MelissaH

Our supermarkets will do this. And if you want a whole case of something, they'll often give you a discount on the order of 10%.

My sister always says no to ice cream. She likes other sweets just fine.

Here's the recipe we used for the braised turkey leg quarters, from Serious Eats.

I live in one of them. My parents live in another. My MIL lives in a third. Go into any of the nearby stores that sell wine and ask for shaoxing, and nobody's heard of it.

Nothing to add, per se, as I work from home. But once upon a time when I worked in an office that had a toaster oven in the kitchen, I brought in some chocolate chip cookie dough balls from my freezer. I baked them mid-morning, so they'd be ready for a snack over a meeting. You wouldn't believe the number of officemates who came out of the woodwork, people who usually didn't have much to say to me—or maybe you would!

I'll ask my husband, as he was the one in charge of that.

Andie, I might need to try doing that. I bet it would also be good this time of year, with the last of the fresh tomatoes.

Last year, we did our best-ever turkey, albeit one that won't work if you absolutely require a whole bird presentation. The breast meat got cut off the bone, tied together yin-yang style to make a more or less continuous circumference cylinder, and cooked SV. The leg quarters were braised, and the braising liquid made some mighty tasty gravy. And the skin got salted, sandwiched between two half-sheet pans, and roasted into a delicious crispy sheet that was way too easy to eat way too much of. For years, we've cooked our stuffing in a crockpot, so disassembling the bird isn't an issue. For the last several years, we've celebrated Tgiving with our next door neighbors and their family and friends-who-might-as-well-be-family, and it turns into a festival of side dishes. It changes every year, but we always bring at least one vegetarian side and homemade dinner rolls. We do our own turkey some other weekend. If this remains our new tradition, I'm fine with it.

I'd just note that with all these crunchy "keeper" cookies, make sure to package them to keep out humidity. This might be a case where I'd add some silica gel packets, or other dessicants, to keep the cookies from picking up humidity and getting soggy and gross.

You're welcome, @Anna N!

I wonder if you pre-smashed it, you'd wind up with a hard lump that you would just have to smash again, unless you sealed it perfectly airtight.

I think we have a box of each of the two lump sugars in the above post in our pantry. My husband was intrigued by them at the Asian grocery and they weren't expensive, so he grabbed them. They're both still unopened because neither of us has much of a clue how to best use them!

How are each of these sugars used? Would your grandmother look cross-eyed at you if you used, say, red slice sugar instead of ice sugar in a dish? Does the sugar cane juice get fermented (and distilled) or is it always drunk fresh? I'm fascinated by all things sweet, especially from a place where historically there weren't many ovens as I think of them.

Now cheap (US $2.99) on Amazon.com: the Kindle edition of Joanne Chang's Flour, Too. I have and use this book; it has not only recipes for baked sweets, but also other stuff. I loved the lamb sandwich from this!

Costco moved into my part of New York a couple of years ago. I'd been in stores in CO and AZ, and liked those stores better than either BJ's or Sam's (each of which I've had memberships to at various times). But there's only one Costco in the Syracuse area and one in Rochester, the two nearby cities I visit on a semi-regular basis. And neither of those stores is in a part of town where I regularly go for other things (unlike at least one of the BJ's in either). I did finally get to visit the Syracuse Costco with friends who had a membership. I was there specifically because I'd heard they had good deals on lamb, which is otherwise considered a specialty item and is therefore difficult to find and expensive around here. I did, in fact, find a very nice leg of lamb at a much more reasonable price elsewhere in the area. I wish those friends hadn't moved across the country, because I still haven't found enough else that would make it worth getting a membership of our own.

Candy "sushi"? We've been known to do this by making rice krispy treats i a very thin layer (pressed between two silpats and half sheet pans), using a fruit roll-up as the "nori", and making liberal use of Swedish Fish.

We haven't done a portion of a bovine but we have done a pig and a lamb. We split both of the above with friends. The one thing I'd suggest is that if possible, make very clear the sort of butchering you want (how thick do you want the pork chops cut? would you prefer chunks of stew meat or ground lamb? pork belly as a whole piece, or already turned into sliced bacon?). Unfortunately, the friends moved across the country, so we need to find more people to split animals with because our meat consumption isn't enough to warrant a whole quadruped for just the two of us. But with the right sharing partners, I'd do it again in a heartbeat...regardless of the trendy name it may have now.

My favorites are still the peanut, with the regular milk chocolate not far behind. Almond isn't bad, but they're too big. I don't care for the crispy or the pretzel: not enough substance. Anything else falls under the "why bother" category. YMMV, of course!

Kerry is the most evil of the enablers. And she looks so innocent, too!

I'm with you, @NWKate. Cheap white chocolate is a no-go for me, unless it's white chocolate chips in a really dark, not-very-sweet chocolate cookie. I think I'll leave both of these on the shelf.

Are both the boo-terscotch and s'mores varieties unbearably sweet, or is there more to them?

And yet another list. This one's from Eat Your Books. Did I mention that I've had Dorie's Cookies on order from the indie bookstore for months now? Only another 3 weeks till it's released and they can sell it to me! (I'm also really intrigued by the idea behind My Two Souths, comparing, contrasting, and combining the south of India with the southern United States. Of course, it doesn't hurt that these are both cuisines I enjoy.)

@Anna N and @rustwood, in my quick look through the book, I missed the special vinegar recipe. And I definitely agree that substitutions would be welcome, especially for the specialty ingredients that may not be widely available. And my reasoning is not only because specialty ingredients can be hard to find or expensive (the Blis Maple Sherry Vinegar, ordered directly from Blis, would cost $12.95 plus shipping). The other reason to include substitutions using regularly available products is that specialty ingredients may be transient: what happens if Blis stops making this particular vinegar, or the company goes out of business? How would one make the recipe if the vinegar is an endangered species, limited only to the quantities available in various people's pantries? I'm specifically thinking in this case of one of the cakes in Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible. There's a recipe in there that requires a specific candy bar (possibly Hershey's Golden Almond?) that has long ceased to exist. Without this exact candy bar, the recipe has become obsolete. (IIRC, in one of her newer cake books, she published a recipe that was similar to whatever this one was, but doesn't need the special and nonexistent candy bar.) Of course, I now can't find whatever the specific recipe was! Anyway, I prefer my cookbooks to be timeless. I get that any book will be a snapshot of the time in which it was published, as far as what's popular or "in" (both the recipes and the formatting). But when I can't make the recipes because I can't get the ingredients or a reasonable facsimile thereof (for whatever reason), the cookbook loses much of its appeal to me.

There's a book called Preserving with Pomona's Pectin, by Allison Carroll Duffy. I use the recipes in there for jam and jelly, and they're reliable for me. The chapters with recipes are titles Jams, Jellies, Preserves, Conserves, and Marmalades. No PdF, alas.

My husband commented a number of years ago that Fernet Branca reminded him of old Vicks Formula 44. I'm not sure which would be better to use in your bonbon.