andiesenji

I have this scale also and it is a good one, holds a larger container than some of the others. I also use a balance beam baker's scale for repeated weighing of the same amount as when I am scaling bread dough. This has the advantage of not turning itself off as the digital scale does after a short time. Also it is now like second nature as I have been using this scale for 50 years.

I will never eat sea urchin. I have a couple of acquaintances who are on a "call list" from some restaurant and get a notice when a shipment of these creatures is due so they can make a reservation. They rave about them but I can't even look at the plate.

Ah, but the question is not whether these people are seriously misguided. That is a topic for another thread. The question is, are they pleasant and sociable?

That review mirrors what I said in my post. If you have an espresso machine (I have the Saeco Royal Digital Plus) this is not going to replace that. However for people who live in tiny apartments where space (and money) is at a premium, this makes a very acceptable cup with no difficulty, no special training and with excellent safety features (automatically turns off after an hour, signals when water is low, etc.) Virtually foolproof, the directions are very simple. I am going to get one for a friend's daughter who is going away to university at the end of next month, leaving on her birthday, and must drink 20 cups a day. She has baby sat my dogs many times when I have been away from home and will never take any money so this way I can give her a birthday gift and pay her back. I may also buy one for the office. One of the "girls" has a coffee maker in the kitchen next to my office that gurgles and spits and makes too much noise for far too long and she is the only one who can stand to drink the output, no one else will touch it. My boss likes coffee too but has taken to drinking instant because it is safer than the stuff in the coffee maker. I think this will work out fine because he has to have decaf and this way everyone can have the kind they want in their own mugs. Since it brews so rapidly there will be little delay in everyone getting a cup.

I make a peach pie which is quite different from the usual. I do the bottom crust and partially blind-bake it, just enough to "set" the dough then allow it to cool completely. Meanwhile I skin and cut up enough peaches to fill the pie about 3/4 full, this varies depending on the size of the pie plate or tin. Then I cook the peaches with 1/2 cup sugar (or Splenda) and 1/4 cup lemon juice, stirring often if they are done on the stovetop or occasionally if done in the microwave, until they are the consistance of preserves. I allow this to cool until it is barely warm, then pour it into the pie shell. Next I beat together 1 cup of sour cream and 8 ounces of cream cheese, add 1/4 cup sugar (or Splenda) continue beathing until it is smooth. Set aside. I then skin and halve enough peaches to cover the top of the pie, cut side down and pour the sour cream/cream cheese mixture over the top. I cover the edge of the pie crust with a pie crust ring to keep it from burning. (These things are so great. pie crust ring ) This then goes into a 325 degree oven for 25 to 35 minutes which should be enough to set the sour cream mixture. This is very pretty with the domes of the peach halves surrounded by the creamy mixture.

Some vegans take it way too far. And many of the PETA people are totally off the beam. They had some big rally at the shopping center in Northridge back in February and one of them was being really nasty to people walking out of the mall who were wearing leather jackets. I sat in my van and watched while she went to her car to get a bottle of water. She was driving a Mercedes with leather upholstery. Now how committed is that? I don't know if it made the national news, but a couple of years ago we had a family here in Lancaster who had their children taken from them because they were strict vegans and their children were found to be dangerously malnourished. The court found that it was fine for them to choose what and how much they consumed but their children had to be fed according to generally accepted standards. The simple truth is that incomplete amino acid chains cannot fuel a rapidly growing body or something will suffer. The brain in particular. All these children were very small, looking at least 3 years younger than their contemporaries and were found to be a bit slow mentally. An older sibling, from an earlier marriage, who had been living with the grandparents from age 4, was normal in size and mental development. I see a lot of vegans at the health food store where I buy a lot of my baking ingredients and many of them do not look all that healthy to me. It is my personal belief that we evolved as omnivores and our bodies and brains develop the greatest potential with a completely balanced diet and that includes some protein from an animal source, eggs, milk, etc. If we were meant to eat grass directly, instead of after it has been processed and turned into meat, we would have multiple stomachs as ruminants do. But that is just my opinion and my personal preference. I don't think anyone should be discriminated against by what they eat, wear, speak, believe, sing, grow, read, draw, paint, drive or fly and also what color, height, weight, shape, they might be or how many children, pets and etc., they might have.

I tried Diet Rite cola with a squeeze of lemon juice and another with a squeeze of lime juice. It helped a lot. The Raspberry is okay as is.

I order it direct from White Lily. White Lily

No, there is no date, at least I have not found one.

I don't eat a lot of seafood, I have an allergy to some types (shrimp and others that concentrate iodine). However I do cook it for friends and can eat limited amounts of lobster and crab, scallops. One of the friends who turned me on to the coconut oil lives in Rhode Island and cooks a lot of seafood. She said that the scallops she has made with the coconut oil are extraordinary, it seems to be a fortunate paring.

I gave up on KitchenAid mixers after burning out the third motor on one of the 525 w, supposedly pro/heavy duty. I have a larger very old Hobart but it stands so high that it is really a pain to add ingredients and always having to stop it to scrape down the sides, also bread dough constantly will crawl up the dough hook. I bought an AEG made by Electrolux of Sweden. It is now marketed in the U.S. as either the Electrolux Assistant or the DLX-2000 DLX-/AEG I have mentioned it on another thread. It does all I ask of it, including mixing and kneading Struan bread dough which is very dense, similar to rye, and the KA stalled every time I tried to use it. I have arthritis in my hands and can't knead by hand the way I used to. It comes with a dough hook but I have found that the roller/scraper action kneads the dough much as it would be kneaded by hand. The open bowl, with no overhead machine, makes it very easy to add ingredients and the lower bowl is much easier to use. I read many descriptions of this machine on the Bread-Bakers list and how much those owners liked the way it worked prior to my making the purchase. It has a separate poly bowl with whisk-type beaters that does a beautifuly job on egg whites, whipped cream, etc. It also cleans up easily.

The Brown Camel (UPS) arrived at my door today with a large box sent by one of my gadgeteer buddies. He tests small appliances for some publication and often sends me the "extras" he gets because the company doesn't want them back and he has only a finite amount of room. I opened the box and found one of the new Senseo pressure brewing coffee machines made by Phillips/Douwe Egberts. He said he had tried it with all three of the coffee types (Dark Roast, Medium Roast and Light Roast) and found it made a pretty decent cup of coffee and came very close to making a very fair substitute for espresso with the Dark Roast. I am not a coffee person per se, usually preferring tea, but I decided to give it a try and by golly, he is right. I have an espresso machine, one of the superautomatic monsters, mainly because I have a lot of friends who like it and when I entertain it is very popular. For many years I had an ancient (and huge) Gaggia that was kind of a running joke, it sounded like it was going to explode every time I operated it, and people who were not familiar with it would run outside. Jerry had forgotten that I had replaced the Gaggia earlier this year and thought he would do me a favor and give me something that was a little easier to operate and had a much smaller footprint. This certainly seems to be a foolproof machine. No complicated tamping of the grounds as in the cheaper espresso machines, no diffculty with cleaning the thing. The pods are pre-measured, use one for one 4 oz cup, two for 2 cups or one larger mug. The crema that forms on top is as perfect as any produced in any of the espresso machines I have used. The flavor of the coffee is very nice, however, as I mentioned earlier, I am not a coffee aficionado but I do like good coffee at certain times and this is just about as good as I have had. There is of course, no steam frothing with this machine, but nowadays you can get all kinds of little gadgets to froth milk, heating it in the microwave takes less than a minute so that should not be a deterrent . I have no relationship with this company so do not stand to gain by promoting this appliance but I thought that some of you who are coffee/espresso addicts might be interested. I checked on a couple of web sites and apparently it retails for somewhere around $70.00 Gadget madness has a review here and they mention the cost of a cup using the pods works out to 22 cents a cup. This place sell them at a bit of a discount: coffee pods Jerry sent me 6 packages of the pods so I doubt that I will be making any purchases any time soon but I seem to recall seeing them at Target and will probably shop there as they often have the best prices on such items. In any event, this might be just the ticket for people with little space and a great desire for a special cup. Oh yes, there were two small cups included in the box, slightly larger than regular espresso cups, these are 6 ounce cups.

What about Fishland on Olympic in Bev. Hills? It has been a while since I was there but since the other place in Bev. Hills closed, (can't recall the name) this one has been frequented by quite a few people I know. Were you thinking of one of the guys from Berth 55 in Long Beach? Before they opened the restaurant didn't they used to sell at the Farmer's Market?

I am lining up with the butter contingent. My absolute favorite. I have never intentionally eaten margarine by choice. I never, ever trusted those chemical formulas. When I lived in Wisconsin (briefly, in the 50s) you still could not buy colored margarine in the state. People had to drive across state lines to buy it. They did sell the white stuff with the color bubble in it but we never had it in the house. At the bakery we got butter in 30 pound tins, both salted and unsalted. I was not quite to the point where I would eat it with a spoon, but many a loaf of bread, fresh from the oven, was split lengthways and slathered with the stuff. I never did believe that hogwash that you shouldn't eat bread fresh out of the oven. As soon as it was cool enough to not burn my hands it was okay to eat, as far as I was concerned. Next in order is very good, very frest extra virgin olive oil. For medium heat cooking I like a combination of butter and avocado oil. Probably easier to get in California than anywhere else. Grapeseed oil also. I buy it at the middle eastern market where it is much cheaper and comes in big bottles. I was buying and using rapeseed oil long before it converted to canola. I don't use peanut oil very much because I have friends who have severe allergies. I just checked in the pantry and I have, besides the ones listed above, flaxseed oil, walnut oil, corn oil, coconut oil, safflower oil, palm kernel oil and sesame oil. There is also some regular palm oil which is going to be dumped because it has gone off - changed color and I am not even going to open the jar. This stuff does not keep well and has a horrible smell when it gets past a certain point. Rancid does not even begin to describe the smell....... I am so glad you started this thread which prompted me to look at the oil supply. I just recently got the coconut oil. A friend mentioned it and referred me to this site. I am usually somewhat skeptical about "miracle" claims for things such as this but I decided to give it a try. My friend is every enthusiastic about it. It is expensive but the few things for which I have used it have turned out very nice. I used it to saute veal medallions, which can go from lovely to awful in a matter of seconds, and they were just perfect. I also paired it with butter to saute some lobster chunks and it was delicious. I have yet to use it as an ingredient in a smoothie (something my friend swears by) but am thinking of trying it soon. I do want to try it in some of the quick bread recipes I have that call for liquid oil instead of butter. I will report my results. By the way, I am unabashadely fat (or morbidly obese as my doctor terms it). However my cholesterol has never been over 140 and my HDL (the good one) is very high compared to the LDL(bad one) a ratio of 84:16. In spite of my eating a lot of high cholesterol foods. It has to be genetic, probably the reason that so many in my family live to a very great age.

It is a round peice of metal that you place over your burner. It absorbs and distributes the heat so you can obtain a perfect simmer. This is the one I have Flame Tamer Thanks! This could eliminate some of the cursing that goes on in the kitchen. Of course the downside of this is that there will be less reason to replace that nasty, horrible, unpredictable piece of garbage stove that I have now.... did I mention that I really hate this stove???? Wow, thirty bucks for a slab of aluminum. These things used to be much less. I wonder why the price has increased so much. I have one that I "made" , sort of..... One of the department stores had a table of "clearance" items, much of it damaged merchandise, including a large all clad skillet with the copper/aluminum layers in the bottom and a big V-shaped dent in one side and one of the handle rivets was loose. I took the thing to one my my neighbors, who is a welder and he cut the sides off then ground the rough edges down and now I have an 11 inch almost round (a slightly flattened spot on one side) heat distributor. I can put three of the little butter warmer pans on it with the flame on very low. Oh yeah, the pan cost me $2.00. I told the sales lady I was going to make a planter out of it......

I have made the goat stew from the recipe on this site Goat stew and it is indeed remarkable. If you brine the goat meat prior to cutting it up for the stew with this brine recipe it will be tender and not at all gamey. Far better than lamb, in my opinion.

The best way to roast goat is to lard it, that is get some pork fat, cut into thin strips and insert into the meat. If some of your guests do not eat pork, you can get some beef suet and do the same thing. A larding needle is hard to find nowadays, but a very thin bladed knife and a chopstick can work just fine. The fat completely disappears during cooking and makes the meat very tender. Brining helps also. Goat is actually less strong a meat than mutton. Ned is correct that slow and low is the best way. I wrap seasoned roasts in aluminum foil and cook in the oven at a very low temperature for quite a long time. Even well done, the meat is moist and tender. If you have time, do a practice run with one roast first. You can always reheat it, shred it for something like tacos (or fill pita pockets). It is always a chancy thing to cook something for the first time for a large party of guests. You are a brave person.

It is true that the first cheese seem to have been accidentally produced by nomads who carried milk (mare's milk) in skins and then some enterprising nomad made bladders from a stomach, probably from a sheep or goat and slung it behind his saddle and at the end of the trek he didn't have milk but a thin liquid with clumps of solid stuff that, when tasted, turned out to be pretty good. This budding Einstein probably figured out that since this only happened when a stomach was the container so it was something in the stomach that made it happen. Rather than use just one stomach to one batch of milk he began scraping the lining of one stomach and adding it to several batches of milk in other containers and got the same results. Cheese! And it probably stank to high Heaven but the nomad was probably so stinky he didn't notice any additional aroma. (I have been on a backpacking trip to the High Sierras when it wasn't feasable to bathe a whole lot because the water available was right off the snow and was darn cold. After a few days Limburger would have smelled like perfume when compared to some of us. On the way home we had all the windows in the station wagon wide open in spite of the near freezing temperatures outside. Finally we stopped in Bishop, rented a motel room and took turns showering. The only way we could handle the 4 hour trip home. .......

Actually "brick" cheese always seemed a rather odd name. During the few years I lived in Wisconsin, in my mid teens, I thought it was because it was generally shaped like a brick when you saw it in stores. However the story now is that it had to be pressed between bricks for the right texture to develop. and what is this Virgin Pine Native Blue? Does this sound like a cheese? Well it is, and a very nice one too. Not a typical blue cheese but actually a blue veined cheddar. And then there is Cojack, obviously a combinaton of Colby and Jack. Why don't they call it JackCo instead. And the Finnish cheese Juustoleipa (hoo-stah-lee-pah) which means bread cheese. Not because you put it on bread but because it is baked like bread and has an edible crust that looks like bread. Someone gifted me with a carton of "Neil's Squeeky Cheese" last Christmas. For some reason I thought of mice (squeeky) when I saw the name. However it is actually fresh, slightly dry, cheese curds that squeek when you bite into them. Not a lot of flavor but okay for something different. The low carb people should love them.

I can't hear "Quark" without thinking of the Star Trek DS9 bar-keep... (he was a Ferengi named Quark). I remember Quark. He did always look a little cheesey to me.

I want to make a couple of comments. I do not drink alcohol but I have many friends that do and I make many of my own flavorings. If you are in a state where Everclear is legal, try using it. It is straight grain alcohol and extracts much more flavor from whatever you put in it than 100 proof vodka. It is available online but they do not ship to certain states, including California. The other thing is, even with the microplaners, it takes a fair amount of time to grate a lot of zest. I make a lot of citrus syrup with zest and keep it in the fridge with the zest still in for up to 6 weeks, then strain the zest out and the syrup can then be heated and canned in jars and stored at room temperature. during that 6 weeks, the zest can be dipped out of the syrup and used in pastry, (scones especially) in dressings, chutneys, and so on. I need cups full of the stuff and there is no way I am going to spend all that time with a microplane. I do 4 or 5 pounds of lemons or oranges at a time, scrub them well with a nail brush which I keep just for this use. Then dry them with a towel. Using a vegetable peeler (and the serrated one is perfect for taking off just enough) I peel off the colored part of the rind, let them sit for half an hour or so, so it drys just a bit, then I put several pieces into one of my spice grinders and turn it on, shaking to make sure it is all finely shredded, then dump that out and do another batch. I use one of the brushes especially made for cleaning the grinders, available at most coffee specialty stores, to sweep out the zest. If you have only one grinder and need to use it for various things this is the best way to clean it between batches of strongly flavored things. Put two heaping tablespoons of baking soda and 4 saltines, broken, into the grinder and turn it on and run it for 15 seconds, shaking and turning it upside down while it is running (hold the top on). This will remove oils, caked on coffee, cinnamon, cloves, and etc. Occasionally you might have to reapeat it a second time if it is really gunky but usually one pass is all you need. Wipe it out with a paper towel and it is ready to use on something else. It also polishes the bowl and the blade. I have a Krups that is 10 years old and still looks new and it has been used on everything. Whenever I see them on sale for some ridiculous low price (like the KitchenAid I got for $8.00) I buy it and stick it away because eventually I know I will find a use for it, drop one and break the body, or leave one at a place where I have gone to cook, etc.

For flavoring ice cream, sorbet, ices. As a base for drinks with plain water, seltzer or club soda (a soda siphon works really well). Some are used in making dressings or condiments. Also in baking. If you wish you can process the bottles in a water bath, you just have to start them in tepid water then bring it up to a boil, process for the correct time then allow to cool in the water, capping the bottles at teh end of the process time but not fastening the bail until they are cool. However the acid/sugar level in most syrups is so high that you don't have to worry about anything infecting the syrup as long as it is bottled while it is still hot.

As long as you have a way of keeping it well sealed. I bottle citrus syrup in the glass bottles with the glass top that has a rubber gasket and a wire bail to hold the top on. I sterilize the bottles, funnel and everything that will touch the syrup fill to within an inch of the top of the bottle and (wearing sterile gloves) cap the bottle. I keep these on a shelf in my pantry. I have a large bottle of vanilla syrup from a batch that I made 2 or 3 years ago (I use it for making marrons glacé) and it is still just fine. I buy the bottles at Cost Plus World Market. Every store has a different policy, but the store at which I shop will give me a good discount if I buy a case of the bottles. They are not all that expensive at the regular price. I have several bottles of mixed flavor syrups, ginger/orange, cinnamon/orange, ginger/lime and mixed berry, all are bottled this way and stored in the pantry. My pantry does stay fairly cool, even in the middle of summer.

Sorry the gloves did not work as well for you as they have for me. I don't steam the nuts and the skins are very dry and crisp. Of course there can also be different varieties of nuts which may have different characteristics. I have blanched some almonds that pop out of their skins all by themselves while in the boiling water. Others cling to the skins as if they were glued on.

I make all kinds of fruit syrups and freeze them in large airtight containers for later use either as a syrup or for making jellies in combination with other things. It can be kept much longer when frozen in larger amounts. I only freeze juices or diluted syrups in ice cube trays shortly before use because they have to be tightly sealed to keep from being altered by the freezer and even a month is too long. I use the Cambro containers because they are just flared enough from bottom to top so that anything frozen in them can be decanted into a bowl or another container without waiting for the entire thing to melt. You can also freeze juices and syrups in orange juice cartons (that have been scrupulously cleaned) then clamp the top closed and place the carton in a freezer bag. When ready to use it, simply cut the top off, dip briefly in hot water and the frozen mass will come out easily.