MelissaH

If you have a lot of gunk, is there any way you can pre-filter to get at least some of it out? Back in my synthetic organic chemist days, it was pretty rare for us to filter through a Buchner funnel with a paper. When we were working up reactions, a very common last step before purification was to add a powdered drying agent and swirl it around. It would suck up any last bits of water or aqueous solutions. Then to get rid of the drying agent, we'd send the whole thing through a fritted funnel topped with a layer of Celite (diatomaceous earth). The Celite wouldn't clog as quickly as a filter paper would, and if it did it was easy to scrape off the top bit with a metal spatula and clear out the filter bed. (Side note: home beer brewers live in dread of a stuck mash: when the grain bed clogs up and the water can't flow through. The classic homebrew solution is to add some rice hulls to the mash grain. The rice hulls act sort of like the Celite, sort of like a pre-filtration, to catch the fine stuff that can gum up the rest of the works.) Anyhow, when we'd dried and filtered the solution, we'd pop it on the rotovap to remove the solvent, sometimes pump on it with a vacuum to make sure all the solvent was gone, and then purify our compound by some appropriate means.

I'm definitely talking to you before my next camping trip, Kerry!

Um, Kerry? I think this might just be the biggest understatement ever on eG! Nonetheless, I envy you, and look forward to seeing what you do with your new toy!

IIRK, Cook's Illustrated also liked Farmland's bacon best out of all they tried. It doesn't seem to exist in upstate NY, or Michigan, or western PA. Maybe it's a western brand?

Thanks for all the suggestions. After yesterday's batch, I think I've traced part of my issue to rolling up the bunch of herbs in paper towels: the water on the inside leaves can't evaporate, doesn't get wicked away, and keeps things wet. I just stuck each bunch in a jar with an inch of water in the bottom, and let the tops splay open to dry. Lucky for me, I don't need to use them for a few hours yet, so they have time, and if they're still looking wet after another couple of hours, I'll put a fan on the counter to blow it away. The chamber sealer suggestion has merit, but the scientist in me cringes at the thought of purposely sucking away all that moisture without a proper trap to keep it out of the pump!

As for cooked sausage rounds: On PBS, I caught a show (don't remember which one) where Cook's Illustrated tasted breakfast sausages. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that they said the precooked brown-and-serve versions were the tastiest. I wonder if something like that would work in the sandwich maker? And for the eggs: one of our local watering holes cooks all their breakfast sandwich eggs in the microwave, using pbear's method from what I can see. Do you have to pre-toast the muffin, or does the sandwich maker take care of that? I'm up to at least 3 (frying pan on stove, microwave, sandwich maker) and possibly 4 (toaster) for the number of appliances you'd need to make a sandwich with the new toy, Anna!

You know how you see people on TV chop their parsley and cilantro into a beautiful fluffy green pile? I can't do that with the herbs I get at the supermarket. Both the cilantro and parsley I can buy are grown in dirt. I know this because the dirt is clinging to the stems and leaves. Since I don't feel the need for extra mineral content in my diet, I need to wash the herbs before I use them. (Once, I tried chopping then washing. Big mistake.) Once I wash them, I can't get them dry enough to chop into anything but a soggy mess. I've tried a vigorous shake, a trip salad spinner, a roll in paper towels, a roll in cloth kitchen towels, and just about every permutation of these. I've tried doing the washing and the drying in the morning, when I won't need to use them till late afternoon or evening. I still can't get them dry enough to chop easily. About the only things I haven't done yet are to aim a fan at them and blast them with the heat gun. Is there a good way to dry my parsley and cilantro? When they're dry, I have no trouble chopping them.

I can taste a difference. It's subtle, but it's there, and the nuttiness of the browned butter enhances the butterscotchiness as well as the pecans (or walnuts; I've used both successfully). Part of my propellant issue may have been that at the time, I lived at an altitude of about 5000 ft. The lower atmospheric pressure meant that there was a greater pressure difference between inside the can and outside, so it may have upset the balance between the amount of contents and amount of propellant. (If a can sits for a while and the seal isn't perfect, some of the propellant can also leak, regardless of your altitude, which also doesn't help.) But I got so fed up with the other issues that I never went back to the sprays with flour!

No. I've been browning the butter in a saucepan on the stove, adding the brown sugar while the butter is still hot so I can melt away any lumps, letting it cool so it doesn't cook the egg, and then adding everything else. Plenty of room to mix. My experiences with floured pan spray were universally awful: turned the pan sticky and black, clogged nozzle, propellant lost so that I couldn't push out half the contents of the can. What brand are you using that you like?

I've been doing my mixing in the pan with the same silicone spatula I use to mash the brown sugar into the melted butter and get rid of any lumps, and then at the end to scrape the batter into the pan. Is this not the right implement? Does the pan ordinarily need to be treated? I've gone to parchment because it's so easy to get whatever you've baked out afterwards, and because I always have it on hand.

I certainly don't think you're missing something, except maybe some mussel meat. I've never heard of mussels all falling out of their shells. And piling up the empty shells seems beyond ludicrous to me. Then again, I've only ever eaten mussels in North America and Europe, not in your part of the world, so my regional bias might be showing!

Here's my second take on Kerry's blondie recipe. This time, I browned the butter and then melted in the brown sugar far enough ahead of time that it had cooled down so it didn't cook the egg. I also boosted the amount of salt (because I use Diamond Crystal, which is less dense than many other salts) and vanilla extract (taking a cue from the Cook's Illustrated recipe mentioned above). I also added walnuts (untoasted because I'm lazy, and sprinkled on top, so they might toast a bit during the bake) and (ssssh, don't tell anyone) stirred in a double handful or so of chocolate chips before I scraped the batter into a parchment-lined pan. I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but the same thing happened this time as last: there's a thin layer of grease on the outside. There's enough grease (presumably from the butter) to get through or around the parchment and stay behind on the pan. It doesn't make the eating unpleasant, but it does leave your fingers a bit slimy. Any ideas what might cause it, or how I can get rid of it?

Silly little thing, but the can opener my FIL gave us for xmas the year before he passed away. It's the kind that uncrimps the lid rather than slices the metal, and it's still working beautifully, even given my left-handed ineptitude with can openers. I have to smile every time I use it, because it makes me think of him.

Not that I've noticed, at least with cookies (which I also bake on parchment on these same sheet pans) or things that go in deeper pans. Maybe I'll have to pay more attention to whether the bottom browning depends on where in the oven they bake, and whether I get lazy and do multiple pans at one time in the oven.

Another little point where I diverge from the directions: when I use a rolling pin rather than the pasta machine, I actually roll the dough directly on a sheet of parchment, with another piece of parchment on top. I do flip it a few times and lift the parchment to be sure it isn't sticking. But I will definitely try separating the crackers. I'd thought about a lower temp, but since I seemed to have a bigger issue with the bottoms getting much darker than the tops, I first wanted to try double-panning to see if that helped any. You think the lower temp would be more useful? Or should I try both?

I'm mostly a "sweet kitchen" baker, but every so often I get a savoy baking bug. My latest obsession is with baking crackers containing cheese (so far I've done cheddar and parm) and some kind of spice (black pepper, cayenne, mustard, or whatever seems to go with the cheese in question). However, I haven't taken any questions because I've had mega issues with my crackers. I've based my batches off a recipe from King Arthur Flour (blog post with recipe link: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2013/08/21/0821-crunchy-parmesan-crackers-chee-easy/) and I apparently have yet to get it right. I've tried rolling with a rolling pin and a pasta machine, but the thickness doesn't seem to make a difference (except in how long they take before they get brown and then overbrown and then burned to a crisp). I've tried baking with and without convection. I've tried lowering the temp slightly when the convection fan is on. Again, the only difference seems to be in baking time. I've tried leaving the crackers in the oven as it cools down with the door cracked open, to dry them out even further. And no matter what I do, I wind up with crackers that aren't crunchy except for a very small window. When they're warm, they don't crunch. When they've cooled completely, they don't crunch. The only way I can get crunch with staying power is if I totally overbake the crackers, in which case the taste isn't any good. I'm thinking that the next time I try, I'm going to use doubled-up baking sheets, since my crackers always seem to cook faster (and burn faster) on the bottom than on the top. Maybe that way, I'll be able to keep them in the oven longer and get them better dried out, so they'll crunch better. I'm also wondering about whether adding a little leavening to the dough might help: perhaps a little bit of puff would make it easier for moisture to escape, since it won't have to work its way out through a thicker layer of dough? I'd definitely continue to dock the rolled-out dough very well. Has anyone had success in baking savory crackers? I'd like to make something as beautiful and tasty as Anna's tart!

I'm tremendously enjoying this thread. I grew up in a mint-free house, right down to the toothpaste, because my mom feels about mint the way I feel about bananas. I still don't do spearmint well, largely because everything my orthodontist used was spearmint-flavored, but I've come to like peppermint. Our neighbor has a large mint patch, and we have free rein to gather and use as much of it as we want (hey, it's MINT, so it'll come back!) and it's fun for me to see all the ways people use mint.

Shelby, those are the peaches we always also call Palisade peaches (or apricots, or other fruit), named after the place they're grown. Just like the sweet corn we'd get is Olathe sweet corn. I wonder if this is a Western Slope phenomenon?

Someone with more of a sweet tooth than Anna N: how sweet *is* Kerry's recipe? Oversweetness is my primary complaint about many baked goods, but I do enjoy sweets and always go for them over salty snacks.

A trick that I learned from a breadmaking class at King Arthur: a handful of flour works wonderfully to clean up goopy dough from your hands, your bowls, etc. without clogging your sink. So if I have a bowl that's got sticky dough bits, I'll dump a spoonful of flour and use my hand to rub it around and loosen the dough, then rub it between my hands to clean them, and finally brush it all into the trash. If it's dry dough, I soak in cold water for a bit, as others have recommended.

Would the judicious application of a blowtorch help with the top browning problems? Or is that anathema to this kind of event?

I'm quite envious of Anna and her loot!

This reminds me of something that happened on my first trip to Belgium. We were bicycling through the country, and stopped at a campground outside of Brugge for a few days. Our first morning there, as we walked the 3.5 km (or so) from our campground into the city, we walked past a bakery and swung inside to get some more breakfast, which we ate in the very American, un-Belgian way of munching while we walked. I don't remember what my husband got, but I got a pastry called an appelflap, which was like a turnover made with puff pastry. It was delicious, and the bit of powdered sugar dusted on the outside was as good as a scarlet A to mark my transgression, but after the first bite I nearly stood still because something didn't taste right. After my second bite, I figured it out: there was no cinnamon (or any other spice) in the pastry. The bakery had cinnamon rolls available, so that obviously wasn't the issue. But as an American, my brain has come to expect cinnamon with apple in pastry. When the cinnamon is missing, it's a bit of a surprise, based on my cultural expectations. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to do it another way, or that it won't be good. (Also see the Ritz cracker "mock apple pie" with a filling including crackers, lemon juice, and cinnamon. I bet it doesn't work to most Americans without the cinnamon!) The short story: do what you like, and what makes you happy. After all, is there a such thing as a bad apple pie, if it's well-made with love?

i bought fresh water chestnuts once. My verdict was that they were a PITA to handle. Furthermore, the taste and texture were quite reminiscent of jicama, which is easier and cheaper for me to find than fresh water chestnuts, and a lot less trouble to prep! Heresy it might be, to some of you, but for my uses it's fine.

In my college days, I'd sometimes eat them straight from the brick. No need for the seasoning packet. It was quicker and easier than cooking them, especially when it had been a long day, or if I was on the go between classes.