andiesenji

Carrot/Sorrel/Ginger Soup Serves 0 as Soup. 2 tablespoons canola or light olive oil 3/4 cup chopped onion or half onion/half shallots 1 1/2 tablespoons grated or minced fresh ginger 4 cups shredded carrots, firmly packed 2 cups chopped sorrel, loosely packed 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock or water kosher salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup half and half chiffonade basil leaves In a large saucepan or evasee heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and ginger, sauté until the onion is transparent but not browned. Remove the onion/ginger and set aside. Add the carrots and sauté, stirring often, for about 8 minutes, until the carrots begin to soften. Add the sorrel and toss with the carrots. Return the shallot/ginger to the pan, mix well. Add the stock or water. Increase heat to high and bring the mixture to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cover the pan and simmer for minutes, until the carrots are soft and mash easily with a fork. Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool until just warm. Transfer the soup to a blender (blend 2 cups at a time) and strain through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan. When all has been blended and strained, place over medium heat, stirring constantly until the soup just begins to simmer. If the soup is quite thick, add a little hot water and blend in. Stir in the half and half and blend well. Serve with basil chiffonade scattered on top. May also be served in mugs with cinnamon toast points on the side as a starter. Orginal Recipe by Andie This can also be made in the Vita-Mix blender. Simply sauté the onion and ginger as above, set aside. Then place the carrots and sorrel in the Vita-Mix, add the onion and ginger then the remaining ingredients. It will "cook" in the blender. ( RG1289 )

Carrot/Sorrel/Ginger Soup Serves 0 as Soup. 2 tablespoons canola or light olive oil 3/4 cup chopped onion or half onion/half shallots 1 1/2 tablespoons grated or minced fresh ginger 4 cups shredded carrots, firmly packed 2 cups chopped sorrel, loosely packed 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock or water kosher salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup half and half chiffonade basil leaves In a large saucepan or evasee heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and ginger, sauté until the onion is transparent but not browned. Remove the onion/ginger and set aside. Add the carrots and sauté, stirring often, for about 8 minutes, until the carrots begin to soften. Add the sorrel and toss with the carrots. Return the shallot/ginger to the pan, mix well. Add the stock or water. Increase heat to high and bring the mixture to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cover the pan and simmer for minutes, until the carrots are soft and mash easily with a fork. Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool until just warm. Transfer the soup to a blender (blend 2 cups at a time) and strain through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan. When all has been blended and strained, place over medium heat, stirring constantly until the soup just begins to simmer. If the soup is quite thick, add a little hot water and blend in. Stir in the half and half and blend well. Serve with basil chiffonade scattered on top. May also be served in mugs with cinnamon toast points on the side as a starter. Orginal Recipe by Andie This can also be made in the Vita-Mix blender. Simply sauté the onion and ginger as above, set aside. Then place the carrots and sorrel in the Vita-Mix, add the onion and ginger then the remaining ingredients. It will "cook" in the blender. ( RG1289 )

My sorrel is already seeding and I am cutting seed stalks every day. It is in the small garden next to the house. It seeds itself all over the place if I don't keep up with it. I made some dolma using the sorrel as wraps, instead of grape leaves, and the lemony flavor really sparked the flavor. I simply steamed the leaves for a couple of minutes and removed only the largest center ribs. I have made two batches of carrot/sorrel soup so far. Again, the lemony flavor of the sorrel counteracts the very sweet flavor of the carrots and makes a wonderful soup, hot or cold, that I serve in mugs as a starter.

This was just a vegetable garden, not the garden next to the house. It is one acre of a 5 acre parcel that has been fenced and graded and the soil amended over the past few years. The water system, drip-trickle pipes, was PVC pipes just under the surface with heads spaced out that had radiating tubes attached to deliver water directly to the plant roots. Apparently they used a hook or something similar to pull the pipes right out of the ground and break them in addition to running over almost all the heads. They also broke the main assembly where all the different areas come together and since the water was on, it made a huge mud patch before my neighbors got home and turned the water off. This afternoon my gardeners found that they had also damaged my auxillary generator. The sheriffs got some boot and hand prints off of it and are hopeful now they can identify the perps. That is going to be costly to repair.

Only if the metal is magnetic. I can assure you that gold is not affected by it because I dropped one of my gold bracelets onto the burner while it was on high and I picked it up with my fingers, the burner was not even warm and neither was my bracelet.

My big garden in the field behind my home HAD a large number of squash, multiple tomatoes, cucumbers of different varieties, carrots, onions, tomatillos and several varieties of peppers. Yesterday, while I was at work (70 miles away) and my neighbors who overlook the field had gone to LAX to pick up one of their sons who is home from Iraq, several people on ATVs vandalized the field. They broke down a fence to get in and must have spent several hours tearing around, knocking down trellis, plants and even breaking up the watering system and broke several of the panels on the greenhouses. When I got home yesterday evening and found out what had happened I was sick. I couldn't even sign on to eG. The sheriffs that came out to take the report said that there have been several similar happenings but they have no clue who is doing it. Another neighbor saw a couple of the 4-wheelers down the street but said they were so covered with mud and dust she couldn't even tell what color they were and the riders were wearing the helmets with the blacked out face shields. She said the ones she saw were too big to be just kids. They also broke into the shed belonging to my neighbors and stole a couple of expensive bicycles and some power tools. I simply can't understand why someone would do this just for kicks. It is the act of someone who has the intelligence of pond scum. They were smart enough to cut the lines to the transformer powering the electric fence (to keep animals out). My gardeners are out there today, trying to clean it up but it is going to take a lot of time and money to fix the watering system. Fortunately they couldn't get into the well house (they tried to pry the lock off the door) otherwise my well may have been damaged also. I had a crop of mustard that would have been ready to harvest in a week or so. Sometimes I really despise those ATVs because it seems when people get on them, all their common sense leaks right out of their heads.

What is really funny, at least in my opinion, is that this is not a NEW idea. The original pop-up hot dog and bun toaster appeared way back in the 60s. I had one made by Presto that also made a "Hot-Dogger" that cooked 6 hot dogs at a time but not the buns. I occasionally see the pop up hot dog toaster on ebay, but more often see the "Hot-Dogger" as I believe more of them were sold. Just another case of "What's old is new again"

I read an article several years ago about one of the makers of flavored syrups that froze very mature fruits and then spun out the mashed, frozen stuff in a large centrifuge that extracted the concentrated flavored liquid from the pulp and skins with much of the water ice remaining in the pulp. As I recall, the fruit mentioned was black currant so it was probably a European company.

foie gras with black truffles

I have never cared for cheesecake, or rather the dessert cheesecake. There are a couple of savory cheesecakess that contain textured ingredients that I do like. For me it is the mouthfeel of regular cheesecake that I don't like. I have tried to eat it when pressed, just to be polite, but then find I have difficulty swallowing more than a bite. I also do not like okra and never have, even though I was raised in the south. I can't stand doughnuts, however beignets are okay, if done correctly.

I thought I would post some photos to show how the L.verbena looks this morning. The first two plants get morning sun, light shade in the middle of the day and late afternoon sun. The third plant is on the northwest side of a shed and only gets afternoon sun. It is just now putting out new leaves, ten days ago it still looked like a dead stick. You can easily see that the leaves are 1/4 the size of the others. In fact, the two that get the most sun are already blooming. I have 4 more plants that are essentially just like the first two.

I should have mentioned that although I do live in southern California, it is in the "high" desert - almost 3000 ft altitude and we have hard freezes usually beginning in December and can sometimes occur as late as early March but this year had two nights of temps in the high 20s in April, which is unusual. This year the lowest temp was 9 degrees and we had several nights of lows in the low teens but in past years I have seen it down to 1. We do not get a lot of snow but have rain during the day that freezes on the surface of the ground at night. I have hardy rosemary bushes that overwinter well and even bloom around Christmas in spite of the nightly freezes. Sage and lavendar also overwinter outsite. My bay trees are protected with burlap wraps with dead leaves stuffed inside from the ground to about 4 ft high. However I do not protect the lemon verbena and it will look totally dead (I have to make sure my gardeners do not cut it back so tie little tags onto the branches so they know to leave them). I am patient with it and eventually it will put out new leaves. It can be maintained in a pot but you have to be careful to not give it too much water. Actually it, like so many herbs, will develop more flavor in the leaves if it is slightly stressed, i.e. given less water once it is well established and in full leaf.

I have several crockpot or slow cookers from the very cheap to the fairly expensive and use them often. There are several excellent cookbooks on the subject but there is also a vast resource of recipes on the internet. Crockpot recipes! and more crockpot recipes I actually do some advance work on some things, just to develop the flavor tha Paula notes is often lacking. Also with very fatty meats, doing some rapid pre-cooking and fat removal makes for a better end result. In my freezer I have several "pre-cooked" small roasts - seasoned, wrapped in foil and cooked in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes to develop flavor and carmelization. These are cooled rapidly, sealed in a ziploc bag or a vacuum bag and frozen -identified by meat type, seasoning and date. When I am going to use them in the crockpot I take them out of the freezer the night before and leave them in the refrigerator. In the morning the foil-wrapped package goes onto a sheet pan and into the oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size. In the meantime I have already added the prepped vegetables (usually done the prior evening) and other ingredients to the crockpot and turned it on high. I then remove the foil and add the meat, either whole or in pieces to the crockpot, cover, making sure there is some room between the top of the food and the lid and that the lid fits fairly tightly. If I have some time, I leave it on high until I am ready to leave for work, then reduce to low (I leave my keys next to the cooker so I will remember) and go off to work. Chicken or turkey can be browned in a skilled the evening prior and held in the fridge overnight to give additional flavor to the dish. It is also ideal for preparing braciola which can be prepared and browned the evening before then placed into the crockpot to cook all day. This recipe works beautifully. in the crockpot.

I have several plants that have overwintered here outside and come back in the spring. The leaves left on the plant drop with the first freeze and the woody stems look like they are dead. However as soon as it warms up in the spring leaves pop out at each joint except sometimes on the twig at the very tip. I harvest leaves several times during our very long growing season and have found the dried leaves retain much of their flavor. I use it in dishes which call for lemon when I am serving someone who is allergic to citrus. (I have a friend who loves grilled salmon but is allergic to citrus. I place a few l.verbena leaves under, inside and over the salmon and cook as usual, often combined with dill.) I also use it in recipes containing milk or cream as lemon verbena will not cause curdling as does lemon. I make a strong infusion to which I add a little Everclear alcohol to preserve it. I also make an infused syrup, cooking the syrup at low heat in a crockpot for a long time until it reaches the strength I desire. You can also place some of the dried leaves in a jar of sugar with a tight lid, shaking it ever few days for a month or so - the sugar will take on a lemony flavor and fragrance.

If you check on the site I posted earlier Here there are a lot of unusual recipes. This is just the celebrity chefs section. Look how many there are here, under the "entrees" section entrees

Check these Calif avocado commission, The Monterrey cheesecake, under the Southern Living section is fantastic.

Actually the initial movement for wearing gloves in food handling was not because of sanitation but because of cross contamination of foodstuffs causing severe allergic reactions. It began here in California (the most litigious state) when a woman had a severe allergic reaction to residue from peanuts that had been transferred to her foods by the person who had handled peanuts and then handled her food. Following that successful litigation. Certain members of the state legislature picked up on it and expanded it to cover all food handling. The rule is that gloves must be changed between handling different foods. Washing with soap and water as usually done and with antibacterial aids will not always remove all of the particles that can cause allergic reactions. "Normal" hand washing does not guarantee germ-free hands. Many tests have been done on surgeons after lengthy scrubbing with a brush - samples taken from under nails and from crevices in the skin, then cultured still show bacteria growth. Employees are supposed to change gloves between handling each customer's order or after handling any meat or poultry products. The SubWay restaurant across the street from my office was cited when one of the doctors noticed an employee made up sandwiches for several customers without changing gloves (the cheapie plastic baggie type) and filed a complaint. The health department sent out an agent who observed the same thing and the place was cited. I wear gloves at home for handling certain things because of convenience as well as food safety. If I am handling something sticky and the phone rings I can rip off the glove and answer the phone. I still wash my hands constantly but I am not transferring things that should not be. I go through a lot of gloves but I feel it is worth it.

You can get rice paper rounds in 9 inch size, with printed patterns here Or you can buy rice paper in rolls or sheets and with an inexpensive circle cutter make your own. rice paper circle cutter

Another thing you might consider is one of the turkey fryers. They have their own stands plus a stockpot but will easily hold a large cast iron skillet or similar vessel and work off a regular propane tank which is far cheaper than the small cannisters of gas. Following the '94 earthquake when we had no power as well as no gas (gas lines ruptured) for several days, my neighbors and I pooled our equipment as I have a large commercial portable propane stove and two of the turkey fryers plus another burner on a tall stand for a wok. I have seen the turkey fryers for as little as $49. US, without the propane tank but those can even be rented. Being able to cook up gallons of soup or chili makes it easy to feed a bunch of people when supplies are limited and is also a way to use up frozen stuff that is not going to last. Of course we use them, even when there is no emergency, for our neighborhood parties. A lot of hot dogs can be boiled in the pot - also a lot of corn. My neighbors also use one for making large batches of tamale. One great advantage is that the stand is low enough that one can reach into the pot without standing on tiptoe and the wide base means it is not easy to tip over. Now almost all of my neighbors have them, since Home Depot had a sale last fall, so we are set for anything that comes along.

Because goat meat is ordinarily very lean, you really should use a larding needle like this to insert fat into the major muscle masses. I happen to like suet, if you can get it but leaf lard (unrendered) also works well. This type of needle works nicely because it comes with the inner rod to make it easier to place the fat deep inside the meat. I used to use a trocar (medical instrument) because it was easier than the old ones that needed something like a dowel or a long chopstick to force the fat out of the needle. If you already know this, I apologize but thought it might be helpful. When my Mexican neighbors roast a whole goat, they do this but season the fat before inserting it into the meat. They also brine the carcass in a huge ice chest lined with a 55 gallon plastic can liner that is food grade. (I have a large box of these so if you need any let me know and I will send you a few.)

The only practical joke I ever remember pulling on someone was while I was taking a class many years ago. One of my fellow students was always carrying around a large mug of coffee and wasted a lot of time fixing it and slurping loudly while the chef was talking and often would set it down in my prep area and just leave it there in my way. One day I was so fed up I cut some pieces off a sheet of gelatine and dropped them in on top of the coffee letting a couple of the other students and the chef, see what I was doing. A little later he picked up the mug and tried to drink it but apparently the surface was stuck to the side of the cup. He tipped it up further and it broke loose, pouring down his chin and his front. He had what looked like a gelatin beard hanging from his lower lip. It broke the chef up, he laughed so hard and got so red in the face I thought he was going to have a seizure. The rest of the class also got a good laugh. He never figured out who had done it. But he was careful to keep his mug close by at all times and out of the way of others.

You can check out this site which has just about all of the "classic" diners listed. I remember a diner, not in a converted train car but in one of the diners manufactured to look like one on Santa Monica blvd close to Havenhurst, but I think it has been gone for several years.

I got an error message with your link to KA catalog. This one works.

I posted a couple of photos of my large batch - long slow roasting at low temp vegetable combo. I do it this way and package and freeze the finished product in 1 quart freezer bags, some of which I also vacuum seal in a secondary bag if they are going to be stored for more than a couple of weeks. (Freezing up to 4 months works fine) This way I can have roasted vegetables when I am short of time. Or if I have some leftover meat and want to make an "instant" stew or soup. This also makes an excellent thickener for soups or stews when pureed after heating in a little liquid. Or tossed into the blender with a little stock - the Vita-Mix blender will puree and heat it for an instant soup and if you use vegetarian stock, it is totally vegetarian. I have vegan friends who drop in unexpectedly and this makes a terrific lunch.

You also might consider "Calrose" medium grain rice. It is not expensive and makes an excellent rice pudding. It is more glutinous than many rices. This site tells about the different types of rice, "Calrose" is sold under different brand names but is known as California medium grain rice. I believe that 80% of the world production is grown in the Sacramento valley, according to CalAg News. I often use a combination of Calrose and sweet rice. This is an unusual recipe I have made it a few times and everyone to whom I have served it has said that it is exceptional, both in flavor and presentation. OT: This site (Australia) has some interesting pictures of rice sculptures.