MelissaH

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

We'll be spending Easter weekend in Lake Placid this year, watching some good college hockey. Our hotel room is three blocks from the ice arena, and we plan to park the car when we arrive on Friday and not move it again until we head out on Monday. Where's good to eat these days? Our tastes definitely tend towards the less-expensive, non-upscale, non-chain, down-to-earth, good food, good to sit and talk with friends places. We haven't been graduate students for quite a while, but think about eating like a grad student and you'll get the general drift. We won't be bringing any clothing more formal than cargo pants and a hockey sweater, so anywhere that would require fancy dress is out. We'll probably be spending a fair amount of time enjoying outdoor activities when we're not at games, so we'll probably get good and hungry. Is there anywhere we should be sure not to miss? And are we likely to encounter closed restaurants due to the holiday? MelissaH

Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen. The author was born in Vietnam, fled at the age of 5, and grew up in Grand Rapids with a Hispanic stepmother. Much of the memoir revolves around the different cultures' foods and the desire to fit in. MelissaH

What I wound up doing: I pulled the cabbage rolls out of the freezer about ten minutes before I realized that I needed to get dinner moving NOW. So they were pretty rock-solid still, when it was time to start dinner prep. I took a pot, added hot water from the kitchen faucet, and tossed in the two vacuum-sealed packets of cabbage rolls. I then started heating the pot on the stove. When the water came up to a boil, I turned the heat down to simmer, and left it there a while (10 or so minutes, maybe? I didn't keep careful track). Things felt nicely thawed, and even hot, but I had no way to quantify how hot the insides were without opening a packet. So I turned the burner off, pulled one packet out, snipped open an end, and stuck my Thermapen probe into one of the cabbage rolls. I was only at about 125 degrees F, so I dumped the entire contents of the packet into a dish, covered it with a plate, and stuck it in the microwave for a minute. After that, the Thermapen kept moving well past 165 degrees, so I knew everything was well dead. This whole time, I left the other packet in the pot with the hot water. When the microwave became available, I put the other serving in for a minute to finish heating it through. The result: one delicious dinner of leftover cabbage rolls. I think if I was going to do only one serving, I might be able to go with just the microwave. But for two or more servings, not only did I get them done in a reasonable amount of time, I humidified the kitchen a bit. MelissaH

The bags (standard FoodSaver brand) are both microwave-safe and boilable. I'm looking for quick and easy. Minimal cleanup is a plus tonight! MelissaH

Back when this cook-off was more current, I made a batch of cabbage rolls (stuffed with meat and rice, and cooked in tomato sauce on top of the stove). We ate some, and the leftovers I froze individually on a cookie sheet, then vacuum-sealed in single-serving packets. Since then, the sealed packets have been reposing in the chest freezer. Tonight, we're going to need a quick dinner, so we're going to pull a couple of packets out. What's going to be the best way to reheat these? (Microwave? Boil in the bag?) I'm unable to plan on a specific dinner time tonight, as it all will depend on how organized my husband's students are in lab this afternoon! Thanks, MelissaH

I prefer the Cook's Illustrated technique modification for overnight waffles, noted by Susie Q: put the batter together the night before, but beat the eggs in. Leave the batter to rise overnight in the fridge. No need for baking soda, because the colder temperature reduces the amount of acid produced. I find I prefer the Fanny Farmer recipe to the Cook's Illustrated recipe, but I like the fridge technique because it makes the morning easier, and I find the flavor better. MelissaH

lauraf, Look in Julia Child for instructions---she taught my mother and me both how to make souffles. I think they're in Mastering volume 1. Then, get yourself a carton of eggs, and try it. Really, the worst that can happen is that you wind up with a baked egg dish! Despite the mystique and the "oooh" factor, a souffle is not difficult to make. The hardest part can be separating the eggs! Good luck, MelissaH

Here's a question, for those of you who bake on parchment: do you find that the bottom of your loaf winds up pale, compared to the part that was not in contact with the parchment? I'm using a pre-heated stone, and even when I pull the parchment out as soon as the loaf is set enough to do so, I still wind up with the bottom significantly paler than the rest of the crust. Has anyone tried baking these breads on an oiled pizza screen, placed on the stone? I'm wondering if that would make the crust color more consistent, but at the same time reduce the amount of cornmeal rolling around my oven. And what internal temperature am I shooting for, when the loaf is fully baked? MelissaH

I tried using latex gloves purchased at a pharmacy. They too worked beautifully for non-sticking the dough. This time of year, I just keep the dough in our garage. It stays a pretty constant 40 to 45 degrees F there, and the dough rests nicely next to the lagering beer-in-progress. MelissaH

I have a silicone pan liner, KitchenAid brand (I think). It came as a set of two, one red and one blue, one for a half-sheet pan and one for a more traditional rimless cookie sheet. I tried using the red one (half-sheet size) once, and I watched it expand through my oven window. (The Silpat-brand liners I have don't do this.) It was kind of scary, watching my cookies move and the red liner ripple on the pan. I won't be using it for baking again, but it should work nicely to keep a large cutting board from sliding on the counter. I think it would also be good as a pan liner when freezing items on a pan before bagging them. MelissaH

I'm having a problem with the silicone spatulas. I noticed that every time I ran them through the dishwasher, they'd drip water all over when I unloaded them and put them away. A little examination showed that the handle was separate from the shaft. When I pulled the handle off, water gushed out. I started to always remove the handle and load the two pieces separately into the dishwasher. That solved the trapped-water problem. My husband tried sealing the gap with a bead of clear silicone, but that didn't last. I've stuck to dehandling. I did just snap the shaft of one of my spatulas, in the process of separating the pieces. I like the spatulas, I just find them annoying to use. MelissaH

We decided it was time to rejuvenate our AeroGarden. This time around we went with the "South of the Border" selection, which gives us globe basil, thyme, two cilantros, parsley, oregano, and epazote. The plants are all doing nicely, and when it was time to feed them I decided I'd better read the book that came with the seed pods. And in at least two different places, there are prominent warnings that pregnant and nursing women should NOT use epazote. This is the first time I've come across a warning for epazote, as though it's in the same category as, say, cat litter boxes, unpasteurized cheeses, or sushi. Is this common practice? Why haven't I seen warnings in any of my Mexican cookbooks? MelissaH