MelissaH

This sounds, to me, like an argument to buy a portion of an animal (or a whole animal) and request a custom butchering job.

I'm definitely thinking sandwich. Or in an appetizer: either as part of a baked brie (spread on top of a small round, wrap in puff pastry, and bake till the pastry is cooked; serve with crackers) or as the topping to a savory cheesecake. Or is it potent enough that you could add water and turn it into a bowl-at-a-time of soup?

Give it time.

Are ticks and the diseases they carry a concern for you? Our county's health department just issues their annual cautions to hunters about rabies and Lyme disease; they said that most hunters will never see a rabid deer, but if you're a lucky hunter you will see ticks on the deer you get and you should be vigilant about checking for them on yourself as well.

I regularly use my manual pasta maker alone. It isn't hard, as long as you aren't trying to make noodles that are 10+ feet long.

I could see that the other two might have culinary uses, but I'm not sure about donkey skin gelatin sugar. What would someone do with it? Would the sugar be medicinal, or is it the equivalent of all the recipes that hide vegetables in kid-friendly foods?

This brings up a topic I've wondered about for a little while. Many vegetables will float, even if you manage to seal them without adding air. I perpetually have a problem when I do carrots, as their density is apparently not much different from water so if you trap the least bit of air in the bag, up it goes. How do you all deal with things that float? I've contemplated putting my sealed food bags inside another ziplock bag, along with a few good-sized washers from the hardware store. My husband proposed adding some large teflon-coated stir-bars from the chemical supply directly to the food bag. At times I've resorted to just using a rack, a potato masher, or another utensil to wedge the bag down. I'm not happy with any of these solutions. So, vegetable bathers, what do you do?

Agreed. Ten years ago, about a week before Christmas, my FIL died. The worst part of it for me was that I was effectively barred from the kitchen. It wasn't that there was a ton of food brought to the house, because that wasn't really the case. The funeral took place at the country church, and the lunch after the service that the church ladies prepared and served was non-descript, but I don't recall that any of the leftovers came home with us. The usual two family Christmas get-togethers, for my MIL's family and my FIL's family, both took place in the days following the funeral during the week leading up to the holiday, as they always have. There was a lot of food around, but people weren't specifically bringing it to the mourners as part of a timeless tradition. I wouldn't say that I felt unloved or uncared-for, exactly, with all the family around, but I certainly felt uncomforted and at loose ends. That was the pits, for a number of reasons.

Our Thanksgiving weekend here in the U.S. was one of losses present and soon to come. For the holiday Thursday, we did as we've done the last several years and joined our next-door neighbors and other friends. But this is probably going to be the last year when both of them are at home—he's been slipping badly over the last year or so, both physically and mentally. (It doesn't help that he's a diabetic who loves sweets, doesn't care to control his blood sugar, and takes a passive-aggressive stance with his family over it.) Nights are particularly bad: after sitting with us at the dinner table for a few hours, we moved to the living room, and he looked at my husband and asked quite seriously, "What's your name? Where do you live? What do you do?" We've lived next door for over 13 years. After he went to bed, she told us that she's been meeting with people to get their affairs in order for when he can no longer live at home, and that time will come when she can't entertain. His 79th birthday will come at the end of December, right around the time they usually host a big holiday party, but I'm beginning to wonder if that will happen this year. On Saturday, we and another friend drove into the Berkshires, to stay with his dad and watch a few hockey games. Until recently, both our friend's parents lived in the house, but his mom got to the point (we didn't ask why, but we think it might be a wicked combination of Parkinson and dementia) this fall where she could no longer stay at home, even with skilled help. So she was moved to a facility in Texas, near where our friend's brother and family live. Our friend's father is a meat-and-potatoes type who has apparently never been much of a cook, but he definitely hasn't been eating well since then. So we brought along our Instant Pot, our knives, and the traveling kitchen box, did a bit of homework beforehand and a bit of shopping when we got into town, and made a quick pot of stoofvlees (that's the Dutch term; in French it would be carbonnade; in English it's a Belgian beef stew) for dinner, which we served in traditional Belgian style with fries and salad. I'd made a chocolate stout bundt cake, with a beer ganache glaze to use up the rest of the beer, and that was dessert. And then for Sunday lunch, we did peppers and onions and Italian sausages and pasta. I think Dad ate three servings of each, and there was about a serving of leftovers of each too. The whole house seemed, to me, to have an air of sadness about it, but our friend said that it had been months since he'd heard his dad laugh as much as he did for the day and a half we were all there. All of this is a long way of saying that sometimes having other people around can help, even if you aren't sure about it yourself. Hugs to all of you. It makes me feel better, even if you aren't much of a hug person.

I hope the sink is larger than the one we used when we did our kitchen reno. After a while, my back went into full rebellion because so many things were large enough that they needed to get washed in the bathtub. I don't think the Instant Pot existed when we renovated, but it's going to be a great tool for you.

I've just gotta say that the thought of eating raw, uncured liver of any kind makes me say "Ewwwww!" Even if you grate it frozen, the little bits are unlikely to stay frozen for very long, and instead melt into little bits of goopy raw liver. That said, please try it and let us all know if it works, or if it's any different than eating raw liver in any other form.

Is there a pH component? (As in, any difference between using Ca(OH)2 and CaCl2?)

I never watched the show, either. This was in the first book in the series, in Chapter 2, called "Winter Days". It's snowy enough that Pa can take a sled to help him bring home the bear that he hunts. At the bottom of page 29 of my edition, a paperback from a boxed set, the part about the butter starts: From there, it describes grating the carrot, steeping it in the cream, straining it out (and then snacking on the carrot, shared evenly between Laura and Mary), churning the cream into butter, rinsing the butter, molding it into pretty pats with a strawberry on top, and finally drinking the buttermilk.

I'm definitely not getting one. But I am reminded of the scene in Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, where Ma is making butter. She wants it to be yellower, so she grates a carrot (on a grater Pa made for her by punching holes in the bottom of an old bucket with a nail) and steeps that in the cream before she churns it. So the idea of infusing cream before it gets turned into butter is definitely not new!

What did you think of the cui? Was it more difficult to eat than rabbit (or any other meat), or did you just need to turn your brain off completely? Would you eat it again if it was presented to you? Would you specifically search it out?

I was fine with immersion blenders too, until I got my Vitamix.

To each, his or her own. I wouldn't put tile in a kitchen: it's too hard. Tile makes my feet and back hurt, when I've been standing on it for a long time. Tile is cold underfoot, unless you happen to have underfloor heating installed. I like my Marmoleum, still, after 10 years. (If you or others tend to wear spike heels in your kitchen, YMMV.)

Do you think you'll take it then, if you think you'll be doing this sort of thing again?

Probably not reusable. I got the email also, but my code is different.

The thumbprint dough is the only cookie dough that gave me a problem. I've made a couple of other doughs (no report here because they're quiescing in my freezer still) and had no issue with them acting dry or otherwise weird.

They're seasonal at the supermarkets around me.

Usually, the point of malting barley (or any other grain) is to start to turn the starches into sugars.

Bump. We have a surfeit of celery sticks, left over from a party. Any new ideas of things to do with it? I'm not a fan of eating raw celery in large quantities, although a little is fine in something like a waldorf salad or chicken salad or other varieties of the salads I think of as the types you might serve in a crunchy shell to a ladies' luncheon. Alas, mid-November is not really salady-type weather in upstate NY, and I'm a different sort of lady who lunches.

Sugar, or lack thereof, is the first place I'd look. A few years ago, I noticed that Thomas' English muffins didn't toast as brown as they used to. The change happened about the same time as when they removed high-fructose corn syrup from their recipe. I wondered if they didn't replace the HFCS with any other form of sugar, thus leading to the reduced browning in the toaster.

I'm wondering about that. I'm using Wegmans store brand butter, which is usually plenty good enough for most things. (Other store brands of butter are not sufficient for pie crusts, I've found, but the Wegmans butter does fine.) I might need to step up to Land O Lakes, or even a step higher to the expensive European ultra-high-fat butter. Or try using a bit more egg, perhaps?