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All Magnalite can be used on stovetop or in the oven. I have had the giant one, the biggest they ever made, since the late 60s and I often use it too cook very large turkeys rapidly, starting them on the stovetop on two burners, on a rack with a couple of cups of water. The lid seals so tightly that the turkey effectively steams. I have cooked a 35 pound turkey in about 5 hours. 4 on the stovetop, one in the oven to brown, uncovered. This has the advantage of allowing the oven to be used for other stuff when preparing a meal for a large group. The breast meat is very juicy and flavorful under a crisp skin which browns nicely in the final hour of roasting in the oven.

There is also a bakery on Westwood Blvd in Westwood Village, on the west side of the street, near Kinross, that has excellent croissants. I don't know the name. My housekeeper sometimes stops there on her home when she has only a half day at school. Very light and crusty/flakey.

I don't get about as well as I used to so rarely get out to the yard sales, however I do visit the thrift shops here in Lancaster and in Palmdale on a fairly regular basis. My best thrift shop find was not a kitchen item and it was quite a few years ago, when I still lived down below in the "Valley". I used to go to the West Hollywood and Santa Monica thrift shops because one could still find some really good items BAR... (Before Antiques Roadshow). I always looked for kitchen stuff but also checked out the books. I came across, not only a first edition, but an author's proof copy of Death In The Afternoon, with the author's signature and a note "To Errol, Nice boat Buddy, Thanks for the ride around the islands." penned on the flyleaf. I have it in a archival box, in my safe deposit box along with some of my silver and some jewelry.

Here is my newest thrift store acquisition. I have some research to do on it. I have a platter and a large bowl somewhere in one of the various storage places, with the same or very similar design. I've had these for many years. I love the colors. It is in excellent condition, not even a fleabite anywhere. The tiny white spots on the rim are under the glaze. I was amazed in the store that I couldn't find a single flaw anywhere on it. I paid a whole dollar.

Mazeltov! Sounds like you hit the jackpot.....

Wow! It will be great if I can use it as a butter dish. The only thing on the bottom that I can see and it's very faint is "Lorraine" in beautiful script and the date "1981". This appears to have been written in the wet clay with some sort of stylus. ← I would advise you to do one thing to "treat" it, prior to use. Give it a soak in enough water to cover them (I would put them in separate plastic bowls or containers) and add a bit of bleach to the water, about an ounce for a gallon of water. Allow to soak for about an hour. Then rinse well and again soak it for 30 minutes in clear water then repeat. This will make sure that any mold spores that might have been introduced in years past will not be able to transfer to anything you place in it. I have successfully used this method with crocks (some huge) that are over 100 years old. I have several Bauer crocks, from when the company was still in Paducah, KY, long before they moved to Los Angeles and became famous for their colorful "Ringware" tableware and bowls which are so sought by collectors. Bauer jugs and crocks rarely come onto the market - in fact, most pickers and dealers I know buy them and keep them for themselves. I have a big old butter crock that holds a gallon of butter. Not much use today, but I use it for "raising" cream in non-homogenized milk after I have pasteurized it. I know that many people are afraid to use bleach - however I long ago had several discussions with the expert in the local Farm Bureau office who has every publication imaginable about treating anything that comes in contact with food. Even though some pottery and similar materials are fired and glazed, they still have "pores" in the surface in which mold spores in particular can hide and they can survive for years until conditions that are optimal for growth occur. You can test the porosity of a piece of crockery by immersing it in clear water. After a couple of minutes you will see trails of tiny bubbles streaming to the surface and this indicates the pores where the water is displacing the air.

You can compare several brands ]at this site. and the Amazon offerings. I have this one for two or three years and it gets a work out. When grinding things like cloves or broken stick cinnamon, I hold the lid on while depressing the button at the side and turn the things upside-down and back rapidly a few times and it gets everything ground evenly. I have several, including a KitchenAid which I got on sale at Target for 9.99. However the Krups has a larger capacity than any of the others. Here's a useful hint. To clean between spices or whatever, place 3 or 4 broken saltine crackers and two tablespoons of baking soda in the grinder and turn it on, hold the top on and also invert it several times. The mixture will remove residual oils, it will even remove coffee residue. I think the DeLonghi was taken off the market. I know they had them at Gottschalk's dept store last December but when I was there in January, they were no longer in the DeLonghi display and I saw several of the boxes taped together with packaging tape behind the cashier's kiosk. I notice that they are shows as not available at the Amazon site.

It is a cheese and butter keeper and indeed yes, the groove is supposed to be filled with water to which you add a couple of drops of white vinegar. As the water evaporates, it will cool the entire plate which will, in turn, cool the cover. It is a very attractive (and unique) piece of pottery. Does it have a mark like a beehive on the bottom?

Try the ones at the Bristol Farms markets, in-house bakery. They are terrific, however, if you want the ones with ham and cheese, you have to get to the store early because they sell out rapidly. The last time I was in the South Pasadena store, it seemed like everyone was buying croissants. Here are the store locations in L.A. County. Be warned, their bakery stuff tastes as good as it looks and one can drop half a yard without much trouble.

The mustard I use is Coleman's DRY mustard - a totally different thing - you know when you feel the "bite."

One of my friends owns a Scrapbooking store and has a great source for custom rubber stamps of all kinds. I will phone her later today (she teaches classes until 2:00) and will get the info if you (or anyone else) is interested.

You might try contacting these people and asking if you can buy the rolls of rice paper in quantity at a discount.rice paper rolls. You can then get a custom rubber stamp made with your logo and food-safe or edible inks and stamp each section of the paper that would cover the pastries. Here's a jaguar I have used this as well as papers from this vendor To make pleated fans on which to present pastries, candies, petit fours and other goodies. I "painted" them with edible dyes so they were 100% food safe. You can do a lot of unique things with the stuff. Several years ago I was sent some samples of paper made from kudzu which was also "edible". I can't remember the name of the company but as I recall, they were in Georgia. The nice thing with rice paper is that once the vegetable "inks" have dried into the paper, they will not fade. This is unique to this material. Here's a jaguar

One thing that has puzzled me, not just here on eG, but for many years, is that people who turn up their noses at MW wil eat hot dogs, frankfurters, wieners, or whatever you call them........ with the ubiquitous yellow mustard in the gallon pump jar, slather on chopped onions that comes in a 5 gallon bucked and the relish, ditto. Incidentally, the French chef from whom I took my first "classic" cooking class, had worked at a restaurant in Memphis on his way west (after a stint in London and New York for the Hilton people) and developed a taste for a peanut butter sandwich spread with MW and topped with sliced bananas. He said the first time he ate one it was on a dare and he thought "merde" -- then thought "not terrible" and then he began to think "this grows on one" ....... This had all started when the kitchen help were discussing the favorite foods of The King... (this was the mid-60s and Elvis was in Memphis for a benefit concert. In our discussions about preparing mayonnaise and the various commercial varieties, he said that if one couldn't get good, fresh olive oil, one would do better to buy the stuff in the jar, assuming it was a premium brand, and he said Miracle Whip had its uses also, than set out a homemade mayo made with inferior oil. Hey, this was the early 70s, before the advent of the enormous variety of "gourmet" oils we have today.

I tried several of the cornstarch recipes and didn't like the pasty mouth feel. After discussing it with one of the people in my local health food store, actually in the restaurant in the store, who suggested I try guar gum, I found that it was much better. Also, it thickens without heating and doesn't "break".

I have tried many, many times - I make mayonnaise on a regular basis. The closest I ever got was when I added some of the "brine" from a jar of bread and butter pickles, carefully strained to remove all the seeds and bits. I mixed 1/4 teaspoon of guar gum into 1/4 cup of the (sweet/sour) pickle juice and whisked it briskly until it had thickened, then slowly drizzle it into a cup of mayonnaise while whisking. It was pretty close, so I added a smidge of Coleman's dry mustard and beat that in and it got a bit closer, but there was still something missing. I have saved the liquid from a jar of Peppadews, which is sweet/sour like the B&B pickle juice but also has a bit more "tang" from the peppadews. I am going to try this in a batch of mayonnaise to see if it is a bit more like MW that any of my previous experiments.

I too am a fan of Miracle Whip in certain applications. For instance, slathered on two pieces of homemade bread, sourdough if possible, between which are arranged slices of fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes and slices of sweet red onion (since the Bermuda has apparently gone the way of the Dodo). And, on occasion, when I get some really sweet iceberg lettuce (it's rare, but not all of it is tasteless) I will whip up a batch of "Russian" dressing. Waldorf salad is another application, however I mix it half and half with sour cream, homemade if I am feeling ambitious. Then there is the blue cheese (actually gorgonzola) and Miracle Whip veggie dip that cannot be duplicated with any other mixture - and I have tried many, many times.

I am also very fond of the Blue Agave. Their chile verde pork (AKA carnitas) is excellent. My best friends, with whom I stay during the Christmas holidays as well as several times during the year, live just up the road (on Avocado Avenue) and we go there often. Their sauces are individually suited to each type of food - they don't depend on an "all-purpose" type of seasoning that goes on everything.

I got mine specifically for bread because I wanted something smaller than the old commercial Hobart I had been using and which I could no longer lift (after a back injury) I have a KA that I use for other things. I tried the Bosch which was being touted by King Arthur flour at the time and it walked off the counter while kneading a large batch and cracked two of my floor tiles. I saw an article about the AEG (as it was then called in the US) in a magazine, may have been Sunset - and the writer said the capacity was greater than just the volume of the bowl seemed to be. Good enough for me. I bought one and I love it. I bake a lot of bread, not as much as I did, but still, more than most.

That is one of the reasons the Hampshire became so popular in Kentucky and southern Illinois. It was a hog that excelled at foraging and in fact, many of the wild boars have some Hampie characteristics such as erect ears and some also have white markings across their shoulders but of course have more hair. http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/swine/hampshire/index.htm The ones we had on the farm when I was a child were allowed to roam in an area that included wooded hills and in the fall were allowed into the orchards to clean up the windfall fruits and also into the pecan and walnut groves. They ate a lot of wild hickory nuts, wild berries and other plants and roots as well. However, they always knew when it was feeding time and would be lined up at the gate to get into the feed yard. I think my grandpa's farm was the first one in the area to have silos for storing chopped corn stalks, mixed with other plant material for supplemental feeding the hogs and cows. There were other swine breeds on the farm but my grandfather didn't want any crossbreeds so they were kept apart. He imported three spotted hogs from England in 1948 and had imported others in the 1930s that I think were large and middle whites. The spotted hogs were very large also. He got some Ozark hogs from a breeder in Arkansas about the time I started school, in 1944, and I recently learned, when I called one of my cousins who runs that part of the farm business, they are also called Mule-foot hogs because their hooves are solid instead of split. I remember it only because I got to go along in the truck pulling the horse van(trailer) and we detoured to the Army Air Corps base at Stuttgart to see one of my uncles who was a training officer. However before that the most exciting part for me was when the truck and trailer went onto a boat at Paducah and down the Ohio and then the Mississippi rivers. I had been on ferry boats back and forth across the Ohio to southern Illinois many times but had never seen the Mississippi. My cousins (actually the children of the cousins with whom I grew up) are really into studying the characteristics, do DNA testing, all of which would have astounded my grandpa but he would have taken to it because with any of the animals, he felt that keeping exact records was the only way to produce a better animal. Ours did a lot of winning at fairs..

I've had the AEG/Electrolux Assistant for several years and I love it. Because of the way the drive powers the bowl movement, it does more with 450 watts than other mixers do with much higher wattage. I particularly like the timer because I don't have to stand watching the machine while it runs. It handles even very dense doughs - I burnt out a KA mixer while kneading some struan dough - this mixer works it easily. I recommend this vendor Pleasant Hill grain. They include things in the base price that other vendors sell extra. Note their notice that the factory in Sweden is being retooled and they will not have any mixers to ship until late June and I know for a fact that they already have several pre-orders because one of my local friends just ordered one and was given the option of cancelling her order or buying something else. She has used mine as a tryout and wants it because of the greater capacity. I have a dough hook but rarely use it. I find the roller/scraper combination works dough more like hand kneading than other mixers and the dough, never, ever crawls up the beater, which used to annoy me no end with the KA. I have recommended them many times over the years and the people who have gotten them have mostly always been quite happy with them. The way they work is different from other mixers and sometimes one needs to adjust how one works with them but once you get used to it you find it has a lot of advantages. It is a lot easier to add ingredients with the machine running than with the KA. I make quite a bit of Italian meringue and I have yet to burn myself with hot syrup using this machine - it happened many times with the KA.

I have Type II diabetes, diagnosed a couple of years ago and usually in good control, except when I have an infection, the flu or am excessively fatigued. I take Avandia, which works well for me but I do watch my diet carefully. I have other problems that cause my electrolytes to go haywire and keeping everything in balance is tricky. I have some of the Pedialyte freezer pops in the freezer because they replace electrolytes as well as dextrose and fructose and in a form that is rapidly absorbed. I have a couple of bottles in my tote bag that goes everywhere with me (along with my backup Epipens). It doesn't require refrigeration until opened. We get samples at the office, however I have also printed out coupons from an online site which give a dollar off on a 4-bottle pack. It also tastes better than the diabetic stuff. I also can't exercise a lot because my joints are damaged by arthritis. However, I have discovered that I can exercise on a "glider-type" of machine, not an elliptical, and found one that works well. I have it in the den so I can watch TV while exercising. My blood glucose will drop after a certain level of exercise but never to the point that I am hypoglycemic.

I know they have them in Hungary because my housekeeper's mum has one. No garbage disposable though. The "edible" garbage is picked up every other day by a service that delivers it to hog farmers.

I always feel the honeydews also. I don't know about them feeling sticky, but to me if they have a suede-like feel and if the blossom end gives a bit with thumb pressure, they should be ripe. The orange-flesh honeydews are much sweeter than the regular ones and the really sweet ones have a sort of rusty look radiating out from the stem end. With watermelons, look for a deep yellow color in the area where the melon rests on the ground. If you find one that is yellow with tracks of tiny brown specks near the stem, (called bee kisses) that is another sign of a ripe, sweet melon. Cantaloup should not have any green on the skin and the webbing should be fairly rough. They should have a sort of perfume-like aroma at the stem end and the blossom end should give a bit when pressed with a thumb. With cassaba, which have a pointy blossom end, there should be slight wrinkling of the pointy bit.

My family, back in Kentucky, raise mostly Hampshire hogs and a few Herefords (they have white faces, like the cattle with the same name). Locally, I have friends who also have raised some Hampshires. Unlike the commercial pigs, which are mostly a cross of several breeds to get a leaner animal, the purebred Hampies pack on plently of fat and lard. The meat is well-marbled and very tender and not near as dense as market pork. Right away you notice the color of the meat is much redder than commercial pork. No "other white meat" on these hogs!

So far in the induction cooker I have cooked long grain Basmati, Suna Massouri, Jasmine, Calrose short grain, Lundberg mixed brown rice, Thai sweet rice, sticky purple rice and sticky black rice with sesame seeds (also black), baby potatoes, 7-grain cereal mix, steel cut oats, cracked wheat, buckwheat groats, white corn grits and barley. Everything has turned out nicely, including the sticy rices. The buckwheat did not get quite done enough the first time I tried it but I just added some more water and started the cooker again. The second time I used more water and it turned out perfect.