MelissaH

That looks like a great save. Do you keep crumble topping in your freezer, or did you make a little just for this apple?

We were given a pot with an insert for our wedding (nearly 20 years ago, eek!) and we use it and love it. We've learned that for boiling stuff in the insert, you can't put in as much water as you think you can. For our pot, that means add water only to the third set of holes from the top, or you'll wind up with water everywhere. I appreciate that I don't need to lift a large pot filled with just-off-the-boil water to the sink, even if it just means turning around. And I love that the pasta water is easily available for finishing sauces without having to remember to do anything. The insert has also been useful for steaming large quantities of vegetables.

Count me in the clothespin cohort. But my clothesline is right outside the kitchen.

Does this mean cooking a batch of bacon in it? And then another batch? And maybe a third batch? My husband always swore that the best way to break in a new set of grill grates (regardless of material) was to make a large batch of burgers, using meat that was no leaner than 80%. Same principle, perhaps?

Didn't someone do exactly that a few years ago when they discovered that some of the meat in IKEA's meatballs came from horses?

We'll cook beans (by conventional methods) in larger batches than we can eat at one go, and then vacuum seal and freeze the leftovers. SV works wonderfully for reheating the leftovers.

If your Wegmans produce goes bad quickly, your stores must have different suppliers than my local Wegmans stores. We've had far greater issues with produce from other supermarkets, which seems to already be on its way out by the time it leaves the store. If you don't like the pre-packed meats, you can always ask at the meat counter if they can cut you a thicker steak. Service is probably what the stores do best. When I get fish, I also ask for a bag of ice, at the stores that have ice makers in the fish department. At other stores, I'll just get an empty plastic bag from the produce area, and get some ice from the drink machine in the cafe. I live an hour away from the nearest Wegmans store, and usually do the week's shopping when I'm in the area for other reasons anyway. I could buy a bag of ice, but that would be total overkill when the only thing I'm getting that really needs the ice is enough fish to be dinner for two. They're happy to do that for me, just like they're happy to tell me which fish came in that day, and let me smell it before they pack it for me to buy. The ice wouldn't be such a big deal if they had a store closer to me. (A small cooler lives in my car, for the perishables I get each week; if I know there's a lot of stuff on my list that needs to stay on ice, I put a larger cooler in the car before I leave home, and either grab some of the ice chunks we keep in the freezer for occasions such as this, if I don't have a lot to do beforehand, or I plan to buy a bag of ice if it's a hot day and there's a long stretch of time between when I leave and when I come home.) I can't speak to the wine, as supermarkets are not allowed to sell wine in NY. But the larger Wegmans stores here (like the flagship stores in each area) have an associated liquor store nearby, usually in the same shopping center, and those all seem to be pretty good in terms of selection and price. The larger Wegmans near us will use separate baggers only on weekends near holidays, when lots of people are buying lots of stuff. I don't find the process to be inefficient, by any stretch, and they cashiers are usually really good at the details: asking you whether you like your bags packed light or heavy, using rubber bands to go around the containers that can pop open (like egg cartons and berry clamshells), putting leakables in plastic before they go in with other stuff, and making sure the bread, eggs, and chips are on the top of the bag. Along that lines, their reusable bags are among the best quality I've seen, able to withstand a heavy load and keep their structural integrity. If you always shop at the same store at about the same time, you'll get to know the cashiers who are generally working then, and can pick one to always visit. They'll get to know who you are, and what you like. (And once that happens, don't hesitate to submit a comment through the website or the app, so they and their manager know how good they are.) Speaking of the app: if you shop at a Wegmans even semi-regularly, it's worth trading a bit of your privacy for the convenience. I love that you can put your shopping list in, and it will then organize it for you by aisle, specific to whatever store you want to shop at. Even if you aren't familiar with the layout of a particular location, it's possible to get in and out with even a reasonably long list in half an hour. The app will give you prices of items at that store, which makes it easy to comparison shop if you're elsewhere and see something that's on your list and also gives you an idea of how much you'll be spending. My husband and I use the same login, so we can both add stuff to our list. We use the item notes for things like produce and deli, to let each other know specific amounts of things to get (half a pound of turkey and a pound of Jarlsberg cheese from the deli, 3 crowns of broccoli this week) if it isn't obvious or if it's different from the norm. And you can have multiple lists: we keep one list that has all the stuff we need for a party we have each year, which gets adjusted as we fine-tune the amount of stuff we need. There's another list for another get-together that happens annually. There's yet another list for the stuff we need to get when our house-sitter comes to stay with the cats if we're away for an extended period. And there's our everyday shopping list. The only thing is that when you have multiple lists, the app can only deal with checking off items on one list at a time. If you switch lists, everything that had been checked gets unchecked. And if you have two people with the same login, you can only have one list active at a time, and items that get checked off on one phone don't show up as checked off on the other person's phone. So if you shop with someone else, designate one person to "drive" the list and check off items. I wish they'd add a store closer to me.

I'm now totally intrigued by these. Any guesses where I'd find them in the USA, at least until @Pan gets his venture up and running? I'm in small-town upstate New York, a 6-hour drive from NYC but within easy reach of online sources.

Do the nurses and others in your department fight with each other to get their shifts alongside you?

I've always had better luck cutting a head into florets before roasting. It doesn't look as impressive as the whole head, but it also cooks more evenly and is easier to serve. (Toss the florets in a bit of oil with salt and whatever spices you want. I typically do about 400 °F, tossing and turning every 10 minutes ago until they're done. Exact cook time depends on how ambitious you were with your knife.)

Lamb is definitely not common in my area. It's not easy to find in supermarkets: Wegmans will carry specific cuts of organic Australian lamb, but anything other than that, good luck unless it's the week leading up to Easter. And even the non-organic lamb is exorbitantly expensive, compared to either beef or pork (or even chicken, which is <ahem!> a bird of a different feather completely). There is a small local grocery store that started out as a butcher and later expanded to carry other foods, but is still best known as a butcher; I can get frozen ground lamb in 1-pound packages there any time, and other stuff by placing an order. But even from them, lamb is still expensive. One year, we got together with friends and purchased a lamb from a local farmer. It was delicious. But those friends moved away across the country, so sharing animals is no longer practical. We have another friend, but need to wait till she gets back from her year-long sabbatical in Sweden before we can discuss meat and sharing. As far as goat: I've only seen it at some (but not all) of the Wegmans stores. But next time I'm in the Price Rite in Syracuse, I'll take a look there. They're definitely not catering to an affluent population, but they have things that nobody else (not even Wegmans) has. They're currently my go-to for all purchases Caribbean, so they may have goat available.

Different regional ideals are a problem everywhere! My husband and I grew up about 700 km apart from each other, and we can't even agree on what characteristics macaroni and cheese *should* have! So we specify: are we making it my way, his way, or the way out of the blue box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?

What's suggested in the book (at least the original version; haven't checked the updated version) is to squeeze a large piping tip so the base becomes an oval, and use that as a cookie cutter to make the bases. It's been a while since I bought nilla wafers; have they been downsized?

I was thinking that they'd be better with chocolate faces rather than royal icing, and with a chocolate coating rather than an adulterated glaze. Should I plan to prebake any cookie bases? Or is there something commercial that would work equally well?

And for me, dipping is easier to deal with than shell molding, not least because I don't need to have tons of chocolate melted in big bowls. (And since I still lack an EZ Temper, that's kind of a big deal for me. When I win the lottery, it's on my list.) At the workshop, I plan to do lots of dipping. I'm contemplating a slight variation on these hedgehogs. And I think my husband would like to play with hard candy and other sugary stuff.

It depends on the cookbook author. Sometimes they'll include how they measure their flour, usually in the beginning of the book. In that case, I'll weigh a cup of flour the way they do, a few times, and take an average. If not, I generally also go with 120 g but take notes and adjust as needed. What drives me absolutely bonkers is when there are obvious rounding errors. For instance, a recipe calls for 4 tablespoons/55 g extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for shaping and drizzling. Step 2 of the recipe starts, “Add 2 tablespoons/30 g of the olive oil….” Fine. But then Step 6 says, “Use a pastry brush to paint the focaccia with 2 tablespoons/30 g olive oil….” For those of you keeping track, that’s a total of 4 tablespoons and 60 g, but the recipe says 55 g in the ingredients list! Every single one of my four digital scales displays individual grams (or even portions thereof), so there's not real reason to round. For now, I'm not even going to discuss the Ottolenghi Sweet debacle. Whenever possible, I prefer to buy cookbooks printed for the country in which they were initially intended, if I understand the language. But I can't do that with Ottolenghi's books without paying a small fortune, so I'm stuck with the American printings, errors and all.

I really enjoyed this.

I prefer mass measurements to volume measurements. But if more than one is given, I really need them to be correct and equivalent!

I've seen freeze dried fruit at my local Aldi.

A friend was just describing to me how she had this happen every time she put a whole chicken directly on the floor of the pot. She's since started to put the bird on the trivet instead of directly on the floor, and hasn't seen the message since.

This. You say so.

What's wrong with bringing wine, especially if you make it clear that the wine is NOT for now?

Please put us down for two baguettes. Thank you, Rodney!

And if there's a spare baguette or two around on Sunday morning, I'd be happy to purchase them and bring them home!

I don't know about the other, but I enjoyed reading the flatbreads book.