K8memphis

I think the gambling pays for the extras like water shows. If eateries in big places like hotels break even then they are regarded as very very successful. So Curlz, it looks like your letter got someone's 'attenceeon'. That's assuming Alana's excursion was indeed after yours. That's gotta be gratifying in itself.

Does the starter have a skin on it??? Is it just the picture??? Looks a little dry on top to me. Jackal, are you getting nervous?? We want video if you gotta' drop kick the starter

The weird are never alone, are we.

Consider re-titling this with more of a metamorphosis* angle than the rehab** thing. If you drop kicked it all, there's nothing to restore. *1 a : change of physical form, structure, or substance especially by supernatural means b : a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances A great aromatic supernatural hatching as it were, er gonna be. **1 a : to restore to a former capacity

Well, I'm inspired here to add my little contribution. But first let me say those breads and pastries look and surely smell amazing!! Just beautiful. And the eggs are stunning! Mine is not a nationwide tradition or anything like that so on that score I'm truly out done before I start. But nonetheless it's a cool idea and it's just a little thing I do. Let's see if I can get the picture gods to cooperate...aghh, no, you have to click on the link instead. This one is actually the beginning of a tutorial on how to make them--you would need to continue scrolling to view it. And this is a little ocean of them. How does one eat this? Do you remove the egg before eating the pastry, or do you cut right in and then pick out bits of eggshell? ← Filipe---And I cannot wait to find out how you eat that Portugese loaf with the boiled egg in it!!! I've always wondered!!! What do you do with the shells???

Oh how cool!! You can do it, Gerhard!!! Then again geez loowez, the Indian Ocean??? Who needs bread??? No seriously, you are very brave--good writer too. I'm looking forward to the next instalment.

For a glass popcorn popper clickety. However, I do not agree with the recommendation to serve it out of the popping container because it is too hot. You gotta know that handle is destined to be whacked off in short order also. But anyway, there it is.

Baby sugar! You have my compassion and congratulations. The first thing that popped into my mind is, give birth. Ok, yeah, that's not funny. The soda cracker thing is good--you could add chamomile tea and pretzels. Oh yeah, umm, ice chips too to calm down the nausea. Not a tremendous amount of protein there. Cottage cheese?? Boiled eggs--but don't slice them open when they're hot--peel them, let them get room temp or refrigerate if you must--but if you slice warm you will be hit with a smell. Umm, what about something like a peanut butter cookie??? You got a little protein there and not much smell--maybe you could nibble those. Salads, with canned beans added--maybe even just eat some canned beans--no real smells and great protein--umm, canned beans have a nice mild pleasant flavor Like maybe garbonzo, kidney, black beans--ones with no spices. Easy. They are not all gorpy & thick they are distinct and cooked perfectly. Blessings on you!! Hopefully this will pass soon. ((({{{Susan}}}))) edited to add: wonder if you put a clothespin on your nose if that would affect anything. Or kept yourself from smelling the food somehow.

I like slightly scorched popcorn.

Yes, and um, something like that. They did use coconut oil, and many have stopped after they published that a bag of popcorn contained three times the calories as a Big Mac - or something obscene like that. Oh my soul, popcorn like that was worth all those the calories!! Doesn't the inside steam and the water accumulate on othe plastic wrap and then drip down into the pocorn to make it all soggy? No not at all. But you have to remove the plastic asap, which is why I said watch out for the steam burn. Furikake is a Japanese seasoning with salt and dried seaweed as the main ingredients. It's uber yummy on rice, pocorn - basically anything starchy - even on meats - especially fishes. Oh, thank you. I'll have to try that. Method for combining government-issued 5lb. block of cheese with popcorn? Shred the cheese and sprinkle it over a short layer of buttered popcorn on a sheet tray, bake like 350 or so until cheese is melted. Break up the clumps. Rub on face. Oh yes, a common problem around our house during popcorn sessions... I'm talking serious cookie-monster cram-your-face mess... It ain't pretty - but it's good.u.e. ← Thanks, u.e.!! (I'd have answered sooner, but my keyboard died.)

Wow, MariaA, I like your cake, it's gorgeous! Cheryl, Wooden dowel can impart a musty flavor to the cake surrounding it. Some people compensate by wrapping them up in something. Some people dip them in wax. Some people use plastic. I use graduated plastic. The bigger Wilton plastic dowel for bottom tiers, the Asian drink straws for middle tiers and drinking straws for baby tiers. Sometimes I put shishkabob skewers into drinking straws--nobody was ever sad that they had too many or too strong of supports. The shishkabob skewers also slide into the corrugated cardboards too. So two cardboards work fine if you make the corrugation cross y'know & not run the same way. But again, I use stronger stuff for the bigger tiers -- sometimes three cardboards, sometimes foamcore, whatever like that. I like my bottom boards to be at least four inches larger than the bottom tier. If your bottom tier is 16" the board should be at least 20". This will only give you a 2" lip all the way around--so decide how much room you want there. For most cakes you want a graduated look where the bottom of the cake, the board, is the widest and then the cake narrows and narrows on the way up. Some people use like 12x10x8 inch cakes. There's a time & a place for cakes like this, but generally speaking, you want to go with a 3 to 4 inch graduation between tiers, 14x10x6 or 12x9x6 stuff like that. It's more pleasing to the eye. When you center a 10 inch cake onto a 12 inch cake there's only a one inch ledge around the top there--not a lot of room. Some people really like that. Most people use 3-4 inches in between tiers unless something special is going on. Like Martha's tower of roses cakes, if the cakes are not centered on top of each other stuff like that. Colette uses foamcore without covering it. That's how I use it too. Usually you can conceal it with icing or a border--but it all depends on what kind of setup you are using--covering the edge with ribbon is certainly an option. I have no patience with people who want to set their cakes up outside. Icing melts in the sun/heat even though they are getting married. Who knew? So I distance myself from that by saying I guarantee the cake to be delivered to the already decorated cake table at such & such a time and that it will be servable and not melted at that point and that's as far as my responsibility goes. If they wanna pay hundreds of dollars to melt their cake that's plastered with fly & bird drops as well as insects so be it. And I say it perhaps a bit more gently but not too much. But some decorators make these real cool covers for their cakes & stuff to be set outdoors, but again, I'm not one of 'em. Memphis is hot and I ain't playing games & stressing with the weather when I'm trying to deliver a cake. Fondant would work for outdoors better than icing. "For Heaven's sake don't________" Wait till the last minute to do whatever you can do in advance. Like the delivery vehicle--what kinda car you got? What kinda box you gonna put it in? You can do that now. As soon as you determine the sizes for sure y'know. What will you level your car seats with? You can make all your cake boards now. You can make a lot of the decor now or within two weeks. And I recommend that you allow yourself twice as much time as you think you need. When you start decorating, set a timer to go off every ten minutes for a while. It's easy to get off in that creative side of our brain where time does not exist and when we come out 2-3 hours have gone by and there's not 2-3 hours of work completed. kwim?? I love to talk cakes. Here's a demo of a cake made at home. There's some other ideas in there for yah.

Coupla 3 things First my question, 'member way back when, and you went to the drive-in and the scintilating aromas emanating from the concession stand drew you like a lemming to the edge and the taste of the popcorn was a perfect intoxicant?? Did they pop in coconut oil or something like that? Is there such a thing as coconut oil? And they stopped using it for health reasons?? Anybody??? Umm, I pop microwave popcorn in any deep glass container like a big pyrex 2 qt. measuring cup. Cover with plastic wrap--in fact I stir the corn & oil together then when I cover with plastic wrap I make sure the wrap is very secure to the sides and edges all the way around. And when I cover I don't stretch it tight across the top--I like cover the inside of the bowl out so that when it pops the plastic can dome up kwim? Costco plastic wrap works fine. Umm, watch out for steam burns taking it off. Oh yeah, if your plastic wrap is not wide enough --you can piece it together too. I found the bags to be too messy. The best topping I've ever had--course I haven't tried alot of these like furikake what is that? and anything with truffle and the yeast stuff--so all that said, the best topping I ever had so far is that government issue American cheese, in the 5 pound blocks--never have been able to duplicate this with anything we could ever find to purchase--oh my talk about died & gone to heaven--you don't know whether to eat it or rub it all over your face. kid you not!

I am a happy capitalist. I agree with most of what you write. "...I owe the restaurant and its personnel nothing..." You have invested in that establishment, they have invested in you. If your experience was below expectation, it makes more sense to inform them than to inform us but of course there's no obligation for you to do so. It seems fair to do that though before we wax eloquent elsewhere. And then when we come together as a cyber food force to be reckoned with here on egullet, we need to be discreet in our negative reports because it's recorded permanently and is so much bigger than any one person or place. We would all want bad establishments to close but that is not any part of my personal mission statement, to help it (the closure) be accomplished. Certainly not a goal of egullet's. If in each of our professions at any given moment we were observed and our work was measured and judged, put up for scrutiny and this information was posted for all to see, our bosses, our friends, our everybody--might this affect our next raise, our standing in the community, our interaction with co-workers, etc. This might affect a great many things. There's a privilege and power in the medium thus the irrefutable and tremendous responsibility.

I get your point and I agree to a point but that's a very broad brush stroke. There's just more to it than that. It's not just our meal and our experience in that restaurant. It's their light bill and mortgage payment, it's the baby's milk money. It's their livelihood and the livelihoods of every employee, plus the linen guy, the tomato farmer, you get the drift. Yeah for sure dang straight everything outghta be top notch first class, no less so than when I'm dining there. But we need to not ignore the fact that this is a permanent and powerful tool we are weilding, whichever way we turn it. There's no loss of integrity to be careful and tactful and even tasty in what we say and serve up here for all to partake. Roll over dead, no. Sugar coat, no. Trash talk, no. Somewhere in the middle, yeah, with much respect. If service or food was poor, get the manager. "People should say what they think" is too easy. That's what I think.

Yes, you are correct, don't go there. And multiplied best wishes on the possibilities with the new endeavor.

I think we have to weigh our less than perfect dining experiences carefully. The cyber pen is mightier (way disproportionately so) than the sword of personal conversation. Relate the experience & pm the name of the place. (?) And I think Alexandra is saying, "Gotcha!" like a child standing on the dining room table for attention.

One idea is to let him know how much you have used & appreciated his formula. And how many times you've been aproached for it and would he give you permission to pass it on with full credit to him of course. Go ahead make his day.

My son, (formerly known as chef-wanna-be) Chef-boy, just told me yesterday how he is into adding air to everything. He was saying how he takes like for example a margarta. Let's see you take like a small portion of it and add a bunch of gelatin sheets the rest you put in the freezer or umm, you put that in the freezer--oh shoot I can't remember all that stuff he does. But anyway he blends the bejeezus out of it and makes quarts of product out of it. Who would go through all that y'know?? Anyway I do have an idea--use a firm cake and for real 3 muskateer bars as a filling. Maybe chopped up a bit. But it would be fun to peel the chocolate off the bars and blend it up a bit with something...like ah...cream maybe...or ahh...melted ice cream. Oooh, wonder what you could come up with by putting the peeled 3 muskateer bars on top of warm cake. That might just make them rubbery when the air dissipates out of the candy. But it still would be fun to play. OK--one more hair brained (brainstorm type) idea. Peel the candy bars, chop & freeze the rest. Blend the frozen chunks into some whipped cream. maybe

I love the mini rose pan--well, let's see... they have poppa bear size, momma bear size and now baby bear size. Try that again, I love the momma bear size mini rose pan. I actually have three of them because I got one for each kid too and have somehow needed to 'borrow' them back, anyhow. Yes, getting them out of the pan seems to be as dependant on the fomula you are using as much as it is the seasoning, ie greasing of the pan. Because I bake different fruit breads & muffins in them. Some come out perfect like plucking ripe fruit, viola. And some are immediatley sliced horizontal for sandwiches. I tell yah, there's no better/easier clean up than filling with hot water & putting back in the oven.

I have a bottle sitting in the drawer over there that I haven't even opened yet. I was thinking about some spring time cookies or something. The last time I used rosewater was eons ago in baklava--it was heavenly.

Wow wow wow-- looks like a heavenly evening--theobroma for sure. Thank you, Ling and LordBalthazar.

Well yeah, after I found it and saw Tepee had contributed so much I figured you already knew about that stuff. So anyway, best wishes with that.

I got it I got it This is totally awesome!!!

I can't find it, but someone will be able to--it was a wonderful thing with great blow you away pictures and explicit, careful directions. Anyway--hang on--someone will find it for you --it's awesome--gives you the formulas for like 'dead' dough that doesn't rise so it stays pretty during the baking and way cool stuff. I think it was called dead dough or something like that...

Oh man, we got a great thread on that in this forum somewhere--I'll see if I can find it. Sorry, it's not Chinese though--you'll have to muddle through best you can with english --that's if I can find it...brb... And God knows I'd like to jam about 5 of those in my face they look very edible--I know I know not your point--I'll be right back...