lperry

I don't know. Maybe if the culprit had infiltrated only part of the tuber, or if a portion was exposed while the remainder was protected?

My grandmother grew potatoes, and I recall her discarding a large number of them one time due to "blight." They looked fine to me, other than a vague concentric circle of darker material inside the potato when cut crosswise through the stem. She told me blighted potatoes will never cook through - they will remain hard. I have no idea what the "blight" was or is, but I'm curious if the potato in question had that little line in it.

If you were pregnant or on chemo, or if you cooked for those who were, you might be grateful for information that could keep your friends and family from becoming unnecessarily sick, or worse.

The skyline area is sort of a "Little Ethiopia." I asked an Ethiopian colleague about the restaurants there, and he suggested Meaza, I suggested Caboose for ease of access.

Caboose Café on Mt. Vernon Avenue in the Del Ray neighborhood is run by a lovely Ethiopian woman, Rhoda Worku, and the dinners are very good. She has a new location on Queen St. in Old Town, but I don't know that they are serving dinner yet. The day fare is sandwich / salad. If you have transportation and want excellent Ethiopian, Meaza in Bailey's Crossroads is the place to go.

If you are really wanting to use a centrifuge in the kitchen, I'd go for a used one at a place like LabX. You can get something that has horizontal separation, which is cleaner than fixed angle, and has a much larger capacity. Something used by soil scientists to separate out particle sizes would probably be perfect, and considering how you like to play with gadgets, you can also get a refrigerated one to keep stuff from heating up if you need to spin at higher speeds or for longer times. Clean the thing out, buy sterile containers, and you're good to go. Edited to say, he worries about "major decontamination" issues, but it's easy enough to check the history of something (you probably don't want a medical or vet one), and you can use closeable, sterile tubes or vials for your food.

I would make deviled eggs using a fluted tip and a pastry bag. Small eggs look so lovely presented this way, and there's a fairly significant amount of playing with food involved.

True, but because of the slope of the sides, much of the liquid in a full glass is held in the upper part of the coupe. That means that a four ounce cocktail still takes up about two thirds to three quarters of the visual volume (if there is such a thing), looks lovely in it, and there's enough room at the top that spills are kept to a minimum. I'm not a fan of a glass with the liquid teetering about the rim, especially at parties.

I have these and love them. Elegant, light, and dishwasher safe.

Brilliant! I'm going to retrieve one from the recycling bin.

Nestle choco-bake. I'm having flashbacks. Just substitute one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate for each envelope. I use an old choco-bake brownie recipe and it is works fine (I would argue much better) with regular chocolate.

I'm having the chocolate biscotti with tea. Delicious. I did have to bake a bit longer than the recipe suggested, and I used pistachios because that's what I had. Still a winner.

Looks like metal fatigue. I don't know if it can be reforged, but I did want to register my condolences. I'd be crying too.

I tried it at the Ministry of Rum festival in New York last week. I realize tastes differ widely, but this one strikes me as a mixer. I was told by the rep that it was crafted under the guidance of Dave Wondrich for use in classic cocktails that call for Jamaican rum.

Interesting. I was always told that lemon-scented detergents would wreck your dishes and glassware, but I hadn't heard about things being "too clean." Luckily, I'm too lazy to rinse unless it's something that I think will make the glasses nasty. To be honest, I'm not even sure what etching is. I've seen cloudy glasses at some people's houses - is that from etching?

I'll insert a dishwasher caveat - if you had a spicy or particularly strong flavored meal, be aware that some of that flavor and aroma from the dishes can transfer to your glassware, and if you have a sensitive nose, it can make for an unpleasant experience. There's nothing like sticking your nose in a glass and getting a big whiff of curried daiquiri. I have no idea how that stuff survives the heat and detergent, but it does. Pre-wash rinsing is a good thing.

I have Anne Amernick's baking book, The Art of the Dessert, and she suggests weighing eggs to insure a consistent result in the baked product. She writes that it doesn't make much of a difference in some things, but the texture of sponge cakes will be altered with changes in the gram weight of eggs. For me at home, it doesn't matter so much, but I would guess it may be more important to people who sell their baked goods.

Hyson English Breakfast tea. I needed the caffeine boost this dreary morning.

Steven, try grinding some rice or better yet instant rice. It won't clean the lid of the blade grinder as well as you would like but it will clean the grinding bowl. Soap and water to the lid will help keep that part clean. If you clean on a regular basis it is not so daunting of a task. I grind a lot of cumin in mine and the lid is permanently etched in cumin. A small piece of old bread works well too.

I noticed pieces of orange peel. I shook the packet a bit before I took out the tea, and I wonder if I didn't make the lightest, largest whatnots come to the top.

Another resource, if you like to look at online sources, is A Veggie Venture. There is an index of all the recipes she has tried with tasting notes. Even if you don't use the exact recipe, it's a nice site for ideas, particularly when your garden gives you too much of a good thing.

It's interesting that you picked out the pineapple. Here are my notes from the first two brews. Glass one: I brewed 2 rounded tsp with 8 oz of boiling water (212 degrees) for four minutes in the French press I use for tea. This brew was then poured over ice. The body of the tea is very light in both color and flavor, with just a little astringency. I can taste the orange over any of the other fruit, and that is also what I smelled during the brewing. It smells like fall with the orange peel. The aroma reminds me of mulled wine and cider. After this glass, I don’t think I would use this particular blend iced, but growing up in the South, I learned the most important component of any iced tea is sugar. I have found that it seems particularly important in black teas with fruit – the sugar seems to intensify the fruit flavor somehow. Glass two: I brewed the next glass in exactly the same manner, except I added one teaspoon of sugar to the hot brew before pouring it over ice. Now I can taste the other fruit – the berries and pineapple, although I am not sure I could pick them out if I didn’t know that’s what they are. As opposed to the first glass that seemed dominated by orange and fall, this one has a more complex fruitiness and tastes like I would drink it in the summer. It is light and refreshing.

I have a couple of nice books that have little chapters for each vegetable. They are: Chez Panisse Vegetables - Alice Waters The VIctory Garden Cookbook - Marian Morash I look in each of these when I need inspiration and new ideas. I also have a little Williams Sonoma book on vegetables that I've used and enjoyed. Of these, the VIctory Garden cookbook might be the best in terms of covering the basic, classic ways to cook things, and then offering other, more interesting ideas.

There is a spectrum of colors in the rum family from crystal clear to molasses brown. This variety makes things interesting, but can also be confusing. "Light" rum in a drink recipe almost always means white/silver/clear. Appleton V/X and Reserve are very good mixers (some would say the Reserve is a sipper), but if you sub them in for a light rum, you will have a very different drink due to the deep flavor. If you can find drink recipes that call for gold or even dark Jamaican rum, those would be your best bet because the drinks were created to highlight this type of rum. Appleton has a nice website with lots of drink recipes on it here.

If you're talking about quality, I couldn't disagree more about the relative merits of Flor de Caña and Bacardi. I don't think Flor de Caña is the greatest spirit in the whole wide world, but it is miles better than Bacardi (which I think is crap, and I wouldn't use). As chance would have it, I was peripherally part of a conversation at Pegu Club some weeks ago where the subject was "Cuban-style" white rums that are drinkable and delicious in their own right. We couldn't think of any. I'm beginning to think that Brugal white may be as good as there is for a non-agricole white rum. ← I meant that I wouldn't put either Cruzan or Flor de Caña in the "Cuban" category. As for a sipping white rum, if you are able to get any, I really like Cañita Alambique "Extra Fuerte" from Puerto Rico. It is unlike other PR rums, is made by Trigo, and, for reasons that are unknown, seems to be available mainly in the duty free at the San Juan airport. Soft molasses with a grassy botanical top note. Just lovely.