andiesenji

I didn't see this topic until this morning. Click here for the link in RecipeGullet And click here for an extensive discussion about the subject: With my method you don't have to use young, stem ginger. Mature ginger, sliced across the grain, then steamed until tender, will candy nicely. This will give you larger pieces than you can get with stem ginger, nice when dipping in chocolate. I make it in big batches - cooked in an electric roaster - smaller batches in a Crockpot. After candying I dry it in a dehydrator but it can be dried at room temp - it should keep without molding once it has dried to the tacky stage and been coated with granulated sugar. If it gets too dry, just dry it completely in a very low oven and grind it to use like regular ground ginger. Add it to tea, it's lovely that way.

One of my friends has one of these super-sized grills and for small batches he puts the charcoal (he uses chunk type) into one of these, to keep the fire limited to a section and concentrate the heat. He removes it when he needs to fire up the entire grill.

I would tell him that the time to reconsider selling something was prior to the time money changed hands. A deal is a deal!

There is one restaurant in Palmdale that I rarely visit (and only if friends insist on it) because they have a way of serving that makes little sense to me. After introducing himself or herself, our server will hand out menus ask if drinks are wanted, take those orders and disappear and a bus person will appear with water. The server will return with the drinks and stands poised with an order pad. Apparently he or she writes the orders as given. Some time later, the bus person with a helper, if the party is large enough, brings one or more trays with the plates. The trays are placed on stands and the plates distributed. Every time I have been there in the past two years, since they adopted this method of serving, I have been given the wrong plate. Not only is it not my plate, it isn't the plate of anyone at our table. The last time I was there I was served a plate of fish. No one at our table had ordered fish. I am allergic to iodine I can't have ocean fish. I indicated this to the bus person and she said "But that's what you ordered." I said I had not and explained why. The two bus persons departed with empty trays and stands. Several minutes later, the server sauntered up to the table and asked "what is the problem?" I indicated the cooling plate in front of me and said I did not order this fish. I am allergic to ocean fish. I ordered the pork cutlets(3) - there is no way you could mistake my order as I indicated how I wanted it cooked. The server grabbed my plate, knocking the flatware next to it onto the floor and walked away. I insisted that the others please eat their dinners before they cooled too much. Everyone else had just about finished eating when the server returned with a plate containing ONE small pork cutlet, one small red potato and a tablespoon of mixed vegetables. At this point I did not feel hungry so did not eat any of it. We called for the check, I told the server that I would not pay for a child's portion that I had not consumed and asked that it be taken off the check or have the manager come to the table. The check was adjusted, a minimum tip was left but one of the guys found the bus person and tipped him as he had been attentive, filling water glasses and bringing coffee &etc. In the past I have had similar mix-ups at my table, not always me. On one occasion I had asked for a tonic water with lime but got something with alcohol in it. Fortunately I barely tasted it - because I am very allergic. I had a lot to say on that occasion! The sad thing is that I do like their food and used to go there often until they changed their server policy. The old servers were older, lots of experience and in modest clothes. I am an elderly woman, perhaps I appear quiet but I am not one to be put upon. I speak my mind! Loud and clear! I stand up for myself and for other seniors if I see someone getting less than optimal service.

I've been cooking sausage, both patties and link sausage in water for many years. Back in January I put it up on my blog and posted about it in the "Breakfast" topic. As I noted, I did not smoke the sausage so I used a "quickie" method of getting the smoke flavor I wanted by the use of Lapsang Souchong tea. Plain water works fine if you already have smoked sausage but there is a world of variety in things you can put IN the water to add flavor to the sausage. If you like spicy and have only plain sausage, some chili pepper flakes in the water can liven it up instead of adding a sauce that might be too assertive and mask the sausage flavor. Very fatty sausages are better with a hint of citrus. I just cut a lemon or orange into slices and put them into the water, bring it to a boil and then add the sausages. If you are serving several people, you can take plain sausages and vary them by cooking batches in different "flavored" waters. Sausage on its own is greasy enough. I would never cook it in oil. To me just the thought is ghastly.

chocolate espresso/banana/pistachio would be my triple threat choices. I can't have regular chocolate but I make choc ice cream with Dutched cocoa which doesn't give me a problem. I've got a three-section mold that is shaped like a shamrock and I have used it for an ice cream mold with three flavors.

A bit of love for one's country is never bad. It is great that people who came to America held on to their food traditions, otherwise our dining experiences here would be pretty BLAH! I am happy to live in an enclave of several ethnic groups. There used to be a Dutch family down the road but they had lived most of their lives in Indonesia and they had a food tradition spanning half the world! I was very sorry to see them move away (to Hawaii, no less!).

The second link I tried to add to my earlier post did not get linked. This is the link I intended to add.

WC, you never know when it is going to "click" and become a habit. Or, an obsession. For years one of my long-time friends worked within walking distance of Chado, often walking right past it. After listening to me harp about tea and serving him and his partner tea whenever they visited, he finally wandered in to the tea shop and almost instantly became a fanatic. A few years later his partner joined in. They have been to India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Japan and China, visiting the tea growing regions and are planning a trip to Africa late this fall. They bought Bruce Richardson's Great Tea Rooms of America and are checking off each one on their "life list" as they visit them. They have also spent a total of three months in the UK going through the author's book Great Tea Rooms of Britain.

I counted! I have 94 different teas - although I do have multiples of some "varieties" they are from different "Estates" and have differing qualities. I have several Assams: Dejoo 1st Flush FTGFOP, Toganagoan Estate 2nd Flush, Mangaiam BBOP, Borengajuli 2nd Flush FTGFOP, Digulturrung Estate TGFOP-1, Harmutty Estate "Golden Paw" 1st Flush SFTGFOP. And some others that just are identified as "Assam" - all loose teas. I really, really like Assams! found another: Hazelbank FTGFOP1

Those are just lovely, Heidi. I just had a chat on the phone with one of my book club members (meeting tomorrow - I have to take something on which to nibble) - and he mentioned his mother (Greek) would crush the green buds and flowers in honey, leave it overnight and the next day add hot water and drink it as a "tonic" when she would be feeling tired. (He is one of 14 children, I don't wonder the poor lady was tired!) Their house was on a hillside and every windowbox full of flowers so you could hardly tell the house was white (with the traditional blue door) and the nasturtiums were the trailing type. He doesn't remember if she picked the flower buds or the seed pods, just that they were little green "beads" and tasted peppery but the flowers did too. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that there is yet another way of using them I had never heard of.

I am sure that a food product similar to scrapple and haggis go back a very long way. Thirty-some years ago when my dad did some extensive traveling in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, researching his ancestors, he kept notes about different foods and got some recipes for me along the way. He found some distant relations in Orkney and stayed there for a couple of months. One of the things he wrote about was haggis because there was a discussion that it had come with the "Norsemen" who "visited" from time to time in ancient times. I know the Danish have a similar dish. There are a couple of versions in Iceland (I used to have neighbors from Iceland) that also use a sheep's stomach. One includes oatmeal, blood, liver, lungs, heart, sweetbreads, kidneys and etc. Some people include shark meat. My neighbor said at butchering time, her mother preferred to make it with barley as she didn't like oats and as they raised goats for milk as well as meat, she used a goat stomach. In one of Richard Halliburton's books he describes a trip through Central Asia, where "somewhere east of Samarkand," he was served a dish that he said "might have gladdened the heart of one of his Scottish ancestors, being the stomach of a sheep or a goat, filled with offal, grains and various spices." It seems mostly to be a dish and method of cooking that was popular in cold countries. The long boiling, in a hut, tent, yurt or croft, would heat the enclosure as well as cooking the food.

Here are some variations of "scrapple" which is rarely found outside the area where it originated. One of my uncles(actually a great uncle, my grandfather's youngest brother), who spent some time at a horse farm in Pennsylvania in the early '50s, mentioned it when he came home and he said he thought it was sort of like haggis only without the sheep's stomach. As he was born in the border country and schooled in Scotland, he knew plenty about haggis - didn't like it much.

I washed them really well - I used the salad spinner multiple times - mine had a lot of tiny thrips but no obvious damage. I just put them in the small jars, poured the hot liquid over them, capped them and left them to cool overnight and then refrigerated them. I'm sure either way would work. I forgot to mention that I also put some in with a batch of lemons I was preserving. They turned out pretty good.

Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. A fairly small amount can damage the kidneys. I have seen this personally on my grandpa's farm, not a human but five young pigs, that found a loose place in the outer kitchen garden fence. They ate some rhubarb, as well as other spring stuff - not much was big enough to attract them. Three of the five died that night after trouble breathing and convulsions and the other two were put down because it was feared it was something contagious. The farm vet did a post mort. on one and found the rhubarb in the stomach, mostly leaves because it was not yet fully grown. After that they found the damage in the back garden. Multiple animal deaths had to be reported to the Farm Bureau that collected statistics and my grandpa was told that this had happened to other farmers. After that a rock wall was put around that part of the garden because the wire fencing wouldn't keep the hogs out when the ground was soft after a heavy rain. There is some information here. The poison control centers have information on this because sometimes small children do pick and chew on the leaves. There have not been any confirmed deaths since 1960 but there have been incidents of children recovering from poisoning. There is some good advice here.

There are lots of ways to use chive blossoms. Chopped and mixed into softened butter for a "composed" butter - wrap in plastic and form into a log, refrigerate overnight so flavor will blend. They are great in an omelet. Nice (and pretty) in biscuit dough - better with some grated cheddar. I got a recipe for scalloped potatoes with chive flowers online some years ago. I'll look for it. Found it HERE found another unusual recipe.

I have a friend in Tucson who does a lot of herb gardening in pots. She uses the double-pot method. A larger terracotta outer pot with sand in it with the plant pot buried in the sand. The outer pot sets in a shallow container that holds water. The water that soaks into the outer pot evaporates and keeps the inner pot cooler. She also uses shade cloth on those arched frames that are used for protecting young plants. It is in a panel that can be slid from one side of the arch to the other, depending on the direction of the sun. Usually she has it at the top so the plants can get morning and late afternoon sun but are protected from it midday.

Not so much. Most cookie doughs are mixed in such a way that there is not much gluten development.

Interestingly enough we are experiencing a (knock on wood) fairly mild summer so far.. as in cool evenings and mornings. Loving it so far, but sorry for your 100's. Here too it has been cooler than "normal" and yesterday it was downright cool. I wore a sweatshirt all day. At least the winds have stopped. The past two days was really blustery and a large branch broke off one of my trees. I also acquired a plastic garden chair that blew into my yard night before last. It's now sitting out by the road with a sandbag weighting it down so the owner can retrieve it. Most of my herbs, do very well here. They are mostly of Mediterranean origin so they evolved in this type of climate.

Back in the old (and not so old) days people reused tea leaves as long as they could add some bit of flavor to the water. Here in the U.S. we have mostly forgotten that in the UK the rationing that we had during WWII went on until almost the middle of the '50s. Those were tough times and people made do with what they had. It wasn't that the stuff wasn't affordable, it simply wasn't available. In earlier times it was the servants who were expected to re-use tea leaves and in the real early days there were more nefarious activities.

Once I buy it, it's mine and I will do whatever I wish with it, brew it twice or more times, use it to take the sting out of an insect bite, relieve sunburn, or pulled apart and sprinkled on the compost heap. If they didn't want me to re-use it, then they shouldn't have put the handy string on it.

As requested, here is the griddle cake recipe which is pretty much as my grandmother wrote it down for me in 1950. Great Grammaw Sweeney's Griddle cakes 2 cups white flour (soft wheat flour if you can find it - I used Hudson Cream) 3 teaspoons double acting baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt - rounded 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 egg - large 1 1/2 cups top cream (heavy cream) 1 tablespoon melted butter (a neutral flavored oil works too) (Optional) Ice water if needed to thin the batter. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Break the egg into the cream, beat with a fork and add the melted butter and mix well. Put griddle on high heat and grease lightly (GG Sweeney used bacon rind but a cloth dipped in oil or oil lightly brushed onto the griddle works - and you can use a non-stick electric griddle, if you can get it hot enough.) With a "cake beater" (whisk) mix the cream mixture into the dry ingredients until the batter is fairly smooth, some lumps are okay. If it is too thick, add some ice water just till it will pour - batter will be fairly thick. Ladle onto griddle in the size you like. The batter should puff evenly. When you see bubbles and the edges beginning to look dry, turn them over The second side won't take as long to cook as the first. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you like corn cakes you can use fine cornmeal instead of half the flour but add a tablespoon of corn flour (corn starch). -A note from my grandmother Davis, nee Sweeney- Some folks like sour milk griddle cakes and they are fine, but have a tangy taste that I don't enjoy. You can use clabbered cream but add a scant teaspoon of saleratus (baking soda) to the dry ingredients. -A note from me. I used to use White Lily flour but it is not the same stuff as it was a few years ago but for this recipe it's better than all-purpose flour. I buy Hudson Cream because I like it better for cakes and such. Another one I use is Odlums but I have to order it and Hudson Cream is sold at Walmart.

I'm with you! Producing an ersatz substance and calling it "food" should be a hanging offense!

For Mother's Day I was given a small basket of goodies, including a box of Lipton's Black Pearl tea. It comes in a nifty pyramid-shaped "bag" and is definitely good for re-steeping. It has an excellent "tea" flavor, nothing exotic but a clear, clean flavor and did not get bitter on the second steeping when I forgot and left it in the mug for 30 minutes or so - and reheated it in the microwave. I think it is the first Lipton tea I have had in perhaps five years or so. I like it. It tastes good plain and even better with a small amount of sugar and a little milk. In fact, it reminds me of the tea my grandmother prepared. Good memories! Here's a bag prior to brewing: And after brewing (once).

cut it back and strip the leaves from the stems. Cutting or pinching back the stems should encourage more growth. Are you overwatering? Most thymes require a loose, well-drained soil and not a great deal of water. I live in the desert and it grows nicely here in containers, watered every three days except when the temps are over 100 and it is very windy, when I water every other day. You also have to make sure the plants aren't root bound. I keep mine in the same pots but pull the entire root ball out, pull out and trim off any roots that are circling the pot, cut some off the bottom, chuck in some new soil in the bottom and re-plant it. Mine produces abundant foliage.