quiet1

I have a jealous.

Rice and half a chicken breast sautéed in my Darto, which is awesome.

'It looks delicious - if I'm feeling up to it I may try this for my housemate's birthday cake. He likes drier cakes not soaked in Stuff and I suspect the raspberrry and maybe a nice ganache would make for a good combination of flavors while maintaining somewhat separate layering.

A simple savory approach that may also appeal, especiallly if using good quality oats, is just to sprinkle your bowl with some salt and cream or milk. My late husband preferred his that way (rather than heaped with sugar) and it really brings out the flavor of the oats.

Upton Tea Creme Earl Grey (or some such similar name) was my go-to through college. Held up well in a thermos mug with sugar and milk, and had a 'food' sweet taste so it helped get me going in the mornings without being too heavy. (I can't do breakfast when I wake up, but college lectures on an empty stomach are also no fun. Nice big mug of milky sweetened tea got me through until mid-morning when my stomach decided to wake up.)

I wonder how well that would work with spinach...

Leftover linguine with pesto (from a local pizza place - everyone else had pizza last night) with some leftover grilled chicken added. Eaten too fast for a photo, but for pizza place food it was really very good. The pesto had a nice fresh taste.

Rice and a bit of grilled chicken. Not exciting to look at in the slightest, especially not with white dishes. Slowly getting my appetite back because of my cold.

Not even a typo, that was entirely autocorrect. Drives me nuts - I get it right when I'm typing and then sometime later it decides it knows better and switches things. NOT HELPFUL. But sometimes it is helpful so I leave it turned on.

Honey is usually soothing on your threat so you might as well consider it medicinal anyway, especially with the chile. I don't much care for the burn of chilies when I'm already feeling bad, so I usually just go heavy on the ginger so it's very spicy.

I dunno, lemon curd without any lemon in it seems a LITTLE bit novel and crazy.

Agreed. I think I'd love to just watch cooking happen sometime to absorb whatever I could. (A large part of how I learned to cook was watching pbs shows back in the day when they'd do things like just televise random lectures and cooking sessions from the CIA. I love to watch skilled people cook, you can learn so much.)

More matzo ball soup. Still good, but still sick.

... off to Amazon.

I like attractive, which usually means round, as due to space and access issues most of the baking stuff ends up visible on an open shelf. (I save cabinet space for stuff in packages since they tend to make the room look more cluttered if they are visible.) If I could find nice looking and robust square that seals easily and well, I'd go for that.

Upton says $13.60 flat rate charge to Canada and no mention of duties, although I'm sure they could tell you how it works in more detail if you contact them - I've found them quite helpful. I also like that (at least last time I ordered) you could add a custom note to the label on your tea. So if I order a couple of samples thinking to try them with a particular meal or preparation, I can have a note of that put right on the label so that when it arrives I know what the heck I ordered it for.

I also recommend something like Upton Tea or similar that allows you to buy dinky sample sizes - it is a much better way to sample teas than being stuck with large amounts of stuff you don't like. A local tea shop that actually has loose tea in bulk (as the good ones usually do) should let you buy similarly small amounts so you can sample at home and then come back for more of the ones you like. (Brewing at home is important, especially for more delicately flavored teas, as features like the water you use also come into play - you don't want to buy a lot of something that tastes good at the tea shop where they have a fussy water filtration system but that tastes not exciting at all at home using your bottle water or pitcher filter or whatever.) I also find an electric kettle is very useful - they are handy imo anyway, but the fancier ones now have temperature settings so it is easier to brew the more sensitive teas that don't like a full boil - you don't have to boil and then wait until it cools and hope you don't get distracted so it gets too cold, that sort of thing. My personal favorite general purpose pot for loose tea is a Chatsford style one (Upton makes their own now, something about quality issues with the proper Chatsford ones) with the large nylon mesh strainer. It allows plenty of room for the tea leaves to open up (which can be an issue with infusers) and doesn't add any funny flavors and is easy to clean. But everyone has personal preferences on that point. Don't forget also to keep your pot warm if you make more than one cup's worth at a time - you can get various tea cozies, but a tea towel wrapped around neatly also works, anything to keep the heat in (after you have removed the leaves - only certain tea preparations call for stewing the leaves a long time) so you don't have to worry about the tea going cold while you enjoy the first cup. Tea tends to lose flavors if you reheat it.

I like the large round containers for flour because it is easier to get a spoon in and level a cup off back into the container (if you are using US cups and not weight.) I find this one holds a regular bag (5lb?) of flour quite comfortably with a little room to spare - so you can tuck a scoop in too, or top up the container before it is entirely empty, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Oggi-Acrylic-Airtight-Canister-130-Ounce/dp/B00CSG0ON2

I sometimes share food to offer a taste or what have you, but I hate it when people don't ask first. Rude.

Matzo ball soup from the local Jewish deli. Everyone in the house is working on some kind of cold thing. Outstanding soup, though.

'They just redid the website and seem to have done Something to a fair amount of the information they had about products, so it's quite possible there's a mistake. The search feature works much better now, though, so it is an improvement if you know what you want and just want to know how to get it. Anyway, if that is the thing to buy, I will do it, I just wanted to ask first. I am new to spirits and cocktails so I have no idea what to expect different things to reasonably cost. Most of the purchases I've made of spirits in the past have been of the little mini bottle variety, for cooking, or cheap vodka for mixing with powdered food coloring to paint on fondant and icing. That doesn't give you good insight into normal prices and where it is worth it to go expensive versus where there is a lot of hype or PR driving up the cost of things. I do try to research stuff myself, but at this point I rather trust eGullet folks so I suspect that means I end up asking annoying basic questions here a lot. I'm slowly working my way through older threads, too.

My housemate takes FOREVER to eat and we have friends where one is an even slower eater (I did not realize it was possible) so places we go regularly just seem to have figured it out by now. We do tip well, which may help, plus while I'm stuck sitting there I'm more likely to get extras. (Usually a dessert, but it depends on time of day and so on. Often some kind of drink also.) But I've stopped feeling bad about it because what can I do if I'm out with either of them? Can't make them eat faster. Good places never make them feel rushed. (Actually a couple of times we've had to explicitly ask for the next course or dessert menu or what have you, because the polite thing for the waitstaff is to wait until everyone is done but that doesn't always work out timing-wise, especially when out with people who have somewhere to be after the meal. Luckily the two slow eaters in question do not feel rushed or bothered if other people at the table have moved to a different course.)

I thought someone with a membership has to buy the gift Card?

Nope. If this link works, this is what I can get (probably) around here: http://www.finewineandgoodspirits.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?storeId=10051&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&categoryId=1333989&variety=Cognac&categoryType=Spirits&top_category=25208&sortBy=5&searchSource=E&pageView=&beginIndex=0#facet:&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:&pageView:&minPrice:&maxPrice:&pageSize:& I'm going to have to take a shopping list with me next time we head out of state.

The Pierre Ferrand 1840 is $50 here, which is rather more than I want to spend at the moment - is there a decent cognac that will be less expensive but still tasty? In playing with bar tending apps that tell you what you can make with the contents of your liquor cabinet, I keep being told that adding a brandy or cognac will expand the options most, so I want to get a bottle of something.