MelissaH

My copy of the book keeps taunting me, as I still haven't had the time to do much more than crack it open and briefly flip through and drool. And to add insult to injury, I'll be without water service for the better part of today while the authority fixes a water main (possibly the same one that got broken by a road construction project a month ago, which may or may not be the same issue that happened about a week and a half ago). But I'm intrigued by the issue of baking cookies in rings (or muffin tins) to make them perfectly round. Has anyone done this yet?

I picked up my copy today. It's torture, because it must remain unread until next week: I have too much work to do before heading to a conference.

Anna, how much flour did the original recipe call for? I have the larger pullman pan (I think it's 13 inches long).

I think many people view breadmaking as being of the same sort of black magic as knitting socks. They both seem sort of mysterious and have a (rather undeserved, IMHO) reputation as being "hard." But once you try it yourself, you realize that neither is really difficult, although both require a fair amount of patience and neither can be rushed. It seems to me that this product exists not for us, but for the people who *are* intimidated by yeast, who perhaps have never seen anyone baking bread at home but always saw it as something done by professionals or machines. (The equivalent in sock-knitting instructions also exist, and I used one of those books to make my first pair.) I think of it as a gateway, to start to demystify the breadmaking process for the uninitiated. Even if they never get beyond using expensive yeast with training wheels, that's still a big step, and something to be proud of.

I've never quite gotten the "fruit chunks in clear syrup" as "jam" (to me, meaning something to spread on toast, or between layers of a cake, or heck! on a slice of day-old toasted pound cake. My first instinct, if I were to buy a jar and discover it was of this type, would be to throw the entire contents in my blender and make it a bit more homogenous. As it is, it might work (for me, anyway) as something to pour on a pancake instead of maple syrup, or possibly to put on ice cream. How is this style of jam intended to be used? What's the advantage, other than personal preference?

More Kindle cookbooks that are cheap right now: Flour + Water: Pasta (Thomas McNaughton, $1.99) Love & Lemons (Jeanine Donofrio$1.99) The French Market Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes from my Parisian Kitchen (Clothilde Dusoulier, $1.99) Fresh From the Farmer's Market: Year-Round Recipes for the Pick of the Crop (Janet Fletcher, $2.99) As always, I'm not endorsing any of these; I just happened to notice that they were on sale. If any of these were on your "maybe" list, here's an opportunity to get them for less, at least temporarily.

If you used clarified butter, would that help?

How big are they?

I returned a box of mango Joe-Joe's cookies yesterday. They still had a couple of months left on their use-by date. But when I opened them on Wednesday, the cookies had gone soggy. The guy I talked to claimed that it was because they don't use preservatives. I don't buy that: if the cookies had oxidized, well, maybe. In this case, it was more that either the packaging was flawed or there is a mismatch between the cookie and the filling that allows the filling to leach its moisture into the cookie, to the detriment of both. Whatever the reason, back they went, and I'm sorry I didn't eat them sooner, when they were still good.

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.