Smithy

Welcome, Daniel! You've come to a good place for questions, answers, expertise and camaraderie. There are a lot of us who feel, as you do, that a lifetime isn't enough to learn everything there is about food and cooking. For some people, that's an expression of just how vast the topic is. Then there are the slow learners - like me - who are still trying to phrase the questions ;-) Come on in, wander around; feel free to ask questions, and we hope you'll join in with the discussions.

I like burgers very much, and this had good fixings (except for the dates) although the meat was overcooked for my tastes. I didn't think the dates complimented the burger. I prefer tart flavors with my burgers: dill pickles, for instance, instead of sweet pickles.

Lunch at the Oasis Date Gardens was huge, and when dinner time rolled around I still wasn't hungry. My darling was, and I left him to his own preference of the remaining bratwurst and potato salad from a couple of nights ago. I made a dinner salad, and topped a slice of toast with the last of some enchilada filling from a few more nights ago, melted onto the bread. I'll call it "enchilada bruschetta" until someone gives me a better name. It's a linguistic mutt, but well worth eating. We were both happy with our selections, but that didn't prevent him saying, "Can you cover your green salad while we're eating, so I don't have to feel guilty?" This is the other reason I didn't want to be inside, fussing over dinner:

If you drive south along California 111, through Coachella and toward Mecca, around Thermal you will begin to see date groves of every size and age, and along the right signs will appear for the Oasis Date Gardens. Lunch, a park, date shakes! Don't miss it! As a little girl I was fascinated by the sight of the place when our family drove past it. "Nope," said my father, "it's a tourist trap"...and at any rate we were on a mission with no time to stop. Times and drivers have changed, and now that we're glamping my darling and I have time and inclination to visit. They don't give tours, but they have a short video about date cultivation and harvesting, off in a little side room presided over by "Raul Medjool", a date-shaped mascot character that looks like a child's costume. Date production is a big deal in this area, and (according to their video, ©1990) the Coachella Valley accounts for 95% of the USA's date production. Local date production practices are incredibly labor intensive and water intensive. According to the video, dates require manual pollination via one of several various practices. Given that the date was considered a "tree of life" in ancient times, we think some information must have been specific to formal cultivation practices in this country; otherwise, how would the species have developed? There's a small gift shop with date products, books, and - best of all - a tasting table loaded with different varieties of dates and information about them. There are bins with dates of each variety for bulk purchase; you load up a bag with the variety of choice and pay at the counter. Prices for most dates are $4.50 or $5.00 per pound, but the ultra-fancy Medjool dates are $7.00/lb. You can buy dates already boxed, but it's more fun to sample and choose. They also have a lunch counter with burgers, sandwiches, salads, wraps, drinks; one can eat inside at a table or outside on the lawn, where there are picnic tables. Almost anything can be gotten with dates in it, but not everything has dates - you can get a club sandwich (Despite this current debate, I didn't take time to ask how they made it ) or a tuna sandwich. I was leaning toward a spinach salad with nuts and dates, but was persuaded by my darling to take a bacon cheeseburger with dates so he could satisfy his curiosity without the risk. I wouldn't do it again. Every meal is accompanied by a sample of their date cake - a chewy, dense, lovely concoction of nuts, dates, and probably a bit of batter. If you have a coupon, you can get a free sample of their date shakes also; otherwise you can buy one. I went with the free sample. It was consumed quickly before it could melt. Delicious!

Dutch potato seasoning mix, purchased in Sudbury and noted in a couple of blogs. You kinda have to know where to look. :-)Edit: Thanks, Anna. I didn't see you were working on the same question.

In that case, I also recommend Richard Sterling's Dining with Headhunters: Jungle Feasts and Other Culinary Adventures if you like food from Southeast Asia. One or two of his stories brought me to tears; more made me laugh out loud. I insisted on reading the funniest one to my darling, and we belly-laughed together.

My sister gave me a copy of The North African Kitchen: Regional Recipes and Stories, by Fiona Dunlop. It's a charming description of 8 modern home cooks in Marrakech, Fez, Tunis, Carthage, La Goulette, and Tripoli, with insights into their lives followed by recipes. There are beautiful photos (of the area as well as the food), and discussions of cultural influences and history. She quotes a Moroccan king as saying that Maghrebin cuisine is "rooted in Africa, watered by Islam, and rustled by the winds of Europe." The book makes for fun reading, and the recipes look promising.

Thanks for that, Mick. I'll make a point of daily refreshing; refrigerator space is likely to be an issue for a while. I'm getting it down to a quick routine now, so that feeding the starter isn't as big an operation as it was at first: 1. Set a new, clean container (I have multiples of the same type) onto a scale and set the tare; 2. Pour starter from the current container into the new container until I get the amount I want (I've been doing anything from 50g to 100g); 3. Reset the scale to zero to eliminate potential mental maths errors, then spoon the appropriate amount of flour in; 4. Reset the scale once more to zero and add as much weight of water as I did flour, then stir the mix; 5. Take a deep breath and throw away the remaining starter. This is the most painful part, so I've been learned to keep the quantities down, but of course I don't want to come up short when I'm ready to bake. :-) It's taken longer to spell out these steps than it does to do them, so I should be able to keep it up on a daily basis until the refrigerator is a bit less cramped.

gfweb, you raise a really good question. (That's shorthand for "I dunno".) My question is whether the rising heat is supposed to be taken into account when sizing range hoods? I assumed, based on industrial experience, that it was related to the volume of the air being treated (surface area of the stovetop, distance to the air intake) and a certain capture efficiency coefficient, rather than counting on a 'boost' from the range heat. Lucky you! Planning a new kitchen is fun, and using it when finished is even more fun. I didn't think much of the in- between steps .

I've been traveling a lot over the last few months, and my sourdough starter is changing...not for the better. For various reasons I've just been feeding it (equal parts starter, flour, water usually; sometimes 1:2:2: starter, flour, water if I thought I'd get a chance to bake bread.) My starter has been getting thinner and, well, more sour smelling. The thinness surprises me, and I wonder what - if anything - I can do about it. Hooch starts appearing after 3 days, but the smell is pretty strong after only 2 days. I feed it almost every day to avoid the smell and try to keep it boosted to a "normal" (by my experience) viscosity. I have no control over the water, unless I start using and carrying distilled water. I think the water we started taking on a couple of weeks ago has more dissolved solids and is harder, but I don't have a way to measure it. I haven't been taking pH measurements along the way, but the pH at home (where this starter was born) is around 8.7, so the alkalinity here shouldn't be unusual. The flour - well, I was faithfully using one brand but most recently I've had to explore other brands; all have been unbleached flour but it's possible the variety of wheat was different. My maintenance has been regular and frequent feeding of the starter, but I've had to step up the rate. I wonder what's going on with it. It's sitting out at room temperature (no room in the refrigerator). Any ideas? Is it dying?

Kim, what was so much worse about cleaning the Vitamix for this vs. the food processor?

Welcome. You've come to a good place to learn; the members here range from brand-new cooks to seasoned (heh) professionals. You may find useful information also in the short courses offered in the eGullet Culinary Institute: how to cook various cuisines, make soups, sauces, and so on. Depending on the degree and manner to which your wife has become disabled, you may find useful information in courses offered there on Cooking With Disabilities. Part 1 assumes the cook is working with disabilities; Part 2 addresses cooking for someone with disabilities (mostly for an impaired child, but some information may be valuable to you), and Part 3 discusses sensory issues such as dealing with nausea and medications.

The netting in weinoo's link is designed for your purpose. Does the clam bake netting have any advantages, like being more readily available?

I think if I ordered a club sandwich and didn't have some meat between both slices I'd be surprised. The first one sounds more right to me. I haven't had one in years, though, so my memory may be faulty.

Inspired by recent developments in this topic on Moroccan Tagine Cooking, as well as a need to keep working through last year's stash of fresh dates, I invented a new dish. The cookware in question is a clay pot from Egypt; it isn't a tagine. Clay has wonderful cooking properties that I'll be happy to discuss in more detail. Raw ingredients: chicken thighs, rice, half a valencia orange (for juice), spices, a touch of oil, a bit of chicken broth; not shown: the dates. In layers, into the pot, I set: a little oil, the rice (~3/4c?), drizzled the rice with broth, but not (it turned out) enough. Atop the rice went the chicken thighs (patted dry, dabbed with oil, sprinkled with spices). The dates were tucked in around and between the chicken; the orange juice was poured over the lot; the rest of the spices were spread over the chicken. The pot went into the oven at around 300F (still no oven thermometer) covered, until it was nearly done, then uncovered for a little extra browning of the chicken. I thought it was done when I pulled it out. The chicken was fine; the rice needed more time or more liquid. Still...where that rice was done, it was deliciously done. Look! It approached the Iranian tahdig: crusty, brown, caramelized. The beauty of slow cooking in an oven is that we could spend time sitting outside, looking at the stars. I actually found Comet Lovejoy...that is, I didn't discover it, but given clear skies and a clue where to look, I found that fuzzy greenish ball. I still haven't exhausted our supply of dates, but that won't stop me from replenishing. Up soon: dates from a local producer.

I may be way off base here, having no experience with clam bake bags, but I'm going to guess that if you have them in firm contact with the roast in question the net won't be able to dry out enough to catch fire. If you wrap the item in question with the clam bake bag and tie it off, then trim off the excess, I don't see the netting as being very flammable unless the contents are drying out badly. You might consider basting the contents and the net to prevent that happening. I may be waaaay off base here, though. :-)

Do you have a target age bracket in mind? Lunch totes for 1st- and 2nd-graders would differ from those for middle school or high school set.

When I was a kid I strongly preferred Miracle Whip. Sometime in early adulthood my tastes changed; I can't stand the stuff either. My darling isn't as bull-headed about getting his own preferred condiments as I am, but there's no harm in each of us getting what we want. It just makes for a more crowded refrigerator. :-)

Oh, boy. I've been getting plenty of new toys lately and figure I need to put them through their paces - but this looks like a lot of fun. I was thinking - nay dreaming! - about fried shoestring onions after seeing Anna's and Kerry's recent posts; clearly, I wasn't the only one! I have my mother's old Salad Shooter at home in a box of things claimed when we cleared out her apartment. I wonder if it will be a good trial version when I get back home?

Maybe I'll make a double batch, or triple. My Miracle Whip Brat has been suggesting white balsamic vinegar.

How could one help bragging, with that? That's quite a haul!

I've never seen a butter dish (except a butter bell) that would accommodate that much butter at one time. Is that a standard size in Canada? Or do you cut the butter into smaller portions?

This is what I mean by a clear view of the pass from L.A: unfortunately rare out here. The air right now is quite clear, however, and the view is glorious. One of our "time-saving" tricks is to do about a week's worth of salad preparation in advance. With proper timing the batches can be staggered to different days, but yesterday we were out of it all: the salad greens, the salad "crunchy" additions, and the fruit salad. Below is most, but not all of the results: mixed greens (romaine hearts and kale); 2 large containers of mixed chopped radishes, celery, carrots, ripe bell peppers and snap peas; more than 2 large containers of cut pineapple, citrus, strawberriBs, raspberries, grapes and dates. Not shown: hummus, and some of the other containers. By the time I'd finished with all that, I wasn't interested in food prep for dinner, preferring instead to sit outside in the sun with a book. Dinner was a very uninteresting mix of potato salad and bratwurst, not worth photos. I ran out of mayonnaise, so that's on today's task list. Does anyone have a favorite recipe? I'm doing the 2-minute immersion blender version from Serious Eats, but mine comes out very bland. My darling thinks it needs more sweet (he's a Miracle Whip kinda guy) and I think it needs more...salt? tart? garlic, perhaps? We're considering using Meyer lemon juice this time around but I'm open to suggestions.

I've been looking for the right butter dish for our trailer travels. Criteria: it must be pretty, sturdy and secure enough that the lid won't come off in transit. (Our original stainless steel dish is almost right, but the lid doesn't stay on securely. It takes 2 rubber bands to keep the lid on in transit.) Lightweight is also a good trait. Behold, I found something even better than I'd expected: The butter tray comes out for easy washing, so the entire dish need not be washed regularly...a good water-saving trick. The lid sits securely in the base, just as I needed. The style is a favorite, vaguely Danish Modern. I found this beauty last fall in, of all places, Simon's Town, South Africa, at the local equivalent of the Sally Ann. I think the marked price was 20 rand (something under $2) but I probably paid less: our entire bill, with 2 good linen jackets and some other clothing, was only 90 rand. My darling was a bit nonplussed that my souvenirs from South Africa included a butter dish that one might have seen in the USA in the '60's.

Thanks for that link, Chris. I can personally attest that the Cooper's Old-Time Barbecue of Llano, featured in that link, does wonderful brisket. We always get it dipped. Now I can work on making that sauce myself, more or less.