MelissaH

Andie, do you peel the pumpkins and other squashes these days?

Wow. So many tomatoes, so little time, so few stomachs!

Oh, yay! I love seeing other people's gardens because I'm absolutely hopeless when it comes to growing plants. (Proof of this: earlier this year I killed a mint plant!) I'm glad there are other people around who do not have this problem, and I look forward to seeing the week in your kitchen, your garden, and wherever else you bring us along!

For that price, you can buy a lot of these.

They definitely are wonderful in vegetable soup!

I recall getting tzatziki or gyro flavo(u)red chips in Canada last September, I think. Am I misremembering?

A few years ago, a friend gifted us with a jar of another friend's blueberry habanero bbq sauce. It was stupendous, especially on meat that had a bit of fat (i.e., not chicken breasts). However, if you're not in NE Ohio, it's probably unobtainable, and it was long ago enough that I can't remember a whole lot about the flavors and what else might have gone into it.

Thank you so much for the travelogue! It was fun to read, with all the right details.

This year, I got sick of messing around with kitchen towels/cheesecloth/sieves/other kludges and gave in and bought a "real" jelly strainer bag and wire stand. I'm glad I did because it seems to work better for me than anything else I've tried in the past. I've also discovered the real key, for me anyway, is to get it started dripping and then go away so I don't get impatient.

Buying pizza dough from TJ's isn't really in the realm of possibility for me, as I live too far away. But one of my local pizzerias is happy to sell me a dough ball. Have you asked locally?

I don't think you actually need to add transglutaminase, if you're going to do the pounding and massaging and the like. I believe that the pounding and massaging (as well as possibly the injecting) disrupts some of the cells and releases their contents, which includes enzymes that act similarly to (if are not) transglutaminase. In the clip they talk about "proteins" but remember that all enzymes are proteins! I think I might consider trying physical manipulation on a small scale and see what happens, whether you actually need to add enzymes.

That's the one. I believe I said I'd never eat the stuff again after watching that clip. And I don't think I have. (An aside: what kind of plastic are they using that smoke can penetrate into the meat?)

I hope you're not trying to do what my university dining hall often did and serve a "monotone meal," since so much of what you got is white! (I don't recall ever getting a white meal, but the yellow meal was bad and the brown meal was worse.)

When I saw the picture, I thought they looked like an ice cream sandwich relative. Have you tried using the cookies for that purpose?

Everything looks wonderful. Is Singapore a country where you feel safe eating everything from a health/sanitation standpoint?

I remember catching a "How It's Made" show or something of its ilk, showing how deli chicken was made, when I still had cable TV. They didn't add transglutaminase. Instead, they took chicken breasts and scraped or cut the surface (the details now elude me) and then bound them together somehow. Apparently the scraping or cutting spurs some kind of enzyme action, maybe a naturally-present transglutaminase or similar?, which causes the individual breasts to adhere to each other and become a single unit. Again, this was long enough ago that I can't remember the details, but I wonder if this would give you an opportunity to introduce flavor to the inside of the roll, or if adding spices or even just salt would kill the adhesion.

Kerry, is this the same recipe you've posted previously as Blondies? Did they decide they'd had enough of being blond and needed a rebranding?

Chris, do you think the epazote is an absolute must for the dishes you've made with it? I've never seen it in the markets here. Obviously, things will taste different without epazote, but in your opinion would it make the dishes not worth the trouble?

No food recommendations, but don't miss the hardware store, which has more than just hardware. I've easily spent hours browsing.

As far as keeping track of ingredients, have you and Kerry considered keeping a cloud-based inventory of what you bring? We have one for our freezer, as a Google (spread)Sheet. Columns for general description (type of meat, or if it's a soup or dough or whatever), more specific description (what cut of meat, kind of soup, variety of cookie dough, etc.), approximate weight (although this gets loosely applied, as the "weight" listed for Cookie/Peanut Butter is "puck"), how many, location, and date (as YYYY/MM so it's easy to sort). The advantage of having it in the cloud is that it's easily accessible from wherever we are, and Google Sheets are easily shared between users. While it's a painful day's work to make the inventory in the first place, it's not at all painful to do the upkeep. We even go so far as when we use something up that we want to make a point of replacing, we highlight the row with bold text so it's easy to spot as you look through. You could even append a second worksheet for the alcohol.

Well, I'm just back from spending three months in Belgium. One of my favorite desserts while I was there was a float made of chocolate ice cream and raspberry lambic beer. (This is actually a great use for one of the sweeter lambics, which includes many of the varieties imported to the United States.) The only reason I didn't have one more often was because my refrigerator was a half-height dorm-size fridge with minimal freezer capabilities both in size and temperature!

I got my copy of the book as soon as we returned to the United States after three months abroad. Since then, I've spent a week reading through and very nearly literally drooling over it. And then, I finally get back to eG and find this thread. Wow! I'm wondering if I should maybe start haunting my local thrift store for a rice cooker smaller than the 10-cup model I currently have, which I think is a bit large for the rice cooker recipes here. While I know I could easily do them on the stove, there are times when I don't necessarily want to spend the 20 minutes of cooking time in the kitchen watching the flame, which I wouldn't be compelled to do with an electric cooker.

ElsieD, I've been out of the country with limited internet access for the last three months, or I would have answered you sooner. The Syracuse TJ's store is the closest one to me, "only" about an hour away. We also sometimes shop at the Rochester store, which is about an hour and a half of driving. Before these two stores opened, we would stock up on the non-perishables whenever we drove to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, the NYC area, Hartford, Washington DC, or anywhere else that had a store. And we'd search out locations when we flew to other places that had them (Phoenix, Tucson) to get airplane food and other small things that would fit into the cracks of our suitcases. I'm grateful that we now have a store much closer. Anyway, in your initial post after your visit, you wondered about the size of the store. I'd say the Syr location is about average-size for a TJ's. What is not average is the parking lot, which is absolutely miserable. When they first opened, it was almost impossible to find a place to park in that shopping center. There were a couple of times when I drove through the lot a couple of times but couldn't find a space, and then left without actually stopping. (This is one reason why I've come to prefer the Roc location, which is in a much larger shopping center with an enormous lot.) It's gotten better since then, as the novelty has worn off. We have a focused list of things we like to get at a TJ's. Tops on our list are the nuts (especially the 50% less salt cashews, which my husband adores) and many of the cookies, especially the Triple Ginger Cookies (known in our house as Leo Cookies, because our 17 year old cat goes bonkers for these and no other cookies). Here in NY, we can't get much in the way of booze at a grocery store, and none of the beers available at our TJ's is anything to write home about; we do better going to a more local specialty store in our town. We always check the produce, to see what's available and nice. During hockey season, we like to get the little packs of dried fruit and nut mixes, which we donate to our university's women's hockey team as bus food. In the freezer section, the breaded eggplant slices are a good building block for easy meals. We also like the chile rellenos, although they aren't always available. And during the holiday baking season, we stock up on the all-butter puff pastry. They also do a Harvest Hodgepodge frozen veg, which again is a useful building block for meal construction. And I almost always have a package of the frozen sliced leeks on hand, because fresh leeks are ridiculously expensive if they're even available in my town and I like to use leeks when I make soup. For a friend, I typically pick up "the usual": a box of the strawberry bars that are found near the cereal (her son's favorite treat) and a box of the brown rice cereal treats that are sort of like rice krispie treats, found in with the cookies over the freezer section (gluten-free and her daughter's treat). If you're going to be shopping at the Syracuse store, though, I suggest you also plan an extra hour to visit the big Wegmans supermarket in Syracuse, which is not at all far from the TJ's. If you have a smartphone, download the Wegmans app, which includes prices of all the items, and you can comparison-shop on the fly for the items that are available both places.

Pressure cooker. My husband did some in ours the other day, then seared the pieces in cast iron. I wasn't in the kitchen so I don't have the details, but there was none left over. (Is there EVER left over pork belly?)

I've always just taken the bits that crumble off and pressed them back onto their cookie before baking. they maybe aren't quite as perfect looking, but they taste fine. If the dough is too cold, I get more crumbling. I should also note that this is one recipe I have ALWAYS made on a scale. I first learned about it in Paris Sweets, when they were still Korova Cookies and not yet World Peace Cookies. If you want to see the original mass measurements, they're here: http://doriegreenspan.com/2009/02/world-peace-cookies-metric-measures-and-variations.html