andiesenji

I do the same with butternut squash but I stab them with my larding needle, inserting it next to the stem and up through the cavity. I set the MW for 8 min on 40% power and then let it rest as you do. I use that larding needle for many tasks for which it was never intended.

I have a storage building 15' x 40' with more of the shelving units plus a bunch of used bookcases I bought when I first moved up here in '88 and some shelving units I bought when the old Penney's store closed in '92. There is also a lot of stuff stored in the biggest bedroom that used to be my studio when I was still doing art work, it's 12 x 16. I had planned to build a studio when I moved here but this room was adequate for my long bench and my other equipment so I never got around to that.

I roll them in plastic wrap and nuke for 6 seconds on half power. They come out perfect.

I wear gloves, change them often. I have found that invariably, as soon as I get into really sticky dough - or other food item, THE PHONE RINGS OR SOMEONE BANGS ON THE DOOR. It is much easier to strip off a glove to pick up the phone than try to get one hand clean enough and then have to wash after handling the phone or doorknob, etc. Gloves are relatively cheap and save me a lot of time and frustration. 60 years ago I learned NEVER put hot water on yeast dough, it turns it into glue.

Mine beeps 5 times then goes silent. I candy small amounts of citrus peel in the MW. I have posted the process on eG in the past, not sure where it is now, but it is on my blog. How to peel an orange and etc... Once you get the hang of this process, you will be surprised how quickly you can bare that orange (or other citrus). When I make large batches I can do a couple of dozen oranges in twenty minutes or less. The instructions for the candying follow the photos. I didn't add those photos to the post, although I have them somewhere.

No. No farm. My house is mostly a long rectangle with the kitchen/pantry at one end/corner the master suite at the opposite end/corner with a laundry room, three bedrooms and a large bath between. It's only 1890 sq ft.

Marx Foods/Marx Pantry

My bedroom is at the other end of the house, a very long trek. Nothing even remotely food related in there.

This was originally a "breakfast room" with "cute" (not in my opinion) double swinging doors (AKA "saloon" doors) between. If a decent sized table was placed where it was fully usable, it impeded progress into the family room because there was also a bulit-in china cabinet next to the doorway. The doors and the cabinet were the first to go, the latter replaced with a much shallower, free-standing cabinet which is my spice cabinet. A few other alterations and a new electric line and three outlets so I could have several appliances going at the same time. Then the heavy-duty shelving units - no wheels because they hold more weight without the wheels and a moveable butcher-block top "bench" not as tall as regular counters so it is easier to knead doughs and do other tasks for someone of average height. A new wall between the pantry and the family room, with a single swinging door hides it from view. There is a large window (65 x 48") behind the shelving unit to the right that is hung with a Blindsgalore® Select Motorized Cellular Shade that lets some light through and has a remote control to open it if I need more light. The matching window in my family room, which is behind my huge entertainment center, has a similar one but is a"blackout" shade. I really have no use for a breakfast room or nook or whatever. I have a counter at the other end of the kitchen with a couple of stools, which for me is a multi-tasker. It would be different if I had a family but even then the way the room was situated was awkward. Maybe because my dad was an architect and a builder, gave me an eye for such things.

And they don't rust the way bindery clips will.

That's just mostly empty ones I stacked on my pantry prep table for a photo. This is the other side of the room ready for holiday baking - with several containers from the freezer (nuts and etc., that can go rancid). And the normal line up of various flours I use on a regular basis. The Excalibur dehydrator lives in the pantry along with an extra microwave and oven. And I use my Brother P-Touch label maker with gay abandon - - - My pantry is 9 x 12'

I was born into a family of "foodies" - a great grandmother who had traveled extensively in Europe, the UK and even to Egypt in the late 1800s and was an avid collector of "receipts." Not that she ever cooked herself, being a rather aristocratic lady, but she knew how to instruct cooks. My grandparents who raised me, were adventurous with foods and like to try interesting and even exotic dishes. Their cook was a Gullah woman from the "lowcountry" and she loved conspiring with my great grandmother in trying some of the recipes she had collected in her travels. During WWII there were three Italian POWs who worked on the farm and one had either worked in or owned a "trattoria" in Perugia and taught cook how to make several dishes - braciola was one that became a family favorite. I was fascinated with food and how to prepare it from the time I was old enough to stand on a kitchen chair and "help" and cook had the patience of a saint because I am sure I was a terrible pest. But I learned so much. I have to laugh about a "new" product on the market, "Bee's Wrap" which is cloth coated with bee's wax. One of my tasks when I was about 8 or 9 was rubbing beeswax into fine muslin that was stretched on frames and then one of the maids would iron the fabric with the wax face down on an enamel counter. It was used to wrap food. Now it's a new old thing.

I migrated to eG about a month after you did, also from King Arthur Baking Circle when I became annoyed by a guy who doubted that I had attended Dunwoodie baking school in the '50s - claimed it was a school for men only. I didn't spar with him, didn't answer but he just wouldn't let it go. A long time friend from SOAR, the old Compuserve online recipe source, suggested I look in on eG and I have been here ever since. Gifted Gourmet - Melissa was the first to welcome me and I miss her. Also Fifi with whom I corresponded by email about a lot of off topic things.

The Porcini I have gotten from Marx Foods have been excellent. The flavor is amazing.

I have been using Cambro containers since I was catering in the 1980s and I still have some of the first ones I purchased at Smart & Final in Canoga Park when I still lived in the Valley. I have every size from 1-quart to 22 quarts. A 10- pound bag will fit in the 8-quart container - you have to shake it down a bit to fit the last bit in. I agree that the 6-quart size is right for a 5-pound bag.

Please post when you try the dried porcini. I usually purchase from Marx Foods - Dried wild porcini. $58.00 per pound.

After filling the shakers, I had some of the ground cinnamon left over and used it in a bread pudding, in an apple crisp, and in some spiced syrup. I also have some apple butter cooking but just started it this morning in a slow cooker so it will be some hours before I can actually evaluate the flavor. It is extremely pungent and the flavor is superior to some Penzey's I received as a promotional item last September.

Here is Frontier's web site, which explains in detail the difference between the various varieties.

I love iGourmet and have ordered many cheeses from them. Once a year I treat myself to a whole wheel of Caerphilly - which I have learned I can cut into chunks (I have the giant Wusthof two-handled cheese knife) VACUUM seal each piece and store in the freezer. It keeps perfectly - as do cheddars and other similar cheeses.

There are two or three vendors on Amazon that sell powdered bay leaf in bulk.

Ingredients online - some are much less costly and the product is superior. I'm an Amazon Prime member - saves me a lot of money. I am extremely partial to Frontier Co-Op ingredients. I use cacao nibs - I have found that I can use them just fine but regular chocolate affects me adversely. (I can use cocoa too). I just ordered a POUND of Frontier Organic Fair Trade Certified Cacao Nibs. Price: 12.15 Locally, the CHEAPEST are at Walmart 9.99 for 8 ounces (half a pound) The one time I tried them, they were stale. I also ordered a pound of Frontier's Organic Vietnamese Cinnamon. (Add-on item) 7.62 And it is EXCELLENT. I grind my own cinnamon (Frontier cinnamon sticks) fresh before use, But I am making up some cinnamon/sugar shakers for a friend who is going to be teaching a baking class to teens and needed some prep help as she is up to her ears in getting ready for it. As I already have a bunch of shakers from my catering days, i volunteered to make these up. This cinnamon is really pungent. CI has rated Frontier spices tops in a few categories during the past couple of years.

That's not butter. I have made regular butter, cultured butter and "clabber butter"for 60 years and have spoken to hundreds of others who make butter. She is heating what I assume in non-ultrapasteurizd milk and the stuff she is skimming off is not "cream" it is a skin of proteins - casein and another - which form when milk is heated and the water evaporates from the surface. Butterfat globules are suspended in cream in higher concentrations which clump together as it is agitated. Heating disrupts this and breaks the butterfat up and keeps it from clumping. That's why, on farms where the only cool places were in a "spring house", butter churning was done in the early morning and crockery churns were used, which naturally keep things cool, they were often set into a tub of water so evaporation would cool the churn. Whatever she is making, it is not butter as we know it.

True pines - pinus varieties, including Pinyon pine and also these: Lodgepole Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Shore Pine and White-bark Pine. Make sure you are not getting Yew, which is extremely poisonous, or Cypress - like the Arizona cypress that grows in the southwest. If you live where there are heavy concentrations of pine trees, I'm sure you have "noticed" the pollen. It too is edible and the Native Americans collected it routinely to use as a substitute for flour (from acorns) in the spring. When I stayed at our cabin in Running Springs, I collected about a cup or so of it one year and mixed it into flour and made pancakes with it. It is very high in protein. I think I got that from one of Euell Gibbons books.

There is also "spruce tip" jam. When I was a child we were taught what plants in the woods were edible and at what times of the year. Spruce tip beer is probably more widely known. I subscribed to Mother Earth News for about 25 years back in the 70s, 80s, etc. And in the '60s when we had a cabin in Running Springs, I attended a class in survival training in case I got lost up there. Just a couple of weeks ago a young couple with their child were led off the beaten path by bad GPS and the woman hiked 30 miles until she found a cabin. She said she peeled and chewed on pine twigs, etc.

I forgot to mention that my friend Sam the "egg man" gave me a lovely 7.5 pound duck for my Christmas present. Along with some lovely eggs. He raises fancy chickens, ducks, geese, game birds etc. He has one of the newiish "flash freezing" (commercial) units. It really works - He brought me the duck on the Monday before Christmas and I left it in the fridge. It was still frozen solid on Christmas so I cooked something else. I did not want to thaw it rapidly because I have had not so good results when I did that in the past. Yesterday it was finally defrosted enough - although the parts inside the cavity were still frozen but I was able to extract them. I decided to do a braise (I cooked hundreds of ducks this way back when I was catering) so I made a "bed" of celery stalks and put the duck in breast down for 3 hours at 225°F covered then another hour breast up before applying the orange sauce I prepared during the time it was cooking. This is immediately after I turned it over so it is breast up. I used a poultry hook, inserting it fully into the cavity, lifting and "spinning" the bird with just a fork. Simple and safe. And this is the amount of liquid that rendered out of the bird during the long, slow braise. I consider this one of the best parts of using this method of cooking. I then uncovered it raised the temp to 375°F and set the timer for 30 minutes: This is what it looked like. Returned it to the over for another 20 minutes. Done - transferred to a 12-inch platter. And the breasts and legs parted out. The poultry hook works for any big hunk of meat that you have to turn. I have used it on hams, roasts, etc. even on really big turkeys.