Abra

I'm with Josette on the MasterCook - it's a great product for many things, and its nutritional analyses are quite accurate. I'm with Kevin on the Whey Low - it's also a great product, and works fantastically well in baking with no weird taste or texture. And I'm with jgm on the upselling of desserts. I detest it when servers do that.

Congrats, Carla! I was driving Shel home from the hospital yesterday right past Cafe Lago, and as sick as he still was, he bowed to your sign as we passed. We're hoping to visit you again soon.

Magic Love Soup? I need that recipe, s'il te plait!

Wow, oeufs mayonnaise with couscous?! The restaurant was totally empty too? What's up with that?

What do you mean? The glass isn't levitating???

That's funny, Andie. I've never whipped nor chilled my lard, and it's always creamy and smooth.

Yum, Jaymes, I've had a jar of Coronado cajeta in my pantry for months. This is what to do with it! (besides eat it with a spoon, I mean)

I make pastry crust with lard and it's excellent. The boxed lard, however, is nasty stuff. You need to render your own, and regular white pork fat works just fine. My homemade lard is quite soft, even straight from the fridge, and I think it would be too soft for cookies, unless spreading cookies was what you had in mind. With home rendered lard there's no discernible pork flavor, it's just a little sweet and nutty.

The brew pub in La Connor has quite decent (brew pub type) food.

Fabulous, a week in France is just what the doctor ordered! This will be so interestingly different from your last blog, with the seasonal differences in what's available. You take the best pictures of anyone on eG, I'm pretty sure. I'd swim a mile for a nice piece of rascasse for my lunch.

Fun blog - what a great group you have up there! I'm looking forward to meeting some/many of you when next we head north. And, of course, we'd love to see more of you in Seattle!

I wouldn't have come up with sammich, but I'll add my voice to those of the excoriating throng. I even, on one hideously memorable occasion, had a dining companion who ordered a "sammy." But I have to confess to saying mise, amuse, veggie, and foodie. I think my current pet peeve is when a server comes by a minute after delivering the plates and anxiously asks "is everything ok?" It had better be better than ok, or they won't be seeing me again. If they're so worried that it might not be "ok," why are they even serving the food? I have had a couple of people ask "is everything delicious?" which I much prefer, because it allows me to either praise the food honestly or say that some item does not reach the deliciousness threshold for a specific reason.

Hey, no problemo with heating pulled pork in the micro - I do it all the time. Be sure your pork is covered, and vented, and heat it at 70% power. The time will vary with the size of the serving being heated - probably about 3-4 minutes for one serving, 5-6 minutes for two servings, and like that. It definitely won't be tough or dry if you do it that way. I have the same problem with my smoker that you do - cool, damp weather affects its performance negatively, and since I live just a few splashes away from you, I see that it's a regional problem. I'm solving it by getting a new smoker, since moving to a new climate is right out!

Annie, beautiful! That cake comb trick is way cool. I'll be happy to translate the package for you, if you can't get a more local person to do it.

Cafe Lago is really nice and a good value. Since the owner, Carla, is an eG member, she really treats you right. I don't think they have a separate room, but they could put 15 people all in one area, as far as I know.

Whipping dulce de leche with mascarpone makes a dynamite little mousse. Chilled, it would be great between layers. That said, I boil the unopened can, totally submerged in water, for about 4 hours. The result is very thick and spreadable. Just be sure to keep the can covered with water at all times.

Last summer we spent several days on Granville Island, in the nice (and too expensive) hotel there to celebrate our anniversary. I'll tell you, walking out the door and into the Granville Market for breakfast was almost as good as being in Paris. We had coffee each morning from the little JJ Beans there, and it was excellent coffee, with super-nice people who remembered us by the third day. The food, the fruit and flowers, it was all glorious. I recommend staying there, to any eGer who's headed north. It's a foodie paradise, that little island. Hey, I love that Neus olive oil too!

Thanks for the good wishes! We're doing ok. This is a really hard month, but it will be April before too long, and life will get more normal again. It's the third time he's had to do this treatment, so we're unfortunately sort of pros at it. It's so hard to bake without brown sugar!

That fried rice looks fabulous - wakame with apples? Wowsers. And how does she get that pork into such a uniform, beautiful sheet? I have a mad craving for a dish of your rice right now and it's only 7:00 in the morning. Would you give us a few more recipe details?

It's so unfair! It's almost lunchtime here, so there's no way I can beg, borrow, steal, wheedle, or otherwise procure a Malaysian lunch, but now that I've seen those pictures, nothing in the house is going to taste good at all.

Thanks, Kew, that gives me lots of things to try. It drives me crazy to have ingredients available that I don't know how to use, so I'm always wanting to taste new stuff. Pandan has been calling to me. That pumpkin kaya looks so scrumptious! Is "soccer ball" a reference to the size of the pumpkin, or is that the name of a variety of pumpkin? I'll definitely look for an herb packet mixture, but the recipe Trillium gave me had the individual herbs: gan cao, luo han gao, dang xin, dang kway, chuan kang, and sheng di. Hmm, that looks like the Chinese names, no? Is this the same herb list you'd use?

Chefzadi, please do post some Algerian recipes. I love ME food!

Just for you, Kevin, I'll add that I couldn't use Whey Low because of the lactose. Bummer. And hey, the maple syrup is not bad, just as an off topic aside.

It's funny, but no one seems to know how iodine gets into dairy products. Some theories are: washing udders with iodine-containing disinfectant, washing milking machines with same, or iodine introduced into feed supplies. I suppose that salt licks aren't made with iodized salt, but I'm not even sure of that. I'm not sure if there's any call for iodine-free baked goods out there in pastry chef land, but if there is, I'll be happy to share what I know.

Your "soup for girls" reminded me that last year I had a delicious bah kut teh here in Seattle. It was the first time I'd ever had anything like that, and Trillium gave me a recipe, which I promptly forgot because of its daunting ingredient list. Now I'm craving that soup. Next time I'm in the neighborhood, I think I'll take a list into the Chinese herb store and see if I can figure it out. Can we have a little pandan lesson? I can get frozen pandan leaf, and extract, but don't really know how to use them. What's a good pandan beginner's recipe that will help me get a grasp on the stuff?