jgarner53

Well, I do have a favorite hand cream, but it's made from sheep in New Zealand, and my mom buys it in bulk and gives me a jar every few months. Not, um, exactly to come by. But its main ingredient is lanolin. Maybe it's time to find a replacement.

Oh yeah, since the burn (on the 5th day now), I had a huge bandaid over the burn with antibiotic ointment on it. I'll do another bandage before class tonight to keep it protected. I guess the good thing is that since it's in a place where the cuff of every sleeve abrades it, it forces me to keep it covered or else wince every time I move my arm. The vitamin-E oil worked well for me in the past. In college I burned the back of my hand on the top element of the oven (ow!), and put the oil on it every day for months. I have absolutely no scar. It smelled kinda fishy, but I figured fishy hands were better than a big U-shaped scar.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have another, related one. What do you all do for burns? I got a nasty one last week from a sheet pan on my wrist. My husband bought some ointment in Japan for burns (at least that's what he says it's for - all the writing is Japanese!), that I've been putting on daily, and I have some Mederma once the blistered part heals. I know enough to go straight for the ice water, but obviously, one can't stand around the kitchen with one's hand or arm in ice water. Do you just learn to tough them out? The fingertip ones don't bother me much. This one's just a dilly, though, about an inch and a half long, and a quarter inch wide at its widest point. Maybe that Origins cream/glove combo can be a late addition to my wish list, or I can use my inevitable gift cert. from Dad for it.

Since I've started pastry school, and been washing my hands so often in the kitchen, my hands have started to get really dry, mostly around the knuckles. They're dry, red, and itchy! I put lotion on them all the time when I'm not in the kitchen, but I don't want to make lotion-flavored pastry. What's a PC to do? Rub my hands with butter? Outside the kitchen, what can I do to help my hands?

I just did a ganache infused with Peet's Early Gray with Lavender, which has a nice smokiness to it. It would probably be a great ice cream flavor as well (chocolate earl gray). Chocolate port gelato?

Looking at the KA web site, the spiral dough hook is only available for the bowl-lift models, not the tilt-head models. But I would love to hear from someone with first-hand experience.

You can do either square or round for cake pans. It just depends on what shape cake you usually bake. I like having 8 and 9 inch metal square cake pans (in addition to the standby Pyrex 8x8 pan) because they have square corners. They're great for setting up something like a fruit gelée or nut brittle where I want squared off edges. Most of my cake pans, though, are round, with rolled edges and straight sides.

I forgot about this one: menu sign in a night bazaar in Chang Rai, Thailand for "fried dork."

One of the lesser ones that gets me is people ordering a single "piroshki," when it should be a "pirazhok." But hell, I wouldn't know that if I hadn't taken Russian in college, so I let it go. It just sounds really strange to me, using a plural for the singular. One of my favorite signs in a chinese restaurant, the kind with handwritten signs on the wall announcing specials, featured "shirmps." Yes, I'm not PC, but I found it funny.

Are you just baking at home? Here are my recommendations, and probably most, if not all of them can be bought at your local restaurant supply for less than most other cookware stores. JB Prince online should also have most of this. 1. Tart pans: 9" is a good basic size that should meet most of your needs. A removable bottom is a must to make removing the pastry possible. I like shiny metal, but there was a recent thread debating the merits of dark finishes here. Flan rings (essentially a bottomless tart pan) work well, too, though they are trickier to master, I think. They will give you a smooth, rather than fluted edge. There, your options are tinned steel (less expensive) or stainless (more expensive), and as long as you don't scrub or leave the tinned steel wet, it should last just fine. 2. Pie pans: Easy one here: glass (pyrex is a good choice). Available sometimes even at the supermarket, or hardware store. Some here prefer metal becaus it won't break in a professional kitchen, but I like being able to see the bottom of my pie to gauge doneness. 9" is standard. 3. Cake pans: Sizes depend on how much you bake cakes. Pans with 3-inch sides will pretty much suit all your needs. Standards are 8- and 9-inch, though you can get smaller or larger. I'd have at least two in each size. Cheesecakes can be baked in cake pans (rather than springform) as well. Standard finish here is brushed aluminum with rolled edges. A 3-incher will allow you to build a layered cake (to be later inverted before icing). As for rings, same size range. 8- and 9-inch are good basic sizes, but I love my small mousse rings that are 3 inches wide and two high for individual desserts (mousse cakes and such). 4. Mixing bowls: stainless - unbreakable that way. As for the rubber bottom, you can also place a damp towel down on your counter to the same effect. Get a bunch of sizes. You will probably use the smaller sizes more than the larger ones. Have multiples of sizes you will use a lot. 5. I personally don't bake a lot of muffins and just have one basic 12-cup pan from the supermarket (dark finish) that suits me fine. As for ramekins, depending on how many you serve on a regular basis, 8-12 is a good number. they are good for mise en place as well as baking in. 4.5 to 6 ounce is a good size for individual desserts. Larger than that, and you get into individual souffle size. 6. Loaf pans: I have two Pyrex 8.5x4.5 loaf pans that serve me pretty well for most things, but the "standard" loaf pan you'll see mentioned in most recipes is a 9x5, and for that I have aluminum pans. Depending on what kind of baking you do (quick breads vs. yeast-risen breads), you may want to just start forming loaves by hand instead. I hope this is helpful, and no doubt others will chime in with more advice.

While I can see the value of these gadgets for people with disabilities, I still have to question the electric grater. Why? A food processor will do that, plus a hundred other things that an electric grater couldn't. I don't have a lot of gadgets that do just one thing because I'm blessed with good health and reasonable strength, and I don't have a lot of room for storing things either. So when I evaluate a new gadget, one of the main questions I have to ask is, "What else could it do? Do I have something else that could work at least as well?"

Great start to this blog! I love cheese. Between you and lil ms foodie, I'm almost wishing I lived in Seattle. Maybe it's time for another visit...

And how much do you get in a bowl? Cuz when I'm jonesing for cereal, I really want cereal. Like two or three normal sized bowlfuls. If you get what the side of the box says is one serving, who cares if you get unlimited milk? Is it whole? 2%? 1%? Skim? I'd rather see it done like a college cafeteria, with the huge bins of the stuff, and you pay by weight, like a salad bar. Then I could have me that monster bowl of Cap'n Crunch.

I have the old-fashioned pull-out cutting boards in my kitchen. One of those gets pulled out and placed on the pebbly shelf liner you can buy at the hardware store (so it won't slide around). It's either that or have tile grout marks in my pastry.

Last year I made chocolate sauce (found a recipe in a canning cookbook and actually canned it) and caramel sauce for everybody. I made the caramel sauce in small enough batches close to when I'd be seeing the recipients so it would stay fresh. One recipient didn't know it should be refrigerated and kept it in her pantry. Months later, she pulled it out and used it to top a Sara Lee cheesecake (she's not a cook at all), and it was apparently fine. I was, uh, more skeptical. This year it will be candy: peppermint bark, pistachio brittle, almond buttercrunch, candied almonds, maybe some truffles, nougat, and fruit gelees. Different mixes for different folks. And, as always, there's Chris' beer (200 bottles last year). That's VERY popular.

Tempering the chocolate will give you a glossier finish when you remove the piece from the acetate.

I used to always use two sheets of waxed paper for rolling out my crusts, especially pie crusts, because they are usually very fragile. But I have since learned, like Wendy said, that rolling out on a well-floured board isn't a problem, and is easier (though there is cleanup at the end). I can roll anything out that way. Sweet dough, puff pastry, pie crust.

I have the Cuisinart and like it quite a bit. The only word of warning I have is that you have to make real ice cream. Trying to make it with just milk, or only a little bit of cream, and no eggs (unless you're making sorbet), will get you a very icy product that will freeze rock hard. Like it so much that I just ordered one (in racy red!) for my BIL who's an ice cream FIEND for Christmas. Even living in Alaska hasn't slowed down his ice cream consumption.

So now I pose the question: How are we popping our corn? In the microwave? Air popper? On the stove? I have one of those "theater-style" poppers that goes on the stove. Heat it up with oil, throw in the corn and shut the lid, and then turn the crank. I also have my grandmother's old popper, though it's rusty. It's a rectangular box on a long handle (meant, I assume, for use in a fireplace), with a dimpled area with holes in it where you'd place the butter to melt and coat the corn. She and my grandfather would have the big Sunday brunch after church, and then popcorn for dinner. It's from them that I learned to like popcorn with milk (even better when you dip individual kernels in the milk). Then you wind up with buttery, salty milk. It's better than it sounds.

I'm all for the Milanos and the unfilled Pirouettes. When my parents would have dinner parties or parties in general, my mom would usually buy one of the sampler boxes, and I LOVED the Pirouettes (if I could get my hands on them beforehand). But really, I'd rather have Goldfish (just the old fashioned regular kind - don't need no stinking colors or XTREME flavors or anything like that). I could (and probably have) eat a whole bag in one sitting.

Butter and salt Brewer's yeast Parmesan cheese Cinnamon sugar

Yes, rugelach is not difficult at all. The cream cheese pastry is about as easy and forgiving a dough as you could ask for. Hazard, marshmallows are great, easy, and everyone seems amazed and impressed by them. Neil's (nightscotsman) thread on them is the place to go. I haven't quite decided what I'm making yet, other than caramelized almonds, pistachio brittle, and possibly peppermint bark. I'm inclined to do some truffles, and work on enrobing them, rather than just rolling the ganache in cocoa, but I'm not sure how well they'll keep?

I definitely look at the "How's everything?" question as an opportunity to comment on the quality of the food. If there's something wrong with it, I'm definitely going to let my server know. I'm not paying money to eat crap food. So when my crème brulée is grainy because it was overbaked, I'm not going to stew in silence, I'm going to let the kitchen know. I think that the behavior of the wait staff should reflect the atmosphere of the restaurant. "Thanks, guys," is OK, when the environment is casual, or I'm a regular (gee, I wish). But I certainly wouldn't expect it if I had to put on more than jeans to go out, and I'm likely to have dropped more than $30/person. This shouldn't be so hard, should it? I'd be curious to know what kind of establishment FoodTutor works in that she's not only required to tell customers her name, the "recommended" appetizer, and launch into the specials before the customers have even unfolded their napkins. I imagine a tired server (FT or someone else) rattling off, "hi-my-name-is-food-tutor-and-i'll-be-your-server-would-you-like-to-start-off-with-some-buffalo-wings-and-our-specials-are..." in about 20 seconds flat. This is where I say that any job that requires people to be perky 100% of the time would drive me insane. Needless to say, retail wasn't exactly my cup of tea either.

I read Fast Food Nation a couple of years ago, and it definitely changed my habits. Before, I didn't eat fast food all that often, but I did occasionally (like at least a couple of times a month), and would sometimes just go for the fries. The only fast food place I'll eat now, and that's usually on a long road trip, when there aren't many options, is In N Out. I can't stand the sight of a supermarket anymore, filled with processed, packaged krep, with meat and fish from who knows where, and shop more locally, paying far more attention to the source than I used to. One of the things that no one here has touched on yet, perhaps because it isn't directly related to food is the situation for the workers in these places. Minimum wage, very low skill level, and, as Schlosser points out, sometimes considerable risk of danger. There is also the problem of the workers in the plants and slaughtering houses. His stories about people maimed and treated with very little respect, and the ever-increasing need for speed on the line appalled me. It's as much because I feel sorry for the people as for any of the food-related issues. It may have more fat and calories, but give me a bagel and cream cheese any day over an Egg McMuffin.

Oh, it's fun, once you get the hang of it! I'd spend some time practicing if you can. It's one of those skills that benefits from practice. I'd also make more than one, if you can. In case the first one breaks or sticks to the bowl (I'm guessing here that it's molded over the bottom of a bowl?) or whatever.