Majra

Thank you, I'll pass along your praise to my girl. The marshmallow is strawberry, nightscotsman's original recipe. They are delicious! I dipped the tops in white chocolate; I'm planning to dip some in dark chocolate as well.

Not exactly hand-made, but hand-crafted. This is my daughter's annual Valentine's Day project. This year marked a milestone...she made them all by herself! My own project is marshmallows:

I made a batch of strawberry marshmallows, dipped in white chocolate and decorated for Valentine's Day. I'm putting the heart-shaped ones on lollipop sticks for my daughter to give to her classmates. I'm also planning to dip some square ones in dark chocolate.

We're still in the honeymoon stage with these lunchboxes. Yesterday my daughter had: Wrap sandwich with spicy turkey, salami, and lettuce; fruit salad of strawberries, kiwi, and banana; shoestring potato sticks,; baby carrots; and two tiny homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Propel packet with the fork.

Same advice here. Stir together 16oz sour cream, one tablespoon of sugar, and one teaspoon vanilla. When cheesecake is not quite set, remove it from the oven and set it on a rack. After it stands for 5 minutes, drop spoonfuls of sour cream topping around the edge of the cake and spread/smooth it over the center. Return it to the oven for 10 more minutes. I love the sour cream layer! Delicious tasting, pure white beauty, and great camoflage if your cheesecake cracks.

I consider Yamuna Devi's Lord Krishna's Cuisine to be a good bible for learning Indian cooking. It provides a excellent foundation and it contains vast amounts of information. The recipes are rock solid and the explanations are thorough. I spent at least a full year studying this book. Then, I branched out to Julie Sahni. Her recipes are simpler and possibly better suited for everyday cooking. Additionally, the recipes are not limited to vedic cuisine and therefore include onions and garlic, which I happen to enjoy eating very much. My favorite Julie Sahni book is her vegetarian and grains book. Then there's the book Feast of India by an author named Rani that I turn to again and again. That book is dog-eared! She has some fabulous recipes, including my most favorite chicken recipe in the universe, but I don't think I could execute these recipes as well if I didn't have the foundation and principles under my belt.

Fried rice tonight. Before and After: Eggs, ham, green onion, lettuce, and a few bits of leftover chicken. Sesame oil, salt, and a tiny dash of oyster sauce. Does this photo look like dog food too? It certainly didn't taste like it!

Sounds like a fabulous menu! And you've set the stage for smooth sailing with the logistics you've worked out. Brava!

I thought this even before the judging, just based on the ingredients he chose for his dish. Lentils and garlic for a romantic dinner??? Farting and bad breath are not great aphrodisiacs.

Today my son had kiwi fruit, green salad with ham and egg, crackers and tuna with capers. The condiment container holds salad dressing, and there's a lemon propel stick packed under the fork.

Tonight we had a simple one-dish dinner, chicken and broccoli. It had lots of ginger. This dish is a family favorite and it graces our table frequently. We ate this with plenty of steamed rice. We also had a delicious melon.

Propel is vitamin-enhanced flavored water; the "sticks" are little packets of dry powdered mix that you can pour into your own water bottle to make your own vitamin water. The ten year-old crowd loves that sort of thing. It's possible that this is a regional market for Propel, I'm not really sure. Hydration is always a big topic around here, in fact Gatorade was formulated nearby. Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propel_Fitness_Water (By the way, is the Japan forum an ok place for me to be posting about my bentos, American as they are?)

My daughter's lunch today has a wrap sandwich with chicken breast,hot sopresatta, and lettuce. My kids are obsessed with these flatbread sandwiches. I wonder how long this phase will last? Also pringles chips, fresh pineapple, a few green olives and baby carrots, and pumpkin bread studded with cranberries and walnuts and sandwiched with cream cheese. And 2 propel sticks--one to have and one to share. I understand that you can enjoy hero status on the playground if you have an extra propel stick to share.

Our appreciation for each other is a two-way street, especially at dinnertime! I am loving the new setup, and would recommend one to anyone! Besides the increased BTUs, I also love that my house doesn't stink from cooking.

That sounds like a nice arrangement that you have. My husband considered lengthening the legs on my burner as well, but he thought that the cinder blocks would provide more stability. I guess we are scarred from all of those years when we lived in earthquake country. Thanks for the tip, I appreciate it. I will keep an eye on my screens. I've been using the grill out on the porch for almost 2 years now with no problems, but grease will be more of an issue with wok cooking now that you mention it. We do get a lot of pouring rain here in central Florida, almost daily in the late afternoon/early evening in summertime. I will have to keep my equipment covered with tarps if I ever move it outside.

Thanks for the compliment. As for the wok, I used to think that the 12" was adequate, and I've certainly put plenty of nice dinners on the table over the years using that pan, but that was before I knew any better. Since I got the new larger pan, I've not used the old one nearly as much. I've been using the small pan if I stir-fry two dishes in succession, for instance tonight I cooked the spinach in the small one. Things I do like about the small wok are its integrated handle, and its ability to fit in the sink for easy cleaning. I seem to splash a lot of water on the floor when I rinse out the big wok. Lucky for me, my husband always cleans up after dinner!

Hi everyone, this is my first contribution to this thread. I just recently figured out ImageGullet, and now you are the unwitting audience to my first photo essay. My husband gave me an outdoor wok burner for Christmas this year. He says it's the gift that keeps on giving. To him. He built it up on cinder blocks so that the burner would be at a good height for cooking. It sits in a corner of our "Florida Room," or screened porch. The room is constructed of concrete block, and has a brick floor. Next to the new wok burner is my gas grill. Together, I guess I can call it my outdoor kitchen! You may see the "nightlight" my husband set up to illuminate the cooking area in the evening. These are my two woks. The big one has an 18" diameter, and is new. It was part of my Christmas gift. The smaller one is my trusty old friend. It has a 12" diameter and has been used regularly for the past 15 or so years. It looks like a wee little baby compared to the new one. Here's the whole setup, ready for action. I took these photos during the day. The next batch of pictures will be after dark when I cook dinner. Tonight we had Yu Xiang Pork with Eggplant. I melded two recipes from Fuchsia Dunlop's book. Here's my mis en place. I use the shelf on the right side of the grill as a countertop, and the child-size chair on the other side of the wok is another handy space for putting things. First I fried the eggplant. Next I removed the eggplant, cooked the pork, added chili bean paste, garlic & ginger, then added the eggplant back in. The mixture simmered for a few minutes in chicken stock, sugar, salt & soy to let the flavors blend. Finally, I added scallions, Chinkiang vinegar, cornstarch slurry and sesame oil to finish the dish. It was very much to our liking. We also had spinach stir-fried with garlic and salt. We ate these two dishes with steamed rice. There was also a bowl of edamame on the table since my kids hate spinach. Dessert was not Chinese. We had Korova cookies and a few cherries.

Thanks for the tip, Bigfoot! Considering that it took me over 2 years to to take the dive into posting photos on eG, it may be a while before you see me over there though.

Here's another one from last week. It includes a turkey and cheese wrap sandwich, pretzels, strawberries and nectarines, caesar salad, and a hardboiled egg half. The small condiment container holds salad dressing.

beautiful! Thanks! I like making lunches, but right now I'm most excited that I conquered ImageGullet! what is the white pen like thing on the right side? ←

My kids and I are having fun with their new bento-style lunch boxes. I have fun making them, and they have fun eating them! I'm going to attempt to post a photo of my 12 year-old son's lunch from yesterday. It includes: peppered turkey and provolone cheese with greens, pickles, olives and vinaigrette on garlic-pesto wrap bread, pretzel sticks, pink grapefruit segments, roasted almonds, half of a green apple, and a toffee chip cookie. I was short on vegetables today, hence the two fruits. If this works, it will be my very first eGullet photo. *Fingers crossed,* here goes.

Another asinine moment was the praise that the judges gave the service at the second restaurant. Did they not notice that the place was practically empty at that point? When they arrived at the Italian restaurant, dinner service was basically over. Of course the FOH had more time and mindspace to devote to them. Duh. On the other hand, when they ate at the diner, they literally got the last table. Cliff was juggling a full load of tables, who had all arrived at the same time (at opening), and was literally trying to get the dinners served, when the judges showed up and took their seats.

I'm tired of these team challenges. How can the judges possibly evaluate who did better or worse than someone else, when everyone is doing something different? Having any of the chefs working FOH was ridiculous on last night's show. It's not Top Waiter, these people are not professionally trained or experienced at the art of FOH. And I'm sick of the judges too, with their pack of wolves approach to the food and the contestants. Their venom is so eager. It turns my stomach the way Gail appears to take such true pleasure in finding the errors. Her smile often seems to say, "I can't believe I'm getting paid to be such a bitch! This is great!" And Tom, well he's just a bully. I wonder if the contestants would raise their own level of professionalism if the judges raised theirs. I think the judges have set the tone for a pretty scrappy environment.

My most used Chinese cookbook is Chopsticks, Cleaver, and Wok by Jennie Low. It was given to me as a bridal shower gift 15 years ago by an ABC whose mother gave it to her when she married. For me the recipes are just plain accessible. If I am staring at a vegetable and a piece of meat late in the day, I know that I can put on a pot of rice, pull that book off the shelf, and put out a great tasting meal that my family will enjoy. For Christmas my husband gave me Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, along with an outdoor wok burner and a ginourmous new wok. Whatta great guy! The recipes that we've tried (spicy noodles with soft bean curd, dan dan mein, vinegar chicken, dry-fried green beans 2, ma po tofu, kung bao chicken, something else that I can't remember) have *all* been winners. And with the outdoor cooking setup, I continue to be amazed that my house doesn't stink at dinnertime. Maybe I'll invest some time learning about ImageGullet and start posting photos. I see that Fuchsia's new Hunan book is available on Amazon...does anyone have experience with it yet? Based on these past few weeks' experience with the Sichuan book, I am tempted to order it.