Smithy

Thank you. That's a great-looking grill, with food deserving of the treatment.

I think you should get this one printed on a T-shirt! ← I catered a party years ago in a house with a little stuffed cow sitting atop a very slanty rangehood. I was nervous that she'd leap into a sauce or bounce onto a flame. And I always wondered how the woman FRIED anything for her family and still had such an immaculate stuffed animal as her kitchen mascot. ← Errm...are you sure she cooked? Might she have just mooooved said cow from the hood on those rare occasions?

We were posting at the same time, and I'm now seeing your cookbooks. I like them. Tell me, have you ever actually made anything from Sheila Lukins' All Around the World Cookbook? I keep thinking I will; it's one of the first books I got from the book club I'm in; but I don't think I've ever actually used the book. Every time I weed through the collection I look at it, think "I ought to set this one free", then look again and put it back in captivity. What do you recommend from it?

Ha, I wondered if that would get a rise out of you! But it's true! Well, it was true last month. We're closer to autumn than to summer and green willow smells now, aren't we? Thanks for that tip. Nancy, Hi: Downsizing hasn't affected my cooking at all..........except in perhaps increasing my enjoyment of it. Though this is the smallest house I have ever lived in, it has the largest and, to my taste, the nicest, kitchen...........large amounts of counter space, room for a big cutting block, nice gas range. Even in my largest house, the kitchen was a postage stamp, and no counters at all. It is a pleasure to cook here. I have two large BBQs as well, the gas one and a big Santa Maria style one for oak logs or charcoal; and a little Smokin' Joe by Weber...............so I'm set ← Sounds like my first house, which was even smaller than your present house. I bought it because of the kitchen (not nearly as large as yours, but the biggest room in in the house, with wonderful cabinetry) and the outbuildings (a really-o, truly-o, big Finnish sauna). I still miss the sauna, but the present kitchen is better. Please show us the Santa Maria-style BBQ, preferably in use. I read about that a while back, courtesy of Russ Parsons and eGullet. I'd like to see it in action. What precautions do they have to take, if any, to ensure that the bag contents (earth or straw) don't settle? Does it not matter, once the adobe has set? I remember some years back when Dennis Weaver built a house from used tires that formed the walls, with adobe in and out. It sounded very efficient, and a pretty cool design. That was down in New Mexico somewhere, IIRC. Have you seen anything like that?

What a wonderful house. I started by admiring the interesting roof, and then I noticed the paintings. Wow! Can you expand a bit on "earth bag adobe"? What does that mean? Your fridge is indeed tidy, but it looks like a great lot of liquid food and condiments, and not much produce...unless some of those drawers on the bottom are not freezer doors? What are we seeing there? I too would like to know whether and how downsizing has affected your cookery. Your kitchen looks spacious and nicely laid out. Your grill outside looks as though you could handle a lot of tasks there, too. What do your friends make of your snapping photos of lunch this week?

Your backyard photos are so evocative that I can smell the greenery and the soil. There's nothing quite like that mountainy woodsy dry hills smell: somehow, it's dry and green all at the same, quite unlike the northern Minnesota woods that smell green and lush and willowy like a California river in the summer, and yet also not like high alpine western forests. Maybe it's the oak. I take it you're high enough up the canyon that flash floods aren't an issue? Oh, Fred! How do you like to prepare mutton? I feel lucky to get lamb, and it's been so long since I've had mutton I'm not sure I'd recognize it. Does it have a stronger flavor than lamb? When I have pine nuts, I think of pesto, and sprinkling the nuts (toasted if possible) over salads. What other uses do you have for them? Man, I miss the West.

Think of it as helping the economy. I've been helping the economy myself, of late, but haven't received the latest shipment. Until I see which ones I'm keeping, I won't add to the count.

When you assure your husband that no, 200 cookbooks isn't excessive, you know people with far more, and no, it isn't time to weed the collection; When you go sleep-deprived for a week because you're staying up till all hours doing a braising class after work and then posting about the results; When your husband doesn't dare come upstairs for all the whooping and laughing going on during a recipe testing session for a cookbook; When you proudly show off the newly-published cookbook with your name listed in the acknowledgements as one of the eGullet team of recipe testers; When you've struck up a friendship with the cookbook's author, and your family members know who you're talking about; When your real-world friends stop blinking at the oddball cooking equipment that keeps turning up in your kitchen. (Doesn't everyone have a tagine?) When dinner ranges from Cajun to Lebanese inside a week, even though you haven't a trace of either culture in your upbringing; When a friend or family member says "how does that online group say this xxx should be cooked?"

Grouper in Utah. Isn't that a testament to fast travel for food? Either that, or you don't know how it's supposed to taste. Somehow, I think you'd know if the fish were off, though. That's impressive. I like the Wasatch microbrews. I didn't know there was a Moab winery, though! How are their wines? Now *that* sounds like a great way to score game. I was in Boise over the Labor Day weekend and visiting the Basque center of town. The folks at the Basque Market told me that the local Basques have moved on to other occupations, and the Idaho sheepherders nowadays are from Chile or Venezuela. Is that true in Utah also? Are the Utah Basques dwindling in population, or just doing other things? How do you like to prepare mutton?

Thanks so much for showing those jars with the respective olives. Do let us know how they taste to you, and describe the flavors and texture to the best of your ability. I was disappointed in the manzanillo olives with thyme - somehow the flavor combination just didn't work for me. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of them, to make sure I give them a fair trial, and to use them up.

Hi, Jerry, and welcome to eGullet! I don't know Toronto so can't help you directly, but I'll suggest is that you look around for a Moroccan connection in Toronto. Are there any Moroccan grocery stores in your fair city? What about Moroccan restaurants?

It's been some 20 years since I was in Moab, but I think about it a few times a year when I'm passing through the Salt Lake City area. (Provo and Ogden make great fuel stops on the way between central California and northern Minnesota.) Utah is beautiful, but my husband and I always wonder whether we'd enjoy living there. To the extent you can within the context of a food blog, please talk about the cultural influences. I know beer can now be purchased in some places. Are there wine stores? Do you drink, or cook with, alcohol? What altitude are you at, and what sorts of crops (if any) are grown there? I agree with you that taking a generator along on a rafting trip is cheating.

Here I am, bringing up the rear - sorry I was away from the blog until nearly the end. It's one of my favorite parts of the kitchen! When you walk into the kitchen from the dining room, to the left will be a small "pass" with a staging area, warming drawer/coffee center, and a speed oven. The pull-down door will open to a cleanup area on the other side of the 'wall.' I think of it as a grocery aisle, with the big refrigerator being an 'end cap' display ... pass on one side; dishwasher/cleanup on the other. It's hard to describe without having something to look at, but this is the way I think of it. The refrigerator will open to the island, and the wet bar/beverage area will be between the kitchen and sitting room. Am I making sense? My initial hope was to have the big sinks, dishwasher, storage, etc., in a separate room. I didn't want to change the footprint of the house, and to build it into this plan would make it very closed-off and boxy, which is what we're trying to get away from. ← That makes perfect sense, and now I'm REALLY envious! If I ever get to design a kitchen (or remodel ours) I'll think about how we might adopt that approach. Your kitchen is going to be fabulous. Darn. I meant to quote parts of the boys' diet business, but I'll just have to wing it. The Noodle-O's story was hilarious, as was the bit about your caving after your son didn't eat for 3 days. Good on ya for leading them rather than pushing, both in tastes and quantities of eating. Those friends of mine who weren't forced to eat everything put in front of them have been more successful than most at remaining slim after they passed their 30's. Yes indeedy, this has been fun. Thanks so much for letting us peek into your life for a bit. One of the things I love about the blogs is that they're like mini-travelogues. We get to see parts of the world and ways of life that we might not otherwise see. You've done a dandy job showing us yours. Thank you!

(Photos elided for brevity) What a beautiful, welcoming house. I love the open feel of it. It will be even better with slate floors rather than white tile. What is the "pass through with pull *** door"? Am I seeing aright that it's in the middle of a counter space in the middle of the left-hand side of the room? I'm not getting that. Do talk more, please, about traffic flow. I can see how your work triangle would drive you nuts. Our kitchen, which may or may not ever be renovated, has a large open floor plan (which we love) with the counter space and appliances occupying 2 adjacent walls. The sink is on one wall near the corner; the stove is along the other wall about the same distance from the corner; and for some reason we're always competing for that particular bit of real estate. I've been thinking that an island in the middle would help us, but it might be worse for 2 people because it would restrict our movement. I've only heard or read of Mystery Science Theater 2000, or any of the Food Network shows (I'm still a network Luddite), but I think you've got a winning combo there.

There's no tee-niney font to whisper with. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Oh, what the heck---I have five sons. My life has not been a sheltered one. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The above was posted before dinner, after a LONG day of canning pear preserves---eleven pints and two fridge boxes---and getting seven tablesful of stuff out and priced and shiny, ready for tomorrow's neighborhood yard sale. I can only plead famishment and fatigue. Edited to preserve some sense of decorum. ← Coward. FFB, farther down do you really have "Green Pads"? Is that as in scrubber pads, or something more creative like lettuce in a sheet? And did I miss it? What's P.T.S? I'm still mulling that one.

LindsayAnn, I don't think you'll get sick from moldy cheeses, except sick at the thought of wasting that good food. I think you just won't want (or perhaps be able) to eat them because they taste and/or smell bad. I can tell you, for instance, that the non-stinky cheeses I favor (cheddars, some goat's milk and sheep's milk cheeses, manchego, parmaggiano-reggiano) get a really nasty sharp flavor when they start to mold. I find that refrigerating those cheeses gives them more time before they start to mold. They do taste better at room temperature, so I try to let cheeses warm up before I dive in. I don't know about all cheeses and how to store them, and there are folks here who know far more than I. You might want to go check out the Cheese glorious cheese thread. Steven, you must eat enough butter for both of us! Edited for spelling.

Oh, that looks familiar! Food hoarders unite! I had the samw comforting feeling when viewing the freezer shot. I sometimes have a bag of veggie scraps going for stock as well... Much of this went away recently when I purchased a large (for my small freezer) order of pastured meats from Polyface Farms that I had to stick in the freezer. ← We have a freezer all the way across the top of the refrigerator. In prime season we have to open it carefully, lest a cascade of hard objects tumbles thudding onto bare feet. My husband has been known to complain that there's nothing edible in there: "Shrimp shells, duck parts," he grumbles, "where's something I can cook?" As far as easy access goes, we took care to get the shelves that pull out on rollers. They pull out easily, but since some stray ice cube usually is lurking at the back to fall into that space, the return trip is a bit harder.

I never thought one way or the other about the soy sauce. We've always kept it in the fridge, but now I see a way to save some room! This comment from the Kansas City Star article surprised me: "Butter — Refrigerate it to avoid rancidity. Salted butter is slightly safer to keep at room temperature, but it can also become rancid if left out more than 24 hours." I have *never* had butter go rancid that fast, and we generally leave our butter out so it'll stay spreadable at a moment's notice. (I refer to the butter in the dish for daily use. The unopened butter and special stuff stays in the refrigerator until we need it, or - for long-term storage - the freezer.) I think it takes us 2 - 3 weeks to go through a stick of butter. This one made me laugh: " •Eat or ditch chilled leftovers within 48 hours." That would wreck our entire weekly cooking and eating strategy.

If the tomatoes are just seasoned with olive oil, garlic and herbs I think you'd see they were going off by the fuzz starting to grow. If they're packed in olive oil with garlic then I suppose there's a chance of anaerobic reactions happening, but it seems unlikely over this short time. Despite the warnings about not storing garlic in olive oil I do so, in the fridge, for a month or so. So far no superbug has hit the household. Disclaimer: I'm neither a microbiologist nor a food scientist.

Fear not: those of us who've read Fresser here knew what you meant. I'd still like to hear the story! (Maybe himself will pipe up with his version?)

I, for one, would love to hear this story. Sandy, tell me more about this. Intriguing. Maybe it's time to Google again ... ← I think I know, but I'd like to hear it too! Has anyone else asked yet for the kitchen plans? If so, I've missed it. I'd like to see what you're doing with your kitchen!

Hiding from the laundry?

This is a great tip, and I wish I'd thought of it before. Today's lunch salad was dressed with a vinaigrette incorporating some of the oil/vinegar brine from a jar of kalamatas. It was wonderful. Thanks for the idea!

What is it that makes some people unwilling to try something they have never had before, when it is put in front of them in a situation like this? It is not the same as taking a risk ordering something unfamiliar in a restaurant (although a lot of us do do that as a matter of principle) and "wasting" money on a dish they then dont like. I could sort of understand that. My sister-in-law does this regularly, and I would love to understand it better. One example of many: I once served quail, and she didn't even taste it because she had never eaten it before. No other reason. I dont take it personally (I figure it is her loss, and someone else always eats her share of whatever it is), but it puzzles me all the same. ← I too am baffled by this. I was very excited, the first time I found lemon curd sold in a jar here in the U.S. I bought a jar and cherished it all the way to the camp where my dear friends spend their summers, happy to share the wonderful find. They looked at me and said, in their kindest but most baffled voices, "You've always been an adventuresome eater." As far as I know, that jar was never opened. It hadn't occurred to me that the American association of "curd" with "curdle" might be enough to put someone off trying a delicious lemony spread, no matter how many assurances they had that it was wonderful.

Here's an Alton Brown find but it doesn't describe the important technique of mashing anchovies in with garlic, salt and other ingredients. ← Welcome to eGullet, bouche! Please tell more about the important technique. Someone upthread mentioned getting the proper emulsion. I'm not sure how one would get an emulsion - or know they had it - when adding and mashing those ingredients while the lettuce leaves are already in the bowl. Would someone please help me with this info? Edited for clarity.