andiesenji

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me - - - as having no will power at all when I pass the aisle where such things lurk.

It just occurred to me that I hadn't shown the Staples sorter when I posted the earlier photos. Here is the sorter next to a ruler so you can see the size. and here it is loaded with 5 cast iron pans of varying shapes and sizes.

I get all kinds of catalogs and earlier today was thumbing through the one from this company and came across these tool racks. I think they will make good pot racks or in particular, skillet racks and so have ordered two, one single, one double. I will report on how well they work. I think for someone with very tight space (or no ceiling from which to hang a pot rack) these should work very nicely. I have a spot in mind to put one up so it will be handy to the place I use the induction cooker.

Good news, the cheap sorter racks from Staples hold the cast iron corn stick pans just fine. I made some changes and switches some of my pans from one area to another so they are now on one of the shelving units and I used heavy guage, plastic coated wire to make dividers this allows for odd shaped, odd sized pans and cooling racks, pizza pans and even an odd-shaped Bundt pan. I have a bunch of snap hooks (from my dog-showing days) and put one on each end of the wire so I can move them when needed. It works great. close up so you can see how they are made. Using the heavy guage wire, which will support a lot of weight, means you really only have to make one turn around whatever you are attaching it to. It takes a lot to straighten it out.

Oh, that first one is me all right, except it was a sheet full of cookies. Not only did I burn myself twice, but cookes went flying all over the kitchen. The tongs, now, that's a new one. Thanks for a great picture! ← Have you seen the new thing made of Nomex that you snap over the leading edge of the upper oven rack. A great idea. I have the long cuff Nomex gloves from England, (much better than the 'Ove' glove. My oven is very deep and sometimes I have to reach far inside to turn a pan that is on a sheet pan and have bumped the back of my wrist against the rails on the sides of the oven. I was Ms. Stripey for a few days until I got the gauntlets.

The posts about salt really strike a note with me. I bake a loaf of seeded and nut filled bread with a mix of seeds and crystal salt on the crust. It's beautiful and tastes wonderful. One of the women in the office won't even try it because there is "too much" salt in it. However she will sit at her desk after heating a mug of water in the microwave and dissolve a boullion cube and drink that. About 100 times the salt that is in and on my bread. I do have a few serious food allergies but I can usually work around them. One hostess mentioned the day before a dinner that she was preparing shrimp scampi. I told her that I was allergic to shrimp but not to fix anything special for me. I know how she cooks and there is always loads of other food besides the main course. I mentioned that if she was making the potatos Anna that is one of her usual creations, I could make a meal off that any time. The dinner was fine, the other guests enjoyed their shrimp and I enjoyed the rest of the food. In fact we discussed food allergies and learned one guest was allergic to peanuts and another to lamb. Then our hostess mentioned that she had had a rash after handling the shrimp when cleaning them. I told her to get checked by an allergist because that is the way my allergy began, I only had the more serious symptoms long after I began getting the rash, especially between my fingers. Itchy and painful.

I generally check first at BizRate as they often show deals that are better than Amazon, not always, but sometimes. The 6 quart for 39.95 at Linens 'N Things is a lot of bang for the buck.

You certainly did a beautiful job with it. It looks perfect.

With just a cursory search I can't find the lavender shortbread recipe. However there are a number of excellent ideas for using lavender in various things on this site. \ Including lavender cookies and lavender lemonade.

Why not make lavendar shortbread? If you use the new Splenda/sugar baking combo, it has half the sugar and it works well in shortbread. I have the recipe somewhere on this computer, hopefully by title, because I have 3 huge hard drives and only one is fully indexed. If you are interested I can dig it out and post it. P.S. It keeps very well....

By the way, Viva, I am so pleased that you like the cake. As soon as I get caught up with my current tasks, I am going to fix some of the mincemeat also.

Regarding the "very stiff batter" in the pork cake. I think Meemaw used her hands to mix it. She did have strong arms. Even though by the time I knew her, they had had a washing machine for several years, the bedding always was washed or boiled, in a big tub in the back yard and Meemaw would work that tub full of sheets with a long handled paddle. She wasn't a very big woman but tough. She would go out to the woodshed and split wood for the wood stove if the "boys" weren't moving fast enough for her. I either use my hands (gloves, of course) or use the Danish whisk I got from King Arthur Flour a few years back. It is perfect for cutting through stiff dough. I always wear gloves because invariably, as soon as I get my hands in a mess of something, the phone will ring. This way I just strip off a glove and answer. Clean hand = clean phone.

Helen, It is post #8 in this thread. I can post it on the fruitcake thread if necessary. However I believe Viva has already cross linked it.

That's a great question. Mr. McGee, I too am interested in the answer. I grow a great many herbs and have been drying them as well as fruits and vegetables for years. I know the basics about the herbs, some are stronger when dried because of the oils. However I do not understand how that applies to other foods that do not contain the essential oils common to herbs. I know the effect by observation but would like to know the cause.

As suggested by jsolomon, I would go to a health food store and get a bottle of the unfiltered cider vinegar that contains the mother and add 1/4 cup to a quart of the "wine" and put it away in a dark place for 3-4 months, which should be sufficient time for the mother to take over and create vinegar. Some truly awful raw wines have been converted into excellent vinegar, in fact, one vintner here in California turned a disaster into cash back in the late 70s when he did this following a year when grape crops were affected by out of season storms coupled with a strike by farm workers. Jelly, jams, preserves and juice are also great options. You can also remove the grapes from the stems, spread them on a tray and freeze them, then transfer to bags for later processing if you are overwhelmed with a huge amount. If they are seedless and very sweet, you can dry them and make wonderful raisins. Don't try it with seeded grapes, it is a lot of work to split them and remove the seeds. I expect yours have seeds as most Concord varieties do. I know of only one cultivar that is seedless and it is a relatively new introduction. You can cook them down a bit and put them through a food mill to remove the seeds and the tough part of the skins which will leave you with the pulp and this can be thinly spread on a silpat mat on a sheet pan and dried in a very low (140 degrees) oven to make grape "leather"......

Wow! Diana, What neat ideas. Heads up!!! I had to go to Staples today to pick up some storage boxes (have to put away some of my books -bought 18 boxes.) While wandering down the desk accessory aisle I found a heavy wire 5-section file folder holder/sorter which must be a new item because it isn't on their web site and I did not see in the store when I was there two weeks ago. It is much heavier than the other file sorters and will hold heavy lids without bending. I wired one to one of the steel shelves and it holds the heavy lids easily. I bought two to see how they work - they are only $8.85 and are only available in black (appears to be powder-coated) so far. Looks like a good deal. I am going to see how they work with sheet pans and especially my cast iron cornstick pans which are so heavy they bend all the other racks. Photos to follow....

I received Diana Serbe's newsletter today and when I visited the site I noticed the number of English recipes and a couple of Christmas recipes. Wouldn't hurt to check it out. In Mama's Kitchen I already posted the mince meat recipe on the Pork Cake thread.

I received a newsletter today from Diana Serbe, from In Mama's Kitchen, and noted that there were several English christmas recipes represented, including one for mince meat, the real thing, containing beef. This one appears to be fairly simple, fewer ingredients and fewer steps than the one I have so I am posting it for those who may not want to use pork. Mincemeat recipe.

A boyfriend who used to pick me up after work at my Mom's bakery would, instead of kissing me when I got into his car, would nuzzle my neck. I finally asked him why he did that and he said I smelled just like his grandma's schnecken. I was a bit put out at first but then decided it was probably a compliment as German farm boys aren't much on flowery prose. I never wore perfume, never needed it!

As Judith says, sometimes we need to do this even when very ill. It is a restoring activity and if we tire, we simply rest a bit then get right back to it. A couple of years ago one of my then neighbors, (she has since moved to Taos, NM), began having fainting spells, collapsing without warning, etc., particularly dangerous in the kitchen. She was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis and was told she would have to give up cooking and baking, an activity which she loved. She was very depressed until another neighbor, whose husband works at Edwards with the test pilots, mentioned that he had heard that the pressure suits such as the pilots wore, could be adapted for use by people with this condition, fitting from the toes up to the lower chest cage. It was a time-consuming and very expensive proposition but eventually she did get her "pop suit" and was so excited that she could stand for longer periods of time and didn't pass out without warning. She went back to cooking and especially baking big time. She baked enormous batches of cookies, rolls, and other goodies, took them to the women's and children's shelter, the sernior citizen's center, the Chamber of Commerce, as well as all the neighbors and all of her friends. It was a renewal and gave her a tremendous shot of energy. She also joined a support group for the disease and at one of their conferences, met a very nice man whom she eventually married (she had been a widow for a number of years). He is an aspiring artist and lives near Taos so she sold her home and moved there.

I remember well the saucer-sized abalone steaks and am profoundly sorry that they went into decline. The flavor is wonderful. In the 70s one of my friends, a scuba diver with an "unlimited" permit, used to bring me a washtub full of abalone. I cleaned, then froze them, cleaned and sandblasted the shells and sold them to an artisan button maker in Oxnard. I still have two of the very large shells somewhere in my junk. They are so beautiful, with all the iridescent colors. I used to use them as serving dishes for crackers, etc. I'm glad you reminded me of them. I'll have to get them out and start using them again.

I would rather be called schnecken......... Wait! Come to think of it, I have been, however that was a long, long time ago.

As far as things known in ancient times disappearing, it is true that sometimes plants are selected for a particular characteristic and the parent plant gradually disappears from domestic use. It is possible to find an occasional ancestor plant in the wild but it is a huge job to search for them and people who are interested in such things either don't have the time or the money to search or there is no access to the areas where such plants might have survived. One of the notes in my great grandmother's journal refers to lovage, a particular favorite of mine in the herb garden, and in the next sentence she wonders whatever happened to "smallage" which was apparently some kind of "salat" green, known in the time of Elizabeth I, but seemlingly no common mentions of it afterwards. Did the name change to something else that rapidly or did it suffer a blight that destroyed all known plants? Other people have wondered also and have written about it.

What a neat topic. I have already added it to my "subscriptions" list so I won't lose track of it. I have several, many of which duplicate GGs. But I think these are different. BBC food glossary Petit food glossary. Italian food glossary Japan food glossary India Tastes food glossary and Gernot Katzer's spice glossary Which I find particularly helpful when trying to get a different flavor in a certain food.

Exactly, what you said!!! I detest picky, picky, picky eaters that complain about every little thing. And some of these people have such chutzpa....... I was really floored a few months back when a couple of guests brought along an uninvited addition (she had dropped in on them unexpectedly and then wanted to come along to dinner) who came into my house and started to light a cigarette. I immediately asked her not to smoke as my house is strictly smoke-free. She flounced out onto the patio and smoked her cigarette, standing just outside the screen door so I closed the glass slider. She complained about the water, asking if it was bottled - since we are on a well and have the best tasting water around - this was insulting to me. She didn't like the dressing on the salad and complained about the duxelles on the meat and scraped it off the meat and managed to push it off her plate onto the table cloth. I had tried to be gracious but the final straw was when she stuck a spoon in the tart tatin and my homemade ice cream and made some remark about thinking that a "gourmet cook" would fix something besides plain old apple pie, then went out to the patio to smoke another cigarette. My guests saw that I was ready to explode and apologized for bringing her and made their excuses and immediately left. They were embarassed and the other couple were astonished at the performance of this nitwit who, as far as I was concerned, was a party crasher. I was actually surprised that the couple, whom I have known for years, would even consider bringing an extra person - I later learned that she had been foisted on them by the man's employer so he felt obligated.