LB Howes

There's a culinary textbook that covers the basics called The Book Of Yields by Francis T Lynch that you might find helpful.

When I lived in the SF Bay Area years ago there were ItsIts, a regional treat consisting of real vanilla ice cream sandwiched between 2 oatmeal cookies and dipped in chocolate. They were great! I don't know if these are still available.

Something I just learned from McGee's On Food and Cooking is that leaving cooked rice at room temperature for too long can be unsafe. Apparently raw rice often carries bacteria that can withstand high temperatures (and so survive the cooking process). The bacteria grow pretty rapidly at room temperature, so he recommends serving rice hot and refrigerating any leftovers. Or, you can add an acid (as in sushi rice or rice salads, which inhibits bacterial growth. Yup, this bacteria is what causes the "MSG syndrome" at cheap chinese places very often. MSG Syndrome or anything related to any adverse reactions to MSG are NOT the same thing. The Serve Safe coursebook identifies the cause of illness from room temperature rice as being the bacillus cereus gastroenteritis bacteria.

If you are traveling up to Seattle, Ivar's is the place to go. They also serve a nice chowder and have many locations scattered around the Puget Sound region.

here's what first came to mind: if you have hot smoked salmon you can make this quick dish and tailor it to suit your tastes - all measurements are approximations cause i never measure when making this one smoked salmon & pasta - for 2 people 1/4 sweet yellow onion - thinly sliced 1 tsp capers 1+ tbsp butter 4-6 oz smoked salmon crumbled in smallish pieces heavy cream freshly ground black pepper fresh linguine for two dash of alcohol - vodka or white wine - optional Saute onions in butter until translucent, add in alcohol (optional) & cook off the alcohol, throw in capers, salmon and heat. Finish up with a healthy dash of heavy cream to make it saucy, then heat through again. Pour over a shallow bowl of linguine and toss. serve immediately topped with a sprinkle of fresh ground black pepper. if it's lox, you can use it in other sandwich-y sort of things besides bagels & cream cheese. try it on dark rye in a pseudo-rueben sandwich with sauerkraut(hold the cheese), or try a LLT - lox, lettuce & tomato, or how about a cucumber & lox sandwich?

Maybe I missed it, but haven't seen it mentioned about cutting and serving equal sized portions of desserts. Most home cooks just wack away at the cake or pie with the serving spatula or a butter knife, resulting in un-even pieces with jagged edges. I can't count the number of times I've seen some really beautiful looking desserts mutilated. I always designate myself as the official dessert cutter so the pieces stay looking pretty and there's enough portions for everyone!

I don't care for most crackers, but there's a couple of boxes of Triscuits in my pantry right now! Don't like low fat version, and the flavored ones are overseasoned anf too salty for my taste. Trader Joe's makes their own triscuit type of cracker which I've actually come to prefer to Nabisco's original.

Both. Depending on the season, if we're having company, the occasion, and my mood. The only constant factor is cloth napkins.

okra, creme anglaise, and vegemite

Since eating way too much rich Thanksgiving food, I've been having a cup of mid-grade green tea every afternoon.

In Hawaii where I grew up folks have many more ways to eat spam than just spam musubi. What immediately comes to mind is spam & cabage, spam pancit(Filipino-style noodles), spam shu mai, spam sandwiches with mayonaise (Best Foods of course), spam saimin, and fried spam, eggs and rice. Spam is so popular that a while back the Spam company did a special run of Spam in a tin especially designed for Hawaii. I heard from my brother in Honolulu that sales were especially brisk at Costco stores where folks regularly buy Spam and other canned meats - vienna sausages, and canned corn beef - by the case. These canned meat foods first became popular because they were cheap sources of fresh beef and pork which was expensive and not always available especially during WWII. Also, these processed meats are very saltyand distinctive tasting, so a little went a long way when aded to any recipe. You can buy Spam cookbooks at Amazon which have Spam recipes from Hawaii. Ann Kondo Corum's two humorous Spam cookbooks, and Muriel Miura's Spam cookbook are available. Amazon also has a musubi mold for sale.

My favorite herbal tea is African rooibos tea, which is also known as redbush tea. It's delicious straight but because it has a richness and clarity of flavor like good black tea it also takes well to being served with milk and sugar. Sometimes you can find it blended with other herbs such as chamomile or blended with spices. It's has no caffeine, is high in anti-oxidants, and supposedly soothing to upset stomachs.

Is there anything people won't eat???

Yes, I really really do( it might be a texture thing). I love cooked tomato sauce though and I dont mind the odd piece of tomato in a stew. I also love tomato soup. ← I can't stand raw tomatoes either - it's the texture. My oldest son is the same way.

I don't know what kind of logic it has, but my cheapo rice cooker arrived yesterday. I'll take on the Brown Rice Project this week, and I hope to be converted from a Hater to a Lover. ← Well. . . did the new rice cooker convert you from a Hater to Lover?

It's all a matter of personal preference - do you like a horizontal or a vertical bladed peeler? But why choose between the two - get one of each. I have two favorites, one of each style. The horizontal bladed one is made by Williams Sonoma which my mother-in-law gave me as a stocking stuffer about 10 years ago and still works great. The vertical bladed one is the Messermeister peeler and is still peels wonderfully after 2+ years of use. LB Howes

Aren't you lucky to have game meat to eat! A few years ago we had deer meat for a couple of winters and aside from steaks, chops, and braised roasts discovered that less tender cuts of deer make wonderful hearty stews, as well as Filipino style adobo stews. We found we liked Bambi spaghetti sauce and Bambi chili rather than Bambi meatloaf. Sometimes we had some smaller amounts of tender cuts which I sliced thin, quickly sauteed and then made a quick pan stroganoff sauce and served it all over noodles. I did make curry once and it was not very tasty, perhaps because I used Americanized green curry powder. Having expanded my knowlege of curries since then - deer might go well with any of the different kinds of Thai curries that complement beef. If you have rear antelope legs from a youngish antelope don't cut them up or use the meat for burger meat - you can roast it whole. We were gifted with a leg once and it was delicious roasted after being seasoned by poking holes in it and stuffing in small chunks of garlic, marinated it in a bit of wine and rosemary for an hour or so, rubbed with salt and pepper and then roasted. Good luck and happy eating. LB Howes

I'm going to be in Honolulu and on Big Island for the first few of August and would like to eat at some small, homey places that serve Local-style food. Here's my question - does anyone know of any of these local-style restaurants that make this food without MSG/Ajinomoto? Over the years, I've developed an extreme sensitivity to Ajinomoto/MSG. Although I can eat small amounts of foods containing naturally occuring low levels of MSG (shoyu, dashi based broths without added Aji,, etc.) without getting a headache; eating food with added MSG brings on an incredibly severe and debilitating migraine headache that lasts for days. I'm hoping someone knows of such restaurants, as I'd love to take my kids out to eat some of the delicious food I enjoyed as a kid growing up in Hawaii. Mahalo! LB Howes

Interesting comments all around about aspartame. Certainly people can develop sensitivities or allergies to it, causing adverse reactions such as migraines, heart episodes, etc. As far as it causing certain problems like autism, ADD, etc. I believe that the causes are a combination of factors - environmental as well as genetic and we'll probably never be able to prevent or cure them. Can people with those challenges to eat healthier, purer food and feel better? Certainly. Is substituting aspartame for sugar and corn syrup a good thing for those folks and everyone? Well some folks may think so, and some may not. It seems that a great quantity of aspartame is ingested by the soda pop drinkers who feel that aspartame sodas are healthier because they don't contain sugar (corn syrup). But just how healthy are soda pops in the first place - sugar laden or not? Especially when drunk in huge quantities which seems to be the norm these days? It is astonishing to see the number of people who use soda pop as their primary source of hydration! Whatever happened to water? I feel better overall not ingesting carbonated, mostly artificiallly flavored water mixtures into my body; having arrived at this conclusion after years of moderate off and on soda pop drinking. Anyways - now I"ll get off my soap box about soda pop. As far as taste - I've yet to come across an artificial sweetener including aspartame and the newer product splenda that doesn't have a wierd extra sweetness with an unpleasant chemical aftertaste. So do believe aspartame is safe? It's probably as safe as any chemical additive these days, if consumed in small amounts - i.e. the portion size intended by the manufacturer (which as we know seldom happens!) Do I eat or drink things containing aspartame? Not if I can avoid it and I usually do.

Is it just me or did that yolk seem a bit underdone to anyone else? And yes, it looks revolting - would be revolting even if the yolk were cooked through because one of the things that makes devilled eggs appealing to me is the proportion of yolk to white - that perfect contrast in taste and textures between between the yolk and white in each bite. Something well nigh impossible to achieve with an ostrich egg unless you have a mouth the size of Shrek.

First off - it's your own kitchen, wear whatever you want! And, chefs coats are simply uniforms worn by professional cooks and chefs. Chefs usually wear cleaner/nicer versions, oftentimes with names embroidered and made of high quality cotton. Even so, regardless of who has the nicer coat - once the cooking starts - well it becomes apparent who is who in the kitchen pretty quickly. Wasn't so long ago that a chefs rank was determined by height of hat, not if they were wearing a coat. I agree with the folks who say wear a nice coat one for deliveries, meeting with the public, etc. because thats what the public who watch the food TV channel seem to think "real" chefs wear. You can personalize it somewhat, but keep it discreet and above all - keep it safe. By the way, this question seems to arise from how modern Americans define what makes a person a chef these days. Is it training? Education? Experience? Where did you all get your definitions of chef?

. . . Yeah, really. I know. Can you convince my kids of that? I'll pay you. My energy for this sort of thing with them is usually directed towards bigger battles. ←

I completely agree that cold (and even some hot) commercially prepared wraps filled with sandwich fillings or a fusion of several different culture's ingredients are culinary abominations. I don't which is worse - the horrible faux tortilla wrapper or the mixture of (oftentimes) poor quality ingredients. Someone mentioned a similarity to those horrible rolled pinwheel sandwich things made of doughy flatbread, rubbery & stringy roast beef, limp squishy lettuce and un-ripe, slimy tomatoes. I've got this theory that the same folks who commercialized the pinwheels saw their fad losing it's popularity and came up with wraps as a substitute fad?? Anyways - a burrito or burrito-esque food made with a good quality, heated flour tortilla wrapped around fresh ingredients can surely be one of the most delicious quick foods. As Fat Guy wrote earlier, this kind of burrito is not the "wrap" he was referring to when he started this thread. Add my name to the list banning Wraps.

Yet another reason to not eat "food" from fast food places!

I've heard that SCCC is is about to - or has just begun a bachelors program. Also, that in the works is a CWU bachelors degree at the Edmonds CC campus. ← That would seem to conflict with the charters for the schools - and really piss off the University system. As it is, they are complaining about the lack of quality transfer students. But here is an article confirming the possibility: Oct 2005 Very interesting. ← I just heard the other day that South Seattle CC might be starting a program where you could get your BA in Culinary Arts. ← Central Washington University is indeed going to start offering an applied Science BS degree in Food Service Management at their Edmonds CC Campus starting in January 2008 if all goes according to their plans.