Lisa Shock

Warm items could include: stuffed mushroom caps stuffed mini veggies like tiny eggplants or tiny peppers falafel roasted halves of new potatoes that have been hollowed out a bit on one end to hold a filling and flattened on the other to stay upright filled with veggie curry

As a teenager in Maryland, where it can be very humid, I managed to make some in the summer by sun drying. It only took one day because it's so thin. IIRC I made it on wax paper. -The peaches I tried to dry got moldy, the slices I made were too thick.

I ate at one of the Tokyo locations (vegetarian stuck in a place with no other vegetarian options for most of a day), and it was quite good -especially since Japanese Italian food tends to be sweetened, and this was not.

Yeah, I made it through the first two episodes. Too much time spent on playing silly games, running around, and arguing. The hosts are bland, the challenges too simple and too rigged. I want to see more food and more cooking. I also lost any respect I may have had for the contestants as they struggled with quenelles, which is something, IMO, they should know how to make. This show is clearly aimed at a non-foodie audience.

A peach gastrique is tasty, especially one made with ginger.

Thanks for posting the results. It's pretty amazing stuff. If you make with a real sugar of some sort, let us know about the taste.

I make open-faced cheese sandwiches, usually with swiss cheese. I like them with the cheese bubbly and browned, usually, I put whole-grain mustard on the bread and a few tomato slices. I'll also melt cheese on a tortilla before adding eggs and potatoes for a breakfast burrito. The slightly browned cheese makes a big difference. I have also found that it's faster for heating up frozen leftovers if they aren't too thick.

I have occasionally thought it would be nice to have a sterling silver spoon. But, that would have to be strictly for home use -I imagine it would disappear quickly at work.

Cooking helps avoid some foodborne illness. Some berries have been the source of e. coli infections in recent years. Cooking also inverts some of the sugar, giving a better mouthfeel.

NM used to be part of Mexico. There are families who have lived there since the early 1700's, after emigrating from Spain. The construction is classic Northern Mexican. The ingredients, especially the powdered spices are a big red flag. A real NM recipe would use red or green chile sauce, never raw chile powder. (and ceratinly no powdered, prepackaged spice mix) The diced bell pepper is neither here nor there, since they could appear in a vegetable medley enchilada. The real giveaway for me is the zucchini, because it's watery, this would usually appear in a calabacitas side dish, with the corn kernels, not in the enchiladas. I suspect that this is a dish that was doctored by several home cooks to the point of unrecognizability.

I lived in Santa Fe, NM for about 15 years. Locals there tend to make enchiladas in the flat style, that is to say unrolled, with fillings in layers. I never saw a series of fillings exactly as you describe, but the filling part was always pretty random -based on what was on hand. A common way (but not the ony way) to make the dish was in a slow cooker, and to have it pretty much fill the vessel. Many people viewed the rolled type of enchilada as restaurant food.

I always thought that Miracle Whip was a commercial version of old-fashioned "Boiled Dressing" -- which was a way of making a mayonnaise type dressing by cooks who didn't have access to oil. It's basically a thick flour based sauce with butter and cream -- and plenty of sugar and vinegar. My mid-western and northwestern great-aunts all used it when I was a kid and it was a must for coleslaw. Mayonnaise was exotic for them since olive oil was rare as hen's teeth on farms in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Here's a recipe: http://southernfood....leddressing.htm That's what I always thought. The first recipe linked is just a sweetened mayonnaise. The big clue is that MW has about 1/3 fewer calories than regular mayo and that recipe above would not have significantly fewer calories.The fake MW recipe I use is similar to this one, can't find the place where I got my version, uses boiling water as a significat ingredient and would give a lower calorie result: http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-miracle-whip-41781

I posted some on my attempted blog: lusciousrepast.com

If you make flavored sugar, you could use it in a batch of toast dope.

I have never been to this particular show. Shows that I have attended, and worked, that had wine tastings, often had more wine types available to taste than one could/should reasonably drink in an afternoon. (those little 2oz/50-60ml cups add up!) Don't taste all 54 offerings. Talk to the people running the booth about their products. Get them to recommend things that are to your taste. You never know, they sometims have 'special' better bottles hidden away for limited tasting by interested customers. You probably want to get a shot at those bottles rather than the cheap mainstream factory stuff. Also, talk to the people running interesting food booths. Don't just grab food and walk away. You may find out about special events they are having, special deals on buying their product, plans for opening a new restaurant, job openings, etc. These are great places to network with other foodies.

I grew up in a household of mayo-haters. Sandwiches got mustard and maybe horseradish on them. Once I discovered Miracle Whip, I loved it. I found regular mayo to be rather flavorless -and still do. I started making my own at home and haven't really looked back. I usually have a jar of dill lime and a jar of ginger sesame in the fridge at all times. Other flavors come and go based on dishes I am making. If I eat out I won't go out of my way to ask for mayo, but I won't reject it either. Along the road of discovering mayonnaise flavors, I found an imitation miracle whip recipe online. While it doesn't taste exactly like the real thing, when I did my initial taste-test with friends, everyone noticed that after tasting the from-scratch stuff, the brand-name stuff in the jar tasted very mettalic and chemical. So, I make that recipe too, on occasion. Never had Duke's, to my knowledge, so, no opinion on that. For commercial food prep, Hellman's is really consistently best. It behaves itself nicely and is always the same, jar after jar, tub after tub. Once tried a Sysco product labelled 'heavy duty' -it was oddly super-thick and sticky.

Many places are closed Mondays, it's our traditional day off. So, that's a good day to hold an event. And, yes, the informal setting is fine.

You might want to see if a local culinary school would be interested in hosting an informal talk/seminar with you. I can recall being in school and attending some great extracurricular talks by groups like SCORE. People will remember you and call you later.

I wouldn't call them national. They appear to be located exclusively on the northerly part eastern seaboard.

I hadn't had commercial pizza in years, and just did a taste-test of every place near my house that delivers. The only decent one is a mom & pop. The chains are all pretty bad. Dominoes hand tossed was the best of the lot, I guess. If only California Pizza Kitchen or Grimaldi's would deliver...

Actually, oils can go rancid before humans can taste or smell it. (I add a little BHT to oil as soon as I bring it home and store it in the fridge. And, I buy small quantitites.) If it smells/tastes bad, then it probably is bad, whether rancid or contaminated. There have been some recent scandals involving oils being sold as one type, but actually being another type, some with chemical additives. I'd return it. If you buy more, avoid that lot number.

Got a 1.75L bottle of Hendrick's gin at Costco last night. I have never seen this size bottle before. At $53.99 it is cheaper than buying the smaller bottles. I like to save their bottles to use when making my own infusions because of the corks, and because the bottle is so dark.

You need to calculate the friction factor for your mixer. Every mixer is slightly different, even different examples of the same make and model. http://duelingmargaritas.blogspot.com/2011/01/friction-factor-in-bread-part-deux.html Here's a moe complete discussion of temperatures and dough: http://thebakerynetwork.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/baking-science-principles-of-bread-production/

I use 2:1 for Jasmine, but, I tend to make small amounts where the surface area is fairly big in relation to the depth, and I don't rinse. I also live in Phoneix where the humidity is below 15% most of the time, so things dry out really fast, and I buy Jasmine in big bags. I do 1:1 or less if I cook really fresh sushi rice. But, I make less of it in a smaller pot because I don't like leftovers of that kind of rice. And, I buy small bags of it so it doesn't sit around long. There are a lot of variables in cooking rice. The height of the water and rice together is an important parameter to consider. There are commercial formulas for rice based on a standard stockpot size. They decrease the water % as the size of the batch increases because as the water boils off it steams the rice above it. If you start out with 1.5 inches of water/rice in a pot the water mostly just boils off. But, if you start out with 8 inches, the top keeps steaming when there's, say, 3 inches of water left, so overall you need less water. So, the ratio needed varies based on the hydration of the rice itself and the size of the pot in relation to amount of rice you want to cook.

I have a friend, an ACF certified Executive Chef with 20+ years of experience. He charges $1,700/day.