gingerfreak

Sad to say, but nothing cooked in the restaurant I'm currently working at (and hopefully not much longer). I'll eat toast, that's about it.

I made the French Pear Tart for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. My grandma is a bit confused about things these days, and thought they were apples, but she loved it. Very high praise indeed from the baking queen of my childhood. I've made this recipe before and it's always a winner

I've been avoiding studying by making marshmallows (first time so it took a while) and making my Christmas gingerbread snowflakes. Nothing like doing all those little cutouts ever so carefully... My justification for procrastibaking is that I'm putting off studying for my baking and pastry theory class. This sort of counts as studying, right? Right? Eh, maybe not. But it's a lot more fun

I don't have a whole lot of industry experience, but I can't use normal sized cutting boards anymore either. So I got a giant one that is hugely out of scale in my tiny apartment kitchen. The "blue monster", we call it. I also don't get people who have bad knives - if I'm cooking at my mom's place I just take my own. Oh, and I freak out if my husband sneaks up behind me to get affectionate and kiss the back of my neck while I'm chopping anything. I'm gonna lose a digit that way...

Two things from this book today. First up was the Coffee Break Muffins. Whenever I bake something "plain" that doesn't have nuts, raisins, etc. in it I'm tempted to add some but I wanted to see how the coffee flavour came through. These are really nice - not overly sweet and the coffee is subtle but definitely there. Next time I might add some bittersweet chocolate, or walnuts. Next was the Peanuttiest Blondies. My failure here is not the book's fault! They baked up beautifully, and I had just placed them on the rack on the counter when my cat decided HE needed to be on the counter. He's a clutz so all he managed to do was pull the whole rack down on the floor, sending brownies all over the floor and scaring the crap out of himself. My first instinct was to think "FIVE SECOND RULE!" but they were still smokin' hot. I'm sure they WERE good - and next time I make them the cat is locked in the bedroom.

You need to ask yourself if there are other redeeming qualities that make the effort worthwhile. But I'm skeptical - it's almost like he's threatened by your love of food. As someone else pointed out earlier, it's not totally necessary to have your partner completely share your passion for food (hey, I have my husband, and then I have my food-freak friends), but the fact that he doesn't respect and even belittles you for it sets the alarm bells off. I'm not sure that you want to put the effort into someone who's so dead set against what you love. At any rate, good luck figuring this out.

That's exactly what I'm finding so far. I just received my copy yesterday and in flipping through it I come across so many items that I just wasn't thinking of at that moment. Then I run off on another tangent and am amazed at where I ended up from the original search. One thing I find though is the pointing out of what to avoid makes me want to try those combinations to see for myself! (the contrarian in me I suppose...)

Wow. That product is new to me. I saw the link briefly, the site's goofy arcade aesthetic is hard to look at. Is the peanut butter cold, or frozen? Has it been chemically altered to remain between two slices of plastic from factory to table? ← I've never actually seen these things but remember reading a snarky article about them a while back. Apparently they solve the problem of overprocessed white bread tearing when spreading normal PB. Oh, and these are FUN!!! I have no idea what they've done to it to make it stay in that form, and I don't want to! Seems that info is overlooked in the website's wackiness. Other lazy products: anything "portion-controlled". Come on. You want to lose weight, how hard is it to figure out your own portions?

Peanut butter slices! http://www.pbslices.com/

Oh I agree...that's a huge incompatibility! Be careful about deciding to upgrade this to "SO status" Reading this thread I realize how lucky I am. My husband doesn't share my love of cooking (though he likes being my sous chef) and if left to his own devices becomes purely functional about food and would eat the same thing day in and day out. But fortunately he LOVES to eat new things and loves that I'm always experimenting, and is very adventurous when we eat out. Prior to him, I dated someone who declared that "bread is bread" and "coffee is coffee". Unrelated to the topic at hand, he thought of my dear cats as "just cats". They're family! We see how THAT turned out... Good luck, gingerbeer, I hope you can somehow inspire this guy.

Ditto on the thanks for the typos. I've only had trouble with the Espresso Walnut Meringues, but I think that was the fault of my technique more than the recipe . And yes on the date walnut bread! I made it as well, but substituted dried figs, which I had on hand. Worked really, really well.

I'm pretty sensitive myself, and working in a kitchen and getting yelled at definitely toughened me up a lot. Quite often it's really a matter of the stress of service and it's all forgotten afterwards. If you can get over the shock of it the first few times you'll learn to shrug it off and perhaps learn to yell at a few people yourself

I saw my first Cadbury's creme eggs yesterday! They're *somewhat* lost - I used to inhale them when I was younger but they lost their charm once I had some higher end versions. But I still can't help but have a few...

Could be! And you just reminded me that I need to change my profile as I'm now in Toronto. *scurries off to change location...and maybe grab some chocolate *

Two of my husband's favourite things! And he's been known to have them together, I'm sure. Funny how it doesn't take any hormonal justification for him..