Eden

ditto on the query re where you got the cheesecake pan. Bill hasn't yet put me on cute tart pan probation, but he will soon & I think I need to slip that one in before it happens! Please do visit Poulsbo. Despite living in the Seattle area for well over a decade now I've never made it out there & would be interested to see your impressions. Beautiful dinner last night! if you don't go with the "let's all cook the same dinner" idea I may have to copy your meal from yesterday. I adore that celery root & apple puree, and everything else sounds wonderful too. Besides a girl can always use a good excuse to buy a pound of almond paste from Larsons I'm loving the blog & really looking forward to meeting all the furry members of the house at the Turkey fest! oh and how can you dis this mornings view? it shows all the subtle grays and lavenders & streaks of pink etc that make the sky here beautiful regardless of the weather.

I think there may be a lot of us there that day

One of my friends has a theory that part of the reason we see much more of this behavior in parents in the last decade or so is that so many couples here in the US are waiting till much later in life (later 30's, even early 40's) to have children, so they are more entrenched in their habits than younger parents and it's thus harder for them to give up going to the nice restaurants, concerts etc when little ones come along. I don't think it expains everything, but it's a theory...

yeah requests are flattering, but I do get bored with having to make the family toffee recipe every single year ... for the dried cranberries what about little mini scones? Or I bet they'd be good in a cookie with white chocolate chips. I have friends/family who are ginger junkies and they like candied ginger shortbread a lot. Also 3 ginger poundcake (powdered, fresh & candied all in one cakey goodness). This year I put up a bunch of candied ginger in brandy so that a few special friends will get a sweet ginger liqueur with some very "happy" ginger bits. Me, I need a new, more exciting rolled cookie recipe. I have a nice collection of cookie cutters that I love to use, but I'm a little bored with the gingerbread & sugar cookie recipes I always use...

I finally got to make chili today. I used the Cooks Illustrated Chili con Carne recipe & then varied it based on the actual spices I had in the house, and used a poblano in place of the jalapenos. Here it is all dressed up and ready to eat served with fresh cornbread of course It came out wonderfully in spite of a MAJOR problem with the recipe text. The line about when to add in the spice paste had been deleted somehow so I simmered for 2 hours before I realized that the spices should have been in there all along. (I felt like there was something wrong but didn't act on it - always a mistake!) So we tossed in the chili paste and simmered another 30-odd minutes till we couldn't wait anymore! I'm sure it would be better if done right, but it's mighty tasty as is. And the perfect spice level for me: very perky in the mouth, but not going to rip my head off We finished up with some home-made pumpkin ice-cream for a perfect Fall meal.

asian pear butter with ginger???

well it's very cool looking, but you lose a lot of storage space in the unused angles on either side of it. Which would mean less space to store gadgets speaking of gadgets a lot of the posts upthread say things like "check out this cool toy" and of course a year later the link is dead so posterity will never even know what that cool toy was. A real loss considering the number of useful widgets suggested. May I suggest that from now on we at least put a brief description as well as the link so that folks can try & track down another source for Turnip Twaddlers if the first link is gone?

I hadn't realized just how long we've been using chestnut stuffing for turkey. I just found the following quote from a book written in 1614 about the foods of Italy: "peeled chestnuts are used with prunes, raisins and breadcrumbs in a stuffing for roast chicken, goose or turkey." I may have to try this one.

I cook for a large number of people with allergies, and most of the time they'd rather have something that's as close to what everyone else is getting as possible just so they don't "stand out" so much, in which case the mango salsa sans shallots would be fine. But if you're worried that she doesn't like mangoes then what about a brandied gingery peach sauce - it will be in the same color pallete (plus or minus) as what everyone else has, but still be something safe and special for her.

I use it pretty much anywhere I'd use sour cream or creme fraiche. It's a little thicker, but not so much that it significantly affects anything I've tried it in so far (soups, sauces etc, not baking) A local cheese maker told me they use the same recipe for their Quark as for their Fromage Blanc, and they just label it differently because the people who want Fromage Blanc, won't buy Quark, and the people who want Quark won't buy Fromage Blanc

we do the simplest thing possible but SO yummy: tiny servings (@ 1tbsp) of chestnut cream topped with creme fraiche.

great looking short ribs - that sauce looks truly perfect, and I am going to have to go get some goat cheese because that dip sounds wonderful. And Asher is just the cutest little guy on paws! (with no offence meant to Issachar or Zedulun, who are both cuties too)

A quick google comes up with a world of hits like this one for $20 that claims to work on any surface... given the number of hits, I presume you can find one available in France without much trouble. I don't of course know how that compares to the cost of retinning...

we recently had a Scottish cooking night with some friends and enjoyed fresh bannocks (some barley flour, some spelt/barley) slathered with good butter. They were SO good, each one barely hit the plate before being snatched up. we also had Scotch Collops, Colcannon & Stapag (oatmeal ice-cream!) there were going to be oat cakes too but we got full, so there will probably be an oatcake night in January

I did not do a blind tasting, but did roast my first smart chicken this week. it was very nice, I'd say it was on par with the organic chix I get at the grocery store, (i.e. better than the non-organic factory farmed birds) but not nearly as good as the free range chickens I get from a local farmer (Thundering Hooves for those of you here in WA) I dont know, maybe my expectations were just too high after reading all the raves. It had good chicken flavor, just not as much as I was expecting...

chanterelle soup tonight, with madeira, cognac, heavy cream & good stock: autumny velvety goodness! we started with a caprese-oid salad made with a last heirloom tomato from the farmers market, fresh mozzarella & then a pesto drizzle because I hadn't planned this so there was no basil in the house... dessert was homemade pumpkin ice-cream (I have the best husband!) with dillettante's Ephemera chocolate sauce.

I think that Alton did a segment on World Spice here in Seattle. Tony (the owner) has the best spices you could ask for quality-wise, and is a great guy in general, but he can be a pain in the XXX when you need a particular spice NOW & he won't sell it to you because it's not fresh/good enough. I also love that he carries some spices that are harder to find like Grains of Paradise.

Maybe you could flash a pack of candy cigarettes, and go lean against the wall with a faux cig hanging out of your mouth?

Kathleen I have to agree from reading here that you clearly CAN cook. Are you perhaps setting the bar a bit high for yourself? I don't think I should be able to sing opera just cause I can sing at all... and just for the record - we need more ferret porn!

I read somewhere (maybe in Patricia Wells' Food Lover's Guide to Paris?) that you can get copper pans retinned in Paris, which is probably a bit closer to you than VA I would worry a little bit that it might be an alloy rather than pure tin, in which case you would have to question what it's been mixed with - our ancesters were not so afraid of lead as we might like...

Giving: I always make toffee for the holidays. (there are certain friends who give me the sad face if it doesn't happen, and I'm an easy mark...) I also make cookies of various types, I have a small collection of cookie stamps and cutters so I try to personalize the cookies to the recipients, which also makes it more interesting for me than just cutting out 200 gingerbread men... In the past we've often made "happy berries" (berries or cherries that have been soaking in vodka or brandy & sugar for a few months) this year we're experimenting with soaking candied ginger in Brandy. if this works out it will be a very popular gift. Too bad I can't legally mail it to my Uncle in California, he's a total ginger junkie! Receiving: One of my friends makes really excellent pralines, I'm pretty sure they're going to send me into a diabetic coma one of these years, but I'll die happy! Another makes home made caramels we refer to affectionately as "crack" - I can stop anytime I want to - just gimme one NOW! It's funny I know several of my friends have trouble figuring out what to get me because I "already have everything" (so not true) and never realize that there's always room for another good pair of tongs, or a trivet, or a nice stack of ramequins (I'm supposed to be on ramequin probation, but if it's not me that buys them it's not a violation, right???) or a nice piece of maiollica if you want to splurge

according to my notes you would want about 30 cups of uncooked arborio for that many peop0le (sorry I don't have that recipe by weight) I have done risotto for merely 50 people, and won't do it again because it's just too labor intensive a dish. If you're sold on it however and planning to precook anyway, may I suggest instead cooking it 99% of the way & then seal-a-meal/boil-in-bagging it?? risotto should stand up to this type of reheating well, and not get either too gloppy or too dried out etc. good luck!

beef stroganoff made with local chanterelles over egg noodles (so good I licked the bowl!) warm home made tapioca pudding and an impromptu cocktail of ginger-beer & raspberry vodka interesting but not my favorite...

Help! On my previous trip to hawaii several years ago I had difficulty finding good food within our limitations and am hoping that this time maybe some eGulleteers can give me advice to make it more foodie friendly. We'll be visiting Oahu* in January, and of course we would like to eat well while we're there. Unfortunately, we have two major restrictions (besides budget) 1: I am allergic to both fish & seafood - I can have a little thai fish sauce as a minor component in a dish, but nothing more than that or bad things will happen, which I know means I'm missing out on some of the best of the local cuisine - what can you do? 2: My adorable husband is not so keen on Thai or Japanese cuisine in general, so I have to keep those to a minimum. (no accounting for tastes) Now we both love Plate Lunch, but on our last trip, after eating some of the worst mexican food I've ever seen, and a lot of really dull low-quality "american" food, Plate Lunch became almost the only thing we ate & frankly we got pretty tired of it after a while. (and yet we never got tired of malasadas - hmm) So in short, what are some good affordable places to dine outside the plate lunch arena, that aren't too fishy or japanese/thai ? Thanks for any advice! *we'll be renting a condo in Waikiki but will have a rental car at least part of the time, so food outside of honolulu is of interest as well.

actually it does. they have a seperate kosher table over to the left of the cooking area, with it's own knives board etc, where they prepare your food if you need it kosher (obviously no denvers over there) The bagels here are above average and their challah (which you special order for pick up on fridays) is very good. Not my mom's but very good...