andiesenji

You could get some of These - Max Temp Handle Covers glue a magnet onto the tip of each one and when you put a skillet into the oven put the handle holder on the oven door across the opening or the handle so you will have to move it to open the door. I have some made of Nomex which can go right into the oven and while they get warm, they are not uncomfortable to grab, however they were rather expensive. Sur La Table did have one that was cloth on the outside, silicone on the inside but I don't know if they still have them. I saw some at Linens 'N Things that were just silicone but they weren't very big, only about 4 or 5 inches long and to me didn't look that useful.

I absolutely will never again walk into the kitchen at dusk, without turning on the lights, and pick up a tube of "hand cream" without looking at the tube. I have been scrubbing for five minutes to get the wasabi paste off my hands. Burns like the dickens and the fumes are making my nose run and my eyes tear. My housekeeper left it out after taking some to have with sushi she brought home before I came home. (I don't eat sushi so rarely use the wasabi.)

Joy of Cooking if I could have only one but it would be awfully traumatic leaving all the others behind. I fear I would weep uncontrollably.

You could probably discretely resell them.........

I don't know why the milk is added in at the last. However, when she first gave me the recipe I figured it didn't make sense and simply cooked it in with the rest. The results were okay but the cajeta had a tough skin on the top after it had been in the fridge for a day. After that, I have made it as instructed and it did not develop that tough skin. All I can think is that the casein in the uncooked milk keeps that from happening.

Lucy, I am yet another who is truly overwhelmed by your blog. Your words and pictures are a delightful essay reflecting your daily life. Truly a work of art. Andie

I posted this recipe last October. I also took a quart of this dulce de leche to the eG potluck at Tejon's. Once you try this you won't want to fiddle around with the cans of condensed milk. This is the real cajeta and is delicious. Here is an authentic Mexican recipe as made by Mrs. Obregon, my neighbor, who loves her slow-cooker which she says is muy sympatico. DULCE DE LECHE - SLOW COOKER 1 Mexican (or other) vanilla bean, split lengthwise 2 cups regular goat milk, do not use low fat 2 cups regular milk 1 2/3 cups cane sugar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in ¼ cup water Mix the milks together in a quart measure. Pour 3 cups of the milk (refrigerate the remaining cup) into the slow cooker and add the vanilla bean and sugar and turn heat control to high and mix with a whisk to make sure the sugar has dissolved. As soon as the mixtue has warmed to about 140 degrees, add the water with the baking soda and whisk again. Do not cover the cooker. Continue cooking for about 8 hours, gently stirring about every 2 hours. Remove the vanilla bean, wash it and set it aside to dry and stick it into your sugar canister to flavor the sugar. Meanwhile, with a silicone high temp spatula, scrape down the crust that has formed on the sides and stir it into the mixture. If foam forms do not remove it, simply stir down into the mixture. Reduce the temperature to medium and continued cooking. Stir occasionally, about every 15-20 minutes until the mixture has thickened, it should pour like honey. This should take about 2 hours. Near the end of this time, warm the remaining cup of milk in a small saucepan then stir into the mixture in the slow cooker. Mix well and transfer to a sterilized quart jar and place the cap lightly on the jar, do not seal. Allow it to cool to room temperature then tighten cap and refrigerate. It will keep for three months in the refrigerator. To make a cake filling, cook 1 cup gently over very low heat or in a double boiler for about 45 minutes. It should be thick, even while hot and the consistency of soft caramel. It should not soak into the cake. First chill your cake, or at least the bottom layer. Pour the cajeta into the center of the cake layer and gently spread it out to the edge then add the top layer. Finish as you wish.

I use my pressure cookers all the time. The big one is used for canning and for the occasional really large item (like a whole leg of pork which would take many hours to cook otherwise). I cook beef heart in the pressure cooker. I also cook beef tongue in it because otherwise it takes a long, long time. Cooking Under Pressure is my favorite cookbook for this process. by Lorna Sass, this was published in 1989 and I have been using it for years. Last year she has Pressure Perfect published and I bought it and found that she has been busy thinking up new things. It is not the same as the older book but together they really fill the bill.

That looks lovely. How much is there and how many does it serve?

I am pretty sure it is still on Reseda Blvd, close to Roscoe. It is in a strip mall and as I recall, there is a Baskin Robbins at the other end of the strip. It has been quite a few years since I visited the place. They used to get a lot of business from the university students (CSUN).

I mix just about all of these grains and cook it as a breakfast cereal, as a side dish, etc. I also include teff, spelt and triticale. I like the flavor of the combination. I also grind the mix and add it to breads. I will post a photo later, when I discover where I left my camera. I know it is here in the house, I just can't find it.

I have had a couple of custom cutters made by Sugarcraft. They are probably one of the sources you have already found. I checked with another company, Kitchen - something, but they could not get the cutters done by the time I needed them. As I recall they were a bit cheaper.

I have "several" types of grits, including the Antebellum white from Anson Mills, and both white and yellow from Falls Mill in Tennessee, Bob's Red Mill Organic and home ground from sweet white dent corn from Kentucky (cousin's farm). So you can see you are not alone in the GRITS department. If you have a deep fryer, you can pour your cooked grits into a shallow baking dish to about 3/4 inch deep, then when set, cut into 3/4 inch strips which cross cut into (approximately 4 inch long) pieces, dust lightly with potato flour (or regular flour but potato or rice flour is better) and deep fry till golden brown. These are tasty with a savory sauce or a sweet syrup but maple syrup is my favorite. They are even better with crisp bacon finely crumbled and mixed into the grits just before pouring into the baking dish. My neighbors like them with hot salsa. I often make them for our weekly shared dinners.

That is exactly what I have, the 6". I need the 8". The smaller one is fine for spices and small amounts of seasoning but much too small for sauces. ← I have several of the Mason Cash mortars from England. However last fall I broke my biggest, (12 inch) and am missing it greatly. (I pulled a dish towel off the counter, unaware that the mortar was sitting on one corner - my own fault for not paying attention.) For some reason the places that used to carry them in the U.S. no longer do and I haven't even been able to order one from England. My daughter tried to find one last year when she was living in Scotland and it was also no-go. I have a bunch of mortars of various sizes and different materials but I really loved that old MC one, especially for making aioli in large batches.

slkinsey, Is there a restaurant or grill or pizza place in your neighborhood that uses wood for their grill/oven, whatever. Take a little bag with you, ask if they will give you some wood ashes and explain what you are doing with them. I have found that a lot of restaurants are more than happy to assist people who need something that doesn't cost them money. I have an arrangement with a local coffee shop that saves their used coffee grounds for me. I take them an empty bucket every few days and exchange it for a full one. I use the coffee grounds in my compost for my garden. When my garden is producing goodies, I take them some of the veggies for their personal use. We both enjoy it and it is not a problem for them to dump the spent grounds in my bucket instead of their trash.

There is a fast-food place in Reseda that has Greek and other regional foods that cooks the chickpea flour into a thick porridge, pours it into a sheet pan then cuts rounds out of it and deep fries them. They turn out like a rather thick chip and they toss them with salt and spices - as I recall they have three "flavors" one with a rather hot chile powder-reddish brown. They have to be eaten soon after preparation otherwise they become absolutely rigid. They have a drive-through and there is a window next to the driveway where you can see them making the "chips" and also the vertical grills that hold the meats they slice off for the gyros, etc. I lived in Reseda when they first opened and at that time they cut the chickpea stuff into sticks, like French Fries but some where along the line they began making them into rounds because people like to use them like scoops for dipping sauces. They also sell a lot of falafel in various combinations and have a lot of vegetarian combos.

Go to your local yardage store. Buy the very lightweight unbleached muslin, get several yards as it is very inexpensive. Cut into large squares. Wash it twice to get out all of the sizing. Dry and fold, store in the large ziploc bags (Hefty has 2 1/2 gallon size that are perfect.) Before use, put the cloth in a colander and pour boiling water over it then let it cool. It will last for years. You can buy butter muslin from cheesesupply.com but it is $7.50 for two square yards. I have found that the lightweight unbleached muslin works just as well. P.S. This is the stuff jelly bags are made of.

Hi Andie, are you still there? Where is your Vallarta market? I could not find one around here. I will ask my nurses since they know all the Mexican markets. ← Here is the store locator for Vallarta;Vallarta supermarkets I don't know what you are near. Gigante is another Hispanic supermarket chain. There is one in Pico Rivera and one in Anaheim, besides the ones in the Valley. They don't have a web site with their store locations listed but you can look in your local white pages to see if they are listed in your area. The produce at Vallarta is exceptional, the prices are amazing, compared to regular markets. The price of lemons and limes is especially good.

I have a seltzer bottle (well, actually two) and make a strong lemonade with Splenda then mix half and half with the seltzer. Instant carbonated lemon soda. If you mix lemon and lime you can have that too. I have been buying the Toroni syrups that are now made suger-free with Splenda and simply pour some over cracked ice and fill the glass with seltzer. Practically no calories.

Yes indeed, this cannot be stressed enough. When my housekeeper first came to me I had to constantly remind her that some things NEVER went into the dishwasher and some things were never washed with detergent. If something needs more than usual cleaning, I make my own "soap" from soapwort for certain things as it grows like a weed in my garden and is great for cleaning antique linens and unglazed pottery. It rinses clean easily and if any is retained, it has so little residual taste and it is safe to use, in fact it is used medicinally in extremely small amounts. The southwest Indians use yucca root the same way, however it has a greater percentage of saponins than soapwort. (There should be a bumper crop of yucca this year, with all the rain it is springing up all over the place, I see it in places that I have never before seen it. I have a recipe for the edible flowers but unfortunately am not able to hike around in the desert as I once was.)

I have one of the Dawn scrubbers and it works great, especially in muffin pans, tight corners and etc. However for all of my earthenware/clay unglazed, salt-glazed and etc., I use the "tawashi" palm fiber scrubbers from Japan. The first suribachi I bought years ago (at Marukai, huge Japanese market in Gardena ) came with one free. I notice that this place is also offering one with a suribachi. I use them to scrub my molcajete and metate as well as my wooden spoons, spatulas, and etc. I have several and have them identified with different colored cable ties, leaving a loop so they can be hung to dry. One is dedicated to vegetable scrubbing, etc. I don't know why they work so well on porous surfaces but they do an excellent job. Since they are so cheap (1.75) I always order a dozen at a time. I also order a bunch in the fall as I include them in many of the gift baskets I make up for the holidays. I have a friend who is a tile maker, carves designs into the clay before painting and firing so they look almost like cloisonne, and she uses these to clean the cured tiles before painting. She also uses them to make a fine design on some of the tiles by pressing the wetted tawashi into the clay to make a fine, pore-like pattern. After curing, painting and firing, the "pores" are darker with the surrounding glaze much lighter in color. I have one of her tiles picturing an orange and this technique makes it look like the orange peel is real. O.T. Apart from food/vessel/utensil use, they are great for scrubbing the feet....

Pickled eggs are very good. You used to see them in neighborhood bars, in large glass jars. The markets where I live carry them in jars in the deli section, usually right next to the "fresh" horseradish. All I can recall is that there is a man's name in the brand name. I have several recipes on my computer at home. I am at the office today so won't have access to the recipes until this evening. I use the recipe in Joy of Pickling as it is easier than my old one. I came across one on the 'net a couple of years ago, tried it, liked it but lost it. It had a distinct mustard flavor which was very, very good, (I love mustard) a sweet/sour flavor that was just right. At that time I was using Netscape instead of IE and the search engine was different. I purged all my Netscape bookmarks and lost the web site URL. Darn!

Julia was not the "first" TV chef, however she was the first syndicated one that had a national audience. The first TV chef was in Los Angeles beginning in 1948 - Chef Milani, one of the founders of the Hollywood Canteen USO, was seen daily on KTLA until 1954. There was a female chef on KTTV (L.A.), whose name escapes me at the moment (Mama - - mostly German cooking, as I recall) in the early 1950s. She even produced a cookbook which I have somewhere in my collection.

I will add my second to this! I have (I think) all of Paula's cookbooks, and in fact, doubles on a couple that have been used so much they are spotted and dog-eared. Some of the pages are stuck together from having stuff spilled on them and not cleaned adequately prior to being put away. (As a side note, if you do spill something on a book, sprinkle it with corn starch and let it sit for a while. The corn starch will actually pull the moisture out of the paper. - I learned this years ago when taking a course on preserving works on paper at the Huntington library - to see if it is dry, simply dump the corn starch off onto a paper plate or paper towel, if the page is still damp sprinkle on an even layer. I have even put them on the shelf this way, just to make sure the pages wouldn't adhere to each other.)

For baking things like pies, pastry and etc., I think that Nick Malgieri's "How to Bake" is an excellent way to begin. I have recommended this book to many novice bakers who find it has a wide range of recipes from very easy to fairly complex, all well explained and they all taste good. For bread baking I recommend Peter Reinhart's "Crust and Crumb" or "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" There is a thread on this forum about baking with "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" here which might be helpful to you.