Smithy

Add me to the mashed potato crowd! There are plenty of variations that should hold people's interest: garlic mashed potatoes are really hot right now; cheesy mashed potatoes, horseradish mashed potatoes, etc. would be good to mention. If you don't think that's enough, you can always through in the idea of mashed potato madeleines, or other molded mashes. Congratulations on the impending addition!

Beautiful! How was the flavor? Did the pot make a difference beyond the aesthetics?

I'm not so sure that would be bad. I recently had a dish of grilled livers (chicken, lamb, and possibly beef) tossed with garlic, lemon sauce and some seasonings I've forgotten. There may have been tahina in there as well. (I can't remember for certain.) It didn't have the hummus-like texture described above, but I could imagine mashing it and using it as a spread. The flavors were excellent.

There's a Middle Eastern garlic sauce that sounds rather like it. The garlic sauce is basically whizzed up garlic, salt, lemon juice, and a bit of egg, with a thin stream of oil added. FoodMan gives a recipe for it in his eGullet Culinary Institute course, Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine (scroll a little way down the page to find it). ChefCrash is right; the white color could be from emulsification, just as it is with mayonnaise. Using only the egg whites will result in a whiter sauce than if you include the yolks. The stuff I've seen has always been the consistency of mayonnaise, but if you add enough oil, or perhaps some water? you might get the thin sauce you describe. Another avenue to try is to find a recipe for aïoli. I think aïoli and thomeya (a name for that Middle Eastern sauce) are very similar, and both names indicate garlic, as yours does, in their respective languages. Does this help? Edited to add: I just found a "Spanish-style garlic sauce" that uses bread (even stale bread) as a thickener, and doesn't use eggs. I bet this has the consistency you're after. Clickety here.

You've outdone yourselves. Those photos and the step-by-step discussions of the smoking process are amazing. If, or when, I ever decide to try smoking meat, I'll now have a fine tutorial. As always, I'm impressed by the quality of your blogging. You three have posted your usual fine photos (even with a new camera, Susan) and words. The fact that you've done it under such pressure, and managed to stay civil, and not turned into blithering idiots, really shows gumption. Congratulations on your successes. Congratulations, too, to the others who've tagged along and quit - or at least started to quit - during this time. Thank you for sharing this time with us. Do please let us know, somehow, how it all goes, even after this blog is closed. There'll still be plenty of support and encouragement for you.

Does Janet Evanovich write for Harlequin? I thought she pitched to a different market, at a higher level, than the Harlequin Romances. (I confess, I'm too lazy to go check further to who publishes her books.) I think she may just happen to have written a NASCAR racer into her book rather than participating in the marketing line I'm talking about. I'd like to know about the celeb endorsement bit, too. My guess is that the typical eGulleteer would be skeptical until the quality were proven. Does that hold for the "rest of the world" too? (My, aren't we the exclusive ones. ) And for the record, one of my dear friends adores his Wolfgang Puck cookware, given to him by his son. (I think it's called "9W".) I would have avoided it *because* of the product endorsement, but it does its job well in my friend's household.

Who else remembers locker plants? They were a bit cold for brining, but where I grew up they were the way to go for long-term meat storage at Very Cold Temperatures. The place shut down long before I moved away, but I still remember Dad bundling me into the too-large too-heavy parka with the wolf-rimmed hood, before he bundled himself up. Then he, the similarly-attired locker plant operator, and I would trundle in, open up our particular rented locker, and select the cut of venison for our special dinner. That place probably wasn't all that big, but at the time it felt like Narnia. There should be such places now, with climate-controlled spaces for your choice of temperature. Frozen storage? Over here. Brining? Right this way. ObCongrats: I've said it before, but I'll say again, how impressed I am with you bloggers and other quitters. It's a tough row to hoe under any circumstances. Doing it in public without going homicidal is...well...pushing past mere sainthood.

As I live and breathe!!! That's what was in mine back in '86!!! My late FIL, and indeed every person of male persuasion in the whole family was or is an AVID hunter. He had shot the bobcat out at the deer camp, and brought it home, where he stashed it in MY freezer. ...(go back and read it...all of it...again!) So I knew just where to locate the packages of shrimp, ran in the door, lifted the lid, leaned WAY over to position my head JUST SO to hold the top up, rested the lid on my skull, and kicked the side of the still-dark freezer. And as the light gleamed on, I found myself face-to-face with a freezer full of bobcat, all brindly fur and shining eyes, lying there all snarly-fanged, just inches from my face. I don't know which happened first. I jumped back and up enough to free the lid, which thumped down upon one of my uplifted hands, whumping it underneath its fall. I think it even bounced once or twice. And I don't remember if it hurt. ... ← Unless someone admits to having severed human body parts in their chest freezer, you DEFINITELY win. ← Maybe about the wierdest part, but racheld definitely wins the GulleyLaugh award!

At least it isn't a cheesehead hat. That would be treasonous.

I think you just trumped my finch carcass.

?eh? Please tell us more! I did recently hear that NASCAR and Harlequin Romance are teaming up for, er, racy romances (I couldn't resist), on the theory that romance novels are as fine a family activity as NASCAR racing. Tomatoes I hadn't heard about.

We learned the same thing. It was a week or two later that we realized the vendor had kept the original card, too. Was that supposed to happen? (But what would we do with a 3-picture memory card?) Anyway, enjoy the new camera! And I still think a time-capsule with the carcass of the old camera and other memorabilia of this time, buried at The Cabin with all due pomp and circumstance after the ground thaws, is the way to go. If you're worried about electronics and soil pollution, remove the circuit board first. The kids should enjoy that bit of surgery.

...yeah. Without going too far OT, some friends gave me a bunch of Pampered Chef stuff one year. I did like the nut chopper, as long as it lasted, but the garlic press thingie that they gave me was pretty useless. It was a screw tube that you twisted to force the garlic through the holes. It took a lot more hand/arm strength than I thought the process was worth. There wasn't enough mechanical advantage to overcome the friction of the (plastic) screw threads; the holes didn't really cut...it was a poor design. Your press sounds like a better design. Hmm. I do like their garlic roaster, although that's pretty foolproof. I guess I've had better luck with PC than some folks here - but I still prefer to support my local kitchen store.

Good point.

"Extra yummy". Oh, dear. Whenever I think I might be missing out by not having cable or satellite TV, I roll on over to eGullet to disabuse myself of that notion! It may be catching on now, but marketing by celebrities certainly isn't new. Photos of Hopalong Cassidy (don't say "who?" too loudly, now, or I'll hit you with my cane) graced the cartons of Producer's Milk when I was growing up. On a more familiar note, don't forget that Newman's Own has been going strong for a long time. I hate to bring it up in connection with FN marketing, though; the motivation seems to have been different even though the marketing was similar.

The OXO Garlic Press has that feature. ← This was the first garlic press I owned. I liked it, but it broke at the hinges within a year. I've been using a Zyliss for over a year now without problems. It seems to be sturdier than the Oxo.

That sounds like something that could earn a slap to the face. You'd have to know the complimentee was secure about his/her weight, wouldn't you? Congratulations on the new arrival!

I hope you do try the side-by-side cooking and let us know the results. I've been curious (idly so, in light of my jammed cabinets) about this cookware. I'd expect some benefits from the thermal characteristics of the clay. However, since the clay isn't porous I've wondered whether the flavor benefits would be the same. Uggh. I haven't had problems with sticking in my clay pots. That sounds like a nightmare. You have my sympathy!

I'm afraid I have to disagree, but that name is really cute. First time I've heard of the dish, but "sham-el-nasim" literally means smelling the breeze. It is a common term for taking a stroll on a nice day. Shamy (not having seen the arabic, and assuming this is the correct origin) would then probably refer to the "smelling" part of the phrase. Sun as you probably know is "Shams", but always appears with the "s" on the end. Naseem/nasim/neseem means breeze, and is also a very nice boy's name, IMVHO. ← I do like the sound of that as a boy's name! I'm just repeating what the cookbook writer said in her preface to the recipe, but of course she might have misunderstood. I did wonder about the lack of an 's' at the end of shams, but since I'm a bare beginner I figured I was missing something about converting from a noun to an adjective. The cookbook only gives Arabic for ingredients, in an appendix, so I don't know how that dish would be written either. Something else to ask my teacher! Thanks for the information. Edited to add: Thanks too for the tip on Sham el Nessim. I think we'll have to instigate this holiday around our house! Without the smelly fish, though. I've smelled it. I'll stick to fatta.

...and there's NOTHING like deep-fried turkey, out in the woods, at night, somewhere below 0 degrees F. Just as long as someone else tows in the turkey, the frying pot, the burner, the propane, and the cooking oil. That oil sure helped the bonfire later.

So perhaps vinegar in tahina sauce is a particularly Egyptian twist. I'll have to ask my teacher how she makes it. I almost picked up one of both of Ms. Abdennour's books last week. Now I wish I had, in addition to the one I brought home. Heck, what's another couple of books? Thank you for that information. Your description of the lemon's size is spot-on. Now I have a way to search for them in this country. As much as I love our standard lemons and Meyer lemons, I'd like to find a source of the daq lemons as well. My cookbook says that fatta shamy is made to celebrate "Sham El Nessim, the holiday which welcomes in spring", so I'm thinking that in this case the word "shamy" refers to the sun.

Well, keep in mind that this is a mixture of tahina and yogurt for the fatta recipe, so I may have used the wrong turn. Otherwises - perhaps this is evidence of unique Egyptian cuisine? I don't know. None of my other cookbooks - except the Claudia Roden book mentioned above - has any fatta recipes. In the Egyptian book from which I was cooking, both fatta shamy recipes used vinegar in addition to lemon in the tahina/yogurt sauce. The other fatta recipe, which uses beef, did not - but it added tomato sauce. So, broadening the question a bit: what type(s) of vinegar would be likely to be used in Egypt? What about in the Maghreb? The Mashreq? I'd still like to know what variety of lemon is grown in Egypt. So far I haven't found any definitive answer online. I'm sure some horticulturists has figured it out, but I don't know where to look.

Hm . . . good point. I will also await Daddy-A's reply. I think the racks in the GE Monogram I am planning on might be about the same. For sticky racks that don't slide easily, I used to smear with a little high temperature silicone lubricant. I have no idea where to buy it. I used to um . . . borrow some from the lab. First time I did that, I yanked at the rack and it almost came flying out and onto the floor. ← I wish I'd thought of that high-temperature silicone lubricant. I'm sure I can, er, find some lying around somewhere. Our new oven's racks developed a considerably higher coefficient of friction after the first self-cleaning cycle. They've never been the same since. I think you left out a syllable? mushrOOOM....mushrOOOM... The food you women have turned out tonight is awesome. Marlene, you continue to amaze me with your command of things that would have me running in terror, even as you claim to be entering unknown territory. Susan, how the devil you manage to run a household and still cook is beyond me.

Shows what I know!

Wow, that certainly hit the nails on the head for me. What is it about most of us that we're like this? I've survived and overcome lots of things in my life, but this remains the hardest for me. ....Multiply that by what you all are doing right now, and not doing right now, and publicly, I can hardly imagine but I totally admire and respect you. ....And the food!! Sweet! Marlene, the hot roast beef sandwich looked so good. I haven't had that in years. I love the looks of those onion rings, too, and I want some like that on top of the next steak I have. They remind me of those that are served atop a beef stroganoff recipe I have. Susan, I am going to search the Asian markets I go to for MAMA noodles. That meal is for me! Your dinner last night looked damn good too. I hope Dave is OK... have either of you heard from him behind the scenes, so we know that he is OK? LOL, this might be the most impressive of all: Kudos to all, including those that are joining in along with the official bloggers. ← What she said. All of it. (Nice oven! ) It took the funeral of a friend, and my beating myself up over a misunderstanding that would now never be satisfactorily resolved, to really grok that line in the Lord's Prayer: "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who've trespassed against us". Suddenly it made sense to me: "cut us some slack, as we cut others slack - and by the way, help us to cut ourselves some slack too". I still beat myself up, but not as badly or for as long. As others have noted, count your progress instead of your slippage. Stroganoff! Snowangel, have you ever made venison stroganoff? It's a household favorite around here. I'll bet elk would be good prepared that way too. Marlene, I was going to suggest cucumber dill soup (with some yogurt or sour cream, a bit of garlic, how can that be bad?) but while I've been trying and failing to format this post the way I'd like I see you've decided on roasted peach. Ooh, much better! No, star anise isn't the same as anise, and I don't think it would be a good substitute, but I'm not sure what would. Allspice, cinnamon and pepper, perhaps? Others in the know may giggle if I'm off base, but maybe they can jump in with a good substitution. I confess, I have a package of the stuff in my cupboard and have yet to try it.