Nyleve Baar

Nice Dansk baking dish from my local St. Vincent de Paul. $14. It baffled me because it's in mint condition, made in Indonesia and is not the more common Kobenstyle. But a little digging online suggests it may have been made in the 1970's when Dansk started producing in weird places.

Thanks! I will look for these. Don't need or want clear - just fine with murky brown.

Do you know what kind of extract your friend gets in Mexico? I'll be going there in about a week and am prepared to stock up if there's anything good available. Years ago I bought some vanilla on a trip to Mexico that was just awful, so I know it's not always easy to find the good stuff.

My thought too. It seems a shame to drown it in a stronger flavour but not sure it has enough oomph to stand up on its own.

When life gives you crabapples...and you don't want to make jelly...you make crabapple vodka! Basically just cut crabapples in half and steeped in vodka - probably nearly a month now. It smells delicious. Almost spicy - which is weird because the only thing in it is crabapples and vodka. I'd love some ideas for cocktails for next week's Canadian Thanksgiving. People?

I have a friend who used to make something she called Chokecherry Cordial, which was basically a syrup you could add to sparkling water or whatever. Non-alcoholic. It is delicious. I have no idea how she made it but I"m sure recipes exist.

It looks like I have the exact same - or very similar - stove. That happens to me occasionally when I boil over or somehow spill something. Not sure where the stuff collects, but it causes that endless clicking. My solution is usually to light the burner manually, as Shelby suggests, and let it burn off. Sometimes it seems to be water that has gotten in somewhere it doesn't belong. The flame dries the burner out and the clicking stops. Hope that works for you.

Save the sauce too. If the only problem is that it's too salty, that's so easily fixed by balancing it out with unsalted ingredients. I hate throwing out food. Hate hate hate. I mean ok fine, if it's really terrible in some way - spoiled, rancid, bad-tasting - fine throw it away. But I love taking something that didn't work out well in its original form and turning it into something entirely different and edible (or even delicious). So here's my suggestion. Rather than turning your freezer into a morgue, as Anna N describes it, why don't you re-purpose everything NOW, and freeze the new thing. I do find that stuff I put in the freezer that isn't quite edible usually gets ignored forever. But a finished soup or casserole or whatever is always welcome on those crappy days when you don't want to cook.

Mash them up and use the crumbled meat sparingly in lasagna or some other concoction. If they're sufficiently diluted by other ingredients it should be fine.

Sorry - turns out your parts are exactly the same as mine so even if I do have a bowl that would fit your machine, I'll be keeping it until I inevitably need it. If I were you I would look on Ebay. I've found parts for my Cuisinart on there - sometimes just what I need; sometimes with extra bits I don't need. But still worth it if you're looking for any replacement parts. Sorry for the false alarm. I thought maybe it might be a slightly different model.

What exactly is the part number on the bowl that is broken? Usually it's embossed in the plastic somewhere. I am a collector of all old cuisinart parts so I may have a bowl that would fit. I know it doesn't fit my old cuisinart so I have no use for it. Would be happy to pass along for the cost of postage. I recently found another whole machine - almost exactly the same as mine, Japanese made - at the dump. It went into my basement Cuisinart Museum for future use, if ever necessary.

No photo but risotto with ramps, fiddleheads, dried porcini (which I picked) and a few eager-beaver asparagus from my garden. The season has begun. Looked for morels this morning but nothing.

I started a few small patches on my property, using ramps I dug up from my main picking spot. They're going to take a lifetime to get to the point where it's possible to harvest from that area, but I'm happy to have them growing in my woods. My grandchildren can pick them. Or their children.

Looks like risotto tomorrow.

This works really well for me. I have one shallow drawer dedicated to spices. But I should clear out the one below it - currently filled with my music CDs which I never listen to - and put all my salts and whatnot in there in a similar way. Very easy to find and use everything. I mean, of course, this requires a drawer. Which may or may not be available.

$4.99 at Value Village yesterday. With my 30% Tuesday seniors discount it was under $4.00 including tax. This is one of the smaller ones - maybe 10" diameter. I also have a bigger yellow one that I picked up at our local dump for free several years ago.

A couple of years ago my son made Dark and Stormy cocktails pre-thanksgiving-dinner with lovely fresh apple cider and Jamaican ginger beer. I haven't had one since but now I want one. Seems the right thing for the time of year.

True true true.

If you buy the large, primal cuts - the vacuum packed whole thingies - they are NOT blade tenderized. I have been doing this and cut my own steaks. It's a little cheaper too.

Oh yes!

One more thing. I make cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries - using the recipe on the bag but substituting red wine for all of the water. Also throw in a strip or two of orange peel. The wine does something very nice to the cranberries and the whole business takes about 10 minutes.

The mushroom guy is still there. He has white and cremini mushrooms, portobellos, shitakes and a variety of oyster mushrooms - yellow, white, pink. Very sweet guy - always smiling. I have a secret foraging spot for porcini mushrooms near me on a friend's property. They grow with insane abandon during good years. Or else they don't come up at all, which has been the case for the past two years. When they're abundant I can fill a bushel basket with them in about an hour. Usually I just have to stop picking because I can't deal with them all before they go wormy. I still have a couple of jars of dried ones from the good years. Hoping next year they come back - I was very disappointed this fall. Mushrooms are a mysterious thing.

Of all the things to ensure a delicious turkey, the most important one in my opinion, is to make sure you DO NOT OVERCOOK IT. It needs to come to 160o - no more. Let rest a little while before carving. It will be good, even if it's a poor quality cheap grocery store bird. For Thanksgiving I always get a local fresh turkey and it's delicious. But yesterday I had to roast 2 cheap frozen turkeys for a meal at the soup kitchen where I volunteer and they were moist and flavourful also. Much better than what I expected.

This is a braised dish so I don't think it's possible to retain the bright colour while still having that long-cooked blending of flavours. It does lose its brightness very early in the game - the acid (vinegar and wine) change the colour somewhat but it's not exactly back to the original purple anyway. It's just one of those things that you cook forever and it looks like it but tastes divine. As for the jelly, there is really so little in the recipe compared to the volume of cabbage that it doesn't do a whole heck of a lot to the appearance. Your cabbage dish looks very much like mine.

Thanksgiving is completely and psychotically cast in stone at our house. NOTHING CAN CHANGE EVER. Since we're in Canada, Thanksgiving is a long weekend so we always have a houseful of guests from Saturday to Monday and even the other meals - Saturday lunch right through to Monday lunch before everyone leaves - must remain completely intact and unaltered. Snacks can change (as if we need any snacks) but the meals are untouchable. It's sort of weird when new people join the table and don't understand our craziness. But it's our craziness and we stand by it. The red cabbage is going on 40 years now.