MelissaH

Yes, it is. I discovered that too, along the way. Ooh, I think our library has a copy of this book. I'll have to check it out. This restaurant (might have been Casablanca, might have been somewhere else) didn't think a roast leg of lamb was a necessary accompaniment, but the yogurt side was quite nice. This looks close to what I remember eating. I'll have to give this a shot, I think. Thanks a bunch, M. Lucia! MelissaH

We finally had the opportunity to use some over Thanksgiving. (We live a six-hour drive from the nearest TJ's, and nothing frozen would be frozen still by the time it got home. Ah, the joys of a station wagon!) We baked it blind, and heaped slow-cooked onions over the top. Delicious. MelissaH

When we were visiting in Tucson over Thanksgiving, my sister suggested that we eat at a Middle Eastern restaurant one night. We gladly said yes, since we don't have any of those in my town. (And this one had a belly dancer, to boot!) We asked my sister what was particularly good, and she and her boyfriend both immediately said, "The oozie." So that's what I got. Oozie turned out to be a rice dish, nicely seasoned, with small pieces of meat, onions, and pine nuts. I got mine with chicken, but it was also on the menu with lamb or beef. And it was wonderful! Since returning home, I've been trying to find a recipe for oozie, without success. Does this sound at all familiar? Is there another name or spelling for this dish that I should be looking for? MelissaH

I'm practically crying reading this blog, both from the beauty of it and the fact that I can almost taste everything but I'm here, not there! MelissaH

We used to be able to find packaged herbs labeled as "herbs for fish" and "herbs for poultry" and the like. The packs would include a couple of sprigs of several different herbs, the specifics depending on what the herbs were meant to be used for. I liked them because I'd get just a little bit of a bunch of things, so I could get many different flavors. I haven't seen them around here for a while, though. Guess it's time to get the Aerogarden going again for the winter. MelissaH

If you're concerned about direct contact between the bag and the pie crust, you could probably use foil directly on top of the crust, and then put the bag on the foil. The bag wouldn't contact the food that way, so it wouldn't get buttery-greasy and it wouldn't leach anything through direct contact. But you'd also get the easy-out advantage. MelissaH

Reading about this is the next-best thing to being there. What a treat! MelissaH

On one leg of our Thanksgiving flights, we were served breakfast: a little bowl of Cheerios, a carton of milk, and a banana. Best airline food I've been served in years. MelissaH

This is a great idea. You're right on the texture aspect. I'd been thinking about that ever since I read the Cool-Whip suggestion. I'm going to have to go with the frosting! ← Or maybe instant mashed potatoes, made up to whatever density you want to practice with? (I didn't make this up myself. I think the idea came from Regan Dailey's book In The Sweet Kitchen.) MelissaH

We've done our stuffing in a slow cooker for many years, dating back to the times when we had only a miserable tiny oven. And I agree with previous posts: SIMPLIFY YOUR MENU! Get down to just a couple of munchies that you can prep way ahead of time, or better yet, ask people to bring their favorite. Remember, there's a lot of food to come, and at least for me, the primary goal of munchies is to keep people out of your way! Either soup or salad should be plenty, if you feel you need either. (Do you have enough dishes?) I'd go with one form of potato. I'd also think that if you're having a cornbread stuffing, you don't need to have cornbread on the table in addition. Desserts are another good candidate for making ahead of time, or having other people bring. The best part of T-giving for me is having friends and family around. I try to engineer the menu such that I'm not too flustered to enjoy their company. MelissaH

We used to use plastic grocery bags, doubled up, inside our kitchen trash can. But since we redid the kitchen and got a new nifty sliding trash can, we use commercial bags. The plastic ones have been building up, and it's not so easy to find somewhere around here that recycles them. (I know Wegman's does, but I never remember to bring them.) I've heard about people cutting plastic grocery bags into strips and then knitting them into a tote bag, but I have yet to try it myself. We have one of Wegman's $0.99 reusable bags. I'm getting better about grabbing it from the back of the car when I go in to shop. MelissaH

Never tried it. I have an apple peeler, which works fine on apples but not so well on squash. And for small quantities of apples, a vegetable peeler is great. MelissaH

Some of you may recall that exactly one year ago, in the thread on multi-tasking equipment, I posted about one of my desires for my new kitchen: I'm a lucky woman. My husband did go for it over the summer, and I'm here to show you the results. Behold, the lathe, with its fodder in place: It's a Delta LA200 Midi Lathe, which I run on the slowest speed of 500 rpm. When I choose my squashes, I look for relatively straight ones, with thicker necks. To prep the squash, I wipe it with a damp paper towel to remove any surface dirt, and then cut off the top and bottom with a sharp knife, just enough to expose a flat surface. My husband built me the piece on the right side of the photo, which I use to hold the squash in place. It's basically a flat circular piece of wood with three screws. The lathe grabs the wood, and the screws grab the squash. To install the squash into the lathe, I simply jam it into the screws, trying my best to center it. Then I slide the live-center on the other end into place, crank it up a bit more, and secure it. (That's my hand securing it in the photo above.) Once it's secured in place, I let 'er rip! I've made a movie of the process and you can watch it here. (Moderators: can I embed the video directly?) I use an ordinary gouge, although I'd like to find one with a plastic handle so it's less likely to be adversely affected by squashy goop. I thought about using a parting tool to mark grooves for easy even slicing, but decided I'd lose too much of the good stuff to make it worth bothering. Those of you with sharp eyes will note that the lathe is technically not in the kitchen. It's in the garage, and it's easy to move outside. There would have been room in the kitchen, but I would have spent far too much time cleaning squashy goop off my kitchen walls. When I'm done, here's what I look like after shaking off some of the turnings: The full face shield is essential. I usually change into ready-to-wash clothes before starting, and I always wear a hat because my curly hair is tremendously good at holding on to squash turnings. The cleanup's actually not too bad, just requiring a little time with a broom and a handful of paper towels. The towel draped over the lathe keeps any sticky juice from contacting the bare metal, which helps immensely. I remove the turnings, wipe down with a damp paper towel, and then dry with another paper towel. I've learned that it's easiest to clean the live center if you remove it from the lathe. I do make a point of peeling multiple squashes in a session, since it takes as much time to clean up after one squash as it does after half a dozen squashes. And the payoff's tremendous! All those recipes that start with peeled butternut squash are now remarkably easy. A peeled squash is no problem to cube into perfect half-inch dice, or reasonably thin slices, or any other shape. (And who knows, the lathe might just turn out to have other uses as well!) Got any favorite squash recipes? MelissaH

An update on my dinner meeting at Golden Ponds: the food was adequate. I've never been a big fan of pre-cooked pasta, but I was able to find enough to eat. The big "highlight" of the evening was the make-your-own-sauce bar: you chose the pasta shape, a sauce, and whatever add-ins you wanted, and they heated it all together in a little frying pan with some oil. They also had some pre-made combinations, including spaghetti with escarole. I asked for a few pine nuts to be toasted, to sprinkle on top. They did this without blinking. Would I go back? Sure, if it were for another meeting. But if I'm hauling 80 miles over to the west side of Rochester, I'm looking for something I don't get at home. And there's no shortage of Italian restaurants in Oswego. MelissaH

This thread so makes me want to go to Italy! I guess I'll just file it on my "someday" list for now.... MelissaH

We do a lot of our shopping this way. We usually go in with a list, if nothing else a mental list of what days we'll need dinner for that week. (For instance, I have band rehearsal on Thursday nights, and I typically need to have finished eating well before my husband gets home from work, so Thursdays are usually "fend for yourself" dinner. But once we get there, we'll often see what looks good, and plan our meals that way. I'll often fill in the gaps with a trip to the orchard store, or a repeat trip to the supermarket later in the week if I'm heading out that way for other errands, and we're getting better about remembering to get something out of the freezer a couple of days before we want to eat it. The vacuum sealer makes a big difference for us, also. MelissaH

But there's no reason why, once it's frozen, you couldn't slip it out of the pan. Then when it's time to bake, you can just put it back into the pan. And in the meantime, you'll have the pan available for other uses. I have bad memories left from every time I've tried to use a disposable foil pie pan. MelissaH

Andie, that's beautiful! (I'm somewhat partial to Art Deco styling, but if I had something as gorgeous as that, I might have designed my kitchen around it! MelissaH

I'm going to a dinner meeting tomorrow evening at Golden Ponds Restaurant & Party House (500 Long Pond Rd, on the northwest side of the city). We're apparently going to be "served" from the pizza and pasta buffet. Has anyone eaten there? Should I come hungry, or get something for immediate consumption at Wegman's when I stop to pick up supplies beforehand? (And if any of you reading this are technical communicators and plan to be there, PM me please!) MelissaH

What's a lumberjack cake? MelissaH

I'd also look for soups where you're tasting the "stuff" in the soup more than whatever stock you use. Look for recipes where it says you could substitute water if you don't have stock on hand, or for recipes that call for water instead of stock; this is usually a good tip-off that the stock's flavor isn't so important to the soup as a whole. IIRC, Julia Child's potato soup recipe is one of these. I think I found her recipe on line here if you don't have Mastering. I made a soup last night that might also fall into this category. I was sort-of following a recipe from the new Alice Waters book. You start by cooking some beans (she said white beans, I used Rancho Gordo's Red Nightfall beans because that's what I had) in a 50/50 mix of water and chicken stock. She said to soak overnight, and then cook the beans on the stove, but I cooked my beans without soaking in the oven (of course) and I used water alone because we're having vegetarian guests at the end of the week. Then, you slice a couple of onions, and saute them, a few sage leaves, and a bay leaf (I suspect she meant fresh, but I used dried) in a couple of Tbsp of olive oil (no duck fat in the house at the moment) till the onions are soft. Then you add a medium butternut squash, which you've peeled and cut into half-inch cubes. My squash was huge, so I just cubed up the neck, leaving the lower portion with seeds intact. Anyhow, you saute with the squash for another few minutes. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have probably tossed the squash with a little more oil and thrown it under the broiler for a few minutes to get some color, or maybe just oven-roasted the cubes, because I couldn't tell that cooking the squash in the same pan with onions did anything to it. Once the squash has gotten its headstart cooking, you add liquid. She has you drain the beans and add 6 cups of their cooking liquid, but I just used a container of nondescript chicken stock from the freezer, plus a container of water, which seemed like about 6 cups worth. The soup simmers till the squash is soft. The instructions say to add the beans when the squash starts to get tender, but I waited till nearly the end of the cooking process, and then I scooped in a few ladlefuls of the beans, with a little of the cooking liquid. (The recipe calls for a cup of dried beans, but as long as I was oven-cooking them, I went ahead and did the whole pound. I have leftover beans to do something with later this week now.) The soup was very autumnal, and could easily be taken in a number of directions. With a little chile, it could be turned in a Mexican direction. Add corn in some form, and you'd have something along the lines of a Three Sisters soup. We went European and ate ours with a grating of Romano and some toasted bread. Puree it, maybe with a potato added to help thicken it, and it's more elegant; maybe play up the fall-sweetness aspects with a pretty little fan of apple or pear up top? MelissaH

That sounds wonderful, Andie! I used my boiled cider to make a cookie. I got the recipe from King Arthur Flour. They were a big hit with my husband, which is exactly what I'd intended. MelissaH

Andie, as it turns out, we actually have both a hygrometer AND a refractometer (and a siphon starter ) in the house. My husband is a homebrewer, so we have all sorts of fun toys. Except that the hygrometer and refractometer are both currently in to school, as a colleague has a student working on a research project involving mashing and sugars. But they'll be back home before the next brewing session, whenever that happens. I'm glad to know that nothing disastrous happens if you overheat the solution. I wondered if, at 220 degrees F, it would somehow drastically change for the worse. I didn't measure the temperature of my boiled cider. But when I took it off the stove, it felt about like what happens when you heat up maple syrup. It's been in the fridge overnight, and it's still liquid enough to flow, albeit a very thick liquid. Is it possible to make an apple-flavored caramel, either by boiling down cider enough or by using cider to moisten sugar and then boil that down? MelissaH

What happens if you get it above 220 degrees F? MelissaH

Thanks, Andie. By the time I got this, I'd reduced my quart or so of cider down to about 1/3 cup. I nearly had a catastrophe: the little saucepan I'd used is a little handle-heavy if there isn't enough inside, and if the pot's not perfectly oriented on the burner grate, it will tip. When I heard a clunk coming from the kitchen, I didn't think much of it at first, and figured there was a cat on the counter, knocking things around. Then I remembered which pot I'd used, and went dashing in to check. Fortunately, enough liquid had boiled away that tipping the pan didn't cause anything to slosh out. At that point, I poured what I had into a metal 1-cup measure, which I left on the burner and continued to evaporate. I think I've eliminated enough water that I won't have a storage issue...if it lasts that long. Next time, I think I'll do a bigger batch. I very much like the crockpot idea. MelissaH