Lisa Shock

...mmmm...baked beans....have to remember to make those more often... Thanks for the heads-up! I have purchased 5 Brer Rabbit recipe pamphlets of varying ages and a hard-bound cookbook from the 1960's and none of these has the brownie recipe I am looking for. They have recipes, one of the pamphlets has a no-chocolate recipe, but none of them are the right one. It's notable because it has just one egg. I'll probably just have to try and re-formulate it on my own. (It didn't use weight for flour anyway, so I have a pretty good chance at getting something close.) Thanks again, though!

I like to toss the wedges with oil, olive or canola, in a bowl with Old Bay and some salt, just to get everything coated quickly. I then just spread on a pan and bake, no turning. I make a red-cooked potato (occasionally adding other root veggies) by tossing with a glug of oil and a couple tablespoons of hoisin sauce. I mix the oil and hoisin first, then pour it into a pan and turn once halfway through, since you get a crispy glaze on the bottom. If the potatoes are cut fairly large and/or I have time, I will turn 3-4 times each time making sure to get a different side down on the pan.

I like it and use it quite a bit. I learned as a kid to use it with regular sugar to make brown sugar for recipes. I really like experimenting with varying amounts in baked goods and other things like fruit compote. And, yes, it's indispensable in barbecue sauce. I usually see it in glass jars, but expect it to be in plastic bottles any day now. In some of my older cookbooks, civil war to the pre-WWII era to be precise, I have some recipes that make 'brownies' with molasses -and the recipes use no chocolate. Now, molasses in chocolate brownies is, IMO a great addition. I used to make a recipe from the Brer Rabbit jar all the time when I was in college in the late 70s -early 80's. People seemed to like it, and I wish I could get ahold of that recipe again. But, these chocolate-free recipes are something unique, sort of like chewy gingerbread, not to everyone's taste.

I have made some very good apricot pies with fresh apricots. When I lived in Santa Fe, a neighbor had a tree that produced lovely fruit with very thin skins. Of course, I was lucky enough to get big sacks of dead-ripe fruit handed to me when they couldn't handle it anymore. I made the pie because I needed to use a lot of fruit very quickly. I just cut the fruit in half, removed the pits, dredged it in some sugar, tossed in about a tablespoon of cornstarch, a pinch of nutmeg, and tossed the mixture into a double pie crust and baked it. It was always great, and the skins were not noticeable.

I wound up sending email to Bittman. So far, just got an auto-reply. The blog only has a video version of his recipe and no place to comment upon it. BTW, to be precise about the heat issue, the spores can live up to five hours in boiling water. I didn't see Bittman take the oil that hot or cook it for that long. You can kill it in a pressure canner that is at 250° F for more than 5 minutes. But, again, I didn't see a pressure canner used in the video or read about using one in the article.

I really enjoy reading your posts. I find it refreshing to be reminded that there are people out there who think of factory-made box mix foods as superior to made from scratch slow foods. Not that I agree with them, but it's good to realize that they exist and aren't changing their minds. I also find it interesting that as rural people, these seniors grew up with farm-fresh produce, fresh milk, and grass-fed meats. And, they somehow came to be of the opinion that frozen/dehydrated boxed dinner is somehow superior, and, in their opinion tastier. Reminds me of the cake mix fanatic (middle-aged woman) in my group in pastry school. She hated almost everything we made -it was all from scratch with ingredients like real butter and chocolate.

Botulism spores are heat resistant. And, several of the deadly strains grow at refrigeration temperatures. That's why it is of such great concern. Garlic in particular is known to carry a large number of the spores, and keeping any garlic, cooked or not, in a low acid, anaerobic environment ins dangerous. There have been outbreaks involving cooked garlic oil, and roasted garlic infused oil. These cases were part of the FDA's banning garlic oil infusions, except those produced with an acid from the beginning of the process.

They could. There are only a few situations where you can't sue someone in the US.

Today, The Minimalist column by Mark Bittman extols the joys of homemade flavor-infused oils, without regard to the food safety issues inherent in taking foods known to carry C botulinum spores and placing them in the low-acid, anaerobic environments in which they thrive. Do they not have fact-checkers or nutritionists or someone check these articles? This is a basic issue covered in the ServSafe exam, and in health code requirements in most US states. HERE is a link to more detailed info, written by scientists.

They should be fine. The only issue I can see is the extremely remote chance that a microscopic amount of the supplement gets on a lollipop and finds its way to a person with an allergy to that supplement.

When I make pizza, I often make a double or triple batch of dough and refrigerate what I won't use after one fermentation. The extra dough is good for, usually, two days. It can be popped out of the fridge, allowed to warm briefly, rolled out and used. -If you can stand to eat pizza three nights in a row. (I can, with different toppings, my husband cannot) After that, I use it as a patè fermentè tossing it in the mixer with some water, a little yeast and enough flour to hold it together. I usually about a half cup of water for each lump of dough that started out as a potential pizza but has gotten too old, essentially, I am doubling what I had. So, there will be a leftover chunk of dough which will be good the next night for calzones, stromboli, foccacia, etc. The dough will spring back to life pretty fast during a short fermentation near the preheating oven while I prep toppings. It's not the finest pizza crust on earth, but, it's quick and easy. The original batch of dough I make has a very high hydration rate, and I handle it almost like ciabatta. That said, you could assemble a simple pasta dinner in about 20 minutes, too.

A fairly fancy restaurant here in Phoenix had several meats baked in clay on their menu. Unfortunately, they recently closed. If I run into anyone who worked there, I will ask them about their sourcing of the clay, and any other details I can get.

It kind of depends on what you're making. Rice flour might work. I am assuming you have the flavor part covered, and you just want to make up for the bulk the cocoa provides. Hope this helps!

My parents live in the west, and I attended college in naptown for a couple of years. I tend to like dicing the onion very fine, and about half of it superfine -so that some of it disappears into the batter. I tend to use a white onion, mostly because my husband is touchy and doesn't always like it when red onion changes color. But, I'd experiment with different types of onions. I suspect that most places use just one deep fryer, so maybe, you need to fry some fish or other seafood in the oil before sending the hushpuppies in....

I use round placemats. My tabletop is glass and I am trying to avoid scratches. The placemats wipe clean quickly, no laundry involved. The table and matching chairs are very modern, made by Bombo, and I think a tablecloth would ruin the style.

You can cut them into supremes and put them on a fruit tart.

The hard part about packaging it yourself is finding a packaging material that is porous enough to allow moisture in, but strong enough to not break open and not porous enough to allow bacterial growth. You can buy tyvek envelopes at an office supply store, but, I don't know if those have a different thickness or different porosity than the packets, and I have no idea if they are food safe. Rice might help, but it isn't as absorbent as the silica. Terra cotta may work, I suggest baking it to dry it before trying to use it. The silica comes to you sealed in plastic, from a very low humidity factory. Any rice or terra cotta sitting around your home is already pretty full of water due to diffusion from the air. Good luck!

I'd curry some of it. Then, maybe, try it as an enchilada filling.

Well, the Discovery Channel is seven years older than the Food Network, and was showing cooking and food related shows from the start. Lifetime had a cooking-show lineup in the mornings, when it was new. And, of course, PBS has always had food shows. I still know people who don't have a clue that Top Chef even exists. For the last couple of years, my local ACF chapter (don't get me started about the food professionals who don't recognize that on my resume) has volunteered to help out at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. I helped run the door of the venue where speakers appeared. Security and SCF staff alike all uniformly refused admission to every one of the speakers in 2008. I literally had to point to the giant poster hanging above the theater and say, "This is Sam Talbot, he is the noon speaker, he was on Top Chef' and 'This is Dale Levitski, he is the 11am speaker, he was on Top Chef" and "This is Rock Harper, he is the 10am speaker." As a matter of fact, Sam was refused admission on five separate occasions. It got to be such a joke that I just gave him paid admission ID bracelet. -This is supposed to be the biggest culinary event in Phoenix, run by supposed foodies.

When I was in pastry school we got them from Shamrock, a distributor like Sysco. I see that JB Prince has carried them, but is out of stock right now. You could try emailing them to see when they will restock. I also found SilicaGelPackets.com but you'll have to contact them about shipping to Canada. Remember that the silica inside the packs is not edible, but is GRAS (generally regarded as safe) according to the FDA. The packets made for food packaging are generally the ones with the tyvek outer bag. The cotton ones are ok, but not recommended because germs can eventually start feeding on the cotton. Try to avoid gel packets that have colored gel which acts as an indicator, as these colors may not be as safe. You may wish to keep checking amazon.ca since I find small manufacturers selling things directly there quite often. If you can find someone selling plain silica in tyvek, whether or not it's marked for food, you should be ok. Good luck!

I don't agree. Julia had the #1 show on PBS for quite a while -back when most of us just got the big 3 networks plus PBS and maybe one or two UHF channels on our tv's with rabbit ears. She was on the cover of Time magazine in 1966. She was famous enough for Saturday Night Live to do a parody of, without in-depth explanation.

There have been food related celebrities in the media for a long time. Back before TV there were radio shows, like "Mystery Chef." Then, TV came along and so did a bunch of local and national food celebrities (Does Poppy Cannon ring a bell?) whom we have all but forgotten, primarily, IMO because their shows were less about food and more about their own cult of celebrity. Now, it's true, times have changed. On the one had, chefs are no longer considered to be part of the 'downstairs' servant crew; they are respected professionals. On the other hand, fewer home cooks prepare everything from scratch on a daily basis. We remember Julia Child and James Beard because what they presented remained meaningful and useful. Meanwhile, Peg Bracken, who was at one time just as big a household name as Julia, has slipped into obscurity. It's just like the book industry. Every year, since the mid-1800's, thousands of cookbooks get published. Many of them are not worth buying, written by people more interested in fame than cooking. A few are written by craftspeople who want to further the art and science of food, or perhaps wish to document their efforts. (Ranhofer, et al) I'd say that the current perceived glut is simply part of the cheapening and expansion of all media over the past decade. We have more media outlets (500+ tv channels, the web, etc.), and people are simply adding food content to all of the outlets meaning that the sort of celebs who used to, maybe, just have a local radio spot now get on a national tv show.

The fridge may or may not have humidity controls, these are sometimes labeled as 'energy saving mode off' or condensation settings. That said, the minute you pull something out, condensation may form because of the humidity in your air, like a glass of ice water. So, I'd avoid the fridge. Dessicant packets are a lifesaver here. If the pops had been wrapped as they were made, then sealed in a tub with dessicant, it may have saved the day. (assuming you use less corn syrup next time!) You can buy these packs, you can also save them whenever you get them in things, and refreshen them by baking on very low for about an hour to dry them out. (store in an airtight container) These are those little white packets that come with new shoes, luggage, etc. With humidity that high, I don't think I'd trust making them in advance. Stores are only able to keep them because they have AC, and the accompanying low humidity. As for dusting sugar, almost any is probably fine, but avoid the types with cornstarch like regular powdered sugar. Superfine should be good. You can make your own superfine, colored or not, in a blender or food processor, just run it for a while with the lid on very tightly. Hope this helps! Good luck!

I understand. My favorite place to eat cheap is the Blue Burrito Grill. It's a fast casual place, you order at the counter, and they have unlimited chips, salsa (4 kinds), and softdrinks including three China Mist tea flavors. My hubby and I manage to eat there for under $15 for the two of us, including drinks. As you can gather, it's not fancy, but it it is filling and fast. They have a commitment to making healthy food, so they don't add fat to the beans and they can tell you what is in everything. That said, there is plenty of cheese and guac on the menu, and if you wish, you can make a pretty decadent meal there. The burritos are large enough for a whole meal, although my hubby and I like to share one of their side salads with our meals. (the side salad is pretty big) They have a bunch of extra things that aren't on the menu, so ask the order-taker for info. They generally offer spinach or whole wheat torlillas, and they can smother things in 'enchilada style' red or 'green chile style' green sauce. I'm pretty sure they have a bunch of 'add meat or chicken' extras, too. The closest location is on Shea, just east of Scottsdale road.

I must stand up for the slow cooker. It's a huge help for the vegetarian cook, and anyone interested in frugal foods. I use mine primarily to cook dry beans, which is something I do once or twice a week. I also occasionally use it for New Mexico style flat enchiladas, and for root vegetable stews. I especially like using it in the summertime, because it doesn't seem to heat up my kitchen as much as simmering beans on the stovetop does. I like the fact that it is self-contained and safe to run while we're asleep or not at home -something I would never, ever do with my stove.