viva

Pam, I'm glad you liked them! I have some friends coming in town next week, and I'm looking forward to an excuse to get back to Barrio Cafe. I need to try Pizzeria Bianco... I can't believe I haven't been there yet. On another note, has anyone else tried Frank & Lupe's in Old Town Scottsdale? I always figured it was just touristy, but we went there this week for lunch, sat in the outdoor cantina and had some wonderful orange roughy fish tacos and the green chile chicken soup. Delicious and inexpensive.

I thought I'd revive this old thread... although it's 3:00 on a Sunday. Since it is 80 degrees and sunny here in Phoenix today, I mixed myself a frosty pineapple margarita, made with my El Tesoro anejo that's been infusing in pineapple chunks, piloncillo sugar, and vanilla bean for the last 3 months. Huzzah to an Indian summer! "It's 5:00 somewhere..." what are you drinking?

Oh, beautiful. I'm adding that to my cookbook wish list. You can never have enough cookie recipes!

Ahh - the liquor stories could be endless. I celebrated my 21st birthday in Mexico, and let's just say it took a long time before the smell of tequila didn't make me shudder. I still can't smell the cheap stuff without feeling nauseated. When I was a teenager, my family was cooking live lobster at home. My father made little screaming noises as he dropped the lobsters into the pot. My impressionable young mind thought that the screaming was the lobsters - couldn't eat them for years. I've gotten over it, though.

"Triscuit" and "Disco Biscuit" were two terms we used in college to describe girls with bimbo tendencies. I have no idea why.

Kevin, are the peanut butter-filled choc cookies out on epicurious as well? I cruised but couldn't find them. They look delicious!

How would one go about making one's own chicken cracklings? Just fry up a bunch of chicken skin the same way you would make lard? I adore homemade pork cracklings.

Our hotel in Sao Paulo listed "Misty Meat" as one of the dishes on their English-translated menu. We were never daring enough to try it.

The December issue of <cough> Martha Stewart Living has an interesting gingerbread house *cake*, where the gingerbread house is actually a solid cake, with appropriate cookie decoration for windows, etc. Was an interesting variation to check out.

Excellent idea. As this subject was started by comparing chipotles to tomato paste, can you do a similar freeze technique with tomato paste? Freeze a tablespoon on some wax paper, then combine into a freezer bag? I always hate finding half-cans of chipotles & tomato paste in the fridge, with a thick layer of mold. <sigh> They're so small and so easily hidden in the back.

Ah, but I'm single and I keep 4-5 boxes in rotation. There's different cereal moods that must be met: Sugary mood - Sugar Smacks (I refuse to call them honey smacks) Fiber mood - Cracklin' Oat Bran Flakes mood - Smart Start Crunchy mood - Kashi Go Lean Crunch No milk mood - Granola I also get the occasional hankering for Fruit Loops, but the box disappears quickly (you can eat a lot of Fruit Loops in one sitting). I'm thinking about Fruity Pebbles right now. Pink milk mood. It's not like the stuff goes bad as long as you keep the pouch closed so it doesn't get stale!

It's actually cold and rainy here in Phoenix today, which doesn't happen often. I took advantage of the mood and made a country pork stew, with pork stew meat, carrots, onions, roasted garlic, a little vermouth, a little rosemary, all simmered up and served over egg noodles. (Conveniently, all items that were sitting around waiting to be used.) Caramel apple brownies for dessert. I'm happily full and ready for a nap!

I just spent a couple of hours reading this thread and all of the links. These posts are hysterical (the Polish meal takes the cake). There needs to be a book compilation of all this stuff. I think I had some truly horrible meals in my lifetime, courtesy of my dear departed Grandma (she was the main chef in the family in my youth) - the stories here all have a familiar ring to them - but I was either too young to know the difference or I have blocked it out of my memory. Grandma was an aficionado of processed and overcooked food. Shake n' Bake, Tuna Helper, the pot roast cooked in the crock pot for 12 hours. I never thought a salad could have anything in it other than iceberg & Thousand Island dressing when I was growing up. My proclivities toward Kraft macaroni & cheese linger to this day (it was *safer* than anything she homecooked!!!). My father recalls being served Hamburger Helper 3 meals in a row, although I have some doubts as to the veracity of that claim. But I still remember her peanut butter & Hershey's kiss cookies with fondness.

I like experimenting with T-Day desserts, because that's where people seem a little less bound to tradition and willing to experiment. Unlike, say, god forbid, messing with the stuffing recipe. Along the chestnut lines, this year I made a chestnut chocolate rum cake (chocolate cake layers with rum syrup, RLB's chestnut mousse for filling between the layers, and RLB's chestnut rum buttercream frosting). It was a nice change of pace but chocolate-y enough for the chocoholics to be satisfied. In past years, I've done: - harvest pie (apple, pear, cranberry) - apple-quince-raisin pie - sweet potato cheesecake The family-favorite pumpkin pie is the fluffy one from Julia's "The Way to Cook". One friend brought a blackberry pie this year, but it seemed kind of out of place. Delicious, but out of place.

That's evil, because my heart nearly fell through the floor when you said you were kidding about the tequila. I was almost out the door, on the way to TJ's. There's no fresh meat or fresh fish at my TJ's. The frozen fish ain't bad, and there's a lot more variety in fish types than I can usually get around here. I've never seen any Niman Ranch meat. Having said that, I never go to the damn place, because it's always packed to the gills with ignorant people that can't remember to keep their cart out of the middle of the aisle. Pure chaos.

Just wanted to let y'all know that MeeMaw's Pork Cake went over famously - a call was even made to Grandma in Texas, who requested the recipe. That's an accolade! We put it on the T-Day dessert buffet, not bothering to note that it contained meat (no one attending has any aversions to pork) - half the cake was gone by the end of the night without the slightest suspicion. I also gave her the jar of mincemeat, which was difficult to part with.

Those are very good points - I think the dark is too bitter for eating (for me), but may actually work nicely in the buttercream with chocolate. I personally don't like very sweet desserts, and we'll have plenty of other cakes on T-Day for those that like their stuff on the sweet side. It's just nice to have a little validation that it's not burnt! I'm also making RLB's Caramel Cage to go over the frosted cake...very excited as I have never worked with caramelized sugar in that way before. Thanks all!

Hmmm. According to that (I found a similar chart in the Cake Bible), I was on my was from light caramel to medium caramel. I think it might be okay, particularly once I mix the praline powder with the chocolate buttercream... But just in case, I'm making an almond praline (I'm out of hazelnuts) and will cook to the light brown stage. I let it cook to about 300, and it tastes less bitter than the other. ETA: It's a little confusing in the charts... according to them, at 320, the sugar will "liquefy" and start turning from clear to brown. Well, my sugar starts turning amber at around 270. I think I understand the "liquefy" part, because at around 270-280, the sugar suddenly becomes a lot more fluid. I'm not sure I fully understand all of this... was using two thermometers as well, just to verify the accuracy of the temp. Maybe a nice eGCI course complete with photos?

Question for all of you... At what temperature does sugar become "burnt" and not just "dark brown"? Here's the story: I am making RLB's Chocolate Praline Crunch Buttercream. The recipe for the praline is to cook 2/3 cup sugar in 1/4 cup water, to 370F (!) and then pour over hazelnuts. The praline is then ground to a powder and mixed into a chocolate buttercream. I've never cooked a sugar syrup to that high a temperature (370!). I actually only wound up cooking to about 325-330, because the syrup was turning a very brown color, and I was afraid to burn it. I poured it over the hazelnuts and it's cooled nicely to a clear burnt sienna brown (maybe a little deeper than the dark Karo syrup color). To me, it tastes a little smoky, definitely not sweet. Thoughts? Is it overcooked & burnt and I should scrap it & begin anew? If it is overcooked, what temp would you recommend cooking the sugar to? Much obliged... Edited to add a photo...

I just checked my Weber Silver C manual - according to the directions, a whole 12-14 lb turkey, unstuffed, should cook on medium indirect heat, breast-side-up for 2 1/4-3 hours. It recommends using a roasting rack set inside a foil drip pan for most of the cooking time, then placing the bird directly on the grill for the last 1/2 hour. Indirect heat was defined as having the burners around the bird on (so, in the case of the Silver C, the front & back burners would be on, but the middle burner would be off). Does he have a natural gas grill? No need to worry about filling the propane tank.

There was an article in People magazine about this last week. Apparently there is a Cereality open on the Arizona State campus in Tempe near me. I might check it out to see if it has any options that would beat the variety at the local grocery store. The stuff takes up a whole aisle, for crying out loud! Anyway, there's nothin' wrong with cereal! I like Kashi Go Lean Crunch, Cracklin' Oat Bran, Sugar Smacks, plus any stuff with lots of dried fruit and crunch. It's all good. And sometimes it's my only source of, er, fiber.

Make Katie Loeb's recipe for limoncello, using tangerine peel instead. Mighty nice! Will use up about 12 tangerines worth of peel. The Limoncello's thread is in the Fine Spirits & Cocktails forum.

Oooohhhh... I have some white truffle oil. Now I'm going to have to make mac & cheese to try & incorporate it. Darn!

I like it on the rocks. It's a nice after dinner sipping cream liqueur.

Well, I made my first couple of batches of marshmallows (finally!), and I'm hooked. Cranberry Marshmallows: Made a batch of Julia Child's cranberry relish (cranberry, orange juice, sugar, & orange/lemon zest), then pureed 3/4 cup of the relish in 1/2 cup of water, then strained it. This replaced the 1/2 cup of strawberry puree and 1/2 cup of water in the original recipe. They're a pretty pink and nice & tart. Not quite as fluffy as the pumpkin ones turned out, but they were my first, so I'll chalk that up to experience and not the cranberries! Pumpkin Marshmallows: Took the advice above and used 1/2 cup of pumpkin pie mix (with the spices) in lieu of the 1/2 cup of strawberry puree. They're a pale orange, with little flecks of spice throughout. Yum! I also tried Frangelico Marshmallows, but unfortunately I put a tbsp of Nutella (hey, hazelnuts, there's logic there) in with the Frangelico, but I think there's too much fat in Nutella, so the mixture didn't foam up nearly as much as the other two. I'm letting it sit overnight, maybe they'll be little dense guys. They taste phenomenal, so I don't want to give up on them yet. I also think I'll try again tomorrow, but starting with cocoa dissolved in Frangelico. Bless whoever it was that mentioned using an oiled pizza cutter! It worked wonderfully to cut 'em. The goal of all this is to make sandwich cookies... about 1/2 the 'mallows I made thin enough to sandwich between 2 ginger crisps or almond crisps. The other half are nice thick cubes for general fressen! Thanks, nightscotsman, for sharing... these are really fun!