emilyr

If I go by the two ways I'd use something held overnight it'd be anywhere from 6-18 hours. For bread dough or similar items, I'll prep before bread, but then do the baking in the morning 6-8 hours later. For marinades or brines, I'll prep the night before and then cook the next night for dinner, upping the o'nite time to 18-ish. Of course, I guess there is a third option of prepping in the morning and cooking or baking around dinner time, which would make a range of 8-10 hours. The only one I really worry about the timing on is baking. Marinades/brines just need at minimum of 4 and can go up to 24 (for most things, but I don't brine more than 10 hours, ever, so I don't end up with ham-like meats!).

Bumping up this thread to say I ate at Olive Cafe today, and dang was it good. It's in Cafe Berlin's previous location (and before that, Clover's?) at Providence and Walnut. Middle Eastern food and a Halal market, which is nice to see in mid-MO. I'll definitely be going back for spices and other ingredient; there are some great deals. Today I had the kofta sandwich (seasoned, minced meat, hummus, tzatziki, veggies and pickles rolled in a chewy flatbread) and my friend had the gyro salad. The gyro meat was really good and crisped all over. We shared the hummus and it was pretty good, with a nice balance of flavors, but had a lot of olive oil on top which kind of masked some of the tastes. Their menu isn't huge, only about 15 items, but I won't take too long to try them all!

^Oooh! Could you please post or PM the recipe for the gingerbread biscotti, iguana? That sounds fantastic!

I have a feeling that the egg isn't as cool as you think when you put it in the fridge and is still cooking inside the shell closer to the yolk. The outside could feel perfectly fine, but the inside would still be warm. I'd just leave them in the ice bath or cold water until you are ready to use them or move them to the fridge (or even put them in a bowl of ice in the fridge). And, just to be difficult, I'm not a bring-it-up-to-a-boil-and-turn-off-the-heat kind of cook either. I just bring it up to a hard simmer/low boil for 5-6 minutes and then immediately put the eggs into ice or cold running water. This bugs my mom to NO END! We actually argue over it. This summer making salads for a church dinner, Mom told me I wasn't allowed to do the eggs til she left the house!

I'm willing to try anything once, but mostly I just want to make what makes people around me happy. Right now that's homey things like soups and stews, potatoes and meaty dishes. Home food. But when we get on a kick, I might cook all Italian for a fortnight or Mexican for a week. Then again, I'm not a pro by any means. I don't have a set cooking philosophy.

I cook for my friends and family. Simple as that.

This thread popping up is one of those weird serendipitous internet phenomena. I bought a Skor yesterday because my mom and I didn't have time to make our traditional Thanksgiving toffee and was really craving it. Skor tastes more like my mom's buttery toffee recipe (which is, needless to say, far, far superior to even the great Skor). Heath bars are kind of bland for my taste, and I think the chocolate is more oily.

They really brew the tea, both for the sweet tea and the unsweetened. The excuse we got for "not recommending" less than a full cup of ice is that the tea might still be hot. I guess they brew the tea and add sugar syrup before putting it in the dispenser. I don't order sweet tea, but my sister does and says it tastes like our "homemade" Lipton sweet tea.

I find that the stem-tops that come off when doing "the zipper" are soft enough to cook. I just chop them and their attached leaves with whatever other herbs I'm doing.

OMG You've got to show us the recipe and, hopefully, somewhere where we can see a picture. Rhonda I don't have a picture, but it's a recipe my Grandmama tweaked from one she found in the newspaper. A bag of frozen southern style hashbrowns, a can each of cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups, half a bag of cheese (cheddar, generally), a stick of melted butter, and some frozen and chopped onions are all mixed together and put into a buttered (aluminum and disposable, usually) 9x13. Then another half a stick of butter, the other half the bag of cheese, and about a half-cup each Cornflakes and Special K are mixed together and put on top. Bake til golden brown and bubbly. It's REALLY salty, but good when you get a craving. We generally only make it for Easter (it's really good with ham - more salt!), but Grandmama was recovering from a few surgeries and illnesses this year and lost a lot of weight. She had me make a batch for her and that was all she ate with a few veggies on the side for about a week to help gain back some weight. The two different kinds of cereal lend a different kind of crunch each. OK. . . now that I'm thoroughly embarrassed, I'm going home!

My favorite white trash-y potato casserole has Corn Flakes and Special K on top mixed with cheese and butter to make a yummy, gooey and crunchy topping.

In the county where I work, it's required by the county health department to have a notice if the burgers are offered less than medium-well. Most of them begin their warning with something like "In accordance with Boone County Health Department rules, customers should be warned..." I can almost hear the eye-rolling from my seat.

I just picked up Cook's Illustrated's Holiday Entertaining issue, and there's a great looking recipe for potato casserole that they specifically designed to make ahead. I think I'm going to try it this year, too.

I'd also like to hear your restrictions. $1 per person sounds pretty hard to me, but $2 sounds pretty reasonable. Don't forget breakfast foods! They tend to have a lower per person cost and are very filling and satisfying. Budget Bytes is one of my favorite blogs for budget cooking. Her entrees usually run around $1-$1.50/serving and are always generous, and side dishes are often in the $.60/serving range. This writer had a high-end party planner do a winter party for $30/person, but I that included decor and drinks, and I already see lots of the suggestions that I could do cheaper (especially as a Midwesterner with cheaper prices and as a crafter with a lot of my own suppplies).

I've thrown a few baby showers, and I think it really depends on the mom-to-be. They can go one of (usually) two ways: 1) Tiny food, mostly desserts and crudite; lots of pastels here, and it usually goes with a super cute baby-baby theme AND 2)Regular party food - whatever that means to the mom/group of friends; most of my "foodie" friends fall into this group. I've done a BBQ shower and one where we made our own panini. Martha, of course, has a wealth of Baby Shower Ideas. If your wife is throwing the party, I assume she's friends with the MTB. Unless it's supposed to be a surprise, it can't hurt to ask what she wants. Anyone remember the Sex and the City episode where Miranda refused to have any mini food at her shower - she insisted on fried chicken and sandwiches (not tiny ones, with all their crust on!).

I think these rules seem fine, if a little OTT. But I'm young and don't go to many fine dining type places, so most of these aren't even an issue in my day-to-day life. The one that seems exceedingly strange to me is: Really? No name? I get joking, flirting, cuteness being an issue, but waiters are people with whom you're transacting a business deal, not robots. I work in an office, and it is nearly mandatory to begin phone conversations with my name, right after thanking the customer for calling my business. You don't HAVE to remember your waitresses name to complete said transaction, but doesn't it make it easier, not to mention showing the restaurant and it s employees their proper respect. I get frustration with TGIMcFunster-type waitresses who do every cutesy trick to pull for a higher tip, and I'm in no way condoning that, but come on!

I read this today at work and cried a little in my cubicle. I love the way his focus on cooking has become more family-oriented - it makes him less intimidating to a cook such as myself. I look forward to the family dinner cookbook.

The brownie recipe I use calls for this as well as chocolate. It adds a cocoa-y flavor. The Joy of Cooking substitute for it is cocoa powder mixed with vegetable oil - just enough to make the powder liquidy. I wouldn't sub straight chocolate, just so you don't miss the different flavors.

Me too, MizDucky! Good thing tonight's punkin' carvin' night here on the homestead!

It is that. It's just liquid baking chocolate.

One of my dad's absolute favorite dishes is fried rice. I made it for dinner the other night and he said, repeatedly, that I could make it again later this week, too. I may just make him a big batch to have for lunches at work. He lived for a time in Hawaii, and the way he showed me to make it, they made at all the little diners he went to and one that he worked at. It's totally Americanized, but good and filling and it travels well. Fry some onions, garlic and ginger in oil. Add cold, leftover rice. Fry til the edges get a bit crispy, then stir in frozen peas and carrots and cold leftover chicken/pork/whatever meat. Cook til veggies defrosted. Add soy sauce and mix. Push the rice and veggies to one side of the pan and crack in some eggs. Scramble a bit, and when they're about half-cooked, stir into the rice. let the rice get a little coated with the eggs, but with plenty of chunks of scrambled in there as well. Sometimes I cook the eggs entirely separately and then fold in the bigger bits, but usually I only do this when I'm not adding any meat. I also don't generally use just soy sauce - the other night, for example, I used hoisin, soy and a little cider vinegar (we were out of rice vinegar). Sometimes, when I'm super lazy, I've made the dish with entirely pre-made products: frozen, steamable rice, frozen veggies, canned chicken breast and stir fry sauce from a jar. It's not nearly as good, but it passes. Also, I used a mixed veggie bag instead of just peas and carrots, and my dad acted like a 4-year-old; I found his bowl with a little pile of corn and green beans on the side. Apparently those are anathema in this version. Personally, I like to use leftover stir-fried or grilled veggies for mine, and I'm definitely going to try adding some sausage next time!

After a fire at a friend's house, we found that cleaning products with orange oil do a great job getting off greasy, dirty deposits. She had old copper molds and graniteware dishes up on her shelves (they were already dirty) that bore the brunt of the smoke damage.

Here are things I use the microwave for on a regular basis: Poaching chicken Cooking green veggies, esp. green beans Baking potatoes Making bacon Boiling eggs Cooking pasta (not often, but my stove takes FOREVER and a day to get to boiling) Softening/melting butter Melting chocolate Popping popcorn (not always microwaveable packets - you can use regular corn in a paper bag) Readying lemons for juicing (just pop them in for about 15 seconds before you cut them in half for reaming) And I do my fair share of re-heating and cooking of frozen/pre-made dinners.

I know it's not really proper, but I kind of like odd numbered groups - 7, 11 and even unlucky 13. I think when you're not in groups of couples, you get a bigger, across-the-table conversation going. Plus, I'm single, and I don't want to have to worry about finding a date and encouraging my other single friends (both male and female) to find dates just so I can set the table boy-girl-boy-girl.

I noticed the Pim's cookies available at Wal-Mart this late summer/fall. My Brit and Euro friends all love them, so I'm going to have to give them a try.