MelissaH

We have three different versions of mac and cheese in our house: My Way, His Way, and the Blue Box Way. My Way starts with a bechamel sauce, seasoned with a pinch of chile and a bit of dry mustard, to which I add half monterey jack and half sharp cheddar. The sauce gets mixed with cooked small elbows, poured into a pyrex dish, and baked until the top is crusty and the whole thing is bubbly. I've been known to mix in a can of diced tomatoes. His Way uses large elbows, which get tossed with chunks of sharp colby (which can be hard to find; you can use sharp cheddar if you must) in a baking dish. Evaporated milk is poured over the top, and more chunks of cheese get added to the top. It too gets baked. Since I'm usually the one making the mac and cheese during the week, I do it My Way. On the weekends, he's more likely to make it, and of course he does it His Way. It's been eons since either of us has done it the Blue Box Way. MelissaH

I'd just like to point out here that Buffalo's usually a distant second or third to Syracuse in the Golden Snowball contest. And Steve, just keep telling yourself that until the lake freezes, it helps to keep the temperatures up. MelissaH

Thanks so much for taking this on, Steve. I'm really looking forward to it, and hope that I can be there for the whole weekend this time! MelissaH

We have a Marmoleum Click floor in our kitchen. We love it. MelissaH

If it worked, graduate school would have been much faster and easier for me! MelissaH

Waffles. Made with overnight-risen-in-the-fridge yeast batter, so morning is easy. MelissaH

If I can work out the transportation, I'm in. I had a lot of fun last year, and because I'm still new to this, pretty much anything you do would be great for me. But the chemist side of me has always been fascinated by glassblowing---so I'd love to see some sugar blowing, maybe have an opportunity to give it a shot myself. MelissaH

It's not just you. MelissaH

I've always stored mine rolled inside paper towel tubes as well. I make sure I roll them such that they're curled in the direction that when I put them inside a sheet pan, any residual curl would be down and not up. That way, any weight on the silpat will help keep them flat. Interestingly, I've noticed that I tend to use parchment for baked goods, and the silpat for more savory tasks like roasting vegetables, where I could conceivably be left with a whale of a mess to clean in the pan. I think in part this is because I hate cleaning the things so much, whenever possible I look for an alternative! The only thing worse than cleaning a silpat is trying to clean black vulcanized gunk out of a sheet pan. (Not to mention, it's really easy to slide a sheet of parchment with cookies off the sheet pan, so the pan can get re-used quickly. Not the case with a silpat.) MelissaH

The other thing I'll sometimes do when I'm not planning to eat the squash just as a vegetable is drain the cooked squash puree in a sieve, to get rid of some of the liquid. MelissaH

Unless you live where I do, in which case the only "bakeries" (and many of the restaurants) all buy their bread mostly-baked and just brown it off themselves. We used to have a terrific baker, but he found an opportunity he couldn't pass up and moved away. The "fresh-baked" bread from the supermarket here isn't bad, in a pinch. MelissaH

Are commercial, industrial products always necessarily inferior? MelissaH

Yes, I'm looking for mool yut (choose your preferred transliteration). I wish I knew what grain was malted to make it! MelissaH

I'm hoping there's a little intersection between the homebrewing community and those who cook Korean food. I found a recipe for pork ribs that glazes them with a mixture that includes malt syrup. These days, it's easier for me to get homebrew supplies than it is for me to get to the almost-local Asian grocery. Can anyone out there give me a suggestion as to what sort of malt syrup the Koreans use, and what its homebrew equivalent might be? Thanks, MelissaH

I love Silpats. I don't love cleaning them after use. They're floppy, they take up huge amounts of space, they always seem to feel greasy, and they're tough to dry completely. My usual technique is to get the sink completely empty, wipe it down with my soapy dishrag, and rinse. Then I lay the Silpat into the bottom of the sink, clean one side and then the other with the soapy dishrag, pick it up, and run water over it. To dry, I flop it over whatever else is on my drying rack, making sure to avoid anything sharp or pointy. After a couple of hours, I move the Silpat so that the places where it rests on something change, and the original resting points get a chance to dry. Got a better solution? Could I clip it to my clothesline and let it hang to dry, or would this be bad for the Silpat (or would it be so slick as to slip right out of the clothespin)? MelissaH

Cabbage and noodles. Yum. MelissaH

I think it is more about Food Network needing/wanting yet another food competition show. And when the time comes that they do a head-to-head competition, I wonder if the secret ingredient will be jumped shark. MelissaH

And don't forget the cookbook Gordon Hamersley wrote, Bistro Cooking at Home. MelissaH

How soon will you be ready? I can be there on half a day's notice! MelissaH

I must have the same genetic flaw, because I too prefer my marshmallows without egg whites. I just like the way they taste better. MelissaH

You'd think that by now, anyone appearing on a Top Chef of any flavor would have at least a couple of desserts (one that requires an oven, and one that does not) in their bag of tricks. MelissaH

And I once sat in on a Chinese-style cooking demonstration where one dish was, basically, green beans deep-fried in a wok till they were wrinkly and slightly browned. They were removed from the oil and drained. Most of the oil was poured out of the wok at that point, and a spicy sauce with a bit of ground pork was constructed in that same wok. The beans were tossed back in at the last moment. It was tasty! MelissaH

Or, you could tweak the order sheets before you submit them and not even bother to order the fronts at all. When you order a kitchen, everything is a separate piece. You can pick and choose to take or leave pretty much whatever you want. That's how we didn't get the wire baskets on the post in the corner cabinets. Good thing, too, because our nearest U.S. IKEA store is a 5+ hour drive away! MelissaH

As CaliPoutine stated above, we have an IKEA kitchen. We put it in three years ago, and still love it. They were easy to put together and install. And very easy to tweak from the "standard" setup, if you want to do something slightly non-traditional (as in our under-microwave drawer). But if you do corner cabinets with turntables, build your own rather than use their cheapo wire baskets. I've been bugging my husband to write up exactly what he did, and if he ever does, I'll come back to link to it. MelissaH

I asked this question a few years ago, and one of the answers I got was to make a cold soup with them. I'll see if I can find a recipe. MelissaH