MelissaH

I, too, like Stretch-Tite. I can find it in all of my local supermarkets, and it was also available at a BJ's near me (last time I was in one, anyway; my membership expired in January and I didn't renew).

The times I was subjected to it, or to the old-fashioned giant shredded wheat biscuits, I felt like I should be mooing or neighing or baaing as I ate it.

ANYTHING beats Weetabix, any time!

Could someone please type a translation of the recipe into English? If anyone makes it, include your testing notes!

Might it be worth checking out some of the other companies that ship cakes, to see what they do and how they deal with the challenge? I know Momofuku Milk Bar ships cakes across the United States.

My MIL still also uses one of those Mouli-Julienne gizmos!

Yup. I'll salt the beer.

We will sometimes do brats sous vide, in beer of course. Because of the beer, this is probably the one thing (other than eggs, which come pre-packaged) that we use a ziplock bag for rather than vacuum sealing.

Ohhh, you have Dano's beet salad recipe? I'm envious!

I have yet to see a leek I'd be happy to eat without a thorough cleaning.

Might a commercial model be more efficient than two standard dishwashers? IIRC, @andiesenji had a commercial model for a while, and she said it was effective and lightning fast but very loud while it ran. However, if it only takes 3 minutes to run, you might still come out ahead.

This is a question for @liuzhou and others of you who speak multiple languages well, or who live somewhere that the language spoken is not the first one you learned. When you make your shopping list, do you make them in your native language, in the language commonly spoken where you'll be doing the shopping, or does it vary day to day, list to list? I know that my aunt, who is an American but married to a Frenchman and a Paris resident for nearly 40 years now, still makes her shopping lists in English, except for a few specific items where the best way to describe it is with a specific French term. (Liuzhou, I'm particularly intrigued with the "toilet water" on your list, which you wrote as a transliterated version of the Chinese word.)

I am so spoiled. Because I'm heading to Syracuse about once a week anyway, I do most of my shopping at one or another Wegmans as long as I'm down that way. (I dislike the one big supermarket left in my town.) And Wegmans has an absolutely terrific app, which interfaces also with their website. I put my shopping list into the app. When you type in an item and say search, it comes back with a list of items that they stock. For some items, as you type, it gives you suggestions, and even separates them by store department. So you can choose the size/brand/package of exactly the item you want, and the number to go on your list. You can even add notes to individual items, as well as notes to the list as a whole. (Sometimes, if there's an item we need for a special recipe, we might note something to the effect of "For making X. Do not buy if Y is not available." There are a few things that we like specific brands of, but other items where any brand is fine and it's easier to compare prices while you look at the store shelf. I generally always put a box of cornflakes on the list, but include a note that cornflakes is shorthand for "whatever breakfast cereal sounds good this week". And for some things like produce and deli, it's easier to make a note of exactly how much of whatever you want.) It remembers which items you've bought in the past, so when you search you can specify to see all items that match your search term, or just your items that you've previously purchased. And you can keep multiple lists: we have one list we use for the everyday shopping, which gets added to and subtracted from as needed; another list for our once-a-year meal for the women's hockey team, and a couple of other special purpose lists, including one of things to look for at Trader Joe's, where many of the items are similar to things we can find at Wegmans, and the things that aren't exactly alike can get noted and anything else gets added with a list note. As long as my husband and I use the same login information, we see the same lists and can both update. But here's where the Wegmans app really shines: it makes the shopping super-easy. You select a store to use as "your store" and the app organizes your list for you. It's set up to geolocate your phone as well, so if you're very close to a store that isn't your store (like in the parking lot close), it asks if you'd like to change your store to be the one you're near. Every item has a location for that store, whether it's a general section like Produce or an aisle such as 12B, and the list is set up in a logical order for walking through. And if there's something not available at that specific store, it puts those items at the end of the list with a Not Available location. It tells you what your items should cost at that store, and gives you a total cost for your entire list. I can walk into the largest stores with a long list, and be in and out in 20 minutes flat and know that I haven't missed anything. As you walk through the store and get your items, you check them off on the list which grays the items out, so it's easy to see what's still left to get. When your list is complete, it gives you the options to uncheck everything, delete everything and clear the list, or just leave it with items checked off. (You can also always uncheck everything, or delete everything or just the checked items, as you wish.) And the app also includes your keytag barcode for the specials, so you don't have to remember to grab that when you shop. It's so convenient that it's pretty much spoiled me for any other way of shopping, especially when my time is limited. I'm a little uneasy about giving the store that much information about me, but then I remember that most of that information they'd get anyway via my keytag. The one thing that isn't quite perfect is that the checking off of items is only on the local device. So on the rare occasions that my husband and I shop together, one or the other of us "drives" the shopping list, checking off items as we get them, and then making sure to clear those items off the list. Of course, when we do the big hockey meal shopping trip, we each have a list to drive from.

Well, I have the ingredients for both the recipe from on line and Kerry's pie recipe. Things are busy around here this weekend, but I'm hoping to have a chance to try one or the other on Monday! <gosh, what did I start?>

I'm still having trouble cooking my zoodles and getting something that isn't mush. How are you all cooking yours, so they actually hold up to any sauce at all?

Dunno about yellow split pea soup, but a friend's mother (he was one of my bridesmaids at my wedding, and I was his wife's bridesmaid and my husband was his best man at theirs) is of French Canadian background. She told me (at the wedding, in fact!) about French Canadian pea soup, which is made from whole (not split) yellow peas. So every time we travel to Quebec, or to Plattsburgh, NY (which is apparently close enough to Quebec), I make a point to pick up a pound or two of whole yellow peas to mail off.

To the list of Kindle book deals, I'll add Tacos: Recipes and Provocations by Alex Stupak. $2.99 for me right now. I'm a US Prime member. (I've been staring at that book for a while, wondering if it would ever go dirt cheap, and I guess it just did!)

I usually take one of my sieves, line it with a coffee filter, and pour in as much yogurt as will fit to the top of the coffee filter.

If a sandwich has almond butter or cashew butter, it isn't a PB&J anymore; it has become an AB&J or a CB&J. Does anyone else remember that Goober Grape stuff, sold as a jar that had both PB and grape J, and you could see stripes of each through the jar? I always thought it looked cool, but I can't tell you how it tastes because my mom never bought it. And then one year, early in elementary school, the reader included a few recipes, and we got to make them in class one day. The two that I remember were apple juice heated with those little cinnamon hearts, and a sandwich made of (drum roll, please) PB and grape J mixed together, then spread on bread. I made my sandwich (in the art room rather than our classroom because that's where we had tables that could easily be wiped down), and ate it but didn't like it a whole lot because the texture of a proper PB&J sandwich was destroyed by mixing the PB and the J. I never again asked my parents to buy a jar of Goober Grape.

I've made the (in)famous plum torte a couple of times, but I was underwhelmed by it, especially given the hype. It's been long enough since I made one that I no longer recall why it underwhelmed me. But with the cherries, this looks completely different from what I remember. I am going to have to give this version a try...after the Thursday night market when I get more cherries! Thank you, @ElainaA, for posting it, and for the rest of you for the discussion and memory jogging.

Don't keep me hanging with the icebox cake book! Is there anything inside that vaguely resembles what I'd heard about a carlota de limon?

The bread: something I buy. Homemade bread never tastes quite right for this. If the bread's been in my house more than a couple of days, it gets toasted slightly. PB: Jif Extra-Crunchy, on one side of the bread. If the bread is toasted, spread the PB on while the toast is still slightly warm so it melts just a little bit. J: my favorite is homemade strawberry freezer jam. My other favorite is homemade concord grape jelly. My second favorite is homemade cherry jelly. My other second favorite is homemade concord grape jam. (See a theme here?) The J goes on the other piece of bread, AFTER the PB gets spread on the first piece. Slightly melted PB good, slightly melted J not so good. The sandwich gets put together, and then cut on a diagonal. Fluffernutters are a completely different species!

That looks divine! I might need that recipe as I, too, live in U-Pick cherry country.

We've frozen watermelon puree, nothing added, portioned into bags and vacuum sealed.

My midwestern family-in-law have any number of desserts that use Cool Whip or other brands of whipped topping: dirt cake, Ho-Ho bars, strawberry pretzel salad, and the like. Pumpkin pie always gets a glob of whipped topping on top. And I would rather go without than have to eat the fake stuff. One reason I think the classic icebox cake, with the chocolate wafers and whipped cream, works so well is that the moisture in the whipped cream softens the cookies, and the cookies absorb the moisture so the whipped cream doesn't look or taste like it's weeping. And now that I think about Kerry's pie filling, I can see that icebox cakes and many pies are close culinary cousins. The difference is that in a pie, you want the shell to stay crisp, whereas in an icebox cake, you'd prefer the filling to start out maybe a little wetter so the cookies soften.