andiesenji

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.

If TJs quality is so bad, then why are so many communities begging for a store to open in their area. These are people who drive a long way to shop at TJs and if there was something wrong, they wouldn't spend the money on gas, which is usually higher here in California than just about anywhere else except Hawaii. For instance there is this article regarding Chula Vista.

It is definitely illegal in California to SELL any canned item with a proprietary label to any food company. Companies who OWN the label can and do DONATE canned goods to charity but those goods may not be resold. If the broker offered goods with the TJ label for sale that is a felony. I have volunteered many times at our local food bank and the local senior citizen's center who receive donations from local markets, including TJs. They are happy to get them. I have been using TJs canned vegetables since they were still Pronto Markets, and I have never found inferior products. I opened a can of TJs green beans (which I use quite often) last Saturday and found they were greener than most canned green beans, there was more vegetable and less water than in most brands. The corn is also of excellent quality. I am quite particular about the quality of the canned vegetables I use and it disturbs me that you can make such remarks. If you were buying bulk food product, why would you be buying regular sized cans of green beans. When I was catering, I bought the large cans. TJs have never been marketed in anything except the regular small cans.

If they can't help you, let me know the model number and the exact size - and a photo would help, and I will check with my small appliance repair guy. He has been able to find some of the most obscure parts for some of my antique appliances- I think he is a wizard or something - He found an insert for a hot fudge heater made in the early '50s (the kind that was in every coffee shop or cafe).

Sorry, I thought it was a Zo. Here is a toll-free phone number for a parts place that can get a huge number of replacement parts. Parts store

Unless I misunderstood the first post, I believe she asked for a timer that one didn't have to push the minute button to get to the time she wanted by advancing it a minute at a time. Most keypad, direct entry, timers are fairly expensive. The CDN timer is only $20.00 It takes a beating in my kitchen, has been dropped on the floor, shut in the freezer (I put it down in the freezer when juggling a couple of packages of frozen meat) and picked up and carried around by my dog. It still works.

In answer to your question... Zojirushi replacement parts. Check your model number and scroll down until you find the number corresponding to your rice cooker. And make sure the size is correct. I have the NS ZAC18 (The "Neuro" model) near the bottom of the first page. I made a mistake and ordered the pan for the ZAC10 - idiotic, I know. I was in a rush at work. There is no return or exchange so I was stuck with a pan that didn't fit but found someone who had dented their pan so sold it to them at a steep discount. I have ordered replacement pans for both of my Zo bread makers, twice for the first one that I bought back in the 80s. It still works just fine.

After reading your experience yesterday, I consulted a friend who has also done a lot of candying of citrus and other fruits. She lives in Vista and has several kumquat trees and several rare and unusual citrus. She can't figure it out either. She suggested trying a very small batch, parboiling them briefly in a couple of changes of clear water - as one would do with citrus peel, then go through the candying process with three times the amount of syrup as fruit. Her regular process is virtually identical to mine except she adds half a cup of light Karo syrup to 2 quarts of sugar syrup. I can't see how that small an amount could have much effect. I have never used it, mainly because I never have it on hand. I am going to stop at the middle eastern market on my way home and buy some kumquats and go through my usual process and see if I have any problems. I am really stumped by this. I am also going to see if my microwave method will work on kumquats. I have never tried it with anything except orange, lemon and grapefruit peel.

I don't know how it could have either. I have never had that happen. I am so sorry you had a bad experience. I have had it turn a deep amber color near the end of the process, the 5th or 6th session, but certainly no where near brown, much less black. I have several crockpots, including a new Cuisinart which does run hotter than the others, but as long as the liquid is deep enough it certainly shouldn't burn by the end of a 6-hour session. It is possible the rheostat is advanced too far on your particular crockpot. However that would defeat the point of having a crockpot or slow cooker. A sufficient amount of syrup should hold well below the "soft-ball" stage, that is, below 235 degrees F. When I have tested any of mine with a thermometer near the end of a session,(including a very old large electric roaster), it is usually hovering between 190 and 200 degrees F. It would have to lose a lot of water vapor to reduce that much. Does your crockpot have a vent in the lid? Did you notice a lot of steam escaping?

Check this page Le Creuset at Amazon The 6 3/4 oval French oven is 149.99 on this page. Not a lot of size difference between it and the 7 1/4.

If anyone is interested this is the site where all the Factory Outlet Stores are listed. I have shopped at the Cabazon, California outlet. We usually stop there on our way back from the Palm Springs dog shows. I have been hoping one would be added to the huge Camarillo outlet mall or the (even closer for me) outlet mall at Barstow.

Where are you, KitchenQueen?

I got prices ranging from 189.00 to 229.00 some with free shipping, some with shipping added, all on Amazon, various listings were 7 quart, 7.25 quart, 7.5 quart, 7 1/4 quart. I am in southern California. If I use my Amazon account, they offer a 10% discount, however I have yet to use it, I think they figure they will get back any discount from interest but I never carry a balance on credit cards. I have bought most of my Le Cruset locally (sort of) as when Sur La Table in Pasadena had a special sale. It does seem odd that the prices vary so much. These were all either the red or the blue pots. I didn't try the other colors. Oh yeah, there was a free grill with two of the above.