andiesenji

One of my friends found some 1/2-pint canning jars with one-piece lids (instead of the lid-and-ring type) and screwed the lids to the underside of a cabinet in a row, back next to the wall. The jars were clear glass but she got a type of opaque glass paint (at a craft store) that is cured in the oven and dipped each jar in it up to the bottom of the screw threads. She then painted on the name of the spice or herb on each one. The bulk herbs she keeps in Cambro containers in the freezer and just puts enough in the jars for immediate use. It is very simple to grab a jar which releases from the lid with a 3/4 turn, they are out of the light and also in an opaque container. I haven't been in her kitchen for a while, but I would guess she has at least 20 jars under the cabinet which is over her prep area. I never thought of doing spices like this, however I have about 40 baby-food jars mounted the same way in my shed with screws, nuts, bolts, washers and other little things of various sizes to make them easier to find.

We so think alike! I have more than one "just in case" and also because I need one really long one for working in deep stock pots but it is too large for most other uses. (Waring WSB60 with 16"shaft) I have one that lives permanently by the cooktop (and for which I have an overhead plug recepticle for which I am eternally grateful as it keeps the cord from dragging through stuff) as I am always using it for sauces, and so many other things, and another in my prep area that is instantly handy for use. I have a bright red KitchenAid that was a gift, still in the box. My housekeeper, new to the American way of having gadgets for so many tasks, bought one for herself, her very first kitchen appliance, which she uses to chop herbs for a lunch/snack she makes to take to school. She could use mine but wanted one of her very own.

Try pairing it with duxelles, half and half on a slice. Takes it to an entirely new dimension!

Depending on your location, you might want to check out this one: Hobart.

If you keep your spice bottles in a drawer with aids such as these, you don't need to have opaque containers. Or these.

Why not make your own? It isn't difficult. Put half a cup of lightly roasted and skinned hazelnuts in a 2-cup pyrex container, add water to cover microwave for 2-3 minutes, depending on how powerful your oven. Add 3 tablespoons sugar. Microwave for an additional 3 minutes. Set aside and allow to cool. Test a nut by squeezing between your thumb and index finger. If it is soft and crushable, it is ready. If not microwave for additional 1 minute intervals until a nut is the right consistency. Old nuts will take longer than fresh. Then crush to paste in a mortar or pulse in a mini processor. A variable-speed blender will work but you have to be careful to pulse it a few seconds at a time and mix it with a rubber spatula between pulses so the blender won't stall.

bread crumbs!

The small freezer storage ziplog bags work quite well. If you take a hole punch and punch a hole above the seal, you can then thread spices of a similar nature (all your chiles), or sweet spices that are usually mixed together, or savory spices, etc, on shower curtain "rings" the old fashioned kind that have a fastening something like a safety-pin. These will in turn, hang neatly on a hook and the bags can be fanned out to find the one you want and slide it around to the opening. Easiest identification is to take address labels and fold them in half (with the backing still on) and write on both sides the name of the spice and the date. Then peel the backing away and stick it on one edge of the bag, so it sticks out like a tab on a file. If you offset each one on the bags from top to bottom, you can just about see every one while the bags are on top of each other. For many years I used this method to store my hundreds of pastels and found it was far neater than the open box method and saved me a lot of money by allowing me to see just what I had before going to the store to replace ones I had but couldn't find. This is a good way to store whole spices and you can tuck a smaller bag inside with freshly ground spices. I often do this with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, etc., dating the ground spice bag as once ground they lose flavor quickly. If you have a Smart & Final wholesale grocer near you, check to see if that store carries the snack size food grade heavyweight bags and the pint size freezer bags. They are much heavier than the regular freezer bags made by Glad, Hefty or Ziploc.

How could I have forgotten the burnt-sugar pecans so beloved by my grandfather. I can remember sitting for hours, with an upside-down flat iron between my knees, and a small ballpeen hammer in my hand, cracking pecans for various recipes and for eating out of hand.

I treat onion confit as I do any confit, to keep it fresh and good. I put it in a sterilized canning jar, (just large enough to hold it with an inch of head room) press it down so there are no air pockets, then pour melted duck fat over it to a depth of 1/2 inch. You could use a neutral oil if you don't have duck fat but it is easy to break the cold fat and lift it off the confit, in fact, I melt it, strain it and save it in the fridge and use it again. The whole point is to keep air away from the surface of the preserve and duck fat makes a fine seal as it adheres nicely to glass. Melted Crisco works too, in a pinch. It has no flavor to interfere with the flavor of the confit. I treat duxelles the same way and it keeps for a long time. As long as the air/oxygen can't get to the surface of the food, it won't sour, spoil or develop mold.

I was in Target today and they have a new Rival with a very attractive crockery insert with a beautiful decorative design right on the crock. 5-quart, $34.99.

This is my 5-gallon one And this is the pasturizer. I also have a hand-cranked 1 gallon churn but haven't used it for a while.

It really helps when one has an actual butter churn which you can turn on and allow to do its thing for the alloted time. It makes the job much easier.

If you heat the syrup to dissolve the sugar and bring it up to 165 degrees and hold it at that temp for 10 minutes, then immediately pour it into sterilized bottles with a tight seal, you can keep it at room temperature or in the fridge for much longer if you invert the bottle. The point is to keep air away from the surface of the syrup (or any condiment or jam or jelly). Oxygen is the great destroyer and reducing the exposure will preserve anything such as this much longer. don't shake the syrup to mix the sugar, heat it unless you are going to use it all at once or within a day. Oxygenating the mixture by shaking just promotes growth of some of the bacteria that cause the clouding. When you need to pour out some of the syrup, set the bottle or jar upright for a couple of minutes to allow the syrup to drain away from the top. Remove the top and pour out what you need, then wipe the top and immediately reclose and invert.

Order placed. Shipping to Calif. $34.00. Considering what I have paid for overnight express shipping of a couple of truffles, this is not bad.

I make my own cultured butter from extra heavy cream that I get locally (under the radar of the dairy board, actually) and figuring my time expenditure, and all the other things that add up in such a project, my butter costs me more than this but it is worth it to have what I consider to be a superior product. I am going to place an order and see how it compares with mine and will also try it out on some friends without letting them know I have pulled a switch. A real "blind" taste test. I may be able to retire the butter churn for good. It's little motor has soldiered on for many, many years because of my obsession with butter.

On various relish trays, arranged down the center of the main table were various assortments of the following. My aunts said that there may have been a couple of other home made items that no one makes any longer but this was just about it. Usually 50 or more people for Thanksgiving dinner, even more for Christmas. baby gerkins sweet baby gerkins dill bread and butter pickles (similar to my recipe) green olives with pimentos ripe black olives marinated mushrooms celery with several types of filler radishes cut into roses green onions baby onions pickled pickled peppers watermelon rind pickles spiced crabapples mixed vegetable pickles benne seed sticks, savory carrot sticks hard boiled quail eggs in curry sauce pickled walnuts

Mazeltov!! You must live right.......

Well, mine was in the dining room, but while it was esthetically attractive because of the design, it was impractical because the entire top was not one level. Mine also had a bolt-on upper unit of staggered shelves with a mirror back of the serving level which we removed soon after we purchased it. We sold it along with the "upper story" to someone who wanted it only for a back bar for which it was suitable. You will have to use it for a while to see if it works for you as is. If so you are a lucky man, if not, you will know how to make it work by then. On mine, the top slab was marble but the wood beneath it was not finished with the veneer of the fall front so leaving the marble off was not an option.

I have been served grits fries. Little coin-shaped pieces of grits from cooked and cooled grits spread on a sheet pan about 1/4 inch thick, cut out and deep fried and served with a sauce reminiscent of seafood cocktail sauce. Not bad.. I can see promise here of an interesting theme.

Regarding the sideboard. I lived with one with a similar top for a few years but finally said bye-bye to it after the fourth time a large footed chafer was moved and a foot slipped over the edge of the top platform and slid off the top dropping the contents onto my antique Sarouk rug. Having a top with a level surface from front to back is much more practical and safe. I could have bought two new sideboards for the amount I spent on having the Sarouk taken up and cleaned four times.

The DLX can handle any size. I have made a small batch for a single boule. You just have to set the roller assemble very close to the side of the bowl. As I said, it is very like hand kneading in the way it handles dough.

If you have a tilting-head KA, not locking the head prevents the "crawl." You have to be sure to stand nearby, though, as this makes the mixer walk around .the counter more. ← I really haven't used one of the tilting-head KAs for bread dough. I have some older ones that are part of my "vintage" collection but they are too small for the batches of dough I handle. I have had several of the KAs with the elevating bowl and had the same problem with all of them, even when they added a "shield" to the top of the dough hook. I don't want to have to stand and watch a mixer work, which is one of the reasons I like the DLX. That timer is a Godsend.

Since you are considering a center island, why not opt for a 36 inch range in the island. Even if you can't bring the electric and gas service up from underneath, you might be able to bring it down from overhead. In my old house, the floors were concrete with terrazo tile and when we added an island to the kitchen we had a round stainless steel column that contained both electric and gas lines with plugs on 3 sides as well as a water line for a pot filler on the side facing the cooktop and for a small vegetable prep sink, all brought down from overhead. In addition we had a pot rack hung from the upper part of the column which was very handy. The island itself was sort of egg shaped, broader at the end where the cooktop was and narrower at the end that held the sink (with a cutout next to the sink for scraps to drop through into a bin for composting). It was shaped this way because it made it easier to move around it. The top was 3 1/2 inch thick butcher block and one side had 3 pull-out platforms that were large enough to hold a place setting, glass, cup, etc., so we had a little extra seating. It would have cost considerably more to cut through the tile and concrete and I doubt they would have been able to exactly match the tile color as it had been a special order.

If you can't get a shake mixer (and I have one of the HB triples also) then the next best thing is an immersion blender because you can work it up and down in the container. The Cuisinart, which is very inexpensive, does a fine job on malts, shakes and smoothies.