andiesenji

It's for charity. I do NOT feel the same way about things discovered in the antique "malls" where so many things are marked up way beyond their worth. If I find a bargain in one of these for-profit places, I take it for what it is marked. I have clewed in some yard sale sellers when they put out really good stuff at far too cheap prices. The profiteers who mine these places often even ask for a discount. Last year a woman was clearing out a neighbor's home - she went into a nursing home. I knew she had some very good stuff so I went over the day before when they were trying to price things and explained that her mom's collection of Fire King peach glow was worth a lot more than she was pricing. There were also some early Fire King PHilbe baking dishes, loaf pans and pie plates which she had priced a 50 cents each. I helped her price a lot of the other things and she gave me several pieces for my help. After the sale she said a man bought all of the Fire King peach glow and did ask for a substantial discount for taking all of it. She said no and he took it anyway. It was priced so he could still make a profit, probably doubling what he paid. I have some of the green restaurant ware by Hall but I think I only have one green teapot. Several of mine were inherited as we were a tea-drinking family and not the usual southern sweet tea. My great grandmother had spent a lot of time in England and she insisted on afternoon tea every day and as we were a large, extended family, it required several tea pots.

It is behaving like a jerk. I found a somewhat "rare" Hall China teapot in one store a few years ago. They had it priced at $3.99, which was ridiculous. It was in perfect condition. I took it up to the counter and was greeted by one of the women who knew me. I told her that someone had mismarked the teapot and I would buy it for 39.99, which was somewhat closer to what it was worth. She took my money and thanked me. This is a thrift store that supports the neonatal unit at the hospital here. I think it is disgusting to cheat them. When it comes to Goodwill or Salvation Army - I don't care. Goodwill CEO is paid a ridiculous salary and they mark stuff up now to ridiculous prices . So does SA, which sells online and often doesn't pack well. I bought an Eva Zeisel piece for my Harlequin set and it arrived smashed to pieces. The idiot who packed it wrapped a single piece of small bubble wrap around it and it was obviously loose in the box with no other packaging. I complained and they ignored me but I went through PayPal to get my money back.

You are very honest. There are people at thrift shops here who take all the good stuff - especially Pyrex - because it is hot right now. One sells on ebay and one of my friends who shops at the thrift store said this woman bought a boxed set of pink mixing bowls - pristine, never used - for $15.00 and sold them on ebay for $150.00 and bragged about it to her friends. My friend took great delight in congratulating her in the store for her coup. Apparently this was noted and she is no longer working there. If you price an item fairly, and the store has no objections, why not print out one of the ebay or etsy pages and show them.

I was on the Kerekes site a few days ago and I think they had them cheaper.

I have tried numerous "bread" knives. Most are not long enough for my liking. I have stuck with the Dexter Russell roast slicer for well over 20 years. They saw through hard, crusty loaves as easily as through brioche and with just as fine a precision. I used to buy them at Smart & Final for 10.99 initially, then they went up to 14.99, sometimes they could be found cheaper online but there was shipping cost. Now they are $19.79 on Amazon. And free shipping. Read the reviews. By the way, I will be selling my big Wusthof two-handle cheese knife with the 12 3/4" blade. If interested, PM me. I never really used it on any hard cheese, just once to see how it worked on Caerphilly.

I wrote about my "Christmas" duck last year that turned out to be my December 29 duck because it took a long time to thaw. Can't find the thread. My friend the "egg man" who raises fancy chickens, game birds as well as guinea fowl, ducks, geese and etc., brought me a lovely big duck that had been flash frozen. That sucker was determined to stay frozen but once I did get it thawed, it was a beauty. And the long, low roasting method produces a lot more lovely duck fat. I started it breast down and using my handy poultry hook, turned it over half-way through the roasting time. I had stuffed a large orange, studded with 4 or 5 cloves and a large onion, also with a few cloves, in the cavity. This was just after turning it when I applied the orange/apricot sauce I had made from homemade apricot preserves. Then, after another 2 1/2 hours at 275° - - And finally 25 minutes at 375°F. To finish that glaze. and the duck fat and I used this to turn it. Very handy instrument.

Sounds like a lot to me also. I use the Guerande "velvet" salt and at most, 2/3 of a teaspoon. It depends on the culture, some taste more salty than others without the addition of any salt.

They even have adjustable ones there is a channel in the handle that has a button that moves the plate up and down on the wires. Pretty clever. Instead of having different sized portion control on both ends, this is much neater. I can think of some other applications where a gadget like this might come in handy.

I would never have guessed. I took a screenshot and emailed it to my friend of 40 some years, Fumiko Ito, who has even more kitchen gadgets, both antique and modern, than I do, many hauled home from Japan where she visits often to see her daughter and grandchildren. She just phoned and says she has a metal one with balls of wires on each end, large and small. She says she has never used it, only the bamboo ones that are sort of like the chansens (matcha tea whisks) only longer handle and shorter, thicker "bristles" I have seen her use them, just never though to ask what they were called. It's kind of a dual-purpose tool because she uses the slightly rounded end of the handle to crush stuff in a suribachi bowl.

A gallon of "store brand" milk is 2.78.

Yes but I don't want to buy a pound of it. It goes rancid rapidly and it takes me several months to use up 8 ounces.

You can call the New York Bakers and ask. They sell flours that are only available commercially - in SMALLER, CONSUMER-SIZED packages that they weigh and pack themselves so that HOME BAKERS will have access to these flours. I think the people with this Modernist stuff are being a bit picky. I have been extremely satisfied - the "first clear flour" is excellent for artisan breads. The ryes are also and if they aren't "fine" enough, though I don't see any problem, they can be zapped in a blender for a couple of seconds and then sifted through a very fine sieve. The flavors can be enhanced with malt powder or syrup. Or this stuff, which is first toasted in a dry skillet, cooled and ground and added sparingly to the flours. For that matter, I have been "toasting" flour for my rustic breads for years. We used to have an Italian bakery near my work in Canoga Park, CA. I often went there for lunch or stopped on my way home. One of the bakers was a patient and one day when he was in the office, I mentioned that I had worked in my mom's bakery twenty years earlier and I had been trying to figure out what gave their breads such a lovely flavor, almost as if they contained nut flours. He said he would let me in on the "secret" - half the flour was "roasted" at 300° for 15 minutes, stirring a couple of times, cooled and used that day - it did not keep well. So I tried it at home and the flavor was exactly what I wanted in the rustic breads. I have also roasted rye flour, barley flour, spelt and others. I like the flavor. The hydration is thrown off a little so I watch the dough and add a bit more water if needed.

I picked up a small ham, a "stewing hen" and some chicken leg pieces at Aldi this morning. I checked out the eggs, that someone had mentioned were cheap. NOT CHEAP HERE. the "large" eggs were quite small and 1.86 a dozen. They had little selection in the dairy. only pints of heavy cream and way more expensive than Walmart. The only eggnog they had was Knudsen, which is crap. I bought a huge loaf of round bread, which is pretty good but their "sandwich" bread is that soft stuff. Other breads had short expiry dates. It's the 16th and every bread I looked at, except the one I bought was dated today. I needed some ginger but all they had was tiny stuff and I need the big pieces. I was going to buy some short ribs but they were $6.99 a pound and I can get them for half that at Stater brothers across the street. Their tomatoes looked awful so I passed on them. I doubt I will waste my time there again.

I buy lovely rye flour from The New York Bakers They are in San Diego. I have purchased Rye flours, Rye meal - fine, medium and coarse. Pale malted rye, the Ragsikt Swedish blend, Durum, High-Gluten flour. Euro-style artisan flour, Farine rustique and a pound of compresse dyeast and diastatic malt powder. Also some seeds and some flavorings.

I recently saw one of the PBS food shows where one of the people dropped chunks of parm into one of the smaller Cuisinart food processors and ground the parm. The other woman said, "aren't you taking a chance grinding that with the blades?" The first woman said, "this not the very hard parm, you can still slice it, I wouldn't do a rock-hard cheese this way, I have one of the hand-held rotary graters for the super-hard, aged parm or Pecorino."

These are all "twirl whisks" designed to get into the corners of sauce pans ("pan corner whisk" aka "gravy whisk") and also used for mixing cocoa powder or chocolate - used similarly to a molinillo by using the palms of the hands to "twirl" the whisk. The biggest one is Kuhn Rikon and is called the "tornado whisk" I saw these being demonstrated at Dillard's several years ago and bought these as well as several other "odd" whisks at the same time. The Rosle one has since been discontinued in the U.S. but is still available in Europe. I used it yesterday to blend cocoa powder into a base for ice cream and I had to retrieve it from the dishwasher to take the photo - it still has the evidence on it.

I have ground vanilla beans, chopped, in a poppyseed grinder - the hand-cranked type that look like a minature meat grinder. A wet grinder, with the stone wheels - will grind them into a fine paste. Like the Ultra Pride grinder

I know a couple of chefs in the "greater L.A. area" who have one and could use another but they only offered me $100. to "take it off my hands."

It is the TM31, the last one before the newest one and this one is the U.S. (Canadian) version, works on 110 voltage. I got it in November 2009 but I have not used it all that much. Mainly for making butter and occasional risotto. Made peanut butter, cashew butter, almond butter a few times. Applesauce, peach butter, plum butter. Contact me via private messages.

If anyone is interested, I will be listing my Thermomix on ebay soon. I will give a significant discount to eGullet members.

That was an error. I baked sponge cakes in it. I don't know why I typed pound. I filled them as full as I could, laying down extra batter down the middle, then closing it quickly and straight onto a hot sheet pan in a hot oven to "set" the batter in the bottom half quickly so it would push the batter up into the top half. I learned this trick from a baker friend who worked at the Huntington hotel. The temp preheat was 450 with the sheet pan in place. The pipe tin was set on the sheet pan and the oven temp lowered to 325 and bake for 55 minutes. There is room for a probe thermometer to be inserted into the center and I would do so at each end of the second loaf from the hinges.

I have a great many sentimental items. One eG related item that I treasure is a atainless steel mushroom. There was, quite a few years ago, an extended discussion on garlic gadgets and there was Fifi who advocated for an AMCO stainless steel mushroom that not only did a bang up job of crushing garlic, but also would, when one rubbed ones hands over it, under running water, would remove all odor of onions and garlic from ones hands. Fifi left us a few years later and she was sorely missed. I have one of the stainless steel mushrooms that sits on the window ledge right above my sink so I see it several times a day and remember the many times we corresponded about various things, food mostly, gardening, foraging for wild plants, strange people. And I smile because Fifi was always cheerful and very kind.

I've had this pipe tin on ebay for awhile. Have received several inquires (some extremely odd) but only very low "offers" which I declined. I used it when I was catering for bread and cakes (sponge cake). I never had any trouble with loaves sticking - I used the Vegalene Food Release Spray or the Bak-klene - purchased at Smart & Final. I used to put on a mask to spray it but now Vegalene has an "Allergen-Free" release spray.

My great grandmother's ERIE cast iron griddle (Pre-Griswold) ca. 1889. It was given to me in 1967. And another great grandmother's dough trough that was made before the Civil War from a huge chestnut burl. It is 2 feet long. You can see the marks of an inshave on the inside and the marks of a draw knife on the outside. It's not been varnished. It has been oiled and bone rubbed to get that polish and that was before I was born. It was passed to me when I got married in 1961.

All those double boilers are from the 1930s - have the "blue" tinted glass and they all have glass handles. The small one is fairly rare because most were the larger size. I've used all of them - I used to use them to make fruit curds, lemon, orange, strawberry and passion fruit, all at the same time.