Lisa Shock

The purple flowers may need some experimentation if she wants those in cream cheese icing. Purple is a color notorious for not holding up well over time. Even commercial icing companies have special formulations for their purple products. Cream cheese icing has to be held cold, which is something that some wedding venues may not be able to accommodate. You'll need to get cold storage as part of the delivery contract. Also, the aforementioned purple icing may do weird things as the cake moves from a walk-in to the room temperature reception. (weeping, turning grey, fading, etc.) The main issue that I see with using carrot cake is that it tends to be more crumbly than regular cake and will be difficult to use for larger sized layers, and will need a lot of supports for upper tiers. You'll also need to carefully watch the baking soda/powder ratios to prevent green carrot bits.

Is there any chance that the eggs were accidentally frozen at some point? I suspect some sort of error on the part of a stock-clerk putting them into a walk-in freezer for a few hours instead of a walk-in cooler, or, they were on the top shelf of your fridge, and it's colder than you think....

You can make a juice or jelly (either can be canned) without removing the seeds. Search around for recipes using whole concord grapes and you'll get the general formulas.

I haven't tested this with macaroons, but, those freeze dried fruits can add lovely colors and flavors to many baked goods. Freeze dried blueberries mixed with a light colored nut flower might make a good berry macaroon.

Can your supplier get you a sample to run tests with? Many vendors will send a 500g sample.

The health department here does not allow towels to be worn/carried as part of a uniform. They have to be either clean and in the supply container, or in a sanitation bucket with fresh sanitizer -meaning wet. So, it's oven mitts for me. At home, I also use oven mitts because I find I get more even protection.

I agree wholeheartedly! Tarragon is the 'secret' ingredient in my cream of broccoli soup. And, it's an wonderful pairing in many other dishes.

I would be very interested in a recipe for broccoli giardiniera. My mom gave me a good one in the 80's. I have lost it, and she doesn't remember the incident at all so we have no idea where it came from. It was a mix of vegetables, but designed to be eaten right away, so it had some vegetables in it that wouldn't hold up to the canning process. (I think that many recipes out there are for a home-canned finished product.) I am also in the middle of preparing to move, and have limited access to a home kitchen. I will get back to this in a few weeks when I have my own place. I do recall steaming vegetables in my bamboo steamer over a pot of boiling, salty, vinegar based liquid, cooling and then combining them. Anyway, I have been wanting to perfect a recipe for giardiniera it's at the top of my 'test kitchen' list of projects because it's just such a good counterpoint to tomato sauced items -like as a nibble with an eggplant parm sandwich. So, I'll post in a few weeks.

giardiniera alfredo sauce jullienned to replace cabbage in mu shu jullienned to replace cabbage in egg rolls pulao fried rice enchiladas with green chile sauce finely chopped and added raw to a ricotta layer in lasagna soup: cream of, or added towards the end of cooking to noodle types in a salad after lightly steaming and cooling

I prefer freezer on the bottom models, but, only if they have regular shelves -not one big basket. I open the refrigerator portion far more often than the freezer and think that it's silly to be bending over all the time to look at my produce drawers. That said, I dream of one day having a dedicated unit for each. And, I really like some of the commercial units that can be hung like horizontal cabinets on the wall, so that everything is at a height you choose.

So, is this as simple as heating some olive oil in a pan with some garlic? Pretty much, yeah. And salt obviously. And many people also like to add black pepper and sometimes crushed red pepper flakes. But all pantry staples. I like to make a quick sauce from olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, oregano, olives (kalamata or black) and crumbled feta cheese added right before serving. Occasionally, I will make some beurre noisette then lower the heat and toss in some mushrooms and a tiny dash of nutmeg and lightly cook the mushrooms. Another non-traditional sauce I like is brussels sprouts (halved or quartered) sauteed in butter until lightly brown and tender with diced red onion added towards the end so it just sweats a bit and then a big dollop of sour cream tossed into the pan and the heat turned off so the sour cream doesn't break. Hope this helps!

Can you place cold gel packs on the top/side of the containers that might get exposed to air when the freezer is opened? Or even bags of frozen vegetables as an insulator? If you limit the air exposure, I think you will be able to do more earlier.

I rarely use them together. -Except possibly in separate layers of a casserole type dish like a pizza rustica. I tend to think of romano as salty and parmesean as sweet/umami, even though I know that both are actually salty cheeses. So, I tend to choose between them by thinking about the dish and what would best enhance it; does it need the bite of a salty topping or a slightly sweet umami velvety-ness. Also, many times a dish that does well with romano will also do well with a salty feta instead, although I am well aware that this is a bit of unorthodox cross-culturalism.

This might make an interesting ingredient in bread, as long as you don't use so much that the structural integrity of the gluten is affected. I'd take a basic bread formula, one that just uses water, yeast, salt and bread four and replace about 10% of the flour with the peanut flour.

I have taken these tests several times and wind up either as INTJ or ENTJ with my score very close to being a statistical dead heat in terms of the I/E. I do tend to be very detail-oriented, and like to focus on perfecting things. But, hey, I'm in pastry....

I am at a great disadvantage in that all of my books are packed in anticipation of a move. But, IIRC, Ateco Simplified Cake Decorating has images of lines and simple figures (shells, rosettes, lettering) piped onto a board each one corresponding to an Ateco tip number. Amazon has this book listed several times, it went through many editions. I own two copies, each a different edition and my recollection is that there were very minor changes, so I'd get whatever is cheapest. Even though most copies are pretty old, the binding and paper used was very substantial and my copies are in great shape.

That's my go-to book on pasta.

As someone who owns hundreds of cookbooks, I can see how this will be very useful. Occasionally, I will know that I have a recipe for something, but just cannot recall where.

You could try making your own. That way, you'd only be limited by how large of a container you're willing to invest in to produce it. Check out this eG thread for more info.

Might make a good macaroon....

I can get them at the local Mexican food market, in season. The top looks like a green onion, but the bulb is much more developed, maybe up to 2" in diameter. They have a stronger flavor than green onion, yet retain the fresh 'green' character so they are different from completely mature storage onions.

I have seen the UK show on BBC America, it's much better.

Fresh, green garbanzo beans at the mexican market and the pink baby ginger when it's in season at the pan-asian mega-mart.

Some of the answer depends on the potato variety. Waxy types will work better than mealy types. The reheat will have to involve high temperatures and low moisture, such as a quick saute. They lose the crispness when refrigerated, so just warming on a steam table won't re-crisp them. The only potatoes that remain crisp when cold are those that have no moisture left in them, in other words, potato chips.

How's the flour tortilla situation? If you cannot find those, they are easier to make than the corn ones and they use more common ingredients.