MelissaH

This definitely strikes me as a unit conversion issue. This is the sort of thing a cookbook editor is typically supposed to catch!

Other than in salads, the two most common ways I'll use spinach are in a soufflé (I use a slight mod of Julia Child's recipe) or in a Chicago-style deep dish pizza.

I'll help!

We remodeled our kitchen about 11 years ago, and put in a 36" dual-fuel range (GE Monogram) with 6 burners. We wanted something with minimal electronics. This particular stove also has 6 equivalent burners, which is nice because it means you can do anything anywhere (rather than, say, needing to cook pasta on one particular burner, or do something delicate on a different particular burner). We thought going to 8 burners would have been excessive, but we also knew that 4 burners left us feeling pinched for stove space at times. And we prefer the flexibility of having 6 burners that can be used as burners, or hold a grill pan or griddle as needed. We considered a second oven, and then realized that we didn't really need it. That became especially true once we got the Breville XL toaster oven.

And if there's any reason why your favorite pro gear wouldn't be feasible in a home environment.

Are you a fish-eating crowd? What about doing a side of salmon? The turkey is my least-favorite part of the Thanksgiving dinner. The last couple of years, we've deconstructed a bird à la Kenji, and cooked the boneless skinless breasts SV, braised the leg quarters in red wine, used the bones, wings, and giblets to make the broth that becomes gravy, and (the best part!) salted the skin from the breast, sandwiched it between parchment and sheet pans, and baked it into a large sheet of crispy turkey skin that we fight over.

I think you might be thinking of the Dutch speculaas (think windmill cookies), as opposed to the Belgian speculoos (Biscoff). The two are similar, but definitely not the same. Stella Parks, aka Bravetart, did a Biscoff clone that your spice mix will be exactly right for: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/06/homemade-biscoff-recipe.html If you don't have a homebrew store nearby to get the Belgian brown sugar, go with what you've got, and you'll still make a really good cookie.

Except that around my parts, you can't just carry off a deer that you hit with a car. You need to wait for the police or warden to come by—their concern is poaching.

How long does the tart need to bake? And how much should it be cooled before you serve it? You may be able to get away with preparing all the components ahead of time, possibly even rolling out the dough for the crust and fitting it into the pan, and then putting it all together and baking it as soon as you get home. As long as it doesn't need to cool completely before you cut into it, nobody's going to mind if you set a timer and bring it to the table, and when it goes off, get up to rescue the tart from the oven. Alternately, take @JeanneCake's suggestion, which sounds like a perfect solution to me.

Was the roasted corn tea like the roasted corn and roasted barley tea that Korean restaurants serve? Or was it just corn? (I don't see anything else that you ate leaning towards Korea; is this indicative of your choices, or reflective of the menu in general?)

We have a 36" GE Monogram dual-fuel range with 6 burners. We opted for that layout, rather than 4 burners with wither a grill or griddle in the middle. I believe all the other high-end manufacturers offer the same choice of configurations. More than once, we've had all 6 burners going at the same time, with 6 different pots.

Depends entirely on your sous chef's relationship to you!

Beautiful pie! Did your grapes have seeds? I'm not overly fond of eating grape seeds, and have wondered for a while how to best deal with them in an application such as this that requires the grapes to be left whole, rather than run through a food mill to get rid of the seeds.

Every mushroom is edible once.

@gfweb is spot-on. Bugs would be better than raisins. Raisinettes are godawful because unless you look closely, you don't realize that they aren't chocolate-covered peanuts. Raisins are evil.

Byrne Dairy, which is local to the CNY area and makes the Aldi cream that @DiggingDogFarm found, does both ultra-pasteurized and non-UP. When I need cream, I usually buy directly from a Byrne Dairy store, and get the non-UP (with the much much shorter use-by date).

Anything with raisins in it might as well go into the xmas stocking of the bad boys and girls instead of coal. At least the coal would help keep you warm.

I am not a gardener. I can kill mint, with ease. But earlier today, I committed the absurd act of plucking a ripe Yellow Pear tomato off its vine from the pot on our deck, and noted that there are still probably a dozen or more green versions of all sizes still there, as well as some flowers. There's also an unripe Brandywine, which may or may not be able to progress beyond green. This on the shore of Lake Ontario, in mid-October.

And you bothered to go back across the ocean in between? (Unless you mean Paris, Ontario?)

There are actually a couple of different versions. We like the thicker one especially for cutting boards, because even if your board is slightly warped or cupped, you still get good contact. It's a thicker version of the non–heavy duty version. A little bit of cushioning wouldn't be a bad thing for bottles, either.

I've been reading Restaurant Man by Joe Bastianich. I'm about halfway through it, and he doesn't come across as a likable character to me, more like a Bourdain-style bad boy without the charm. Whether this is actually how he is IRL or if it's a persona he adopted because he thought it would sell the book, I don't know. But at this point, I have zero interest in eating at his restaurants or meeting him. I'm currently debating whether it's worth finishing the book.

Definitely go to the Tenement Museum. It's become my new favorite museum in NYC. But be aware that admission is only by guided tour—and they fill up. So plan ahead, and book on line for the tour and/or neighborhood walk that you want. While you're in the neighborhood, the Museum of Chinese in America is also worth a visit. And there are plenty of places nearby to get a nice meal.

Ruth Reichl's My Kitchen Year is $1.99 on Kindle, US Prime. This is one book where it's helpful to have a tablet rather than an e-ink device, as the photographs are lovely.

Chris, do you think the pretzels work better than the normal version where they get a bath before going in the oven? (Is the modernist version actually an improvement, or just different?)

I don't think so. But for our general munching needs, the Delhaize store brand are more than adequate, and also cheaper than Lotus brand.