Lisa Shock

edited for sillyness...

I have to agree entirely, especially about the fridge/freezer part. Don't waste storage space in your fridge or freezer, you are just keeping bugs dormant. My husband used to develop software for a pest control company and the guys with the advanced degrees in entomology told us not to bother with cooling anything. We had a terrible infestation about 4 years ago, which was complicated by small lizards coming in to eat the moth larvae. Since that time, I got a FoodSaver and a bunch of different sizes of glass canning jars. I store many items in the glass jars which I seal with the jar attachment on the FoodSaver. Other items, that will get consumed within a week, I seal with the FoodSaver bags. The canning jars are relatively cheap (compared to plastic containers), they last forever, you can get new lids cheaply, and they work well with all sorts of leftovers in the fridge/freezer too. Ok, you do need to be careful not to drop them! You also don't have to worry about chemicals like BPA, and other toxins in plastics, with glass jars. The widemouth jar sealer works very well, and I recommend getting widemouth jars for ease in scooping things out. The regular mouth sealer is difficult to get a good seal with, and you can see a bunch of complaints about it on amazon. But I have discovered that if you disconnect the sealer hose and let the air into the accessory before trying to take it off the jar lid, it seals almost every time. I still prefer the widemouth jars. I keep spices and things like baking powder in small screw-lid jars, which I check carefully since I don't trust them as much as the vacuum-sealed stuff. We have not had a problem in 4 years, and I believe that vacuum sealing combined with glass jars has been the cause of our success.

Whoops! Sorry about that. Guess I had a bad myth stuck in my head. (always heard as a kid that salt made water boil faster) Further research reveals that while salt will help, but won't, depending on your exact altitude, make it the same as sea level. (I used to see water boil at 198F, a 2 degree increase helps, but doesn't take it up to 212F.) It also appears that, according to the USDA, meat and poultry will take longer to cook.

Glad the chocolate was a success! It's always great to hear that first snap confirming that it was done correctly! Beans do take longer to cook at high altitude, but it's hard to say how much longer because there are also variables in the beans themselves -they take longer to cook if they are older. I would generally toss mine into a Crock Pot on low before going to bed and let them cook all night, so I wouldn't worry about timing as much. I usually, even now, make extra to keep in the fridge or freezer, so they make me several meals for my efforts. I don't care what Ruhlman says, the Crock Pot is indispensable for cooking dry beans in a busy household! It might be useful for you to cut back a little on baking powder in scones and american biscuits. American style cookies will definitely need adjustment, or else chewy ones may turn out more cakey, or runny, or other odd ways. Yorkshire puddings...well...that's pretty much popovers, and experiment time. I'd be certain to use bread flour as part of the flour mix (many recipes call for it anyway) and I'd make sure to let the batter rest before use. Other than that, you'll have to adjust liquids and such and accept a few batches of hockey-pucks before perfection arrives. A little more egg, maybe a tablespoon or two, would be the direction I'd experiment with, though. And, if you succeed, you'll be a foodie legend in your area! Have fun!

Pasta, especially dry pasta, takes a lot longer to cook and never tasted quite 'right' to me. It worked a bit better if you didn't salt the cooking water, which also lowers boiling point, but then the pasta was never seasoned properly in addition to not being quite right. I think that was my biggest gripe. Pretty much anything boiled or braised took longer to cook. This isn't an issue for meats and fish because you just want their internal temperatures to get to 120-150 or so, and gelatin dissolves at just under 100 degrees. But, starches and grains can get gummy if exposed to liquid too long, so sometimes cooking rice can be a challenge. I owned several rice cookers while living at high altitude, and they seemed to work out ok. -They would sometimes boil up really fast and boil over, so I would leave a towel on the lid to keep it down (I can recall seeing it literally dancing in mid-air on the boiling rice water once!) and retain more water. The final product was always good rice, white or brown, so no complaints there -just a bit of adjustment to using the machine. I knew other people who struggled with rice when new to town, though. Casseroles with potatoes may need more liquid to cook thoroughly, if the liquids involved are watery. If they are cream & butter, the adjustments needed will be minor or nonexistent. Baked goods needed adjustment, sometimes in really odd ways. I got hungry for popovers and could not make them work. I asked around, and none of the local chefs (or ordinary people for that matter) I knew made them and they were not on any restaurant menus. I worked on the problem for over a year, and then discovered that using a slightly higher amount of egg and a different size was the answer. Essentially, 4 extra small eggs instead of 3 large, as called for in my original recipe, was the secret. I have no idea why using the XS eggs worked, as I had tried adding more regular egg white and/or yolk and it failed. (and I know to only use fresh eggs) I was only able to get XS eggs from a local farmer who sold eggs at the flea market. The real catch to all of this is that some formulas work well, like the baking powder adjustments given above, and others are approximate. I'd start keeping a journal and noting recipes and how they work out, so you have a reference for your altitude. (and humidity level, Santa Fe is pretty dry) Enough rambling for now! If you have any more questions, I'll try to answer as best I can!

Altitude affects cooking because at higher altitudes there is less air pushing down on top of things. (well, being pulled down by gravity, actually) This is why, for example, one uses less baking powder in a cake at high altitude. If one used the sea level amount of baking powder, the cake would rise too high too quickly and there wouldn't be enough cake structure to support the network of air bubbles. (breads are less affected because of the resilience of gluten) Water boils at a lower temp at high altitude because there is less air pushing down on it to keep the water vapor in the solution. It doesn't affect temperature related events, though, this is why some foods do not cook well when boiled at high altitude -they never get as hot as they do at sea level. Tempering chocolate is an exercise in manipulating the various crystalline structures of cocoa butter. There are six different types of crystals that can form in chocolate, the goal in tempering is to develop the beta crystals and suppress the other 5 types. This is done by a combination of careful application of heat and motion, neither of which is affected by the amount of air pushing down on it. I hope this helps! I lived in Santa Fe for 15 years; at about 7,800 feet. (I lived partway up a mountain.)

I like to cook. My husband, not so much -but he likes good food, and hates store-bought frozen food. We wind up eating at different times several times a week, so he likes having frozen meals available. I usually use my Foodsaver to seal things up before freezing. Rice is a good staple to have on hand in the freezer, it can go with a lot of meals. I make double batches when I make dinner, and freeze the extra in small sized plastic containers. -My vacuum-sealer crushes the rice, making it into mush! Occasionally, I will freeze overnight in containers, then vacuum seal the frozen rice. If I make saucy Indian foods, which I do at least once a week, I will make extra and vacuum-seal individual portions. Lasagna is always popular, I usually make twice as much as we need and vacuum-seal/freeze the rest. I also like to cook dry beans in my slow-cooker, and usually make as much as it will hold to save time and energy. Since there's just two of us, I freeze most of the cooked beans in 1 cup amounts for quick meals later. It's not as fast as a prepared meal, but it's cheaper and tastier than canned beans. So, bean burritos, red beans & rice, and bean curries can be made in under ten minutes with just a few more ingredients. Soups are good, the only problem I have had is that I get a weird texture if I try to freeze my leek and potato soup that has chunky potatoes in it. For some reason, the potatoes wind up with an unpleasant (to me) texture. The husband thinks its fine. Once a month, I make tomato soup from a #10 of tomatoes from Italy, and we have some for dinner with home-made bread, and the rest is frozen in individual portions. (The large pot of soup costs me less than $5 to make.) In general, saucy foods like chili, stews and curries seem to freeze the best for me. I also freeze sauces, then thaw them and add to some quickly sauteed veggies for a fairly fast meal.

I'm suspicious of any recipe that doesn't use weight to measure the ingredients. That said, were the eggs large size? And, when did you purchase the eggs? (older eggs don't leaven like super-fresh ones)

For a cold dip, one that I prefer over the one people make with the soup mix, I use a lot of fresh artichoke and very little in terms of extras. (no spinach) Recipe is approximate because of the variations in artichoke size. I take fresh artichokes, six or so, and trim them down to the crowns. I then slice them into 1" chunks and microwave a plate of them for about 5-6 minutes. (I find that this intensifies the flavor. I cut them into bite sized pieces for use on pizza or in other dishes.) I then allow them to cool and toss into a blender (or into my steel milkshake cup for use with my immersion blender) with some (½ cup to 1½ cups) home-made tarragon mayo. You want this to be very thick, so just add mayo until the blender 'works'. Sea salt to taste.

I have a recipe for a chocolate pie that's made with tofu. It's pretty good too, rich and decadent. You use a prepared graham cracker or oreo crust, then mix silken tofu, melted chocolate chips and a bit of honey in a blender. Pour and chill. ← Oh yeah, there's tofu-based pumpkin pie. Some people swear that you cannot tell the difference between it and regular pumpkin pie.

I saw an olive oil pound cake recipe online at a website of an olive oil company last year. Sorry, I didn't try it, so I have no idea how good it is. You might try searching for the term 'crazy cake' it's an eggless cake that is mixed in the pan its baked in. And, of course, there's my husband's favorite, Miracle Whip chocolate cake.

That may depend on where you live... Where I live, in Phoenix, AZ, we can often see summer daytime temperatures of over 120°. This means that the inside of a delivery vehicle or car can easily exceed 170°, which is hot enough to burn chocolate. (Yep, it's common to see people here using oven mitts to get into cars in the summer!) In general, you do not want your package to get over 120°. Depending on where you are, you may wish to wait til cooler weather appears, or pay for a cold-pack with the shipping.

In terms of the pale yellow color vs brown, I have seen commercial brown chips. Some of the small companies like Kettle Chips sell a very brown product. I decided to research how potato variety affects chips and found an interesting page from OSU Potato Variety Development Program. Looks like the big commercial chip producers tend to use round white varieties of potatoes. Some small producers use Russets, and this might explain the color differences. I have never seen the varieties they list as giving good chip color for sale in a store. When I lived in Santa Fe, we used to get a variety of red potato from Colorado that had a thick ugly skin and very white flesh. Those made very delicious chips. -And were really good for other things like potato salad...

I make powder-fine salt (like commercial popcorn salt) by putting a good flavorful salt (so many to choose from!) in the blender and letting it go for a few minutes. I find it gives more even coverage, and a more professional appearance. I occasionally add dry herbs/spices to the salt in the blender.

I'm 47 and grew up eating brown rice in the US. I like it as much as white rice, and prefer it for use in fried rice because it won't stick to the pan much. My current favorite type is red cargo rice, but I am also very fond of brown jasmine rice as well. I like using the sticky black type as a color contrast with white rice in sushi, and serving it with other Japanese meals, even though I know it is not traditional. For regular brown rice, my mother-in-law doesn't like the flavor of the 'exotic' types, I am particularly fond of a type that the LeeLee Market gets from Japan that has incredibly regular shape and identical size to the grains. (Sorry, I don't know the brand name, as I place it in a big jar as soon as I buy it. Phoenix has some very aggressive kitchen insects.) As for history, I'd like to point out that Macrobiotics came to the US from Japan in the late 1950s, so, there must have been brown rice available in Japan at about that time.

How about salads and quiche and a nice sorbet for dessert? If the vegetarian eats eggs it can be a tasty and inexpensive meal.

Corona beer and lime is a good ice cream.

How about Waldorf Salad? And, I second the ice.

You could also look into getting lemon wedge covers, something I recall from seafood restaurants in my childhood. They are like tiny hairnets for lemon wedges. HERE is a link to a commercial supplier.

It may not be the best tool for the task, but I get acceptable results, for sandwiches and sauces at home, with my immersion blender. I got a stainless cup from an industrial milkshake machine and I just toss nuts in the cup and go at them with the blender.

He can, it seems, eat quite a few vegetables. How about a curry or a korma?

I hope they return to Phoenix, I really enjoyed the events we hosted in the past!

That would probably taste ok, but I am guessing that it would separate and look weird. Only one way to know for sure....

The liqueur made with chocolate is far superior to the on made with cocoa. I just mixed the cocoa infusion with syrup, after letting it infuse a few more days than the chocolate. The cocoa infused liqueur has quick one-tone flavor of chocolate followed by a blast of alcohol then sweetness. It was chocolate flavored, and that was about it. The chocolate liqueur has a fuller, longer more complex set of chocolate flavors that carry though the alcohol and sweet sensations in the mouth. It was a full rich experience, very close to that of eating actual chocolate. I strongly recommend working with chocolate for this project, the cocoa product was a very pale imitation.

I'd try banana peppers, or New Mexico Green chiles.