Terrasanct

This thread inspired me to make chocolate gelato. I'm not sure if I've ever made it before, and it's not something I can buy here. It's not done yet, but the custard tastes great! What would you serve it with?

Oh, I just found my list of things I froze last year. Ham--can get the cheapest cut and it still tastes good. Cook in slow cooker, when defrosted I used for ham and bean soup, scalloped potatoes with ham, ham and broccoli and cheese, etc. Ground beef--cooked with Mexican spices. Cooked with onions and garlic for spaghetti, soup, chili, nachos. Baked meatballs and froze. Good for spaghetti, sandwiches, stroganoff, Swedish meatballs. Cooked a big batch of barbecue pork. Lucky to have any left to freeze! Oh, I also made a big batch of chile verde. Most of these things use inexpensive cuts of meat, so they also save money. Another thing that worked out well was freezing pizza. Here's the recipe I used for that: http://organizedhome.com/recipe169.html

Here's what I did--it's easy. Use a slow cooker to make roasts or chicken or whatever, then divide and freeze. You can put the meat in at night so it won't heat up the house during the day. That way you'll have the (seasoned) meat so you can just make a quick salad or veggie with it. I made shredded beef for enchiladas...I can't remember what else just now but I'll look it up on my other computer. I do recall that I even browned ground beef with onions and garlic and froze it in serving-sized dishes. Makes it easy to make quick spaghetti or nachos. If the meat is cooked, the rest of dinner is usually easy. Also, you might stock up on good curry sauces or spinach sauce, etc. in a jar. Trader Joe's sells them. Make a huge pot of soup and freeze. You've probably already done that. I'm always glad to look in the freezer at lunch time and find a nice single-serving of chicken soup. This is another thing that does well in the slow cooker. Honestly, I can see why these things have become popular again. Here's a real shortcut--I get a rotisserie chicken at Costco (for about what it would cost me to get a raw one), use it for a few meals, then make a soup in the slow cooker. It's surprising how good the broth is. Tortillas are a good thing to have around, and they freeze well, too. Take some meat out of the freezer, defrost some tortillas, and you're already halfway to dinner.

Uh...if a non New Yorker is allowed in this thread... I was going to post where I get takeout, but the town I live in doesn't have any except for fast food and a few Chinese places. So never mind.

Pan, that's really interesting. I'd love to know someone here who is familiar with all of the wild plants. I keep asking my husband, who was born 50 miles from here, but he doesn't know any of them. I accumulate books about wildflowers and edible plants, but I'm usually too cautious to go out and pick anything! Berries are the exception, since I know what most of those are. I know I have some edible weeds in my garden--common mallow seedheads are shaped like little cheese wheels and are edible, but it would take forever to gather many of them, since they're tiny. Here's a photo of common mallow: http://www.cees.iupui.edu/research/restora...mmon-mallow.JPG As a teenager, I read a book on survival skills, which mentioned the many uses of the cattail--food, shelter, and fire making. I learned that a kind of dough can be made using the pollen and ground seeds, and that the young shoots can be eaten raw or cooked, and the immature "tail" can be roasted like corn. I've only tried the shoots, which were really quite good. My husband thinks I'm a bit crazy when we're off in the wild and I start eating wild berries. He thinks I should leave them for the bears, anyway.

Here are a few I found. My favorite, Gastronomica, is not on this list. All About Beer American Cake Decorating Bon Appetit Brew Your Own Chile Pepper Cook's Illustrated Cookbook Digest Cooking Light Cooking Smart Cottage Living Culinary Trends Diabetic Cooking Easy Home Cooking Eating Well Everyday Food Fervor Magazine Fine Cooking Fine Cooking Food & Wine Food Arts Food Engineering Food Logistics Food Processing Frozen Food Age Gourmet Home Cooking Light & Tasty Louisiana Cookin' LowCarb Energy Martha Stewart Living Meat Processing Pig International Prepared Foods Quarterly Review Of Wines Quick Cooking Quick Frozen Foods International Saveur Southern Living Taste Of Home The Herb Quarterly Vegetarian Times Veggie Life Weight Watchers Whisky Wine Enthusiast Wine Press Northwest Wine Spectator WineMaker

No, I don't think so. Her sister who was working on it with her passed away a few years ago and my mom's getting old, too. I was going to take over for her, but it was so dated that it really wasn't applicable anymore. It's sad, but just the fact that she was working on it gave us a lot of culinary adventures that we wouldn't have had otherwise. The book was about frugal cooking; I think they were going to call it Nail Soup, and it was going to be a large cookbook. The name comes from an old story (sometimes known as Stone Soup) that most of you have probably read--what to cook when you think there's nothing in your pantry. That and growing up in Washington spurred my interest in wild edibles. I like the idea of free food. I've made a lot of jellies from chokecherries, wild plums, crabapples, and the like. I'm always looking at the weeds in my garden, wondering which ones I could eat. I've tried to threaten them with the information that they, too, could end up in my salad.

This seems a fitting place for my first post here. I've been reading but there's so much to read, I'll never get it all done. My family was always interested in food. I grew up in Seattle back before it was considered to have a cuisine of its own, but we spent hours fishing, picking blackberries and hazelnuts, and digging clams. We always had apple, pear, and plum trees and a huge garden. We rarely went to restaurants because we had a large family and a small income, but we ate the freshest and best food then. Even had a milk cow and made butter and yogurt. I never knew how spoiled I was to come home from school and make a porterhouse steak for an after-school snack. Because the freezer was full, of course. My mom was working on a cookbook for most of the years we were growing up, which was never published. But whenever she was working on a particular chapter, we got to test the recipes--stinging nettles (very good) homemade graham crackers and corn chips, seaweed soup, and a lot of even stranger things. Once a week the kids would take turns making dinner; we'd make a shopping list and the whole family would go out to get the ingredients. My favorite reading material was the Joy of Cooking. I liked reading about cuts of beef, for some reason. Maybe it was the illustrations. I also enjoyed the stories about extravagant things like boiling potatoes in pine sap, something I knew I'd never try. I don't cook as much as I used to, as my children are all grown, but it's nice to know that at least a few of them enjoy cooking as well. One daughter plans to open a bakery/cafe in Hawaii some time in the future. I like to look at cookbooks and food writing. I love On Food and Cooking, Steingarten, Bourdain, and I just finished Ruth Reichl's latest book. I want to be her new best friend, as long as I can go to dinner with her. Unfortunately, my husband doesn't care much about food. He's a picky eater, and has a long list of things he doesn't want to eat. He can't tell the difference between instant potatoes and fresh. At least he likes chocolate. I live in Montana now, which truly doesn't have a cuisine of it's own, unless you like steak and huckleberries. There's no Pike Place market here, so I have to make do with visits home. It's nice to be here with the other people who like to eat.