andiesenji

Frosted mini-wheats, spoon sized, half and half with Cheerios. Broguiere's Milk - comes in a glass bottle and tastes the way milk is supposed to taste. Worth every penny of the inflated price and th $1.00 deposit on each bottle.

Regarding Claremont, the only time I go there is during the "Mission Circuit" round of dog shows at the L.A. County Fairplex and generally a bunch of us go to Tutti Mangia for Italian food. It is very good and the servings are extremely generous. We keep going back to the same place as everyone know how to find it and there is something for everyone on the menu. It's on Harvard but that is all I recall. Claremont is a college town and many restaurants are very crowded on weekends.

As I mentioned, the danger would not be to the consumer, who would hopefully have enough sense not to gobble up 30 or 40 chocolates at one sitting..... However the person handling the ingredient needs to be warned to wear gloves with good integrity so as to not be exposed to the material for long periods or repeatedly in a short period of time because it is absorbed through the skin. I grew up on a farm where tobacco was grown and like all the kids, got to help with hanging the bundles in the drying sheds. From personal experience I can attest to the fact that after getting the sap on hands and arms one could taste it for many hours afterward and that was not the refined and concentrated product. (They stopped growing tobacco on the farm in 1967.)

I want to add one more caution. While the amount of nicotine in a single serving of a dish, dessert or drink might be well below the toxic level, anyone handling it as an ingredient is also at risk because it is readily absorbed through the skin. Years ago we used to use it extensively as a garden pesticide and one of the gardeners who worked for me in the early 80s became very ill after spraying the stuff and getting his shoes soaked with it although he was wearing rubber gloves and a mask. He became disoriented, had hallucinations, was wandering out in the street when we found him, and had to be hospitalized for several days to detox. The ER doctor said he might have died if not for prompt attention. It is not something to play around with unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Thanks for this greaet idea. I actually bought a hot tub thermometer and used it in yogurt and cheesemaking, but it didn't float such that I could actually read the temperature without pulling it up out of the liquid and I got tired of cleaning all the milk out of the inside of it. ← The one I have needs to be pulled up to read it but it is glass and I just wipe down the side I want to read. It is just 5 3/4 inches long so fits well in a quart jar. I rinse it in cold water, wipe it with alcohol then rinse again before putting it away in a ziploc bag which I roll up and store in a sleeve of bubble wrap to protect the thing. Laboratory supply places are excellent sources for thermometers and have great pricing. Kodak thermometer. This one just has the best picture so you can see what it looks like.

We have all tried it, so you needn't feel like an idiot. Anything that brings us more knowledge is good. You learned something and progressed as an individual. I just happened to do it a long time ago because I am a lot older than most of the people here. This particular mistake was long in the past for me but I still have new ones coming along.

How could I have forgotten.......... I am making gingerbread and I always butter it lavishly as soon as it comes out of the oven so the butter melts and is absorbed. Then while still warm I cut a thin slice and apply butter to the cut side and eat it immediately while the butter is still partly visible. Oooooohhhhhh. Oh yes, my method of buttering it - I use a cheese plane as it is the quickest way to get a long slice of butter, just the right thickness, ready to drop onto the top of the gingerbread.

Nicotine

It is not true that if people begin drinking junk wines they are doomed forever to continuing down that road. I have known more than a few people in the wine business from the root to the table and except for a very few exceptions, they all comment that they do not care what kind of wine people start out drinking, as long as they do drink wine. Because there is a chance that eventually they will venture out from the familar base to different, more exotic, more expensive and notable wines, however if they never drink wine at all or are discouraged by being put-down for their plebian tastes, they will not make that step into the more rarefied atmosphere. One vintner said that a palate can always be educated but a person with a rigid mind set and not willing to try the mundane along with the supeior, might miss out on something that could be extraordinary. He said that on his travels he had tasted a great many unremarkable wines but these were also inoffensive and probably attractive to an uneducated palate because of the lack of assertive flavor. Some had promise with appropriate aging in the bottle and he was in the habit of buying a bottle or two of the latter and putting them by to see just how they would mature. One of his pet peeves were people who wrote off an entire category or year of wines simply because they had become popular with the "masses," which he said was the worst type of pomposity and arrogance. He had nothing but scorn for the "ivory tower" wine critics who had only bad things to say about the wines from a particular region because they just weren't doing their jobs, too lazy to really get out and do comparison tasting in the field. He has now passed on to the great vineyard in the sky, but he always said that every glass of wine that passed his lips taught him something, whether the wine itself was good, bad, mediocre, extraordinary or sublime.

For chestnut lovers, like me, there is: Girolami Farms Chestnuts I have long been a fan of Swab's foods - the garlic-stuffed olives are the best I have ever tasted. Long known only to those who drove up and down highway 395, on the eastern side of the Sierra (and here in the Antelope Valley), their unique product line is now available online and thankfully so. I have bought and shipped assorted products to friends who once lived or vacationed in the area and fell in love with the various products. Now they can order their own. Swab Farms. Another local producer I favor is Mel's Olives. Again, these are small batch products and if you visit farmers markets in southern California you might have met Mel at one time or another. As he states in his brochures, if you like garlic, you will like his products. I buy these for my Italian boss, who swears these are the absolute best for helping keep one on a diet. One or two pieces from the mixed vegetables is enough to satisfy as a low calorie snack. For the gardeners among us, particularly those needing or wanting unusual citrus trees, here is the place to go. GrowQuest.

Perhaps not illegal, but very unwise!

I love cooking and feel that too much planning, unless I am preparing an elaborate feast with multiple entrees and sides that have to be brought together at a specified time, causes me to lose some spontaneity and flair. This is the reason that I often do not have a specific recipe for a dish and that the dish itself is constantly evolving until it reaches a point that I feel is virtually perfect. Not to say that it couldn't be improved but rather it has reached a point where further changes would take it away from the desired result. I enjoy eating, but it is a far second to the cooking and planning is yet further down the list. You didn't mention shopping, however many of my adventures in the kitchen have begun with the discovery of a new and interesting ingredient in a market and then figuring out how to use it in a recipe or basing a recipe on it. I look up recipes that use it and go from there. Except in baking, where adherence to a formula is critical, I rarely prepare a recipe exactly as written every time. Usually I will prepare it the first time as written, then use it as a platform to put my own stamp on it. This is the part that is fun for me and sometimes just substituting one ingredient for another, or adding an ingredient, can completely change the entire complexion of the recipe and make it more interesting to me. This may sound arrogant but I am not trying to "one-up" the recipe author, I simply want to explore new avenues of flavors, textures and appearance.

I have bought and used every remote probe thermometer on the market (avid gadgeteer) and have not been satisfied with any of them. Some have an alarm that is too faint to hear if one is in another room and the distance from my kitchen is too great to place the base where I can easily hear it when I am in another part of the house. I can't use them in my big oven because it is a steam oven and even the thinnest cable will interrupt the steam seal. I can't use them in my combination oven because the stand revolves and twists the cable. I use instant read thermometers and separate timers and I highly recommend the Thermapen mentioned by esvoboda. If I am cooking a roast or fowl for long periods, I use an Accu-Rite meat thermometer which has a dial that is big enough to read through the oven window and simply stays in the meat. The older, larger types by Taylor are the ones I use in the barbecue because they have a movable marker on the outer rim that you can set for the target temperature and it is easy to see when the needle hits that point, without trying to read the numbers. For liquids, I use thermometers designed for liquids. For low temperature applications, such as the liquids to be used in breads, particularly when dealing with large batches, I use a floating darkroom thermometer made by Kodak, which I have had for 20+ years. It has a range from -10 to +120 F. and is very accurate.

Or you walk in Smart & Final and everyone in the store knows you by your first name and directs you to an unadvertized special on a 50-pound bag of bread flour and on full-sized sheet pans (10 for 79.99, regular price 9.99 each (since have gone up to 10.99 each).

It looks like I may have to do this. I'm smoking a 2-3lb pork loin. It's been in the smoker for 5 hours or so, but the temperature gauge on the smoker reads "warm" instead of "ideal." Which leads me to suspect that the sub-freezing temperatures outside are taking their toll. I've never had to finish a smoked pork loin (or, for that matter, anything else) in the oven before. Anyone have suggestions on the best way to go about this to preserve flavor, juicyness, etc? ← This is too late to help you now, but in the future, get some of the insulating material that is used to wrap water heaters, line furnace closets, furnace outlet vents, etc., and wrap the sides and part of the hood of your smoker when the temps are below freezing. The stuff I found is rate for temps up to 600 degrees if not in direct contact with flames and works very well to insulate the smoker. I have heavy wires cut to fit and fasten them with leash snaps so the "jacket" can be placed and removed easily.

The food over at West Hills Hospital is sometimes pretty good. Their meatloaf is wonderful, as good as any I have made. Occasionally they have ham and serve it by the slab, which is enough for at least two people or for lunch and dinner. The scalloped pototoes are great and made from real potatoes and not from a can (occasionally there are a few slices with the skin still attached, also their garlic mashed potatoes made from boiled red potatoes with the skins. And their enchiladas are great. The head cook is from Guatemala and makes them fairly spicy and the servings are generous. Chicken is generally inedible, pot roast is so-so, strogonoff is mystery meat and I won't touch it but the noodles are good so I just get them and butter them generously. And it is cheap, for anyone who works for any of the doctors on staff the cost of lunch including a drink is $3.00 and the servings are so generous that some people make two meals from it. Then there is the fish problem - my boss loves fish and keeps trying the various offerings but they fail time after time. Even catfish, which is not difficult to prepare, is pretty bad. I often pity the patients, they have fewer choices than we do.

I also have friends who like to bake and often bring me gifts of their efforts and often they are quite good but not always to my taste. I don't critique their efforts but what I do is tell them that their pie, cake, pastry, is very tempting and that I am going to take a small portion for myself but have to limit myself because I have diabetes but would hate to have it go to waste because of my limited diet so I ask if they would mind if I pass it on to my neighbors, who have a huge family and love any kind of baked goods and would appreciate it immensly. They are always flattered to hear that I like their offering so much I will pass it along to my neighbors because they know how often we get together for communal meals. Sometimes I just take the things to the office where it disappears, no matter what it is....After all, the folks in the office also eat at the hospital cafeteria several times a week.

And how about the difference between a guitar and a "guitar". (for pasta). I would post a picture of my antique guitar but ImageGullet is still not operational for me.

I am not a wine drinker but I know the owners of Maloy O'Neill and how dedicated they are to producing a superior product. Their wines are winning awards against tough competition and are reasonably priced.

I had a hotdogger when my kids were at home because at that time I had a Garland range and I didn't want them using it when I wasn't around until they got old enough to understand how to use it safely. I had several electric appliances that the kids could use safely without burning the house down and while it may have appeared stupid, it worked and they thought it was fun to use and even cleaned up after themselves! Even better, they all became interested in preparing food and became excellent cooks in their own right (as well as a few of their friends from the neighborhood whose mothers were not very handy in the kitchen). Sometimes it takes just a little nudge to get a young person interested in cooking and in my opinion, anything that keeps kids occupied and out of trouble, is worth every penny spent on it.

Having been in the dog show world for many, many years, I have had a great many gay friends, who excel at showing dogs with great style. However not all were great cooks, not all were fashion plates and few fell into the sterotypical frame that many people assume. A few were great cooks and some were professionals. Some couldn't find their way around a kitchen with a map and they weren't all decorators either. One was a high steel worker! For a couple of years one young man rented a room in my house and had kitchen privaleges but never stepped foot in the kitchen. His successor, who stayed for 5 years, loved cooking and baking and had plans to attend culinary school but caught a break and has been very successful in the entertainment business. We keep in touch and he still loves cooking but just as a hobby now - he has been able to afford the most amazing kitchen that even makes me envious. He is definitely a foodie - now even has an interest in a vineyard and an olive grove. However his partner, an artist, often doesn't even remember to eat unless prompted and will eat anything and everything without caring whether it is gourmet or the crappiest fast food. And ladyyoung, I didn't see anything in market's post to imply you were not intelligent. It was a joke about the series on TV, not about you. I haven't watched the show either, but there has been so much about it on other shows, it would have been difficult not to know it existed.

I wish I could find the bit I copied from Bizarre News a couple of years ago. Some weird artist in Florida was making sculptures out of palmetto bugs, dipping them in a type of clear epoxy or similar resin and sticking them onto wire armatures formed into varius shapes. One sculputre was a grove of palm trees about 8 feet tall and from a distance looked like a real tree. Apparently he lived in a place that was heavily infested by the "state mascot" and decided to make use of them. He had already sold one piece to a hotel for display near their outdoor dining area. (Shudder!)

There are few areas in southern California where you would want to use seawater from near the shore, or even 10 miles offshore. If, however you live along the central coast, (away from the power plant) or along the Mendocino coast (assuming you could get down to the beach from the top of the cliffs, the highest point along the Pacific coast), then you should be able to use the water safely. I used to do a lot of fishing and our boats always went out quite far to get away from the effulvia from the shore. There is also always a lot of muck in the water, just from being stirred up by the breakers. One of my stepsons was an avid surfer and you wouldn't believe the amount of sand that came out of his baggies when I washed them. Compared to the water up around Big Sur and points north, our water down here is very dirty, particularly at this time of the year. Having flown over it, out to sea, then back again, it is very obvious how far out the stuff from run-off goes. (Years ago I got a ride on the Goodyear blimp, a run out to Catalina and back, a high point in my life!)

I love to grate sweet potatoes with this and deep fry them. I have been doing this for years, ever since I had them at a restaurant in Pasadena and was so impressed with the flavor.

You know for sure when your mailbox is full (large rural mailbox) and it includes only one bill plus 9 catalogs, food or kitchen related only, a package from the Mustard Museum and one from Salsa Express.