andiesenji

for the shaped pans, I use Bak-Klene, made by the same company that makes Vegelene. I have never had any problems with it messing up my pans and molds.Bak-Klene I buy it at Smart & Final. Store locations in SF

For pasta I usually use a pasta scoop strainer, similar to this one. except mine has a rubber or easy grip handle. I have an over-the-sink colander and a small cutting board that just fits in the bottom of it. When I have to cut something when I only have one hand working, I put in on the cutting board because the sides of the colander holds whatever I am cutting in place. I found that I could hold the handle of one of the turkey lifter fork thingies, which I could stick through a chunk of meat and use like a carving fork. like these. In fact, these things will pierce a chicken fairly easily. One will also hold a head of lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower or bunch of broccoli. I always wear the disposable food-handler gloves anyway, when handling meats, poultry, etc.

I have the same problems with getting involved with people, which is why I wear a timer that hangs around my neck when I have to do something cricital at a specific time. That does depend on remembering to set the timer, but now I simple put it on top of the recipe, with a clip holding it to the page or sheet of paper so I have to pick it up and put it on before I proceed. I have several timers for different tasks, including one made by Taylor that is a super long-ring. It rings fo 20 seconds.

I am surprised a chemist wouldn't know what it is. It is used as a laxative. Try this site, print it out and take it to a chemist. "White" oil

For the mini tube pans and other tube pans up to 8 inches in diameter, I use this circle cutter. I buy the parchment paper in packages of 100 flat sheets. If I am doing the little ones, I tape the edges of a stack of 5 sheets to the cutting board. Then... I cut all the center circles first, leaving enough room for the larger circle, starting at one corner of the paper. Then I go back and cut the outer circles. Remove the tape from the edges, which is now scrap, stack the little liners and store them in a ziplock bag. You can buy liners for tube pans, but I have some very old ones which are odd sizes and no one makes that size. I also cut bottom liners for regular cake pans up to 8 inches with this cutter. This saves me a lot of grief and especially allows me to slide mini cheesecakes baked in the little springform pans off the bottoms so I don't have to worry about scratching the finish.

That is a beautiful cocktail. It also reminded me that my mother used to drink a cocktail called Cherie Cocktail (this was in the '50s) that was made with Cherry Heering - later re-named Peter Heering - and included triple sec, rum, lime juice. My step-dad would also make it in a tall glass with a spritz of soda water over ice during the summer. This was in a village in Wisconsin where most of the people drank mostly beer and stuff like peppermint schnapps and many of the ladies didn't drink any "mixed" drinks except for possibly a Tom Collins, and thought my mother was somewhat odd anyway. The only southerner in the village and for a long time the only woman business owner in a town where most of the women stayed home, played bridge, or??? Thanks for evoking this memory.

Thanks! I needed that shot of reality!!!

I have a couple of life-threatening food allergies. The worst one is alcohol which is a rather odd allergy. I have had numerous scratch tests on my back for the numerous allergens that affect me, mostly hay fever, burning eyes, and the normal things one expects. However, with alcohol and iodine (the seafood thing) I get edema in the larynx which partially closes my airway and several times I have come very close to a tracheotomy. I didn't always have these allergies as severe but about 40 years ago began having peculiar symptoms whenever I would drink a glass of wine or beer, a sensation of what felt like prickly heat on my face and neck, itching around my eyes, then hives. Then I began reacting to the liquid medicine(prescription at that time, now OTC) I was taking for my allergies, hives, scratchy throat, hoarseness and finally losing my voice. My allergist said he thought I might be allergic to yeasts. However when he did the scratch test he first used grain alcohol, diluted with purified water and I reacted strongly. With seafood, it started with shrimp but then other ocean fish that concentrate iodine, began to bother me also but it wasn't too bad, I could tolerate it with antihistamines. Then I had a kidney problem and had to have a special x-ray with an IV dye that contains iodine. Huge reaction, very scary. Advised to avoid seafood. However I can tolerate a limted amount of lobster and crab but not much else. Fresh water fish is no problem at all, its only the stuff that comes out of the ocean and of course that includes kelp and other sea "vegetables" .... I can cook with them and serve them to other people but have to keep them separate from my food. And I take medications and carry an EPI pen always. Aspartame or Nutrasweet has also been a problem, but not a conventional allergy.

That is so cool! Thanks for the idea! ← That is a great idea. However, my problem is that there wouldn't be enough....... I can get around half a pan all by myself. In fact, I often commit the sin of eating the stuff while it is still hot. Whoever made that rule anyway? When I first started working in my mom's bakery (at age 15) one of my jobs was to load the bread into the oven and bang the finished loaves out onto a table and transfer them to the racks for cooling. (Four at a time - as the bread pans were bound together in sets of 4 pans, with metal straps holding them a couple of inches apart so the heat could circulate.) As soon as I finished with the unloading, I would take a loaf, split it down the middle, lengthwise, apply butter liberally, then chop it into chunks and the bakers and other assistants would snack. My mother always said that eating yeast bread fresh out of the oven was unhealthy. I always asked, then why do we eat hot dinner rolls?

I often use them instead of kale in soup with cannellini beans, browned sausage (bratwurst is my preferred type) and pasta. Not exactly Pasta e Fagiole but my version.

I made a big pot of Alford oatmeal (pinhead) divided the batch in half and added some chopped dried apples and apricots to the breakfast half, stirred in some half and half and continued cooking until it was just the way I like it. No need to add any sweetener because the fruit has enough sugar to flavor it. Oh yes. There was a nice dollop of butter stirred into the bowl. The other half is going to be mixed with some chopped fried chicken livers I have to use up today, along with some chopped scallions (I waded through some very cold, yucky mud to get into the greenhouse and think I have ruined my favorite boots, just to get some green onions! Darn!) I may add some chopped hard boiled egg and something else for flavor (besides salt & pepper). I have several things set out on the counter to contemplate. Then I will form the oatmeal mixture into nice fat patties and fry them until they are crusty on the outside and still creamy inside.

THat's what I use mine for too Andie! ← The term "Great Minds" comes to mind!!!

I use both a regular tube pan and the shallower version to make various versions of "Monkey Bread" either plain, - that is, with the dough balls just dipped in melted butter - or with the dough balls dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon with a little sugar or Splenda, or in a mixture of cinnamon, sweetener and finely ground nuts. Or for a savory type, dipped in butter and rolled in a mixture of salt, dried and coarsely ground onions, shallots, garlic and herbs. Whatever type, this results in a pull-apart bread that is simply delicious either alone, as a snack or with tea, coffee or a meal.

I would love to get out today but we are having one of our rare snow/rain storms and I didn't go out yesterday and doubt today will be any better. We have snow on the surrounding mountains and foothills, had snow yesterday and last night but now it has melted and we have had rain, sleet, snow and more rain, patches of black ice on the roads and loads of accidents. My neighbor ventured out earlier but got only as far as the drive-thru dairy a mile away. She said even in her 4-wheel drive vehicle with the wide tires, she felt unsure of the steering and didn't want to take a chance on getting stuck. She knows I always have plenty of stuff on hand so came over here to "shop" I saw a sign on Thursday that one of the churches was having a "bring and buy" sale this weekend. (the pastor's wife is from England and big on these things.) I had figured on stopping in but not in this weather. Last fall at their last sale, I found some nice Christmas plates which I bought for giving filled with cookies and such. They had several tables filled with small appliances, some still in their original boxes. Nothing old enough for my collections but some very nice items. I really love to go to garage and yard sales, as well as estate auctions, in older areas. Pasadena and Glendale have been favorite places to "mine" for goodies, especially when one of the old craftsman homes that has been in one family for many years, is being renovated or sold. Amazing finds there.

Aunt Hattie Anne's Green Tomato Pie Here is the recipe for green tomato pie/marmalade. This was my great-aunt's recipe, the favorite in our family. She got it from a Shaker society in Kentucky when she visited them for a time in 1925 to exchange herb lore. She made it in big rectangular cake tins because there were so many of us to feed. I have cut it down to a manageable size for a single 9 inch pie. I sometimes add a bit of ginger, either candied or fresh, finely minced and crushed for a bit of a "bite". I have also added Sultanas, or golden raisins when I didn't have quite enough green tomatoes to fill the pie shell. Both variations are very good. You can double the batch and jar it up in 4 pint jars and use it later. It will keep well in the refrigerator for about 3-4 weeks or the freezer for 3-4 months, or longer. 4 cups green tomatoes chopped in bite-sized pieces 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, freshly ground 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground 3/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch Top & bottom pie crusts 1-1/2 tablespoons butter diced Directions First prepare dough for a double-crust 9 inch pie. Chill dough while you are preparing the filling, then roll out the dough while the filling is cooling. Cut aluminum foil in 2-inch wide lengths, enough to go around the circumference of a 9 inch pie pan. In a large saucepan combine the chopped tomatoes, lemon juice, lemon peel, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring often to keep from burning. Mix the sugar and cornstarch together and gradually add to tomato mix, stirring constantly. Continue cooking until liquid is clear. Immediately remove from heat and stir in the butter. Cool for 15 minutes Now roll out the dough, line the pan and prick it all over with a fork, sides too, to keep it from blistering. Preheat oven to 425F. Pour mixture into the 9-inch pie shell. Cover with top crust and seal the edges so juices will not leak out. Cut several slits in top to allow steam to escape. Fold aluminum foil strips in half lengthwise and crimp all around the edges of the pie to keep crust edges from burning. Place pie tin on a sheet pan on oven center rack or higher. Bake for 50 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream or topped with whipped cream CHEESE to which you have added a little sour cream. (You may wonder at this last, but wait until you taste the flavor combination.) YIELD: 8 servings (or less! - my neighbor's husband likes this so much he takes about a third of a pie for his serving. So I usually make two.) ( RG1657 )

The Blodgett I have is similar to the top unit except mine has glass in the doors and mine has the bottom three rails taken up by the steamer. I got it at auction for $790.00 but had to pay to have it trucked down from the bay area, then had to have a separate gas line, and a separate exhaust system in addition to the firewalls. Altogether I think it was about $3500.00 total when I had it installed in 1994.

Sometime around the mid-'60s, my family was away for the weekend and I decided to drive out to Malibu to the Big Rock Cafe for a late breakfast. I arrived during a lull and got a table right next to the windows overlooking the surf and settled in reading a book. The place filled up rapidly and the waitress came to the table (table for 4) and asked if I would mind having another single patron join me and I said it was fine with me. A young man sat down, introduced himself as "Dave Thomas" with what sounded like an English accent. I got on with my breakfast and my reading, we agreed the weather was beautiful, water probably cold for the surfers. He was curious about my fried grits - a specialty of the place. Soon there began a series of visits to the table by young people, mostly girls, asking for autographs, not obnoxious or noisy, except for a little squeal now and then, but obvious. After I finished my breakfast and was leaving he apologized for the disturbance. I told him I had a fair number of friends in the business and knew how it was and I apologized because I said I really had no idea who he was but assumed he was a musician popular with the young people, and then I left. It was only much later that I learned he was Davy Jones from the Monkees. I rarely watched TV in those days, never really had the time, so the face was completely unfamiliar to me. My stepdaughter was furious that I hadn't gotten his autograph for her. All I could say was that he was a very nicely-mannered young man, neatly dressed and rather quiet.

In addition to books, you should also consider some of the other online sources of information that can be very helpful (in addition to eG!) Pastry Wiz includes links to other sites, discussion forums, supplies, books and etc. Baking 911 And do check in at Joy Of Baking.com in addition to the excellent recipes, there is a message board where you can ask specific questions about a specific recipe and get helpful answers. I have made the almond sponge cake and apple scone cake recently and was very impressed. joyofbaking cakes If you need to know the name of a particular tool or utensil or ??? this is a good site through which to wanderPastry Chef.com. The books recommended above are all excellent. I have a great many books on baking, going back many years. One I also like, which is fairly inexpensive is Gail Sher's "From a Baker's Kitchen" Professional baking in the home kitchen. One of the 10 best baking books in 1984. She gives some excellent advice on how to achieve professional bread quality in a home kitchen. I have been using her recipe for Monkey Bread for many years.From a Baker's Kitchen

What I want to know is WHY food producers are against warning labels. If there is something potentially harmful to certain people, why wouldn't they want to warn them to avoid the product. If someone does consume a product and has a severe reaction, or even dies, wouldn't the ensuing lawsuits potentially cost a lot more, even if they appeal until it goes away, lawyers cost a lot. why not just make the labels the same across the country. Anytime I see something like this come up, with lobbyists pushing congress, I am suspicious. I read labels and I want them to include pertinent information. If they do succeed in knocking out something like the "peanut" warning, the first child who dies from an anaphylactic reaction, should be laid at the door of the congresspersons who voted for it.

Apparently there is the "Eye of the Beholder" factor in those who like TJs. I stopped at TJs Palmdale on my way home this evening. I chatted with a woman who was buying some of the packaged vegetables and fruits that so many here have decried. I asked why she liked the packaged produce and she gave me an insight that had not occurred to me. She said she liked them because other people had not been able to "paw over them with their grubby hands, sneezing and coughing their germs all over them." She went on to say that since she has been buying her vegetables and fruit at TJs she has not had a single cold or the flu. She said she would rather pay more for the washed and packaged salad makings instead of lettuce and cabbage that has been handled by "God knows who" etc., etc., etc. Another woman chimed in and said she felt the same way and had stopped buying vegetables and fruit at Vons after watching an employee who looked like he had a bad cold, sneezing and snuffling, arranging tomatoes. One of the employees who was stocking the salad stuff (and who handed me a bag of the "Chard of Many Colors") said that a lot of the customers said they liked having the veg and fruits "hermetically sealed" - although the hermetic part seemed to me to be an exaggeration. So obviously some people look at the style of merchandising differently. I bought some bananas, unwrapped, which are priced at 19 cents each. 10 bananas weighed 4 pounds, 7+ ounces = 1.90. At Ralphs they were 59 cents a pound and would have cost 2.77.

Bargain!? Wasn't that the price of an average new car? Altogether you spent around $75k in today's dollars? Edited to say WOW! ← That price included delivery and installation of the stove, AFTER we did all the prep for it. And my '67 Town & Country station wagon was a lot more. (and had a lot more horsepower).

I love my Cadco. I use it when I don't want to fire up my big oven (Blodgett) and the half-size sheet pan is certainly large enough for most things I cook. Cornbread: It will even accept the giant Staub oval pot, though a snug fit: If you get one of these folding splatter guards Norpro splatter guard You can cut it down by about 4 inches so it wil fit in the oven and set it up behind the pan in which you have a custard or cheesecake to keep the fan from blowing ripples in the filling. I use one all the time in the big oven because the fan in it is huge and really moves a lot of air. although it says it is not currently available at Amazon, you can find it at other vendors. I just saw it in one of the kitchen catalogs I get every months.

I dug around in my old records and finally found the information on the Garland - this was in 1969. The stove was a real bargain at 1235.00 it had two ovens, both large enough for standard sheet pans. 8 top buners and the combination salamander/flat top grill - the grill was 6 inches higher than the burner tops. 72 inches overall length, However the DEPTH from front to back was 42 inches because this one had a deck "well" behind the burners and a built on back piece with a shelf/plate warmer above that was just above my eye level and I am 5'6". Because of the height of the grill, we had the floor dropped for the stove (floor was brick) so the legs that were about 6 inches tall were set down into the cutout. This also made it easier for me to work with big stockpots on the burners but meant I had to bend further to put stuff in and out of the ovens. The work on the floors, walls and ceiling, not including the exhaust system and the stainless cabinets, cost a little over $5000.00 and my husband was in the building trades so we got significant discounts. The stainless steel hood and exhaust system were built in place by a sheet metal specialist who did only that kind of work and it cost $2700. plus the motors,filters and the roof thingies that spun around. This was in 1969 dollars. I have no idea how much it would cost today. We also had an additional through-the-wall air conditioning unit, 60,000 BTU just for the kitchen because the central air couldn't cope with the heat output. I don't remember what we paid for that and it isn't in the folder with the rest of the kitchen stuff. We happened to have an extremely large kitchen, we had a large family and needed it. I was doing some work in the food business and we could write some of it off on our taxes. This was before the laws on food handling got so restrictive.

andiesenji. you bring up a good poing. i'd love to hear what other people think about t.j.'s quality. i have found that their products are hit-and-miss. thankfully, most of the misses can be identified by sight... i'm very selective with the products i buy there. that being said, i do find they afford excellent value for the products that are good (e.g. dried fruits, capers, and some vinegars and other sauces...). in my experience, where t.j.'s is good, they can be very good. where their products are questionable, i avoid (e.g. pre-packaged snacks, candies and produce). u.e. ← There is this about TJs, if you have a problem with an item and take it back to the store, they will refund your money, no questions asked. If you have a suggestion about something you would like to see them carry, they will take the information and check on it and if feasible they will give it a try. If it works, it will become a staple. Try that at Vons, Ralphs or Albertsons, they will laugh in your face. Several years ago some friends and I got together and wrote TJs about the popularity of Chai, and how difficult it was to find a good mix that was reasonably priced. The chai mixes are now a staple at TJs. I have friends who love their coffees because they offer a sample cup of a different variety every day and there is no limit to how many of the little cups you can have. They are not super high end coffees, but they are certainly better than the regular supermarket variety and reasonably priced. One can pick any retailer to pieces and find something they don't like but if one shops at TJs on a regular basis, one learns what works and what doesn't for them. I happen to love the free-range brown eggs, when I can't get eggs from our local egg man. They are always fresh - the yolks are deep yellow and stand up high and the white is thick and doesn't run all over the pan. As of February 1 this year, they no longer buy eggs from battery caged chickens. This is significant as TJs sells a lot of eggs.

You do have to have the walls, ceiling and floor to the same code as commercial, otherwise your insurance will not cover ANY damage that might be caused by the stove. You also have to have an exhaust system that can handle the higher temps. I have a commercial oven and had to have one installed which included a bigger flue (two actually) and the exhaust hood has to be slightly larger than the stovetop surface. I don't recall exactly how much but figure the size of the stove and add a bit. You can't have any wood cabinets above the range or next to it. There has to be several inches clearance. I had a big Garland in my house in the Valley and had stainless steel cabinets on each side of it. I also had to have a fire extinguisher in a wall-mount bracket no more than 5 feet from the range and we had to have an exit door at the closed end of the kitchen because the insurance rater felt that if someone was in that end of the kitchen and the stove was on fire they would be trapped there. Of course things may have changed since then, it was 25 years ago, but there were more expenses than I realized in the beginning. However I loved it. We also had to get a bigger gas line and a new meter which we paid for. Regular residential gas lines do not have the capacity to fuel a commercial range.