Kris

I use Hellmann's sandwich spread, which is a type of mayo blended with chopped relish and pimentos. So does that count toward making AA type potato salad?

There's another cheese I recently discovered and it's divine: Quicke's Farmhouse Cheddar from England. I find a lot of English cheddars to be overly sharp for my taste. So when I went to Murray's Cheese kiosk in Grand Central Station, I asked a sales clerk to recommend an English cheddar which wasn't too mild or sharp. She gave me a sample of the Quicke's Farmhouse cheddar and I bought nearly a pound of it on the spot. It's made from raw cow's milk and has a firm texture. It doesn't have that extra sharp bite that some cheddars have (although it has a slight bite), but neither is it mild to the point of blandness. I'd like to post photos here, but I don't know how to do so. I'm a cheese lover and I'm enjoying my experiments with trying good quality cheeses from around the world. I grew up in the 70's & 80's mainly eating American cheese and supermarket cheddar. But for 2006, I made it my goal to expand my horizons. So every few weeks, I'll sample a new cheese I haven't tried before. I'm having a good time doing so and will hopefully get some good ideas from this thread.

Fig spread. The best fig spread I've tasted is the Organic Adriatic Fig Spread sold by Whole Foods: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/afa/figspread.html It has a sweet, and pronounced "figgy" flavor and I love the abundance of crunchy seeds. It's divine with goat cheese and bloomy rind cheeses. Here's a blogger waxing poetic about this fig spread: http://www.teich.net/blog/2005/11/19/adriatic-fig-spread/ I discovered a new cheese last week (well, new to me at least) - Bucheron from France. It's made from goat milk. The interior of the cheese has the texture of fresh goat cheese, but the outer edge has a soft creamy texture (reminds me of a melted brie) with a bloomy rind exterior.

Jell-O pudding pops are back under the Popsicle umbrella. I bought them about two months ago. They come in chocolate, vanilla and your beloved chocolate/vanilla swirl. They still taste almost as good as I remember them as a kid. And I still enjoyed the icy/crunchy exterior of the pop. My favorite is chocolate. As for fast food favorites that I miss: McDonald's fries cooked in beef fat McDonald's fried apple pies Wendy's Monterey Ranch chicken sandwich Burger King's honey mustard chicken baguette Someone posted a while back that the KFC Little Bucket parfaits were gone. But I still see them sold at all KFCs in my area. Chocolate and Strawberry. I also agree with the poster who said that KFC's cole slaw isn't as good as it used to be.

Overall I prefer to watch cooking show for the learning aspect vs. the entertainment value. But I do have one peeve about two cooking shows airing on PBS - Lidia's Family Table & Daisy Cooks: When they demo their recipes and give pretty decent techniques, they don't give ingredient measurements for each recipe. Cynically, I suspect that this is done so that you are forced to buy the accompanying cookbooks. It seems a bit mercenary if you ask me... Another related issue is cleanliness and hygiene in the kitchen. If someone has a tv cooking show, their hands & nails should be clean and immaculate. I'm a bit dismayed when I see chef/tv cooks who handle raw meat without properly washing their hands. It also peeves me to see chefs with grubby, dirty fingernails. I recently watched a cooking show where the host's teenage son was assisting her with a recipe. However he had a Band-Aid on his index finger. Not only that, he was grating vegetables and handling the food. I know cutting accidents happen, but the Band-Aid seemed out of place for a tv cooking show.

Although his show is goofy at times, Alton Brown's explanations and demonstrations of why things are done is the reason why I like Good Eats.

Truth to be told, I was kinda glad he lost to that Marine Captain. And in the chowder episode, his version did seem more appealing. So I think he won that contest legitimately.

The simple reason your simple ingredient didn't compare to the company's recipe is that any reputable recipe MUST contain dates; that is the "secret ingredient." If you look at the Haagen-Dazs ice cream, it even contains dates (got some in my freezer now, pretty good too!) When I lived in SoCal, I met the owner of stickytoffeepudding.com -- he's a great guy with a great product and I still buy it when I can find it NoCal. Bottom line, look for a recipe with dates and, yes, I would recommend brown sugar for a richer pudding. ← I wasn't trying to make the actual cake part of the "pudding." I only wanted to make the toffee sauce. It's the sauce that made me swoon.

P.S. - Recently, my husband and a few of his guy friends wanted to get together for dinner to catch up with each other. They hadn't seen each other for a good while. What was the restaurant they picked? - A Brazilian churascarria! Yes, the wives/S.O.'s were allowed but it was so funny how they were looking forward to the rodizio. Our evening out was dubbed, "Meatfest 2006." Meatfest 2007 is already being planned...

For my hubby, it's steak, potatoes and creamed spinach.

I too am a New Yorker and am guilty of frequenting take out places when I'm too lazy or tired to cook. I've had the occasional strange hair in my food which has turned me off from that place. I've also received orders meant for other people. Hubby and I ordered from a local pizza shop and got container of rice balls that we didn't order. We happily scarfed them down. A particular pet peeve of my husband's is when he'll ask for and order Sunkist orange soda. Everything is cool until the order shows up and there's an orange Slice or Tropicana soda in the bag. My husband is EXTREMELY anal about his orange soda preference (Sunkist), so it peeves him to no end when a clueless store employee substitutes an inferior brand of orange soda after confirming that they have Sunkist. In his mind, not all orange sodas are created equal.

I only use Gold Medal bleached all purpose flour for all of my cakes that call for AP flour. I get good results and don't have any consistency problems with the cakes' texture and density. For cakes calling for cake flour, I use King Arthur flour's Lady Guinevere cake flour. It has a very soft and silkly texture to it. I pay the extra money to have it shipped but it's worth it. Be advised that King Arthur flour's AP flour has a higher gluten content than most other AP flours on the market. So you may get a baked good that's denser than you'd like. I guess it would depend on what you're using it for.

P.S. - Their sticky toffee pudding is pretty good too. My husband loves it.

I've been looking for a recipe to duplicate the sticky toffee sauce made by this company: http://www.stickytoffeepudding.com It's absolutely to die for! And it contains four simple ingredients - sugar, butter, cream and vanilla essence (extract). Yesterday afternoon I did some experimenting with a sticky toffee sauce recipe I found on the internet. The first time I used brown sugar, the second time I used white sugar. Neither one compares to the one sold by this company.

Ditto. Indian corn (now known as harvest corn due to politically correct times), just doesn't taste the same to me. I love those pumpkins as well, although if I eat too many of them my teeth begin to hurt. As for Mary Janes, peanut butter taffys and other candy of that ilk, those were ones I hated to receive as a young trick-or-treater. My mother loved them though, so she was more than happy to take them off my hands. When I was a young trick-or-treater, my sisters and I (and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood) would visit the local mom & pop shops looking for treats. One of the best treats was the candy apple we'd receive from Mike's Fruit & Vegetable stand. The cool thing was that parents never had to worry about the apples being tampered with razor blades or poison since everyone knew Mike. So it was okay for us to eat Mike's candy apples before we even got home for mom to check our candy bags. Those were the days!

I love it!

I've used him before to make me a custom copper coffin shaped cutter (for Halloween). Great customer service.

P.S. - To this day, I must buy a bag of candy corn every October! It's either prominently featuring during my Halloween party or during my Halloween movie marathon weekend (whichever event I'm having in a particular year - it changes).

I love Halloween. It's July and I'm already thinking about the costume I want to wear this year. Mind you, I'm 35 years old. Anyway, when I lived at home with my parents and outgrew trick-or-treating, I started handing out candy to the kids that would ring our doorbell. I always bought the "good" candy, which to me was miniature chocolate bars like Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Muskateer, et. al. I always hated getting cheap candy as a trick-or-treater, so I remembered that as a candy giver. I would have my tape recorder (in later years a CD player) cued up with creepy music playing, have my Jason-from-Friday-the-13th hockey mask on and greet the kids with a bowl of candy in my hand. One year, I gave out pre-wrapped popcorn balls from a company called http://www.popcornfactory.com My sister had gotten 100 of them as a corporate gift but didn't want them. So she gave them to me to use for the trick-or-treaters. They were a BIG hit. Even some of the parents who accompanied the kids wanted one. I haven't had any trick-or-treaters for several years now because I moved into an apartment building when I married. But when hubby and I buy our house next year, just you wait...I'm going to be ready for 'em!

My favorite cookie hands down is a homemade chocolate chip cookie. I like crispy edges and a chewy middle, fresh out of the oven. I'm also fond of peanut butter cookies & a jumbo raisin cookie that my mom used to make when I was a kid. As for commercial cookies, I like Le Petite Ecolier Butter biscuits topped with milk chocolate & the Girl Scout's Samoas. Last year, I made a variety of Christmas cookies including lemon spritz, chocolate spritz, cherry almond, venetian tri-colors, gingerbread, pecan tassies, rum balls (made from vanilla wafers) & chocolate florentines. It was a lot of work but the cookie trays looked so festive!

Wow. This thread brings back some fond memories of when my younger sister and I were kids and we'd assist our grandmother with her donations for the church's bake sale. We used to make chocolate chip cookies, brownies & cupcakes. The chocolate chip cookies always sold out first.

Ditto! When I first smelled this candle I immediately bought it because it reminds me of the icing I make when I bake. Some of my favorite food smells are: A cake baking in the oven Summery fruits like a cut fresh pineapple and mango The aroma of lightly sauteed garlic Meat baking in the oven (e.g. a brisket or pot roast) The "vinegary" smell of homemade potato salad as it's being mixed with the mayonnaise. I also like the sound of it being mixed in the bowl. That reminds me of my mother. Chocolate chip cookies baking in an oven Flavored coffee brewing Bacon Bread baking in an oven I dislike the smell of: Raw chicken Shrimp Americanized Chinese food (e.g. lo mein, General Tso's chicken, egg foo yung and dishes of that ilk that you find at the local Chinese food joint). burned garlic

I had this problem too...I'd buy fresh herbs for a recipe then the rest would get slimy and go bad. A co-worker of mine suggested putting the leftover herbs in a paper bag, sitting it on the counter for a few days to dry it out. So I tried it and voila! I had freshly dried herbs that weren't slimy or rotten & which can still be used for flavoring my dishes. They last for months and still retain a flavor and aroma that is close to fresh. They are certainly better than the McCormick dried herbs you'd buy in the supermarket. It's a great solution. I found that parsley doesn't work well with this method though. It's great with rosemary, sage, tarragon & thyme. I haven't tried it with basil or dill yet.

The Great Cornish Pasty Debate is nicely summarised in Wikipedia: diced steak, potato, onion, swede (rutabaga). Start with everything raw. No pudding end in living memory I'm afraid. They taste fantastically of themselves, but are unlikely to qualify as the spiritual cousins of pastels. ← I'm inclined to agree. Puerto Rican pasteles are more akin to the Mexican tamale than a Cornish pasty. I think the Cornish pasty is more akin to an empanada or a Jamaican beef patty. It seems that a lot of cultures around the world have some variation on the "meat/potato/veggies/spices filling enclosed in a dough" type food. Pierogies, samosas also fall into this category, I'd say.

I've been eating lots of stuffed grape leaves, "summery" fruits like mangos & blueberries & drinking lots of water. I've also had a craving for raspberry sorbet that I've been indulging.