Lisa Shock

For me, Sonic is all about the drinks. There are quite a few locations in Phoenix, and it's great to pick up a cold drink in the summertime here. My current favorite is the frozen lemonade, but the ice cream slush (half ice cream, half slush, blended) is pretty good for a cheap treat. They also offer a grilled cheese sandwich for under $2. I like pickle juice and will probably try the drink at some point. Here, 2pm-4pm is happy hour with half price drinks.

Oh yeah, crinkle cuts always remind me elementary school. I like them, but feel like I'm eating the kids' meal. (does the meal come with a little carton of milk and a bowl of gelatin cubes?)

Yea, I'm shoestring all the way. The only time the thick cut ones are ok for me is if we're having cheese fries, or green chile cheese fries. Even with battered 'scallops' I don't like them too thick.

BTW, I'm still working on using up the gas in the first of my two CO2 tanks. (which can, of course, be refilled at a sporting goods store)

Wow, I can drink it just fine -I just prefer Noilly-Pratt or Cinzano. I'm sorry to hear this, @paulraphael, this has be pretty terrible for you when you try to order drinks out. I will take note of this when party planning.

Honestly, most of those pies in the video are raw. They won't look as precise if baked, and they certainly won't be as colorful. There are a bunch of people posting this sort of thing on Pinterest and people try to copy it and get very disappointed when their baked final product does not look or taste as good. Real pie crust, if it's going to be flaky, is going to rise and shift in the oven. I really dislike cooked apple/pear/plum/peach/etc skins in pie. To me the texture is like strips of plastic. All of those cute looking raw pies will bake up into pies with terrible interior textures. Overall, I find it really unrealistic and in many cases inedible.

Here's may favorite easy drink: The Martinez. I make it 1:1 (gin and sweet vermouth) with a dash of orange bitters and a twist of lemon peel. Classic purists insist on Old Tom gin, I like it with almost any gin. Slightly more expensive vermouth does make a difference -I tend to buy the $9 bottle from Italy instead of the $4 American brand. That said, the $4 isn't actively bad, it just isn't as complex. Some people add a dash of maraschino to it, I find that it becomes too sweet with my ratio. If you go 1.5 gin to 1 sweet vermouth, then maraschino makes more sense. But it also changes the flavor. I have a small bitters collection, and if I use one of the more exotic ones in a Martinez, I eliminate the twist. Anyway, this is an easy drink to play around with and customize. And, the ingredients don't go bad very quickly on the shelf.

If you can choose one spirit that you know you like to begin with (gin, rum, rye, tequila, cognac) then buy yourself one mid-level bottle of that and explore possibilities from there. Other basics: one of the more popular bottles of bitters (explore these later, just don't start with something that's way out there) simple syrup (make it yourself, it's cheap and easy) lemons and limes and a juicer that works for you (don't be tempted to use bottled juice!) In some recipes, you'll see maybe ½oz - 1oz of a liqueur. These can be expensive, especially if you aren't sure you're going to like it. Always check the store for miniatures of these, and/or smaller bottles like 375ml, etc. And, unfortunately, those cheapo brands really aren't very good. (I'm referring to those 750ml bottles of liqueur for under $10.) Most have artificial flavors and taste weird and metallic (IMO anyway). The good stuff is made from real fruits. An added bonus: good liqueurs can be used in the pastry kitchen to flavor icing, syrups, mousses, etc. Good luck!

Scaling is an important part of preparing baked goods. A bakery purchases ingredients by weight and can only determine a price to sell them at based upon the confirmed weight prior to baking. A sloppy employee who doesn't use a scale can bankrupt a bakery over time. Weighing prior to baking also ensures that items have the best chance for baking evenly, so that the customers have consistent experiences. In competitions and culinary school exams, finished products are judged on consistency. Finished weight, and sometimes pre-bake weight, are part of the scoring system.

How much did each item weigh prior to baking?

Mostly a serious student. I spent two years trying to perfect falafel. In college, I made brownies every day for a year in an effort to get a high altitude recipe right. (and now I can't make great sea-level brownies and I am about to embark on a series of tests) I also spent months working on high altitude popovers, succeed, and gained some acclaim with local acquaintances at the time. When I was married, I had a dozen or so tried and true meals I would repeat -just to keep the husband happy. He tolerated the experiments and studies, but would be disgruntled at any failures. He told me once that he really was just a passenger along for the ride, he did not share the craving for novelty. (and, he enjoyed the fact that I'd make big batches of certain foods and freeze them, so he had access to lots of portions of 6 basic things) I am much more of an experimenter by nature, I love variety. A new recipe for something novel is pretty much the only thing which will derail me from my study projects. I'll be infatuated, make the new dish, and then either file it away as good, file it as an unredeemable failure, or work on 'fixing' it. And then return to the current field of study. Ultimately, as a student, I want to know what I am doing wrong, why it's happening, how can I perfect the dish, and how I can improve upon it.

Oh yeah, as a vegetarian, you'd think I'd be happy that they finally had a vegetarian challenge...but, they way is played out, not so much. Having to use those kettle stoves was weird, plus having to serve 200 was a tough constraint because the stoves didn't have much space on them. You had very little temperature control, and apparently the only pots issued were 5 quart cast iron ones. If a person were to, say, wish to make some beans, they would have to use 2 pots to do so to get enough finished product out to feed 200 people. For me, not having an oven was also a bummer, there's so much that could have been roasted, bread could have been made, etc.

We made the eggs in home-ec when I was in jr high, so not so difficult. You just need a steady hand, and an awareness that you will probably break a few. Essentially, you just lightly wet some sugar with a few drops of water/color and then pack into a stiff mold, and allow it to dry. Components get attached with royal icing. That's quite the display, I can see why you're starting now. You can always make all sorts of things in marzipan (better for fine detail), pastillage, or fondant. You should run tests or make your own marzipan, though. I made the mistake once of taking some lovely canned marzipan in a #10 can to a competition only to discover that it would not harden.

Are you starting with dry beans? HERE's an article about puff.

Royal icing will last for decades. It's never going to be fluffy and scoopable, but you can pipe it on as well as texturize it with tools. It makes good icicles, too. Dry coconut can be used on bases and such to give more of a 3D effect, it will blow around if there's too much of a breeze, but I think it's a good option. You can make some items, like snowmen, from pressed sugar -the sort people make easter egg displays from. These can last quite a while if left untouched. If you make sugar windows, painting snow drifts on them is useful, use white colored, white chocolate. In general, hot boiled sugar is a great glue for the whole project. It is strong and sets quickly. Just take care while piping, don't get burned! Good luck!

Never heard of it. I do know about bulla cake, though.

Generally, when testing, one cuts the pastry so that the internal layers can be evaluated. It would have been interesting to see two cut halves, one from each batch, next to each other.

I was wondering if the trout 'flavor' issue is real? I know that fresh water fish tend to carry parasites that can easily affect humans, so the food safety books recommend cooking it well. I had no idea that bear scat was soooo pungent...

I will only order dessert if it is made from scratch on the premises. So many places now just serve frozen desserts from their food distributor. I want something fresh and fun, not something that's factory-made for shelf-life.

A little chocolate should help. (as a coffee-hater, I have never made this flavor of ice cream) The issues with coffee flavored ice cream are the brix and the fat content. You are trying to add a watery (relatively) drink to a mixture which is best at certain sugar and fat levels. Chocolate adds a bit of fat (all-chocolate ice cream is a balancing act, too much chocolate and the ice cream is too hard), which the coffee is lacking, and should help the texture. Flavor-wise, I suspect the results will be variable to type and brands, and personal preference. Making coffee and then dehydrating it may also be something to look into.

It's amazing how easy it is to get things wrong! The basics can vary so much from culture to culture, cuisine to cuisine. (plus, we're always fighting off waves of misinformation online) I know that plain rice is not salted in Japan, but, I have spent a lot more time studying Japanese food. I am admittedly a beginner with Chinese cuisine.

You par-cook the rice most of the way (like 75% or so) in lots of salty water, like pasta. Then you drain, add fat (and spices if desired) to dry pot, heat it and add the drained rice to it. You then cover it tightly and cook at a fairly low temp for about a half-hour. I don't know much about the Chinese type, but this is how Persians do it.

Just a reminder to check the discount aisles in Home Goods, especially after the fall/winter holidays when they get in more high-end items. Today, I got a Staub cast iron 2.9L/3qt tomato cocotte, new, in perfect condition, for $69.99! Weird thing is, I never saw this item on the shelf until today. I had seen a pumpkin one in October, at $129.99, but never a tomato. Maybe someone returned it. Oh well, timing, I guess.

fixed, I think

HERE are two of my favorites. (The Mannish Water, and C***.)