MelissaH

I'll let you know when I get there. I have a work deadline starting to loom at the end of the month, which makes this a totally awful time to have all these wonderful new temptations cookbooks nearby!

Um, yeah. I got that one on Kindle a while ago, and am now reading through it. It's one of those books that makes me hungry just looking at the recipes, and of course the photos are gorgeous too.

I think I may need to stay far, far away from bookstores for the next little while.

So after going to the farmer's market last night and then dropping by a local bar to say goodbye to one of my husband's colleagues who is about to start a new job, we stopped in at the local indie bookstore. And I looked at the book myself. Apart from the salt issues, I decided that there wasn't a lot in the book that I would actually see myself making, so I left it behind for someone else to buy. I can't say the same thing about the Alton Brown's latest book, Simple by Diana Henry, or the new tome on rye baking. And this is just the start of the holiday cookbook release season!

Bump! Anything new in the world of sous-vide beets? The ones I regularly see around here are a little smaller than a tennis ball, but definitely bigger than a golf ball. I usually scrub them well, wrap them individually in foil, and then roast till they're soft all the way through. The skins slip right off when they're cooked. But in the supermarket this morning, I saw what appear to be vacuum-sealed cooked beets that are marked with a reasonably long shelf life. Is it possible to make them at home? Or would they freeze, so when I want beets with dinner I can just thaw a package?

I've never had a good pot pie. The crust doesn't do it for me. I'd just as soon have a bowl of really good stew, with a biscuit or two on the side. And I'm a little surprised nobody is marketing a combination like that.

I'm intrigued by what I saw in the Eat Your Books sample, but I am soooooo turned off by the pretention of Guatemalan sea salt.

I'm still disappointed the key lime variety didn't make a repeat appearance this summer. Is there any logic as far as which flavors are one-offs and which ones come back?

That depends. Are you looking for eternal life?

And? Have you tasted them yet?

@Anna N, did you try clickling on the "See all 4 formats and editions" link to get the Kindle edition? I'm seeing it on .com for the $1.99 price. (And yes, I bit.)

No. This is Kindle ebook format, from Amazon. And like Anna, I couldn't resist the Greenspan either. Better for drooling on my pillow at night.

Prompted by a post from @Anna N in another thread, I took a peek to see what I could find very inexpensively for my Kindle. Most likely to be of interest here are Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi ($2.99) and Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads ($1.99).

For us, cinnamon toast was made by buttering a slice of bread, sprinkling on cinnamon sugar, and then toasting it in a toaster oven. We were the only ones with a toaster oven rather than a toaster with slots, which probably explains why none of my friends made cinnamon toast this way.

Have you tried opening the IP and letting it boil, open, for several minutes? @rancho_gordo is a proponent of doing that for beans in the pressure cooker, and it might also make sense in this instance.

Love those pistachios! We hosted a gathering last year, and one of the couples attending is from the Detroit area. They brought a similar-looking box of goodies. Many others brought desserts, but these were the only ones to completely disappear.

Vacation Rental By Owner.

@Kerry Beal, kimchi jjigae is my husband's all-time favorite Korean dish. Could you please share your recipe and technique so I can make him very happy this winter?

Beans are good. This summer, I've been particularly into lentils because they cook so fast. In particular, when it's hot I like a salad made from the French green lentils that hold their shape (like this one or this one), or an Indian dal with red lentils that collapse completely, served with rice (like this one; slow cooker version here). And at a Lebanese restaurant in the tiny burg of Cortland, NY (are you listening, @ElainaA?) I had a really nice lentil soup that warmed me up nicely before we headed into a very cold rink to watch a hockey game. To me, the dal and soup are the sorts of things that I like to make in large batches and freeze in individual or pairs of servings, to reheat for lunches and quick dinners later.

I find chicken on pizza does much better if you put it underneath the cheese.

Did it find its way home with you?

Those of you with air fryers: have any of you tried it on zucchini "noodles"? Can it cook them without making them into watery mush?

Oh, yum. We went to a Wegmans store "only" 48 miles away last weekend for their Chilefest, and picked up a case of medium hotness Hatch chiles that were roasted especially for us. From the drum of the roaster, they got dumped into a plastic bag inside the box, and then they steamed nicely on the ride home. Once we got them home, my husband and our friend T took them out onto the back deck, where we put a plastic (easily hose-off-able) table with a couple of half sheet pans, a garbage bowl and a bowl of water, and a box of disposable gloves. While I put away the rest of our groceries (hey, we had to make the nearly 100-mile round trip really worth it!), T and my husband started in on the chiles, pulling out the cores and seeds, peeling the skins off, and setting the chiles on the sheet pans. (The bowl of water was to periodically clean the skins and seeds off hands.) I offered to help with the task, but it was deemed better for someone to keep a clean, ungloved set of hands available to open doors, refresh water, and do other things easier done with clean, ungloved hands. Once all the chiles were cleaned, we brought the two half sheet pans indoors. Portioning and sealing turned out to be a three-person project: one person with a bowl on the scale to weigh portions, a second person to load the bags (we use a Pringles can with the bottom cut out to support the bag, with the top folded over the top of the can to stay clean. A canning funnel fits inside nicely and makes loading easy. Once the bag is loaded, it's simply a matter of pulling up the folded-down top edge and letting the full bag fall out the bottom of the tube), and a third to actually run the sealer. From one case of chiles, we got twenty-five 8-ounce bags of chiles plus another three bags with 6 ounces. These will be shared with T and other friends who like the chiles. It's a week later, and the car still has a faint aroma of roasted green chile.

If you have a large amount of fruit to carbonate, you can do it in a regular cooler with dry ice. Put the dry ice in the cooler, and cover it with a towel so you don't freeze (and burn) your fruit. Then add the fruit. Put the lid on the cooler, and then use plastic wrap to tightly wrap the cooler, starting at the seal but then wrapping around the entire cooler. Let it sit a while (the video says 12 to 14 hours) before cutting it open and eating the fruit. I don't recommend using the leftover dry ice to make a bomb, as demonstrated at the end of the video! ;-) http://www.eater.com/video/2015/10/9/9486953/fizzy-fruit-hack-dry-ice

And there's also the Vegetarian Flavor Bible, which has enough different material that we keep both handy. And along the same lines is the Flavor Thesaurus.