Eden

has anyone here tried any of the higher capacity slow cookers? I currently have a classic 4 qt Crock-Pot, but am thinking of upgrading and must admit to being tempted by the 8.5 qt Elite slow-cooker. I'm a little disappointed that Rival doesn't have anything bigger than 6.5 quarts. And it seems that only cheap knock-off brands like Hamilton Beach go higher than 7 quarts

and for Persian/Iranian Najmieh Batmanglij's New Food of Life is excellent. Mmm Koresh!

OK so my current dishrack is old enough to vote It's a battered old wooden folding rack from the 80s, sort of like this one, but it's extra long and got a very wide angle so it holds large items like 14" pot lids well. I've been trying off & on for years now to replace it, but nothing they make today seems to work as well. I'd love to get away from the wood to something more streamlined, but the metal & coated wire racks, like this one, don't have deep enough grooves to hold upright pieces like plates & lids securely, nor do they feel sturdy under the weight of my Le Creusets & cast iron pans... The new wooden ones have a much tighter angle and are often shorter as well, so I cant just buy the same model again. The classic tub shaped ones don't hold as much as the "X-wings" and also don't fit large items well. I did some poking around on the web and found this design by SimpleHuman, but it's $50 which is an awful lot for a dishrack, and I'm not sure how sturdy it really is. Surely there must be a workable solution that doesn't cost so much? I just had to duct tape together a corner on my old one so replacement is becoming urgent. What's your favorite design & why?

Porcella closes early on Sundays so where else besides Bamboo Garden could we go for a quick meal pre chick-flick at Lincoln Square?

wow that salad looks amazing. todays lunch was a sandwich thrown together from stuff lying around: oven roasted tomatoes from our garden , pepper jack cheese, fresh nasturtiums and a little mayo on brioche. It was really good! Husband had one taste & stole half my sandwich The bite from the "nasturtiums is totally different from that of the peppers in the jack, but both were nicely offset by the sweetness of the tomatoes & of course the dairy goodness of cheese & mayo... I may experiment with the cheese a bit, but I'll be making this again next time I have spare nasturtium blossoms.

I'm so excited that you're blogging here Pille! A friend brought me back cloudberry Jam from his trip to Estonia (along with Vana Tallin liqueur ) so any suggestions of traditional uses for the Jam would be fun - although right now I'm thinking it might be just fine with apple-cake More Moomin Mug shots always welcome, you just can't get Moomin stuff here...

Clearly we should have done an american cheese tasting while you were visiting seattle make sure you're using a mild young gouda, and even then it's not a great sub for cheddar. I'm not familiar with Dutch cheeses to know of a better choice though (one of these days I'll have to spend more than 2 hours in amsterdam & go on a cheese binge!) so go with gouda, but you might want to mix in a little of a mild buttery cheese (think spanish tettilla?) to balance it out...

We were in Bologna back in April and had an outstanding lunch at Tamburini (the restaurant around the corner from the shop, not the buffet thing inside) we all had the taglieri (platters of meats cheese etc,) and loved them. The service was excellent and they even managed to dig up a drinkable wine with no added sulfites for my friend who is allergic. Sorbetteria Castiglione is as good as they say - i.e. very Stefino at via Galiera 49 was also good. avoid Rosso San Martino, in piazza san martino - bad food, (so salty that even I, a total salt-hound, couldn't take it) and bad service! There were a couple other places we enjoyed very much I'll see if I can find my notes later...

Has anyone tried Rowdy Cowgirl BBQ in Fremont yet? Just got a flyer for them & I'm always hoping to find good BBQ...

Did you try a compounding pharmacy or just a regular pharmacy? If you didn't already, call a compounding pharmacy like Ballard Plaza Pharmacy, since they actually have ingredients rather than just pre-fabbed pills. hmm I wonder if one of the brewing supply places might carry this? some of them have branched out a little...

Don't get me wrong, I love De Nola's recipies - his porrada is dreamy - and it's a very important as it shows how Spain varied the base dishes you see throughout Europe at the time. I'm just saying that the recipes are mostly derived from other sources (Sent sovi, martino etc) often with his particular spin on them...

I'd been under the impression that in italian cuisine "gatto" was a bastardization of "gateaux" as in "Gatto di patate" The vast majority of recipes in these books are derivative from either earlier spanish sources or contemporary sources from other cuisines. Neither the earliest Spanish cookbook "Sent Sovi" nor the the Arabic "anonymous andalsuian cookbook" includes cat, and none of the earlier or contemporary european sources I'm familiar with do either. It's this lack of correlation in any contemporary cuisines that has always made me suspect these particular recipes (there are only a few) as perhaps a mistranslation of another animal or the like? I admit however to some bias in that I am squeamish about the eating of cats. (pets are not food, food are not pets...)

My problem with the hot dog tongs is that they are 1) flimsy and 2) the shape of the end doesn't give you as much fine control as a good pair of "ubuiquitous" tongs for picking up small items. I think Cooks Illustrated did a tong comparison and came to a similar conclusion. but yes they would probably be fine for pulling out eggs. I just use a skimmer - that way I can get more than one egg at a time...

Yes! as a well endowed cook I really want an apron that gives reasonable coverage up top... Also I prefer aprons that wrap around generously, because somehow whenever I bake I end up with flour on my backside Pockets are a must. When I cook at home they are for thermometers tasting spoons, and the pair of earrings I left in the kitchen yesterday for god knows what reason. When I do big cooking events they are for my kitchen schedule, masking tape, more thermometers, bandaids, pot holders, pens and so forth. And yes, loops for side towels would be nice too.

Since I already had the Oxford Companion to food out for another discussion, here's a snippet of what Davidson had to say: "It seems that 'Hamburg steak' (in a Boston newspaper in 1884) preceeded the snappier 'Hamburger'; and that the St Louis World Fair of 1904 was a significant launching pad for the hamburger in a bun as we know it, although it's growth to the status of a global food item required another four or five decades of the 20th century for completion."

Just to add a little more confusion to the discussion, per the Oxford Companion to Food: "In W. Africa, where both taro and malanga are staple foods"...New Cocoyam is the name given to Malanga and Old Cocoyam is the name used for Taro.

I'm all the way up in Seattle, and thanks to your very helpful list I'm thinking about maybe Puerto Rican or Afghan or NW seafood. (They love Copper River Salmon but couldn't make it up for the season this year)

hear hear re the multitude of measuring cups I have a contender for most useless gadget - somewhere in the house I have a speacial tool for lifting hard boiled eggs out of the pot!!! apparently a spoon, even a slotted spoon, isn't good enough Got it at a tupperware party & kept it for it's pure inanity...

My Aunt & Uncle are coming up to visit from La Jolla, and I'd love to pick a restaurant that's not a cuisine they can easily get at home. Obviously I'm not taking them for Mexican but is there anything there's a dearth of down in that area? Thanks for any advice.

Was that the too full of herself "pretty girl" waitress? if so I think it's more your privilege to eat at her table... Have to say that my favorite moment was when I figured out that the incomprehensible dessert she had just repeated 3 times, with increasing impatience, was not "Choklit Shush" but chocolat chaud apart from attitudinal service from one waitress (the rest were fine) we had a lovely meal and walked out for under $15 each, so how can you go wrong? I must go back & try the steak tartare!

I love mine, of course having no knife roll, they're particularly important. But on occasion when I have used a knife roll I've come close to nicking myself when putting away/pulling out knives, so the extra safety factor would be nice...

Odd coincidence, I went looking & happened across this review (scroll about halfway down the page) a late friend of mine wrote re one of the Gordo collections, which seems to include the recipe you're looking for per her comments. edited for clarity

There was a notice up about these at my allergist's office today - bascially it said "yeah this sounds swell, but don't get your hopes up..." The implication was that there was room to doubt the findings re the modified peanuts...

Slugs feed garter snakes and also feed ducks :-) ← This is true, back when my mom had ducks [ducks feed raccoons) our neighbors used to borrow them to come eat snails & slugs from their garden on a regular basis. Does organo really help, or does it just make the slugs tastier for the ducks?

We have 3 types of blueberry planted now & nooe of them are doing well two of them are new this year so I wasn't expecting berries yet, but the plants themselves are not thriving. the variety we planted last year (Brunswick?) are looking really sad and not a hint of fruit, even though they had a few berries last year. Meanwhile the huckleberries look quite happy - they're still tiny so no fruit this year, but green & bushy so I have high hopes for next year. And our well established thornless blackberry is going gangbusters as usual, so we are foraging like bears every time we walk by I think I saw fruit forming on the japanese wineberry also which was not only put in this year, but a little bit late in the season! I just don't get why the blueberries aren't thriving when everyone else is so happy...