JanMcBaker

a process of frying and pressure cooking at the same time. ← For those so inclined to check it out further-- the official Broaster website. And after reading these posts about it, the word 'broasted' is looking really weird....

I found this article just amazing-- does this town have nothing better to do with their money? And why didn't the cop just stop eating the burger if it was so bad??!! I was especially amazed at the last line in the article, concerning the charges against the worker, because she recklessly prepared food "without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it." HE WAS EATING AT A GD MCDONALD'S, FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!! NOW there's concern about his well-being?? Give me a break.

And if you're looking to make your own corn pudding, of course you have to get some dried corn ! That corn pudding and pork sure looks yummy!

I've made freezer strawberry jam and peach jam using Sure-Jell pectin, the version for less or no sugar added recipes. Their strawberry jam recipe uses 4 cups crushed strawberries to 3 cups sugar, and the peach uses 4 cups finely chopped peaches to 2.5 cups sugar. I freeze it in one-cup sized Glad containers, but I put about 6 ounces of jam in each to allow for expansion when the jam freezes. The strawberry jam I made last year and this year came out lovely-- it set up nicely and has a wonderful flavor. Using it in mid-winter is like a lovely taste of summer. For some reason though the peach jam I made last year and this year just didn't set up. It still tastes wonderfully peachy, but it's more a sauce rather than jam.

You might want to try Polaner's "Spreadable Strawberries." Please note that this is not their 'All-Fruit' spread. Ingredients are strawberries, sugar, pectin and citric acid, and it has a very nice strawberry flavor. I don't particularly care for the spreads sweetened with fruit juice concentrates, as they seem to taste like the juices rather than whatever fruit the spread is supposed to be. Sugar in the 'Spreadable Strawberries' adds only sweetness, not other fruit flavors.

Woah.... Hold on there, pardner! There are some things you can make in a microwave, but you cannot bake in a plain old microwave oven. Please say that you wrote that by mistake? Or if not, please rethink how you're cooking your mac and cheese! How else will you get those lovely browned bits on top, if not in a regular oven? As for the bacon, I've never had it on mac and cheese but it definitely sounds interesting! For myself, I think I'd prefer to cook it crisp first, then crumble it on top, or stir it into my serving. Putting raw bacon in the mac and cheese would not allow the bacon to cook crispy, plus there may be pools of bacon fat in the mac and cheese. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your preference. Anyway, bacon or not, please bake that m&c in a regular oven!

Darn! I didn't get the Healthy Choice ad-- mine was "Try the Hoodia diet patch." Though I really don't think that's necessary after seeing those pictures!

When I called a week or so ago to ask that, they said " 8 to 8, every day." And yes, that does mean 7 days a week.

I don't have a recipe at hand, but on some cooking show ages ago, the cook used a metal pie pan with holes punched in the bottom. It was placed over the simmering water and the dough was pushed through the holes with a scraper.

Good lord.... this thing has really struck my fancy-- or my weirdness, I haven't figured out which! For some reason various things are going through my head: boullion cube-of-the-month club..... boullion cube collector clubs.... boullion cube exchange clubs or swap meets.....eeeeeee!!!

By the way-- any idea if there's any problem with boullion cubes going through customs? I have a friend who's in China with her husband visiting her daughter, SIL and new granddaughter. She said she'd get me 'something interesting' but had no idea what. Well, now I know! And I emailed her this morning about checking for boullion cubes!

Can I add myself in? Sandy-- Kim's is at 5th and Champlost-- you can pretty much roll off the 47 bus and end up at their front door. There's also a couple new looking places a few blocks up on Cheltenham Avenue at Oak Lane Rd.-- catty-corner from each other on either side of Cheltenham Ave. The one on the Cheltenham side used to be a pizza place.....

What a great idea! I think I like that even better than collecting shot glasses, which is what I would usually try to get when I travel!

I got some amazing peaches from a stand at Headhouse last Sunday. I forget the name of the stand, though! Coming in from the south end, they were on the right about half way up. They had some fruit to sample-- blueberries and peaches. I tried a peach and OMG!!!!! It was the most amazing peach I've had in AGES! Amazingly sweet, great peach flavor and squirting juice! I had to do that 'eating a messy cheeesesteak-style bend-from-the-waist' stance to keep from getting the peach juices on me. Got a half-peck of peaches and made some freezer jam which didn't set up for some reason-- but it will make great peach sauce over ice cream or in yogurt. There was still plenty left to eat fresh all this week too.

I think it's a problem more with the rolls than with the meat or greens. They have to try and guess how many rolls they'll use in a day and they order accordingly. Once the rolls are gone, that's it for sandwiches for that day.

Linda-- Thank you so much for your post, and I am so sorry for the loss of your brother. Not matter what age they were, or what the reason was, it's always tough to lose someone you're close to. 'Fattism' seems to be the remaining 'acceptable' prejudice for people to have. I'm feeling even more strongly about this issue after finishing Gina Kolata's book 'Rethinking Thin'. She talks about various studies and research that has been done with weight and eating. Studies that show that fat people eat for the same reasons thin people do. That if you saw psychological profiles of fat people and thin people-- not the people themselves-- that you could not tell them apart. Fat people are no more pathological about eating than thin people are. Research that shows that hormones control a lot more of eating and weight than we realize, and that fat is basically another physical characteristic. She also talks about how basically, 'fat is money.' At least, that's what I thought of when I read one section about the businesses that depend on fat people, and the universities that devote entire departments to weight and eating 'disorders.' Universities do pretty much the same studies time after time, year after year, and people may lose some weight, and most of them gain it back. Why do the researchers keep doing the same things over and over when they know it doesn't work? And about the word 'fat'-- maybe it can be de-demonized. So many people automatically make derogatory associations with the word. It should not be any more or less of a descriptive word than the words thin, tall, short, blond, brunette, etc. And yes, it is ok to be fat, and to like food.... In fact, most of my life I assumed that I liked baking and cooking because I was fat. It was only within the last few years that I realized that I'd like food no matter what my size was-- that my interest in food had nothing to do with my size. I wish I had realized that 30 years ago! Thanks again for your post, Linda. Maybe I can come up to Brooklyn some time and we can split a pizza at DiFara's!

FYI, Sheena-- Lora Brody has an Indian pudding recipe in her 'Slow Cooker Cooking' cookbook. It would still take a long time, but at least you wouldn't have to be standing over it the whole time. I haven't tried it, but she's pretty thorough with her recipes so I'd imagine it's pretty good.

When I read your original post, my first thought was "Oh great, now what are they saying is going to kill fat people?" I had not heard of anything associating esophageal hemorrhage with obesity or diabetes. In fact, after doing some research, it appears that the major risk factors for esophageal hemorrhage include alcoholism, or liver problems such as cirrhosis or hepatitis. There is a variety of people in the world, with a variety of physical characteristics in height, skin color, eye color, etc..... Oh, and size. If there's such a variety among people-- naturally occurring variations-- why wouldn't it follow that there's a naturally occurring variation in weight? Obesity is not automatically a death sentence, any more than being thin automatically means you're healthy. As for why fat people eat the way they do, does it really matter? What if it's for the same reasons anyone eats the way they do, no matter what size they are? Then what? Where is it shown that how or why fat people 'deal with food' is any more pathological than how anyone else 'deals' with it?

Here's one that I started doing a few years ago and NOT as a child! I don't know if it's that my tastes have changed or if the pretzels are different, but I find the insides of soft pretzels too doughy so I peel off the outside and eat that and discard the insides. When I can choose the pretzel, I'll pick the one on the end of the row since that has the most 'outsides'.

Pan, please accept my sympathies on the loss of your friend. I've had a variety of thoughts from the original post, and from subsequent replies. I'm still sorting things out, but I want to start with a question that came to mind when I first read Pan's original post. Do they know how your friend's diabetes and weight caused her esophageal hemorrhage?

Shaking my head or finger at you?!! Hell no!! I work just a few blocks from Tastykake but the last thing I need is to try and get mass quantities of them-- and for free yet?! Also, I don't understand the reasoning behind it, but once I asked why the Metropolitan Bakery stand at the Reading Terminal Market doesn't donate the unsold bread at the end of the day rather than discarding it. I was told there were liability concerns. Maybe they could be sued if someone choked on the donated bread?

I don't know if this counts 'cause, strictly speaking it wasn't at a supermarket. But it's what I thought of when reading these entries, so here goes..... One year I was grocery shopping for Thanksgiving and I was having trouble finding one of our family's 'must have's'-- sweet mixed pickles. Out of desperation I picked up a jar of some never-heard-of-it brand (Bell-View) at Phar-Mor of all places-- the now-defunct drugstore chain. They were great! Very tasty, snappy pickle juice, and the veggies were crunchy and tasty! So I also tried Bell-View gherkins-- also good! After I couldn't find Bell-View pickles around I started trying other store or 'off-brand' pickles. I have found them to be consistently better than the national brands. The national brands seem to be kind of mushy with a blah flavor. Other sweet pickles that I've found and like are White Rose, and BJ's. Please note these opinions are primarily for sweet gherkins and mixed pickles. Oh, and you can order Bell-View from their website, BTW, (www.bellview.com) but you have to get a full case..... Anyone in the Philadelphia area want to split a case of sweet mixed pickles?

Ask her how in the heck do you get a restaurant to live up to their heat designation for a given dish? I don't know how many times I've ordered a 'hot' dish but ended up with something bland enough for a newborn! Or if someone else has a suggestion, please let me know.

The entire package should be a full pound of butter. But as you've seen, there's no guarantee that each stick will be four ounces-- especially if each stick is marked 'not labeled for individual sale'. By law, one-pound or half-pound packs of butter shouldn't be sold by the stick for this reason-- you can't be assured of getting a full four ounces per stick.

By whole scallops, do you mean the scallop plus roe? If so, scallops plus their roe are rarely found in this country, for some reason. I understand that most scallops harvested for the US are shucked on board and the roe and shell are discarded before they even reach shore!