MelissaH

I’ll miss you all because I’ll be away that weekend. 😞

My experiences match Anna's. Spoons in the bag float for me as well.

When you figure out how to get carrots to sink, I'll nominate you for a Nobel Prize.

Here's to 2021. I hope to see some of you before then, once we can gather again.

Is now a good time to say (again?) that Michael Ruhlman's book Grocery is a good read?

We use a Pringles can with the bottom cut out, along with a canning funnel. The top of the bag folds over the rim of the can, the funnel goes inside for neat filling, and then you can remove the funnel, unfold the bag, and lift the can off. If the bag-inside-the-can is filled all the way up, there will still be enough space to seal the bag.

You might also look for the marshmallow recipe from BraveTart (Stella Parks). It's in her cookbook, but the only place I found it on line is embedded here: https://www.saveur.com/best-white-layer-cake-recipe/ In the book, she gives a few variations, including for a marshmallow that she says is specifically good for hot chocolate and not good for toasting on a stick because it's too fragile. None of her marshmallows use egg. (IMHO, you need gelatin or egg but not both. I find I strongly prefer the taste of those without egg.)

Oh man. When we lived in Ohio, our usual route to visit my husband's family in the exurbs of Grand Rapids took us right through AA, and we'd periodically stop at Zingerman's as we drove through. But since we moved, we don't pass through anymore, so it's been, oh, more than 15 years since my last visit. Lucky you!

@Kerry Beal, we really must acquaint you with Paula's donuts. They're amazingly good even when you pick up a box of them at 6 PM, just before you drive home, mostly to eat the next morning. (And if you ever need to eat them in the car, I recommend a glazed cruller, because it's delicious and there's nothing that is likely to drip off the donut and into your lap or the cracks of the car.) @patris, let me know how I can help you make this happen!

Is now an appropriate time for me to ask whether Paula's Donuts could be a part of breakfast on a day when I'm there to take advantage of them?

Dutch ramen story: five years ago when my husband was on sabbatical, we spent three months living in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. I got super-excited during our first couple of days when, as we walked around town learning where things were, I saw a number of shops that had "RAMEN" signs with large letters. Remember what I said earlier about not being at all fluent in Dutch? Turns out that ramen is Dutch for windows. These all were stores that sold windows, not Japanese noodle restaurants. My Parisian family refer to chicken lunchmeat, particularly the kind sold already sliced in packets, as "chicken ham". I guess "ham" has become a generic term for any kind of sliced meat that goes into a sandwich, at least in France. (My family may have been using a direct translation from the French jambon when they talk about it in English.) Is it possible you saw a similar usage?

Oh, you found Sie Joe! I really enjoyed eating there on my last trip to A'dam. (And to answer an earlier question from @kayb: Yes, Dutch forms plurals of some words with an apostrophe followed by an s. It isn't English, so get your knickers out of a twist over the apostrophes. More rules about making plurals in Dutch are at http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=NounsAndArticles.11 I am NOT anywhere close to fluent in Dutch, nor do I claim to be.

I'm also a member of the Bosch dishwasher club. If you don't need to sterilize your dishes, the Quick Wash cycle takes only about half an hour, and gets the dishes clean enough for me. We also made a conscious decision not to plumb in the fridge, because if/when it leaked, the leak would be in a really bad place. As far as a stove, think about how you cook. We have been very happy with our 36" six-burner GE Monogram, although we've had a couple of repair issues and I've been glad my husband is handy. We have had all six burners in use, a few times each year. But with any high-powered stove, a high-powered hood is also a necessity. Ours uses a 10" vent pipe up through the roof.

How hard is your water? When we were in Belgium for three months on sabbatical, we tried cooking beans once, and they didn't soften after being soaked overnight and then boiled for a couple of hours. We did some research and discovered that the tap water in our area was high in calcium. After that, we looked carefully at all the bottled water labels and chose one that was much softer to lug home and cook our beans. It worked beautifully.

Will anyone who is coming to the workshop in Buffalo be driving there across the NY State Thruway (I-90) with an extra seat in the car? There are a number of convenient meeting places at various exits in the Syracuse area (from I-481, exit 34A, over to Weedsport, exit 40). Or if you're taking the scenic route, NY 104 along the south shore of Lake Ontario, that goes right through my hometown. My husband, who some of you may remember from the last workshop at Niagara College, would like to come to the dinner on Saturday night. He won't be able to attend the Saturday workshop because he needs to attend the university commencement exercises Saturday morning, a 2.5 hour drive away. We're a one-car family, so if I drive myself over on Friday, my husband has no way to get there for dinner. So I could either drive over with my husband for the Saturday night dinner (only) or to catch a ride over with someone who will be passing through so I can participate more fully, and my husband will come when the ceremonies are done and join us all for dinner. Or I could take a train, but that's less easy if I want to bring a box of tools with me. The Exchange St station is right around the corner from the hotel, and there are 3 trains that are scheduled to get there from Syracuse on Friday. One of them might even get me into town early enough to join you all for dinner that night! But given a choice, I'd rather ride with a friend or three than with a few hundred people I don't know. 😀 In any case, my husband and I would stay over Saturday night after dinner and drive ourselves home Sunday, so if I use one of your car seats on the way over, you could use it on the way home to hold all your chocolates and any other purchases. I don't currently plan to do the master classes, so a ride on Friday would be my preference. I do know Buffalo reasonably well, and can navigate you to the hotel. Let me know if I might fit into your travel plans, please!