Smithy

Please tell more about the eggplant casserole: both what it's like at The Cupboard -- your target, as it were -- and what you've done to reproduce it. I like eggplant and am always on the lookout for good things to do with it. Especially if they're easy.

A simple "like" or "delicious" or "thank you" isn't enough for that tale, @kayb. I know well the pang of letting go the old family place, even when it's the right thing to do, and how difficult it can be to arrive at that decision. I thought perhaps you were going to get a cutting or three from that pear tree to start a new one by grafting it at your current abode. Have you thought of that? At any rate the outing, the harvest and the preserves have the makings of wonderful memories. Thank you for the post, and for sharing your pear preserve recipe.

I like the design on those chop sticks. Tell me about eating the potato salad with them, please: does one have to more or less shovel the potato salad with them the way one would sticky rice?

I tried those chips yesterday. Meh. The initial slicing, drizzling with olive oil and seasoning, then roasting, was very promising. The aroma of those roasting tomatoes drifted upstairs and down, and made the house smell gob-smackingly, drive-you-crazy-to-eat-RIGHT-NOW delicious. Perhaps I should have stopped there. I tried to get the dried crisp texture described in the original recipe, and decided to stop while most of the tomato slices still had some juice because others were getting too dry. Nonetheless the tomatoes looked and smelled delicious before I added the parmesan and put them under the broiler for a brief melt. After that, I had a dubious mix of tomato slices charred to a crisp and tomato slices that were juicy but too tart, as though their acids had been concentrated. I tried a few of both types and was unimpressed. It was especially disappointing because the original smells had been so promising. They didn't go to waste, however. I chopped the lot up with fresh basil, and at the last minute added it to a sheet pan dinner of sliced and roasted potatoes, cauliflower and Andouille sausage, tossed with yet more olive oil (and the pan scrapings) and roasted until browned.The crispy tomatoes gave a croutonesque crunch and the juicy tomatoes added a piquance that livened everything in the dinner. All I can show is a meager portion of leftovers. It looked better in the bowl last night, before the basil had lost its bright green color. So: this treatment of tomatoes wasn't a loss, but I won't do it again unless someone else posts a win on it. The simpler treatment of oven-roasting with olive oil, basil and salt per @ElainaA's recipe seems more foolproof. (And yes, her recipe uses cherry tomatoes but I've used the treatment to good effect with chunks of larger tomato also.)

I made that same recipe a couple of days ago, bacon and all. Our family loved it too. I don't think I had to cook any longer to finish the pasta, but now I can't remember.

Not funny about the credit card alarm, but think of the money you're saving!

Here's the reference, for those interested. I am one of them. Did you do them yet, kayb? My husband's daughter and I spent the Labor Day weekend making salsa. It's our third year doing so, and we're getting it down to a fairly efficient process. Unfortunately, the fellow who got us started on this with his bumper crop of tomatoes, peppers and onions has stopped having bumper crops. We've gone to the local produce farm instead. Buehler's Produce has a barn loaded with tomatoes, squash, spuds, eggplant, a great variety of peppers, and (in the refrigerator) green beans, cabbage, okra, and surely some things I'm forgetting. Truckloads of freshly-harvested sweet corn kept backing up to the building, and customers kept leaving with corn almost as quickly as it came in. Aside from the sweet corn that we bought for dinner, we came away with these fixings for salsa: It's a nice, meditative way to visit as we chop. She did the tomatoes, I did the peppers and onions, with some assistance from her mother-in-law. The recipe calls for roasting it all in an oven pan. We tried cooking it on stove top the first day, and it took forever to cook down. We suspected it would, but the pot seemed more manageable than giant pans on baking sheets, so we gave it a shot on the first batch. After that we resumed oven roasting. The left top pan is before stirring; the right top pan is after. The bottom is what it looks like after 2 hours. We've canned 48 pints of this salsa, with varying heat levels. Sheer gold, I tell you. I'm tempted to do more, but I also want to try the aforementioned tomato parmesan chips.

Thank you for that. Barhi is one of my favorite varieties, but I've only seen them when they were darker. The linked article is enlightening. Thanks!

Please say more about the "dates", @BonVivant. I've never seen them so pale - even the Deglet Noor - and they're rounder (as opposed to oblong) than most I've seen. How do they taste?

That all looks good, but the bacon especially grabs me. It looks perfectly done: crisp, not burnt, not soggy. I could take that and the tomatoes (why do I forget to do tomatoes that way?) and be satisfied.

It worked! I checked the gasket carefully, once I got it out. Couldn't see any cracks or damage. Soaked it in said mineral oil, then wiped it off and reinstalled it. No leaks. Thanks again for the idea.

I agree that the burger-flipping robot in this video leaves a lot to be desired except as an exercise in robotics, but this isn't the same machine. Flippy, the machine in the video link above, is at Caliburger, a restaurant in Pasadena (near Los Angeles). The machine in the first post is at Creator, a restaurant in a San Francisco neighborhood. The Creator article claims that the humans load all the supplies into the machine and the finished product comes out the end, in their containers, all done in a transparent enclosure so folks can watch. It sounds much closer to your vision of a proper burger-assembling machine. No doubt someone will post a YouTube video about Creator before long.

Good question. I'll try it, and report back. Thanks for the idea.

I'd like to see a video of that machine in action. The burgers sound good, and the air quality / worker health aspect is impressive.

Food truck stuck in a freeway shut down manages to make money and help frustrated commuters: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-food-truck-freeway-20180824-story.html

Yes. In case it isn't clear, ours have had heavy use: in the car, in the trailer, sometimes even in the house or the hot tub. I have other travel mugs I keep for sentimental reasons (corporate logo from my former job, for instance) but never use them any more because they don't hold a candle to the Contigos.

We've been very happy with our Contigo Autoseal mugs. We chose mugs with handles, as shown in the link, but they also come without handles. The mugs hold temperature better than any others we've tried. I learned about them from a friend who took hers on a backpacking trip around Europe: she'd fill it with boiling water in the morning, and have hot water for tea a few hours later. It didn't leak. Here's a picture of one of ours, not-leaking. Clockwise, from upper left: coffee inside; lid on; tipped over (for more than a minute); righted again. No leak. The only apparent age issue is that the outer coat of the mug, which once matched the lid, has worn off to reveal the stainless steel below. Note: I discovered, while making this photo series, that our other mug DOES now leak around the lid's rim; the gasket must be wearing. I think they're 4 years old. They didn't leak on our boat trip last year.

Nice pun! My mother, a born leftie and forced ambie, thought so.

Based on this recommendation, I took a look and also bought the second one.

Squash Ribbons with Tomatoes, Peanuts, Basil, Mint, and Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce, 47% through the Kindle version. This was an adventure. The photos uptopic have been inspiringly lovely, and I bought 2 yellow summer squash and a zucchini simply to make this recipe. Then I started to make the Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce, and began to worry. First, there was the necessary substitution of ground chiles and sriracha sauce for the fresh chiles to be found in the recipe but not in my pantry. Next, there was the Fish Sauce. I don't recall how long ago, or why, I first bought fish sauce, but I've kept it around without really cottoning to it. It has sulked in the refrigerator, only occasionally being trotted out for some experiment before being relegated again to the Hazardous Materials Storage section, for years. I began to mix, and the aroma permeated the kitchen. Whew! I adjusted seasonings in the dressing to my taste, which meant adding a LOT more water, sugar and vinegar - including some wine vinegar - to balance out the fish sauce. I could still smell the fish sauce. I let it rest and mingle. The marauding aroma marched to the rest of the house. The salad itself looked pretty. The ribbons of squash became supple after some hours of salting, draining, and then rinsing. The tomatoes, basil, mint and peanuts added to the color contrast. O-kay, it looked pretty. How would it taste? In a moment of skepticism I hauled out some leftovers as a dinner backup. Surprise! I needn't have worried. Somehow, that spicy fish-sauce sauce is an excellent compliment to the vegetables. I probably overplayed the sriracha; the salad dressing has a sneak-up-and-don't-let-go bulldog quality of heat, but the flavors are quite good. We'll be playing with this more. Maybe I'll move the fish sauce to more accessible place in the fridge.

I'll have to keep an eye out for Raves in our markets. To be honest, I think the Honeycrisps are overrated (says the Minnesota resident). My favorites these days are Fujis for eating and Granny Smiths or Pippins for baking, but it's fun to try other varieties.

I'm very impressed. Who would have imagined dendritic patterns on confections? Obviously, someone did - but not I! I wonder if they got the idea from looking at, say, a dendritic agate. I often look at interesting landforms and wonder how they might be reproduced in pastry form, but the closest I personally can come is to make meringue to look like a sand dune.

Fascinating. It would be fun to see what they come up with as a rough recipe. Einkorn flour isn't difficult to come by. Maybe some clever forager can find some club-rush tubers. Although I will admit that "club-rush" sounds more like a social event than a plant. On further reading I see that an alternate name for the club-rush plant is the bulrush. Hmm, this may have some marketing possibilities for a restaurant of the same name. @gfron1, I'm looking at you.

@Jim D., if the party favors can be used to predict the marriage, this one will be joyous. Well done, sir.

My work schedule is such that I've been relying on the local farmers instead of trying to grow anything more elaborate than basil this year. I'll file away the info, however, that Mountain Magic tomatoes will grow in pots. I had assumed, for no particular reason, that they'd need more space.