Ajl92

Lindacakes-- Would you mind sharing the process for these cherries? Did you start with fresh or dried? They look good and I would like to try making some for a last minute chocolate fruitcake. Thanks.

I can recommend Assouline from personal experience. I have ordered some of the E Guittard line from them on multiple ocassions and it has been very good, especially for the price.

If you are looking for a French brand, try Tesseire. I enjoyed it in France and was pleasantly surprised to find it available online here in the states from "The Frenchy Bee" -- they have an amazon store, an ebay store and a stand-alone website. I have tried the Orgeat which is good, but really enjoy the Peche sirop with soda water.

I'd be interested if anyone knows an online source for the tiki glasses also. I picked up a few at Disney's Polynesian Resort during my last visit, but they were 10.00 bucks apiece-- a bit expensive and too bulky to buy too many to fit in the luggage. If no one knows another source, the resort does accomodate phone orders for anything down there if you want em real bad, but hopefully someone knows where to get them online...

inspired by the homemade limoncello thread which recently rose to the top again I wanted to post a new thread about homemade aperitifs, or "vins maison" before a third search brought up this thread. I just recently purchased the Aperitif book by Georgeann Brennan and found it quite interesting, especially for the price, on ecookbooks.com when I ordered a bunch of other great books for a song. I actually assembled a half-batch of Vin Marquis which has been macerating for about a week now and was hoping to revive a discussion of homemade aperitifs to get some insight into what else I can start up. With as much time and patience that is necessary to make these right, and for the fact that oranges and citrus abound in the markets, now really is the time to start the infusions to be ready by summertime. I can't wait to see the fruits of waiting when I finally bottle and cork this in february, but I need more ideas for things to make! I am thinking of bottling these in 375ml icewine style bottles and corking them either with fullsize corks using a corker or just some "t-corks" like these. Will I have problems with longevity if I only use tasting corks? Hopefully I can at least use this method for liqueurs such as limoncello.. Cheers

I'm jealous. I started a thread about a year ago after I returned from France to find that it is not available ANYWHERE in the US. It is great on its own, neat, chilled, or over an ice cube. I tried it as an aperatif, and with the drink left in the glass enjoyed it immensely with a piece of Bleu D'auvergne. I recall searching online to find one page about a trip to Marseille that included a note about a drink with Noilly Ambre in it, will have to do a quick google search to find it again. Congrats on the great find.

I actually just assumed that it should be 4 cups and added another 3 plus a little extra to the dough when I saw that it was thin. I should have just looked at recipe gullet, but the dough is fine and is resting in the fridge. Thanks again for posting, I can't wait to bake some off.

Thanks for the recipe. I just made the filling and dough. The filling is great, but the dough appears to be more like batter, not something that I will be able to roll out. Is it supposed to be very thin before refrigerating? I weighed out 4 oz. of flour and it was not much more than a cup, should there be more flour or less liquid? A cup of flour to a cup of butter and 1/2 cup milk does not seem right for a dough to be rolled out. Thanks, Adam

sure. shipping clothes would also work, but I imagine the price to ship a box of clothes would be comparable to that of foods other than heavy bottles.. my main concern would be the timing of my trip and how long I'll have to carry things in my luggage before returning to the states. If I arrive and spend my first week loading up on goodies I just couldn't pass up, I'll have to either carry them with me for the rest of the month or so in luggage or store them somewhere and return to get them before departing.. Of course I will try to save most of the "loading up on goodies" until the end of the trip, but this time I intend to spend time in more different areas, ie Paris, Hte Savoie, Lyon, Provence, etc.. If I learned anything from my last trip, it is that I DO NOT want to take two large suitcases onto the TGV and attempt to stow them anywhere overhead when the other compartments fill up. I hope I can practice a bit more restraint when packing for my next adventure I also hope to plan my trip to coincide with the Soldes in Paris (that would be a different thread, I know) again as that was a lot of fun regardless of the oppressive heat and droves of wall-to-wall people..I could easily cheaply buy an entire new wardrobe at H&M if I pack too light Hmmm, maybe I should just take an empty suitcase and fill it with wine, cheese, and french clothes when I get there

for those who have checked out CAM, would you say that they have a wide enough Japanese food selection to make them the best choice for a purveyor of ingredients for that cuisine? if not, which market is your choice for japanese items? and where can I find a good selection of sashimi grade seafood? i'm living in akron now for school so cleveland area is close enough to drive for good food and ingredients... thanks, adam

I definitely understand what you are saying Dave, and the same kind of foolishness applies to sending home bottles of that great yet inexpensive (in France) wine and eau-de-vie with alcohol importation regulations. I don't think I would try shipping sausage and cheese (though I suppose I could try if they were packaged sous-vide), but was thinking more along the lines of sealed and non-perishable foodstuffs like snacks, sirops, chocolate, etc... But how I would love to be able to ship wine and eaux-de-vie home that I cannot find here or are exponentially more expensive in the states. Funnily enough my last trip back through customs in New York was quite painless as I was not questioned a second about what I was bringing into the country, I just walked right on through. I am not worried so much about carrying products in my luggage through customs as I am concerned with not wanting to weigh myself down with two suitcases to bring home a couple bottles of wine, pastis, or eau-de-vie or other interesting foodstuffs. Frankly I wish I could tranplant the entire Galeries Lafayette gourmet food department (or heck, even a small Champion supermarche) to my back yard and stop worrying about shipping regulations!

Bonjour tout le monde I believe this is my first post in the France forum.. Spending this summer stuck in the US after last summer's months abroad has put me in full planning mode to get back to the Hte Savoie, Paris and other parts of France (and Suisse, Italia, and Espana) next summer.. I can't wait to revisit my famille d'accueil in Faverges and actually eat well again! Anyway, with other friends going abroad to all corners of the world (as far away as Japan) and offering to send me back packages of local delicacies, the cost of shipping "un colis" back to the States has become an issue. Last summer when I returned home from France, I had to purchase another valise to carry all of the food items I had emassed (thank God for the Soldes, I was able to get a good deal on a suitcase). My French family told me that it was "tres chere" to ship items to the US, but I never verified this at the Poste. I saw "colissimo" service at the Poste, but never inquired about the price of shipping to the US. Having purchased items from ebay that were shipped second day air from Singapore for only $25US, I can't imagine it is completely cost prohibitive to send back a package of some of the things that don't fit in my suitcase when traveling for extended periods abroad. Does anyone have experience with which services are best and most affordable for shipping non-perishables across the globe to the US? Merci, Adam

Well, I guess I can almost answer my own question here. As I am oft apt to post a question just before reading further to find the answer, I was reading John Palmer's "How to Brew" online and read a few recipes where the level of DME is easily within this range. I am surprised that the online store for my local brewshop said to only use 1-3lbs for a 5 gallon batch. Thanks again for the course and inspiration Chris.

Having been inspired by this course to get into home brewing I have been looking/shopping around online for the past few days for ingredients and toys (I can't help but buy toys whenever I find a new hobby:-) The one question I had about the beginners' batch you are using in the course of 2 gallons. Your recipe calls for 3lbs of DME. When I see the notes for DME in the online stores it says that that amount is enough for a 5 gallon batch (in fact one site says to use 1-3lbs for a 5 gallon batch). Will the 2 gallon batch you are demo'ing in the course be heavy or stronger? BTW I am really enjoying reading the classes, thanks for taking the time to make it happen. I have learned a lot already and was inspired to read some other brewing forums and it seems very accessible, but also something that I can buy a lot of toys if I want. I already roast my own espresso and enjoy things I can tweak and experiment with.

Prices are in Hong Kong Dollars..there are about 7.8 HK$ in one US$ which means that those bitters are still about US$21.78. They don't deliver overseas.