MelissaH

I'm very glad I did this today, not tomorrow when I have a crowd of hungry people around. I'm thankful for secondary containment. I love the sanitizing powers of bleach. Wireless home networks are good things. I think the wrath of the heavens may be descending upon my head, in return for Nice Jewish Girl Daring to Cook Pig. So, I woke up this morning at 5 AM, for no good reason other than the cat deciding that something was alive under the covers. Kicked the cat off, went back to sleep until 8 AM. My husband was already downstairs, checking out this week's grocery sale flyers. I stumbled down and asked him about the best way to light the burner. He brought it into the family room, and I sat the base of the smoker onto the burner's pot support ring. Yes, sat onto and not into. Turns out that something didn't get welded straight, and it took a judicious application of dremel tool and hacksaw to get the smoker to sit inside the burner enough to be stable. (While he was doing that, I lined one of our bowls with heavy-duty Al foil, so I wasn't being totally useless.) Eventually we got that obstacle bypassed, and screwed the regulator hose into the burner. We brought the burner and our spanking new full propane tank with the acme valve outside, added a bunch of wood chunks to the bottom bowl resting on the screws, put the lined bowl on the clips and dumped about 1.8 liters of boiling water (our electric kettle is Canadian, and measures in metric), added the rest of the apparatus, and went on a hunt for our long-handled lighter. After finding the lighter, we got ready to light the burner. Nothing happened. Eventually it lit, but it was acting like there was too much air in the mix and the damper adjustments didn't seem to do anything. We eventually cut down on the airflow by using a couple of pieces of masking tape to cover the airholes, and the burner finally lit. By then, it was nearly 11 AM. We kept the burner on for about an hour. Nothing happened, at least as far as smoke went, and the cover stayed cold. Eventually we got disgusted enough with the lack of smoke to pull the cover and middle ring off, remove the lower rack (cool enough to do with bare hands), take out the water pan (ditto), and dump the wood chunks out of the pan and directly onto the bottom of the smoker itself. Bingo! Within three minutes we had copious amounts of hickory smoke billowing out. So at about 11:30, I went upstairs to get the meat out of its brine, to bring downstairs. I also readied a fresh kettle of boiling water. First step: put away the clean dishes and wash the others that were waiting in the sink. Everything fit on our supplementary drying board, far enough from the sink that there would be no risk of contamination by splashing. Then I went out to the upstairs walk-in to retrieve the meat. When I opened the cooler on the deck, I was confronted with a pool of pinkish brine: the pig bag had leaked. Only the bottom half or so of the meat was still underwater. Oh well, no time to do anything else, and the rest was still shrouded with plastic so it at least stayed moist. I pulled the chicken out of its container and into a baking pan for transport downstairs. I then opened up the pig's bag, and removed that into our largest roasting pan, for transport downstairs. I brought both of those, along with the kettle and a probe thermometer down to the smoker. I dumped the water into the pan before the chicken went on the lower rack, the pig up above (thank heavens, the cover closed!) and the probe thermometer laid on the top rack next to the pig. After I closed everything back up, and waited to see what the thermometer would do. It topped out at (are you ready for this?) 86 degrees F. I think today, at least, I have a cold smoker. Never mind. I took the two pans back upstairs and cleaned them. I was also ready to clean out the cooler, but I want to do that in the bathtub, and that was occupied at the time with my husband. So I just dumped the brine remnants into the sink, added enough clean water to come up higher than the brine spill, and a good tot of bleach to kill any nasties. That's still waiting for me to get back to it...but it can sit until my husband gets back home to watch the fire. Read on. Then I got ready to combine yet more boiling water with cornmeal for my anadama bread. But when I grabbed the container, the lid popped off and half the cornmeal spilled onto my kitchen floor. Couldn't find the full-size broom, so had to use the whisk broom and its dustpan from the laundry room. Got most of it, but left just enough to act like ball bearings under my shoes. Didn't go on my butt before I grabbed a damp paper towel to wipe up the rest of it. Eventually combined cornmeal and boiling water; still waiting for it to cool enough that it won't kill my yeast when I add last night's poolish and the rest. About the time I came back downstairs, my husband suggested that I kill the fire and let the wood continue to smoke on its own. I complied. He also announced that he was going into the office for the first time since before Christmas, to deal with the backlog of e-mails. I came upstairs to start writing this. When I went downstairs to check, the temperature had fallen to 65 degrees and the smoke had quit, although there was plenty of wood. I fired the burner back up, and within five minutes the temp was back up, this time over 90. I've been running to check every two minutes or so, and as soon as I get this posted I'll be turning the laptop on. I think I'll either have to figure out some sort of insulating blanket, or just resign myself to continuous burner firing, to see if I can get the temperature up to even 200 degrees. My thoughts: I probably don't have to worry about not getting enough smoke flavor into the meat because it got too cooked too fast. So I'll just keep babysitting the smoker with the burner on, at least until the propane runs out. (Last time I checked, the temperature on the rack next to the pig was up to a whopping big 105.) When the propane's gone, the meat will get transferred back into the roasting pan, although this time on a rack, covered with foil, and baked at low heat until it's good and dead, and then allowed to rest before getting pulled. As far as the chicken, I think I might see if I can convince the grill to ignite, and finish those off on the grill. I'll also be making a phone call first thing Tuesday morning, to see if the manufacturer has any suggestions or thoughts. There's definitely a learning curve, but I'm not giving up! MelissaH

We're underway! I mixed up a brine consisting of 1 cup of very coarse Korean sea salt (weight: 7 ounces), enough boiling water to dissolve whatever's going to dissolve, and then cold water out of my kitchen faucet to make a total volume of about 1 gallon. I did this in a round plastic container with a yellow plastic lid, made by Rubbermaid, that I got from the restaurant supply store; I use a couple of others to hold various types of flour, keep one empty for letting bread dough rise (it's got poolish downstairs in the nice warm family room at the moment; the book said 70 degrees F and the rest of my house is closer to 58 right now), and have a spare for times like this. I donned a pair of disposable rubber gloves a la Alton Brown, took my chicken thighs out of their package, placed them in a "large" oven bag that I'd draped into a good-sized Rubbermaid container, and added about 6 cups of my cooled brine. I also sloshed about a half cup of brine on the counter, down the edge of the cabinets, onto the floor, and spotting my shirt. I twist-tied the top of the bag shut, put the lid on the Rubbermaid, and put the container in the walk-in. (This is the upstairs walk-in, the deck, as opposed to the downstairs walk-in, the patio where the smoker will reside tomorrow. It's 28 degrees F on top of the meteorology building at the moment, so I'm not concerned about things staying cold enough.) Then I took off that pair of gloves and put on a fresh pair for the hunk o'pig. My initial thought was to use the container I'd mixed the brine in as secondary containment, so I transferred the remaining brine into a couple of 8-cup measuring cups with spouts. But when I tested the still-wrapped pig part to see if it would fit, it didn't: too wide for my container. My next thought was my 6-quart pot, which is plenty wide. Unfortunately, though, what it had in width, it lacked in height, and about the top third of the meat would have been above the top of the pot: not so good for secondary containment. So I finally just hauled the cooler upstairs, bagged the hunk o'pig in a turkey-size oven bag, put the bag in the cooler, poured the rest of the brine into the bag, pushed out the air, knotted the top shut, moved the cooler onto the walk-in, and then put the Rubbermaid of chix inside as well. We do have critters in the area, hence the need for robust secondary containment, but I don't think any of them have yet tried to open a cooler that's been left out. My butcher had tied the hunk o'pig into a nice neat round, and I think I'm going to leave it tied throughout the smoking process unless that's not a good idea, according to those of you who have done this before. Next: fill a bucket with water, add some wood chunks, and set in the garage until morning. Can't just leave it out, because one of our cats is very much a water kitty, and I've cleaned up enough wet stuff today already. And I'm afraid that a bucket of water without much stuff dissolved in it will freeze overnight. Hence, into the garage it goes. I plan to leave the meat outside chilling until tomorrow morning. Then I'll fire up the smoker and let it go without food for a little bit to be sure anything nasty inside is either burned off or coated in. My goal is to get the pig on the smoker just after listening to Will Shortz do the puzzler on Weekend Edition, about 8:50 AM. I'm thinking hunk o'pig goes on the top rack of the smoker, with the bird parts underneath, as lancastermike suggested. The only thing that concerns me with doing that is height: this smoker's top doesn't quite dome quite as much as a Bullet does. So a little testing is in order tonight, to be sure that's possible. (If my round food-service Rubbermaid won't fit, I know the hunk o'pig won't.) I figure that if the meat is on the smoker by 9 AM, it will all be ready to come off the smoker by 7 or 8 PM, which means that I'll be in bed at a normal hour and on the day of the event, I'll only need to make up the sauce, cut veggies, finish the bread (poolish tonight, dough tomorrow, bake-off Monday), reheat the meat, and maybe do a batch of brownies or an apple pie or something like that. No worries about timing, and I'll actually get to see the football games too! Further updates as needed. Happy new year! MelissaH

I now have 10.3 pounds of bone-in, skin-on fresh ham in my fridge, along with 4.4 pounds of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. I also have the ingredients for a batch of =Mark's South Carolina Mustard Barbecue Sauce, or at least everything except for the juice of the lime that he added but wasn't listed in the ingredients. (Any of you who have made this, did you add the lime? I wasn't planning to go out again, but I could certainly request that someone bring some along. They have their uses, after all! ) For the chicken, I was thinking I'd do a rub similar to what I use on a beer can chicken: mainly a base of Penzey's jerk for pork combined with a bit of salt and some brown sugar (and whatever else I feel like adding). The chicken is destined for tomorrow's dinner, since tonight's plan is gorgonzola pasta with arugula salad on the side. But here's a crazy idea: would it be out of the question for me to put BOTH on the smoker tomorrow, assuming it all fits on the two grates? I have plenty of time to brine overnight tonight and get wood chunks (hickory) soaking now, and I'd only use one firing's worth of propane. The biggest issue: would the hunk o'pig be irreparably damaged by getting cooked ahead of time? That way there would be no worries about getting stuck in the dreaded temperature stall when everyone's starving and the Fiesta Bowl's long over. Is there a mystique about pig fresh out of a smoker (OK, fresh out of a smoker and well-rested) or is it like a stew where it gets better if it sits for a day? Is it appropriate to consider reheating any leftovers (planned or otherwise) in a crockpot? Educate me, please. MelissaH

Melkor, thanks for the vote of confidence. Snowangel, thanks for the link---I've actually been following for about a year, and it's what inspired me to start playing with smoke in the first place. As for the pictures: Here's the bottom of the smoker. I didn't bother to post a picture of the outside of the beast, because it's easy to see in the zillions of other pictures on the Web. But note the flat bottom, designed to rest inside the burner's pot support ring. The "legs" actually fit just outside the burner's pot support, and between the legs and the flat bottom, it's quite stable. Note the loooong metal screws, which hold the legs on, and the clips closer to the top. This is how the bottom bowl fits in, as confirmed for me on the phone by the guy at the place I bought the beast from. Its rim rests on the screws, which have no other reason for being so long. The wood chunks go in here, and the side door allows mid-cook access if needed. Here's the top bowl. It sits on the little metal clips. Water or sand goes here; I'm planning to use water. I also have an electric kettle to boil water quickly, should I need to recharge. And finally, the rack goes on top of everything, sitting on a different part of the little metal clips so it's not touching the bowl. One thing that's still a bit of a mystery is the heat diffuser. The guy on the other end of the phone was able to confirm for me that our disk-with-a-hole is definitely the heat diffuser. But he also said that the heat diffuser is a fairly recent addition to the box. He thought it might be something you use only when you want to grill rather than smoke, and that it wasn't needed for smoking. I'm leaning towards not using it at all, and hoping I don't burn a hole through anything. I am, though, planning to wrap the water pan in foil, to try and cut down on cleanup time later. Later today, I'll be going to pick up the hunk o'pig. We'll also be getting something small to try on the smoker tonight or tomorrow (maybe some chicken thighs?), to see if we're totally off our rockers and if we should plan to use the oven instead. We'll also need to get a new propane tank, because this beast has an Acme regulator (the kind that needs threads on the outside of the propane tank valve) and neither of the two propane tanks we currently own have those. I've actually been hunting for an adapter, but nobody seems to make them. Our current tanks both have OPDs, but one has an old-style quick-connect, and the other just has threads inside the valve. We have no problem getting the tanks filled, but they don't work with newer devices built for a newer standard. My plan is to brine overnight, probably in our downstairs "walk-in" (aka the back porch; it's now snowing!) and then start smoking (naked) early Monday morning. I don't mind sliced rather than pulled, if that's the way it turns out. (I can't stomach the thought of waking up any earlier than 6 or 6:30, which will give us about 10 hours before the Fiesta Bowl. My thermometer doesn't have a remote read, but I can put it where I'll be able to read it from inside.) I'm guessing I won't have a problem keeping the temperature in the smoker down, considering our weather. I plan to bake up some anadama bread (or maybe anadama rolls), and also make a batch of =Mark's mustard sauce to go alongside, since that's gotten very good reviews. Veggies and dip, a bowl of guac and chips, and whatever else we think of in the way of munchies for during the early football games on Monday, and am I missing anything else? I leave the beverages up to my husband the beermaker. Stay tuned for more details---and my ears and eyes are open for more advice! MelissaH

OK, so we (actually my husband) today put together the propane-powered smoker we acquired last month just before we both got completely swamped with end-of-semester school matters. It's more or less a propane-fired version of a Weber Bullet. (Why propane? Because we don't do charcoal in any way, shape, or form, but we always have a couple of propane tanks around, so it made the most sense to us.) You fire up the burner as needed to keep the smoke going and the temperature where you want it, but you supposedly don't need to keep it lit at all times. (We'll see what happens here in windy Oswego.) My wonderful husband had already dismantled the burner and taken the dremel tool to its inner workings to get rid of the burrs etc. that inhibit smooth gas flow and most efficient burning and then given it a fresh coat of high-temperature paint, the way he did for his homebrew burner. Today he actually put the smoker itself together, which turned out to be quite a job because the instructions that came with the beast were the instructions for a different model. I think I have most of it figured out, but I have some questions about specifics, since nobody I called was answering their phone today. Parts of assembly were obvious (handles, grate supports, legs), even without proper instructions. But I'm not sure of other parts. For one thing, there's one piece that we don't know how to use: a flat disk of enameled metal (I think), about 7 inches in diameter, with a small (1/4 inch-ish) hole in the middle and a slightly raised lip all the way around the edge. After looking at the descriptions on the Web, I suspect this may be the "porcelain heat diffuser" but I don't know where to put it. To me, the hole in the middle implies that it's supposed to be threaded onto something, but I don't know what or where to be looking for. Any ideas, besides just putting it in the bottom? For another thing, the smoker came with two bowls that are identical as far as I can tell. I'm guessing that one goes directly on the bottom (maybe sitting on the disk with the hole?) and holds the wood chunks to generate smoke. If it doesn't go on the bottom of the cooker (with or without the disk underneath), the door on the side won't be in the proper place to allow reloading if needed. The other bowl, I'm guessing, goes directly above the first bowl and directly beneath the lower rack, held up by the brackets that also support the lower rack, as a water bowl. Am I guessing correctly? The part that's really confusing me is that the Web site says the smoker comes with "porcelain coated water bowls [plural, emphasis mine], porcelain coated charcoal/wood chip bowl [singular, emphasis mine]" which to me implies at least three bowls in all. I'm wondering if the Web site mis-spoke, and we have the right number of bowls included. I'll be making some more phone calls tomorrow, hoping that maybe the place I bought the thing from will be open. Our plan is to pick up the hunk of pig (a fresh ham, on the bone) tomorrow, so it can get brined on Sunday, and then smoked starting when I get up in the morning on Monday, to be ready for eating by halftime of the Fiesta Bowl about ten or twelve hours later. (Backup plan is the oven, in case we can't figure this out.) Or should I plan to be starting this earlier than that? I'm not necessarily looking for a heavy smoke flavor, and I'm most concerned with being sure that it's completely cooked. I may also be able to post pictures of the beast (the smoker, not the fresh ham) tomorrow when it's light, if my descriptions don't make clear what I'm puzzling over. Thanks, MelissaH

*bump!* The semester is over, our grades are all turned in, and we can start thinking of kitchen again, at least for a few weeks. Looking back through this thread, I still kind of like the last version I posted of the proposed kitchen. We still haven't heard a peep from the designer we talked to way back in August. Either he forgot about us (in which case we don't want to work with him) or he looked into what we were planning to do with the IKEA cabinets, and realized he couldn't touch it price-wise (in which case we don't want to work with him). So, forget about him! I've e-mailed another designer in the area. This one doesn't sell cabinets, which immediately makes me feel a little better. We'll see if we can't arrange a meeting shortly after the new year, so we can get some planning help. I suspect we may be making a quick trip to Philadelphia sometime this spring, since that's where the good IKEA kitchen people are. Our new lights are mostly great, but they'll need to be relocated somewhere in the remodel so they don't cast your shadow onto your workspace. The kitchen cart makes a big difference: much more area than the old semicircular shelves. The glass backsplash is gone: in trying to remove it to clean behind, we shattered one of the panels a couple of weeks ago. We confirmed our suspicion that the glass wasn't tempered. And the faux brick is still really ugly. You might think that in the winter, the drawers and cabinets would work better. But no: we still can't open our utensil drawer without also pulling the cabinet door below open also. I'm really starting to lust after other peoples' dishwashers. My knuckles are cracking, as they always do this time of year. I'm starting to like the idea of a stereo in the kitchen, especially if it's something we can protect from gunky hands. I'm also thinking that an iPod might make a nice kitchen accessory, especially if we set things up so that the speakers project into the dining area. Definitely time to find someone who sharpens knives...or get a system and learn how to do it ourselves. Lots to ponder about the kitchen, at least for a little while until I need to think about my spring classes and the things I've never taught before! MelissaH

Aaah, love the pierogi. That's the sort of work that goes much better with more people around. Reminds me of helping the local Polish Catholic church make them for St. Stephen's Festival a couple of years ago. A couple of people in the kitchen made the dough in food processors. The dough balls would rest for a few minutes, and then get moved outside to the hall where the rollers would roll the dough and cut it into circles using cans. (I like your jar lid idea, though: it looks like it would be much easier on the hands!) The circles of dough would get transferred to sheet pans, and then sent to the tables where the pinchers would sit. The pinchers had not only the dough circles, but also the various fillings, previously scooped into balls onto paper-lined sheet pans and then frozen. The cheese and potato were both relatively easy to handle, but the kapusta (cabbage) were a pain because the shreds had a tendency to stick out away from the ball of filling, and get in the way of pinching. The filled pierogi went back onto a sheet pan, sent to a checker who re-pinched any that looked like they might not have been completely sealed, and then sent back into the kitchen where they were boiled and then fried. Most of them were frozen at that point, and on the day of the festival they were given a quick re-frying before service. The last task of the day was always scooping the next day's filling into balls, so it would be ready to pinch in the morning. Thanks for sharing, and I wish I lived closer to help you...and to find help for me! MelissaH

Just curious: based on the name, I've wondered if Ho-Hos (chocolate cake, spread with something similar or identical to the white cremey filling that's used in Twinkies, rolled up, and coated in a chocolatey glaze) were a seasonal treat at one time. Can anyone shed some light? MelissaH

The one I'm not quite sure of is mint with ANY and EVERY dessert. Apart from that, I adore the chocolate/raspberry combo (the taste of visiting my grandfather: those chocolate-covered raspberry jelly rings), and I also enjoy chocolate with orange (but it's gotta be real orange, nothing fake that tastes like something I once made in organic chem lab). Hazelnut and chocolate (with or without raspberry) is also terrific in my book, although not terribly original. My husband's enamored of chocolate with lemon, after tasting something like that during a tour of a Las Vegas chocolate factory many moons ago, but I'm not quite sure I'd want to try and duplicate it at home. One of my favorite herb teas is mint with lemongrass. I've occasionally made brewed tea into sugar syrup, and mixed that with lemon juice to make a sorbet. (This is one dessert for which the ubiquitous sprig-of-mint garnish would be appropriate!) MelissaH

I'm showing my geeky side here...but is there any kind of a kitchen vacuum device that you could use to put the jam under vacuum and just suck away the water? That way you wouldn't have the heat. (Don't know about other non-water components of jam flavor, whether you'd suck them away or if they'd be lost during the cooking down process anyway.) MelissaH Proud to be a geek!

Ah, thanks for pointing me to the workaround, Klary. I actually had a whole Web site of our vacation. I'm still working on getting that posted after losing access to the server it was on. Once I get it functioning again, I'll post a link here because it's fairly heavy on the food content. (I hope you don't mind that it includes some time in Belgium as well.) In the meantime, here's a picture of a group dedicated to preserving traditional Zeeuwse dress, dancing, and cooking in the process of making babbelaars. To make the candy, sugar, water, white vinegar, and butter (don't know the proportions) were boiled together to about the soft crack (I think) stage. Then the candy was scraped out onto an oiled slab of marble, allowed to cool momentarily, and then pulled by hand. The woman on the right of the picture was in charge of the cooking, and the man was teaching the girl how to pull the candy. The girl was wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves like you'd see on someone washing dishes: a handicap to help the rookie, who hadn't yet developed her asbestos fingers! When the candy had been pulled enough (whatever that meant), the puller rolled it into a rope about as thick as a Twizzler, and used the back of a butter knife to mark it into pieces. When the candy had cooled and hardened, a quick tap with the flat of the knife broke the pieces apart from one another. We got to taste a piece each, and I remember it as being quite yummy, not too far from a Werther's hard candy.

I like to use the leftover poaching liquid to sweeten tea. MelissaH

Klary, This is one of my favorite threads of all-time. If you're taking requests: here's another one that dates back to our cycling vacation of summer 2004: Zeeuwse babbelaars. I'd post a pic from our vacation, but ImageGullet's not cooperating at the moment. MelissaH

You're forgiven. But should you ever find yourself in CNY, bring me a side of their hash browns! Please don't tell me you had your wedding in their castle along with your rehearsal dinner? MelissaH

OMG!!!! Mike's Place is less than a mile from where I used to live! It was always a favorite bike ride restaurant destination: I'd leave the house on my bike, meet the gang wherever we were meeting, we'd do our ride and wind up at wherever our breakfast spot was, and then ride back to our start point (if that's where you'd left a car) or home (usually in my case). I hadn't thought about their hash browns in about two years, and then you had to go bring this up and bring back all kinds of memories. Whaddya have to go do that for? MelissaH

Cook's Illustrated also did a pumpkin cheesecake where they pressed the pumpkin between multiple layers of paper towels, to extract water without cooking it any more than it already is and probably will further be. I've tried it myself, and it's pretty amazing how the paper towels remove water and the pumpkin pretty much peels itself off afterward, with very little sticking. MelissaH

Klary, Your pik in 't potje recipe brought me back to the vacation we took during the summer of 2003, during which my husband and I spent a week riding our tandem bicycle through the roads of Zeeland. Glorious time. One of the discoveries we made on that vacation was vla, bought from the grocery store in a carton like a milk carton. We drank a liter of chocolate vla every day, straight from the carton. And then we cycled back into Belgium and it disappeared from the store shelves. Do you have a recipe for vla? Or is it something that everyone buys from the store? MelissaH

interesting. What about parsley root? Is that available in the US? you don't see that in the markets over here very often nowadays, but it used to be a key ingredient in Dutch cooking - soups, stews etc. ← Occasionally, and depending on which supermarket I shop at, I'll see bunches of parsley with their roots still attached. Ditto on cilantro root.

Hi everyone, The chili cook-off is coming at a good time. Our local college hockey team has a game this Saturday afternoon at 3 PM, which is a rare event since most games don't start till 7 or so. But the timing is perfect for inviting the buddies we sit with back to our place afterward for dinner. And the plan is to have a crockpot full of chili cooking for us through the day, and ready to eat after the game. But what goes with chili? I'm particularly looking for things that are either quick, or can be done in advance. (Or both!) We're planning to do cornbread in some form; I'm hoping that we might be able to do that ahead of time and then just reheat it right before serving. (Our backup plan: just have someone bring a bag of tortilla chips.) We're also thinking maybe salad, since that's also easy and quick, and someone else could bring that. Any other suggestions for sides to go with chili? And I'm particularly stumped about dessert. Is there a classic dessert to follow chili? Or should I just whip up a batch of brownies in the morning? Make sure I have ice cream in the freezer? (Or hope someone else offers to bring something?) Thanks, MelissaH

Chufi, Thanks again for starting this thread and posting all the wonderful pictures to go with your delicious-sounding recipes. To answer a question that you asked: I've never seen bunches of celery leaves for sale in the U.S. In fact, right now it's hard for me to even find bunches of celery with many leaves left on them! For some reason, the stores around here tend to de-leaf their celery, and sell them denuded, which is a shame because I love to include celery leaves in my soups. (During farmer's market season, I can easily get celery with some leaves. But farmer's market season doesn't usually scream "SOUP!!!" the way now does.) MelissaH

YMMV. I always had problems keeping milk in glass bottles good: see this thread. MelissaH

Chufi, I'll add my echo of thanks for starting this thread. You mentioned that winters are not as icy as they used to be. What, exactly, would a typical January day be like? Rainy? What sorts of clothing do people wear these days to stay warm and dry? (Yes, there's an ulterior motive here: I'll be journeying to your part of the world in early January, and I'd like to blend in rather than stand out thanks to entirely American outerwear!) Is Dutch cooking best eaten at home, or can it be experienced properly as a traveler? If I make some of your recipes, will I be dreadfully disappointed when I get there myself in person? MelissaH

My MIL makes and then cans her own apple pie filling. She uses Northern Spy apples, but if Haralsons are a good pie apple, I see no reason why it wouldn't work for that. I don't have her recipe here at work, so I can't provide more details. MelissaH

Last weekend my husband and I took a little trip. We spent one night in Kingston, ON, at the Frontenac Club Inn, a delightful B&B, and were served baked apples as the first course of our breakfast. We asked, and were told they used (unpeeled) Honeycrisp apples: they're apparently somewhat rare in that area of Ontario, but they worked well for this. They were filled with a little granola, and I think some maple syrup also. The dregs were great for sopping with bread! MelissaH

I completely agree with that. In fact, if Abra hadn't shared her wonderful choux discovery with me, I'd still be making mediocre cream puffs. ← So what, exactly, is this marvelous discovery of Abra's? MelissaH