Lindacakes

Long tradition of shortbread in my family. My grandmother had Scottish blood, and she made a round of shortbread for each of us kids every Christmas. Amazing bounty, a whole dessert to yourself! I like shortbread in all its guises, particularly flavored shortbread. A favorite of mine has tiny chocolate chips in it . . . I'll need to try the malt shortbread recipe -- I love malt and just bought a new bag of it . . .

I've done chocolate in fruitcake -- it's very good! I hope you document your cake, post some pictures, share the recipe! Did you make the peel yourself? Do you have a trusted peel source?

I've eaten a lot of lunches in conference rooms. We have a cafeteria at our office, and they bring food up so we can keep workin' workin' workin'. Pet peeves: The smell. Sandwiches with mayo and cold cuts smell like the dickens after an hour or so in a small room. I'm in agreement that the people eating want to be refreshed, not sleepy. So . . . no cookies. If there's a platter of them, in your boredom, you can't leave them alone. Little carb bombs. Nothing drippy. Don't wanna have to deal with that in public, with people I normally wouldn't eat with. Pasta salad. See smell rant. What would delight me: Something with clean protein and vegetables. A chicken salad of some sort. Cleverly done. A small unusual sweet. Tiny little lemon tarts. Mini cannoli. Has to be easy to eat. I'm always uncomfortable in these situations -- I've noticed co-workers who won't eat at all.

You forgot Organs.

I was in Mexico for Day of the Dead the year my brother and sister-in-law died and made an alter in my hotel room for them. I'll have to dig up the picture and scan it. I had sugar skulls, a sugar angel, pictures of them, two DOTD "toys" with couples in a coffin, flowers in yellow (marigolds)and hot pink (coxcomb), and fruit. I spelled their names out in nuts. There are lots of books out there with DOTD photos -- even instructions on the Internet for making your own skulls. Often there is an arch constructed of dried grass, hay, straw, something like that. Die-cut paper flags in bright colors. Flowers and fruit, pictures, items that the deceased person enjoyed (beer and cigarettes figure prominently). I saw a lot of altars while I was there and they were all beautiful and colorful and uplifting. I think it would be a great experience for you to do and for other people to see.

One of my favorite meals in the whole world is a whole chicken with a side dish of brown rice with brown rice gravy with mushrooms. The brown rice has to be a particular mix from a particular "health food store" -- a mix of both short and long grain brown rice and wild rice with a few grains of white rice thrown in. The brown rice gravy came to me from the chef at Angelica Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant in New York. Before it was printed in their cookbook. One makes a roux from brown rice flour to start it. Oddly enough, before I read this thread, I didn't realize that this is the only way I enjoy brown rice . . . I don't eat that whole chicken by myself, by the way, but the chicken has to be whole for it to be right . . .

I don't know -- I don't think I've ever bought it in the supermarket. I'm talking about stuff in a red and black can. I find it very tasty and fresh. Give it a try.

Good candied angelica tastes like marshmallow. The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City had piles of it when I took a cassata class there. I don't think it's just citron -- many candied fruits suck unless they're quality, even something simple like lemon peel.

I know how you feel. I did this with pie crust. My mother made wonderful pie crust. Fabulous. And she used lard. And I tried and tried to replicate, to no avail. I took a class with Carole Walter. At lunch, I told her what I was trying to do. She took me under her wing, she helped me, and at the end of class she put her hand on my arm and she said, "Linda, I want you to go home and make five more pies this week." I did. And I got it. It's one of the major accomplishments of my life. My pie crust is better than my mother's. My next holy grail: Napoleons. Why? Because I like them. And they all stink. Same as with the pie. All I wanted was a decent slice of pie, unavailable anywhere.

I have some candied angelica I bought in Paris . . . There is only one on-line source. PM me to remind me to look it up if I forget. I like it chopped fine and added to cannoli with tiny chocolate chips . . . In Sicily, my dear, you are going to find INCREDIBLE candied fruit. Are you familiar with cassata? Try this day one in Sicily so that you can have it every day. My last day in Sicily we drove around looking for a pasticceria -- I had to have ONE MORE SLICE -- before we went to the airport. My only regret is that I did not photograph every whole cassata I saw, because the designs are exquisite. Grab you some candied citron, which you can buy whole and slice any way you want it. Candied cherries have a checkered past -- they used to be brandied cherries until Prohibition. I've taken to candying my own every summer for use in my fruitcakes. You might want to look into Chukar Cherries, they sell dried cherries of many types you can plump up with a lil bit of simple syrup and approximate a candied cherry. Tell me/us more about your fruitcake.

In Martha Stewart's Hors D'Oeuvres Handbook, there is a fabulous recipe for lemon crab tea sandwiches, something like that. Essentially, crab with a dab of mayo, lemon juice, lemon zest, scallions. A bit of watercress, some gentle bread. Love that stuff, make it all the time with a can of crab meat from Costco.

The potato soup idea gave me the idea of stuff-your-own potato, which could be fun . . .

You guys are great! Thank you for the ideas -- I'm going to use them. The white pizza with broccoli and garlic sounds excellent. I'm wondering how acid reflux and garlic mix . . . I also thought of roasted veggies or some sort of crudite -- I'm either going to do that or the white pizza for this round. It has also occured to me that it might work to do a wonderful dessert (which is my specialty and can always be done ahead of time) and then just do munchy finger food. I think that would actually be liked -- last time, the morning after when I washed the dishes I really had to laugh. Because I'd never seen cleaner ramikins in my entire life, I mean, I think some people must have licked them clean . . . The brownies will be Nick Malgieri's with Valrhona and the cherries imported from Italy. There must already be a thread about this, but times have changed. I would never have dared (and I think for me, never would) express a food need. I was raised to choke to death on that liver rather than admit I didn't like it . . .

After many years of thinking about it, I have started a discussion group with five members. To get this group off the ground, I enticed the group members over with dinner. I asked the seemingly innocuous question, "Does anyone have any dietary concerns?" Well, crap. There's a vegetarian. No meat, no fish. There's one with acid reflux. Nothing spicy, no tomatoes, no citrus. There's one that just plain skeeves at mayo and something I don't remember. There's one person, bless her heart, who hasn't voiced a need. My first dinner began with olives, dried apricots, almonds and white wine. We had lemon sole, spanikopita, Moroccan spicy carrots and more white wine. Dessert was chocolate mousse with whipped cream and espresso. Everyone loved it, although no one touched the apps. It set me back $200. We are about to meet again, and I need to serve some sort of dinner at the ungodly hour of 6:30, since that was decided the best time to meet. That gives me almost no time for food prep after work. I've already decided on brownies with cherry sauce for dessert. I've already decided on red wine, since I have three bottles on hand. During a freak out last night at Costco, I got mashed avocados, a huge bag of multigrain chips, hummus and a hunk of cheese. I'm thinking I'll do a nice guacamole with chips/hummus with chips to start. That leaves the middle thing. Since I'm planning on us being able to graze, to eat sitting on the couch, etc., I want food that can move comfortably. I'm thinking a casserole of some sort -- maybe wild rice, broccoli, cauliflower and cheese. Does anyone have any ideas for that casserole thing or a substitute? Does anyone have any ideas for how to deal with this challenge? I'd like to offer food and drink and make it nice and homey, but I can't do this time-wise and money-wise. I was going to do pizza, but then my acid reflux person reminded me about the tomatoes. Argh. Help.

You can get Baker's Amonia / Hartshorn at House on the Hill, also, and they have a nice booklet with recipes that you can get for a buck or so. The King Arthur web site has the recipe for one of my beloved favorite cookies, the Vanilla Dream. The texture is different, and impossible to achieve without it. A lemon version of the Vanilla Dream is also a very nice thing. Perhaps it's about the hardiness of the nose hairs, but I find baker's amonia burns the hair right out of my nostrils in a refreshing, too-much-wasabi sort of way. But then, I'm a sensationalist.

Cinematic Bitters: Fellini's incomparable film, Nights of Cabiria. Cabiria's Oscar scopes her out at the vaudeville show, waits for her to exit, and then asks her to have a drink. Fernet Branca. And Oscar turns out to be a very bitter drink, indeed. Genius.

I was stuck in the airport on the way back from Ohio; I had bought some cookbooks at antique stores and I had nothing to do but read. I read Time Life Series Foods of the World: Creole and Acadian cover to cover. It kept me riveted for six hours of idleness, but I have to tell you, when you are trapped and hungry and reading about the utmost of lovely Creole sauces and you are stuck in an airport with airport food it is TORTURE. The best I could do was a Wolfgang Puck pizza, which was okay, but it was no shrimp remoulade.

You're a doll, Kerry, thank you! I take it when folks say they like Smithy's eggplant, they use it as a side dish and not necessarily in the lamb dish. Point being bechamel plus soft eggplant equals fabulous. Katie, if there's something in particular you want, I might have it already and can at the least email it. 'Cakes

Excellent thread. Many of the recipes mentioned above are ones I use often -- Russ Parson's No Soak Beans, World Peace Cookies, Marshmallows, Roasted Cauliflower. I jotted down the names of all the recipes that sounded good to me, and found most of them. I can't find two I really want, though -- Smithy's Eggplant Jayme's Salsa Can someone point me in the right direction? Thank you!

Cream cheese with tomato slices, lots of salt and pepper. Miracle Whip (yes!) with slices of hard boiled egg. Hummus and green olives.

One of my favorite cake recipes comes from the back of the Domino confectioner's sugar box. It's called Cafe Expresso Cake. You make the frosting first and put one cup of the frosting into the cake batter. This is all made by hand. It's one of those 8 x 8 cakes that's so dang handy to have, and it's a good one.

Good idea, plastic blade. I think all I have is a dough blade, but I'll look. Thank you for your advice.

Those little baby corn-on-the-cobs . . .

Ooooooooohhhhhhh, a pantry. I haven't thought about a pantry in years. I live in a New York apartment. A walk-in pantry. When I was a kid growing up, my neighbors had a pantry and I loved that room. Big wooden cupboards, shelf space galore, a secretive feeling. Julia Child had a pastry pantry. This is what I imagine: big tubs of flour and sugar at an easy to reach height. A phalanx of drawers where you can keep all sorts of pastry equipment, cookie cutters, dipping forks, pie chains . . . A shelf where you can line up your plug-ins -- ice cream maker, waffle iron, etc. Maybe a little freezer in there, too. Garlic and chilis hanging from the ceiling. Herbs growing in the window. There's that scene in Home for the Holidays, where Anne Bancroft has enough of her family and goes to sit in the pantry with the door closed to smoke. Like that, maybe with a little a little cabinet of liqueurs and cheerful liqueur glasses.

Is it me? My food processor is too good. It processes too much, and I'm talking about controlled pulses. My first food processor was a Cuisinart, a hand-me-down and it worked really well, except getting the bowl off the stand was a p-i-t-a. I bought a new KitchenAid that seems to be too effective. Case in point: the graham cracker crust for a key lime pie. The graham crackers ended up as sawdust. And this was after a few pulses, just to break down the chunks. Is it the sharpness of the blade? Can I purposefully dull the blade some? Repeated processing of whole beets? Is it the brand change? Is it a foible of food processors in general?