MelissaH

One of the things I love about Flo Braker's baking books (say that three times fast!) is that they're scale-friendly. It's just so much easier to deal with than measuring cups. MelissaH

Thanks for posting your recipe, Kerry. I have some cheese that's appropriately old and stinky, and look forward to trying it out. The problem I always seem to have with biscuits, no matter whose recipe I try, is that they look great going into the oven, but while they bake they spill butter (or whatever other fat I used). When the pan comes out, the biscuits are generally cooked all the way through, not burned, but the bottoms are more or less fried because they've been sitting in a layer of melted butter. What am I doing wrong? Is my butter not cold enough to start with, and I can solve my whole problem simply by making sure the butter's colder? MelissaH

I was disappointed by the Newman's cookies, which tasted soggy and overly sweet to me, but thought Famous Amos wasn't bad. Since the WSJ article came out, I've looked for Hydrox in supermarkets in seven different states. Nobody who works in the stores where I've looked seems to have read the article, because all I seem to get is a "Huh?" kind of look, and at the better stores someone offers to help me find them. It'll be interesting to see when the first package actually shows up for someone to buy. MelissaH

Kerry, What is your cheese biscuit recipe? MelissaH

I have an old edition of Sweet Miniatures. Does anyone know what the differences are between it and the newer edition? Must. Make. Hedgehogs. Someday! MelissaH

We'll sometimes show students how to make a "date night dinner." They come over, and we all go to the supermarket, they buy the ingredients, we come home, and we cook a nice dinner. Our typical menu: chicken roasted with a lemon inside and garlic, vegetables (don't forget that carrots and celery can be used to kludge a roasting rack!), and little potatoes in the bottom of the roasting pan, a bag of salad (remember, these are students who are often pressed for time) plus a little something to add to the greens (grape tomatoes, or grapes, or an apple to slice and add, some nuts to candy, or something else that's in season and looks good), a loaf of bread, and something for dessert. If birds are on sale, we'll often buy a few extras for ourselves and use them to give a butchering lesson while dinner's in the oven. When the chicken is roasted we'll let it rest, make a quick pan sauce, give the bread a bit of oven time, light the candles on the table, and turn on some music. By then it's time to carve the bird and eat. We've heard that this has worked quite nicely for several people trying to convince someone to go out with them. We just haven't yet figured out what to teach as a follow-up. Chicken soup, maybe? MelissaH

We have a new addition to our kitchen. Behold: And for a closer look, albeit with colors that aren't quite as true-to-life as those above: This is a hand-woven rag rug, made by Walt and Ronda Rose of Louisiana Loom Works (http://www.customragrugs.com/). We discovered their shop on Chartres Street when we made our second visit to New Orleans, way back in March of 2003. Truth be told, it wasn't the rugs that first drew my attention—it was the cat in the window. I was in town for a conference, and was deep in withdrawal from my own two cats. And lo and behold, Miz Williams was there, lounging in the middle of a rug, showing off her gray fur, white paws, and blue eyes. So I came inside, asked permission, and gave her some love. And lo and behold, there was a second cat there also: Miz Williams' daughter Feffa. We talked cats for a while, and then I asked Ronda the magic question: "Where do you like to eat?" She steered us to places that are still high up on our list: Napoleon House, Clover Grill, and a great little now-departed breakfast spot on Exchange Alley called Lulu's that we still miss. (Every time we go back, we add more restaurants to the list.) On that very first visit, we found a rug that we purchased for a wedding gift for two of our very good friends. Every trip back, we'd go and look, but the time was never right for us: either we knew we'd be moving soon, or we'd just moved and were a little tight for cash. Fast forward to March 2008, our first trip back since Katrina. The shop is still there. Ronda says they were the first in the French Quarter to reopen after the storm, waiting only as long as it took for power to be restored. Miz Williams and Feffa still rule the store, but they've added a couple more refugee cats since. Peace mostly prevails. We decided that this was finally going to be the year we'd get a rug for ourselves, so we started looking at materials. First choice: fabric. We knew we wanted something to go with the Lion of Flanders theme for the kitchen, and this plain yellow fabric was available. We looked at some prints, but the plain yellow was our favorite of everything they had enough of. (The fabric is mostly odds and ends from factories, so they rarely get the same things in twice.) In a way, I would have liked a print because the prints morph into something completely different when they get woven, but I'm quite happy with the yellow. Once we had the fabric chosen, we needed to choose thread colors, as well as which thread color would be used to finish the ends. Yellow, black, and red were no-brainers. But there were two colors of red to choose from, and we wondered about including a little green because the main color of our floor has a significant green tint. We brought home a snippet of the fabric, as well as a bit of each of the thread colors we were considering. Using both natural light and the lights we installed in the kitchen, we considered our options. In the end, we selected the perfect shade of red, as well as a nice green. We also measured the exact dimensions we wanted the rug to be. And while we were doing that, we decided we wanted a smaller mat to match, for the dining room table, to help tie the space together. We phoned in our thread choices, as well as the measurements we wanted. And then we waited. In the middle of July, we got our rugs! And we're thrilled that we did it. The mat looks great on the dining room table. And the floor rug is so much nicer than the old bathroom rugs we'd been using. It feels good underfoot, a piece of non-skid material holds it in place nicely, and it's machine-washable when the need arises. I'm just sorry it took us so long to finally get around to ordering a rug of our own. MelissaH

They really should go to the one in the Strip District. While it may not be the most geographically proximate, I suspect that it will have much more character. Besides, I would think that the Strip District is a wonderful place to wander around before the game. (But a Pittsburgh native would have to confirm whether the shops are open at that time.) ← I'm not a Pittsburgh native, but I lived there for 16+ years. The Strip District location is open 24/7. Definitely the one to visit. MelissaH

Don't forget to compare the plumbing and electrical costs of two dishwashers vs. one commercial dishwasher. They can add up! MelissaH

I always pit first. Then I spread the pitted cherries on a cookie sheet, freeze in a single layer, and THEN bag. Much easier than dealing with an icy lump. I'd think the cherries would mush, rather than cleanly pit, if you froze them before pitting. MelissaH

I just returned from a vacation with my husband's family. One of my first stops when I go there is always their local library, armed with my MIL's card so I can actually take things out. This time, I borrowed a cookbook called Grandma's Wartime Kitchen. Along with scads of recipes that would actually work for today's eaters, this book includes a few "Wartime Special" recipes. And one of the included Wartime Special recipes is for something called Whipped Evap, and the note says it was used in place of unavailable whipped cream. Ingredients for this topping are: 1 tsp. unflavored gelatin 1 Tbsp. cold water 1 cup evaporated milk 1 tsp. vanilla extract 2 Tbsp. confectioners sugar The directions are as you might imagine: bloom the gelatin in the water, heat 1/4 of the evaporated milk and use that to dissolve the bloomed gelatin, and then stir the hot gelatin/milk into the rest of the milk along with the vanilla. That sits in the fridge until it's well-chilled, and then it gets beaten with the sugar. The recipe says it can be covered and stored in the fridge, which kind of makes sense as the gelatin probably stabilizes it nicely. MelissaH

My husband and I will be flying into the Milwaukee airport on Thanksgiving Day, renting a car, and driving to DePere. We'll be in DePere through the holiday weekend, drive back to Milwaukee on Sunday to spend the night in a hotel near the airport, and fly home early Monday morning. Where should we eat? Is there anything in DePere, or will we need to drive into Green Bay? I'm particularly concerned about making sure we can find food on Thanksgiving Day. Will grocery stores in the area be open, or are we doomed to McDonald's? Thanks, Melissa

When we were visiting friends in Cleveland, the Whole Foods had some rose wine on sale for $6 a bottle, or something like that. We didn't care about the wine, but the label had a beautiful old bicycle shop ad. We got a bottle for our friends who own our favorite bike shop of all time, and a bottle for us. Once the wine (which was nothing special, IIRC) was gone, the bottle got rinsed out and placed in our bicycle-themed half bathroom downstairs. We're suckers for all things beautiful and bicycle. MelissaH

The flip side of the reusable grocery bag: This morning, the cat puked. Hauled me out of bed at 5 AM to go and clean it up. (Not too big a hardship, in reality: we got back from a trip to the Czech Republic last night and it felt way later than that, and the sun was up, so I was practically up already anyway.) I usually grab a grocery bag along with the roll of paper towels and the carpet cleaner when I clean up hairballs, and this morning I pulled the LAST bag out of the holder. That's it, no more in the house! We use grocery bags not only as small-scale trash bags, but also as secondary containment for various wet things, as bags in which to pack a lunch and then collect the trash in afterwards, and (perhaps most importantly) as a liner for the container into which we scoop the clumps from the litterbox. And we are now out of bags. We did go grocery shopping today, as the house was nearly devoid of food after ten days of our recent-college-graduate housesitter. We're both feeling badly in need of fresh fruits and vegetables that are not potatoes, after ten days of Czech restaurant meals. (That's not a rap on Czech restaurants. The trip was great. Read Rehovot's foodblog, go visit, and try to get away from Prague for at least a little bit. We ate well. But I'm just a touch sick of potatoes, dumplings, and meat meat meat.) Anyhow, because we got lots of produce, we have a bunch of the plastic bags into which produce gets inserted. The ones here are much sturdier than the ones in the Czech republic, so they can be readily reused as a "garbage bag" while cooking, in the sense of a Rachael Ray garbage bowl. But they're too small for much else. When we shopped, we actually had to *buy* some small garbage bags that we think are about the right size for the litterbox scoopage bin. Talk about guilt! So, those of you who used to recycle your grocery bags, what do you use instead, now that you have no more grocery bags? MelissaH

I'd also add that it helps guests out if you register for way more than you think you'll ever need. We were invited to a wedding, oh, seven or eight years ago. By the time we finally got out to shop for the gift, nearly everything on the registry list had already been purchased by someone. There were just a couple of items left, the big-ticket ones that cost probably ten times what we'd been planning to spend. We wound up looking at the list of stuff that had already been purchased and finding something else within our price range that we thought somehow went with the rest of everything. (IIRC, they'd ordered stuff like chopsticks and plates. We wound up getting them the Asian porcelain soup spoons and some teacups or rice bowls or something like that.) MelissaH

I finally tried my own experiment. It didn't work. The dough oozed through the holes in the screen, and then expanded in the heat of the oven. I wound up with a loaf fused to the screen, and the only way to get it off was to rip the bottom crust off. I let the dough proof directly on the screen. I wonder if I'd have better success if the dough spends less time on the screen. But I'm not sure where I could let the dough rise such that I could easily transfer it to the screen and gain any advantage over not using the screen at all. MelissaH

Chris - Have you thought of contacting Wegmans about this? They are very responsive to customer requests/inquiries and it might be interesting to see how they reply. I liked how their system of letting you weigh/price your produce in advance sped up the checkout line. On the other hand, if I only needed one of something, it seemed like a waste to bag it just to have a place to put the price sticker. If you bring the items to the checkout without a price, the cashier will weigh it for you. The downside to that is they don't always recognize the produce and have to look it up or ask you what it is! ← I've been known to put the sticker directly on my ginger, or apple, or canteloupe. (It doesn't work so well for lettuce, though.) However, I find that I still need a few plastic bags around, because when I cook, I use a garbage bag. If there's anything wet or drippy, I like having the "secondary containment" when it goes into the kitchen trash. MelissaH

When I go into the supermarket, no matter how much (or how little) is on my list, I bring all my bags in with me. And the bagger always manages to make use of all my bags, no matter how much (or how little) I purchase. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? The bags are quite robust, yet sometimes I wind up with a two-pound bag of cat food in one, a bag of flour in another, and a carton of milk in a third rather than all three items going in the same bag. MelissaH

Has anyone else noticed the problem I alluded to in my previous post: little holes in the bottom of the plastic bags? I would have been just as happy to continue to accumulate, and use, the zillions of bags but the holes in the bottom make them useless for many tasks. Come to think of it, the holes might be the reason for using so many of them: do they compromise the strength of the bag? MelissaH

When we redid our kitchen and got our new trash can, we discovered that we'd actually have to buy bags to fit it. (This is not a bad thing, as our plastic grocery bags invariably have a hole or two in the bottom, so we'd started doubling or tripling them as insurance against drippy leaks. Bags made for the purpose are of better quality.) The problem: we then started to have issues with plastic grocery bags coming out our ears! Last summer, we got a couple of bags and kept them in the car. As soon as they get unloaded from a shopping trip, they either go back in the car immediately, or they get put somewhere that you'll have to trip over them on your way to the car. Our supply of plastic bags is no longer increasing prodigiously, although occasionally we'll acquire a few. The bags we have still see use as liners for the garbage cans in bathrooms, the container into which we clean the cats' litter box, and in the kitchen as a garbage bag on the counter during meal prep. It's getting easier, the more we do it. But this summer, we're hoping to do much of our shopping on bicycles. If it won't fit in our panniers, we can't get it that day! MelissaH

We go to Potsdam every year for hockey. Our recommendation, developed over four years' worth of visits: Sergi's Italian Restaurant downtown. Not too pricey, and good food if a little ordinary. Caroline's Diner is our favorite for breakfast in Potsdam. Typical diner breakfasts: pancakes, omelets, and the like. On various occasions, I've gotten pie or a milkshake with my breakfast. There's a bagel place in town. The bagels are better than Lender's. I'll stop there. We stay as far away from Maxfield's as we possibly can. The menu is very broad, which means that they don't do anything well. But we had a bigger issue there. The friends we were with wanted to get a drink after the game. The guy at the door stopped us and told us there was a cover charge. We refused to pay. Our friends went anyway. (No, no band that night.) As we walked away, we saw other people walk right in, without paying a cover charge. I realize Potsdam's a small town, but I can't help but wonder if the kid working the door saw our team colors and opted to try and make a few bucks for himself. Since that night, we haven't set foot inside their door. MelissaH

Passover Coke has made its appearance on the shelves of the Wegman's nearest to me. MelissaH

What we found: a bunch of places were closed on Easter Sunday. We brought sandwich fixings with us, and made some very good sandwiches. As far as meals out, we did a lunch and a dinner at the Lake Placid Brewing Company. The food was uneven; I'd recommend going for lunch and sticking with sandwich-type items. The beer was good. MelissaH

Oh yeah, it was well worth it. But I somehow don't think I'll ever try it with the precious Oban Double Matured that we brought back from Oban last summer. Balvenie works just fine, and it's a lot easier to get my hands on here. MelissaH

Last week I made a rum-soaked pound cake again. Except that instead of using rum, I used single malt scotch, specifically Balvenie Doublewood. I thought that the vanilla-like flavor of this particular whisky would go nicely in a cake, and it most definitely did! MelissaH