MelissaH

We went to our Aldi this afternoon, hoping it would be Euro enough to have mustard in a tube. Alas, no.

If I'm in Albuquerque the first week in August, what are the chances that this year's chiles will be coming in?

Once upon a time, my husband and I had a subscription to the BBC Good Food magazine. We enjoyed it because it was so different than most of the U.S. magazines, but the subscription was ridiculously expensive. Out of curiosity, I looked recently at an iPad subscription, and discovered that it was much more reasonably priced than the old-fashioned paper subscription. I haven't done anything more than just look at the price. We still have a paper subscription to Fine Cooking, which gets us access to the iPad version as well. We have every single regular issue starting from #1, which makes me feel bad about possibly cancelling or getting rid of the shelf-ful of paper. (The subscription's been a gift from my parents to my husband since the early days of our marriage.) I also get a paper version of Lucky Peach, which I like because the pages are so carefully composed and the content is a breath of fresh air (although if you wait long enough, it seems they eventually put everything on line). I have Saveur and Bon Appétit on my iPad.

We just did a little tandem bicycle ride on the Erie Canal trail. At one point my husband sat down on the trailside to stretch his hamstrings. When he got up, he walked down the embankment a short ways. I thought he was answering a call of nature, which I thought was awfully quick since the last pit stop, but instead he came back with a small handful of ripe black raspberries. Yum!

You can get different pH papers that are good for different ranges. So if you think your pH is "well above 4" and you want to know how far above, you might consider using this paper: https://www.morebeer.com/products/ph-paper-46-62-beer-vial-100-strips.html If you want to get a general idea of where you are, use a wide-range paper to start, and then use a narrower range paper (in the appropriate range) to get more precise. Some pH meters use probes that can be fragile, and that need to be stored soaking in a buffer solution. These are analytical lab–grade instruments, possibly more than you need. If you don't think you're going to need to do this often, I'd probably start by getting a selection of test papers, since you can buy a lot of paper for the price of a meter. Alternatively, if you live near a college or university, try contacting their chemistry department to see if you can find a cooperative professor who already has a suitable instrument.

How precise do you need to be with your pH measurements? You might be able to get by with pH paper instead.

There are still ferries across Lake Michigan, but you'd have to take one from Wisconsin. http://www.lake-express.com/ https://www.ssbadger.com/ (And they aren't inexpensive.)

No room for a cart in my fully-cabineted, galley style kitchen. The thing that really kills me about the CSO is the size. Had it been quarter sheet pan size, it would be easy to say yes!

Make that 10 years out. We did the kitchen the summer of 2006. First, measure everything twice. Then measure everything again. Then go back and triple-check the specs of everything you plan to put in, and make sure it all fits. Spend your money on the things that aren't as easy to replace. This means flooring, cabinets, plumbing. If you need to economize, I still think countertops are a good place to do so. We finally replaced our laminate with a quartz composite last summer. It still cost about what a small used car would have cost. We liked our single large bowl sink enough that we put in an undermount version of the same thing when we replaced the countertop. We still love our range and hood, and think they're worth what they cost. We have never run out of either workspace or electrical outlets, so we must have enough of both. Be cautious with appliance sizes. Our refrigerator crashed earlier this year. We were glad we didn't box the fridge in with cabinetry so we had wiggle room. That allowed us to choose the refrigerator we wanted rather than getting stuck with the one refrigerator on the market that had the same dimensions as the old one. When the microwave gives up the ghost, we will have the same deal, since it just sits on a shelf in a large cabinet rather than being built into a perfectly sized box. You can plan where you think you're going to store things, but actual usage may dictate otherwise. A soak in Oxy-Clean does a great job of degreasing stainless hood vent screens. And make sure you have a plan in place to eat AND CLEAN UP AFTERWARD for your no-kitchen period.

I have a 36" (six-burner) GE Monogram dual-fuel range. (My parents have the 30" version with four burners, although theirs is set up for propane rather than natural gas.) I love that the grates make the top more or less one continuous surface, so that it's easy to slide a pot off a hot burner, and that if you're just looking for a landing zone for something hot, it's easy. I also love that the burners are ALL equally able to be on to a high heat to quickly boil a large pot of water OR be so low that I can melt chocolate without burning it. I love that my oven heats evenly, especially with the convection fan on, so I can bake three sheets of cookies at once. In a perfect world, the oven would be just a smidge larger so I could fit a full sheet pan inside. (With the 30" version, that's obviously not going to happen.) We've had a couple of little maintenance issues. In the first, you'd turn off a burner but it wouldn't register as being off so the auto-igniter would keep popping. While we had the issue, either that burner needed to stay on (with a pot of water to help humidify, if nothing actually needed to be cooked) or the circuit breaker for the stove needed to be off. The repair was relatively easy, with a cheap part, and could be handled by our local appliance repairperson. After the second burner with the same problem, we asked the repairperson to please order us the four more so that when the other burners went bad, we wouldn't have to wait for the part to come in. Of course since then, all the burners have been just fine. The other problem we had was with the oven: after a self-clean cycle, it refused to unlock the oven. Turns out that after 8 years or so, the servo that moves the little hook that actually clamps the oven shut had been fried. That repair was harder to figure out and a little more expensive to fix, but could also be taken care of by our wonderful repairperson. After 10 years, I still love the range.

You and me both, @kayb. I have a Breville XL, which is also terrific for the hot days when I don't want to turn on the big oven, or the not-hot days when the big oven is already in use for something else. After seeing everything here, I think I'd like a CSO also. The catch: where to put it? The Breville is on the counter, beneath a row of wall cabinets. Thus, taking a page out of @Shelby's book and stacking the two would be impractical, both because I'm concerned about steam venting and because I'm not convinced there would be enough height. And I can't put anything much on top of my microwave; it fits into a small cubby in a cabinet close to the cat food and also near the dining room table—which is a great place for the microwave, as the #1 use for the microwave in our house is to slightly reheat a portion of refrigerator-cold canned food for His Highness, and the #2 use is to reheat leftovers destined for the staff of His Highness. So, help me out: where else might be an appropriate place to put a CSO? (How much steam actually vents out during a cooking session?) Or better yet, convince me I really DON'T need one! (Yeah, right!!)

My MIL gave me a pitter that I love many years ago. It's a scissors style pitter, made of white plastic. It's relatively foolproof and quick for me, although not as good for large quantities as one of the kind with a hopper that you fill with fruit and a handle you crank. But then again I'm also absolutely anal about pitting cherries before I cook them into anything. I'll almost go so far as to count the number of pitted cherries and then count the number of pits, to be sure the two match and I'm not putting anyone's teeth in imminent danger. I don't completely trust the hopper style of pitter, because I want to know 100% that every cherry has been pitted, and I have yet to see a hopper pitter that lets me do that.

I was rather amused to get an email from Anova last night with the subject line "Celebrate The 4th Like A True American BBQ Hero." The timestamp was 7:07 PM yesterday (that was 3 July). Why is this relevant? The recipe in the email was for "the ultimate BBQ pulled pork shoulder," which cooks SV for 18 to 24 hours and then gets finished on a grill for another 1.5 hours. Assuming I actually had a boneless pork shoulder in my fridge and a sealable bag large enough to hold it, as well as all the other ingredients for the rub in my pantry, and if I'd gotten started at 7:07 PM when the email arrived, using the minimum 18 hours of SV, the soonest I'd be eating would be nearly 4 PM today (the holiday). And if my pork shoulder were large enough and shaped such that it actually needed a full 24 hours to precook, dinner wouldn't be served until well after any fireworks display. I'm sure the recipe is wonderful—I believe the rub is Kenji's rib rub previously published in The Food Lab. I just find the timing of the email from Anova a little off, to say the least! MelissaH

Alas, I'll be in Colorado that weekend, just at the tail end of a conference.

We visited my MIL last week, and in her local TJ's they were sampling the Mango Joe-Joe cookies. I'm not a huge fan of most of the Joe-Joes, but oh my! The mango version was so good that a box of them came home with me, where I'm trying to forget about their existence.

That recipe is SO high on my list, too!

Would using a slow cooker with the lid off work? I know a lot of people successfully make apple butter that way without worries.

They already exist, but they aren't common.

@Kerry Beal is my go-to for questions about water activity, and I don't know enough to make an educated guess. But that 0.93 reading does sound high to me. I'd be interested to know what you get if you test just the raspberry puree for Aw, because that *should* be higher than puree that's been sugared and boiled!

How is this raspberry layer made?

Could someone make one with Pomona's and then run a water activity test?

I'd think it would be easier just to spray the whole mold, and then use a toothpick or other pointy but not super-sharp object to make the line.

The lemon ones didn't do it for me the way the key lime pie ones did.

I'm reeeeeeally hoping the Key Lime Pie Oreos make a return this summer. Of all the limited editions, those were the only ones that I didn't find icky.

We were just visiting a friend in Queens, NYC, and walking through the streets of Jackson Heights looking for a dinner restaurant. We liked the menu at one Tibetan restaurant, but the smell of incense was so strong even through the closed door that I couldn't imagine trying to eat in that room. We chose to dine elsewhere.