Torrilin

Is mustard on the list of no-nos? I find that powdered mustard mixed with water has a fiery flavor that I love. People who know me tend to avoid getting in between me and the mustard *g*. If your daughter enjoys spicy food, this might help. Note that if it's made with water it doesn't seem to keep as well as when made with vinegar. I'm also a bit of a chilehead, and mustard punches some of the same buttons for me. A salad dressing of thin, pourable mustard blended with a nut oil or an infused oil might be fun. Is she ok with fresh ginger? IME, it can make a nice vegetable in curries. They turn out quite hot, even if you use no chiles. You might be able to do the same thing with galangal root. Daikon might be able to work similarly for her too. Some greens can be rather intensely flavored. It might be worth trying Chinese, Indian, Thai etc preparations of various greens to see if she enjoys the flavors. Do watch out for the very sour greens like sorrel, since they have a high acid content. Are bell peppers ok for her? They can make rather colorful stews and soups, so if that's something she misses it might help.

We do stuffed bone in pork chops like a roast chicken. The oven temperature varies, but the method is basically the same. Season the outside of the meat with salt, and perhaps other things depending on our mood and what's on hand. Find a suitable size baking dish, stand the chops up in it as best as we can, possibly with veggies acting as a support and future side dish. We roast the chops standing bone up, and keep going until they're done. The fat on the bone ends up rendered nicely and very crispy. Any fat near the edges renders nicely as well. The meat ends up on the edge of rare near the bone, but otherwise is cooked through. The stuffing is browned and crispy where it shows, and soft and squishy inside. Yum! Our butcher (well, one of 'em) makes the stuffing and sells prestuffed chops. We keep buying them because the guys at our butcher shop are all excellent cooks, and it's a better stuffing than either my parter or I can make. This method should work with unstuffed chops as well, but the meat may be cooked through faster. The stuffed chops are 2 bones worth of meat, so very thick indeed.

I have no idea what I first cooked for my partner, or what he first cooked for me. For me, it was likely roast chicken, risotto or some other family staple like that. The first Thanksgiving we had with my parents, he made his family's chestnut dressing. It vanished, and my mother had a blast being his sous chef. It wasn't the first thing he cooked for me, but I knew then that he was a keeper for sure .

Well, really I get by with a single knife for everyday use. I have an el-cheapo Faberware chef's knife that I keep honed with a steel. In the near future, I need to purchase a couple stones or a sharpening system so I can keep it in better shape. When all is said and done, the sharpening and honing equipment will cost several times more than the knife. A second chef's knife is on the list, since my partner often shares the chopping with me for big projects. I doubt we'll buy much else in the way of knives in the foreseeable future, since we're both more comfortable with a chef's knife for everything. More than one knife is certainly not needed. Wanted, maybe. My mom is a knife addict and loves having 2 chefs knives, 3-4 paring knives and a utility knife around. A lot depends on the cook's habits. Mom usually is sharing the kitchen with dad, and two cooks fighting over the lone chef's knife is a dreadful thing. As everyone else has mentioned, old-dog-new-tricks is likely to be an issue. My mom can (and does) sharpen her own knives, and hates a dull blade. My dad cooks a lot also, and can sharpen knives. They taught me to be the same way. If your mom is used to the control a dull blade can give (and they do give control, just a different sort), she is not likely to enjoy a knife that's "too sharp". It won't be comfortable for her to use. If her knives are uncomfortable for you to use, I'd recommend buying a smooth steel for yourself, and an inexpensive but reasonable quality chef's knife. The total should come out around $70, tops. Over the next year you'll want to add a fine/medium whetstone, and eventually a coarse and very coarse stone. Alternately, save up and get a sharpening system. Final total should be somewhere in the $200 ballpark, spread out over a year or two. That gives you a solid knife, and the tools to keep it in good shape for a lifetime. Since you live together, if she takes to using "your" knife, you can start to teach her how to keep hers in the same shape. If she's not interested, it's ok too. You've made a lifetime investment in your own comfort while cooking. Either way you *both* win. She gets to cook with comfortable tools, and you get to cook with comfortable tools. If you come to agree on what's comfortable, it's a bonus.

There is a market. It's a popular meal among near eastern and middle eastern populations. Some Brits also enjoy it. The trick is, people who are from those backgrounds aren't spread evenly across the country. So unless there's a large population in your area, it's simply not going to be readily available. If you're in an area where buying the whole animal is the best option for mutton, a better alternative if you're interesting in "lambier lamb" is selecting a lamb from a rare breed. *That* is a much more manageable problem. A lamb isn't going to run anywhere near the sheer volume of meat. It's also much easier to find culled lambs than it would be to talk a farmer into keeping a cull alive til it's mutton. Most areas of the country have at least some sheep farming going on.

I'd begin by searching for local sheep farms, particularly farms raising "dual purpose" breeds of sheep such as Corriedale. If there is a local sheep farmer in your area, chances are they have animals each year that aren't suitable for breeding. Usually those become lamb, either for the farmer's freezer or for sale. If you make an arrangement with the farmer, you should be able to get some of those animals raised for mutton. I'd expect that if the farm doesn't specialize in mutton, that you'd likely need to buy the whole animal. If a whole sheep sounds like a daunting amount of freezer meat, focus your search on small sheep like Icelandic, Shetland and Soay. As with breeds of pig, different varieties of sheep have different cooking characteristics. Most lamb sold in the US is from "meat sheep" breeds like Suffolk or Dorset. If you can find a farmer who specializes in selling wool to the handspinning market, you may be able to find unusual sheep, and a farmer who is more interested in unusual requests. The Oklahoma State Breeds of Livestock site has a quite good section on sheep. If you poke around some, both on and off the internet, you should be able to find a sheep farmer near you.

The direct cause of your disaster is you used a single doneness test. A thermometer is a very useful tool, and it gives the illusion of being very precise. If you hit a bone, or even graze too closely to one, the thermometer will give an inaccurate reading. If the thermometer hits an air pocket, it gives an inaccurate reading. If it hits the bottom of the pan, it gives an inaccurate reading. When you're in a hurry to get dinner done, it's very easy to make mistakes with a thermometer, and all the mistakes will give you a higher temperature reading (it's the water thing... everything else in the roasting pan heats faster than the meat, because the meat contains the most water. And water is notable for taking a *lot* of heat to get a small temperature increase.). That's why I recommend always using two doneness tests. If the juices of the bird are red or an intense pink, you *know* the bird isn't done. If the drumstick is nearly immovable, you *know* the bird isn't done. If I don't get agreement on "done" on at least 2 doneness tests, I cook the bird longer. It's far more likely that I screwed up placing a thermometer than that my eyes are so wonky I read red juices as clear. If you roast a chicken on a bed of vegetables, you'll get deeply carmelized vegetables. If you don't care for intense carmelization, this is not a good method. It's also generally better for the hard root vegetables to outweigh the oniony vegetables. Onions cook very quickly, potatoes and carrots cook slowly. So if the onions are buffered in a mostly slower cooking mix of vegetables, they don't get so exposed to the heat and there's less risk of burning. You can also do things like cover exposed portions with foil to minimize burning. As a basic principle, flavor tends to travel with fat, since most flavor molecules are fat soluble. So if you want a slightly carroty chicken, you can make a carrot flavored compound butter and put it under the skin, or you could cut up small carrot pieces and add them to the chicken's cavity. I suspect carrot coins under the skin could work too, but that might make it harder to get a crisp skin. The vegetables will get flavored by the chicken, since they get soused in chicken drippings. They will not particularly flavor the chicken, since the fat is busy following the law of gravity and flowing down. Chicken has a very pronounced flavor. You can demonstrate this by making chicken stock. You can get a nicely flavored chicken stock with a very small amount of chicken compared to what you need for a vegetable or beef stock. The chicken will take on some of the lemon flavor from the lemons in the cavity, but it will not be particularly noticable while the chicken is hot unless you do a direct comparison between a lemoned chicken and an unlemoned one. I find the lemon flavor is much more noticable when the chicken is cold. The amount of liquid you're describing sounds like either the chicken was very freshly killed, or the amount of olive oil was excessive. 1 cup is a lot more than I'd usually use, but I also use a 9*13 baking dish as a roasting pan for chicken. If you're using a larger pan, that amount of oil might be just right. If the liquid was primarily from the chicken, you had a *very* fresh bird. Those do not behave exactly the same as a less recently dead animal. They contain more water, and thus take longer to cook. You can view cooking as "bring the water contained in food X up to temperature Y". This works because water needs a lot of heat applied to raise its temperature. Most other things we eat take much less heat to have their temperature change, compared to water. (If you want the detailed scientific explanation, just say the word. I find it easier to understand, but it takes a fair bit of math)

Mostly what you need for crispy skin is time and a few simple tools. The night before you plan to roast the chicken, get your bird out of any plastic wrap. Pat it dry. Rub it inside and out with salt. I find kosher salt is easier to handle, but that's a matter of taste, not a hard rule. Now get out your roasting pan and a V shaped roasting rack. Other roasting racks will work, the main thing is to keep the bird from sitting in the juices and fat. Set the bird in the rack, thighs facing up. Let it sit in a dry part of the fridge until you're ready to roast it the next day. When you roast it, let it go thighs up until the underside skin is very crisp. Then turn it breast up. If you are using a beer can style roasting rack, you don't have to turn the bird, so you may find you prefer that method. You can also get crisp skin with no roasting rack, but that takes a fair bit of practice. After that, the main thing is practice. After you've roasted chicken a few times, you'll get to recognize the scent of very crisp skin. Skin can look crisp visually, but not be really crisp. I find smell is a more reliable indicator. You can get quite crisp skin with different oven temperatures. I prefer high heat, but there are other cooks who prefer low heat. Experiment and find out what you like better. The big thing with roast chicken is to do it often while you're mastering it. Practice makes perfect. Since it's a very economical meal in most places, this shouldn't be a great hardship . I usually don't bother to prep the bird the night before. It gives better results, but I'm not at my best in the evenings, so if I prep the bird in advance it's the morning of roasting day. Practice taught me that.

Oddly enough, the Joy of Cooking has a wealth of recipes for sandwich spreads suited to afternoon tea. Or maybe not so odd, depending on your point of view. Large chunks of the recpies in the older versions seem perfectly in tune with meals called for in the first edition of Emily Post's Ettiquette book. Consult both to get a bit more of a feel for how to construct a menu for afternoon tea. If I'm getting together with a friend for tea, chances are there will be either a sweet *or* a savory dish, but not both. Put it on a pretty plate on the tea tray, along with enough teacups and saucers for all hands (usually no more than 4), a pot of freshly made tea, the sugar bowl, and the "cream" pitcher. Pour tea and enjoy. A common sweet dish for us is brownies, but we both make very good homemade ones. We're less likely to do savory, but I don't think either one of us is very fond of cucumber sandwiches. Maybe I should come up with a spinach and lemon sandwich spread... that would likely go over well. If we didn't live in Southern CA, toast might appear more often than the brownies. If we ordinarily had tea as more than two adult women and no more than two teenage girls, we might have more dishes. For 6 or 8 adults, I'd think a tiered plate holder, with savory sandwiches on top and a sweet on bottom should work well. If I were doing a very elaborate tea a la Emily Post, I'd *love* to try making a sandwich cake.

I care about nutrition, but I also despise being preached at about it. I grew up as the child of a food scientist who is also a passionate home cook, and the skepticism stuck. When I was very young, my parents made all sorts of efforts towards a lower fat, whole grains focused diet. As a result of various instances of picky children, we tended to avoid red meat and nearly all protein except boneless skinless chicken breasts. And well, as an adult I'm quite content to say most whole grain bread doesn't taste very good, and the stuff that does taste good isn't very whole grain. So I won't buy whole grain bread, and I won't make it either. I *do* make nearly all the bread I eat tho. And low fat is great when it makes the food better (which it does in some cases). When low fat interferes with food tasting good, I toss it out on its ear. I like brown rice, but I don't like the cooking time. So sometimes I have brown rice, sometimes I have white, and if I'm having either sort, chances are I'm having lots of veggies too. I still like the way boneless skinless chicken breasts taste for certain applications. For others, I like lean beef, or fatty beef, or chicken thighs. I'm not a big fish fan, but I'm also not a big mercury poisoning fan. I figure it'll balance out in the end. Really, it all comes down to balance. I'm in no rush to go taking a multivitamin, but I'm also in no rush to cut down on my veggie intake.

Boxed wine usually keeps quite well for months, even in rather brutal conditions. My parents kept some on hand as cooking wine on the countertop. Even in the heat of summer (no A/C unless the thermometer broke 85F), it would stay pleasant and drinkable for around 3 months. A box of wine usually doesn't last much longer than that with 5 adults around to use it for daily cooking. I've made plenty of risotto with boxed wine, or with no wine, or with no stock. IME, the key thing is to plan your flavors based on what you have on hand. A fairly sweet boxed rose is not going to go well in a risotto loaded with broccoli, and a spinachy risotto won't like an oaky red. An austere parmesan risotto works well even when all you've got is water for the liquid. A lemon heavy risotto might not work *except* with the rose wine. It all depends on what you're throwing at it. If you've got a rice loving household, it's not a bad idea to spend several months working through a risotto as often as you can stand. Try different vegetables, different wines, different stocks, no stock, cheeses that you think might work, "quick" techniques... The effort I've put in on making risotto a part of my default dishes that I can turn out well without a recipe was worth it. I've now got a nice reliable technique that I can use to dress up almost any vegetable. I haven't been as exhaustive with protein varients, since I'm usually pretty budget constrained.

I hid all the cookbooks I don't use in my mom's book boxes when we moved. She moved "into town", and I moved across the country. I don't miss them. Among them was a compilation of Mark Bittman columns (never used), an Asian vegetable identification guide, a rather slender in utility Chinese cookbook, and a few others I can't recall now. The ones that came with me have all seen use, tho in some cases not as much as I'd like.

The only cookbook that I've found so far where edition matters is The Joy of Cooking. The recent editions (iirc from around 1999 or thereabouts) cut out most of the food safety information, preserving information and preparing wild game information. I do not customarily use most of it, but I'd be a lot worse off as a cook if I hadn't had it to read when I was growing up. Generally, a cookbook doesn't change notably from one edition to the next. A misprinted quantity may be fixed, or an unclear direction might get some clarity. The "better" comes from how well the book is suited to your kitchen. As far as copyright dates go, Amazon.com is usually fairly accurate. Otherwise, I'd just check a paper copy of the book. Most online booksellers aren't particularly concerned with the copyright date being exactly correct.

Just a warning... you probably can't get good blind or double blind test setups on something like a pasta dish. In taste testing food, it's very difficult to get reproducible results, due partially to the difficulty of setting up blind tests, and partially to some poorly understood psychological and physiological factors (for example, sometimes things taste differently to people for psychological reasons... and other times, you can document genetic differences which result in two people tasting different things. I'm pretty sure that's not the only issue tho... and neither side of that issue is particularly well understood.). To help improve reproducibility, try to make the pasta dishes as visually identical as possible (visual differences between product is one of the most common ways to ruin an otherwise good double blind taste test). There are probably published studies of this type available, so try a literature search to see if there is other methodology advice. Also be aware that you'll get different results from trained testers vs naive testers. Do a literature check on *that* too. Both have their uses, but you need to be aware of the differences for presenting your results. You may need to modify testing methodology if you're using one or the other too. Don't limit your literature searches to psychology journals... make sure to check chemical, medical and food science ones as well. Emily

They've also got rather marked texture differences despite both being hard cheeses. Parmesan will dissolve readily in a lot of different liquids. Pecorino Romano tends to clump unless you dissolve it in very small quantities compared to parmesan. So I tend to favor parmesan as a risotto flavoring, even tho pecorino works better with some flavorings. Emily

The cut ordinarily sold as "swiss steak" in the US makes a good pot au feu. I cannot for the life of me remember what other cuts made for good pot au feu from when we had a quarter of a cow, but there were several. The ribs and marrow bones seem like an excellent idea too (dratted butcher didn't give us the bones!). Ribs can be quite fatty, so it might be best to separate the meat, veggies and broth, and chill the broth overnight to defat it. IIRC, the cow was grass fed. The meat was around select grade for marbling quality, but the flavor of the stewing cuts was amazing. Much richer and beefier than I ordinarily expect without bones. Emily

The soup is all gone, thanks to life interfering. On Wednesday, I made the stock. I brought the chicken parts up to temperature and poached them for around an hour at a simmer. This was long enough to get the connective tissue melty and give the stock a lot of gelatin. I was using the bones of 1 chicken to about 8 quarts of water, and ended up with a very soft gel. Next step was to let it cool enoug that it was safe to fish out the chicken parts. Then put both the stock and the chicken parts in the fridge overnight. If this sounds like a nonstandard way to do stock, it is. Mom and I ran several comparisons of stock making methods when I was in my early 20s, and this is the one we found gave the best results. It's based on what seems to be the standard Chinese/Japanese method of stockmaking. YMMV, I learned more from the side by side comparisons than I have from making stock over and over the "right" way. On Thursday I had a job interview, and got the job. Whee . This put a crimp in my posting, since I started on Friday. When I wasn't at the interview, I did kitchen stuff, including picking the chicken, skimming fat off the stock and a lot of veggie prep. The stock was cold and not very fatty. There was a thin spotty layer of fat on the surface, and the stock clearly didn't have fat incorporated into it. It was too pristinely clear. So, scrape the fat off the top. Then I realized that the reason there'd been no scum to skim was it had all sunk to the bottom. There was a layer of sediment on the bottom, clearly made up of scum. I didn't want that in my soup! So I carefully got the nice clean stock out, disturbing the bottom layer as little as possible with my ladle, and then poured the scum down the drain. Since I don't have a strainer, that was my only option. Next I picked the meat. It's best to peel the skin off, then pick the meat. Sometimes the skin won't peel, or it'll be glued to the meat with gelatin. Cook's choice what to do then. I was perfectly willing to futz for quite a while on skin that didn't want to peel, but if it had gelatin... how could I throw that out? Meanwhile, my partner snitched bits of meat to make us quesadillas. Dump picked meat into scum-free stockpot, with scum-free stock. Then I chopped an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, seemingly endless carrots (little tiny ones from the farmer's market... too early in the season for bigger ones), and a potato for the veggies. The carrots and potato got peeled because I've tried 'em unpeeled and it makes the soup taste nasty. Toss chopped veggies in, and bring soup to a simmer. Let it go for around an hour or so, and the veggies will be cooked just about right. The carrots and potatoes were the only good looking root veggies at our farmers market this week, so I had to make do. For dumplings, I used my fallback recipe from The Joy of Cooking. Their drop biscuit recipe is the one recipe I actually use regularly. I couldn't find the stockpot's lid, so rather than cooking uncovered 20 min then covered 20 min, I cooked it uncovered the whole time. Results were fine, tho the dumpling tops didn't get normal steamed texture. When the dumplings are done, turn off the heat and devour. And now I know how to scale down my mom's chicken and dumplings. It's the number of chickens. One chicken makes a fine batch to serve 4, with a bit leftover. 2 chickens plus a bag of chicken bones from the butcher makes Mom's usual batch size, fit to feed a family with three teenagers for most of a week. Scale veggies to number of chickens. And for god's sake, have more vegetable variety than I did. Emily

Which one? The kind my Minnesotan mother makes, or the kind my friends' mothers make? Since PA is by definition north of the Mason Dixon line, my friends' moms must have been making a Northern dish. And well, I have no idea how my mom learned to make her version. I know it's not Scandinavian, since her family was very set on ignoring their heritage. And besides, I find it hard to believe that American cuisine is the only one with chicken and dumplings . Anyway, I made a pot of chicken stock today. Nice clear golden liquid, and the meat should be poached nicely and still good to eat. Next step is to chill the stock and meat separately. Then I can shred the meat off the bones, and degrease the stock. I should get that done this evening. Emily

Though I agree with most everything else you said, what is the basis for this statement? A side note, toxic means lightly poisonous to me. ← I'm using toxic in the sense of produces poisonous to humans chemicals as part of it's natural growth. There's no judgement involved about degree. I'd use the same word for lye or methanol, or for a medication taken in such quantity that it poisoned the patient. Anyway, across most of the US, the common enviroment where you see fungi is lawns and other fairly sunny grass expanses (not because fungi are more common there, but because people spend most of their time in such enviroments). The fungi that typically grow there are not safe for human consumption due to natural toxins, not due to roadside pollution or other factors. If they are safe, they typically mimic the appearance of a toxic variety. Puffballs are the only fungus I'm aware of that is easy to find (it likes lawns and sunny areas) and easy to identify as safe (no mimics, obvious toxicity tests). I'm familiar with around 3-4 other fungi that like lawns and none of them are safe to eat. And given fungi's fondness for mimicry, what I see as 3-4 varieties could be only one species or it could be over a dozen species. So given the fact that I don't like eating mushrooms in the first place, I haven't researched in enough detail to say more than "most mushrooms are toxic" and "you can learn to ID safe to eat mushrooms". I'll happily leave all the mushrooms to those who like them Emily

I'd say it's not to be approached at all, but I have a rather intense distaste for the scent and texture of every cooked fungus I've encountered. I can recognize that others disagree with me tho In this *particular* case, it is possible to be certain. Not 99.9% certain, just plain certain. The form, growth habit, and signs of toxicity are readily recognizable even to someone like me who won't eat the bloody things. There are no mimics of this fungus. Now, with other fungi, it's different. The vast majority of the ones you find on a regular basis are toxic. It can take pretty drastic measures to ID a nontoxic one. There are resources available for learning about fungi tho, and IDing nontoxic ones is a matter of pretty intense concern. So if one is interested in wild foods, fungi are not the worst place to start (well aside from the oh ick factor ). Basically it's a neat way of joining biology and cooking into a hobby. You don't need a biology degree to enjoy fungus-hunting. You *do* need a methodical mind, research skills, a good memory, and some common sense about how to handle IDs you're not sure of. And to be honest, if you buy wild mushrooms, you are accepting that the mushroom harvesters know what they're doing. And you *are* accepting nuances of opinion. The fact that it's many steps removed from you personally doesn't alter fungi into a well behaved group of easy to identify organisms. And well... very few sorts of mushrooms are cultivated. If you're buying any mushrooms other than the plain white button mushrooms and portobellos, you are quite likely buying wild 'shrooms. Emily

This is one of my favorite soups. It's also the cause of some early culinary shocks. See, I grew up in Central PA, and my parents weren't native to the area. My mom's chicken soup with dumplings is a delicious dish of stewed chicken, manymanymany vegetables and it's topped with dumplings based on a drop biscuit dough. We didn't eat out much, so one day as a preteen I was in a restaurant and ordered chicken and dumplings. After all, I knew *that* had to be edible. So imagine my shock when instead of a plate of light fluffy dumplings and a thin soup, I got a big bowl of chicken noodle soup! That was my first encounter with PA Dutch chicken and dumplings. When I got over my shock, I enjoyed it a lot. I still don't know how to make the PA Dutch version, since to me it feels like restaurant food. Must be early imprinting. And I know there have to be other versions of chicken and dumplings... So let's talk about 'em I've got a hankering for the one I grew up on, so I'm going to visit the butcher tomorrow and get myself a chicken. I'll need carrots and onion for sure. Potatoes, parsnips, turnips and rutebegas wouldn't be a bad idea either. I'll have to see what the farmer's market has, since it's a bit early for root vegetables. And I'm low on butter, and I need a bit for the dumplings. Emily

Well, I haven't been doing much fringe cooking. But I haven't been doing much *interesting* cooking either. Roast chicken, nachos, quesadillas, roast beef, salads and peach cobbler mostly... all of which I have very solid go to methods for. Not much to post about when you're doing that kind of cooking. And by this time, I've posted my method for pretty much every one of 'em. And nachos don't count, since any method that calls for half a jar of salsa doesn't count as real cooking in my book. Now I *do* have a hankering for chicken soup with dumplings. And I don't think we've got a thread on that *hatches plot for this week's menu*. I'm sure there are other tasty plain cooking dishes that we haven't discussed. So if it feels like there's too much frou, throw in some anti-frou Emily

I'm bewildered. Scrambled eggs are not a dish that one holds. If you try, they end up freezing cold, and that's no good. However, I'm clearly working from a different aesthetic. Scrambled eggs aren't supposed to be a custard. They're supposed to be a quick preparation that is safe to do even when one is half asleep and in dire need of protein at 4am. So. Cast iron fry pan. High heat. Butter. If one is awake enough to recall that butter burns, a splash of olive oil, hopefully before the butter foams. Dump 2 lightly beaten eggs into the foaming butter. I hope you're awake enough to recall that eggs need salt and pepper. Flip as needed. Remove from pan when just solid, and eat. Try not to burn yourself and remember to turn off the pan. If this takes more than 5 minutes from egg to plate, you're either too tired to be awake or you're futzing too much. Possibly both. One may be in this position and need to feed more than one person. You can go up to about 5 eggs and still produce nice scrambled eggs. After that, just make the other nominally awake people make their own damn eggs. Besides, at least one of them will be annoying and want over easy anyway. Emily

These are basically the only fungus that's trivial to ID whether it's safe to eat. If it's white all through, it's safe. If it's not, it's not. The grey (at least the ones I'm used to go grey) spores are toxic. Emily

Most people don't cook at home. Most people don't have older family members who cook. When they start experimenting with cooking, they don't *know* to put salt in. And the average recipe is designed to produce a blind follower who knows nothing about cooking, but can produce edible food. So when a cook says 'throw the meat on the grill, you don't need to do much to it' they hear 'you don't need to do anything to it'. But the cook means for them to at least add salt and pepper to the meat, and depending on the meal maybe some garlic or rosemary or ginger. That's why I don't write things up as recipes anymore. Instead, I try to walk the person through the decision making process I go through as I make something. I may add a lot of salt one time, and hardly any the next. Or I may be in a tearing hurry, so the chicken gets salted *right* before it goes in to roast, rather than the day before. I'm not really interested in helping someone to duplicate exactly the dish I make. I'd rather help them learn how to make the decisions so they can make their own version that suits their taste. And thinking this over, I suspect the reason my friends moan about their waistlines after a meal I cook is *not* due to the fat, but due to the fact that it's carefully seasoned. It tastes like bad for you restaurant food, even if it's something healthy like roast chicken with a salad and several sorts of veggies. 2 teaspoons of kosher salt on a chicken isn't excessive. Neither is a sprinkle of salt on the veggies. And a salad dressed with the jus of a roast chicken is going to taste sinful no matter what you do. Emily