Katherine

For me, all it took was divorce...

If you're going to use different flavors of jello, you can tilt up the aquarium at an angle to set the first layer, reversed or a different angle for the next (and different flavored) layer, and so forth.

The reason turkey breast meat is dry is because it is always overcooked by the time the rest of the bird is done. It's not traditional, but I find the best turkey breast in the world (and I never liked turkey breast meat before, as it was always too dry no matter how it was cooked) is deboned, and poached in turkey stock until the interior reaches 160ºF, as measured using a probe attached to a temperature readout. I cook the carcass section from the breast meat in my existing turkey stock, and keep the whole batch in the freezer for the next time around. So that is another option, unless you consider it to fall under option 1. You could present an oven-roasted turkey, then bring out a platter of sliced breast meat prepared in this fashion. Use the dried-out breast meat for soup or other leftovers, no one will eat it after they taste the good stuff. Actually, as long as your crowd is like most people nowadays (who exclusively eat white meat), you could purchase a small turkey only for skin and dark meat eaters in the group, and purchase extra white meat to cook using this method, so it would probably work out better overall.

I think Cook's Illustrated did a basting testing a few years back where they decided that basting doesn't help the meat, and ruins the skin (crispy skin, after all, being the best part). [shudder]"Moist" turkey skin?[/shudder] Basting could theoretically prevent breast meat from drying out and getting hard on the surface, but it's going to be just as overcooked and dry on the inside as if you hadn't.

Speaking of salt and concentrating stock, I have found that the limiting factor in concentrating lobster stock is its inherent saltiness. The most flavorful lobster stock I ever made was from lobster shells leftover from a 30 second poach, followed by removal of meat for sashimi, but I wasn't able to cook it down to less than a half.

The cube's probably not gonna cut it. That shape won't be stable if the jello is of eating consistency (especially with those little things in there, which is where the breakage will begin), and you don't want to make it tough enough to have structural integrity. However, it's possible I'm wrong here. In any case, you do need a mold, and I doubt you can find one that size and shape and unmold it successfully. Look at rectangular storage containers, like rubbermaid. You will also need to immerse the thing briefly in a larger container of hot water to loosen it from its container, and a platter to receive it, so don't start until you have these things ready. So get yourself some unflavored gelatin, make up the quantity you need, and practice to see if you can get it to work. There should be a recipe on the box that tells you how to mix it up for unmolding, or you can search and find one on the internet. Something this size will take a long time to chill and set. Don't unmold it until it is. It's probably not going to work perfectly the first time, but you can reheat and reuse the gelatin until you get the hang of it. How much time do you have? Another idea is to find a small square aquarium (I don't know if these are available in this shape) and NOT unmold the thing. This would be a lot easier. Just cool the gelatin, stirring occasionally, until it gets syrupy. Then pour in your first layer, chill, and when it is almost set, stick men in position. Keep your working gelatin out of the refrigerator now. Repeat this process of pouring, chilling, and inserting objects until you are done. I think the second idea is more workable than the freestanding cube. It would be a real shame if you tried that and ended up losing it in the back seat of your car when you try to transport it.

Unless, of course, it's a frozen dessert with cream and finely chopped nuts or macaroon crumbs. The color of bisque, of course. Yum.

Is that, like, complementary to spiritual punishment?

Your cat isn't working hard enough, or you aren't as much a soft touch as I am. My cat often talks me into leaving out the onions and garlic so we can share the good stuff. I cheat by starting the rice in the pressure cooker (until a bit too al dente), then finishing it off by hand.

If you cook a sugar syrup to the soft ball stage (238F?), and immediately mix it with lots of shredded coconut, you can shape balls around your filling, and when it cools, it will be firm and taste like the inside of a Mounds bar.

I will not say anything to people who use pseudo baby talk in an effort to regain their lost cuteness, but, note the following: ellipsis, plural ellipses (e lip seez) ellipse, plural ellipses (e lip sez) Ellipsis: ... Ellipse:

I've never heard of bisque of corn, but bisque of tomato is about as traditional as they come.

Your vegetarian friends would probably like something traditional for a change. Try making a bread dressing, bread crumbs or cubes, sauteed onions and celery, moistened with vegetable stock, and seasoned with poultry seasoning. Add shredded pan-fried tofu for texture, too. Are they vegans, or just vegetarians? If they'll accept it, use butter.

Speaking as a person who likes the old-fashioned long-cooked mincemeat... One year I made a batch adapted from The Joy of Cooking, using fresh fruit, including both apples and pears, lots of dried fruit, spices, and canned sour cherries. No "candied" fruit, only dried. The key ingredient, of course, was lots of pork (the all-purpose meat). It cooks slowly, two hours according to the recipe, and makes enough for about 20 pies. With all that meat in there, you get to eat dessert for supper.

At the time when the Irish began immigrating to New England, it was already the practice there to store chunks of meat in barrels of brine for the winter. Think "salt pork", the square of brined fat back we put in beans.

You probably could save money, if you don't end up buying lots of expensive equipment to do things that used to be done by hand, as modern types are wont to do. You would probably eat more simply, especially when you decide to settle on a fixed number of condiments that you are willing to make in quantity. Either that, or you'll get tired of not having dozens of different mustards, chutneys, relishes, hot sauces, etc, and end up buying them (on top of all the extra food prep you will be doing), thus getting the worst of both systems. I think this would work best for people who are either highly motivated to do this as a way of life, or who live remotely where impulse shopping is not a considerations.

I made oyster ravioli once. Salt the shucked oysters in their container, and leave for 12 hours. Roll out pasta dough into 2 sheets. Drain oysters in a strainer, then blot with towel paper. Brush the bottom layer of pasta dough with a damp pastry brush. Lay the oysters out on the bottom layer of pastry, leaving space between them. Top with the other sheet, press between the edges to seal, and cut out free-form with a zigzag wheel doohickey. Slip into simmering salted water to cook. Serve with sauteed sherried mushrooms and melted brie. These are real eyeballs-roll-up-in-the-head stuff.

water high fructose corn syrup - sweetener maltodextrin (glucose polymers) - sweetener citric acid - sourness natural flavors salt - electrolyte potassium citrate - electrolyte potassium phosphate - electrolyte modified food starch - texture coconut oil - texture? sucrose acetate isobutyrate - ? niacinamide (B3) - B vitamin pyridoxine hydrochloride (B6) - B vitamin cyanocobalamin (B12) - B vitamin blue 1 - coloring I'm guessing that the modified food starch is there to stabilize the trace of coconut oil (less than one calorie, remember). The sucrose acetate isobutyrate is a synthetic compound derived from cane sugar. It seems to show up in beverages, nail polish, and veterinary drug delivery systems. Some sort of stabilizer, probably. I personally avoid consuming things that resemble alien amniotic fluid.

I wouldn't mess with the recipe, who knows what would happen? Pound cake keeps pretty well already. You should have no trouble with two-day-old pound cake. Just wrap it well, or store it in a plastic bag.

Besides which coconut oil is a solid at room temperature, which would probably have to be chemically modified to prevent it from forming greasy white clumps floating on top of the liquid. Ick.

It's likely that the high sugar and salt levels are what keeps it liquid. According to the official product nutrition information on its webpage, Powerade has no fat of any kind. What does your ingredients list say?

What you need to do is split the eggnog up into 8 batches, and add a different type of rum to each one. Have a tasting, and let us know your results, if you can remember afterwards. Better take notes.

While you're waiting for the potato cooking class, here's what I've done for potato chips: rinse the sliced potatoes in cold water to remove surface starch, dry with a paper towel before frying. Season with salt, and eat immediately, as the homemade ones don't keep like store bought ones do, probably packaging issues.

Peel raw sweet potatoes and cut into 1" cubes. Simmer in an extra-heavy syrup of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water until done (cooks really quickly at this elevated temperature). Cooked this way they get nice and firm. I think the high temperature drives off the extra water. Eat slowly and feel your blood sugar rise. Also good when served with apples simmered separately in the same syrup. If you don't mind the brown color, you can add brown sugar, dark corn syrup, spices, etc, to the syrup. Sweet potatoes boiled in water are soft and watery, you can do a lot with them, but they're not really "candied".

Small chain stores and mom and pops often have shopping carts from major chains. Sometimes the names are spray-painted out (but still visible) but often not. I always wonder how they come into possession of these carts. Sometimes the chains themselves have carts from other chains and I wonder why there's not a standing reciprocal policy to pull them out immediately and return them to their rightful owners. Probably the carts you're looking at here were actually sold off by the major chain when they were replacing all their aging carts, not stolen one-by-one. I was in a supermarket parking lot once, not too long after they had installed cart corralls for the first time. I saw an elderly woman who could barely walk push her cart over to the edge of the lot, much further than a nearby corrall, push it up over a curb, and then down a slope toward a ditch. I'm guessing she thought she was doing someone a favor. Hmmff.