K8memphis

"In the tension" is a term I read recently and I really liked it. For me, I have to walk a very straight line to keep my body from storing food. I have a thyroid issue and with that (or with whatever the underlying reason is) I have those deep raucous unrelenting cravings for something heady and sweet. (So I was eating apples as an alternate trying to be good and broke my dang tooth hehehe yeahthat'snotfunny If I watch the balance on my foods for proper glycemic index, I keep the beast at bay. But I have to want to do this proper eating thing. When clearly I want to eat otherwise like I have all my life. This creates tension. It's easier to give in and pig my face out and not keep a wise glycemic index of foods going and top it all off with rich decadent sweets that fulfill my cravings. But alas if I live in the tension of eating what is right for me to eat and not eat (as a rule) the stuff I crave then that's better. But it's a tension bridge over troubled water. Sure I'm healthier, sure I feel better, hey I look better, I look younger, but I'll be damned if that makes up for anything. That's tension. Picture me staring longingly at a beautiful sparkly moist glisteningly rich slice of wonderfully fragrant chocolate layer cake singing, "If loving you is wrong I don't wanna be right." Living in the tension. And I'm a freaking cake decorator!

First of all I'm so sorry about your dear friend. And you are so so so so so right and have done each of us a favor by reminding us. And therefore the life of your dear friend is still spreading blessings out to each of us. I struggle so much with my weight and eating at my age and level of health. I need to be vigilant and live in the tension and not give in!

I've heard there's whole wheat phyllo but I've never seen it.

Not exactly true. I've used scary winter tomatoes and you just have to try it. Slices. It all melds into somthing else.

Sorry about your go to sauce going down the sugar tube. No no no no no. Thee best 'sauce' for pizzas is skinned sliced fresh tomatoes laid out like a mosaic side by side allll over the crust. Y'know blanch them in boiling water for like 45 seconds and dip in ice water and the tomato peel just peels off easy peasy. Slice two slices off and with your softest finger, scoop out the seedy juju stuff and discard that. Slice away. It makes perfect pizza! It's not too much sauce it's not too little. It doesn't drip on yah. It's not too sweet or acidic. The finished pizza cuts perfect, the slices bite nice where the tomatoes are not glopping all over your face like a runaway onion flying out of an onion ring. I always order pizza with light sauce because it pools in spots under the cheese and it's too acidic and I just don't like that. My husband likes all that goop. When I make the pizza with the tomatoes the planets align, birds sing, bells ring and we are in complete harmony. It doesn't last long though. And then you can wax eloquent with all kinds of basil and garlic and oregano and onions and salt & pepper etc. It might sound like a big deal to do but it's really not. And it's so worth it. Just a pizza thought for yah.

I'm not seeing that a table top is that indordinantly large of an amount of space. You do need to be able to get all the way around it to stretch stretch stretch. The hassle is getting your modus operandi operandied (I kinda made up that last word). But I mean there was a 25 year lapse in making the stuff. I started on the dining room table like I did 25 years hence. But apparently I had a smaller table back then. So after that first batch I switched to a more compact table. But truly getting all the meandering ducks in a row is the big deal, the right table, a sheet or tablecloth that can be tied on, all the ingredients. Stretching it out is wonderful fun.

Well, for most of my professional baking years, I did not know about the x factor for leavening and have always used the same straight multiplication/division for increasing/decreasing a recipe. I've prepared for 2000 and 200 and always multiply/divide all of the ingredients equally. There are no hard and fast rules for this. Rose Berenbaum has a theory about increasing leavening, but my way worked fine so I never experienced the need for it. If you don't want to learn as the company rings the doorbell, then test first.

The only rule I have followed for all these years is use my own judgement and multiply and divide. Even when you blow the math you learn something.

I guess my prettiest and nicest piece of furniture is my dining room table and chairs. Antique no less. I thought we were all supposed to eat together but we use the table for holidays and rare 'sit down' meals. We eat in the den. It's just more comfy. Well, when we first got it, we had pizza delivered and one of the hot boxes slid off the towel it was on and made white marks on the table. So right after I refinished the table, I found the product that removes the white without refinishing. Umm, we got our teenaged girl (she's 27 now) hooked on coffee at an early age . My husband makes the coffee here and so he would make her a cup every morning. tee hee hee. So we kept that door open. We chatted every morning come what may. However we could not get the boy up that early and he flat refused the coffee injection/addiction. But God forbid you should get 'caught' by chef-boy in the hallway around midnight, he would talk both your ears off and if you ever got back to bed, you might never get back to sleep. So we stayed close there too. Sleepy but close. Tuned in. I don't think the meal thing counts. At all. Like it says it's one marker that can quantify 'closeness'. Ours was morning coffee and midnight chats. She's going for a second master's. He got a 4.0 in culinary school. He did quit high school but he called me to come pick him up that day. We only wanted them to be safe and to do thier thing whatever they chose. They want us to be proud of them. We are. My husband recently said that our kids have given us sweet sleep. No worries. I finally broke down & let the cat get up on the table that's pushed up against the window to keep an eye on the neighborhood. If we rarely did before we sure don't eat there now. Being together is the warmest feeling of all.

It takes maybe 15 minutes to get it stretched out. That was the first batch I made since about 25 years previous. I make/sell it for Christmas presents. I lived in a small tree house (garage apartment) where I first lived when I made it. You need some kind of table top is all. Where you can go 'round and 'round. For the batch in the pictures I used my dining room table. But for subsequent batches I used my stainless steel table top which is 48x36. I have a pasta roller and that just wouldn't work for this stuff. But key is the resting of the dough under the heated upturned bowl. I made several batches last year. It's soo good. Many thanks to Bernard Clayton Jr for explaining it so well in his book, The Complete Book of Pastry Sweet and Savory.

I made a little pictorial with captions on dehr schstreudel* dough. To answer your question about how to get it thin enough, you stretch it out on the back of your hands. I've never had that happen with store bought phyllo though where it all gums up so bad but I don't use it that often either. Go to my webpage www.acmecakes.com (link there at the bottom of this post) then scroll over halfway down to "Welcome To The Library Of The House of Acme" keep scrolling a bit and choose Magic Dough. Or I think this will take you there. * this phrase is spoken with gusto where s's and saliva dit dot's fly hither and yon Your spanikopita look heavenly!!!!

If Europe is the gold standard and we suck so bad why did he come here to check us out?

for sure. what does this have to do with Per Se? ← Though the title restaurant, this topic goes well beyond Per Se and cuts to cultural diferences in restaurant management at the highest levels. While I agree with Fat Guy's assesment above, I still think that one should not be presed for time in a 3* establishment. That being said, I have not had that experience at either Per Se or TFL. ← Yes, why would the guy drop 2K on a bottle of liquid if they had just received such substandard treatment. 'Cause he was thirsty? Why? To impress the staff? That's not why I go out to eat. If I was gonna have a nice evening, I'd go somewhere I was comfortable and welcomed.

When I am treated poorly in any restaurant, I do not eat and drink more for several reasons. One is, screw them. Two is, it takes my appetite away as I came to enjoy. And three is, I'll be damned if I enlarge the coffers of creeps. Also, in fine dining I am there to be impressed. I'm not at all into impressing them. Maybe an Amercian thing?

I don't know but I'm gonna guess. I think the business pays out of it's liability insurance or out of it's butt. One, because the business always pays for every dang thing. And because if a patron of the restaurant was injured in some way the business once again would fork over. A non-paid worker bee is at least a patron. Y'know? But I'm just totally quessing. We'll see how close I am as answers come in.

I can just see you quickly tip toeing across the slippery street dropping royal icing bombs on the way. Boom! Boom! There goes another one. That's not funny is it.

Piping petunias into aluminum foil lined lily nails and finding them so difficult to remove prompted me to use a bit of pan release into the foil before piping. Dries fine. Works great.

And here's the link for the Jacques Torres way of doing it with a towel as a blotter. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_20438,00.html

Grease is the enemy of royal icing, and it'll keep the plaque from fully hardening and it'll crack or break for sure. I wouldn't use waxed paper either..... the icing sticks to the wax. Ditto for parchment.... the icing sticks to the paper. Clear acetate really is the way to go. ← Baking and decorating is such a multi faceted endeavor, one person's never ever do is often the next person's I swear by this. Many people recommend using waxed paper with royal projects. Check the International School of Sugarcraft Book 3, page 142, Toshie Harashima recommends waxed paper. Colette Peters recommends using waxed paper for run-in designs. Toba Garrett uses parchment. Earlene Moore recommends applying crisco then wiping it off to facilitate removal of royal icing lace points. http://members.nuvox.net/~zt.proicer/cakepict/lacepcs.htm It's in the paragraph that starts "Nicholas Lodge has an excellent book..." right under "Make yourself a handle for your pattern with masking tape." Down toward the end of the article. Not all ideas and procedures fit each of our individual modus operandi but they are all viable.

You can spray a teensly bit of pan release on the surface and then wipe it evenly with a paper towel. There will be enough grease adhering to make it release well. I would use waxed paper though because it has a bit more flex. How big is your finished product? You might want to consider doing it in fourths or something if it is really large. I would not want to make it more than a metal spatula width big. Otherwise you will encounter that annoying breakage. Another idea is to scan your artwork. Laminate the copy or place tape over your paper pattern front and back and cut the pattern out around the outermost edges. The tape or lamination gives it that little bit more body so it holds up to tracing better. Trace that onto your surface. Then make another cut out for the essential details and trace those. Then just fill in the gaps. Yes, pictures would be most welcome to see. Ask the SugarVeil lady and she will give you the skinny if her product is the best. She is very helpful. I can't remember how it does for long term. I was really pleased with the gelatin water buttercream I made the other day. Just replace whatever liquid you use in your buttercream with gelatin water.

Why don't you ask the clients what they expect you to do? Ask them if cleaning your equipment well, and using peanut free ingredients is enough for them. Keep it reasonable. Most of us (people dealing with food allergies) don't expect restaurants and bakeries to have whole separate facilities because we know that's not reasonable. Most of the people who aren't comfortable with those conditions generally avoid restaurants where their allergens are on the menu. Some people get really neurotic about it, but that's a whole 'nother story. ← What do you mean? How beneficial would it be to a person with an allergy to be mostly peanut free? Besides that's a ginormous responsibility. From http://www.kidshealth.org http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/nutrition...lergy_diet.html It's the responsibility of the parent to ensure their child eats safely. A bakery could not do this. I don't understand it being neurotic or anal to preserve a child's life. Babycakes is very cool but they are equally careful to not ensure a 100% nut free product either. Another idea for a nine year old is to decorate his cake himself. There are so many many things out there they can use now. I had my boy on a special diet once upon a time. I told him that he was lucky to know which foods to avoid to stay healthy. The bummer is to not know and keep getting sick. It's a blessing to be able to simply avoid a list of foods & products and keep breathing. I would not let him feel sorry for himself. Me as a business? I would add a peanut butter cookie so there's no ify confusion as to whether or not. The stakes are too high.

Bottom line is that's why God created Grandma's. Don't you think?

^^^ Yeah, what he said ^^^ Because for 'at home' is so vastly different than for production. And 'at home' baking and use of peanuts addresses the allergic propensity of one person generally. To do this successfully for the peanut allergic populus is a monumental thing as Sebastian very aptly explained. Because if something wasn't Kosher the consequence is not possible death. I mean equating Kosher preparation of food to life threatening allergies is beyond apples and oranges, it's life and death. And I agree cookies and cakes are for fun and celebration. The further problem is that unless one has unlimited space and resources, the different allergies each would have to have it's own complete atmospherically controlled kitchen. Once you did for peanut free, the wheat free would want you. You'd have to have a kitchen for each allergy/malady. Who wouldn't want to be a blessing to all these folks? It's just beyond most of our grasp to comply with all the restrictions and still maintain a viable business.

'Should be' is good enough if it is for yourself. 'Should be' is not good enough for my retail establishment. ← I'm sorry I offended you. If she cleans after the last time she uses nuts, there will not be a problem. Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, leavening, and cow-dairy products do not contain peanut or other nut products. I have never found there to be a problem with Callebaut -- but of course since it is her business she should read the labels. I was giving her a starting point to investigate. ← Oh no no no, I'm not offended at all. No worries. I didn't mean to come off that way at all. I just can't/don't cater to life threateneing allergies for people--that's just me--that's what I meant. I agree too. It should be good enough for an individual but it's too big a liability for moi or for any shop I think. I don't want the pressure y'know? I mean sometimes you sit around and wonder how a cake or cookie was received by the people at the party. In this case I'd be sitting around praying to God nobody got sick. Yeah, no not for me. See, she wants to give you a set of pans. I can't operate that way. Other people with their particular issues will follow. Remember that poor girl who died from a kiss from her boyfriend from a peanut allergy? Not trying to be a downer, it's just hard enough to be in business as it is. I mean sugar free or egg free is kinda different or vegan, nobody's gonna die if something got cross contaminated. Peanuts and celiacs and folks with the bad allergies, the possible consequences are too great.