Patrick S

Use a paper towel to hold the pepper mill/salt dispenser. Or, use only your fingertips to season the first side, then try to operate the pepper mill/salt dispenser without touching it with you fingertips.

According to the link below, they are not exactly the same thing, but one can be substituted for the other. See The Rice Vinegar/Rice Wine Vinegar Conundrum

Good job, gfron1!

You're certainly welcome! Yet in the study cited above, 31% of the free range chicken carcasses were positive for salmonella, compared only 9.1 to 12.8% in commercial chickens, and in the UK's FSA survey of salmonella in shell eggs, there was no significant difference in salmonella prevalence between free-range eggs and other types of eggs. So apparently any anti-infectious disease effect associated with a free range existence is being mitigated by or even outweighed by some other factor. Stress can certainly influence susceptibility to infectious disease, but the single biggest determinant of prevalence will always be exposure to the relevant pathogen, and it may be the case that free range conditions might actually provide more opportunities for chicken-to-chicken transmission of salmonella than a conventional caged environment.

Don't be too discouraged, Randi! The thrill of victory is worth the agony of defeat. You'll nail it next time. Just to try to summarize some of the advice: 1. Have the butter whipped and at ~65F. 2. Try not to let any of the syrup sit in the whites for more than a couple of seconds without mixing. 3. After all the syrup has been added, beat on medium for 2 minutes, and then beat on low speed for as long as it takes to become completely cool. RLB italicizes the word "completely" in her book. I think it took about 5 minutes or so before the mixer bowl didnt feel warm anymore. 4. When you start adding the butter, if the mixture looks like its starting to curdle, increase the speed and wait for it to smooth out before adding more butter. Apparently whipping the butter is optional, but perhaps it would be a good idea if your kitchen is warmer than 70F, because it will help keep the temperature of the butter homogenous. What I did was whip the butter just till it was creamy, and then folded it with a spatula every few minutes. That way the whole mass of butter reached 65 at the same time.

According to the research I've seen, organic and free range eggs are not any less likely to be Salmonella-postive than run of the mill eggs. For instance, Bailey and Cosby (2005) reported: Bailey and Cosby, 2005. Salmonella Prevalence in Free-Range and Certified Organic Chickens. Journal of Food Protection 68, pp. 2451-2453. A similar survey of eggs by the UK's Food Standards Agency a couple of years ago found no statistically significant difference in the prevalence of Salmonella on organic, free range, or conventionaly mass produced eggs.

Salmonella is indeed found inside eggs, as Cheryl points out. It can get in from the outside, because the pores in the egg shell are so much larger than a bacterium, or it can be in the egg from the moment it forms if the hen has an active Salmonella infection when the egg is forming.

True enough, but there is a difference between pasteurization and sterilization, and eggs that have been brought to 160F for several seconds would indeed be considered pasteurized even if not sterilized. According to the Wikipedia entry on pasteurization, it is estimated that the HTST (high temperature/short time) pasteruization used with most milk, which involved heating to 161.5F for 15 seconds, achieves a 5-log reduction of viable microorganisms in milk, so that only 0.00001 times the original amount is present in the milk. I assume a similar reduction would occur in eggs, and while that would not make the eggs sterile, it would certainly reduce the already small risk of bacterial illness by several orders of magnitude.

Once I asked my wife's grandmother about this, and she laughed. She said she'd been using raw or "undercooked" eggs her entire life, and as far as she knew no one had ever been sick as a result.

BTW, I don't hesistate to use raw eggs in recipes I make for myself. I just use fresh eggs and try to keep them from being too warm too long. I would not be comfortable doing this commercially, but for things I'm making and serving myself, I don't worry too much.

Good guess, but actually pasteurization refers specifically to heat-treatment of a product. FDA has approved irradiation for shell eggs and apparently they are available in some places, but I've never seen them in any stores in my area, at least not labeled as such.

That sounds like a big design flaw -- if a static electric discharge at the bowl turns the scale off, that must mean there is path for electricity to flow from the metal bowl to the electronic guts of the machine. My understanding is that electronic devices are usually designed specifically so that any current flowing through the outside of the device can't (easily) reach the circuitry inside, which are easily damaged by static electric discharges. I don't know how the measurable bowl attaches to your scale, but is there some way to seperate the metal bowl from the scale by using some kind of nonconducting material (I don't know why the saran wrap didnt work though)? My scale has a glass platform and I've never had this problem.

Me too. I only use strained puree. If I use whole raspberries at all, its only for a garnish.

Patrick, Check out www.http://chocolatetalk.proboards56.com/index.cgi?board=techniques&action=display&thread=1139456849 This is on the chocolate alchemy form and it talks about someones experience using the santha to make praline, they did however add something with liquid to it, it seized and caused the stone on the bottom of the santha to separate. I think you probably could use the santha however as long as you avoided all aqueous solutions. Another piece of equipment I have been considering to make praline is an ointment mill used in pharmacies that compound - exakt is the company. It has ceramic milling wheels. Only downside is the few thousand dollar price tag. ← Looks like I can kiss my dream of low-cost praline paste goodbye.

I finally got around to experimenting with Boyajian strawberry flavoring. $15 for 5 fluid ozs, which works out to be like $1.50 per tablespon. The smell was somewhat weird, but it tasted good in a cake. I changed my mind again about the puree. I've decided I don't like the reduced puree. It changes the flavor -- some elements get stronger and others get weaker-- and makes the cake purplish. But I may have reduced it too much, cooked it too long. So last night I made a strawberry chiffon cake using 1C puree from frozen strawberries plus 1T of the Boyajian flavoring. This seemed to have the best flavor yet -- stronger and more like fresh strawberries. I used the CI recipe for chiffon cake. It was perfect except 1) there was a very thin (like 1/5") custary layer on the bottom, and 2) it was maybe very slightly more delicate than I'd like to to be.

From what I have read, field corn is what corn syrup is made of. So all of our sodas and such made with high fructose corn syrup are made with gmo corn. I would love to be wrong, though. ← So? Corn syrup is so highly refined that it's chemically equivilant no matter where it comes from. There is no concievable way for your body to distinguish GM and non GM corn syrup. ← Is this why the FDA does not require safety testing on GM foods? Or is it just corn syrup that is chemically equivalent? ← I might be misunderstanding you, but FDA certainly does require safety testing for all transgenic crops, though they do not require seperate safety tests for the hundreds or even thousands of individual products made with or derived from a transgenic crop. This is the same way other ingredients are regulated -- i.e., food colors or artificial sweeteners are tested, but seperate tests are not done for every product that contains them.

While we're on the subject of organics, there have been a couple of recent papers comparing organic dairy production to conventional dairy production that have produced somewhat surprising results. The first one compared the incidence of mastitis in cows raised on organic farms versus those on conventional farms, and actually found the incidence to be higher on the organic farms. Presumably this might be partly explained by the use of prophylactic antibiotics in conventional farms? The following was presented at the 12th Int. Conf. on Production Diseases in Farm Animals, East Lansing, USA, on July 19-22, 2004. The same group just published another paper in the Journal of Dairy Science comparing the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant mastitis pathogens in organic versus conventional farms. As they explained, they fully expected to find a greater prevalence of resistant pathogens on the conventional farms, but suprisingly found no difference. These tests were done of farms in Switzerland, so I wonder if similar tests done in the US would be the same or different? Roesch et al, 2006. Comparison of Antibiotic Resistance of Udder Pathogens in Dairy Cows Kept on Organic and on Conventional Farms. Journal of Dairy Science 89:989-997.

But aren't antibiotic resistant crops implicated in the problem of Superbugs? ← If you are asking if the use of antibiotic resistance markers in transgenic crops has created or measurably worsened the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, there appears to be a concensus among experts in microbiology and plant biotechnology that the answer is 'no'. The following is something I wrote in 2003 when I was reading a lot about this issue, and reflects the data available at that time. I'm not a scientist, but what I read convinced me that this was another non-issue. The short version is this -- despite repeated attempts to demonstrate it, there is no evidence that the resistance markers even can be transferred from transgenic plants to bacteria, which of course would have to occur for an ab-resistant bacterium to be created. Second, even if such a transfer were to occur, it would not have any measurable impact, because the very same ab-resistance same markers are already abundant in soil and human gut bacteria. Jelenic, 2003. Controversy Associated With the Common Component of Most Transgenic Plants – Kanamycin Resistance Marker Gene. Food Technol. Biotechnol. 41, 183–190. Conner et al, 2003. The release of genetically modified crops into the environment: Part II. Overview of ecological risk assessment. The Plant Journal 33, 19–46. Cook, 2000. Science-Based Risk Assessment for the Approval and Use of Plants in Agricultural and Other Environments. Agricultural Biotechnology and the Poor Report, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. http://www.cgiar.org/biotech/rep0100/Cook.pdf FAO/WHO, 2000. Safety aspects of genetically modified foods of plant origin. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Foods Derived from Biotechnology. WHO, Switzerland. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications...ec_june2000/en/ Gay, 2001. The biosafety of antibiotic resistance markers in plant transformation and the dissemination of genes through horizontal gene flow. In Safety of Genetically Engineered Crops (Custers, R., ed.). Zwijnaarde, Belgium: Flander Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, pp. 135–159. Flavell, 1992. Selectable marker genes: Safe for plants? Biotechnology (N.Y.) 10, 141–144. Royal Society, 1998. Genetically Modified Plants for Food Use. Policy Document 2/98. The Royal Society, London. Salyers, 1999. Genetically engineered foods: safety issues associated with antibiotic resistance genes. University of Illinois and APUA (Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics) Reservoirs of Antibiotic Resistance Network. http://www.roar.antibiotic.org, www.healthsci.tufts.edu/apua/salyersreport.htm

That looks very promising, Melissa. Thanks again for your help! ← Design and Realization has the same molds for $21.60 US. Click on "pastry molds and shapes" in the left menu bar, click on "plastic molds" in the main frame, then scroll down to near the bottom of the page. They also have 8" stainless steel domes for about $28 US (click on "stainless steel molds). ← Awesome! Assuming they ship to the US, I'll be ordering tomorrow.

That looks very promising, Melissa. Thanks again for your help!

What about a Santha wet/dry grinder? Check out this thread to see it being used to make chocolate. It interests me because I think it might be great for making a smooth praline paste, which in my experience has been impossible to create in a food processer.

Thank you, Melissa! That definitely fits the description, however they are as expensive as the stainless steel version (JB Prince has the 8" steel for $32), and I was basically looking for plastic under the assumption that I could find it cheaper, but that may not be the case. . . I think what I'm looking for would be like those thin, clear plastic molds that are used for chocolates, only much bigger.

Does anyone know where I can find large (on the order of 8" diameter) plastic hemisphere molds? These will be used for molding mousses and ice cream cakes. I've found plenty of stainless steel molds that fit the bill, and that's what I'll use if I can't find plastic molds (which I am assuming will be a bit cheaper). Thanks!

How 'bout 'briseephobia'? The wooden-stick phobia is really interesting. I wonder what sort of physiology is behind that and similar nails-on-the-chalkboard type aversions. I had a friend in school who had a similar, really strong aversion to metal forks touching his teeth. If he even heard someone else's fork touch their teeth, it made him almost sick. Naturally once this became widely known, all of his friends (except me of course) considered it their duty to rub their forks against their teeth in his presence at every opportunity. . .

Regarding the hypothesis that organic produce is superior in terms of sensory qualities and/or overall subjective preference, the existing literature is at best inconsistent, and doesn't permit many generalizations. Bourn and Prescott (2002) review the available studies in the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. There are a couple of types of studies that have been done. One type of study is a discrimination study, in which subjects are given organic and nonorganic samples of produce and asked to differentiate which is which. Another type os study has subjects rate the samples on a variety of dimensions -- flavor, juiciness, color, etc. A third type simply ask subjects "Which do you like better?" A crucial component of all these studies is that they are blind -- the subjects don't know in advance which is which, and so can not be influenced by unconscious biases or expectations. The bottom line(s) in their review are that the research is limited, but what exists is inconsistent and doesn't support the view that organic produces is superior in any general in terms of sensory qualities or subjective liking. One interesting thing they discuss is studies showing that if you tell someone that something is organic, they actually rate their subjective preference for the organic more highly. Bourn and Prescott, 2002. A Comparison of the Nutritional Value, Sensory Qualities, and Food Safety of Organically and Conventionally Produced Foods. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 42(1):1–34.