MelissaH

I have beef stock going in mine now: 3 pounds of crosscut beef shanks, a couple of chunks of beef femur bone, onions, carrots, a couple of big squirts of tomato paste, celery, peppercorns, bay leaves, and water. I took Kenji's shortcut (from a stew recipe, IIRC) of just browning the beef on one side, thus continuing @Anna N's theme of saving energy. The kitchen smelled delicious during the initial browning, but now I can't smell it anymore.

If no hooded or external venting is required, where does it all go?

Really, it's just a spreadsheet. Nothing fancy, just columns for Class, Specific, Approx Wt, How Many, Location, and Date. Everything below that is entered and modified as added or used. The advantage of the Google spreadsheet is that everyone in the house has access, and we can make changes via phone or tablet.

We still have our Google spreadsheet freezer inventory. We have columns for type (soup, chicken, beans, or whatever), the specifics (cut of meat, kind of bean or soup), package size, how many of them, location in freezer, and date). About once a year, usually when it's nice and cold, we go through and make sure that things are up to date. For us, the real advantage is that both of us can access and update the shared document. And because Google automatically tracks changes, it's easy to see who took the last whatever!

He didn't specify, other than he found them both acceptable but thought the ebook was easier to read. This was after downloading the samples of both. He ultimately purchased the ebook (to go along with our home hard copy, and the hard copy he got from his textbook rep at work because this will be the text for his food science class this semester). He's going to tell his students that any form of electronic book or paper is acceptable for their class.

I agree with what other people have said. The one other thing I'd add is that our favorite question to ask locals is NOT "What's a good restaurant?" but rather, "Where do you like to eat?" Sometimes they'll tell you what they think you want to hear, but more often than not, you find places that you'd otherwise never hit on your own.

My husband preferred the ebook from Apple to the Kindle version.

I'm still looking for a roommate! If I don't find one, I'll probably have to bow out, even with the favorable exchange rate.

And I envy you!

I would sooner say that the slow cooker is the opposite of the pressure cooker. The slow cooker is for when you think ahead. The pressure cooker is for when you don't. For me, SV is parallel to the slow cooker, but not like either.

Yesterday at Wegmans, there was a note next to the price listing for the cauliflower. I didn't photograph it, but it said something along the lines of unfavorable growing conditions, expect higher prices for a few weeks, we apologize, blah blah blah.

I travel enough and I have my family's curse of being a fast reader. For me, ebooks have huge benefits over paper books. I don't bring my cookbooks into the kitchen. Instead, I copy the recipe onto a sheet of paper (or print a copy, if it's from an ebook), which I then use to cook from and make notes. If it's a keeper, I type it into my computer with my notes. For those of you who like to cook from an iPad or other tablet, I'll just note here that touch screens work very nicely through a plastic ziplock bag.

There were a few in the sale bin at the orchard store on Friday for only $2.50 a head. But we still passed, as we've planned our meals sans choufleur.

How is an index organized, in Chinese?

@Anna N, we aren't doing much better on this side of the border! Last week, the local orchard store wanted $7 for a small head of cauliflower. Wegmans wasn't much better: $5 for a medium-size head. We've gone without.

I learned about toasting nuts in the microwave from Kerry Beal, as well. I learned that it's easily possible to burn nuts in the microwave all by myself.

My husband made butter chicken in the Instant Pot last night. He did half a recipe of this. The IP pot worked fine, although he chose to do the browning in his cast-iron skillet instead of the IP. But we both thought the end product was bland. Neither of us is a butter chicken connoisseur, so maybe the problem is that butter chicken is supposed to be bland?

I usually figure one rabbit for two people. But with enough sides, you could probably stretch it to feed three. The trouble is that a rabbit only has two of each part, and that will become painfully obvious if you grill it and serve the pieces.

Ooh, I also just remembered: squash! Cook small ones whole, and then scrape out the seeds and add butter and seasoning! Once it's cooked and soft, there's minimal danger of you needing the services of your colleagues to sew you up after a knife mishap.

I bet you could also do whatever your favorite pot roast recipe is in the IP. Or a chicken, maybe even a turkey breast if you can find one that fits? Once you have the cooked meat, you could always eat it in lettuce leaves with whatever condiments you prefer, if you're looking to stay away from noodles or rice or mashed potatoes. I suppose the ribs would be a no-go, since you won't have an oven and someone might object to you torching them at the end?

Russian olives don't grow where I now live, but once upon a time, they made me sneeze for a couple of weeks each year. Hands off, if you're able to reduce their numbers!

Soup is also what came to mind to me. You can throw in whatever you want. Ahead of time, chop some onion and other aromatics, and use the saute function to brown them (or do that part at home first). Broth in a box so it doesn't need to be refrigerated or require any special tools to open. Add less broth for something more stew-y. You're going to have everyone else within nose-shot jealous.

@Anna N, have you made this particular recipe before? It looks to me like the recipe itself might be at least partially to blame. It looks to me as though there's too much fat in the dough for the dry ingredients to handle, and the excess fat on the outside gets caked with the powdered sugar in the same way that a bad doughnut does. This is what's left of the batch of chocolate crackle cookies I made yesterday morning, from the Serious Eats recipe. Mine are not at all sticky; the cookies that look a little less powdery are the ones that lost some of their sugar coat while I was moving them around. Comparing this one to the one you used, this one has nearly the same amount of butter, but half again as much flour (and three times the amount of cocoa, but no melted chocolate). The Serious Eats recipe has twice the eggs and a bit more than twice the sugar, to compensate for the additional unsweetened dry ingredients. I found the sweetness level of these to be pretty close to what I like: the cookie isn't super-sweet, except for the outside coating. I'd make these again. FWIW, my technique was: make the dough and let it rest in the fridge overnight. The next morning, scoop all the dough into appropriate size balls. Then roll all the balls smooth between my hands. And then roll each smooth ball in a bowl of powdered sugar before placing it onto a cookie sheet. I wound up with three cookie sheets full, which I baked all at once in my oven with the convection fan blowing. I might have gotten lucky in that I didn't think about the fan, but the sugar adhered well enough that it didn't all blow off and make a sticky mess inside the oven. I believe that overall, your recipe has a higher percentage of fat, and that's what is triggering the sticky outsides. I think next time, I'd try a different recipe before giving up on the concept.

Remind me in a few months to show you our local CNY apple trees in bloom. Some of those apples will undoubtedly find their way into my IP. And around here, always always always local onions! But you're making me nostalgic for the days when I would visit my grandparents in Florida, and be sent out back to the trees to pick the breakfast juice. These days, I'd definitely be saving all those peels to candy!

I have both a KitchenAid and a Viking. I got the Viking when I got frustrated with my KitchenAid being too small to successfully make a batch of bread dough with a kilo of flour. I find I like the KitchenAid better for cookie dough and most cake batters, especially since I got a beater blade that scrapes, but the Viking is my breadmaking beast. Anyway, a few years back, I noticed that one of the rubber feet underneath had cracked. I wound up calling down south to Viking. They no longer make stand mixers (and apparently did so for a year or two) but they were happy to send me a few replacement feet. You might try phoning them to see if they have any of the attachments around still, if you're hell-bent on getting the attachment rather than a standalone.