andiesenji

Has the one in Signal Hill closed? That shouldn't be too far from you. It's on Willow just west of Cherry. I had lunch in that store during the holidays last year, while I was staying in Orange County. Friends and I had dinner at the one in Torrance after the South Bay Kennel Club show last year. It's just north of PCH on Hawthorne blvd., west side of the street.

If making for later, I always bake empanadas because the fried dough becomes extremely tough after a few hours. (and I have tried many different types of dough) I make empanadas filled with meats, poultry, cheese, fruits, pumpkin - anything you put in a tart or pie, you can put in an empanada. If I am preparing them for immediate consumption, I sometimes steam them, then pan fry in just a tiny bit of fat to brown the crust. I used duck fat the last time I made them this way (carnitas with potatoes and peppers, pork mincemeat with squash, and cheese with apples for dessert) and they were terrific. This thread has some great photos.

I lived in Burbank in the early '60s and we used to alternate between Bob's Big Boy and Van de Kamp's just over the border in Glendale, for Saturday morning breakfast. I haven't been in the Burbank store for years but did stop at the Bob's in Barstow the last time I drove up that way. Did you know that the Bob's iconic Big Boy symbol, a cartoon drawn by animation artist, Benny Wosham, was based on 90-pound, 6-year-old, Richard Woodruff?

Try making a small batch of sweet pickles - the semi-candied type similar to sweet pickled watermelon rind. The tuna I get are pink and purple almost all the way through, although occasionally I do get some that are sort of striped on the inside, purple and green. Use a melon baller to remove the seeds.

and today's email brings the lates bulleting from the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum and a report on National Mustard Day! Next year it will be on Saturday August 2, 2008.

I do that with the various salsas remaining in jars following a party. For some reason we never seem to put out the entire jar and each will have 1/4 to 1/3 left in the jar. I also combine similar jams and jellies, i.e. berry jams, peach, pear and apricot preserves. Pumpkin and apple butter. And so on. One of my most inspired mixtures was 1/3 pint of spicy bread and butter pickles with 1/3 pint of Italian cherry peppers and a bit less than 1/3 pint of mixed vegetable pickles. After the mixture had about three weeks to "blend" the flavor was more than the sum of the parts. They lasted three days.

I am fairly sure I have all of Dave DeWitt's books and with a couple of minor exceptions, (probably me being rather picky) they are all great cookbooks. One of my favorites is the Santa Fe cookbook. I've had it for almost ten years and I don't think there has been a better one published to date that really get the essence of the city. The recipes are more complex than in most cookbooks about the region. There is nothing generic about this collection. I think this one was written with Nancy Gerlach but am not 100% sure.

Have you looked at Linens 'N Things? or Bed, Bath and Beyond? many choices

Chile pequin and chile tepin when fresh, dried or partially dried, can be candied to great effect, as can other chiles. These are the original "red hots" but one needs to be prudent in the amount consumed. (Afterburner is a favorite term of some of the folks in a local group of hot foods aficinados.) Here's an excellent photo essay on candied hot peppers and suggestions of how to use them. from Fiery Foods Candied chile pequin in peanut brittle sounds lovely. And because of the heat, it would restrict the intake of the sugary stuff. Sort of a built-in diet plan. These grow wild in certain areas in New Mexico and one can usually find them because of the numerous birds attracted to the bushes. One of my friends, who lives in Julian, CA, found a wild pequin bush at the edge of one of her pastures several years ago and since then new plants have popped up around her home, probably from seeds deposited by the birds. The first time I was in Mexico City, back in the early '70s, (for several dog shows) our hotel served a dessert of pineapple, papaya and mango chunks drizzled with agave syrup and lime juice, then dusted with chile pequin powder. At the time I was unfamiliar with all the varieties of chiles and there was also a bit of a language barrier so our waiter (dressed quite formally in a white mess jacket and black trousers complete with cumberbund) brought a tiny dish of the chiles to show us. That was my introduction to chile pequin.

I've never had a bottle of balsamic do this, or any vinegar do that come to think of it. So you know how it goes: when in doubt, throw it out. ← I looked through my collection of balsamic vinegars, some quite ancient, and found none with anything such as you describe. Many have sediment at the bottom, but no more than expected. It is unlikely it would be a vinegar "mother" because the producers in Modena are scrupulous about removing it before the vinegar is transferred to the aging barrels. In fact, they jealously guard this important factor in the production. If the product you have is one of the greater aged true balsamics that initially had a syrupy consistency, it has a very high sugar content and it is quite possible that some of the sugar has crystalized. If you can fish one of the "bubbles" out and it feels gritty or is solid and hard, you have sugar crystals. Crystals that form in the company of acids take a different shape from those of plain sugar water. I had something similar in an unopened jar of spinach salad dressing with bacon. Each bacon bit at the top of the jar was surrounded by a "pearl" of sugar. When heated the sugar dissolved back into the liquid and the dressing was fine. You might try placing the bottle (with the stopper removed) in warm water - not over direct heat - it is best to place the bottle in a container that won't allow it to tip over and add warm-to-hot water to about 2/3 up on the bottle. Periodically pour off some of the cooling water and add more hot water. If you have a small crock pot you can use that set on low - (this is what I use for jellies, jams, honey, which have developed crystals). If the lumps dissolve it is a pretty convincing tip-off that it is sugar. If unaffected by heat, toss it.

I have to add my voice to confirm this - please make some room in your kitchen for canning tongs if you're going to do any canning at all. Boiling hot water plus wet glass jars are just asking for trouble without them - as well as a future entry in the I Will Never Again... thread. ← How true! I have several canning tongs, including a true antique that still works, although tricky to handle. I also have an antique lid grabber for glass and zinc lids (obviously the magnetic devices are useless for these). The latter looks rather like an instrument of torture rather than a kitchen utensil. Actually, most of my canning involves canning racks, as I have yet to break a jar when using one and have broken several when using tongs, mainly because my grip strength is much less than it was. For the sake of safe handling, I now use one of the portable burners made for the "turkey-fryer" pots. It is much easier to lift just one or two jars out of the canner from that much lower level.

The rubbing-of-the-hands-on-stainless-steel to get rid of garlic smell, does work. It also works with some other odors. However one doesn't need a special item, anything stainless works, although in my experience, the satin-finish works better than highly polished SS.

I had a bit of a chuckle when I saw this in one of the catalogs - Sur La Table or Napa Style - and I had the same question, about cleaning it.

When I read the intro to this thread, I thought it sounded like fun. However, reality has caught up with me and I now realize that I don't think I could count all the condiments that are in my kitchen, pantry and refrigerators. I have one refrigerator just for condiments, jams, jellies and cheeses but occasionally some of them migrate to the big fridge. Part of my problem is that friends don't just give me ONE condiment, they give me collections whenever they come across something different, odd or sometimes, just plain weird. I recently received a box of stuff from Capetown, SA because my friends did not want to take a change on packing the things in their luggage. (I can understand why, after opening one jar and having to air out the kitchen) Then there is all the stuff I have collected on my own. I have been a member of the Chile-Heads list for years and get regular bulletins from The Mustard Museum. I make at least an annual pilgramage to Light My Fire, the condiment (mainly hot sauces) shop in the Los Angeles Farmers Market. I don't think I have ever managed to get out of that store with less than twenty selections. The area in which I live has some fantastic ethnic markets, middle eastern, Indian, Phillipine, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, South and Central America as well as the Mexican supermarkets and carnicerias. And then, there is Trader Joe's with a great selection of condiments. I think I will pull a selection out of the pantry and take some photos. Tomorrow...

The blossom end will give just a bit when pressed (not too firmly) with the ball of your thumb. This works for just about any melon, except for watermelon and Christmas melon (which has a harder outer skin. Also the stem will begin to shrink just a bit and you might be able to see a faint line where it meets the melon. Some varieties will actually fall off the stem when fully ripe. Casaba are hung in net bags when the vines are trellised because they will drop off the stem. For smooth-skinned melons, when fully ripe the skin should feel slightly suede-like, not exactly rough, but there is a textural change from the waxy feel of the unripe melon.

You don't give any hint as to your location. Here in Calif. Smart & Final carries the complete line of Torani syrups as well as Coke syrup in the cartons as mentioned above. There are other suppliers who sell to small mom and pop businesses and have the syrups used for snow cones in gallong jugs. Google snow cone supplies, shave ice supplies, Hawaiian shave ice supplies, etc., for your area. Here's one in NC: Hawaiian shave ice supplies

I've been looking for a standing mixer for the church where I cook for the Seniors and I havent been able to find one. Are you finding these at Value Village? ← You might consider joining a Freecycle group in your area. It's free and I have given away several mixers (and a lot of other stuff) to people in my area. One of my friends, who now lives in Niagara, scored a Kenwood mixer to use at her school, via Freecycle. Some in Canada have been renamed Full Circles Network

I think the level of humidity might have a slight effect, however I grew up in western Kentucky, right on the Ohio river and it was always humid and we made rock candy all the time. (We did have problems with grainy fudge.) Here, the humidity is usually quite low. Today it was up to 21% but a few days ago it was in single digits. Three weeks ago we had one day it was 5% and the temp was 111. Needless to say, water evaporates with extreme rapidity. I get quite large crystals in less than a week when conditions are like that. Sometimes I suspend the strings above the jars and let them drip and the crystal surfaces dry, then put them back in the jars. Here is another site with rock candy recipe.

I just bring water to a boil and add sugar until some crystals will not dissolve on the bottom (I use a clear Visions saucepan) This is not exactly syrup, it is a super-saturated solution but has not been cooked long enough to be syrupy. I have never used skewers, I use cotton string with a button on the end for a weight, that has been dampened and rolled in sugar. The end of the string must not touch the bottom of the jar. I either tie the top end to a chopstick or use a bindery clip to hold them.

I have several pickle keepers. Currently in use one with spiced crabapples, one with jumbo, garlic-stuffed olives, one with peppadews, one with homemade mixed pickles, one with pickled asparagus. There is another at the back of the shelf but I don't want to move a partially-set Jello mold to check it.

They are called tuna - for Opuntia the genus of cacti to which prickly pear belongs. They do have a lot of seeds, which is why I use a food mill. Some varieties have fewer seeds - I find that the ones with the largest "crown" have fewer seeds and the ones with a smaller crown (the blossom end) usually have the seeds concentrated in the center.. I have no idea why, this is just my observations over thirty-some years. The produce man at the Mexican market will cut one in half for me so I can see the inside.

Frankly, unless there was a way to guarantee there were absolutely no pathogens in the food prior to vacuuming, I would be hesitant. However, I do know people who cook eggs and ham in a divided clear Pyrex baking dish, covered with plastic wrap and placed on a shiny aluminum cookie sheet which is placed on the dashboard in their SUV parked so it faces the sun. At this altitude and with absolutely no clouds and temp above 90 F, it takes less than 15 minutes for the interior temperature to reach 140 degrees. They do it as a demonstration project but the eggs and ham are certainly edible. I have neighbors who "cook" jerky on the shiny aluminum roof of a utility shed. It takes just one day. Try it with some sliced apples with sugar in multiple packages and after they have had time to reach what you think is a cooking temp, take one package and insert an instant-read thermometer and record the interior temp. Repeat with additional packages at 10-minute intervals. That should give you an idea of how long it takes to get to a certain temp. Place the outer container on something shiny. Black might work too.

I have a solar cooker I bought about 40 years ago. It folds up but when open looks like a parabolic antenna or a very shiny satellite dish. You wouldn't want to put your hand at the point where the sun's rays concentrate. It will bake bread. I used it many times when camping in the high Sierras as it was a way to get water hotter than I could on a stove or campfire. We used aluminum foil and a fish (trout) would be fully cooked in about 3 minutes. I have seen cookers made using just a sheet of shiny aluminum, bent into an arc and mounted on an adjustable wood tripod. I will see if I can find the directions.

I have cooked and frozen the pulp for later use. If they are very ripe - here they are best after an early frost as they get sweeter - I burn off the spines, peel, split, seed and cut into chunks to add to fruit salads raw. I have made pickles - using the same recipe as for sweet pickled watermelon rind, adding some spicy peppers for a bit of "bite." I rarely strain the pulp to make jelly, my favorite sweet treatment is to cook the pulp, put it through the food mill to get rid of the residual fibers, then return it to the stove and continue cooking until it is like pear or apricot butter. I have substituted this "butter" for the banana, the eggs and the oil in a banana bread recipe. It performs exactly like the commercial substitutes, in fact, the result is a little lighter than the recipe made with oil or butter. prickly pear recipes You can also substitute the cooked pulp for the applesauce in this PIE! Amish applesauce pie. And you can use it for the filling in a "stack" cake - it combines nicely with spice cake.

Click here and scroll to the bottom of the pictures. about half-way down the page. the 1/32 mesh is very fine - the 10-inch is a good size. For sifting cocoa, I sift into one of the heavyweight zip - locking bags - X-tra large. I put the tamis inside the bag, load it with cocoa, close the bag nearly all the way then sift. It saves cocoa powder drifting around and settling on and in everything, including up your nose.