kitchenmage

ummm, geoducks?

and i thought they replaced foam with silicone...

giggles Project is funny and just soooo awesome! giggles

Well, it's been a bit longer than "tomorrow" but here's the results of the experiment. I used a heavy glass jar with a tightly sealing top and broke spaghetti into lengths that fit with a couple of inches to spare. I poured boiling water into the jar and closed the top, leading to my first question: If this is supposed to make pasta cooking easier, why did I just boil water in a teakettle? After 12 minutes, the water was at 190F and the pasta was starting to bend just a bit. At 20 minutes, the water was 160F and the pasta was as cooked as it ever got. Although it appeared to be largely one solid clump, the individual noodles came apart without sticking much. (Hmmm, what does this say about stickiness and moving water? Does the sticky, starchy stuff sink to the bottom of the jar? It didn't seem that way when I washed the jar.) The pasta seemed a lot cooler than 160 degrees (I stuck a noodle in my mouth straight out of the water, it was nominally warm) I wouldn't do this as a regular method of cooking pasta, but in a pinch (power outage and minimal equipment, camping, after the apocalypse) it just might work. As long as the sauce was hot. Really hot. And now I must go get a life. (edited to fix linebreaks)

akafun, I don't make it too much farther south than Astoria most of the time so can't give you much help myself, but I took a look at the Daily Astorian's food articles and came up with this about an upcoming event that has marvelous food and several Cannon Beach chefs. Also, the recent Munchie Awards has a few places on the coast suth of Astoria. (go there soon and snag the articles, they only have them free for a few weeks, then it costs to get to the archives) If you go to my site and look at the list of "Pacific Northwet" sites on the left sidebar, there are a few in Portland that also cover some coastal, and the Seattle sites travel to the coast a bit so you might want to check them too. Have fun, it's a beautiful part of the world.

This obviously calls for a test. I'm not sure what containers...oh wait, I may just have the right one. I'll have to look tomorrow, give this a shot and report back.

Hmmm, I notice that there's no price. I am thinking that even if it works, it's a silly device. Why not just use a tall wide mouth thermos or an old coffee pot? It'd keep it hotter, and thus seem to work better, even though you'd lose the col factor of watching the pasta "cook." And could you trust a company whose "click here for larger picture" image is smaller than the one you can already see?

Odd. So is there a chance it's the Florida bay? I'm not familiar with them. (We're on day 25 of rain, I am as far from Flrida as it gets!) Look at the last picture here. It's more turkish/sweet bay-like than many I've seen, and magnolias take a long time to start flowering. Has yours flowered at all? In any case, you should definitely find a true sweet bay. Mine came from Monrovia (if that's available locally) but any good nursery will be able to find one. The last place I lived had a nursery with several people who cooked a lot so my herbs were always good.

here's my data: sweet bay= turkish bay = laurus nobilus = perfect for most cooking california bay = umbrellularia californica = too strong for most cooking the magnolia florida bay thing is neither and it certainly isn't sweet bay! fresh sweet bay smells different from dry bay -- there's warm spicy tones, vanilla, nutmeg, stuff like that... (and i just verified this against the Herbfarm cookbooks so i am pretty clear on what i'm saying...and growing... and that the USDA is wrong) still confused?

it sounds like a california bay, not a sweet bay... they are very different and 've had no luck (nor much desire) with the california due to the medicinal qualities you describe...

Might be time for a label that just says SALT with the "no" symbol (circle-slash) on it. ...and why doesn't that circle-slash have a short name?

Here's to synergy, doctortim. I don't have an answer, unfortunately, what I do have is my own pasta machine sitting on the counter waiting to be cleaned after spending the last year sitting in my garage while we cut hardwood flooring a dozen feet away. So, eah, dust and gunk on a pasta machine. cough I haven't bothered to look at it yet to see how disgusting it is -- I needed to fortify myself with a cup of tea first -- but with an luck someone will post the miracle words that, when whispered to such a device, transform it to gleaming and pristine. One can hope. ...oh yeah, welcome to eGullet.

It's one of those He Who Shall Not Be Named things. I call 'em "unholy fruit bagels," a category that includes cinnamon raisin--about which said, the less the better...ah heck, i'll say it: Would you like icing drizzled on that? Or perhaps you should just get a cinnamon roll!

Is there some technical reason for using frozen spinach in these recipes? I've been using chopped fresh in my spinach dip (no artichokes) for years and people always rave that it's so much better than the other similar dips. I am no fan of frozen spinach to begin with and ever since hearing a certain perky Food TV personality talk about "wringing it out" it makes me shudder. Am I missing a compelling reason to use frozen here?

I'll echo what Tammylc said about the pre-made bread dough. And consider doing pizza rather than bread; teaches the same bread basics and the difference (cost, nutrition, etc) between delivery and homemade is huge! I applaud your decision on using ingredients that are available locally, that's really important. (Got any farmers who sell out of their homes?) How about some sort of quick appetizers for a party for the last class? It's another area where people end up spending money or buying prepared crap because they feel clueless. Do you have any way to communicate with students prior to the class? Get a clue as to what they want? Maybe a list of possiblities to choose from for one class (late in the series) that's chosen at the first class...or is that asking for trouble? Good luck, and keep us posted on what you do. I've been debating doing such things myself.

We are? You Georgians must have one heck of a shift when daylight savings time goes into effect!

my standby is this made with half sour cream, half mayo and a bunch of fresh spinach chopped in the food processor. It must be fresh spinach, trust me.

How'd the turkey hunt go? I was in my local (town of <1000) store yesterday and they still had fresh. Sure it's some big-name mass-market turkey, but for your second bird... Of course, with my being on the left edge of the US it might be a bit of a drive for you...

I've got one 17 pound turkey in the fridge and another similar one in the freezer -- because it froze in the garage refrigerator and in the debate between trying to thaw it and taking advantage of a decent price for another, the one not requiring a third refrigerator won. I've also got four -- count 'em, four -- people coming for dinner. That's including us. If I don't have leftovers until the Solstice, I'll be happy. (edited because I have a finicky "t" key)

Do I really get to be the first person to say Bass-o-Matic?

monavano, do you want some technical help with the printer? If it's Windows, drop me a PM and i'll be happy to give you a hand. I'm not so much with the Macness lately, sorry.

I have my primary laser printer attached to a desktop that is almost always turned on when we're home. That computer (my partner's) sits in a back room office--fairly isolated because it's where he records music--which houses all our network infrastructure (wireless access point (WAP), satellite connection, network hub, printers, scanner) while my office, which is in the "den" next to the dining room has our notebook computers, my other systems, and the public side of our media stuff (TV, music gets played via my desktop which has Dolby, 5.1 speakers, etc). It does a fair job of keeping the food stuff out here and the music stuff back there. We use Netgear's network equipment--WAP, hub, cards--which I recommend to clients, but there are other good vendors out there so buy what you like. I end up searching for recipes (sometimes mid-stride when I look at the thing and wonder, "is this what it's supposed to look like? or when i am cooking without one but want references), checking technical details (pan size conversions, etc), reading eG or food blogs between stirring/flipping food, making notes on what I am doing, photographic work, etc. As for the refrigerator that makes ice, mine does ice and filtered water and I am also thrilled. Plus it's not harvest gold!

I am geeked out. I've got a laptop that's where I do most of my food-related work and i lives about 15 feet from the main kitchen workspace. I can easily put it on the dining table, although I don't usually because cooking is messy and laptops are delicate. Especially since I do lots of baking, meaning "flour in the air." I've been printing individual recipes as needed, scribbling notes on them, and then transferring those notes to the electronic version. If I ever win the lottery, I think I'm getting another dedicated machine with all wireless I/O so I can perch the peripherals in the kitchen without risking the expensive stuff on the steam and floating motes of stuff. Until then, I'm biting the cost of paper and toner.

Yeah, well I come from the latter camp. It's not that uncommon. ← You're an over-educated woman who is loan-free and surrounded by wealthy, single men? Really? Seriously, while Dowd is sometimes either amusing or enlightening, you're asking us to take the opinion of a woman well past the ageOfInappropriateClothes who shows up in a lingerie top to do political commentary. I think I'll get my feminist writings elsewhere, thank you very much. Not to mention that it, like your writing BryanZ, is simply one person's opinion/observations--and only a bit of that, it's about 800 words--on a topic that is as individual as a favorite meal. I daresay that she, being female, is a smidge more qualified to write on the issue than some, but the headline says "girl" so I am not giving her too much credit. (BryanZ, if you think shes saying anything new or particularly interesting, you really should consider the earlier suggestions to take some women's studies classes, or pick up a few good books...the column is depressingly repetitive of other backlash-lite crap that circulates every so often.) btw, I don't expect my dates to pay for dinner, or open doors, or even defend me. I can pay, open, and defend with the best of them. Chivalry is sexist, and it seems to be an attempt to paint women as 'girly' and dependent to drag it into this thread. In an attempt to pull this back on topic, let me just say this. Some people seem to assume that the "traditional household gender roles" are a good thing and thus the entire conversation about women cooking or not logically follows. Many others see those roles as institutionalized sexism and believe that all peoople should know how to cook/clean/cope. A few trade on the gap between these two groups to promote their latest TVshow/book/agenda. Guess which group GR hangs with?

I'll second this. Plus, they are good people--a while back I was asking for food donations for an event and they gave 10-12 dozen bagels. Offered more, but that was all we needed. Plus, bialies. (is that how you spell the plural?)