MelissaH

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?

We, too, enjoyed a dinner at Revel. That was about four years ago, on our last trip to Seattle. Apparently, the gang from Top Chef had been in just a couple of days before we were there. I no longer remember the specifics of what we ate, but I remember enjoying it tremendously.

Rose Levy Beranbaum fans and pastry lovers: the Pie and Pastry Bible Kindle book is now available for $3.99.

You obviously aren't left handed, and have never lived with anyone who is. About time something was made for us!

Could you please tell us more about this book? What sort of information is inside? How would you expect to use it?

I just gave in and ordered a copy of Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss from my indie bookstore. (I cried on their shoulders. They understood.) I'd hesitated to order it because I wanted to look at it first, to see if it was going to duplicate much of my library. Yesterday I was in Rochester and stopped into a Barnes & Noble (mainly to use their bathroom, as neither of the 7-Eleven locations where I stopped had a customer restroom or a Coke Slurpee available). They had a couple of copies, so I leafed through it. (They no longer have comfy chairs stationed about the store either. Boo to them!) And I drew the conclusion that it's worth buying: it has enough recipes different from others that I already have, which I could see myself making, it gives me mass measurements, it doesn't overload me on either evil raisins or the anise/licorice/fennel flavor I hate (and in many cases it specifies that if you aren't a raisin person you can omit them without a problem!), and a bunch of the recipes are ones that play right into my husband's preferred spice dessert flavor palette. And it was just plain fun to read, with headnotes for each recipe to give some historical and personal background as well as production notes. It isn't a fancy-looking book, and doesn't have a dust jacket. There are photos, although I'm more of a word person than a picture person. The notes on where to find special ingredients don't make anything sound out of range, even for me here in small-town middle of nowhere upstate NY. I expect my copy to arrive in less than a week.

I might be way off base here, but it's hard to tell from a picture. How similar are those to the Korean rice cakes called dduk or some other spelling that may or may not be along those lines? I can buy them ready-made at the Korean supermarket in Syracuse. If they're at all similar, this would be a super-easy comfort food type of dish.

That's smaller than mine. Mine has a 14 cup bowl, but nesting inside it are two smaller bowls, the smallest of which is 4 cups. I'm curious if smaller might be better than bigger for some of these cookie recipes.

This probably won't help, but when we make that kind of food, we usually do so when it's cold enough out to either stash the pot on the deck, or (if we won't be around to keep an eye on it) stick it downstairs in the garage, where the winter temperature is not far off from fridge temperature. When it's warmer, if it's something that can be divided into smaller portions, we'll do that (bigger surface area:volume ratio means faster cooling). And if necessary, we'll buy bags of ice.

@FrogPrincesse, how small is small for your food processor?