MelissaH

I think Emily_R has the right idea. Make something that follows the concept but that you trust, and when she tells you how much she enjoyed it, you can tell her the story. MelissaH

This is the way cilantro regularly comes to many of the Wegmans near me. I'm posting it simply to make Kerry and Matt jealous. MelissaH

Got a recipe or technique to share? MelissaH

I'd be less worried about making sure that coupon can be used on everything you buy, than about making sure you get the stuff that will work for you (even if it can't be coupon-discounted). If you're thinking about knives, before you make a decision on what brand, make a point of actually holding each one, and seeing if you like the way it feels in your hand. (As it turns out, I personally can't stand the Global handles and find them unbearably slick, especially if my hands are the least bit wet.) Sometimes, what works in a paring knife does not work as well in a larger knife, so you may prefer different brands for different purposes. And, if it turns out that the knife you really like is in a coupon-restricted brand, so what? It's gift-money anyway, and it sounds like you have a lot of that to play with. Better to get something that you really like than stress over saving a few bucks, especially for something as critical as a knife. If I were trying to spend money at BB&B and regularly cooked for just two people, I'd get a Breville Smart Oven (heck, I did just that about 9 months ago!) and use at least some of the rest on cookware that will fit inside it, such as a metal 9" square pan, maybe a quarter sheet pan and rack and Silpat to fit it, a Pyrex deep dish pie plate. To that, I'd add things like a good-but-cheap nonstick frying pan (because they never last too long anyway), a pasta pot with perforated insert if you like to make pasta, more utensils like pancake flippers and spatulas that won't scratch nonstick surfaces than you think you'll need, silicone spatulas, a good vegetable peeler, several cutting boards to help save your good knives, glasses and serving plates if you can find ones you like there, maybe a coffee maker if you're a coffee drinker, and storage containers for leftovers. Just my $0.02. MelissaH

I haven't tried it, but I wonder if either directly on the oven rack, or on a rack placed on a sheet pan, would be the way to go. I'd try it small scale first. MelissaH

We saw caffeine-free Coke Zero in Rome (Italy) last summer. I emailed the company to ask why they couldn't bring it to this side of the pond, and got a non-answer answer to the effect of, "We do different things in different markets." Bah! MelissaH

Send them to me. If you've canned the jam, won't it keep for quite a while, so you don't need to use it all immediately? Then you can wait till winter, and revisit all your ideas. MelissaH

You're teasing. The closest Slurpee to me is an hour and a half drive away! MelissaH

I haven't tried SV meatballs, but I'd be worried about them getting squished out of ball form when I vacuum-sealed them. MelissaH

You may be. My principal experience with Sbarro's has been at JFK Airport when I'm not flying JetBlue, and the pizza has invariably been tasteless and greasy according to everyone who's eaten it. MelissaH

I know what NY-style pizzas are. But please enlighten me: what's an Uruguayan-style pizza? How does it differ from other deep dish pizza? MelissaH

Ugh. Just found a moldy orange with my nose, and then my eyes. At least this time, it wasn't so far gone that I got a poof of spores. I'm hoping this isn't related to the previous moldy citrus. I've washed all the others, as well as the container, and hope that this is the end of it! MelissaH

Thanks, all. We've bleached and otherwise washed, and so far have seen no return of the Dread Citrus Mold. I'd like to go to the supermarket where I got the original nasty moldy fruit, and tell them to take some of the bleach they're apparently (so says my nose) using in the fish counter, and apply it to the citrus bins. No, I won't buy fish there. Ever. MelissaH

I, too, am interested to hear about the evaporation issue. Would leaving the lid ajar do the trick, or is that a bad idea? MelissaH

PC, that's exactly what I've been doing for years. I just violently object to having to copy (either by hand or by typing out) a recipe that's already in an electronic format that cannot easily be printed, such as Kindle! MelissaH

My biggest gripe about cookbooks on Kindle (and its ilk) is the inability to easily print recipes. I don't like to bring my electronic devices into the kitchen, just as I don't like to bring my good cookbooks into the kitchen. Page breaks in Kindle books aren't always as well thought out as page breaks in paper-and-ink books, and I get annoyed when I need to handwrite a recipe that is already in an electronic format. I do like the ease of searching in an electronic edition, although that is not by any stretch a substitute for a good index! MelissaH

Call me a local, but if you're looking for a fish fry in upstate NY, you'd be better off going to Rudy's in Oswego than to any of the Doug's locations. MelissaH

My prime concern is not me getting sick from the stuff growing on my citrus, but rather the spores hanging around long enough to infect the next batch of citrus I bring into the house, thus causing it to become unusable more quickly. This time of year, when we're home, the windows are wide open most of the day, so any remaining spores have been thoroughly blown around the house. We've wiped down what we can, and we'll see what happens! MelissaH

I guess this counts as "high-quality ingredients," or the lack thereof. Maybe. Consider yourself warned. We purchased a bag of lemons at our local supermarket (the one in town) late last week. Four days later, we noticed that inside the bag didn't look quite right. So we investigated, and discovered that at least one of the lemons inside the bag had gone moldy. The mold was so bad that blue-gray moldy dust had sprinkled itself into a puddle onto the counter, and when we lifted the bag into the sink to see if any of the other lemons in the bag were salvageable, a giant gray poof of (what I presume were) mold spores came floating out of the sink. We've wiped down the counter with a disposable disinfecting towelette. (If that's not a prime use for one of those things, I don't know what is!) We also washed all the other citrus in the house, as well as the tomatoes that had been residing on that end of the counter, with soap and water. But what about that cloud of spores? How do I disinfect my kitchen, so I don't have issues with moldy fruit in the future? (Do we need to wipe down the counters, cabinets, ceiling, floor, and all other surfaces with StarSan?) Help! I won't be buying produce from this supermarket anymore. Everything I've gotten there lately seems to go moldy, slimy, or otherwise bad in a much shorter period of time than produce purchased elsewhere. MelissaH

If I'm in the neighborhood of a store, Penzey's is fine. But if I'm going to mail order, I prefer The Spice House. Same family, different sibling. Less fancy packaging, great quality, generally a little less expensive. MelissaH

I'm a convert to the mustard-based South Carolina sauces, as exemplified by =Mark's version: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php/topic/126568-south-carolina-mustard-barbecue-sauce/ MelissaH

Don't forget that many small towns have Chinese restaurants that are reliable sources of rice, if you're looking to go that route. Melissa

Resurrecting this long-dormant topic to ask a question. A friend gifted us with a loin from a deer he shot. It's been vacuum sealed and in our freezer for a few months now. We've thawed it, and are thinking of cooking it sous vide. I've seen the charts in Modernist Cuisine and other advice here for cooking venison, but I'm not sure (a) if those numbers apply to domestic venison or (b) if you need to do anything different with the wild kind. What would you do with it? Is there a better way than sous vide? Thanks, MelissaH (at least the fifth generation of city dwellers in my family)

My husband's lately started to use the handle end of his muddler to crack ice. Says it's better weighted for the purpose than our regular eating spoons. (As far as barspoons, he doesn't use one, as he generally prefers cocktails that get shaken.) MelissaH

When it comes to cookbooks, I have a strong preference for paper. E-cookbooks are harder to make notes in, harder to print recipes from (at least with the Kindle variety), and far more expensive when you take them into the kitchen and spill something. My Kindle is also the old-fashioned e-ink variety, which is great for text, but leaves a lot to be desired for photos and other pictures. For other books, I like my Kindle. MelissaH