HungryC

I adore fenugreek, which is technically a legume. I find the aroma delicious. Fresh fenugreek leaves are used in some dishes in addition to the seeds. Though it is hard in the dried form, the seeds will soften with cooking.

What food/cooking mags are available in e-format? I've looked at the obvious suspects available through Amazon, iTunes, and Zinio....do you have any particular favorites in e-format or any obscurities available through other channels? TIA.

But diet obsession is a wonderful American tradition, going back to the founding days of the republic. Eating as an act of self-definition or reinvention is such an American trait. Throw off the traditions of your forefathers, whether kosher or fish on Fridays...or embrace 200 chews before swallowing, or juicing as a lifestyle, or purportedly ideal food combinations. Creating your own food orthodoxy and preaching it is as American as starting your own religion or business.

RE: praline, why not try a french almond cream? It's a classic filling for tarts, pastries, and to make bostock. Here's a recipe: 6 T salted butter, 2/3 cup sugar, 1 cup ground almonds, 2 tsp AP flour, 1 tsp cornstarch, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla; mix butter & sugar in food processor or mixer until fluffy. Add ground almonds, mix, then add flour, cornstarch, then egg, beating between additions to combine. Stir in vanilla at the end. Keeps for a week in the fridge. Lovely as a fruit tart filling--partially bake the crust, then add almond cream and dot with berries. Bake until puffy & browned. But the best use of almond cream is bostock: stale brioche spread with almond cream & sliced almonds, then toasted until puffy/browned. Heaven.

If fruit is too expensive, consider a jam-filled crostata. Apricot or raspberry jam pair nicely with almonds, and you can easily make crostate to serve a crowd--make it in a long, skinny shape and cut into slices. Crostata crust is usually some sort of Italian style pasta frolla; it's easy to use ground almonds in place of some of the flour in the dough. RE: coarseness, the almond meal/flour doesn't need to be very finely ground at all. The stuff sold by Bob's Red Mill is coarser than rough cornmeal--the nut bits are about the same size as couscous grains, and it works in cake/pie recipes. If you decide to make French macarons, you might want to grind it a bit finer w/some sugar in a food processor.

My thoughts exactly--call your local county extension agent and ask for a referral to a fruit grower or nursery that handles fruit trees. You can graft a variety you really like onto that mature, productive tree.

TAPrice recently profiled five bartending transplants in the (some)Times-Picayune: http://www.nola.com/bar-guide/index.ssf/2012/07/new_orleans_cocktail_culture_a.html

French & Italian baking abound with almond flour/meal as an ingredient. Here's a recipe from Dorie Greenspan's website for an almond cake: http://doriegreenspan.com/2012/03/im-chugging-away-on-a.html I adore Nick Malgieri's recipe for Pleyels: http://nickmalgieri.typepad.com/blog/pleyels.html And Francine Segan's "Dolci: Italy's Sweets" has more than a few almond-flour recipes: http://www.amazon.com/Dolci-Italys-Sweets-Francine-Segan/dp/158479898X Ditto for Claudia Roden's books--she has more than a few almond-meal recipes in "The Food of Spain". But I probably use almond meal most often in Greenspan's French Yogurt cake: http://doriegreenspan.com/2011/04/o-magazine-bonding-through-baking.html#more Here's a pic of it.

Does your cafe have a Facebook page? You can use Facebook to promote daily specials, events, etc. It's an easy format; users can "like" your page and everyone who subscribes to their feed will see it. Yes, I know FB is passe with the cool kids, but it's an easy, low-maintenance way to spread the word and keep you in control of the message. ETA: food discussion forums hosted by local media outlets are often full of interested eaters. Ditto for Chowhound in certain parts of the country.

Are you in a university town? If so, network with the student affairs/programs/organizations coordinator (or greek affairs) on any nearby campuses. Doughnut sales are an easy and popular fundraiser; students pick up the fresh doughnuts and then sell 'em on campus. It's also excellent exposure for your products.

I can't answer your cream of tartar question, but a little lemon juice will also work. I have seen many recipe references to lemon juice used for this purpose.

They'll whip; it just takes longer. Use a little lemon juice or cream of tartar, let 'em come to room temp, and whip away.

Do you have a Restaurant Depot membership? RestoDepot (locations in PHX and Mesa) carries edible flowers, microgreens, etc. You'll need some sort of business license in order to get a free membership, but perhaps a friend or associate can help you out. Each member gets multiple bar code tags, which are required for entry & purchase. You don't have to show ID, but you do scan your tag upon entering. RD doesn't care who pays for the merchandise, just as long as you have a scancard at checkout.

I like prosciutto on good bread, dressed with a handful of arugula and some cow's milk mozzarella...

The course is temporarily on sale for $20, a real bargain. ETA: whoops, it was on sale last week. Appears to be full price this week.

Oh, this is so far beyond the realm of needs....LOL. I'm turning out pretty good pizza on my Egg, as well as the occasional loaf or two. But a wood-fired oven class at King Arthur exposed me to a Panyol oven w/a 3-meter hearth; what a beast! So I'm thinking long & hard about what kind of oven, placement, etc, if/when I decide to take the plunge.

Raoul...your oven is a beauty. Did you buy a precast oven insert, or did you build a brick dome by hand? Either way, it's a fine-looking setup.

I've sworn off gas, but I'm surprised to find myself impressed with the quick-searing capabilities of an infrared burner on my dad's gas grill. It's pretty much the perfect grilling device for delicate items like shrimp, fish filets, and so on.

Thanks for responding...I already have a big green egg, but I'm chasing the perfect pizza. I need to convince myself that it's within reach using the BGE, and probably forget about another expensive outdoor cooking device!

Does anyone out there own a Forno Bravo pizza oven? Seriously considering one, and I'm looking for unbiased opinions. The company has its own message board, but I'd like to hear the bad & the ugly, not just the good. Thx.

We're singing the same tune: my olive oil is from California ( http://www.californiaoliveranch.com/ ), my wheat flour from Kansas, and my sugar, rice, & citrus are all from within the state line.

I saw a TV ad for the cantina bowl last night....most interesting was the tagline: 'if you don't like it, we'll buy you something else'. Guess they're worried about their core customers not buying into the bowl-of-food concept.

I swear, that pig's head is following me around! LOL. Makes me hungry every time I see it.

I buy local, wild-caught Gulf shrimp...ONLY. No pond-raised (yukky stuff added to the ponds, plus habitat destruction), absolutely POSITIVELY no imports (foreign, cut-price dumping of shrimp on the US market is undercutting the domestic fishery), and never frozen (by someone else) if I can get my hands on fresh. (Though I do fill my freezer during the May brown shrimp season, 'cause I think they're most flavorful.) Why? Because I live smack in the middle of Louisiana's seafood producing parishes. It makes me very sad to walk into my local WalMart and see big IQF bags of dirt-cheap, imported shrimp when the local fisherman is getting less than $3-4/lb wholesale for gorgeous shrimp. If you want to learn more about the seafood industry in my corner of LA, check out the Southern Foodways Alliance's oral history project focusing on Bayou Lafourche: http://www.southernfoodways.org/documentary/oh/bayou/ Ask for wild-caught Gulf shrimp....your purchase matters to a whole bunch of fellow Americans.

Libraries aren't always paying extra for most books purchased--in most cases, they're getting a price similar to Amazon's from a jobber. In some cases, they're buying direct from Amazon or local retailers offering a discount for volume purchases. Authors are compensated up front through their advances...the typical cookbook never "earns out" the advance (ie, sells sufficient copies to generate additional royalties), so my choice to use the public library isn't exactly cutting into anyone's potential income. In fact, I'd wager that public library copies SELL more books by introducing readers/cooks to new titles....haven't we all checked out the same book 25 times, only to finally purchase our own copy once we realized how great said book really was? Frankly, I don't feel much angst regarding discounted book purchases; do you feel angst buying discounted fruit or meat? Why would I feel BAD about using a public library? My tax dollars supported the purchase of the book in the first place, now you want me to feel bad about using it? If not for library purchases across America, many cookbooks would have virtually ZERO copies sold. I routinely buy used cookbooks. No, the author isn't getting an additional cut of my recycled purchase. That's life. Books aren't like software; the purchaser is entitled to read the damn thing as many times as he/she likes, to pass it on, to resell it, to rip out the pages and make a collage. (One fear I have of digital publishing is that the e-books aren't as readily transferable as traditional books, so we may end up with LESS information freely shared when everything goes digital.) Yes, I'll (probably) live to see the printed & distributed book go by the wayside. But we have centuries of used books floating around the planet, and they'll continue to be traded, resold, and used for a few more centuries before they all disintegrate into dust. Meanwhile, I'll keep checking out books and e-books, buying new and used books, and looking forward to the day when e-books have some sort of simple, direct markup capabilities so I can make notes on the damn things!