MelissaH

Nothing to add about making it easier to peel the eggs, but I like to use brown eggs (rather than white ones) for eggs that get peeled after cooking because it's easier to see the bits of shell that you haven't yet removed.

Our solution to this, as well as all other cereals, is a clothespin. When you open the bag inside the box, do so carefully (using scissors if need be). Then, after you pour out what you need each time, push the air out of the bag, fold the top two corners in, roll the top down a couple of times, and secure with a clothespin. For us, anyway, this keeps the cereal crispy long past the amount of time a box of cereal SHOULD last in our house. This even works for things with a sugar coating on the outside like Corn Pops, which otherwise become sticky and not worth eating in a couple of summer days.

Here's my knife, alongside my 8-inch Henckels chef's knife as a size comparison. This was a wedding gift, nearly 16 years ago now. I love it still!

We also like pressure-cooker risotto. Just as Franci does, we cook it directly in the pressure cooker pot. No muss, no fuss, quick dinner. Definitely not soup.

Was the table as crowded as last week?

I agree with the above sentiments: don't use things that you don't feel good about, and don't make things that you're not going to be happy with. Instead, find recipes that start without eggs, butter, or cream. Are the vegans willing to eat traditional-process sugar? Will they have an issue eating things prepared in your dairy- and egg-laden kitchen? (If not, that might be a whole nother deal-breaker.) One book that seems to have some reasonably good ideas for vegan desserts is Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. If you do chocolate work, what about non-dairy chocolate bark with dried fruit, nuts, or whatever else you could add? Or if you're into candymaking, what about nut brittle (with or without a chocolate coating)? Could you make something like a pastry shell out of baked phyllo dough, and use that in place of a traditional tartlet shell, with a fruit-based filling? The one swap that I'm sometimes willing to make is to use coconut milk in place of dairy milk, assuming that whatever else in the recipe will work with that flavor. (Tropical rice puddings, maybe?) If you think there's a market for vegan pastry in your area, it might be worth doing some experimenting in your spare time. But I don't think the traditional pastries you mention above would do the trick for anyone in vegan versions, especially if they don't work for you.

Nobody has yet mentioned the mirrored disco ball on the ceiling of the restaurant. It hung next to the projector. Neither was operating, yesterday at lunchtime. The aerial view photo isn't great, as I was just holding my cell phone as high over the table as I could reach, and blindly snapping photos. I would have needed to stand on a chair to see what I was photographing, and I was afraid I'd lose my balance and fall into the (fully loaded) table if I did so. Lunch was truly dizzying, and I'm still thinking about the potato pancakes. Next time, I think someone needs to try the golabki...and the czarnina! (Maybe in winter?)

I'd think that isopropanol would evaporate off very quickly, so you aren't actually eating any of it. My concern would be with the nonvolatile impurities, which (again) may or may not be considered safe to ingest in any amount. If the cocoa butter is a fat, is there any chance that you could dissolve it using another oil, whatever you typically keep in your kitchen? Would filling the molds with oil and letting them sit for a bit soften the cocoa butter crystals to the point where you could dump most of the oil out and then wipe the molds clean? Or what about hot water? IIRC, the phase diagram of cocoa butter doesn't include anything with a melting point too high, so near-boiling water might melt the cocoa butter and allow you to wipe it away. (Conversely, if very hot water doesn't do anything to the granules in your molds, it's probably not cocoa butter gunking them up.)

No more Heinz factory in Leamington? Say it isn't so! We did a bike ride through there many moons ago, and the Heinz factory is one of the things I remember as distinguishing Leamington from all the other towns along the lakeshore that we rode through. (Well, that, and a great kitchen store called Strawberry, and our first-ever venture into a Canada Tire store, and the oppressive heat and unrelenting sunshine that turned our tent into an oven for the two nights and a day we were there. My contribution to this topic is one favorite from Girl Scout Camp days: Fried Ham! As I remember the words: Fried ham, fried ham, cheese and bologna. After the macaroni we'll have onions, Pickles, and peppers, and then we'll have some more Fried ham, fried ham, fried ham! (Save some ### verse. ***** talk, much much worse!) For the second (third, fourth, etc.) we'd keep the words the same, but change the style: "doggie talk" where all the words became woof, baby talk, Pig Latin talk, or whatever other talk we could come up with. It was invariably much much worse.

We use a remote-read indoor/outdoor thermometer. The transmitter goes in the fridge or freezer, and sends its reading to the receiver, which lives in the kitchen. No need to even open the door to get the temperature inside. I'd love to get something with a little bit of memory, so we can track at least the high and low (for instance, when we're out of town) but I suspect my geek side is showing now.

Is there any reason you couldn't just do what most industries do: pay your employees a higher rate, raise your prices to cover the higher rate, and eliminate tipping?

Yes. Reminiscent of Spanish pimenton. I think it would be great to add a little bit of smoke (and spice) without using a smoked meat product.

I first heard about prebaking the crust for a 2-crust pie in an article about Bill Yosses, (soon-to-be-former) White House pastry chef. He'd blind bake the bottom crust, load the pie with apples or whatever, and then add the top crust and bake the whole pie. Supposedly, the advantage is that the bottom crust is guaranteed to get cooked properly and stay crisp. I've been known to bake "cookies" of pie crust, and place one on top of each serving of open-faced pie. For people who love crust, this is a way to give them more of the good stuff.

We got it to replace a no-longer-functional box grater, and have been pleased with it. We haven't had any issues grating cheese. YMMV.

Hi, Rob! I'm left-handed but my husband is not. Lately, he's the one who has hurt himself (cut, burned) in the kitchen. The two appliances that I seem to struggle more with are the (manual) can opener and the handheld mixer. I know there are left-handed can openers, but every one I've ever seen has been a piece of junk compared to the heavier-duty "normal" versions, so I struggle. The mixer cord annoys me, but my mixer issues stem more from having trouble pushing the beaters in securely...and I always put the bowl on a piece of nonskid so I can let go of the bowl and move the cord out of the way as needed. As long as I have sufficient elbow room on the proper side, I have no issues folding batters. As long as my knives are sharp (and as long as I'm not trying to use the one knife in my husband's knife drawer with a distinctly right-handed handle), I can chop without cutting myself or anything else that isn't supposed to be chopped. I think you've just had a coincidence. Don't distrust us all. And remember that we often use the "other" side of the vegetable peeler, so you can actually keep the same one for twice as long! MelissaH

And our local indie bookstore also sells ebooks, so you can walk in and purchase them using cash (or any other payment method the store accepts).

Sad. Thank you, Fat Guy.

Have you tried tightening the roll using the parchment paper and either a thin cutting board or bench scraper (or a no-sided cookie sheet if you have one)? Form the dough into a cylinder, horizontally in front of you on a sheet of parchment. Then curl the parchment over the top of the cylinder towards you (don't roll it up in the paper yet). Place the edge of the scraper or whatever you're using on top of the parchment, parallel to the cylinder but at a bit of an angle to the table, and push it into the gap where the dough cylinder comes down to the surface. Then pull the BOTTOM edge of the parchment. This will pull the parchment taut around the dough, which should form itself into a perfectly round cylinder and push out any air inside. The edge of your scraper or cutting board should hold the dough in place and keep you from whipping the paper off. Once the dough cylinder is tightened up, you can roll it up in the parchment and twist the ends. I rest my dough cylinders in the fridge or freezer in a cradle I make by slitting open a cardboard roll from paper towels, to keep the side from flattening. Clear as mud, right?

I'll be spending a few days in the Auburn/Lewiston area later this week. Are there any restaurants or markets I should keep in mind? One meal will be with a friend who is not an adventurous eater and prefers steaks and seafood. For him, Italian is as ethnic as it gets. I eat just about anything. We will have a car, and would be interested in potentially bringing seafood home with us if something good is in season now. Thanks for any help you can lend.

For several years, we periodically sent our knives to Bob Kramer for sharpening, and he did a terrific job with them. But then he appeared in magazines and no longer had time to sharpen knives that he didn't make. That was when we bought an EdgePro, and we've been very happy with it.

Actually, no. According to page 216 of my hard cover book (near the beginning of chapter 14, if you have an ebook), he says, "The finished soups were to be placed on the shelves of the walk-in cooler so the older soups were used first." After a sentence or two, he continues, "Demand would require that we produce 150 gallons of hot soup each morning, but the containers couldn't go directly into the fridge because their heat would quickly turn the fridge into a sauna. We didn't have the money or the space for special equipment to cool the containers rapidly." So they were definitely cooling the soup for storage, not for immediate consumption.

I am reminded of a story in Jacques Pépin's memoir, The Apprentice, in which he also needed to cool large amounts of soup very quickly. His solution was to make the soup very concentrated (use less water or make a point of reducing the soup as you cook it), and then once it was made, add ice to both chill the soup and dilute the concentrate into what you're after for the finished soup. Might something like this work for you?

This is an incredible book. It's sad, but somehow manages to keep a thread of hope alive. And heidih is absolutely right that, 20 years after the events in the book, the content is spot-on relevant still. Get to know the farmers who grow your food.

Casey also did fantastic french toast this way: bread and custard in an uncovered pan, and run a couple of cycles. Way faster than my usual technique of an overnight soak.

How do yinz feel about ladles that have a pouring spout? I myself generally hate them, because I'm left-handed but my husband is a righty. I get frustrated by ladles that have a pouring spout on the right-handed side, but nothing on the left-handed side, because they generally seem to drip and slop more than the ones that don't have any spout. I notice that the ones pictured above all are spout-free! MelissaH