andiesenji

I am seriously considering putting carpeting in the kitchen. My contractor brought me some samples of a cut-pile high density carpeting made for either indoor/outdoor/heavy/traffic or kitchen/bath areas exposed to wet, stains and etc. It is the same stuff that is in several convention centers around southern California and also in several areas at LAX. It has a thick rubber base that will not absorb moisture and is very resiliant. It won't last as long as hard surface flooring but I don't care about that, I want something that will give if I fall and won't ever be slippery. I can afford to replace it whenever I want. It can be fitted like wall-to-wall carpet but can be kept in place by tape around the edges and across wide areas and where joined to other pieces, but the joining fuses the sections together.

They look exactly like the chayote sold here in Mexican markets and known as Mirliton in New Orleans and other parts of the south. ← Thanks. chayote I see from this site that the chayote's skin is wrinkled and of a darker green. Perhaps it is a variety of the chayote. The ones at Carrefour were very light green with real smooth skin. ← The chayote sold here are very light green but some varieties are quite smooth, some are wrinkled and some are dark with a sort of warty skin but inside they all look alike. The one shown here is larger with more 'wrinkles' than I usually see. I have a friend in San Diego that has some of the vine covering a huge pergola in her back yard simply for the shade. She doesn't eat them but picks them and sets boxes of them out by the curb for neighbors and passersby to take. I don't care for them raw, but like the slices grilled on the barbecue and sprayed with lime juice and dusted with ground chile powder. I sometimes add them to my oven-roasted vegetable mixture.

And don't forget Cook Books by Janet Jarvis Specializing in used, rare and out-of-print books. 1388 E. Washington Blvd. Pasadena, CA 626/296-1638 Mecca for the cookbook lover. and in Los Angeles proper NOTE The Cook's Library 8373 West Third Street Los Angeles, CA 323/655-3141

Andie, when are you going to blog for us? You have so much experience and knowledge - and cookbooks - to share. ← Something is in the works, not a blog, but watch for it in late April, asuming all goes well.

They look exactly like the chayote sold here in Mexican markets and known as Mirliton in New Orleans and other parts of the south.

Another foot-covering no-no while working on something with a lot of liquid and/or fat, are the Ugs boots, in particular a brand-new pair of $125.00 ice white high tops. They are still wearable around the house but have been drastically changed by a splash of red-wine laden sauce when an odd shaped roast was turned without getting out the long forks. The darn tongs were not strong enough (or my grip wasn't strong enough) to hold it. My very heavy sweat pants from Old Navy saved my legs but the boots have what looks like the map of Africa on one and an amoeba shape on the other. I tried the Oxy stuff that is supposed to clean anything but no go on this one. The shoe store tried to clean them but that red wine is there forever.

I would like to recommend that your visit Graeme Caselton's web site. Chile database He has the most complete listing (most with photos) of peppers, chile and others, on the internet. Click on "Varieties Database" in the upper left corner. You can also email him at gcaselton@gmail.com if you have a recipe made with a particular type of pepper, the more unusual the better. He would like to have a recipe for every type of pepper. This page explains the different terminology that can sometimes be rather confusing. A caveat - you can spend a lot of time on this website. It contains a huge amount of information about the lovely little fruits with the amazing colors, flavors and degrees of heat.

Beautiful!

I have a bag of Tim's Sweet Maui Onion chips that I picked up at Smart & Final. Actually I thought I had picked up another type but didn't notice until I was in the checkout line that I had the wrong ones. These are pretty good

This is a very old family recipe which gets raves, hope it is what you want. RED VELVET CAKE It is very important to follow the directions exactly. Note there is no baking powder in this cake. The action of the acids and alkaline ingredients mixed in the proper order is what leavens this cake. You must start with all ingredients at room temperature so set the eggs out and measure out the buttermilk at least an hour before you plan to start mixing. 2-1/2 cups all purpose flour (you can also use 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 cake flour for a finer texture) 1/2 cup Crisco (This is important for the texture) 2 large eggs - room temp. 1 level teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 2 rounded Tablespoons cocoa (regular, not Dutch process) 1 cup buttermilk - room temp. 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 Tablespoon distilled white vinegar 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 2 ounces (1/4 cup)red food coloring First grease and flour 2 9-inch cake pans - or line with bakers parchment. You can also use a large rectangular pan. In a large mixing bowl cream the shortening, sugar and vanilla, beat till fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating each until completely incorporated into the batter, set aside In a cup mix together the cocoa, food coloring and vinegar and set aside. In a medium bowl mix together the buttermilk, flour, baking soda and the salt and set aside. Turn oven on, set at 350 degrees F. Add cocoa mix to shortening/sugar/vanilla, blend. Add buttermilk, flour, baking soda, salt to the batter and blend until batter is completely smooth and looks silky. Pour batter into the cake pans, Bake for 40 minutes, test with a cake tester, if it still appears moist, bake an additional 5 minutes. ICING 1 cup whole milk 5 Tablespoons flour 2 sticks salted butter 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1 cup granulated sugar. Cook milk and flour until thick in double boiler ( or in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water) Set aside to cool. In a medium mixing bowl cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add vanilla and blend. Add milk and flour mixture and beat until completely blended and icing will hold a peak

I made an inquiry from some of my baking buddies and five people referred me to this recipe for very moist and sticky bran muffins that keep well, stay moist and do not dry out.

Wasn't there a scene in The Prince of Tides that revolved around violence and food?

I love it! Would love to have seen his face. Several years ago some friends and I went to dinner at a very well known restaurant in West L.A. We had a lovely dinner and ordered our desserts. When I tasted mine I realized that the whipped cream was soured and motioned our server to the table and very quitely mentioned it and he took it back to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later the chef came to our table with the same dessert and said rather loudly that I didn't know what I was tasting, it was supposed to taste like that. I asked had he tasted it and he said, "No, I know how it is supposed to taste." He then gestured at a nearby table where a celebrity was sitting and said, "Do you know who that is and do you think he would be eating here if the food we served was spoiled." I said, "Yes, I know who he is, in fact, I have worked for him in the past as his personal chef." Then I whispered to him, "I really think you should take this spoon (a clean one) and actually taste the cream on this dish." He did and the expression on HIS face was priceless. He whisked the offending dish off the table, marched back to the kitchen, face very red. I was brought a new dessert, which was perfect, we were all brought espresso and when we asked for our check we were told it had been taken care of. I returned to the restaurant several times over the years. That chef is long gone, but I never had a similar experience, the food was always excellent and the service was always exemplary.

I don't know if she wrote an Albanian cookbook. I have a couple of her books, written in the late 70s or early 80s. I know I have had them for many years. One is on middle eastern cooking but I don't remember the exact name. I think they were both published by L.A. Times books and sold through the old "Home" magazine in the Sunday paper. One is California recipes, requests from the Times food section.

One of the guys who works at the lab across the hall from my office has a fil who is from Albania. (Worked on a ship and requested and was granted asylum in port of L.A. years ago (mid 70s) after he got word his entire family had been executed by the communists.) Leo tells me that his wife makes a pepper paste when her father is coming for dinner that is so hot it brings tears to his eyes and he is used to hot foods. He has been promising to get the recipe for me for many months but so far no go. It is sweet/sour/salty as well as hot and also contains a lot of garlic, besides a fat pepper that looks like a pimento and skinny yellow peppers that must be the hot ones. (I showed him some pepper pictures on Graeme Caselton's web site.) He was also going to get a recipe for little meat pastries (look like an empanada) which are served with this hot pepper paste and yogurt sauce. Haven't got that one yet either. Albanian recipes aren't all that easy to find.

I have acquired 57 new cookbooks during the past four months. (These are the ones I have stacked next to my desk, I think I have bought others but am not sure where they are at the moment.) One is also a murder mystery, Sugar Cookie Murder, by Joanne Fluke. The first half of the book is the mystery, 168 pages. The second half of the book is the cookbook, more than 50 recipes from appetizers such as Spinach Rollups to soups such as Sally's Radish Soup and all the way through to desserts such as Pecan Pie for a Holiday Crowd and drinks such as Dimpled Duchess and ending with "Extras (that didn't fit anywhere else)" ....... I enjoyed the mystery and am going to try several of the recipes. I have met the author (lives in the SF Valley) and have made recipes from her earlier books and all have been excellent. I recommend it without reservation. My housekeeper has been doing some cleaning of the bookcases in a couple of the rooms and so far has counted more than 2100 cookbooks, many mixed in with other books. Since I also have a lot of cookbooks packed away in footlockers in my storage building, I apparently have a lot more than I estimated earlier in this thread, when I posted on May 1, 2004, that I had "well over a thousand" cookbooks. The last time I cataloged my books (not just cookbooks), in 1999, I had listed 826 cookbooks in storage and 912 in the bookcases dedicated to cookbooks. Apparently I had a lot distributed througout the bookcases in the house or I have managed to acquire more than a thousand in the past five years. Some did arrive as part of a private library I bought at auction (purchased mainly because of the many dog books, natural history books and early 20th century literature books, which I also collect.) Anka still has two rooms to go in her cleaning and I can't even begin to estimate how many cookbooks might be in those bookcases as they should be mostly fiction, science fiction/fantasy and mysteries. My best estimate at present is that I have 3170 cookbooks which is about 1500 more than I estimated last year and with the additions I listed prior to today. Amazing, I had no idea there were so many.

Oh Happy, Happy Day!!!

You also might try rocking him to sleep.......... I have a 5-pound rock that might do..

I have the wire shelving and the shelves will hold a full size sheet pan plus a smaller one. Smart & Final have the sheet pans for 10.99 regular (used to be 9.99) and a while back they had a special, 10 for 79.99, which I bought. I use the sheet pans and smaller, inexpensive, bus trays on the wire shelves as it makes it easier to move things around, especially appliances with feet.

Where I grew up in western Kentucky, yellow corn was known as "hog corn" or "horse corn" as it was usually fed to livestock. The white "shoepeg" dent corn raised on the farm for our use often had one or two red kernels on an ear - we called them "lucky Indian corn" . It always seemed those ears were especially sweet, fresh or dried. We had a neat "huller" that we kids loved to operate, a hand-cranked machine for removing the dried corn kernels from the cobs. We didn't have to do it, it was work, but it was also fun. There was also one that had a kerosene (coal oil) motor and later still an electric one. Farmers in the area would come to our place, rent time on one of the machines to hull the corn, then pay to have their corn ground in the grist mill (water powered), white corn for table use, yellow corn for chicken feed (**and other enterprises ). They made a social event out of it, groups of men in overalls standing around, telling tall tales about their hunting dogs, their mules, their fishing exploits, etc., smoking roll-your-own cigarettes or chewing tobacco and passing around a bottle or two. (** from the "other enterprises" ) For us that was fun, hanging around the mill, cranking the huller, listening to the stories. I feel sad for today's kids who have the entire world at their fingertips via the internet but will never know how much fun one can have just being in the midst of activities such as this. As corny as it may sound today, these rough, poorly educated men rarely used profanity. A "Dag nab it", "Dad burn it", "Dern" an occasionall "Damm" was about all we ever heard.

I thought it sounded good. Mickie is not a cook and not much of a foodie so she isn't able to describe things the way we would. She said there was a sort of lemony cream stuff sort of like lemon pie filling, sliced strawberries and the crumbled bacon. It was part of a brunch buffet service so she didn't order if off the menu and has no idea what it was called.

I mentioned this in the office this morning and one of the "girls" described a "dessert" she had at a restaurant in Santa Barbara last summer. Unfortunately she can't remember the name of the restaurant, only that it was on or near Stearns Wharf. It was strawberries and crisp crumbled bacon rolled into a crepe with something that sounds like lemon curd.

Okay folks, here is an answer from someone from the deep south, Laurel, Mississippi. Her mamma made several versions of maccaroni and cheese, INCLUDING one with toasted bred crumbs on the top, and also sometimes with crumbled bacon. She said that sometimes they had mac and cheese as well as maccaroni salad at the same meal, usually with collard greens. The mac and cheese was treated the same as if it was meat, when times were difficult.

The biggest difference is between regular table salt and Diamond crystal salt which has such an open structure that comparable volumes weigh much different. If you go by weight you will be okay. If a recipe calls for a tablespoon of "salt" simply weigh a tablespoon of regular salt and mark what it weighs, then weigh out the same amount of kosher salt and then put it into a dry measure so you can see how much it is in volume and indicate that in your recipe. The recipes that I do all the time have the weight conversions in pencil next to the regular measurements. I find that I get the same results time after time with this routine.

Several bakeries use date syrup in their bran muffins. I have seen it on the list of ingredients. The bran muffins sold at my local health food store (I stopped in this morning and looked) are made with the fruit puree sold as a substitute for fat but is simply a puree of stewed prunes with a little lemon juice added for stabilization. They are very moist because of the sugar content in the fruit puree. They actually do not have a prune flavor. They are made with a combination of wheat bran, oat bran, whole wheat flour and spelt flour. They make three versions, plain, with raisins and with dried chopped apples. They are huge, one is enough for two people, maybe three.....