It rang up at $12.49, and the description on the receipt is correct. I measured it, and it's the size equivalent of the 6-3/4 qt Le Creuset that sells at Amazon for $184.99, and at Caplan Duval for $168.43. I'd been wanting an oval oven for a long time, as I seem to slow roast things that aren't round. I think I'll get my money's worth out of it.

Getting back to the original issue of this thread, which is concerning the urge to drop out of Atkins due to being unable to stand the idea of eating more meat, cheese, and eggs, I have a theory that the problem is protein overload combined with the effects of insufficient fuel (the combined carbohydrates and fat you eat). I have experienced the same thing. It's enough to drive a person to a vegetarian diet for a couple of weeks.

Actually, granite is a mixture of crystals of varying durability. Quartz is forever, but feldspar will tend to etch (or weather, if outdoors), in the presence of a weak acid or even just constant moisture, eventually turning into clay, which makes a lousy counter surface. I have a couple of etched spots on my blue pearl. They don't show, but you can feel them when you wipe the counter.

I'm not impressed. In order to put on 24 pounds within a month he clearly had to stuff his face with food he didn't want, even when he wasn't hungry, which was probably almost all the time. Then he "had to" do some sort of a cleansing routine? Spare me. He has learned nothing from the experience but how to make a good documentary.

There's nothing to feel guilty about in any of these basic things, but when was the last time you ate just plain yogurt? Commercial yogurt has enough sugar added to it to make it as sweet as any dessert. A carbo loader's delight.

Everclear.

I've never clarified the butter. Melt only. There's flavor in the residue you'd lose when you clarified it. I always use salted, but I've found that over the years, salted butter has less and less salt, so the sauce needs more seasoning adjustment.

The important part is to try to keep the yogurt warm while it ripens. A machine can do this, but there are other methods, like setting the container on a heating pad, in a kettle of warm water swaddled in a towel, etc. I think the ideal temperature is about 110º. I put a kettle of warm water on the pilot light of my ancient stove, set a jar containing whole milk and starter in it, and leave it until it is set, which takes a day at about 95º. I had an old machine somebody gave me that had a number of white glass cups with lids. The machine did nothing, and I threw it out, and still use the cups to drink milk from. Whole milk makes milder and thicker yogurt than skim, which makes a thin, watery yogurt. That's why commercial non-fat yogurt has gelatin or other stabilizers in it nowadays. Non-instant milk powder in your milk (use a blender to mix) is supposed to help thickening, too.

Hey, I like rutabagas! I'm deep-frying some up right now.

Not that low: 11g/100g and a high glycemic index That's half a person's intake of carbs for induction, so it fits in. For someone who's not in induction, it's fine. 100 grams is a substantial serving of rutabagas. Glycemic index is overrated. Give up grapes, eat whole grains over processed white flour, sure. But a non-starchy veg is a just a veg. Most of the programs I've seen fixate on making tiny changes in the diet by switching brands of processed foods. Kind of like going Atkins by buying Atkins substitute foods. People need to achieve a level of sanity in their diets. If you're fixating on your diet to the extent that you've given up any vegetable that fits the profile of rutabagas, because it doesn't fit the intersection of carb level and glycemic level that you have targeted to be your goal, you're approaching orthorexia.

Ages and ages ago, someone gave me a boxed set of ethnic cooking paperbacks written by a woman (I recall Myra Waldo was her name) who had spent her career flying around to exotic locations, learning the cuisines, and rewriting the recipes to dumb them down into utterly unchallenging food to be served to Americans on the airlines. The most priceless quote was that the fish sauce that is omnipresent in Thai cuisine is "distressingly fishy and garlicky" and thus she omitted it entirely from the book on Thai cooking.

Rutabagas are a good substitute for potatoes in many recipes.