andiesenji

I'm allergic to chocolate so I too prefer the cookies with raisins or cranberries or cherries. I can highly recommend the Dried Amarena cherries in syrup. I bought some a year ago and just used the last of them last week. 35 ounces goes a long way. They are large and I chop them to mix into scones and cookies.

I have converted unsalted butter to salted. Let the butter soften and beat it in a mixer. Most salt is too granular, unless you like the crunch because it will not dissolve. BUT, just like you can make sugar superfine or powdered, you can make salt superfine in a spice grinder. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon per pound of the superfine salt over the whipped butter and whip some more. Allow it to "rest" for 30 minutes. Taste and add more if needed. Some butters require more. I have found that if you taste immediately after mixing in the salt, you won't get the full flavor, thus the resting. This is the same process I use when I make butter. I use a superfine "velvet" salt.

The glasses look like Fostoria. Possibly Heisey.

Thanks for the info, Hassouni! They sell pans for tadig at the middle eastern store, where I bought mine. It had clips on top for holding the cloth to prevent condensation but I promptly lost them the first time I put it in the dishwasher - took them off because I thought they would come loose. Miriam showed me that she just ties the corners together at the top so that's the way I have done it ever since.

I have had and still have several Zojirushi rice cookers - I got one soon after they introduced them to the US. I previously had a couple of smaller ones, a Salton and another brand I can't recall and for my catering business a 25 cup Panasonic. Friends who had lived in Japan told me that Zojirushi was expanding to the U.S. and their rice cookers were superior to the others. I have moved up as new models became available, gave away some - I got the "neuro-fuzzy" cooker when it first was offered and then passed it on to my daughter - they also consume a lot of rice. I then got the Induction Heating one, which I still use - I got the 10-cup because I cook batches of rice and other grains that are large enough that I have leftovers that I can portion out and freeze. I too like the crispy-bottom rice but solved that problem years ago when I bought one of the "special" pans with the bottom with the rounded sides made especially for "TADIG" rice - and I cook the rice in the Zo, melt butter in the bottom of the tadig pan, add turmeric and saffron and allow to "bloom" while the butter melts and ALMOST gets to the "brown butter" stage, dump in as much of the cooked rice as I want, press it down firmly (I use one of the round perforated potato mashers) cover tightly and reduce the heat. I have several squares of muslin, that are large enough for the corners to be tied together over the top of lid which I have ready as a Persian friend showed me this was the best way to catch condensation so it doesn't dampen the rice. The rice should be golden brown and crusty after about 10-15 minutes - faster on higher output burners, slower on lower output burners. My friend has tried my version and says it is "almost" as good as hers made the traditional way - which takes almost an hour. And in fact, she has adopted my method when having to cook for a crowd because she can't dedicate one or two burners on her stove for just that one dish for an hour for each batch.

In western Kentucky, where I was born and raised, they were known as pecan "meltaways" (there are a fair number of recipes if you Google that name) And they were occasionally made with rum or bourbon - but never if they were going to one of the church events. I have also seen them called pecan crescents, pecan balls, Mexican wedding cookies, Italian wedding cookies that were plain, with pecans, with pecans and lemon, plain with anise, made with pine nuts, and Pecan Snowballs, Louisiana Pecan balls, Southern Pecan Butterballs, Martha Stewart calls hers' Noel Nut Balls And the funniest name is Angel Turds... Lest you think I am making this up, here is the link - Pecan balls or angel turds – the best Christmas cookie of all My grandparents' cook made 50 DOZEN of these for Christmas after the end of WWII and it was easier to get white sugar and powdered sugar. 600 cookies may sound like a lot but at Christmas 1945 with some visiting family and friends, there were more than 30 people to be fed. There were other cookies and lots of cakes but I remember these because I could help roll them in the powdered sugar - togged out in a large pinafore to cover my clothes because that powdered sugar went everywhere! It was really funny that some of the men, who usually avoided the kitchen, would walk through on their way out instead of leaving through the hall to the porch that opened on the side where the barns were. Going out the kitchen door, they had to walk halfway around the house. Often there were suspicious patches of powdered sugar on their coats.

A friend is sending me some Wensleydale cheese for Christmas. It is used a lot in baking breads, cakes, scones, etc., in her part of Yorkshire, a village near Bradford. She said she made croissants filled with Wensleydale and onion confit for an office party and they were the first to go. I'm not in a position to buy much cheese right now so this will be a real treat.

I am very fond of caerphilly in buns and in phyllo dough wrapped like strudel. For some reason I've never added it to biscuit dough.

For the questions about using Splenda or any of the sugar substitutes. The Splenda/Sugar baking mixes, both white sugar and brown sugar have instructions on the bags for substituting. So do the Stevia/Sugar baking mixes and those with Sucralose and etc. I have tried ALL of the baking mixes that are specified for BAKING and with excellent results. In fact, I used even less of the mixture and substituted UNSWEETENED APPLESAUCE (purchased some very large jars) in the quick breads and muffins with strong flavors - gingerbread, pumpkin bread, carrot cake, and an APPLE CAKE! The apple cake took an additional 15 minutes of baking to get to the 210° internal temp - I am using a remote probe, inserted after the cake is fully "set" to make sure it reaches that DOND temp. I prefer baked goods that are less sweet and even when I use regular sugars, I have been cutting down the amounts with no difference in the results except for less longevity - that is some cakes, such as yellow and white will stale faster - after 2 or 3 days but that is seldom a problem. Cakes with chocolate or cocoa do not stale as rapidly. I have been doing this for several years after noticing that cakes made back in the "War years" used much less sugar (which was rationed) both here and in the UK, and were perfectly fine. What I also noticed was that in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, there were many cookbooks that were published with ADs by Dominos, Spreckels, American Crystal, C&H, and other SUGAR producers, that had INCREASED AMOUNTS OF SUGAR! Merchandising of a product DROVE many of these recipes with the additional sugar and in my opinion, a lot of it is unnecessary.

I have the "muffin-top" pans with the shallow cups which will be even easier than the rings (I have a bag full of rings) that I used for making English muffins back when I was catering, until I bought six of the hamburger bun pans - full size. When I sold my Blodgett oven I gave most of my full-size pans to the buyer because I did not contemplate ever having a commercial oven again.

I have been ordering my favorite cheeses from iGourmet (along with other goodies) for quite a few years. I have tried many of their cheeses and never had a complaint. (Caerphilly is my favorite cheese and I order a wheel once a year) I have also ordered from Ideal Cheese co and from Murray's Cheese.

Absolutely! I never thought of a tawa because the one I have is flat but it does have the same type of holder. I haven't used it for years, don't even know where it is. I think the bowl shaped one would also work over a gas burner, UPSIDE-DOWN. I got my tawa from Indian Sweets and Spices, a "chain" of Indian stores in the greater Los Angeles area. The first one was down the street from my office on Sherman Way in Canoga Park, CA in the early '80s. It was "ethnic grocery row" as besides the Indian grocery, there was an Italian one that had been there since the '50s, a Korean grocer and a Tortilla "factory."

Chestnut roaster?

If you liked the cheddar sold at Hickory Farms back then, you will LOVE the Coughar Natural Cheddar from Washington State University. They also have the Cougar Gold but the closest to the Hickory Farms product is the Natural. I have ordered both as well as the smoky, not available now, The 30 ounces will last a few weeks unless you use it for mac and cheese - I used to order two at a time - it keeps beautifully as long as the can is not opened. I often would bake a baguette, split it in half lengthwise, use a fork to pull out much of the crumb (staled to use as bread crumbs) and spread the interior of the crust with the Cougar, cut it into segments, consume some right away and later reheat it in the oven for a snack or an accompaniment to soup.

400° F. 20 minutes - check them at 17-18 minutes, some ovens run hot.

Not really, if you want a correct result, substitution of all-purpose flour does not work. The thing with the self-rising flours for baking TENDER quick breads is, as pointed out in the literature from King Arthur (which behaves like the White Lily, Martha Washington, Red Band flours of 30 years ago, before the companies were purchased by a MEGA-corportation and they no longer MILLED the flour in multiple stages the way White Lily was milled in Knoxville, Tennessee from SOFT-WHEAT) as does my favorite, ODLUMS SELF-RAISING flour which is an Irish product and superior to any others I have tried. ALL-PURPOSE flour is milled from HARD WINTER WHEAT. It does not behave the same as soft-wheat flour, and in my opinion trying to substitute it for one defeats the purpose. If you don't want to be bothered by buying self-rising flour made with soft-wheat then use a regular recipe with all the individual ingredients. Biscuits or scones will be heavier, the crumb/texture will be denser and they won't rise the way they should. Some bakers use 1/3 cake flour combined with 2/3 all-purpose to "lighten" the flour. The results, in my opinion, are marginally better but the reason some commercial bakeries buy a proprietary product made with soft-wheat is because it is better for those particular products. A friend who worked for a commercial distributor in Baltimore has said that the bakeries with the best ratings for cakes, quick breads, etc., use Wilkins Rogers Soft Wheat flours.

A friend who lives (and BAKES) in Canada has no trouble finding Self-Rising flour at BULK BARN in Ontario.

The very simple one I posted on the first page, along with a photo. I've been preparing them for 60-some years.

Whit Lily flour is NOT what it was 30 years ago! When Smuckers bought the company they moved production from Tennessee where it was milled a certain way and and changed the method and the flour changed a lot. I used White Lily and had for decades and I noticed the difference. I use King Arthur self-rising flour which is now fairly easy to find and is very good. However my FAVORITE self-raising flour, which is better than King Arthur, but more expensive, is ODLUMS which is an Irish product and is Odlums "CREAM" flour with the ingredients that make it self-raising. I happened to make biscuits today - a very simple recipe. One cup of heavy cream, 2 cups of King Arthur self-rising flour. I use a Danish dough whist to mix because it blends the ingredients more rapidly with less working of the dough. Which is very important to keep the biscuits from being tough. If you use heavy cream, you don't have to cut butter into the dry ingredients because the heavy cream contains enough fat to replace the butter. These have a natural "split" area because I pat the dough even, roll it out to about 1/2 inch thick, fold it in half and roll lightly so it is 3/4" thick, cut and bake.

From about 1990 to 2012 I had ever model of the CoffeeMaster that had been produced by Sunbeam fully complete with the correct "innards" which ranged from a screw-in to the bottom of the pot a filter assembly on the earlier ones that had smaller (and in my opinion better) seal collars which made it easier to take them apart. The later ones had larger collars that often stuck and after a number of years, if they were not properly cared for, they were impossible to pull apart - the reason a lot of those went to the dump. I had the seals replaced on five of mine so they worked as they should. In 2013 I began to sell one at a time and now I am down to one complete one and one that requires a new seal - which I got in a trade along with a supply of filters for some I was selling. Vacuum-brewed coffee is, in my opinion, superior to any percolator-brewed coffee or French press coffee and all of the ready-made pod coffees. Some people have learned that, which is why I have been able to sell my 21 CoffeeMasters with little difficulty. (Sunbeam produced 10 models but there were variations in some models - some were offered in either 8 cup or 10 cup. And some had a filter assembly for cloth or paper filters and some had "permanent" filters.) I still have several of the glass Silex vacuum brewers and from time to time I bring out my now 81-year-old Silex 10-cup Lido brewer that also has its own little "stove" though fancier than most. I had to laugh at one of the local news people who goes out to see what is going on "around town" and she was fascinated by a coffee shop that brews "personal" coffee choice at the table. They claim it is a "new" brew system from Japan. When she was giving her presentation, one of the anchors said, "I hate to bust your bubble, but my grandma had a coffee maker just like that when I was a kid. I used to sit at the table and watch the magic happen as the water went up the tube, grandma stirred the grounds and took it off the stove and after a while the bottom part was filled with coffee." She laughed and said maybe the people in the shop didn't have a grandma like his.

I was talking to a neighbor yesterday when I went to get my mail and she said she was not going to toss the 3 heads of Romaine that she had purchased the morning before. She planned to make lettuce soup with it. She said by the time she finished cooking it, the temp would be well above the 160° needed to kill off the e.coli. (She's a nurse) She said she did the same thing the last time we had the Romaine scare and there was no problem. She says her family likes lettuce soup and Romaine produces a better flavor than other types.

No, they were electric hot plates and just large enough to fit the vessels. Those had a type of percolator stem and basket which were not very efficient and did not hold up well, they rusted. I discarded them decades ago and used these as servers, brewing the coffee and tea in other brewers. The cords for the stoves are behind the tray in this photo. This is a photo of the bottom of the stove. It, like many of the hot plates made in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, had a rheostat to control the electrical output - and the heat level - so that if the plate was not hot enough, the bottom could be removed, the rheostat "advanced" and the hot plate would put out more heat. These had limits so they wouldn't get beyond a certain point, but these were made to last a long time, not be discarded after a few years.

I found a photo of the tray with the glass inserts. Not all of the trays were marked. This model toaster with the World's Fair logo was introduced in 1939 production stopped in 1942 and was brought out again after the war and was sold until 1949.

Those Sunbeam trays also went with the Sunbeam Toasters and had glass trays (1939 and after) with the 1939 World's Fair logo Sunbeam used on all its appliances for years. I've had several with and without the glass, some sold with toasters and some with the Sunbeam Coffeemaster vacuum pots and I think all were sold. The last went with this set of coffee/tea brewers with their own little "stoves" and these were earlier in the '30s.

FANTASTIC!! That is an incredible value! Of course the weight is considerable but they are great for braising. I still have the Descoware 8qt I bought in 1968. It's stained inside and I can barely lift it now, empty, but I love it.