andiesenji

Trillium, I will call my hair stylist. Chong is from Korea and has brought me many things from home when she visits twice a year. Her mother and sisters are all great cooks and make all kinds of things that are traditional but are no longer made by most people in their homes. If there is a recipe available her mom will probably know it.

I am already fat and can get a lot fatter with this kind of stuff going on. Still, sounds great. I am a Type II diabetic but am well controlled. A little straying off the path isn't a huge problem. Huell Hauser had a show on KCET that included tasting pies at various places around the city. I wish I could remember the ones he visited. I made some notes at the time but have no idea where they might be now. I will see if I can find the link on his web site. A blind tasting sounds like a lot of fun.

There used to be a restaurant on the southwest corner of Harbor Blvd and Katella about a mile south of Disneyland that had the absolute best pies I ever tasted in a restaurant. They made them from scratch and always had lugs of the fresh fruit in a cooler at the front of the restaurant to show what was going into the pies. I think the name was Belisle's. I think it closed a few years ago, but it was there for many, many years, a bright pink building, often with a line waiting to get in. They served huge portions and used only the best ingredients, no mixes. Their pastry cream was the real stuff. They also made chocolate eclairs that were enormous and delicious. They made cream puffs that were the size of grapefruit and if you wished were served with a bowl of sliced strawberries.

shiso/uses scroll down a bit more than half way on the next page umeboshi and this is a recipe for umeboshi but you need to read carefully umeboshi recipe You can pickle the leaves in salt brine, much as you would grape leaves, then dry them in the oven and crumble them for use.

I have one of these It is large enough to handle grapefruit and makes quick work of juicing a lot of citrus - I also use it for pomegranates. I bought it in a middle eastern market for $49.00. It has a spring that lifts the handle back to upright. There are similar ones that are a lot more expensive but this one works beautifully. Check at a local store that caters to middle eastern customers. That is a one-quart measure with the juicer.

I grew up in western Kentucky and we certainly had plenty of green tomato dishes. Fried green tomatoes were just one of them. Green tomato jam (or marmalade), which was made almost like the filling for green tomato pie, was a favorite tea-time treat with biscuits or scones. A spicy version was served with meats. Unless one grows their own, out here it is very difficult to find green tomatoes. Some of the specialty groceries carry them or will get them as a special order if they go to the central produce market themselves. Back home there are almost always green tomatoes displayed right alongside the ripe tomatoes in many stores. The last time I was in Arkansas I took a friend to the store with me after a day of dog-showing (Fort Smith). He was amazed at the varieties of produce displayed. Much different than southern California. Fewer exotics, more "down home" stuff. I did buy green tomatoes and made fried green tomatoes for dinner that night. As I recalled we had about 15 people at the cook-out. (I had a motorhome that had a really complete kitchen and usually caravaned with other folks with motorhomes and we would set up together for mutual help). I had a lot of fun introducing people to regional favorites.

Here are a couple of photos to demonstrate how the dual pitter works. As you can see, these ranier cherries are huge, far too large to fit in the regular cherry pitter. The bing cherries are not small, in fact they are at the large end of the scale but still fit in the cherry side. Ranier cherries in the "plum, large olive" side of the pitter. Bing cherries in the cherry side - it does two at a time, there is a chute on each side which is why the thing is in the center of a large tray.

I remember reading Stranger In A Strange Land when it was first published. I have probably read it (and Glory Road my other favorite Heinlein) several times since then. Did you know that Heinlein sold the films rights many years ago? I have often wondered why it was never made into a movie. Do you Grok it? and Who is John Gault? (Atlas Shrugged) were two popular questions among the kids that hung out with my kids in the late 60s, early 70s. Back OT, we had a little flurry of excitement in a local market yesterday. Someone thought a person had tampered with some of the cereal, because of holes punched in some of the boxes. Mystery solved when someone noticed that a pallet standing on edge, against which a pallet full of cases of cereal had been pushed, had several protruding nails, long enough to punch through the cardboard box and the cereal boxes inside. They found the box with the holes. The same store also had a problem earlier in the week with a batch of produce bags. The seals at the bottom were not good and if one dropped something heavy enough, i.e. apple, pear, onion, potato, bunch of grape, in the top, it would fall out the bottom. It got a little hazaradous for a while, there were many pieces of fruit and veg on the floor. Believe it or not, it took half a day for them to understand that the customer complaints actually had a basis in fact. My neighbor had to take several unused bags up to the manager and demonstrate the problem because she couldn't get the produce manager to pay any attention to her complaint. Apparently he thought people were throwing the stuff on the floor on purpose......... Maybe they need a new produce manager..........

We had some of the smoke plume yesterday afternoon, it was up high and actually caused the temperature to drop quite a bit. It was actually quite comfortale. Since it was being carried at a higher level we had only a little of the smell. There was some ashfall but not a lot. All my neighbors are fine. I have friends in Santa Clarita who have a small horse ranch, that have been evacuated because of a new fire that started yesterday close to their home. She had been helping evacuate horses from the fire that started earlier last week. They have a huge horse trailer and a big truck to pull it so could transport 8 animals at a time. Then they had to move their own animals. They say both these fires were deliberately set. Anyway, I have been growing pea sprouts, broccoli sprouts and radish sprouts. I don't care much for alfalfa but love the others.

Some more of my favorites: “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” Jim Davis, 'Garfield' "Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life." Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons “A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.” P. J. O'Rourke. “Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.” Louis Bromfield, American novelist.

And do you know, those large plastic "clamshell" containers in which fruits, cherries, tomatoes, and etc., are sold at CostCo, Sam's Club, make great sprouting containers for various sprouts. They have slots in the top and bottom so you can rinse them easily, as you should do at least daily (twice a day is better). The "Viva" brand of paper towels are thick and resist tearing and do not dry out as rapidly as regular ones and several layers make a great growing surface in the bottom of the container. (or you can use a pad made of loosely woven cloth).

If you want to get lemon flavor into milk, without the danger of curdling, use lemon verbend, crush the leaves and infuse the leaves directly in the milk.

This site has an explanation of palm sugar. palm sugar I use palm sugar in sambals and in Asian sweet chile sauces, coconut based sauces, etc. I try to find the creamy colored sugar, I like it better than the darker.

I have a friend up in Bakersfield, from Punjab. She has a deep. heavy wooden bowl, about 15 inches in diameter, with a very thick bottom into which is pounded what looks like a railroad spike, with the head that is exended on one side (to hold the rail in place). The extension has been cut with a file so that it has teeth or serrations. She cracks the coconuts in half, holds the bowl between her knees and rubs the meat against the "teeth" and the nut meat comes off in shreds very rapidly. She can clean out a coconut shell in about the time it has takne me to type this note. She said her grandfather made it for her when she was just a girl and learning to cook. The odd thing about this is that our cook, when I was a child, had a similar thing for grating coconut.

I have never had the problem you describe with peaches. I have had it with nectarines, they tend to hang onto their skins. What variety of peaches do you have?

How about salt-glazed pecan halves. Here is my method. I usually do two cups at a time in my largest skillet. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil. Add kosher salt and stir until it will no longer dissolve (you now have a super-saturated solution and will see a few salt crystals on the bottom of the pan) Then add 1/4 cup sugar, keep stirring. Dump in the pecans, bring the liquid back to a boil, stirring constantly. As soon as it boils again, pour the pecans into a large colander toss to get as much liquid off them as possible. Spread on a sheet pan and toast in a 250 degree oven until crisp but not browned.

Peaches have to be dipped first in boiling water for 30 seconds, then into ice water. Even unripe peaches should have the skin slip after this treatment. I make pickled peaches, with unripe peaches and never have a problem with this method.

Wow! Great Minds and all that........ I happened to be thinking about green tomatoes this morning, since I have a lot in the garden and thought I should do something with some of them. I sliced one rather large flat one into two thick slices, grilled in on the panini grill then sandwiched them between ham and provolone on a large ciabatta roll, then put the entire thing into the grill and cooked it until the cheese was nicely melted. That was my breakfast. I love fried green tomatoes in any way, shape or form and, depending upon my mood, I dredge them in seasoned flour or flour/cornmeal mix - I have tried dipping in egg but didn't like the mess. I have ground Mrs. Cubbison's cornbread stuffing (seasoned) in the food processor and dredged them in that when cooking for a crowd. (Some people do not care for the grittiness of the stone-ground cornmeal I use.) I make green tomato hush puppies, chopping the tomatoes then adding just enough batter to hold it together and deep frying. My friends love these. I layer slices of green tomato with slices of eggplant that have been brushed with roasted garlic oil, and slices of provolone and bake. I also have a terrific recipe for green tomato pie. There is a restaurant here in Lancaster, aptly named the Whistle Stop Cafe, owned by a transplanted Alabama couple. He came out her to work on the Space Shuttle program and when it ended he and his wife opened the restaurant. They serve fried green tomatoes and all the other southern foods you would expect.

"Crab got tuh walk een duh pot demself or dey ain' wut." Gullah saying. "Bourbon and Branch (water) is my favorite tipple, however I wouldn't say no to one of Miss Effie's home made cordials." Albin Barkley, Vice President to Harry S. Truman. "I teck muh flour en' muh brown sugah, en' two-t'ree glub uh muhlassis. . . . You know, de soun' muhlassis mek w'en 'e come fum de jug? Glub! Glub! Another Gullah saying, from Charleston Receipts. "A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." James Beard.

Check out the BOA with partially serrated edge. I have this knife and it is a winner. For $29.00 you get a very versatile knife that will hold an edge longer than other knives. It too is designed by Ken Onion. The item # is KS-1640BST Partially Serrated BladeAdam's Cutlery

I am lining up with you on this one. I grew up in a household dominated by my very proper Victorian great grandmother, transplanted from England. Herbs were a great passion of hers. And the H was certainly pronounced clearly. I certainly would never had dared to drop it, I know I would have gotten a lecture about it. In fact in certain parts of this country the H is pronounced. "Urb" just doesn't sound correct.

I am not advocating DQ scrap everything and start over. I made a rather offhand suggestion of a slight name change, adding two oo s, but it was rather in jest. I also can't understand why some "Native Americans" want sports teams, etc., to stop using Amerind names. I always thought it was an honor, not an insult. I can understand why they would not want to see a product named "squaw bread" in a market but that is very different, that is an insulting term. I have cousins who are half Choctaw and they refer to themselves as "indians" and think the whole name business is ridiculous.

I use nuts in several conserves. Pecans or pistachios in cranberry conserve is the most popular with my friends. Chestnuts in apple/greengage jam. Apricot/almond is a wonderful combination. Or peach/almond. You can actually cook up a small batch in the microwave in a pyrex measure to get a taste of how a conserve will turn out. I do it all the time, takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the type of fruit, cooking the fruit in 2 minute intervals. I add the nuts about 2/3 rds of the way through the process.

I heard it mentioned on Melinda Lee's Food Talk show (L.A. area) perhaps a year ago. I grow a lot of fennel and it isn't difficult to knock the pollen off into a cloth-lined basket. I get it on my sleeves all the time when I walk between the rows of plants. I grow them for the seeds and the plants are perennial, after harvesting the last crop of seeds, the plants are just cut back to the base when the stalks die down in the winter. They are the first green shoots to emerge in the late winter. I tried a couple of the recipes from the chef at Sugar Ranch in Visalia and they were okay but I didn't notice that the flavor was as extraordinary as had been touted. It occurred to me that they may be using the pollen from Florence or bulb-type fennel which I grow but in smaller amounts. I tried it and there was no appreciable difference. I made a cream sauce using the fennel pollen which I used on scallops. I also made the chicken recipe.

I had a chat a short time ago with a friend who just happens to be half African-American and half Norwegian. When I mentioned the debate about the DQ MooLatte, she broke up with laughter. She said she would never have thought of it as being non-PC on her own. Her mother is originally from Mississippi, a high school teacher who met her father while on sabbatical in Europe in 1962. Liz told me that she has never heard the word spoken, has only seen it in books. She assumed it was pronounced mew-latto and so did not associate it with the MooLatte when she saw the commercial. She just thought the woman in the commercial was a little ditzy. She said that if someone is going to get upset about this they have too much time on their hands and are indeed a little too PC, i.e. politically constipated. (Liz is an attorney.)