MelissaH

I'm very excited, as a week from today, I'll have a new lunch partner! Dear friends will be visiting us, and while the two men are off judging beer for the NY State Fair competition, us two ladies will have a whole day to ourselves! No clue what we'll do or where we'll wind up, as it'll be at least somewhat weather dependent, but I'll try to remember to bring a camera! MelissaH

My solution to the no-cookbook-stand problem goes hand-in-hand with the fact that I really don't like to bring my cookbooks into the kitchen and work from them directly. I grab a sheet of paper, and rewrite the recipe. I don't necessarily keep all the detail, if I don't think I need it, and I put things into a form that makes sense to me. And just the act of writing out what I will be doing helps get it into my brain, sort of like a "pre-lab" assignment from my student days. I'm lucky enough to have magnetic strips in my current kitchen, but I've also used some of the post-it note tape or blue painter's tape to fasten my scribblings where I can see them. MelissaH

blanching, shelling and peeling chestnuts is definitely up there for me as well I'd include water chestnuts in this category. I did 'em once, and after all that pain, was struck by how similar they were to jicama in both taste and texture. Guess what I use now. MelissaH

The only problem with this would be if he's not 21, the age at which one can legally consume alcohol across the U.S. He'll need to declare any alcohol at customs, and if he's younger than 21 and declaring alcohol, it could be taken. MelissaH

Vanilla syrup AND wedge of lime. MelissaH

At our farmer's market: nothing. Ours doesn't start till the last week in May. MelissaH

I, too, love my pullout spray. I'm not overly fond of laminate, but remember that countertops are relatively easy to replace after the fact, and laminate is significantly less expensive than any other option. That said, if someone told me I needed to replace my laminate tomorrow, I'd be looking at one of the composite quartz materials. When you look at sinks, bring your big pots and pans along. Try them out and see if they fit before you buy. MelissaH

Last night, I discovered that dulce de leche is almost as good as nutella for a pretzel dip. MelissaH

I remember Alton Brown doing an avocado buttercream frosting several years ago, to take advantage of both the color and the fat content. MelissaH

We refer to heat with terms like front-of-the-mouth vs. back-of-the-throat, and slow burn vs. quick. MelissaH

Do you have an oven (or grill/BBQ)? Lots of flat breads can be made at home. Or on a stovetop with a griddle, for that matter. MelissaH

And there's the dip I made when I fed a bunch of hungry ice hockey players, re a suggestion from Okanagancook: half sour cream and half salsa with lots of fresh cilantro. Great with chips or vegetables, or even on some sandwiches. MelissaH

We just replaced the lamp over the sink. A couple of months ago, we noticed that the UFO on the left was slipping. Upon closer examination, we realized that the problem was in the mechanism that holds the UFOs onto the lamp base. There's a light bulb socket housed inside a porcelain housing, which has screw threads on the outside. The lampshade (in our case, the UFO) slips over the housing, and then there's a metal ring that screws onto the threads to secure the shade in place. We still aren't sure whether it's the threads or the ring that got stripped, but something did. As a result, the UFO was hanging (literally) by a thread. We wound up buying a new fixture. It looks about the same as the old fixture, but in a brushed nickel finish rather than the black, and with transparent wire housing on the danglers. We like the way the nickel matches the hardware on the cabinets, and the clear housing adds to the more modern look. The mounting hardware also looks about the same as the mounting hardware in the old fixture, but we discovered that appearances are deceiving in that case. My arms can tell you that one also. When we went out to replace the fixture, we also found some compact fluorescent bulbs with candelabra bases to fit into this fixture. We hadn't gone that route before, because at the time we put the lamp in, the only CF bulbs with candelabra bases had a sort of elongated shape, and didn't look good inside the UFOs. The bulbs we found have a normal round shape, and look proper, like the rounded bottom of a cartoon flying saucer. Since this is a light that often gets left on for hours at a time, we liked the idea of using CF bulbs in this location. And, oh yeah! The yucky off-white carpeting is no more. We ripped it out and replaced the flooring throughout the dining room, living room, and hallway with bamboo. Major major improvement! MelissaH

I need a shirt like that, I think. You scared me for a minute, Kerry. I thought you were going all Sweeney Todd on us! The whole day sounds like a completely enjoyable episode. MelissaH

That's one of the reasons I treasure my meet-ups so much, and work hard to make an opening in my schedule each week. We moved here about 6.5 years ago, and like many other small college towns, this isn't the easiest place to make friends outside the university community. Add to that the fact that I work in a largely male field, and for whatever reason many of my hobbies seem to be favored more by men than by women, and I was having a hard time finding girlfriends. I love the diversity which I lack in other parts of my life.) I just wish we had more options for places to go, although we always seem to spend a lot of time comparing restaurants we've visited! Of course you count, as long as you aren't wiping your nose on your sleeve. That would truly be unladylike. (Of course, I say this only because we spend a lot of our time talking about decidedly unladylike subjects, such as cute (human, not pork) butts, and whether we care more about butts, legs, or something else!) MelissaH

We generally think about things a week at a time. For us, the first consideration is the week's schedule. Specifically, are there things going on that will affect our dinner plans? Are there nights when we're going to have company? If there's a hockey game, we know we'll need something fast and easy that night. If there's a concert, we'll generally have a little more time than we will for a hockey game. In either case, sometimes we're able to work our schedules such that we can eat lunch together, which means we don't need to worry so much about dinner. Sometimes one or the other of us has a meeting over dinnertime. Those nights, whoever's not at the meeting often uses the opportunity to make something that the other doesn't particularly like...or downright hates! Some days, we're lucky and one of us has a clear schedule to make something that takes a little more effort, either because we get home early enough or because we'll have time to do the prep the evening before. If we're thinking a couple of days ahead, we'll pull something from the freezer in enough time for it to thaw. We also consider the weather as we plan our meals. Will there be a "soup day"? Or will it be nice enough outside that we don't mind firing up the grill? That said, sometimes our plans fall through. Those are the days we rely on our pantry and freezer staples, such as pasta. If we were so inclined, we could probably eat from pantry and freezer for a month, with fresh milk and veg supplements added in. We generally try to construct our meals such that we can eat leftovers for lunches, or renovate leftovers into a different meal. Case in point: last week we had stir-fry with rice on Saturday, and meatloaf on Sunday night. Tuesday night we had a friend joining us for a quick dinner before an 11 PM skate-and-shoot session on the ice. The local supermarket had decent-looking red peppers at a decent price. I combined leftover rice and chopped-up leftover meatloaf with a little shredded cheese binder and used the mixture to stuff the peppers. As far as shopping, the one supermarket left in our town is really lousy for most things, although occasionally they'll have better prices than the Wegman's in the city (closest one is 45 minutes away) on produce but quality can be dubious. We have a small market in town with a terrific meat counter and terrific sausages they make themselves, but very limited produce and dairy. We have a farm market the other side of town from the meat-counter market that's a very good place to buy produce. And about once a week, I find myself in the city for other reasons, and on those visits I try to go to Wegman's, where I don't mind shopping or spending time but try not to make special one-purpose trips. Generally speaking, we look at the ads to see what's on special that week. If there's something notable, we put it on the list and find a way to work it into the week's menu. We're both thankful that we have enough of a knowledge base that we can punt, if need be. We usually don't plan out each week's meals to the hilt; we leave a day or two open, which gives us the flexibility to use the fresh ingredients we buy for other purposes than whatever our initial intent was, because it seems like we never have a week go exactly as planned! One thing that's saved us more than once is that both of us like to cook, and have enough of a solid knowledge base that we can improvise as needed. When we've had students over, this is the thing that surprises many of them. MelissaH

McD's is great for on-the-road food that you eat in the car en route. (That's about the only time we eat there.) It's all eatable with just one hand, and they don't cover the sandwiches with shredded lettuce that then showers everywhere. When the fries are good, they're terrific, which is important in the car because we don't do ketchup or anything else for dipping. And when the fries are good, they're better than any other fries I've had except the ones you buy at the two carts outside the bell tower in Brugge...but McD's is a lot more accessible and less expensive here. MelissaH

Around here, we use Utica Club, Old Style if we've imported any, or whatever other cheap beer we have on hand. Pig's Eye isn't found in this area, alas. MelissaH

I guess you could sort of call me a luncher. Except that we usually clear out by lunchtime. There's a group of us, 6 when everyone's in town and available. One of us is currently a professor. Two of us have taught in the past. One is currently a student. Four of us have husbands who are professors. One of us has a husband who is not a professor. Four of us have dogs. Three of us have cats. One of us has a hamster. One of us is allergic to furry pets. Three of us have kids, and one of us has grandkids. Three of us work as sports officials. Two of us are currently in physical therapy. Two of us have been to the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, making the other four jealous. Three of us knit, and we're holding out for the other three to bring some kind of needlecraft at some point. We come from all over, big cities and small towns, east and west and Europe. No topic is off-limits. We, too, get together on Wednesdays for a couple of hours, usually mid-morning till about lunchtime. Our favorite meeting place is a coffeehouse downtown, one known for their pastries, sandwiches, soups, and salads. They're in the midst of an expansion into the building next door, where they plan to install a pizza oven and stretch their repertoire. And unfortunately, at the moment the construction noise makes discussion a little difficult...not to mention the thought of sawdust near the kitchen! This is a small town, with limited options, but we're ready to explore them for the immediate future. We're also discussing an opportunity to expand our horizons by staging a group party-dinner at one of the Korean restaurants in the city, accompanied by another friend/professor and his family---who are Korean. (Spring Break is coming up!) I wish we were closer to you and Anna, Kerry. Any chance you two might feel like a road trip sometime after the snow's done for a while? MelissaH

Braise them, shred the meat off the bone, and use for ravioli or other dumpling stuffing? MelissaH

The lasagna recipe I've gotten the most raves for is a take on something from Cook's Illustrated: it's a no-tomato, bechamel and spinach lasagna. I usually do a variation with added mushrooms. I'm not thrilled with the flavor of the cottage cheese they use, so I generally go for ricotta instead. For the pasta, I use no-bake noodles---but I give them a bath in hot tap water for about five minutes, then pull them out onto kitchen towels to drip-dry. The texture seems to be less leathery that way, and you don't need to walk that fine line between too-much-liquid-soggy-lasagna and not-enough-liquid-yucky-noodles. That, to me, was a big revelation. MelissaH

Spiced roasted chickpeas.

Or any kind of filled dumpling. I wouldn't call it a party, in the traditional sense of the world, but the Polish Catholic church in my hometown spends a week getting ready for their big festival every August. Even though I'm neither Polish nor Catholic (which means I miss out on all of the inside jokes) I try to go and help at least a few mornings, because I enjoy the process of making pierogi, and because I get to learn from the best! MelissaH

I did, in fact, try it with turkey, as I needed something to do with some stuff from the freezer but not a lot of hands-on time. I had a single breast and a single leg/thigh quarter from the freezer, the other half of our Thanksgiving turkey. I thawed them, put them in a pot with a couple of halved onions, a handful of baby carrots, a celery stalk which I broke into smaller pieces, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and barely enough water to cover. On the stove it went to simmer for a couple of hours, at which point I took out the veg and tasted them but deemed them spent, removed the meat from the bones and put it back in the pot, and strained and defatted the resulting broth. At this point, I sliced a couple of onions. I sauteed them in a little of the schmaltz in a small frying pan, deglazed the pan with a bit of the broth, and added the whole shebang to the pot with the turkey meat. I added a little extra water because it seemed like it needed a little more liquid, a couple of handfuls of frozen peas because it looked really boring without any color, and salt because it really needed it. When it came back to a boil, I covered the top with some homemade ricotta gnocchi that I'd made a while ago and stashed (you guessed it) in the freezer, put the lid back on the pot, and let it go till the gnocchi were cooked through. There wasn't much left, and we were too hungry to think about photos. MelissaH

I just rediscovered this post. And wouldn't you know: not long ago, the King Arthur Flour blog posted this about baking cookies and brownies in a waffle iron. Since I do love the crunchy edges of brownies, I think I may need to give this a go. Now, I'm off to cook the waffle batter that's been resting in the fridge overnight.... MelissaH