quiet1

Like the title says - I am on the hunt for a small nonstick saucepan that will work on induction. I strongly prefer the non-teflon ones because I hate the way teflon invariably starts to peel up. I am really not seeing anything, though, so I'm wondering if such a creature even exists? Am I looking in the wrong places? I don't usually buy nonstick at all - I'm one of those annoying 'stick' and 'properly seasoned cast iron/steel' people, but in the past I have reached for a small nonstick saucepan for those little tasks like reheating some soup when I don't want to use the microwave for some reason, or making scrambled eggs. Right now I'm mostly cooking on a countertop induction unit, though, and most of the nonstick stuff I'm seeing is aluminum and therefore not induction friendly. I would prefer not to spend a fortune because this is not a pot for creating culinary masterpieces, but I am willing to spend a bit for something if it's going to last a sensible amount of time. (I.e. no needing to throw it out after a year because the coating's gone all gross.) Any suggestions? Using a disc of metal to heat up an aluminum pan with the induction seems woefully inefficient for a pan that's primary purpose is quick and easy meals.

It's pretty unglamorous, but apple sauce is one of my household's go-to foods for when your digestive system is quite unhappy with you. (However, that is American style apple sauce. The only apple sauce I encountered in the UK was much more acidic and would probably not work as well. I'm talking about a relatively sweet and bland type of apple sauce - I mean, it still tastes of apples, but it's not made using a particularly sharp variety of apple so it's much easier on the stomach.) I also sometimes serve it alongside pork, and if you make latkes or similar things then apple sauce is essential. But mostly I keep some on hand for medicinal purposes and occasional snacking. (Warmed apple sauce with cinnamon on top is a pretty decent quick in-from-the-cold snack that'll give you a bit of an energy boost since the sugars in the apple sauce don't take long to start being digested.)

Right, best to do some experimental shots with the lighting you're hoping to use, particularly before trying to get a shot of something time-sensitive like ice cream. My point was just that often you can find things that will work that you already have, so you don't immediately need to run out and spend money on a flash unit or some other piece of specialty kit. I think people can get discouraged when they're just starting out with something new and they feel like they have to have all the bits and pieces before they can get started. Specialty stuff obviously has a place, but you can do a lot without it, and your experiments without will often help inform your decisions on what you actually do need to get next. Very good point about the way our eyes see whites. Our brain compensates pretty effectively, so it can be a big surprise to take a photo or shoot some film in lighting that you think looks good and then you actually look at the photo or footage and it looks completely different. This is why it comes back to experimenting again - with digital cameras it's so much easier to take tons of photos to try out various options and settings since you don't have to worry about the cost of film or developing. Anyone wanting to improve their photography skills, even just for a specific purpose like food photography, should take advantage of that.

You can use flashlights and other home lighting in a lot of situations if you don't have a flash but need extra light on your subject, too. Just if you're using a flashlight try to figure out a way to rest it on something or clamp it to something - just so you don't have to juggle holding it just so and taking the picture at the same time. One thing about white balance - if you're going to actually do a white balance test shot, make sure that your white sheet of paper/card/whatever is catching the same light source(s) that you expect your subjects to catch. That means you're best to put it basically where you'd be putting your subject, and then adjust camera position/framing accordingly so that it fills the frame, rather than moving the white thing closer to the camera. (We always had at least one kid who'd forget about this in film class, and you could tell that he'd white balanced with the card too close so it was only catching one kind of light because then as soon as you mix light sources (like sunlight and indoor fluorescents) the color would be all off unintentionally.

How much trouble are they in terms of care and attention? Where I live there is no way I could grow citrus outside, but an indoor-outdoor dwarf in a wheeled pot should be doable. Got any photos of yours handy? ETA: Regarding herbs, if you're a newbie gardener I totally recommend trying to find a good gardening store/nursery in your area so you can get good advice and hopefully also really nicely started plants. I've had really mixed results from big box store plants and starting from seed. (I actually use herbs outdoors in decorative window boxes because it annoyed me that most flowers I tried were annuals or perennials with a death wish. The herbs look a little unusual but now that they're established they're going along quite happily with little to no attention from me, and either are winter hardy in my area or self-seed exceptionally well, so it keeps the boxes looking full and healthy.)

You don't even need a proper tripod to start experimenting. You just need the camera to sit nice and stable where you put it. I've occasionally used a sandbag for a 'tripod' when I needed to get really low with the camera and I had one handy - a bag of rice or dried beans might work similarly. (Something where you can nestle the camera in a touch so it's more held than just perching on top. Although I've used fence posts as a makeshift tripod in the past also, so you really can make do with what you have.) Don't get me wrong - a tripod is super helpful because of how stable it is and how easy it is to make adjustments and know that the camera is being held securely, but if you just want to experiment a bit without going out and buying anything new to start with, you can manage well enough with stuff you have around to decide if a tripod is going to be worth it for you or not.

For baking I usually stick close to the recipe to start with because I'm not that comfortable making many substitutions yet re: the chemistry of the whole thing. For other stuff, it depends a lot on why I'm using that particular recipe. My grandmother's meatloaf recipe? I follow that pretty much exactly (within the realm of changes she would also make sometimes, like exactly what proportions of types of meat) because the end goal is to produce my grandmother's meatloaf, and anything else wouldn't taste right. Random recipe that I found because I want to use some ingredients I have on hand, or something I saw on a cooking show? Eh. I'll wing it and use the recipe as inspiration. The one exception is if I'm doing a trial run of a recipe I intend to cook for a major dinner/event - the goal is to know that I'll get the same results when I make it for the event, so I stick close to the recipe or if I alter it for some reason, I make a note of exactly what and why so that I can do it again. It'd defeat the purpose of doing a test run in the first place if I just completely winged it both times.

It is possibly cheating, but I find that a vegetable peeler is quite handy for creating that initial flat surface to make the carrot sit nicely on the board, without taking off too much excess vegetable. I'm sure some folks can do the same with a paring knife, but if the concern is avoiding accidental knife injury, I generally find peelers better behaved for this sort of thing. (I have grip strength issues in my hands due to arthritis, though, so your mileage may vary.) I also cut the carrots down into more manageable lengths, but I've never needed them full length for presentation.purposes.

I used a Cook's Illustrated recipe for turkey one year that called for brining and it came out extremely nicely. People who generally disliked turkey because they found it too dry came back for seconds and thirds. I think you just need to be careful with it in terms of making sure you rinse well and take the brine process into consideration when adding salt at other stages. (Like when making something with the pan juices.) Unfortunately I don't recall details because I only did it once before we found a really good butcher and everyone demanded beef roasts instead of turkey on traditional family gathering days. (This was when I lived in England, so they didn't really have a concept of Thanksgiving. Turkey was more of a Christmas dinner meal, and hard to find other times of year.) But definitely I would do it again if I had call to make another turkey. I seem to recall feeling like the brined turkey was more robust in terms of getting the timing exactly right, too. (Meaning if you don't whip it out of the oven exactly on time due to the general chaos of cooking multiple dishes with friends and family turning up and popping in to help, a couple of minutes extra in the oven isn't going to turn it from edible into cotton-y dried out ick.)

Same. I borrowed a roasting pan when I was hosting Christmas dinner for the full family and wanted to do a turkey/goose/very large roast/two chickens at once (two pans didn't fit as well as one pan with two spaced-apart chickens) but for everyday I didn't need a roasting pan. Mostly I used a cast iron skillet. Worked out fine. Just keep an eye on size of pan relative to what you're cooking in it so stuff doesn't end up too squished in.

Proof that knives are like shoes - I have small hands and I find Global knives to be kind of uncomfortable. (Not the worst I've used, but not fantastic. I think maybe something about the balance is off for me? Not sure.) I would definitely at least buy from a place with a good return policy or stick with something where if it ends up not working and joining your knife collection, it's not the end of the world. (Also, is there a reason you really want just the one knife? I have an 8" chef knife and a couple of decent but not super nice paring knives, and could probably make do with just one of those and between the big knife and the small knife have something comfortable for most jobs. Not idea, but functional, you know?)

By drinking I mean something that's pleasant to sip alone - I find some wines really are happier with a food pairing of some kind to help with the level of acidity or otherwise finish out the flavor, but this time I'm looking for something that stands alone nicely. My mother wants to start drinking more red wine for health reasons, and apparently Melbac is particularly good for her needs. (Something about the altitude and the influence that has on the nutritional content.) Unfortunately I don't drink a lot and so I'm not sure what to suggest for her. I have had a Melbac that was similar to what I think she wants, but naturally I can't remember what the heck it was. So I'm hoping folks have suggestions that I can go looking for. Price-wise it needs to be something affordable with drinking it regularly in mind - maybe $10-$15 a bottle? (It's been so long since I properly shopped for wine I can't remember if that's a reasonable price these days or not!) And also I'm in Pennsylvania, so there may be issues getting some wines since we only have the state stores here and while they do pretty well, there are some things they just don't have. So if you have more than one suggestion that's even better since hopefully I'll be able to find at least one. (I'm going to sneak in a wine storage question, too - she's really the only one who will be drinking it, do those hand pump vacuum wine sealers actually work well enough to be worth getting her one as a gift? She's planning on a single glass a day, so once opened she will want to store the bottle in the fridge while she finishes it.)

That usually works out ok. But, commercial kitchens avoid using glass for tasks like this because if your hand slips and it falls and breaks, not only does the whole kitchen immediately have to be cleaned from top to bottom, any food that is out or open (on prep areas, on the steam table, on the stove cooking, on speed racks cooling, on the pass waiting for a server, bins with lids off for a moment) has to be tossed out. The OP is trying to teach herself professional baking, and it's probably best that she work with equipment used in a professional kitchen. My tamper thing is smooth metal, so it could be chilled if desired I imagine. Got it in the uk, can't remember where.

That site isn't working for me. Can anyone else access it? Thanks. That was the impression I had from reading so far, but there is a huge amount of information in the threads and since the entire sous vide approach is new to me I'm finding it works best to actually read through properly rather than trying to skip around searching for specific topics, and it's taking me a while. i think my holiday gift to myself this year may be one of the sous vide gadgets...

All NSAIDs (ibuprofen, naproxen, etc.) can raise your BP. Some of it seems to depend on how sensitive you are - all of the women in my family seem to need very little in the way of NSAID intake to start retaining fluid like a sponge, which of course cranks up your BP. I always have fun because I have arthritis and so doctors tend to want to put me on this NSAID or that NSAID for additional pain relief and I get to explain that they tend not to agree with me very well. The thing is really just to spend some time paying attention to what you're doing NOW before trying to make changes - if nothing else it will inform the changes you make. (For example, if you find you take more NSAIDs over the course of the day than you thought, perhaps you just need to try to limit those a little to see improvement without having to majorly overhaul your diet, that sort of thing. Maybe there are a couple of bad food choices you make regularly where it would take only a small amount of extra effort to make a different choice.) It's generally pretty hard to make sweeping diet changes, so if you can avoid that approach you're more likely to be successful. Food is such an important part of a lot of social activities, plus people on this forum are probably particularly interested in food, that to go right to a restricted diet that eliminates most of your usual meals/recipes tends to leave you feeling pretty crummy emotionally/mentally. Of course, the benefit to being interested in cooking is that you probably have more options in making dietary changes than someone who is dependent on primarily prepared items like microwave meals. You can tweak something by using a different cut of meat or changing the amount of sauce you have with it, or changing the accompaniments, and still have enjoyable food that resembles something you like.

Quick question - I apologize if it's been covered already but I'm still working my way through the whole Sous Vide thread, and this came up the other day when talking to my mother. I know you can sous vide eggs, and I think it's possible to do so such that you get a yolk that's pasteurized but not set? Would it be possible to do eggs using sous vide to the point where they're pasteurized but still 'raw' enough for other cooking methods? (I.e. salad dressings and things that traditionally for raw eggs, and fried or otherwise cooked eggs where you desire a runny yolk.) It came up because my mom loves many of those food items, but she has a somewhat suppressed immune system and so as much as possible she avoids things that are potentially 'unsafe' (has burgers fully cooked also, etc.) I would move sous vide equipment up my list of stuff to get and play with if it seemed reasonable that it would allow me to safely prepare some of the things that she's currently going without. (Obviously I would be very careful about checking temperature accuracy and so on with my set up, so I could be sure items were actually being held at the necessary temperature for the correct amount of time.)

Lest anyone think that the mini tart tamper is a ridiculous gadget because that one is from Pampered Chef (who, to be fair, do a pretty good line in ridiculous gadgets) - they are really so insanely helpful. When I lived in the UK I would often make large batches of mincemeat pies for friends and family using muffin tins (better crust-to-filling ratio than in a shallower tart shape) and when I got a properly sized tamper it was like night and day - the crust always came out perfectly and with no weird thin spots because I accidentally poked too hard with a fingertip here, etc. Plus it's so much faster in my experience because there's less fiddling around - the tamper pushes the dough evenly into the pan and since the force on the dough is pretty uniform if you have a large enough tamper, the dough isn't nearly as inclined to tear. That was using a crust recipe which, while not labeled pâte sucrée, sounds quite similar.

I didn't realize that was a new thing - my parents have always told me about eating places that sound like they were doing exactly that when they were on their Honeymoon in Greece. That was quite a while ago, though. Perhaps there was a crack down on it and it's being revived now?

My British husband swore by those (although made with a stand alone sandwich toaster small appliance) filled with cheese - grated - and the smallest spoonful of baked beans. (British style ones in a tomato sauce, though, not the usual American smokey bbq type.) The ratio of cheese-bread-beans was such that I would consider that in the grilled cheese family, although I'm not sure how successful it would be without the toaster contraption to kind of seal the edges and hold in the sauce from the beans as it heats and tries to drip out before it's melted in with the cheese. Sometimes we'd add some pre-cooked crumbled bacon, also, for a nice crispy salty surprise as you were eating. I'm with the group that goes with the boring supermarket bread and the American cheese for the Proper grilled cheese sandwich, though. If I have a comfort food grilled cheese craving, that's what I have to have. Usually with some pickles on the side. (I know some people put the pickles in the sandwich, but I prefer to have a bite of sandwich and then next a bite of pickle.) I keep meaning to try making a grilled cheese - maybe with a good cheddar - using some Marmite mixed with butter inside instead of plain butter. Seems like it might be a tasty flavor combination. I do like the idea of experimenting with fillings, but I think it is possible to over-dress a grilled cheese sandwich. If the lovely crispy fried/grilled bread and the melted cheese aren't the star ingredients, then imo you need to cut back on the things you're adding. It might be a good sandwich, but at that point it's no longer a grilled cheese. If you see what I mean.

That sounds very plausible. You get very different results from a creamy fluffy butter mixture compared to something that calls for melted butter to be combined with the sugar - my brain is not functioning on all cylinders today, but I think it's because the thicker butter mixture holds together well enough to trap some air, while obviously the melted butter doesn't really have the structure (for lack of a better word) to do so. For recipes which call for creaming butter, I usually leave it out just until a stick of it would be a bit flexible, but not squishy. (Scientific term, that. ) So if you were to cream it with the sugar by hand, you'd get a fairly good arm work out at first because it's still got quite a lot of solid-butter-body to it.

Many years ago my husband suggested a raspberry-lime combination for a sauce, and I thought it sounded quite weird (they just wouldn't go together as flavors in my head) but I tried it anyway and it turned out to be exceptionally tasty. Somehow the lime makes the raspberry flavor richer and gives a buttery edge to the flavor. I don't know if that's so much a surprising flavor combination as it was just surprising to me, but it definitely reminded me of the value of experimenting outside your personal comfort zone. (My husband was disabled so he couldn't cook himself, but he had quite a good head for the creative elements of cooking.)

I kind of agree with most of the other posters that it's hard to make a plan without knowing more about him and his interest in the subject. My dad, for example, can actually cook pretty well when he wants to and has a good recipe to follow, but he doesn't really pay enough attention to food to have the instincts to make something up on the fly or tweak a recipe, and honestly he doesn't really care all that much about what he eats as long as it meets his basic nutritional requirements and doesn't taste too disgusting. So what he makes for himself is pretty simple - he's quite happy making a 'salad' of a big bag of frozen vegetables microwaved, some good quality meat from the deli, and some salad dressing or bottled sauce. Sometimes he adds in some nuts or a dried fruit and nut mix for crunch. With that attitude, if he didn't already know how to cook (I think he had to learn when he was younger in order to keep himself fed) I'm not sure how interested he'd be in learning.

There was something recently about how actually going too low in sodium intake is apparently as problematic or worse than a diet a little high in sodium. My dad was telling me about it, I'll see if he can find a reference. My general takeaway from it after talking to him was basically that eating a lot of high-sodium processed food is probably not good for you, but skipping salt as seasoning on home cooked foods isn't necessary. (I have hereditary high BP also, thanks mom.)

I am deeply curious about the recipe you use because everything sweet potato I encounter seems to be, well, VERY sweet to the point of basically being a dessert. While sweet potato based desserts are fine, I don't really want to eat them while they're pretending to be a soup or a side dish to go with something else.

While I love a good improv pasta dish, it's not really possible to cook dried pasta in less than 25 minutes, is it? At least 10 minutes to go from tap to boiling, plus another 7-12 minutes, depending on the pasta shape. I cook quick pasta dishes on many weeknights, and it's about 35 minutes from the time I fill the pot to putting it on the plate. Seriously, is there a faster way to cook pasta? Are you using a pressure cooker, special microwave device, or do you have a hot water dispenser or what? Angel hair? I've successfully cooked that in a pinch with boiling water from an electric kettle (which boil fairly quickly) and a bowl and something to cover the bowl with to hold the heat in. Don't recall the timing exactly but it's pretty quick. (Likewise things like some rice noodles.)