andiesenji

Batticarne=meat pounder? Yes, this one. It's only been used for pastry. My other meat pounders are a little larger and have longer handles in a different configuration. This one is Made in Italy and I've had it for at least 25 years - before I moved up here. It weighs 24 ounces so its own weight helps with the task.

For larger tarts I use a batticarne but for the little ones I use a heavy glass tumbler that has a perfectly flat bottom.

I really do care about tea - it's not quite an obsession but is certainly a habit. I have spent part of the day shifting my collection of teas into a temporary abode while I rearrange some shelves in the cabinet where they have been living. Needless to day, I "discovered" some teas that have been languishing in the darker corners of the cabinet, some hiding behind larger containers. All these contain tea or "tisanes" of various types. I noted in an earlier post that I am somewhat partial to Republic of Tea and the top shelf holds 31 offerings from RoT, plus three tins of another brand. Most on the second shelf are from Adagio. The third shelf holds some of my own tea blends in the Cambro containers - and some miscellaneous teas, including several brands of bagged teas. The bottom shelf also has some of my own blends and some more bagged teas. Contrary to some of the "tea gurus" who declare that tea loses much of its flavor with time, I have found that some teas taste better to me when they have been stored for a while. What seems a bit harsh in a new "flush" becomes much more mellow after several months or even a year. I do store teas carefully, in a dry place that is not subject to excessive heat or cold. The boxes with the bagged teas are usually in the large square Cambro containers with tightly sealing lids but those are currently in the dishwasher. Should I start worrying that I have gone a bit too far?

Steven, you posted about a special offering of Cabot butter in Nov. 2004 I ordered that special and I really liked the Cabot "83" cultured butter but didn't find the other to be that much better than butter I can buy locally. (Not Kerrygold) I guess on the whole, I still prefer my homemade product, mainly because I can control the amount of salt that goes into it and when culturing the cream, can control that also.

Not blasphemy at all especially if you're an experienced chilihead. I guess the capsaicin kinda dulls out your tastes buds after a while and all you taste is vinegar Now here's a use for cooking science (and apologies if this has already been addressed in another thread): is it true that long-term use of capsaicin dulls the tastebuds? Prolonged use of capsaicin allows one to tolerate more of it but I have not noted any diminution of my taste sense. I can taste flavors in things that are not noticed by other people and I'm elderly, when all the senses are supposed to be in decline. However, I certainly wouldn't want to be tasting something with subtle flavors immediately after consuming a dish heavy on the chiles.

I like Kerrygold and find the flavor to be second only to my homemade butter. A few years ago I got a special order of butter that I think was from Vermont but that was a one time offer and it isn't available here - and I don't like the other Vermont butter at all. I don't care for Plugra, President or Anchor. Of the butters sold in local supermarkets, Challenge is the biggest seller, Tillamook, Land O'Lakes the next. I think they are pretty tasteless. Alta Dena butter is okay but doesn't have the flavor of Kerrygold. Years ago Knudsen dairy used to produce an excellent butter with superior flavor but the quality went downhill after the company was purchased by Kraft. I haven't seen it in local markets for some time.

I agree completely. There are some excellent teas available bagged. Some are certainly superior to many loose teas. The tea "pouches" in which Mighty Leaf offers most of their premium teas, are beautifully constructed - and are transparent so you can actually see the tea they contain. The Organic Darjeeling Estate is to my taste, a superior Darjeeling - and it can be infused twice. Adagio also offers their teas in teabags and they are the full leaf teas. A step up from there are the teas offered in the pyramid-shaped silken tea infusers of Tea Forté which are pricy but are impressive when people see them for the first time. Oprah gushed about the infusers on one of her shows. Their teas are also offered loose. There are other tea merchants that offer teas in silk or nylon bags and I have tried some but can't find the links right now.

I'm bumping this topic up. Today's Gear Patrol email bulletin included this item: TABASCO® Family Reserve - 5 oz. Anybody willing to shell out $25.00 for a 5-ounce bottle of this stuff?

If you don't have a friend handy, you can get one of these handy drill clamps.

I guess I am a bit dim because I simply don't understand the premise. Are food forums actually in decline? Or, have they simply been diversified into forums dealing with specific foods of regional, ethnic or type of food (meat, vegetarian, fruit, and so on), plus those devoted to specific appliances, (Kitchenaid and etc.) because I have seen quite a few develop over the past decade. I don't know how many barbecue forums are presently active, but there are quite a few, as well as several sub-forums devoted to smoking, or to specific types of cookers. I've been a member of the bread-bakers forum since 1991 and it shows no sign of decline since it was founded in 1990. More recently I joined forumThermomix and it is quite active, though most of the members are in Australia, there is enough input from other countries to make it interesting. I have been a member of eG since April '04 and to me it seems as active as ever, even though many of the people who were very active when I first joined are no longer active, I don't think it is because of disinterest in topics but perhaps life situations have changed. In the '80s I was a member of a couple of user groups and "bulletin boards" that discussed foods as well as other topics. I also still have some early Prodigy files loaded with recipes traded by members on a forum that was mostly related to food, gardening and a bit of travel, with a lot of info about restaurants and shops to look up when visiting a strange city. They didn't die, they morphed into other ways of communicating.

If you have two wheels toward the front of the rack and three wheels in back, you can adjust the height of the upper rack. Top position: Lower position:

Fois gras and lobster - lots of lobster with a cup of butter. Note that since this is the "end" I won't have to worry about cholesterol, blood pressure and my fatty liver. Consuming the fatty liver of another creature is enough.

In the '70s and early '80s one of my neighbors was a Tupperware regional distributor who hosted "parties" for Tupperware sellers. One of the reasons that I have so much Tupperware is from catering many of her parties and besides being paid, was given promotional items as well as regular Tupperware. The only thinks I have ever purchased were replacement lids that cracked over time, with very heavy used and one too many stints in the dishwasher. It has held up extremely well over the years and much of it has certainly been well used. There are other manufacturers but I have yet to find one that has the longevity of the Tupperware. It is available online as well as "vintage" pieces on eBay and other auction or direct sale sites. There are a few items that have not been duplicated by other makers. The pickle containers, for instance, also the long "celery keeper" with the lift-out rack and a few of the specialty pieces that were "premiums" given only to distributors. And there already was a TV "movie" about it.

I'm with you, Anna. I love using bone dishes. I have some with a set of majolica that are leaf-shaped, some that are oval with a "pinch" on one end but most are the crescent shape. Hall China in their "Hallcraft" line produced a number of different shapes. Unfortunately, as they were offered as an add-on to the regular sets, there were not as many sold because that was about the time that people began to cut back on the number of pieces in a place setting. At the turn of the last century, there were twice as many china pieces in a place setting as there were in the mid 1930s.

They can certainly be used as relish or olive dishes, etc. However, I believe they are a mid-century modern form of a bone dish. The traditional shape was a crescent but in the '50s the rectangular ones in both china and pressed glass began to appear again after the "bone dish" per se, had fallen out of fashion during the 1930s and 1940s. The etiquette books of those days (we got a taste of this in high school home ec) advocated the use of bone dishes on the table as it was considered impolite to leave bones on the dinner plate and extremely vulgar to put them on the bread and butter plate. They were centered above each plate on the table. I have 8 of the Eva Zeisel Harlequin that are rounded rectangles as part of my set.

I've always called it "china" as did my family. Some was actually "china" some was ironstone, some "vitreous china" and some was pottery. I read a lot of novels - mysteries from the "Golden Age of Mysteries" and from all the intervening decades up to the present. The plot settings are often describing the surroundings and there are many mentions of "a Welsh dresser filled with china" or "an extensive display of china in a glass-fronted cupboard" or "the table was set with a dizzying array of beautiful china" etc., etc., etc. There are very few mentions of a display of "dinnerware" because that term simply doesn't contribute the same essence to the story.

For the 8 ounce slabs of Kerrygold, etc., and for my homemade butter molded in this size slabs, I have a few of these "vintage" Tupperware butter keepers. They have a pretty tight seal. They can be found on eBay. I also have a "measuring" butter keeper marked off for tablespoons, that fits 4 ounce sticks, both the stubby ones and the long one. And for my homemade butter molded in 1-pound rounds, I have glass and pottery covered butter dishes that take up more room in the fridge but look nice on the table. During the summer, I use butter "boats" like this one for salted, one for unsalted, to keep the butter from melting when out of the fridge for a few hours.

I don't know the name of the drink but I know a guy from Holland who makes a drink layering Advocaat, creme de cocoa and a coffee liquer (not Kahula) topped with cream in a tall, narrow, straight sided glass. He says the name translates as "tiger stripes" or something like that.

I use potato flakes to thicken cream soups, particularly potato soups, that are too thin because the flakes really don't add any apparent flavor and certainly none of the "floury" flavor one gets with that. I use mushroom powder, onion powder, garlic powder, etc.

All of the above.

I don't use it for popping corn but for high temp cooking in my wok, I use safflower oil. It is somewhat expensive at regular food stores but I buy it at the local Middle Eastern market in 2-liter containers where it is more reasonably priced. The one I get has a higher smoke point (500°F.) than canola (and my favorite for lower temps, grapeseed oil) and it doesn't have the "fishy" aroma that one sometimes gets with overheating canola. And not all canola oils are equal - check your container to see which you have. See the graph in the link below. I've also been using rice bran oil (smoke point 490°F.) for the past few months and like it too. It and grapeseed oil have the least "flavor" of any oil I have tried. A good smoke point graph can be found here.

They were probably part of a set of garnishing tools which can have an extensive array of punches, corers, cutters and etc. This is just the selection from one vendor. There are other vendors who have even more sets and individual tools.

If I only need the juice from one lemon - or less, say a tablespoon or so, I use this thingy - and just screw it into the lemon (lime or juice-type orange) and extract the amount I need and set the lemon with the thingy in a custard cup and store in the fridge until I need more. It also has the advantage of restraining most of the seeds. This is just about life size.

Yes, I've been doing that for many years. If I have a lot of limes or lemons that I'm not going to use right away, I freeze them. When they thaw, the membranes inside break down and I get a lot of juice from them. If I'm in a hurry, I thaw them in the microwave at low power.

These are a few of my favorite. An old "high-shoulder" round Ball jar, with blue tint, that in 1938 (the year before I was born) held pineapple chunks produced by Hawaii Cooperative Pineapple Farms, the only competitor that Dole had at the time. One of my aunts held onto it and several others from that era and gave me a couple, her daughters got the rest. The "quilted" jar originally held Jewel Tea whole coffee beans - also in the 1930s. Living on a farm, the Jewel Tea man was a very popular visitor. My grandma saved it. The other round Ball "Perfect Mason" jar was another that came from my grandma. These bottles are of more recent times, saved by me. The pitcher type came from the Italian market, held olive oil. The one with the snap bail top held a French "lemonade" drink. The black cap jar/bottle held caperberries. The square bottle next to it held heavy cream. The chile sauce jar is self-explanatory. The square blue tint bottle held a very old balsamic vinegar and the squatty round jar held some kind of jam or fruit butter. This is a fairly large "jar" and originally held antipasti from the Italian market. I have found it is perfect for holding dried mixed fruits that have been steamed and hydrated.