onrushpam

I always use fresh pumpkin. I just get two little pie pumpkins, jab a bunch of holes in them and lay them on a stack of paper towls in the microwave. Nuke until they start to collapse. Split open and remove the "guts". Scrape out the flesh and wizz in food processor. I've even just mashed with a potato masher. Put in a strainer and let some of the moisture drain out in the sink. Refrigerate. I've never found stringiness to be a problem. I think pie made with fresh pumpkin is SO much better than with the canned.

A friend turned me on to what has become my favorite breakfast... Buckwheat pancakes made w/out sugar, over-easy eggs, milk gravy made with a bit of bacon fat and a piece of two of bacon crumbled in it. I only eat this once or twice a year, but would eat it every weekend if I could!

I don't know about remedies... perhaps the Tylenol sore throat liquid? It helped a great deal when I had a painful mouthsore. I believe burnt and burned are interchangable. However, common usage is: My tongue is burnt. I burned my tongue.

This is it, exactly as my sister gave it to me. Yes, it uses Crisco. I've been meaning to try it using butter, but haven't had time to do it when I could afford failure. It took me a few tries with this recipe to figure out the dough needs to be quite wet. You should add only enough flour to be able to handle it. It will still be a little sticky. I use bread flour, though AP works, too. Watson Bread 2 cups warm water ½ c. sugar Mix these together. (I use my big mixer.) Sprinkle 1 pkg. yeast over water and let stand. (I usually use 3 tsp. from a jar of Rapid Rise, which is a little more than a package.) Let stand until foamy. Add 2 C. flour and 1 t. salt, and 12 Tbs. Shortening (Don’s mom used lard, I use Crisco, melted and cooled a little.) Mix the salt into the flour before adding to the yeast mixture. Add flour 1 Cup at a time until dough can be kneaded. It usually takes 4-5 cups total. It seems to depend on the weather and the brand of flour. Let rise until double in a greased bowl (about 2 hrs.) Make into rolls and put in pans to rise again (about 1 hr.). I put a little melted Crisco in the pan and rub the top of the rols in it before placing in the pan. Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes. Turn rolls out onto a towel. They will sweat and get soggy on the bottom if you don’t. You can also make this into loaves. Time to bake will depend on the size, but generally a little longer than the rolls.

Okay, I'll play. All mine are very much home-cooking type items. Poufy, pillowy dinner rolls. Recipe originally from my sister's MIL. Cornbread dressing. Original recipe from Talk About Good!, cookbook of the Lafayette, LA Junior League. I make it pretty much as written. It's an odd recipe... looks like soup when you put it in the oven, but it is SO good! Marcella Hazan's baked fish and potatoes, but I use thyme instead of rosemary. Fish and potatoes Macque Choux. Don't remember where the original recipe came from and I vary it frequently, depending on what I have. Sometimes I add red bell pepper, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes make it into succotash with baby butter beans.

Our little local grocery caters to the many farm/nursery workers in the area. They have a great selection of Mexican cheese and recently added made-fresh-daily tortillas. So, I've been making lots of quesadillas, breakfast burritos and such. I usually get what is labeled as Queso Quesadilla, but I recently bought Oaxaca cheese and love it! It comes in a cryovaced ball and looks similar to mozarella. It is harder than fresh mozarella and can be shredded/grated. It melts beautifully and has a nice fesh, salty (but not too salty) taste. The only problem is, we have a hard time using a package before it spoils. I have some in the fridge now and enchiladas are on deck for dinner, so I can use it up. I also have a bag of grated/crumbled Cotija I need to use, but haven't figured out what to do with it.

I used to do an annual open-house for about 50 people, with very little help. One dish I always made was this shrimp "salad". I served it heaped in a big crystal bowl with toothpicks along side, so guests could spear their own mini-skewers. It was always a big hit and made the shrimp go a lot further. 1 lb. 21-25 shrimp, peeled, deveined and cooked (I cut them in half length-wise, to make them go further) 1 pint grape tomatoes 6 oz. whole, pitted olives (you need smallish ones, whatever kind you like) 1 can sliced water chestnuts 8 oz. Mushrooms, cut in half if large ½ head cauliflower or broccoli, broken into bite-size flowerets (discard stems) Dressing: 2 Cups Mayonnaise (I think I used less) ½ C. well-drained horseradish 2 tsp. dry mustard Juice of one lemon 1-2 tsp. salt Grated parmesan (this wasn’t in the original recipe and I don’t remember how much I used… maybe ½ cup?) Mix and refrigerate 1-2 hrs. (or more) before serving

I don't deep fry often, but when I do, I use my 50+ year old Griswold castiron chicken fryer (the antique version of the Lodge one that's been linked to in this thread). Peanut oil. Only peanut oil. I do use canola for some things, but for deep frying, it has to be peanut oil. We don't have good exhaust in the kitchen, so I try to do it on the sideburner of our gas grill.

I stopped at Breuggers Bagels the other day and noticed they had a tuna melt on the menu, made on a cibatta roll. I wasn't wanting more than just a bagel that day, but when I got back to the office, I looked up their online menu. Yowza! That puppy packs more than a 1,000 calories, 60% from fat. That's pretty close to a whole day's calories for me. Don't think I'll be ordering one of them anytime soon.

I butter one side of one piece of bread, top w/ slice of cheese (cheddar preferred) and grill on cast-iron pan. Remove. Put another buttered piece down in pan and spread on tuna salad. Top with first slice. This gives a nice mix of hot, melty cheese and cool tuna salad.

I think Chris wins the prize!!! Amazing!!!

Have you tried OdoBan? A friend gave somebody a ride and the person left a package of venison in the back seat of her BMW. The next day, she went away for several days. OdoBan took the odor out.

White acres are a variety of cream pea, so similar to the Lady Peas. White acres are smaller.

My situation is testament to inability to resist... Kitchen fridge freezer (it's a counter-depth so w/ ice maker, so not much room)... Costco potstickers, samosas and nan from the Indian grocery, two deboned chickens stuffed with rice and etoufee and 4 crawfish pies, 3 bags each flour and corn tortillas (from vacation), pecans, walnuts, almonds, bread flour, SR flour, two bags Mary B's biscuits (forgot I had some and bought another bag), bread starter, Meyer lemon juice, chipotles in adobo, bacon, pork tenderloin, crab/shrimp shells for stock, slicked country ham hocks, a ham bone, leftover ham pieces, ???? what else may be lurking in there. 2nd fridge freezer... MANY bags of butter beans, white acre peas, peaches, beef bones and at least one turkey carcass for future stock, a bag or two of seafood stock, pan of AWESOME enchiladas made last week. I'm completely out of stock and need to make more, but can't until we eat some of this stuff!!! White acre peas on the menu tonight. We'll eat the enchiladas and a couple of crawfish pies this week. My mission is to use some of this bounty so I can make room for more goodies!

Here's one that's almost embarassingly simple, but we love it. A friend owned a racing kennel at Wonderland greyhound track outside Boston, MA 15+ years ago. When, he closed his kennel and moved back to FL, he begged the cook at his favorite diner to tell him how to make the pot roast served there. (My friend used to eat two orders of it at a time!) The cook led him back to the kitchen and jotted the following instructions on a scrap of paper... Salt and pepper chuck roast and brown well in a heavy pot (Dutch oven). Cover the top of the roast with thinly sliced onion. Add some garlic if you like. Pour V8 juice into the pot so it comes halfway up the roast. Cover and bake at 300 degrees for 3-4 hours. That's it! I usually uncover it, adding carrots and new potatoes for the last 45 minutes, or sometimes roast the veg in another pan.

Okay, I guess I've been doing it wrong all these years... I never peel ginger. I just break off a knob and scrape it over my microplane (not the really fine one, but the "ribbon" one). The peel/skin seems to stay on top and the good stuff goes through. Nobody has ever complained. Maybe they were just being polite?

Tonight... really great local eggplant, sliced and seasoned batter of self-rising flour/cornstarch/egg/club soda peanut oil cast iron skillet Maybe not really "deep fried"... more like pan/shallow fried Crispy, melty, made my mouth happy!!! The South GA farm boys are learning how to grow some cool, different veg! These little eggplants are called "Neon"... they come in bright purple, white and striped. Thin skinned, few seeds, sweet and wonderful!

Baby new potatoes, butter, parsley or other fresh herbs... It just doesn't get any better! Sometimes, after a trip to the farmers market, I just eat baby potatoes for dinner.

As a child, in the Ozarks, I LOVED sorghum molasses on biscuits. As an adult, I've never been able to find quite the same product. I think the stuff I ate as a child was made by my grandfather, not a commercial product. The closest thing I've found down here in the deep South is labeled as Cane Syrup, but it's not quite the same. I LOVE Lyle's Golden Syrup, from the UK... it's the closest I've found to what I remember from childhood. I use Grandma's Molasses (the dark, unsulphered kind with the yellow label) in some recipes. But, it's not right for spreading on biscuits.

Hey! A trash compactor was a requirement when we redid our kitchen. I wouldn't be without it for a couple of reasons: 1) I have 6 greyhounds in the house and have never a found a trashcan they couldn't figure out. And, we have no place to stash a can where they can't get to it. (No pantry or closet or room under the sink) 2) We don't have trash service because we live in the boonies. The trash compactor greatly reduces the volume of the trash we haul to the dump. Less volume means fewer trash trips in the limping, old pick-em-up truck! It appears few people have compatcors anymore. We struggle to find the right bags for ours.

When I open even a small can, I usually don't use it all. I portion it out into little freezer containers and freeze it. It keeps a long time!

I've done it with the 50/50 stuff and it was okay. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've done Angelfood with just Splenda. Publix makes a sugar-free Angelfood cake that is decent (if you are going to smother it in strawberries). I have no idea what they use in place of sugar.

I frequently bake for a diabetic friend. Splenda will work. The Splenda Sugar Blend, which is 50% sugar, works better.

That's about how I do it, too. Sometimes, if use part stock and part cream or half-and-half instead of milk. I also mix some Wondra with the breading.

When I was in Hong Kong, years ago, I ate at a place that was very upscale British. I can't remember where or the name. It was whilst we were doing some sightseeing. But, I've never forgotten the delightful service of Lemon Tea... a very tall, slender, frosted glass filled with tea and adequate ice (not the single cube you often get). It was serverd on a little platter. Alongside the glass was a teensy pewter pitcher of simple syrup, two wedges of lemon and a couple of sprigs of mint, and a long iced teaspoon. It was heavenly and I think I astounded them by asking for at least three more! (I'd been in HK for a month in mid-summer and had grown very weary of the heat!)