Special K

I found the Handi-Vac system on Amazon, but for some reason it's $23.75 for the same thing that supposedly sells for about $10 at Wal-Mart. My Wal-Mart is a long bus ride away, and I can't find this on their website, but to save $13+ bucks, I guess I'll go a-hunting. WHY isn't Reynolds advertising this thing and selling it at more stores?

Slow cookers abound at thrift shops. They come in really handy for keeping things hot and the oven available. They're also great for parties - soups, hot drinks, etc. Man, that menu looks good!

So it's not just me! I like the control I have over what happens here, after a day in which I seem to have very little control over things. For the same reason, I also like the clean-up - I love to walk into a nice, clean kitchen, chop, slice and dice and make a real mess, play with fire, eat a scrumptious meal, and then wash up and put everything away and walk away from a nice, clean kitchen. I usually plan something new and really complicated on days I know are going to be stressful. I've also done the "cooking in my head" thing - during a seemingly never-ending MRI. It really did help. And then I went home and did it again, for real. Better than Halcion!

The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life. Wonderful reminiscenes, good recipes! The man truly loves food and cooking. Oh, how I wish I'd been able to give this one to my father.

Well, yeah, divalasvegas and Mayur, but the thing is, if you really just don't like vermouth, asking for "a Tanqueray gin martini, straight up and bone dry, no fruit, please" just sounds better than "gimme some gin!"

I have a collection of the smaller glasses. We don't really want or need a huge martini. As for ordering them when we go out - never. They're always too big and have too much vermouth, or they try to give us VODKA instead of gin!!!

Ooooooh! I'm doing the jealous stomp!

I was a bit disconcerted to see the Costco truck making a delivery at Top Banana yesterday, so I guess I might as well buy my fruits and vegs at Costco. Of course, Top Banana is right across the street from work, their prices are good, and I can buy fresh daily, so I guess I won't change my ways. When we do make the trek down to Costco, though, we buy Australian wines by the case, and small bottles of Perrier. I like the big packages of boneless, skinless chicken thighs - all the meats, really. I do like their olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and I load up on various cheeses. For a while they had an awesome artichoke dip, but it's gone now, along with a cheddar chipotle one I loved. And I used to be able to buy pre-cooked half-ducks, which were very good - so much wow for so little effort. Alas, gone now. My downfall are the books and DVDs! Edited to add: Oh, yes, and thick cut bacon! Just don't let it slip under the car seat and stay there for a week until you need to use that car again! Whoof!

I was about ten or eleven, babysitting my little sister, who was about five. We made flour and water "glue" for some project, and we had quite a lot left over. I "forgot" the rule about not going anywhere near the stove or oven while the folks were out, added some sugar and a bit of vanilla extract to the glue, and baked it. And it was good! (Must have been self-rising flour). It was so cool. Of course, we never told Mom, who woulda hadda cow. We probably left a huge mess in the kitchen, but I guess the glue-making explanation covered that.

The ones with the plastic lids? I love those! I use the middle mixing bowl to make the no-knead bread. I just mix everything together, slap on the lid, let it sit overnight, and then scrape it right into my pre-heated Romertopf. No muss, no fuss. But I digress . . . Yes, the little bowls are nice for prep bowls, but their lids aren't air-tight enough to use them for any long-term storage, darn it. I also have the little pinch bowls, which are great in a . . . pinch.

I shop at the restaurant supply stores nearby here in Seattle, and at Cash 'n Carry, and the deals are usually pretty good and/or I find unique items; but to tell you the truth, many of my favorite stuff has come from good old Value Village! This makes it very hard for me to go into Macy's or boutique kitchen stores and spend real money. I guess I'm just a hunter/gatherer by nature. And Mambwe, I think restaurant pots and pans look cool, too, and I am not a guy.

"Stroll outside, find a bench, and tear off a hunk of bread. Slather it with the soft Red Hawk cheese. Tear the top half of the paper cup off and pour in a little olive oil. Bread/cheese, bread/oil until the bread is gone. Sip tea. Watch boats. Nibble chocolate. Life is good. Seriously, go see the building, if nothing else. It's a true foodie's mecca, and is done on an awesome scale. The food-inspired mosaics that adorn each pillar are lovely—olives, grapes, cows, crabs, etc." This is exactly what we did a couple of months ago. It doesn't get any better.

I grew up with the weekly shopping trip, too. Even though Mom didn't have a job outside the home, we still went grocery shopping on Saturday mornings, with the crowds. I never figured out why she didn't just go during the week, but I'm glad she didn't, because I enjoy(ed) it. Now, it's the reverse. I volunteer full-time at the local high school (my husband's chemistry class). [Go Beavers!] During his prep period/lunch break, I walk, so I'm able to shop daily, and just pick up whatever looks good to me that day, and on Friday I pick up stuff for the weekend as well. There are several major grocery stores, each a convenient twenty blocks away. Perfect: a good reason to get a walk in, just enough time to get there, buy something for dinner, and get back before the next class. And if I choose to head north, I have my choice of Safeway or QFC, AND Value Village is right there! There's also Top Banana, for fresh fruits and vegs, right across the street, and of course the Farmers' Markets in the area.

You know you're an eGulleteer when a stranger in the grocery store takes a look at your cart and decides to ask you what you'd serve for snacks other than chips and dip, and you start firing so many ideas at her that she stops you long enough for her to take out a pencil and a piece of paper to jot down notes. She says, "I guess I asked the right person!" Then you keep going until her eyes glaze over and she starts backing away from you. . .

I believe I have the last bottle (actually the last gallon jug) of Alligator Soul Chipotle Mayo. The restaurant's bottler recently told them they were not going to bottle it any more, and they sold them the last of their inventory. I surprised the chef so much with my request (or was it my charm?) that he sold me a couple of gallons before he could stop himself. But I think that was the last time they'll do that.

Sorry to take so long to get back. We drove up that weekend from Magnolia, got to within a few blocks, and the car's brakes started smoking and we had to pull over. Naturally, I let hubby wait for the AAA guy while I went to Alligator Soul! No lunch, sadly, had to get back, but they did sell me two gallons of the mayo! Sad to say, though, that's probably the last time they'll sell it to a customer (I think I just caught them by surprise). It turns out that the current owners bought the restaurant and the recipe about three years ago, and they had it bottled by a company in Kent, which sold it in area grocery stores. That company recently (a few months ago) said they no longer were going to bottle it, and they sold the rest of their inventory back to the restaurant, which is using it up. Then I guess they'll start making it in-house again, but just for their own use. So I'm doling it out very parsimoniously while I try to replicate it. Big trip with friends planned for some weekend soon. I hear that on Saturday nights there's great music, and from what I saw and the aromas I inhaled while waiting for the mayo, the food, I'm sure, is great! I've talked to several people here at work who are regulars and love the place as much for the entertainment as the food. Edited to remove a stupid misplaced apostrophe.

Well, it's been many years, but if I could go back in time I'd go to Bern's steak house and then to the Mullet Inn. There used to be a great pizza place called CDB's in Temple Terrace, near USF. I don't know if any of these places still exist.

I haven't been - yet. I just found out about the place, searching the 'net for their amazing chipotle mayo. They don't sell it online, and I can't find it in stores around Seattle any more, so I'm going on a day trip! If the meal is halfway decent, and they let me buy a crate of the mayo, I'll be one happy camper.

About the barefoot issue, we also take off our shoes when we enter the house, BUT we each keep a pair of kitchen-dedicated Danskos handy, for safety's sake. The shoes are clean, the floor is clean, and our feet are safe! As I mentioned earlier, $267 a stitch!! About holding off on doing the dishes until the next morning, I used to do that - it was just the thing for my arthritic hands, which always ache more in the morning. Now I have a dishwasher, which I run at bedtime, and a hot tub, which helps all of the arthritic joints. My kitchen garbage goes in a small bag that hangs in a gizmo on the inside of the cabinet door below the sink. Also lurking there is my (open) compost bin. Both go out at least nightly, so nothing sits in there long enough to stink up the place. I think the bag-hanger thingie actually came with a lid, but I removed it because it made for an extra step (when I'm working, I just keep the door open and toss things in either the bin or the bag as necessary. And of course the cabinet gets cleaned and sanitized regularly. And I've got the solution to the cat on the counter problem. Mine's too fat to jump up there! Actually, he's pretty svelte now, but when we first moved here and found him (the previous owners had abandoned him!) he was a bit on the portly side. Early on I saw him try to jump on the counter and fail miserably; he's never tried since. Aside: He doesn't jump on the counter anymore, but when he gets hungry he goes looking for food. He can open any drawer or cupboard in the house, and he never closes any of them! Sometimes I come out to the kitchen in the morning and it looks like that scene from The Sixth Sense (below the counter only, of course)!

Alarming: Barefoot in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure my husband is cured of that one, though. I think it came to $267 a stitch. Amusing: Whenever he's adding anything to anything, he has to do it from at least a two-foot height, thus ensuring a big mess. all over the kitchen and his clothes (Wear an apron? Him? No way. Anyway, what he'd need is a dropcloth). Ah, well. He's an enthusiastic, pretty good cook, and he has many other redeeming qualities. Amazing: My dear Mom is still alive and hasn't killed anyone, either by poisoning them or burning the place down. If forced to eat her offerings, I've learned to rely on 90-proof gin to kill whatever. Actualy, that smooths over a lot of other obstacles, too.

Linda, the recipe is pretty much just what I said (in shorthand) in my original post - pour some heavy whipping cream into the mixer bowl fitted with the whip. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let 'er rip at medium high speed. First you'll get whipped cream, then pebbles, and then the liquid will separate out and splatter onto the plastic wrap. At that point you stop and strain the liquid, and then you start kneading the solids to get out the rest of the liquid and it softens and turns to butter. I think the more you knead it the more liquid you press out, and therefore the higher fat percentage of your butter. And yes! The buttermilk is much better! The real reason I tried this is that I noticed the cake I was making called for buttermilk. K

Slkinsey, I bet you're right. I'll have to try that next time. And oh, yes, Annecros, it tasted much better! And it wasn't any trouble at all - it was fun! Something about kneading that butter juuust to the right consistency . . . I'm sure I got something much closer to "European" butter because I got more of the liquid out. To be fair to my husband and friends, they really didn't get to taste the butter except as in the cake along with the buttermilk (an aside: the cake got raves - it was a chocolate cake recipe from a recent Barefoot Contessa episode; the secret ingredient was a cup of freshly brewed coffee). We had burgers for dinner, so I didn't make bread. I need to make some and have a "bought vs homemade" butter tasting.

Has anyone else made their own butter after reading Daniel Patterson's "The Way We Eat" column in the NYT magazine last Sunday? So cool, and so easy! (Whipping cream, mixer, plastic wrap over the bowl, whip on medium high for about ten minutes until there's separation and splatterage, strain, knead.) I saved most of the butter just as is, but salted some, and made a couple of compound butters with the rest. I used some of the buttermilk in a cake. I guess I always knew how to make butter, but it never occurred to me to try it until I read "Curd Mentality." Spouse and friends remain singularly unimpressed - "Why would you go to all that trouble?" I knew you all would understand. (Please excuse if this topic exists elsewhere or I've posted this in the wrong forum - I looked but didn't find it). K

I use a couple of lacquered wooden sake boxes, one for Kosher and one for Grey. I used to use little caviar spoons to scoop out the salt, but lately I've just been grabbing a pinch when I need it.