andiesenji

You mean like this? Or something lower on the price/performance scale? ← I'm a big fan of Northern Tool also. I've had my meat grinder for several years and never had a single problem with it. I have used it to stuff a lot of sausage and it's a lot easier to use than others I used in the past.

I have a large fold-up solar oven that was used extensively during the years when I was still able to get up into the high Sierras on camping/fishing trips. It is like a parabolic antenna with wedge-shaped sections on a wire frame. It will broil, bake and cook just about anything one can cook on a regular stove. When I posted in an earlier thread, I had forgotten about the pressurized water boiler that was great because the water would reach a true boil, something that was impossible at over 8000 ft altitude in an open vessel. Very important for a tea drinker! Here's another site that has some good info. solor cookers/parabolic

Maybe I should break out my old Shopsmith and Ronson electric carving knife and see how that would work. I bet it's possible.

You are 100% correct! Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and can be found in very high concentrations with absolutely NO visible smoke. It also concentrates at lower levels in an enclosure than the lighter, visible smoke so staying near the floor is not exactly the wisest move. Multiple open windows as well as a very efficient fan would be required.

I just called Monica and she said she got the idea from a Mother Earth News article and it is available online. I just posted the link in my last post. Monica said she wanted to be able to pick fruit without climbing a ladder! She is my age (69) and not as spry as she used to be.

I don't see anything wrong with any of the plants and trees you have chosen. You should plant different varieties of beans with some distance between them if you plan to harvest any dry and save some for planting next year - cross-pollination can give you some surprises. If you choose strawberry varieties that produce all year long, you can harvest them almost all year and when they produce rooted scions you can transplant them into new pots and keep expanding. The cultivars I have are: Sunset which are strong and produce large, very flavorful fruit. I also have some Sequoia and Chandler plants which bear heavily in May/June and some Quinault that had fruit well into November. I have tried a few others, including some "wild" strawberries but had little luck with them. You can grow a much larger variety in your area. I would recommend you plant at least two lemon verbena shrubs. It should grow beautifully in your area and the lemon flavored leaves can be used in so many applications. They dry beautifully and retain their flavor for a very long time. It dies back with a hard frost and right now it still looks completely dead but soon the dry-looking branches will begin producing bright green leaves. I have several varieties of rosemary, also several sages and lavenders, three or four thymes, scented pelargoniums, costmary, anise hyssop. You should grow some lavender, it is beautiful and well suited for your area and has several great culinary uses. Pineapple sage is spectacular and attracts butterflies and hummingbirds. It also grows taller than most sages so is a good background plant. I also love Cleveland sage which is a beautiful landscape plant and produces beautiful flower spikes that dry nicely if you like to make dried flower arrangements. One of my friends who lives in the Santa Ynez valley has planted several varieties of fig trees and has them espaliered which allows her to have more trees in a smaller than normal area. You can see some ideas here. and here. Monica's are in the Belgian fence style.

My Electrolux mixer has a plastic bowl for use only with the whisks (double) and I get wonderful volume beating egg whites in it. As posted above, the bowl has to be totally free from any oil. I use Dawn detergent but I also spray a mixture of vinegar and water into the bowl, rinse with clear water then dry carefully before I start egg whites. (I do this with any plastic or silicone bowls, spatulas, etc.)

Living as I do in the southern Calif. high desert (above 2000 ft altitude), there are actually four seasons and one has to carefully select what to plant and when to plant it. I envy people who live in the coastal areas and have friends who live in the "banana belt" who have greater latitude in what they grow. (I especially envy my best friends who have lovely avocado trees in their front yard, both decorative and producing fruit.) This area is ideal for growing herbs and vegetable plants that evolved around the Mediterranean sea as the soil and the climate is nearly identical. We have a very long growing season for an area that does get well below freezing during the short winter. I no longer maintain the large back garden in which I used to grow many vegetables requiring large spaces but still have a 40' x 90' "side" garden in which I have combined herbs and vegetables and fruits that require less space. Some are in ground, many are in pots and planters both to save water and to make gardening easier for me. Some are started in the greenhouse and moved outside in their pots as soon as all danger of frost has ended. Also, plants that in other areas require full sun do just fine in partial shade here. I use "screens" made of shade cloth to protect tender plants from the fierce winds during very hot weather. Again, this cuts down on the need for water and protects the plants and fruits. Rather than have rigid lines, the plants are situated along winding paths planted with a hybrid Bermuda grass that needs little water and rarely needs trimming. These photos were taken in May '07. Rosemary in the foreground, bay laurel to the left under an apricot tree. Sorrel in ground at left - it tends to spread if the seed heads are not cut regularly. Scented pelargonium, herbs, baby peppers, chives and shallots. One of the strawberry pots and a strong stand of fennel that has been there for 14 years. Tomato plants in pots placed in a bed of costmary. A pot of basil and sage.

I would certainly never take my own tea into a restaurant that carried decent stuff. However, I resent paying a dollar or more for a tea bag of Lipton (or worse, some no-name brand) that has been sitting around for a year. Unless the restaurant has a good-sized base of customers who drink tea, it is not worth their while to carry specialty teas and it can be prohibitively expensive for them to carry even a limited line. At the local cafe I mentioned earlier, the owners often will come and sit with me and have a cup of my tea - (I always have a selection of several tea bags in a Zip-Loc bag) - when they aren't too busy.

I've never had a problem with ordering just hot water. I always offer to pay the same as if I ordered their tea but don't recall that I have ever been charged. A local restaurant makes a point of bringing me near-boiling water in a thermal carafe as I am a regular customer. (I also tip well.)

I am also a tea fancier and like many types. My "favorites" change from year to year and season to season because tea itself changes. Like wine grapes, some seasons or "flushes" are better than others. One can spend a lifetime tasting and studying teas and still have an adventure "discovering" something new. I have been a member of TeaMail for many years and have learned a great deal over the years from both the experts and the newbies who post very helpful information. The members are very friendly and unfailingly helpful. The Cat-Tea corner site also has a vast directory of tea shops or tea rooms all over the world which is very helpful when trying to find a place where teas can be tasted locally. There is also an extensive list of online tea vendors and one can post a question about a vendor on TeaMail and get qualitative answers about their products and service.

Whole wheat flour stales very rapidly after it is home-ground, even stored in the freezer. At least I can taste the difference when it begins to "turn" and I usually grind only enough for the current recipe. While preparing some pastries for the holidays, I mis-read the recipe and ground twice as much red wheat as I needed at that time and simply didn't get around to using it for anything else. I know it is not traditional to use whole wheat flour in stollen but I like the nutty flavor and because the wheat itself is slightly sweet on its own, I can use less sweetener (Splenda/sugar blend). For diabetics like me, this is an important consideration. I used 2/3 WW and 1/3 AP flour.

Oh, Andi, that just cries out to me for cream cheese to be slathered on and then the whole thing eaten with coffee! Looks beautiful! ← I prepared some chicken salad for lunch (actually it was meat from guinea hen that I had roasted on Sunday) and it was delicious on the toasted stollen.

That dish is just beautiful! Yesterday evening I finally got in gear and did my first "purge" and mixed up a batch of stollen, using some whole wheat flour I had ground in December that was taking up space in the freezer. Also pulled the half-full jar of mixed fruits off the shelf in the pantry and drained off the liquor in which they had been resting for six months. I made double-sized loaves and they turned out better than I expected. I don't care for the sweeter type stollen as I feel this is more versatile and can be used for sandwiches. I baked them on a half-size sheet pan: I made the first cut while the loaf was still quite warm. The slice was taken after the loaf had cooled completely and is therefore a bit neater.

The boxes are wooden. They were intended to hold small votive candles on tiers. I bought six at a small store that carries religious item as I thought they would be prefect for displaying scrimshaw, amber and gemstone carvings, back in the days that I was still able to use my right hand for that type of activity. They keep little items neatly positioned and I wish I could find more that are made as nicely as these.

I do have a place for my spices and etc., located in the pantry, which remains much cooler (especially during the summer months) and there is no exposure to sunlight and the room lights turn themselves off automatically. Having everything in the same area makes it easy to load a tray with all the little containers I will need for just about any recipe. Since this thread began, I have been purging the various spices and herbs that might be less than optimum in flavor, so I have at least made a little progress. Tackling the "staples" in the grain and legume section is next.

That reminds me that I have to do something with the racks I bought when a local gourmet kitchen store went out of business about ten years ago. I bought quite a few of their display things, including 4 of these spice tube holders. I bought a bunch of tubes but so far they are still in the box in which they arrived, on a top shelf in the pantry. Sometimes I am just so lazy it is inexcusable! I even had four "floating" shelves installed to hold them, complete with little holes for the feet so they wouldn't fall off in an earthquake. (The shelves are not empty, you must understand, they simply have become "catch-alls" for anything I might have in my hand when I walk past.) Arrrrrrrrgh!

OMG! This just gave me a huge blast from my past! (It's funny how food memories bring back things you've long forgot about!) Many, many, many years ago, I was an eager young theatre major at a small college in Missouri. Over Spring Break, we did a "tour" of high schools in Kansas and Oklahoma. Our troupe was parcelled out each night to various homes in whatever community we'd landed in. For some reason, every lovely, gracious hostess I was assigned to decided that ham loaf would be the perfect thing to serve a hungry college kid! I'd never had the pleasure of eating ham loaf before that week and have never eaten it again! But, I sure ate a lot of it that week! For me, once ham has been frozen, there's nothing worthwhile to do with it except use it for seasoning soup, beans, veg, etc. Freezing ham really changes the texture in a negative way. Pam ← This has intense memories for me also. I can recall vividly the time that I, armed with the (at that time) new Spice Islands Cookbook, attempted a "spiced ham loaf" that took half a day to prepare. On tasting it my husband (ex Navy man) put down his fork and congratulated me on re-inventing "Spam." I was mortified but he assured me that unlike most of his fellow sailors, he actually liked the stuff, and in fact often visited the non-com's mess because it was seldom served to the officers. However, I never prepared that particular recipe again. I did discover another ham loaf recipe that was more like one of the preparations one would have seen in the 18th and early 19th century and included prunes and other dried fruits as well as horseradish and mustard. I haven't made that one for a number of years but just thinking of it reminds me that it was very popular with my guests and I never had leftovers. I have a generous amount of dried fruits that I did not use during the holidays and this should use up a good amount. Thank you!

Thanks for the info. I don't eat seafood but if the paella is the one with chicken and snails, i.e., paella Valenciana, I can have that. I visit Cookin' Stuff fairly often but have yet to get to Penzeys. I generally combine a visit to Surfas with visits to points further south. I have a portable fridge in my van for the long trips - makes a huge difference in how much I buy...........

Never trust anyone who is unfamiliar with your various gadgets to use them ONLY as they are intended to be used. A friend stopped by a little while ago with her new "significant other" who happens to be a smoker. He was banished to the patio to have a cigarette and apparently thought the propane lighter would work fine as a cigarette lighter. We heard a yell and looked outside to see the idiot stamping on his burning baseball cap (ex-Navy guy type) which he had ignited when the 5-inch flame shot out of the tube of the lighter. He also lost part of his left eyebrow but apparently has no burns. They departed with him still grumbling about losing his cap which for some reason he has decided is MY fault.... I guess I will have to lock up stuff just as I did when the kids were small and couldn't be trusted to stay away from things they shouldn't touch!

Melinda Lee, KNX Radio, on her Food News show just mentioned that this company will soon be offering the acorn-fed Iberico de Bellota Paleta shoulder jamon (ham). This is in addition to other specialty ham products. I don't know how I have managed to miss this place but this is the first I have heard of it. They have a web page La Espanola Meats but it is just a one page history with a link to a location map. I would like to know if it is worth my making the long drive from Lancaster to shop at the store. If anyone has shopped there, please post information.

I just store the rice with a few bay leaves (dried) in the container, same with other grains, flours, meals, etc. For some reason, pantry moths and weevils don't seem to care for sweet laurel.........

Your meal sounds lovely. Perhaps the next time he gets to the area you might be able to wend your way inland a ways to Yorba Linda and try a meal (lunch or dinner are both excellent) at Blue Agave Southwestern Grill. This is not a traditional "Mexican" restaurant but it is very, very good and many of the dishes are unusual and beautifully presented. Menu

Have you considered something Like This? or this. or this one. I have a large rice dispenser that drops a cup each time the lever is pushed. I think it holds 25 pounds and I keep regular long grain rice in it. Other types in smaller amounts are stored in Cambro round containers and as mentioned in an earlier post, some are stored in the freezer along with other whole grains, farro, kamut, amaranth, wheat berries, etc., as they tend to turn rancid. On the other hand hulled millet seems to keep practically forever and I use a lot of that also. I buy the Cambro translucent containers at Smart & Final. They are cheap, can go from freezer to microwave and last forever - at least I haven't been able to seriously harm one. Get the translucent ones, which are flexible, not the clear. The lids on these fit tighter.

I tried to watch it but changed channels because it simply held no interest for me. The Food Network has had an excellent African-American chef host shows in the past and Curtis Aikens, who was with TFN at the beginning, has continued to present informative and interesting shows. He has a flair for presenting a recipe that involves the viewer and certainly makes me want to try them. The Neelys' show may be popular with many people but to me it seems too "cartoonish" and it certainly has NOT gone over well with my African-American neighbors who feel much of the dialog is gratuitous and contrived. (She is a college professor (economics) and he is an engineer (highway construction) She is from Mississippi, he is from Texas and both said they felt uncomfortable during the brief time they watched it.