pastrygirl

Fairly often, but I never call it a doggie bag, I just ask if I can take the rest home. If a portion is very large, I may consciously try to eat only half and have lunch the next day, instead of stuffing myself. If I didn't eat it all because I didn't like it, I won't take it home.

Do you routinely boil in the pressure cooker without the lid? I wonder if the shape of the vessel has something to do with it, assuming the pressure cooker does not have straight sides like a regular stock pot.

Last fall I did a three nut tart with pecans, almonds, and pine nuts. I used a pecan-pie like mix, but with honey instead of corn syrup and a good splash of orange liqueur. I'm not finding the recipe on my hard drive, which is too bad, because I wanted to make them again this winter. If I can find it I'll share.

Yes!!! MJX, winter in Denmark sounds even more dreary than Seattle, and being farther North, I'm sure it is. We have a large Asian population here, and pho has become hugely popular. I'm looking forward to a lot of pho this winter. Laksa is heartier and richer with coconut milk, so good. I find myself craving Korean kimchi tofu soup lately as well - really almost anything spicy and savory. And don't forget udon & ramen soups and congee (rice porridge). Another good dish for winter (just because of it being citrus season) is Vietnamese pomelo salad with pieces of pomelo (you could use grapefruit if you cant find pomelo or ugli fruit), fresh mint, crispy shallots, and shrimp. Maybe a nice bright side to a steaming cauldron of noodle soup? http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/02/pomelo-salad-go.html

Common substitutions would be helpful too. Don't have milk, use this, don't have semisweet chocolate, use x cocoa + x fat + x sugar, etc. I have an iphone and might buy an app like that. I have the epicurious app and use that occasionally, otherwise use bing to search for information. So your app would have to be faster & more reliable than a web search.

And the lingering scent of most cooked seafood is generally less desireable than the lingering scent of say, bacon or roast chicken. Who has ever heard anyone say Mmmm! Smells like sturgeon!

I've heard that defense a lot, but to me, mackerel tastes entirely different than salmon, which is entirely different from snapper, which is entirely different from cod, pollack, and other (in my opinion, slightly boring) whitefish, and so on. Hell, I say slightly boring because to me many whitefish have so LITTLE taste. To me it's like someone saying "I don't eat fruit." What fruit? apples? oranges? bananas? cherries? How can you make such a sweeping generalization? Exactly. There is such a huge variety of seafood, so many more than the land animals we eat, all with different flavors. I wonder which fish is "the taste of fish" that people don't like. Probably cod or pollack or whatever goes into fish sticks, or canned tuna? I can understand people not liking the oilier fishes. Mackerel is not for everyone. I can understand people not liking fish they've had that's been poorly prepared. A lot of people don't like salmon because of the gumminess it gets when overcooked, yet these same people (I'm thinking of my mother) would not be willing to try it as sushi or meltingly medium-rare. Fish does seem to inspire a higher degree of squeamishness than other dead animals, maybe because they are on display with the head still on? But to lump all seafood into one flavor and texture category seems severely uninformed at best. I grew up in Seattle, not eating much fish because Mom isn't crazy about it. We'd go out for fish & chips every now & then. If there was seafood at home it was Dungeness crab in season, or shrimp salad (with bay shrimp and vile, vile russian dressing), or a tuna sandwich. Now, I eat a variety, raw and cooked with my main concerns being sustainability and deliciousness. Salmon, scallops, halibut, trout, oysters, clams, shrimp... I've found sole to be a little too delicate (boring and mushy) for me, crab isn't really worth the work (except for softshell crab where there is no work), lobster isn't worth the money, mackerel can be good but better in small doses. Anchovies are magic and often mean I don't have to share my pizza

I vote for the eggnog.

I'm not a fan of eggnog as a beverage but I do like the boozy spicy combination. Would the pumpkin caramel be chewy, or just a caramel flavor in the ganache? Both sound great. Would these be with milk, dark, or white?

To me, Bittman comes off as more practical, looking at the big picture and trying to get to the heart of the issues. Waters comes off as more idealistic, shedding a tear over how precious the baby vegetables are. Bittman at least seems to understand the struggles and motivations of the working poor, while Waters, despite being just a few miles from really bad parts of Oakland, seems to think it should be easy for everyone to switch their diet 100% Admittedly, I haven't read anything from Alice Waters in several years, but that is because her piety turned me off. I'm sure she has done a lot for both her community and the national consciousness, and both she and Bittman are preaching to their own choirs, but the church of Alice seems a little more wacky cultish (maybe it's a Berkeley thing) and the church of Mark seems more non-denominational and inclusive.

I don't know, but have you tried looking through their recycling? Or you can always try asking The old 'I really love this, how do you make it so good' usually works.

Does zagat still make their maps? I have zagat maps of Chicago and San Francisco from c.2002 that I found very valuable way back then before smartphones. While I take their reviews with a grain if salt, I trust them more than yelp, etc and would love to have their information worked into google maps on my iPhone.

Just spent 3 days in SIN and it seemed like there was no bad food! I mostly at at hawker centers - Whampoa was closest to my hotel. Seems like it would take years to try everything and be able to compare and come up with a best of list! Sorry that's not much help but my point is I think it is hard to go wrong!

I think you could be overmixing it. The larger batch is going to take a few more strokes, and if your cream is on the stiff side that could be enough to break it. I'm skeptical about the scorched chocolate theory posted above. Anything is possible, but since when does boiling liquid scorch chocolate? I have used boiling Caramel sauce with a much higher heat capacity to melt chocolate and not had problems. You changed your method of making your ganache base, so now you need To make sure your new method gets it to the same temperature. Agitating this mixture at too cool a temp could cause it to break. And with the bigger batch try whipping your cream a little softer so it will allow a little more mixing.

Ah, well then maybe you can teach me how to use quickbooks Or is accounting different from bookkeeping? I think chocolate can be profitable because you can charge a lot per piece. Even with higher end chocolate, your food cost on a 15 gram bonbon is going to be low just because it is so small, but labor cost is going to be higher. The key seems to be controlling labor cost by making big enough batches and being as efficient as possible in production.

It would be a huge turn-off for me. I may even leave.

And after that it's basic adding all the different ingredient/garnish costs up and dividing by number of servings. In the big picture, accurate portion control and minimizing waste are going to do as much for your food cost as how you design your dishes.

If they make the money on the coffee, I hope they are paying a good chunk of the rent!

Make a couple of batches and time yourself. Example: mixing and scooping one batch of chocolate chip cookies takes 20 minutes and yields 100 cookies. I want to be paid $15 an hour to make cookies, so the batch cost $5 in labor and each cookie has 5 cents labor cost. Maybe there is another 5 cents each when you consider clean up, then baking and putting on display. You'll want to consider that extra set-up and break down time, as well as allowing for some waste - especially with chocolate. What is the total time you put in vs the total sellable pieces? It seems like a huge part of the time I spend is melting and tempering, cleaning up, and packaging, probably only a third of it is the actual molding or mixing and dipping. I use my 'hours tracker' iphone app to keep track of the time I spend on chocolates. On a recent production day, I worked 8.2 hours and produced and individually wrapped 210 bars. As much as I would love to pay myself $30/hr to do all this, I figure that the market rate is more like $10 - $12 for the less skilled parts and $15-18 for the more skilled parts, and also have to consider what my selling price is. So on that day, if I was paying myself $15 an hour all day, the labor cost on each bar was about 59 cents (8.2 divided by 210 times 15). If I was paying myself $18, labor would be 70 cents. My pricing only allows about 65 cents for labor, so I'd better work faster if I want to make more $$! Hope that helps.

Agreed. Mix with boiling milk or water first.

I hope you're saying that the sales tax is included in the price at the farmers market, not that you are not charging the tax at all. If you are selling taxable goods and not collecting the tax, you're going to have bigger worries than pricing! Unless there are different rules for sales tax at the market? If at the market, the item is handed to me on a napkin and at the store it is on a plate with a fork, a slightly higher price seems reasonable. You can also add perceived value and not much cost by plating a tart with a squiggle of caramel sauce and a bit of whipped cream - now you can charge $5.50! Or offer the option of whipped cream for say 50 cents extra and hope enough people go for it. I think everybody knows that prices do sometimes go up, and if you're talking about a 25 cent increase on a $4 item I would not be outraged. You probably wouldn't want to raise prices by more than 10% across the board. Will the shop have other items with a higher profit margin that you don't have at the market? Like coffee? Beverages are higher profit, and you can offer a decent selection of drip coffee, nice teas, and fresh juices without needing an experienced barista and espresso set-up. You need to make a little money on the pastry and a lot of money on the beverages.

You may be interested in the newly legal distilleries with tasting rooms. I haven't been so can't recommend, but google will find them for you.

If you're looking for something in particular, you can use the liquor control board's site to find the stores that carry it. http://liq.wa.gov/

Probably underbaked, too much moisture left in the batter.

Carrie, I think jackal has the answer, commercial products are pasteurized/sterilized before going into the can, and the process leaves no room for contamination. Good luck with your business.