MelissaH

If the squash were so tough that I needed anything more sophisticated than the most basic lathe tools to take off the skin, I wouldn't bother.

If your canned pumpkin is too wet for gnocchi (which is a great idea), spread it out on some paper towels to absorb away some of the moisture. I do this for anything that's potentially affected by water, as it's always easier to add liquid than to take it out.

On the subject of pumpkin soup, I was browsing in our local indie bookstore yesterday, and opened Patricia Wells' latest book to a recipe for Thai pumpkin soup with crab. I didn't find anything else in the book that made me want to buy it, and I couldn't justify spending $35 for one recipe. Lucky for me, the recipe is available on line here, among other places: http://www.npr.org/2013/11/24/246739596/thanksgiving-dinner-deja-vu-try-french-food-this-year I think we're going to try it at some point. If you get to it before we do, please tell us how it is!

My husband made an onion gravy. We all liked it, but thought it maybe a tad sweet. Some of the recommendations from CeeCee may very well help with that, next time we try it. Thanks!

Lisa, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of. The flavors of Marmite or kombu definitely would not fly with this vegetarian!

Our Thanksgiving dinner has just enlarged to 7 people, one of whom is vegetarian (no meat, no fish). In addition to the turkey gravy, I'd like to make some gravy that everyone can put on mashed potatoes. The kicker is that the vegetarian does not eat mushrooms, and most of the vegetarian gravy recipes I've found seem to rely on mushrooms. Where do I go from here? Do you have a mushroom-free vegetarian gravy recipe that you like? Is my best bet maybe going to start with caramelized onions and red wine? Thanks!

Is this CSA box typical for your CSA? We tried the one in our area a couple of summers ago, and were disappointed. It seemed like every week, the bulk of our share was made up of a giant bunch of one variety or another of kale. We'd get other stuff too, but the kale was overwhelming. We were not able to have a list of dislikes as everyone got the same box, although it was possible to add "extras" if you wanted. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by some vegetable that keeps recurring in your CSA box like a horror movie nightmare?

For those who are into a little heresy and laziness now and then, the muffins I made from the pumpkin bread mix were pretty good. I mixed it up just as the package instructed, and added about a cup of chocolate chips. I got 12 muffins from one package. They held up well for about three days, until my friends and I finished them. We preferred them slightly warm over completely cooled. The pumpkin flavor was there, not overwhelmed by spices as is often the case.

I have a steel mesh glove, which I also use in conjunction with my mandoline. I usually slip a disposable nitrile glove overtop of it, so when I'm done I just peel the glove off and toss it, and if I've been careful I don't need to wash the cutproof glove.

Noooo! I am sorry to hear this, and glad that I can still go back and remember Dave via his foodblogs and other writings.

Anna, when you and Kerry find a raw food restaurant, I'd like to read what you say about eating there. The above bowls remind me (visually) of what friends feed their dogs. I wonder if they focused too much on the "vegan" and not enough on the "food" part of what a restaurant is supposed to do?

I have the bigger Breville oven. After about a year, the fan started to rattle. One call to customer service took care of the problem: they shipped me a new one at no cost; I sent the old one back, and it's been working beautifully ever since then. No complaints from me about temperature control, the way it toasts or bakes, or anything else. I'd have no hesitation to replace it with another one.

I, too, would like to know whether there's anything new other than the weights in the revised edition.

I agree with everyone who's saying to look really really really hard at the big one. It's enough larger that it can take the place of your standard range oven for many things, in ways the smaller one could not. I can fit a 9-inch dish (square or round) in mine, with plenty of room around it. My standard 13-inch pizza screen also fits in nicely (and the oven does a reasonably good job on a pizza). We don't typically get chickens that large, but I agree with gfweb that it probably would fit in.

Or, if you don't already have one, have you given any thought to a pressure cooker? We like ours because it enables us to not have to plan ahead quite so much.

We've been cooking our scallops sous vide since we put together the equipment to do so. We'd sear them in duck fat if we ever had any. Even just seared in oil, they're amazing, right up there with some scallops we had from a restaurant in a small town on the west coast of Scotland, a few years before we'd ever thought of doing them sous vide ourselves. About the only thing that might make them more perfect would be if there were scallops growing in the water about half a mile north of us. Last time, we wondered about putting them in small buns and serving them as scallop sliders!

That plum cake is the recipe my MIL stumbled upon and made, because we had plums to use. It was delicious. And, lucky me: we have plum halves, pitted and frozen and waiting for winter, when otherwise there wouldn't be plums for plum cake. Kerry, you and Anna always find the most fascinating things to do on Manitoulin. What do people who live there full-time do?

I've never bought an eyeball, but an ophthalmologist friend used to do so often when she was in school. She liked cow eyes for practice, because they were nice and big. What does one do in the kitchen with eyeballs, other than practice your eye surgery techniques? What's the edible part?

I miss shopping with my husband. We love to shop together, and in fact back when we were in grad school, some of our "dates" were spent in the supermarket doing our shopping. When we visit somewhere new, we always make a point of going to a supermarket there. We drive relatives bonkers when we go to visit them, because the very first thing we do is a "recon" where we walk up and down every single aisle to see what they have, and only then do we put together a list and start putting things into our cart. My town of 18,000 people is down to one supermarket, which we both dislike tremendously and therefore don't want to spend money in. However, I make the hour's drive down to the city each week, for my regular Friday morning pickup hockey game. Afterwards, I do our regular weekly shopping at a much nicer supermarket near the rink. We've made a ritual of compiling the week's menu, and the shopping list, a night or two before. Anything we need to fill in the gaps at either the orchard store or the small grocer with the terrific meat counter, I pick up during the middle of whatever weekday I'm in the appropriate neighborhood, alone. Sigh. We do make a point of visiting the farmer's market together each week, when it's the season. And we periodically get a shopping trip together into the city on a weekend, usually when we need to do other things that we can't do in our town anyway.

But have you tried a taste of it, though? Just asking. I have tried it, and it doesn't work for me. My favorite tomato soup is the tomato-mushroom bisque from Coopersmith's in Ft. Collins, CO. That might go with a grilled cheese sandwich, but I'd rather just make a meal out of the soup and the bread. Then again, as far as my husband's concerned, mac and cheese must must must be accompanied by a slice of bread slathered in smooth peanut butter. I always thought mac and cheese just needed a salad alongside. But I digress.

I'm with the contingent of sliced American cheese (but only the processed cheese, NOT cheese food or <shudder> cheese food product) on storebought sandwich bread, cooked in a frying pan with plenty of butter, but no other additions please. My husband insists on tomato soup (from the can, mixed with a can of milk) alongside but I won't do that.

175 degrees Celsius is about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. So no, 175 isn't low if you're metric.

One year of CSA pretty much destroyed kale for me. When you make a kale salad, does it still look like a big overwhelming bunch of green? Or does it start looking more approachable? I still can't face kale, and it's been nearly three years since our last CSA share.

You and Kerry the "Bad Girls" of eGullet. I'm sure they have visions of the two of you in your kitchen, cooking up things other than food. I still have several of those. I used them for sculpting wax for little figurines for jewelry (dogs and etc.) Unlike regular wax sculpting tools, those can be gently heated (center of shaft wrapped with a small strip of duct tape) for working the harder wax types and with a little careful grinding on the diamond lathe, can be sharpened to a razor edge... It's being able to look at an item and see ALL of its possibilities that makes shopping in thrift stores so rewarding... Yeah - hubby took one off my hands - he'll probably use it to spread glue or something. Those look like chemistry lab specials.

My favorite fillings are the easy ones: jam or fruit butter (bonus points for homemade, but store-bought also works) or Nutella.