BarbaraY

Dried rosemary tastes like soap! Also must use fresh basil, thyme, cilantro, (dried has no flavor). Oddly dried oregano is better in some Mexican dishes. It just doesn't taste right with fresh. Winter tomatoes are a crime against nature! We simply do without until ours get ripe. Then a person really appreciates how wonderful they are.

I would love to be able to buy good bagels and we even have a bagel shop in out little town. Sad to say the bagels are as big around as a large saucer and all poofy. If I want good ones I have to make them myself. Toast only after the have started to stale.

Interesting to me as I recently skimmed a nice little cup of schmaltz from some chicken broth I was making. My daughter gave me the "What's that!" Now I can tell her to cook her Latkes in it. Never had it growing ups as my parents felt everything had to be cooked in bacon fat. I actually saved it to use in Chinese dishes. Have to try the bok choy cooked in it that was referred to way back in the beginning of this thread.

I have always used dashi powder until now. Yesterday I needed some dashi and had no powder but I did have kombu and Katsuo-bushi so I made it. My what a difference in flavor. A plus is I have the kombu left to make tsukodani which Is why I bought the kombu in the first place. It was really very easy to make.

I always use fresh garlic. I have worked in kitchens where pre-peeled garlic was used and some where jarred chopped garlic was used. I prefer to use neither as they always taste rancid and the pre-chopped is downright rank. Always remove the germ unless it's totally white. It tastes so much better.

I try to keep blossoms pinched off herbs like basil so I can continue to use them all summer. If let go they will bolt for sure. I've not had much luck doing this with parsley. I keep a pot full of chives going year round although it dies bake in the early winter but is starting to sprout again already. Rosemary grows year round here so I always have more than enough. The bush is due for a good pruning.

Gas snob here. I first learned to cook on a wood range. Since my marriage in 1953 I have cooked on wood, gas, and electric including one glass top electric which I managed to kill with a pot of tamales. I still prefer the gas for it's instant response or maybe I like seeing a real flame. Even more important is that living in a rural area when we have a power outage I can still cook a meal except for anything baked because we have electronic ignition.

For me, it was a special lunch on an Italian tour. The isle of Murano near Venice and started with an antipasto of lightly fried seafood to die for. Calamari, tiny octopus, shrimp and maybe some others, all so tender as to be ethereal. This was followed by a pasta with tiny, tiny clams in a succulent cream sauce. Risotto cooked in seafood broth and then lovely fried white fish. All this with all the wine we could consume. Now I wanna go back.

We have four aging hens that aren't young enough to lay enough eggs for two people. We usually get one or two eggs a day. We give them scratch (mixed grain), table scraps but no meat, and let them run around outside unless it's too stormy. Yesterday I stirred up two of these eggs for a recipe. The yolks are bright orange and very much thicker than the ones we get from the grocery store. When scrambled they do smell "eggier" although I can't taste a great deal of taste difference. The quality of the eggs is better since we stopped feeding them laying pellets. While eating the laying pellets the whites were thin and watery and almost jelly when boiled. Stopped feeding them the pellets and the whites are like they should be.

I was amused to find this thread is still here. Earlier I asked my daughter what we should have for dinner. She said, "Spaghetti" and I said, "How about Putanesca?" She agreed so that's what it will be. Anchovies melted into olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, red pepper flakes all tossed with hot, fresh cooked spaghetti. I'm very easy with the pepper flakes because she has a condition that can't handle very hot flavors. I just sprinkle a few more on my pasta at serving time. The last jar of home canned tomatoes. We must do more this year.

I, too, have Hiatal Hernia and GERD. I had used Tums for a long time but one day after a night meal of pizza and beer and eating some more of the pizza for lunch I felt as though I was having a heart attack. My partner took me to the hospital and after being treated very well by ER staff, it was diagnosed as GERD. More tests followed and they found the hernia. My Dr. told me recently that it had gotten worse which was what was triggering breathlessness. I was on Prevacid for years and it worked fine but the insurance decided they wouldn't pay for it any more. I'm now on Omeprazole and it works OK but not quite as well. I still have to be careful of fatty meals, coffee, over indulging in chocolate. Very spicy food can set it off but it has to be a lot. No aspirin or other NSAIDs. I'm managing alright most of the time and if it flairs I know it's my own fault for not watching. Still love pizza, though.

I have had it with lightly toasted pecans. Delicious! and no bitterness.

Thanks Katie, I did consider calling the paper but last time I called a paper for something, they wanted $200.00. The person who answered told me I could find it in the public library. Unfortunately I was in CA and the paper was the Kansas City Star. Will see if I can check the archives on-line as you suggested.

Giuandia Lace Cookies. These were published in the San Francisco Chronicle about 1980. The were absolutely the tenderest, tasty things I had ever eaten. I've tried to duplicate them since the recipe disappeared with no luck. Teach me to leave a sheet of news paper out where others can use it to start a fire.

How can I choose? My mom was a pretty bad cook but she did learn some Mexican recipe from our neighbors and Italian from other neighbors so I grew up knowing these foods. A little later we got a Chinese restaurant in a nearby town and I fell in love with that. Asian of all kinds is my go to choice. Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Indian are all favorites but I think Thai has an edge. I didn't come to it until late in life because I had heard and read so many snide comments about fish sauce and shrimp paste that it sounded very distasteful. A friend in the Bay Area took me to a Thai restaurant for the first time and it was a revelation. When I got home I dug out all my foodie magazines that had Thai recipes and cooked it for the whole week. Couldn't get enough. It was good even though I had to sub a lot of stuff like lemon zest for lemon grass, etc. A first, a Thai restaurant in our little town and I can hardly wait to try it.

My grandmother made Gum Drop Cake. It isn't the one that most recipes make which is very similar to fruit cake. This was a lovely golden pound cake with whole big gum drops except the licorice ones. I remember one year she made it for a younger sister's birthday, frosted it with a thin glaze, and sprinkled with pink sugar. My grandfather gathered some little winter iris and put them in the hole. A very pretty presentation. Sadly I lost the recipe and haven't been able to make it.

Seems like, if it has tomatoes in it, it is automatically Tuscan. Bone-in Rib Eye! If the bone is in it, it's a rib steak!

Ever thing I've tried so far has been delicious. For Christmas Eve dinner I made The pork loin stuffed with chard, last night my daughter made Curried Chicken, Peppers, and Peas en Papillote. We both agree that this is a keeper and will make it often, tasty and easy. Today, I'm making the French Onion Soup. Can hardly wait for dinner.

Aaah! One of my biggest beefs. I have just about given up on toasters doing what they are supposed to do. When I was a kid my grandma gave my folks a Sunbeam for Christmas. We all loved watching the toast slide down on it's own and then slide back up. Don't recall what happened but the next toaster was old at the time and was one of the flip-flop toasters and worked fine as long as you watched it. In the 60 0r so years since then I have been searching for a toaster that would actually toast toast. Seems like that wouldn't be a problem but it certainly is. Several years ago I bought a Krups. Useless! Went back to getting whatever was available at Walmart. Didn't make sense to me to spend money on a higher priced toaster that didn't do the job right. Right now I'm using one that seems to be a Walmart brand. Toast always has to be turned over and reversed to get near to an even browning. The bagel function is a joke because it doesn't make any difference at all. Sometimes people seem to think I'm weird because I want my toast evenly brown all over. OK, so I'm weird but at least I see from this thread that I'm not alone in my weirdness. Must check out the E-bay for a Sunbeam. The search continues.

Newest books: Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan The Cooking Light Annual Recipes, a gift The Sunset Cookbook by Sunset Magazine Sometimes I feel that Sunset tries so hard to come up with things that are new that they overshoot the mark. I have lost count as I have done some pruning and have acquired others since I last posted the number. It's probably around 550.

And the mail lady brought the book today, two days ahead of schedule. I'm overwhelmed with trying to decide which to make first.

I posted on this thread a long way back but this year there was just one problem. For Thanksgiving one family member cooks the turkey and everyone brings a side or dessert and it usually works pretty well. One niece, who is far from childhood doesn't seem to have a clue. She brought Brussels Sprouts in Cheese sauce. Well, over cooked frozen sprouts, smothered in Cheese Whiz and baked to a gooey paste. I nearly gagged.

Having been out of the loop due to health reasons, I wasn't aware of this new book. I absolutely adore Baking from My Home to Yours and Baking with Julia so I just had to check this out. I just went to Amazon and placed the order after reading reviews and recipes. Getting up there in years and having a huge collection of cook books, I was very careful to be sure this was something I would actually use in my daily life and can barely wait for it to arrive. My Christmas gift to myself.

Mmmm! About to make my second batch of World Peace Cookies. Anyone who hasn't tried these really should. I'm kind of a light weight when it comes to densely chocolate things but not these. Could eat them all myself.

When my second grandson about 5,stayed with me he would get Meat Hunger like no kid I ever knew. After a week of pasta, beans, casseroles, stir-fries etc. he would say, "Grandma, I want meat." in the saddest way. Next dinner would be steak or roast beef and he was happy.