Lisa Shock

I'd try to see if you can find a live demo (Sur la Table and Williams Sonoma have them) or youtube video. Seems kind of fussy to me and with natural variations of vegetables, I could see it sometimes not working well. I got a hand held spiralizer on eBay for about $12 and have used it a little, but, it's not that interesting to me. (raw spiralized zucchini was okay in pasta salad, not worth $129)

You could make an Indian Dal curry type dish. -Maybe with green chiles?

Well, you're going to have to run an experiment to see how long it takes. To me, 45 minutes to an hour is how long dry beans take to cook. Every time I have gotten fresh ones, they cooked in maybe 2-5 minutes after being dropped into boiling water. Now, I usually can only get garbanzo beans and fava beans fresh, so maybe the type you have takes longer. But, I suspect that if they are soft and pliable, they won't take more than 15 minutes, tops. (15 minutes is about how long it takes for starch to cook)

Baking in a muffin top pan would give the illusion of dough holding a cut out shape.

Yes, thanks! The ganache on a stick idea never got too far, no one bought the batch I made and wrapped like lollipops, but the drink made from the basic ganache sold very well. And, it fit our needs in terms of eliminating waste and not needing a separate machine.

I like adding fresh beans to salads, just briefly blanch them (sometimes I put cumin in the water along with salt) and let them cool. I think they are very good in pasta salad, but they make any green salad more of a meal which is refreshing when it's really hot outside.

Can you keep water hot, and some ganache cool? Someplace here on eG there's a thread from 2009 or so about someone opening a candy shop and developing a hot chocolate that was made on demand. It was a ganache that would be placed in a cup then hot water stirred in. I used the recipe for a while at a place I worked at where we sold hot chocolate, but only a few cups a day, and it was very popular. (and easy for us because we could make the ganache every 3-4 days and keep it in measured squares in the front reach-in)

Here are two different ones. They are both from Baker's Weekly Complete Recipes, 1937. (out of copyright) Poppy Seed Filling 2lbs Poppy Seeds 2qts Water 1lb Sugar 2lbs Cake Crumbs ½lb Melted Butter or Shortnening 4 Egg Yolks ½oz Ground Cinnamon Grated Rind of 1 Lemon Boil seeds in water until soft. Drain off excess water and grind fine. Then add other ingredients. If too stiff, soften with a little milk. German Poppy Seed Cake Filling 7oz Flour 1pint Milk 2lbs ground Poppy Seeds 4 Eggs 6oz chopped Nuts 8oz Raisins 1lb powdered Sugar 8oz Butter grated rind of 1 Lemon Cook Flour and Milk to a stiff paste. While still hot, add the other ingredients, the Eggs and Lemon rind being added last.

Shortening is definitely the way to go. The description that it was like cake contradicts the part about holding its shape. In my culinary school baking book there is a sugar cookie recipe which holds its shape precisely, so much so that a stray fingerprint will show in a finished cookie. (you roll them and cut carefully, with the dough on parchment) But, cookies like that, without leavening, do not tend to be cakey. The honey will also be an issue with structural integrity. Is brown sugar in the cookie, or speculated due to dark color? Do you have any clues about the name of the cookie? Where did your friend vacation? Is this some local tradition?

I use the new MasterCook, although I keep older print recipes in a metal card file.

How about a pan sauce, maybe a gastrique maybe not, for a meat dish -like how sour cherries get used as a sauce for beef with a wine reduction in a fond-covered pan.

Thanks!

I remember making a charlotte russe in 72. But, it could have been a 60s thing.

My mom would serve Cherries Jubilee. (sometimes with ice cream or pound cake) There was a time in the early 60s when flambè was all the rage. She also made Rumtopf to serve flaming over ice cream, you probably don't have time to do that unless you vacuum-marinate the fruit. Remember that the 60s were the heyday of Julia Child and the first volume of Mastering the Art, so desserts from that book would have been everywhere. In the early part of the decade, when Kennedy was President, there was a fascination with all things French, so classic French desserts in general were in vogue. I personally like La Cuisine de France: The Modern French Cookbook (1964) by Mapie, Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec Boxed mixes were being pushed in women's magazines by the burgeoning packaged food industry, but, not everyone bought into that type of eating. Health food, which had been around for decades, also took off with Rachel Carson, a growing hippie movement, etc. I'd throw in a few health food desserts like zucchini bread, carrot cake, and whole wheat cake-style gingerbread.

BTW, the Kenwoods even the older ones, have an automatic shutoff that kicks in if it overheats.

I like the new Kenwood with induction heat. I have used it at work and it has a lot of great features like a timer and a thermometer. I still use a 7qt (under the DeLonghi label) 2007 Kenwood at home and make full bowls of bread at least once a week with it. It has more power than most similar sized mixers.

It would also work well in pate a choux, you can then make cream puff shapes and use them as buns for small sandwiches. You could also use it as the fat in a cracker recipe. Then, there's the world of sauces, like warm sauces where you could use it as the fat in roux, and cold sauces, mayonnaise in particular.

Yes!

I have done some sous vide with canning jars and a vacuum sealer. I have not made the egg yolks, although it sounds interesting. I generally just allow 10 minutes for the jar content to come up to temperature. The only other alternative would be to place a thermometer in the jar prior to sealing and somehow set it so that it doesn't turn off. You could also run an experiment with an open jar in a water bath with just oil and a thermometer in it and see how long it takes to get to temperature.

Thanks for posting this!

Your food wholesaler (Sysco, Shamrock, whoever) rep can give you some estimates based on what other places are ordering. What you use to sanitize dishes will be a big cost factor, bleach is cheap but hard on hands and dishes, quat is expensive but gentler. There are bargain soaps, but, you'll use a lot less if you choose name brands, so that comes out pretty even. (just like liquid soap for hand dishwashing at home) my personal preference for cleaning windows is to use rubbing alcohol, which is very cheap. But, you have bathroom cleaners, floor cleaners, mop heads, towels, dishwashing, stuff to scour stoves with, and more to consider. There will be variables we can't estimate for you like if your floors need special products for upkeep. (waxes, sealers, etc.) I've never broken it down by month, some supplies (like soap for the automatic dispensing systems) come in giant containers you might change every few months, some stuff seems to get used up weekly.

The Splendid Table just published this recipe for Summer Tomato Pudding the base of which is supposed to be sliced stale bread. You could easily sub your crusts in there. Also, stuffing can be made in so many ways that you could probably have it at least once a week and never get tired of it.

Egg prices are on the rise here, but, I belong to a cooperative exchange group of home gardeners and I am able to trade members for all the eggs I need. Also, egg prices aren't as bad here as some other places because Phoenix has egg farms and they have not been affected by the flu. It's just the name-brand out of state eggs that are really pricey. I don't follow the chicken situation as closely, but, local chicken farms are fine so far. (we had a quarantine because some breeding stock eggs shipped from the mid west were thought to be infected, but every farm was found to be fine) I think there has been a fairly good national effort to keep the flu from spreading. Not every area has it. There are lots of other sources of protein, like nuts, seeds, combining beans with grains, etc. to consider as well.

If you just have a few, freeze until you have a collection. Toast in the oven plain and then run them in a blender or food processor to make breadcrumbs. These are useful for breading fried foods, adding to meatballs and meatloaf, falafel, topping gratins/casseroles, etc. Breadcrumbs can also be frozen for later use. Dice a bunch of them and then make bread pudding. Dice and drizzle with olive oil and herbs, and bake or saute to make croutons.

When I first moved out on my own I went to an Chinese market and purchased a wok that came with accessories which included a 2-basket bamboo steamer. I still have the wok, the rack that hangs off the side, and the steamer -although the steamer could fall apart any day now it barely survived a bad fire. I use the wok at least once a week for all sorts of things including popcorn and deep frying. I picked up a Wagner 6" cast iron skillet at a thrift store. It is still the perfect small pan for eggs and reheating single portions of leftovers. I got a 10" cast iron skillet, new Lodge, a few years later. This is still my go-to frittata pan. My mom gave me the 4 qt pot and 8" saucepan & lid from the Revereware she got as a wedding gift a year before I was born, I use these almost daily even though I own a fancy set of copper pots. My French rolling pin (tapered, no handles) came from a mall kitchen store, they had a sale going and a huge bin of them at $2 each. I got the only one in the bin made of tiger maple, and it's gorgeous. It still inspires me to bake. Oh yeah, I almost lost it! One former roommate threw it in the trash because she thought it was junk!