K8memphis

I'm sure they all inadvertently found their way home with you due to the stress of all the events of fatherhood and the nicu etc. You're not gonna toss me off the board are yah??? I promise I won't tell anyone about the "towels"

And if you kept PJ's receiving blankets you should be good for a few more decades. My daughter recycled hers into kitchen towels and they work well. ← I think we gave away the receiving blankets -- of which we had amassed many -- as hand-me-downs. But man, we have a lot of these cloth diapers. We had grand plans for them, but idealism gave way to expediency and we went with wasteful, toxic, disposable diapers. We're not proud. I'm even less proud of just how many I pilfered. At least now they'll get used for something. ← I don't know, there are so many clear cut choices to feel guilty about it seems a waste to feel bad about disposables. Once you factor in soap, bleach, storage, olfactory considerations, you gotta use a lot of hot water and it is the costliest utility we have. Then dryer heat. Then the air conditioner has to work harder to offset the heat. Then there's all the time you saved, the stuff that life is made of. I think disposables are the guilt-free-est choice. And shoot you now have enough absorbancy to mop up New York...Wait...You stole 'em??!!

Even though I've been in Tennessee for decades, I'm a Yankee. I've only really known Memphis barbeque. We serve it with cole slaw. I mean like a hamburger comes with pickles ketchup and mustard we automatically serve barbeque with coleslaw wherever you purchase it. I once met a lady who just moved here from Florida and she was demoralized to A) Find cole slaw on her sandwich and B)have to ask to 86 it. Clearly Florida is not a barbeque capital but still...And then again it might not a just been the cole slaw that was demoralizing about my fair city... Doesn't everybody serve slaw on their barbeque sandwich???

Dude, you are set for life!

I think another issue to using side towels more in home kitchens is expertise or rather lack of it. In a commercial kitchen, the cooks and chefs are used to quickly whipping out the towel (and having asbestos hands really helps a lot too) because this is a technique they repeat hundreds of times. But in home situations, I just see the cook fiddling with the towel and dipping it in the fire. Especially when they need to move quickly. Ok here's a thought. Y'know what a quillow is? It's a little throw quilt, just a small size quilt that folds up into a pillow because there's a little pocket sewn into one place where you can fold it all up and tuck it into the clever little perfectly placed pocket--all one piece of course. I think the home chef needs that much help to have the pocket to act as the guide to keep him from torching the place. But just out of regular towel material.

I just don't see that kind of fabric in the fabric stores. Wonder where you could get it? Y'know what makes great great towels? Brand new clean cloth diapers. Very absorbant

You are totally cracking me up. A little obsessed are we?? One problem with making your own is lint. You have to locate the nice material. And truth to tell, back in the day, Mom would use the feedsacks for towels and pillow cases and dresses and...well you get the picture. But Mom sewed too. Do you sew? Do you have a machine? I mean you can fray the edges too but this method works better for napkins because all those lovely pretty frayed strands of thread will catch fire easier when they are nattily folded up for use as a potholder. I mean you can hem by hand -- a straight stitch by machine is almost as good as this idea for potholders that is. But no please don't even think that you would consider using slightly used t- shirts. First of all knits don't fair well with heat, they melt. Use them for spills on the floor and washing the car and cleaning icky stuff, or scrunched up to apply paint to walls, but please never in the kitchen with food. There's stuff you can spray on raw edges called fray stop where you don't have to hem but it might increase flamability, not sure. But buying them is much easier. And hopefully therapeutic. Shop a lot!

We grew up on White Castles!!! Unfortunately, my sister (CA) and I (TN) live hundreds of miles from any. We have Krystal's here in Memphis which is a cruel alternate universe of wish-I-was-eating-White-Castle. I've eaten there twice in the over 20 years we've been here. There's White Castles in middle Tennessee but alas a four hour dirve. But one of my favorite past times is sending her White Castle coupons. More fun by far than the requisite dollar bill in her birthday card. And don't even mention the frozen ones. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. It's written in stone that when we all get togther up North for family reunions with the two brothers and various offspring we get those luggage size orders and pig our faces out. Sliders, mmmmm.

I use swiss buttercream too. But I wonder if a layer of crusting buttercream on top of the stacked area would help. LIke if we got our iced cakes real cold so you could just pipe a thin layer of crusting stuff there where it won't show. Sounds like a pain in the boo but it's an idea.

And I'm not positive, but browning the butter unless your recipe said to might have caused the emulsion to produce the eggy-ness. I'm not sure. I've never browned the butter for a pie filling. But I'd try it regular next time if it was me.

Aww that's a shame it burned! Umm, for glass pans usually you lower the oven temp by 25 degrees and I would have started on the middle rack. Umm, no it's not supposed to taste eggy necessarily. It should taste real sweet and the filling has a lot of body and is nubbly just like your picture and is smooth tasting. I think you just over baked a bit. Yes the pecans rise like that. Strange huh. Yes the first time you inserted the knife and the filling did not adhere to the knife blade then you take it out of the oven. The eggs will continue to set as the pie cools. You did good for your first attempt. It sure looks pretty.

Cool. Sounds like you have it under control. I'm shuffling off to bed...Hope all goes well.

Well didja zap it at all??? Shortening might make it too soft. The microzapping is nice because it gives you momentary pliability. Then when it goes back to room temp it gets firmer. Drapes are easier to do out of a combination of gum paste plus fondant. Umm, if it was moi, I add cornstarch to fondant to get dress bows. Hope all goes well, Cake-buddy!

I mean it might need more shortening too. Umm, I guess my kid has my Berenbaum book. Was gonna check your formula...

Warms it up so it's pliable. Like loosens it up. Try a tid tad. I mean just a bit of the fondant, not all of it, to see if it helps.

Define totally disagreeable. If it's dry add some shortening. If it's hard to knead, microzap it in 5 second increments. Watch it though, don't nuke it.

This boiled egg mess is a real bugaboo of mine. First of all it's not easy but you can do it. But you have to have cold water, lowering eggs into boiling or hot water will toughen the whites. So cover your eggs in cold water, set the pot of eggs on the flame and set the timer for 6 minutes to bring them to a boil. Didja know you can put a lid on it at this boiling point and turn off the fire for 10-11 minutes and they will be done perfectly? Or you can turn the flame down low and set the timer for 10-11 minutes. Now no diddling when the timer goes off. Set the pot in the sink as is, don't pour out the water. Remove one egg with a spoon and hold it under cold running water just briefly so you can grab it in your hand and whack the fat end of the shell and break the shell good there at the top and keep it under the running cold water, completely de-shell it. You wanna get the water between that membrane there and the white. Just do each one in turn. It never works for me to let them set and cool or anything. I time it and do this all right away. Good Luck! Just say no to (over cooked) green yolks in boiled eggs!!

Mmmmno, towels catch fire a zillion times more than potholders because of the fiddling and folding. The little loops on the mitts & hot pads got nothing on a wimpy fold. Even if it's a great fold, it's still got a lot of excess material flailing around there in/near the flame. bwhooosh You were blessed by God to get anything resembling white or yellow or blue in a commercial kitchen/bakery for a towel. If I could find one that didn't look like we'd cleaned the health inspector's white walls with it I was having a good day.

This is a fairly new product line that I hear good things about. ShopBakers Nook carries masonite boards. More cake drums and she sells the silver plateaus too Is this what you mean??

Using an icing that crusts and allowing it to crust before construction will help. I should start doing that for the area under the boards. Some people sprinkle powdered sugar or coconut or using a parchment as you suggested is an idea. But truth to tell having it stick some is good so the cakes don't slide all over. But then it does make serving it messier. Leaving a gap is an idea but then you have to work that into the design. Everybody wants stacked these days. An experienced cake person could scrape that icing off the board and re-ice the cake a bit. It's just kinda messy sometimes. I had a relationship with this one venue where she liked for me to leave a turntable, a flat one to facilitate serving. Where the cake could be turned around and around so the servers could stay in one spot. I made sure the icing crusted very well on those cakes because that made them happy. Cake boxes under the table for leftovers made her happy too. It's the little things. But somehwere where you have a relationship and a turntable they could run a spatula under the board before removing it to prevent the problem. It's always gonna be a bit messy though. Colette Peters and lots of folks use foamcore board from the art or hobby stores. Comes in the big sheets and you just cut 'em out to fit your cakes. Those are nice and umm, I also like to use the corrugated cardboard with kabob sticks slid down the corrugations for strength. The foam board is nicest though because it is white already, sometimes the brown edges of the cardboard peek through so since the foamcore board is all white this is a non-factor with the foamboards. Oh oh you mean for the base??? Yes same place you can get the thicker foamboards at the hobby & art stores like Michael's, Hobby Lobby. Or y'know at cake stores you can get the masonite boards.

I needed lunch fast and I've been hearing that Mcdonald's has some good salads so I found myself caught once again under the comforting canopy of the Golden Arches. It was all I could do to keep from getting an order of fries (hands were trembling, beads of sweat were beading) and they have a cinnamon something now too. The salad was good. Fries & cinnamon anything woulda been better. But yeah, it was kinda cool. How spoiled is real spoiled though, I hate to have to get my own drink.

Yeah, I ran this past my personal chef here, he came home for a minute, and he says, "Buy new hot pads?" See I can't mess up a good thing. That did not compute. We can't be in the revolution this time. Besides think of all the little girls dutifully looming potholders that the revolution would put out of business were it not for those of us set in our ways.

He could not see through lead. He was ok with iron. And kryptonite messed him up. You were testing us huh? KENT? Mild mannered reporter, Clark KENT...look...it's a bird it's a plane it's Kent Wang!!! It was lead wasn't it???

Hmmm and hmmm. This would require re-training of head homechef, my husband. He is in a wonderful rut where he not only cooks breakfast and supper he serves me too. I'm not sure if it's to my advantage to upset his apple cart there. Hmm, a revolution. He might go for it. I could tell him when he grows up he could be like Chef-boy-wonder, formerly known as Chef-wanna-be (our son). Umm, don't home chefs generally tend to torch kitchens with flaming towels or was I just hallucinating? And the hugest hurdle is the wetness factor. Umm, I'm not trying to be a downer here but what happens in a home kitchen is unlike commercial kitchens where we have to elbow and threaten, bribe and cajole to get one or two decent towels daily. (Never thought to look in the ceiling!)The home kitchen is flush with towels. Eveyone uses them. The home cook would burn his paws off because someone would dry their hands on it and foil him royally. I use that eff word advisedly. The big fat cushy awkward pot holders and mitts are kept dry avoiding calls to the firehouse and er. Hmm...I'm not convinced but I'm open. I mean after all we have folks who are bare handedly grabbing skillets out of hot oven. I'm afraid we'd set the world on fire. But I will run this past chef...better not scew up my being catered to...

Well first of all, "Over night rising of bread dough" sounds like the start of a new terrorizing Steven King-ish story. Just very draculanesque--what's it gonna do in the middle of the night...it's in the kitchen...it's in the hallway...it's on the threshold... it's slugging itself across the floor... it's creaking the floor boards by your beddddd...its' AGHHHH But anyway, umm, I always do the first rise in the frige then form it into whatever, then let it rise. And this second rise is slow maybe like three hours. The last time I used the frige, I let it rise at room temp first, then did the second rise in the frige then got it out, let it expand a bit, formed, then baked (pizza crusts) I did not like my second method there. I like it in the frige for the first rise. 'Course if you have carpeting the whole horror story goes out the window. Dough can't maneuver carpet. Game over.