lperry

If you like this one, head to a used bookstore and try to find "Stocking Up." It was published by Rodale, the Organic Gardening people, and is all about having your larder full for the winter. I've spent days with that one.

Thanks for the link! After much reading, I ended up here at "Emergency Orgeat Syrup." I love that there is such a thing as an orgeat emergency!

Now this, I actually know something about. Cut a pomegranate in half and use a citrus juicer. The kind with the reamer, not the kind that turns the half inside out. Mine has a pull down handle and pushes the juice through a strainer. It works in seconds. I'll keep following this thread. I have a cabinet full of rum, and plans for Mai Tais this summer. Edited to add that I was thinking of sugar as in granulated, not simple syrup. I assume this cuts down on dilution, but I'll go back and read the grenadine thread again.

I don't know if there's anything in it besides almonds and water - I've never tried it, only seen it, and kind of wondered what exactly it was for. It seems that if you can make grenadine from shaking POM and sugar, maybe the same will work for almond milk and sugar for orgeat.

Has anyone tried this with ready-made almond milk? I've never bought it, but I've seen it at Whole Paycheck and other places like that. It comes in large containers, but also in little boxes like kids' juice boxes.

And this doesn't answer your question either, but I know that some homemade kimchi fizzes, and that's supposed to be a good thing. I think Kiliki is right. Botulism is an issue in low acid pressure canned foods, not pickles as far as I know. But rule number one is, if you aren't comfortable eating them, don't. I'm sure the store will refund you and send you a non-fizzing jar.

These look nice. Right now I have everything in glass jars that I have collected over the years at various garage sales. Very inexpensive that way, and I love seeing the contents of everything, but they don't stack well. Miladyinsanity, in the immortal words of Bill Clinton, I feel your pain. My upcoming move is looming on the horizon. This coming week I'm going to try to use up some of the pasta.

Four-snap-top containers??

I fell off the wagon. Walking around Harris Teeter after grabbing a box of grape tomatoes to make that wonderful sounding salad (to use up yet more wheat berries), I passed a display of KA flour. Regular price $5.79 (really exorbitantly high) on sale today 2 for $5.00 (a really good buy). I couldn't resist. Five pounds of all purpose is now staring at me from the midst of four other bags of flour. But there are always setbacks before you cross the finish line, right??

I don't know enough to help, but I am happy to provide clueless encouragement! This sounds like a great project and I will be watching to see how it goes. I've been eyeing some blue corn at the international grocery - I have visions of purple pupusas...

I finished the last of the oatmeal and the last of the grits will go tomorrow. I'm also down one jar of honey. A batch of chocolate-pistachio-chocolate chip biscotti took up one of the partial containers of cocoa and half of the remaining pistachios and chocolate chips. If they go over well at work, I may make more. Baking seems to be in my future. I have three bags of unopened flour - self-rising, KA white whole wheat, and KA bread - then there are the AP and white whole wheat already in canisters. I'm not sure what I was thinking with the self-rising. Now that I reread this, I'm not sure what I was thinking buying all this flour! It must have been a Christmas baking special that temporarily short-circuited the brain synapses.

This is excellent! Whether or not it is intentional, you all are providing me with the necessary combination of inspiration and guilt. Tonight, I am combining one package of feta (somehow we ended up with two) and some sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil and herbs out of a giant jar that has been half empty for a while (Costco strikes again). This will go onto toasted bread taken from the freezer. An odd dinner, I know, but BF is now eating again, and when I mentioned the surplus feta, he suggested this. The remaining tomatoes will be blenderized with the last of the chickpeas for some sun-dried-tomato hummous. The barley risotto was interesting. It had more texture and less creaminess than rice risotto, but I liked the nutty flavor with the mushrooms.

Here's another happy birthday wish! The barley risotto is something I have never made, but I have read about it and thought I would give it a go. According to Epicurious, you prepare it the same way, or you can do it in the pressure cooker for 18 minutes after adding the wine. That sounds too long to me (ever the skeptic), so I may try it for ten minutes or so to cook the barley most of the way, then finish it with the lid off. Unfortunately, BF developed a terrible stomach flu Monday afternoon, so I haven't cooked since then. I'm crossing my fingers for tonight.

Congratulations hummingbirdkiss on your clean pantry! I'm a terrible hoarder, and the problem is made worse by a decision my BF and I made that we wouldn't buy "stuff" when we traveled except for food. Food was made the exception because it would be used up instead of sitting on a shelf gathering dust. But we know how that goes. We're combining households in a couple of months, and I think I should start purging now. OK, truth be told, I'm really afraid that I should start purging now. I've got bags and boxes of eight different grains, between five and six pounds of pasta, three quarts of honey, gallons of preserves, a giant bag of lentils, a refrigerator full of condiments, several pounds of chocolate, partial boxes of three different cocoas, five different types of flour, then the cornmeals and masas etc. etc. Then there's the stuff way at the back that is blocked by all this stuff. I'm willing to move wine, homemade preserves, spices, and some condiments, I think. So far I've used up a bag of chickpeas (half for hummous, half in the freezer for hummous later) and about half of one bag of wheat berries (in a salad with roasted beets and kale). Tonight's dinner will be a red wine barley risotto with mushrooms. This will use up the barley, the last of a bottle of red wine that didn't get finished, and some of the dried mushrooms. Thank you for the inspiration!

Yikes! I'm pleased to say my bottle is "floatie"-free. I'm still being moderated on the rum board (can't trust anyone these days ), so the conversation is taking some time. Hopefully I'll find out something interesting to pass on. -Linda Edited to say - Erik, I am ashamed to admit that I had to look up a recipe for an old fashioned. I get back from a business trip in March (leaving this weekend), and we may try it then.

Hi Bill - Thanks, that's from the site I mentioned in my original post. I've posted at the Ministry of Rum, and so far all I've gotten is the same information from the producer. I think we'll just wait for the weather to warm up and give it a try.

I've only seen them in airports (Dulles, National, and I think DFW?), and I have not been disappointed there. It's a nice sandwich to carry on with you now that they don't feed people on planes anymore.

Do you have a Craigslist in your area? At the end of the month when people are moving you can get great stuff for pennies.

Thanks for pointing me to the site. I'll see what they say and report back.

There's nothing like silence to spur the imagination. Has nobody heard of it? Or is it so terrible that nobody wants to break the news to me? Lay it on me. The worst case scenario involves a rum cake or rum pralines...

While cleaning out a cabinet, I came across an unopened bottle of Berling Vieux Labbe five-star rhum from Haiti. My BF works there a couple of times every year and undoubtedly picked it up in the duty-free on his way through the airport, but he has no memory of when or why he bought it. I tried a Google search to try to find out about it, and could only find a couple of references to a food and rum festival in St. Lucia where Berling S. A. advertised it along with some other products. Here's the link. According to the distiller (mixer? distributor?): Does anyone know about this rhum? Was this a special offering from Barbancourt at some point? I don't want to open it until I know how we should use it, and I'm guessing it should only be poured with a couple of ice cubes. Thanks!

i recall reading something about this, where the subjects repeatedly failed to wash their hands before removing the gloves from the box, thereby potentially contaminating the glove beneath, if not the whole batch. of course, best practice would be to wash thoroughly, then retrieve a glove from the box, but that didn't happen. i think the over-reliance on gloves diminishes the importance of hand-washing in the minds of many. ← We teach everyone to wash hands before using gloves. Teaching and practice however... I think the issue hinges upon the two basic uses of gloves in a home kitchen. Are you trying to protect your hands from something (capsaicin, harsh soaps, etc.), or are you trying to prevent cross contamination of foods (e.g., chicken juice on raw veggies).

← Did you click the "judicious application" link? The sushi is too much!

If it helps, in the lab where I work, our rule is that clean gloves from the box are "cleaner" than washed hands. Once you have handled items, cross contamination can happen very easily and often does if people are not trained in how to prevent it. Many students assume gloves are "clean" just because they are not hands. Gloves are simply another tool, and we use them mostly to protect ourselves from chemicals. Hence my recommendation for their use with quantities of capsaicin loaded peppers (despite C. sapidus' taunting...). I peeled several pounds of roasted poblanos once only to have my hands burn for hours . An adventure - maybe. One I want to repeat - not so much!

I'm looking for gunpowder/pearl green tea in a large quantity. I make a lot of it and even drink it iced (blasphemy to some, but very refreshing, and a little caffeine does wonders for my personality ). I had been buying it at Grand Mart. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the brand is because the descriptions are in Chinese and the English translation reads, rather cryptically, "China Green Tea." It is in a green tin, and each little shiny ball unfurls into a perfect little tea leaf in the pot. And now they don't have it anymore!!! I'm considering heading to the last store in Chinatown (the one with the herbal medicine), but I am not terribly optimistic. Does anyone know of a good tea vendor?