MelissaH

1:1:1 flour:butter:cream cheese, by mass?

Great advice in this thread. Thinking about what we have in our "travel" kitchen box, for when we drive somewhere that has at least a microwave or toaster oven: *Knives, one paring size and one chef's/santoku *Cutting board *Carrot peeler *Pyrex measuring cup (great for measuring liquids and also heating them in the microwave) *Silicone spatula As far as other equipment, assuming you have a burner or three to cook on, I'd get a pot large enough to boil pasta, a colander to drain stuff including the pasta you boil in your pot, a nonstick frying pan for eggs and the like, and a sheet pan. Maybe a casserole dish, if you like to eat things that get cooked in one. Maybe a smaller saucepan. The Thermomix would be useful if you know that the things you like to cook and eat would work in one, and if you think you'll really need to make them in a more hands-free process. Otherwise, put your money elsewhere.

Are there adequate pollinators in your area for the crops you're looking at, or do you also need to think about adding some bees (and collecting the honey)?

I can tell a difference between using bay leaves and not. My husband cannot.

Summer's the wrong time of year for apples, but one of my favorite after-school snacks was an apple, halved and cored, with peanut butter spread on the cut surface. Added bonus: with the peanut butter protective layer, the apple won't brown.

While I would love to participate, I suspect the timing next year won't work for me: I'll be spending a few months of my husband's sabbatical leave in Belgium next spring, doing my own chocolate research. So I'll have to wait for 2016, I think.

I love the idea: showing us all how you cook. However, I suspect for me, this would be a vicarious cookbook: I bet much of what you forage for is completely unavailable to me, on the shore of Lake Ontario. I'd enjoy seeing the process you go through, especially with more photographs like the one above, but it's unlikely that I'd be able to actually try many (any?) of the recipes unless you can tell us where to buy the ingredients you obtain by foraging. Is there any chance you can provide sources, or substitutes, for those of us who don't live in the southwest? I'd be happy to test also, but would need to work with what I have available to me.

We cook together. In fact, it was part of our wedding vows that we would share the kitchen!

But I remember kasha as being whole, and what's in the bag appears to be cut. I'm not sure how that would take to the kasha treatment, since there's so much more surface area, so many different sizes of particle, and nothing to keep the pieces separate.

We tried the bacon mac and mango salsa versions. (We didn't see wasabi ginger, and couldn't quite imagine how cappuccino would play well with potato chip so left it on the shelf.) The bacon mac didn't have much bacon in evidence, to us; we thought it was darn close to the standard sour cream and cheddar flavor of chips. As for the mango salsa, it didn't work for any of us. For me, the sweet gunk was jarring (compared to, say, the sweetness of the bbq flavoring, which I don't find offensive). My MIL is a cilantro hater, and there were enough cilantro-heavy chips to turn her off. My husband was meh about them. I'm not sure any of them is good enough to stay.

My husband's family reubens were always made with smoked sausage. The Noo Yawker in me squawked about that; but then again I typically prefer my reuben sans sauerkraut and Thousand Islands dressing. Anna, Kerry can tell you about the issues I had toasting coconut. I believe I destroyed three portions the day we prepped for the workshop she gave for the students here. And I'm not much better with other things that need to get toasted. As if the toasting issues themselves aren't bad enough, I'm also notorious for being impatient about letting nuts and spices cool before I try to grind them. So you probably really don't want me as your kitchen flunky, at least not for that particular task!

That's exactly how I clean leeks, also. I've always wondered how one is supposed to clean leeks for recipes where the leeks are left whole, or mostly whole. Unless the grit left in them is supposed to act like sandpaper and sharpen your teeth as you eat? Borek looks wonderful.

My husband needed the car, so I couldn't drive it up there. And now that the dishwasher is fixed again, you obviously don't need me. Any chance you could bring that borek here to me when (if) it's done?

Gotta say: I'm enjoying this version of Manitoulin's Test Kitchen way more than anything I've seen recently on TV on the show America's Test Kitchen. Oh, you can send some of that borek my way for commentary when (if?) it's done.

Some things, I do freeze. But I have far more shelf space than freezer space!

Get a different blender? Or a different jar?

I'm only half joking when I say that I'd volunteer to do your dishes if I could hang out in the kitchen with you, and eat some of what you produce!

There was a wonderful Cambodian restaurant called Phnom Penh in Cleveland, OH, when I lived there eons ago. It was a favorite when some of us wanted to do something a little bit special for lunch. I don't remember a whole lot about it, except that it was delicious, lots of noodles and fresh ingredients and chile heat if you wanted it. In particular, I remember the one dish that we all always seemed to gravitate towards, because we could never decide what we wanted and it had some of everything: noodles, soup, and slices of eggroll. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was called, though. I also remember the frozen (nonalcoholic) drinks they'd make, especially the one with jackfruit. I wish I lived closer to somewhere with a large Cambodian population, so I had a chance of eating more!

I find that microplaned zest and chiffonade zest are different. I'll do the chiffonade if I specifically want pieces that I can strain out relatively easily, but most of the time I like the small fluffy pieces I get from the microplane because they seem to do a better job of making the oils available. Then again, I'm not in a small NYC apartment kitchen, and I'm usually pressed more for time than for space.

What hasn't yet been mentioned about a microplane is that with the very fine, fluffy shreds of cheese, I find that I don't need as much. I get a much more even distribution of the shredded cheese, more even than with a rotary grater, so that a little bit of cheese goes a very long way. Both my pocketbook and my waistline appreciate this.

Our 22 qt Mirro has served us well for many many years. Because we tend to do large batches of pressure-canned stuff, it does the trick for us. We usually take it outdoors and use the giant propane burner that my husband uses when he homebrews, which makes very short work of bringing the filled canner up to temperature.

Things I use the microwave for: *Taking the chill off refrigerated cat food before giving it to the cat *Melting butter and chocolate (separately or together) *Reheating leftovers *Thawing frozen vegetables *Heating milk, either for cooking or for hot beverages *Making roux when I'm too lazy to stand in front of the stove and stir and stir and stir and stir and stir *Cooking an ear or two of corn *Making a serving of oatmeal (this actually isn't me; it's when my MIL visits) *Starting baked potatoes For these tasks, I can't find a better tool than the microwave.

We do this often, and it works marvelously. No corn silk flying around the kitchen, or getting stuck in your teeth. It's not efficient for more than a couple of ears of corn, but for just the two of us on a day when it's too hot to think of eating much, it's perfect.

Appenzeller?? Where did you find it? Was it good and funky? (We've imported it from Ottawa, on occasion, but don't see it around here.)

Wegmans oreo knockoffs are good, but I wish they made the version with the vanilla cookies and chocolate cream! I really don't like the Newman-Os. Something in the flavor and the texture really turns me off. Maybe it reminds me of an old person's musty house, for some reason? Visiting a supermarket in NE Ohio earlier this week, I saw Golden Oreos with limeade creme. We didn't get any because I was afraid they wouldn't do well in the car with the sun beating down on them for 6+ hours.