Lisa Shock

Salt in the oil is how they used to make it at the movie theatre chain I worked at in the early 1980's. Because my husband is on an extreme-low fat diet, we tend to use our Presto PowerPop Microwave Multi-Popper -without oil. We get just a few unpopped kernels, as long as the corn is fairly fresh. He has a spice mix he likes to sprinkle on, while I like good old butter. The Presto PowerPop does require use of a removable insert, but, you really can get 24 poppings out of it before it becomes too weak to work. It's still far cheaper than store-bought bagged microwave popcorn and has the amount and type of fat that you choose. I live in Phoenix, and everything dries out really quickly, so I tend to vacuum seal my unpopped corn in canning jars just to try and keep some moisture in it. (we also do the teaspoon of water trick, too) Once in a while, I make an old-fashioned batch on the stove with oil (usually olive oil) and I use my wok. The shape is a natural for popcorn because as kernels pop they move away from the small heat source in the center of the bottom. I do not shake or stir.

I like to put it on potatoes before oven-roasting them. I've also used it on occasion when making vinaigrette salad dressing. I like to change my herb/spice mix so we don't feel like it's the same dressing all the time.

You are probably best off making something you are comfortable with, rather than risking something new and untested.

Did you close the lid? I'd also go sparingly on toppings. I've done this a lot, it's killing me that I don't have a working grill right now!

You could always use toasted shelled pepitas, although they are dark green, not black. They could be dipped in dark chocolate.

An ice-water bath is essential to be accurate about the temperature and to have on hand in case of an emergency. Boiled sugar can cause serious injuries very quickly. You can also add liquid color to the sugar as it cools. The water will burn off quickly.

I like Tri2Cook's idea of baking it on a sheet pan, it will be a lot faster to process. I'd make the crust part separately, also on a sheet pan, so it doesn't have a chance to get soggy. Here's the ingredients in the cheesecake portion of the cherry cheesequake blizzard, from the Dairy Queen website: "Cheesecake Pieces: Cream cheese (pasteurized cultured milk and cream, salt, stabilizers [xanthan, carob bean and/or guar gums]), graham cracker crumb (enriched wheat flour [niacin, reduced iron, thiamin, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], graham flour, sugar, palm oil, brown sugar, honey, salt, baking soda, and artificial flavor), sugar, egg, margarine (palm oil, soy bean oil, salt, vegetable mono & diglycerides, soy lecithin, sodium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, natural and artificial flavor, beta carotene (color), vitamin A palmitate added), cream, powdered sugar, enriched bleached flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mono nitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, lime flavoring (freeze-dried key lime juice concentrate maltodextrin, silicon dioxide (prevents caking), lemon flavoring (ground lemon peel, sugar, lemon oil), xanthan gum, pure vanilla, release agent (contains soy lecithin). May contain: peanuts and tree nuts." At any rate, it's a real chemical cocktail and I'll bet your home version will taste a LOT better.

Just piling on with support for the Kir. I run into a lot of people who don't even know what cassis is -which saddens me because it's my favorite fruit. There is of course, variations on the Kir. The Kir Royale is my favorite of those -if your pocketbook can take it.

Make a cheesecake, chill, then cut into small cubes? Add to the ice cream (vanilla anglaise base) when it's at soft serve consistency, then freeze to harden? I'm sorry, if I don't understand the question here. Real cheesecake is super-simple to make with just a few ingredients, and, once made can be kept frozen, so it doesn't have to be made the same day. Good luck!

You could also make hollandaise sauce, beurre blanc, beurre rouge, beurre noissette, etc.

How about croutons? Cut them into chunks, drizzle with butter or olive oil, toss some herbs over them and bake in a low oven until crisp, or cook in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove.

I wasn't fond of nutmeg in ketchup, IMO, it's a bit too 'earthy'. Allspice on the other hand, is my favorite spice for ketchup. I like to add it to the oil right before I start to caramelize my red onion.

There are lots of Indian recipes for using them, search for "dal" (dahl, dhal or daal) and you'll find a lot out there.

That's very impressive, Lisa. Small things like vacuuming the fridge coils make sense, I do it twice a year for hygiene reasons. I run a full dishwasher but I don't run the dry cycle, which is apparently a real energy pig. Nobody here has home air conditioning. I make salad dressing and mayo, but is homemade mustard worth the effort? I think I know the answer. What's a tempgun? ← Homemade mustard gives you the ability to control the flavor of the finished product. Like shallots in it? Add them. Wanna try red wine as the liquid? Go for it! Mustard also lasts a really, really long time in the fridge. So, even if you just a use a little here and there, you will wind up using it. I buy the mustard seed in bulk at an asian market, and occasionally from Pensey's. I use canning jars to store things in the fridge, for dry storage in cupboards, and some freezer items as well. Sometimes I just screw the lids on, sometimes I use my vacuum sealer to seal them. The glass is safe and doesn't impart or absorb flavor. For things like mustard, I've probably saved a cubic yard's worth of plastic bottles over the years by making my own instead of buying mustard at the store. The canning jar lids need replacement after a while, but they are recyclable steel. I will admit to using AC. (actually a heat pump, which is a bit more efficient than traditional AC) But, here in Phoenix, we regularly get temps in the 120°+ range and swamp coolers don't work well above 110°. I know from personal experience that when it's 126° outside, the inside of my house, if un-air-conditioned can easily reach 150°. http://www.tempgun.com/main.html I won the PE-1 tempgun in a contest about three years ago and it's been very useful ever since -for cooking and general household stuff. I was shocked to see how hot the mini halogen kitchen lights were, and made replacing them a priority. We now use less AC when in the kitchen. The LED lights are great. They should last 15-20 years and no bulb in our house uses more than 12 watts, with most using 4-6 watts.

Most of the taffy recipes I have found have a lot less fat than the tootsie recipe, sometimes none at all. http://www.tootsie.com/gal_tour.php Also, the product as shown at the beginning of this video does not look like taffy, at least it does not appear to have been pulled. It's a big thick leathery sheet. I'm sticking with modeling chocolate -with a loose interpretation of the term chocolate.

In Caramel Knowledge, 1988, Al Sicherman wrote of a reader of his column relating: 'Evans's Theory of Relative Competence: Every time you figure out how to cook something new reasonably well, you cease being able to cook something you thought you had mastered.' I personally think it happens when you become so comfortable in making something that you get lax with standards such as timing and measurements. Like, you think you can just intuit when to take something out of the oven, so you'll just play one more game of Tetris on the computer before checking the oven.

That is kind of odd, it implies that they allow some sugar crystallization to occur -something that is undesirable in modeling chocolate. It would also explain the relatively high level of sugar, relative to corn syrup, in the mix. About the ingredients, Wikipedia places the first mass production of hydrogenated oils at about 1909. -From a 1902 patent. And, soybean production didn't take off in America until after WWW1. So, I am a tad suspicious about the oil being an unchanged ingredient. It might have been used from about 1910 onwards, but, I seriously doubt that it was in the original product. (and, its presence is why I stopped eating these things in the early 1990's when the first transfats studies came out) And, the first patent for soy lecithin was registered in July of 1915... As for the recipe, note that it just says that he brought it from Europe. No mention of any great age to it. That's probably because conching wasn't invented until 1879. Chocolate products were pretty simple before that. I personally think that original recipe was something along the lines of approximately equal parts of corn syrup and commercially available milk chocolate bars. Then, someone said 'hey, you could make this more cheaply by deconstructing the milk chocolate and replacing parts of it with less expensive stuff that just happens to add shelf life.' The main proportions of the recipe are probably the same, they've just refined some of the ingredients. -Kind of like soft-drink makers claiming that the recipe for Coca-Cola is the same as your grand-dad drank, despite the fact that most of the American stuff uses HFCS instead of cane/beet sugar.

So more corn syrup than chocolate: what are the conventional proportions for modeling chocolate? ← Here are basic formulas for modeling chocolate. Remember that the chocolate(s) may have sugar and milk solids in them. Dark 400g Dark Chocolate 55g Unsweetened Chocolate 225 ml Corn Syrup White 15g Cocoa Butter 505g White Chocolate 140g Glucose 150ml Simple Syrup Milk Chocolate 450g Milk Chocolate 225ml Corn Syrup The tootsie roll isn't so far off from modeling chocolate, especially if you look at how chocolate is produced, with the cocoa being separated from the cocoa butter then reunited per the buyer's spec sheet for their chocolate. (I'm thinking Milk Chocolate here.) I suspect the ingredients are far different from the original formula, if only because the artificial flavors have become more sophisticated over the years. (I don't recall the orange extract, I'd be curious to see an ingredients list from the 1960's.) You also have the issue of softness. Modeling chocolate can get hard pretty quickly when exposed to air. I'd be afraid to bite into a thick chunk of it too aggressively. And, we know for a fact that the tootsie roll people are not concerned too much with precisely shaping the product -unlike modeling chocolate which is all about details. The trans fat (partially hydrogenated soybean oil) is semi-solid at a wider range of temperatures than cocoa butter, and has a creamy texture that probably helps a lot with pliability. It also won't go rancid for years, so it adds shelf life. The condensed milk and whey add flavor. This is an old candy, it dates from a time when milk chocolate pretty much was the only chocolate for many Americans. I recall seeing a study showing that even today, most Americans prefer milk chocolate's flavor profile over dark. The lecithin is an emulsifier found in a lot of foods, but most notably those brown confectionery coatings that mimic chocolate in a lot of cheap candies. It's there to keep all the components in a unified mix. Anyway, my point is that the sugar, oil, milk, cocoa, whey and lecithin pretty much equal the ingredients in a cheap milk chocolate bar, if you substituted out the fat. Yes, the Milk Chocolate modeling chocolate recipe has about double the chocolate as corn syrup while tootsie rolls have more corn syrup -although we do not have exact percentage numbers. (could be equal amounts of corn syrup & 'chocolate bar') My guess is that more corn syrup helps again with pliability, and mouthfeel. Just my $0.02

I was told by two instructors in culinary school that it was modeling chocolate.

How about 'Hac's Fancy Pantry'?

My husband and I have both been vegetarians since our teens, in the 1970s. (met in 1994, married in 1996) This is probably our biggest green contribution. We eat a lot of unprocessed foods like dry beans and vegetables. We try to eat up all the food we buy, freeze leftovers and make soups and stock from trimmings. I make a lot of foods like salad dressings, mustard, mayo and ketchup from scratch. We compost and have a small garden. I have used re-usable bags since I moved out on my own. I have a french string bag I got in the 1970's and Wild Oats cloth promo bag from 1988 that I still use. I got CFC bulbs in the mid-1980s when they were first introduced. Two years ago we re-did the house in LED lights. My kitchen is now illuminated with about 35 watts of energy total -and the bulbs only get to about 108° -as opposed to the 50 watt (each) halogen bulbs that were here when we moved in which used a total of 300 watts of power and got to 435° each. (so, we don't use AC fighting heat from our lighting) (yes, I love my tempgun) I do simple maintenance on the (circa 1996) fridge, cleaning gaskets and vacuuming the coils to keep it running well, although it will probably need replacing in a few years. I clean with simple soaps and vinegar as much as possible. I'd love to replace the stove with an induction topped model, but, cannot afford to replace it right now -plus I'd have to buy new pots, my copper cookware would not work! I load the dishwasher up, and use it. Most importantly, my husband keeps a small journal of when he changed filters on things or when we cleaned something, so we can do regular maintenance to keep what we do have running smoothly.

Ruhlman has posted corrections on his blog: http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2009/05...tio-errata.html He also asks for other corrections.

I took a class from him at the World Pastry Forum in 2006. IIRC, his philosophy is that maybe only two people in ten can taste the difference, say, between regular chocolate and high end chocolate, and he wants to cater to those two people. I enjoyed his class, and I really want to visit his store someday. He makes everything there, including the soft drinks, from scratch. I'd love to someday have a place of my own, like his. I just don't know if Phoenix is really ready for it.

FYI: NaOH (aka lye or caustic soda) is used in lab tests of sodium alginate containing medications to simulate the body digesting the medication. It's also the main ingredient in many drain openers.

The easiest thing to do is take a bite of the raw eggplant and see if it's bitter. I find that with a really bitter one, even salting doesn't really help, so I compost them and start over. I gave up salting them years ago.