HungryC

How about scratch cinnamon rolls?

If you're having trouble achieving succulent white meat & cooked-thru dark meat, you should try a spatchcock chicken. Cutting out the backbone & flattening the chix insulates the breast meat a bit, while exposing the thickest part of the thigh to greater heat. You don't have to turn the birds, and the breast doesn't dry out (as is common when doing half chickens). I generally go 1 hr 15 minutes or so for a 4 lb bird at around 350 degrees.

I am a big fan of pre-cooking some things and using the frozen food as a partial "ice substitute" in your cooler. A nice soup (I'm thinking corn chowder or some similar seasonal thing) might work, provided that you won't be hand-carrying all of the stuff to your campsite. How about gazpacho? Veggie-friendly, and if you add some ground almonds/almond flour, you can bump up the protein content a bit.

Yesterday's price at SuperWalMart: 64 cents each. 15 miles away, at the asian supermarket: about 30 cents each. I always see cheaper lime prices at ethnic groceries over mainstream supermarkets.

Hmm, the news I've seen on the opening in NOLA state pretty clearly that the owners plan to keep the H-town location open. http://www.culturemap.com/newsdetail/05-17-10-feast-heads-to-nola/

I recently looked at the cookbook from NYC bakery Babycakes. It was mostly gluten-free & vegan recipes, without too many odd ingredients. You might want to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/BabyCakes-Gluten-Free-Sugar-Free-Recipes-Talked-About/dp/0307408833 I didn't bake from it, so I can't vouch for the taste, but the photos looked great & the bakery apparently has quite a following.

As I understand it, if the prevailing winds hold for a bit longer, the impact will continue to be restricted to EAST of the mouth of the river. We have lots of productive wetlands (think oyster reefs) and offshore fisheries (shrimp, etc) west of the mouth of the river. I think that the long term impact is uncertain at this point--the persistent high winds and wave action have dispersed much more of the surface oil than was initially projected. Short term, it's the coastal fishing folks from the mouth of the MS river over to Pensacola who are immediately out of work. Some of them (large offshore trawlers) will almost certainly shift their fishing grounds west...it's the crabbers, oystermen, and inshore/nearshore shrimpers who are taking a huge financial hit.

Hey, the Manchester egg is gourmet compared to the Mississippi delta's "koolickle"....a kool-aid infused, oversized dill pickle. Think cherry or strawberry pickle....

Never made them, but I had the pleasure of eating (many) in Naples, where there are two different kinds: the flaky, crispy kind called riccia (which definitely didn't have pate a choux holding it together) and the frolla kind, which are softer. Riccia pictured here, from Schaturchio:

Hummus ranks as #1 on my list. Dried chickpeas are seriously cheap, a jar of tahini lasts forever, and hummus requires NO special technical skill to make. So why do people buy tiny premade packages? Dunno.

and do the beer can chicken thing on it. Except that I already own a dedicated beer-can chicken stand! (talk about a unitasking item)

See, non-pastry/baking people just don't understand us. Of course you have a popover pan, just as I have an extra-long tea loaf pan (cuts baking time of a pound cake by 1/3), an angel-food tube pan AND an angel-food loaf pan...sure, you could bake everything in a cast-iron skillet, but what's the fun in that? Also, I have not one, not two, not three but SEVEN different coffee-only brewing devices in my (rather small) kitchen.

So you guys have had luck with filled, shaped rolls resting in the fridge overnight? Every time I try this, the cinnamon-sugar mixture seeps out the bottom and makes a grand mess (think too-sticky for sticky buns). I've tried reducing the amount of sugar in the filling & adding a little butter to keep it "stuck" in place, but the results didn't vary much. It sort of liquified anyway. How do you keep the cin/sugar from running out of the rolls?

I just bake 'em all the way and freeze (no glaze). Defrost at room temp for an hour or so, then warm in the toaster oven & add glaze/icing.

Before you try to get a nice taper with a table saw, check out tablelegs.com(the Matthew Burak website) Good prices on a zillion different styles in many different woods; turned legs, tapered legs, notched legs, etc. They'll even mortise 'em for you, should you so desire. (ETA link)

Dude, your super-nice looking bins with yellow pine floors are just too tidy. The microorganisms/fungi/insect life needed to break down the organic matter move through the soil, not the air. Unless you've got some direct contact with the ground, it's gonna take years for that stuff to reach brown, crumbly goodness. I'd take the bottoms off, reload, and sprinkle a few handsful of "compost starter" (really you just some 4-4-2 or 8-8-8 organic fertilizer) or worm castings, etc to get it going. Your pile also looks pretty brown--you need more green stuff and less brown stuff, as the high-nitrogen green stuff will get the low-nitro brown stuff going. Again, all of the beneficial soil creatures will find the bottom of your pile naturally if they could. RE: bermuda, I know it's pernicious, I spent several hours digging it out of a flower bed about three weeks ago. Thus, I also know that it spreads through running roots. Once your compost is well-rotted, it's easy to see any root mass and remove it before you spread the stuff around your beds. I routinely pick out clumps of oak tree roots (the water oaks send up hairy root masses right up into my pile) before I spread. I was lazy this year and didn't dig home compost to top up my raised veg beds as I usually do each spring & fall. I (gasp!) bought some. Now I'm paying the price--an odd new tomato blight I've never seen before, and some very slow-growing peppers that should be several weeks ahead of their current size. This fall, I'll suck it up and dig it myself.

The ciabatta recipe in Dan Leader's "Local Breads" is an easy high-hydration loaf; it makes nice small ciabatta loaves as well as large loaves. As previous posters have mentioned, storage & staling are the two big obstacles to overcome. The ciabatta loaves (par-baked) freeze nicely; you can bake weekly or bi-weekly, defrost the loaves at room temp for a few hours, then warm in the oven just before you need them. If focaccia is too cliched, why not bake grissini? Dead easy, keeps for several days, and the long, crisp sticks appeal to customers who may not indulge in the bread. The same sort of dough for grissini can be used for seeded crackers.

You can get good boiled crawfish at Gerald Savoie's place: http://www.geraldsavoie.com/

No personal offense meant to snowangel, but her reasons for choosing chains overlap completely with my reasons to avoid chains!

Enameled cast iron is great for bread (see all of the attention given to Jim Lahey's no-knead loaves, which are baked inside enameled cast iron pots). ECI loaf pans are also great for baked charcuterie, like rolled ham, pate de campagne, terrines, and such. In fact, LC sells a covered cast-iron terrine pan. And, of course, the loaf pan is perfect for meat loaf.

I'd buy Neilsen-Massey vanilla, the commercial-quality sheet pans, as many SilPat liners as you buy pans, and Guittard milk & dark chocolate feves. Or just spend it all on a big le Creuset pot.

For me, it's not about economic calculation: it's about respect for the craftsman and the tree. I don't put my knives in the dishwasher, and they're completely inanimate, mass produced objects easily replaced with identical copies. Why wouldn't I accord the same level of attention to a unique spoon? When I handwash the spoon, I acknowledge the effort of the maker and of the once-living tree, now repurposed into an entirely individual but useful object. (I build wooden boats & furniture, so maybe I'm just funny about wood. I'd hate to think of someone pouring a quick & easy coat of polyurethane atop a table or bench I spend hours hand-rubbing!) If life choices were entirely about rational economic decisionmaking, I'd never plant a backyard garden, or make lemoncello, or slow-smoke a pork butt.

If you bothered to buy a handcrafted hardwood spoon, please don't run it through the dishwasher. It just needs a quick hand-washing and occasional oiling when it feels dry...don't leave it soaking in water. I have several handmade utensils, specially designed/angled for lefties, crafted out of interesting woods (osage orange, sassafras, cherry, etc, from The Spoon Mill). They're art objects, really, and they deserve a little extra care. The prolonged water contact & high heat of the dishwasher will eventually cause the wood to crack (esp thinner edges of ladles & spatulas). (Note: I'm not a handwashing freak--I toss the le Creuset in the dishwasher all the time.)

My poor tree didn't much like our prolonged bout of 22-degree weather. All the leaves have fallen off, and probably 50% of the branches are turning brown. I don't think the whole thing is dead, but it definitely took a hard hit. I'm waiting until March to do any pruning. (My key lime also dropped its leaves, but the branches look healthier). This was our coldest weather in 15 years....

The above info is only valid for in-shore and close to the coast shrimp trawling in the Gulf of Mexico. Big, offshore trawlers fish year-round, and those boats certainly stay out for more than 5 days. (The kinds of shrimp caught vary with the season, depth of water, etc) Large trawlers have on-boat IQF operations...the just-caught shrimp are dropped into a tank of ultra-cold brine, where they're frozen whole. Yep, right on the boat. I adore BBQ shrimp, but I only make the dish when I get very fresh, head-on shrimp (preferably brown and not white). Frozen (whether peeled or not, IQF or home-frozen) just doesn't cut it for me, and as for using headless shrimp for NOLA BBQ shrimp, well, what's the point? All of the good shrimpy flavor is in the head.