HungryC

The look and feel will depend on the dough's hydration. Wetter, slacker doughs feel very different from a drier dough or one enriched with butter, dry milk solids, or other amendments (potato starch, whole grains, etc). Keep baking the same loaf over and over again--make notes about times & ambient temps--and you'll soon figure out the look & feel of a properly risen dough.

Big Green Egg makes a Mini Egg, sounds lots like what you describe: http://www.biggreenegg.com/eggs_MINI.html Aftermarket parts include raised cooking grids, baking stones, cast iron grates, and so on.

Did a spatchcocked chicken yesterday...briefly marinated in salt, sugar, fresh lime juice, fish sauce & cooked direct, 375 degrees, for 1 hr. Amazingly good for such a simple preparation.

Butter the bread very lightly before toasting; it will definitely stay a little more crisp than dry toast.

Cream meal (an extra-fine cornmeal, though not quite as fine as cornflour) makes an excellent crispy coating for fried seafood.

The refrigerator or freezer are best for whole-grain flours in hot, humid climates. The oils in whole wheat go rancid far faster than white flours.

Hogwash! (sorry, couldn't resist) Plenty of skin-on cooking of whole hogs out there. Louisiana's cochon de lait is skin-on and roasted, and the whole-hog BBQ tradition of the Carolinas is alive and well. Perhaps he meant to say he has difficulty securing skin-on whole hogs, so he doesn't use them any longer?

Count me as a Louisiana gardener firmly in the camp of the M-in-L. I grow backyard tomatoes to eat them raw. Uncooked salsas, bruschetta, gaspacho, sliced, eaten like an apple: these are the highest uses of a fresh, vine-ripened creole. When I have a ridiculously large bumper crop (not happening this year due to drought), I give them away long before I bother to freeze or process in other ways. I will admit to the occasional shrimp creole w/fresh tomatoes, but mostly I use them raw. Quality canned, aseptic packaged, or jarred (like Cento's passatta) are plenty good enough for cooking. Perhaps it's because our local tomato season is rather fleeting compared to the rest of the country: plants are in the ground around mid-Feb to mid-March, tomatoes are ready for picking by mid-April to mid-May. By mid to late May, the overnight lows are consistently above 70 degrees, which means that tomato production slows dramatically & the plants stop setting fruit. (Yes, some heat-adapted varieties continue to set fruit, but extreme humidity limits production even on the heat-tolerant strains.) So while the rest of the country is enjoying tomatoes, I'm pulling up my plants. I just pulled out the Orange Jubilee plants, and the Better Boy, Beefmaster, and Park's Whopper are coming out this weekend. The Celebrity plants are still setting a few fruits, but the stinkbugs are damaging the fruit pretty badly.

Why the lower temp? Have you tried steaming, even with the fan? As I understand convection ovens, the fan is simply circulating the hot air inside the oven, which would not preclude steaming.

Yay for cheese straws. They're ubiquitous around the holidays in the deep South, with every baker giving 'em a personal twist. Next time, try a dryish blue cheese (like Maytag) crumbled into the dough, along with a big hit of finely grated pecorino, chopped walnuts, and a bunch of black pepper.

And if you like buying kitchen equipment, you can get tiny individual tartlet pans w/removable bottoms, which makes it easier to get the baked shell out of the tin.

What about good ol' southern cheddar cheese straws? They're easy, fast, and can be made with whole wheat; will appeal to the non-sweets lovers who still want to support your cause. Can be packaged in small baggies; great w/cocktails, and will keep for a week or two, so you can market them as a take-away item. Here's a Paula Deen recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/zesty-cheese-straws-recipe/index.html Countless variations exist--my favorite twist is to form the mixture into a log, chill, then slice into rounds and top each with a pecan half and a pinch of cayenne.

Pah--I HATE noisy restaurants. I don't mind the sound of chatter, silverware, etc. But I sometimes feel like the only under-40 person in America who doesn't want a soundtrack with my meal. My better half is quite hard of hearing, thanks to a stint in the field artillery, so noisy joints don't ever get a return visit from us. I abhor dining rooms where people shout at each other over the background noise. It's dinner, not a football stadium.

It's a great substitution for mayo in creamy dressings, and as you've discovered, dips. Give me some yogurt-based dip and a bag of PopChips and I'm a happy camper.

Can we all agree that BMI is pretty useless? Body fat percentage is a far better measure to determine whether your weight/diet are appropriate for your frame. Let's not forget that folks who look "thin" can have no endurance/cardio fitness and lousy muscle tone & flexibility.

A long soaking (or simmering), then hit it with a sprinkle of Barkeep's Friend. BKF is ideal for hard surfaces, and it will lift stains out of enamel. So goodbye turmeric (or berry) stains!

Have seen small increases in milk & packaged goods, but I also noticed a BIG jump in butter. The Land o Lakes is now as expensive as the farmer's market butter from local, mostly grass-fed cows. Crazy, esp when the LoL is side by side on the shelf with Wal Mart's "great value" generic at nearly half the price. Hey, one industrial butter is as good as another, right? With creeping gas & goods prices, I'm trying to be more conscientious about preventing food waste....

If I were doing soups outdoors over propane, I'd use a heat diffuser and aluminum stock pots. Alumnium pots are cheap, lightweight, easy to clean....you run a small risk of scorching, since you have a high-output burner, but that's why the heat diffuser is important. You can buy various diffusers, but I use a simple circle cut out of 3/8" plate steel. It is indestructible, & once it heats up, it will retain heat for quite some time, so you can reduce your propane consumption and still keep the liquids at a food-safe temp.

Kinda depends on your learning style, I think. Some folks, given a pile of (great) books and hours in the kitchen, will arrive at a far deeper level of understanding than others who complete a structured course. Personally, I wouldn't bother with a formal course--I'd spend the equivalent $$ on books, ingredients, travel/eating, equipment. You don't need the credential generated by a formal course, so why go through the hassle? Spend the dough eating your way through a new city (or small country, depending on the cost of the course!)....

Cooking a pork loin (or tenderloin) is easy peasy; it's far easier to do a large piece of meat than individual pieces, as long as you have a meat thermometer and cook to temp, rather than time. How big is your grill? Gas or charcoal? If you can't fit everything at the same time, then do the loin first. It will be fine with an hour's rest, and those bone-in thighs will be better hot off the grill. To many cooks, BBQ rubs are like turkish carpets: the busier, the better. For chicken thighs, I'm stuck on ga nuong, and Andrea Nguyen's recipe (here, in the WashPo) is hard to beat.

The Baton Rouge book is River Road Recipes, which has multiple spin-offs (I, II, III, IV). More than 1.9 million copies in print, it's the best selling community cookbook series in the nation. If you're into community cookbooks, check out the Tabasco Community Cookbook hall of fame.

Yes, what Poppy says is SOP in Acadiana. You add the onions first to slow down the roux's cooking, wait for the onions to brown, (and I mean brown, not just soften), then add the bell pepper & celery. These instructions are found in beaucoup community cookbook gumbo recipes, so you know it's a fairly widespread practice.

Indeed, ive never been to a crawfish boil where the crawfish weren't purged TBH even though science says it doesn't really do anything. The practice is hanging around home & backyard boils, but (most) commercial boilers certainly don't bother with a salt-water purge. A thorough rinsing, yes, but no soaking in near-brine. Of course, you can buy purged crawfish (which have been held in recirculating water tanks), but expect to pay a premium.

Ah, the age-old "purging" debate. Some folks swear that they can encourage the crawfish to evacuate their digestive systems if plunged into salted water--it's still a common-enough practice all over Louisiana. BUT, it's just a waste of salt, according to the LSU AgCenter aquaculture researchers (more than you ever wanted to know about crawfish, compliments of LSU). The only way to get crawfish to "clean out" their systems is to hold them for 12-24 hours in aerated tanks without food. You do need to wash the exteriors, easily accomplished in a washtub with a garden hose (or in the bathtub, if you must).

Most often, I use peanut oil, as I keep it on hand for frying. But olive oil will work just fine, as long as you're not trying to make an ultra-dark roux. Never had it burn on me for a "peanut-butter" colored roux, which is the shade I use most often. The best, though, is bacon grease: nutty, smoky, and packed with flavor. It is esp good when making a poultry gumbo to bump up the richness. Bonus: it's the free byproduct of eating bacon. Reuse/recycle....