Lisa Shock

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.

I've had good results from putting items in the washer with powdered oxygenating cleaner, allowing the washer to fill and agitate for a minute then turn the machine off and allow everything to soak for a half hour before turning it back on again. I've also used White Brite on whites, with mixed results. Some set-in stains come out really well with this, but it can also pull color out of trim, embroidery, etc. It definitely gets rid of the yellowing that plagues chef coats over time. I would use it on all-white towels only.

My husband uses a nut chopper that has a hand-crank and deposits everything into a glass jar underneath, all very clean. I use a pie dough cutter inside of a sturdy bowl. Either way, we have the nuts in a container that we can then dole them out from.

Depends on what you're going to use it for in the end. I usually just toss peeled and seeded fresh fruit into the blender. But, fruit like pears and apples has a type of fiber in it that has a texture like straw if the fresh puree is frozen. For making sorbets and ices from apples, pears, etc, some recipes deal with this by calling for cooking the fruit before pureeing, others have you juice the fresh fruit with an electric juicer so there's almost no fiber whatsoever in the juice. I have made really great apple sorbet using fresh juice, and preserving the color with vitamin C crystals. (the juicer really opens up the iron in the fruit and it discolors very quickly) For use in mousse or mirror-tops, etc, lightly cooking the fruit then tossing in the blender works just fine. Because a generic puree is never the same from batch to batch or fruit to fruit, you may need to adjust your brix levels, depending on the final recipe's intent. For example, fresh strawberries have a lot more water, less pulp & less sugar as a puree than a papaya puree. I took a class in ices at the World Pastry Forum '06, taught by the French Pastry School (Chicago), where we got charts showing approximate fiber and sugar levels in various fruits, and formulae for adjusting recipes accordingly. Hope this helps!

Wow, so ungrateful.... I suggest that you get evidence of what the meats cost nowadays, and give a presentation on your budget constraints. Or, you could be a bit passive-aggressive and ask the supervisor where s/he regularly purchases meats for the amount allotted. If they are going to micro-manage you, you could also try giving in, and calling the supervisor every time you run into a bind. So, in the recent example, you's phone up and say 'The only beef is $7 a pound, the butcher has offered me cod at $2. Do we serve cod, or is it a vegan meal tonight?' I hope this works out for you, I don't know that I'd be able to keep my cool!

Well, I noticed this morning that the cocoa infusion has the same sort of feathery clouds in it as the chocolate-bar infusion had. I am using SACO cocoa. The ingredients are listed as: Blend of natural cocoa and Dutched cocoa (processed with alkali). The flavor is starting to transfer to the alcohol, and so far seems decent.