Kouign Aman

I havent used a magnetic stirrer in the lab that would cope with the viscosity of much of what needs stirring in my kitchen. Perhaps a varient of a KA with a stirring attachment would work - like an impeller in the lab.

I do not understand why how much you consume of the second bottle is relevant to charging you a corkage fee or not. Can you explain your thinking on why its relevant, please?

One of the food blogs featured a toaster oven. linkie My impression was that time and temp were the same, just the quantities of food had to be able to fit. And that has been my experience with them in preparing cookies, fish, chicken. Im gonna go look for that blog now, and link it here if I find it. <see above> The blog completely changed the way I looked at toaster ovens. I used to consider them as inefficient toasters, but it made me realize they truely are little ovens. I just rescanned the blog. Its not that there's a lot of detail, its just day to day cooking, using the tiny oven instead of the big one. Nice.

Ceviche uses an interesting 'cooking' method. I've had eggs and corn on the cob cooked by being suspended in geysers and hot springs.

I can only guess that See's prices are so low because they pour the coating rather than molding the chocolate (Im not sure that's what they do. As I said - a guess). They are a different beast than Godiva. I like them very much. I also like the paper-thin molded shells and light fillings of the chocolates my dad brought me from Bruges. Locally, we have Chuao Chocolatier, who would love to become nationally known. I wonder why a Ghiradellhi sampler wasnt on the list? (Not a fav of mine, but certainly one for many people).

I hope you can roast the peppers and freeze em so you dont have to buy those again. What a pisher!

That is hard-core.

Congratulations to Heidi! When I read the above sentence, I thought "She forgot the "yet". You're clearly not one to let things stay annoying, and then I read on.... Thanks to you all for the blog. I've had a hellacious cold for most of it, and its been a very warming read.

Not naive at all. Its a bloody good idea, IMO. My experience was that even when nap time and cooking time co-incided, braintime might have run out, so learning new things was hard. Then naptimes lessened, and reading dinner-time recipes got essentially impossible for a year, so I operated on the few things I had on autopilot. There's two levels operating here - the shopping level and the cooking level. There's a period of time when a project that complex is really hard to manage, if its not already habit. When the munchkin arrives, habit is a life-saver. So is the weird desire to ensure your offspring eats well. That improved the veg/fat ratio in my own diet immensely. I remember my green-veg-hating mom (who was sitting next to the 18 mo old munchkin) looking at a large broccoli stalk on her plate and asking me "What's this? ". I said, "its an example, Grandma.", and my mom ate the whole thing without making a face. First time I'd seen that in my life.

Christie's.

pnut butter powder, carbonated grapes + agave nectar. That sounds like delicious fun!

You guys make a great blog team. This blog is an inspiration to me in many ways (high among them - to stay in a mediterranean environment!).

Me too with The Magic Pan. I'd be happy if it would reincarnate. It was good for lunch.

Studies have show that people in general dont regulate calories to compensate for beverages be they alcoholic, soda, milk or fruit juice. Sugar of some kind is a critical component of ketchup. Not one we think of often but the sweetness is one of the key flavors. Cough syrup - I'm GLAD there's something that makes my kid willing to take cough syrup. Would you rather it were saccharine? Is it any worse than Mary Poppin's spoonful of sugar? (Me, I like the taste of the morphine-derivative itself. Im hoping not to pass that on!) Could it be that the HFCS found in so many breads is because its used to feed the yeast? Most bread recipes with which I am familiar use a little sugar to get the beasties awake and growing before they are added to the flour.

Dianalane, you have very smart children! Who does the cooking in your home? We both do. Its ~ 60:40. right now, but about a year ago he did almost all of it. I think about it more. He just does it. And uses 4x the dishes in the doing. I like rice, he likes mashed potatoes. So in a sense we have 'turf' about who cooks what. Do you eat foods from take-out or restaurants or buy ready-made foods often? We order out about 2x/mo. We eat drive thru ~ 1x/week, on the way to rehearsal. Its a great way to fill the time spent sitting in traffic. Do you cook absolutely "from-scratch" using unprocessed ingredients often? Probably not. After watching endless bunches of broccoli die slow painful deaths in the crisper drawer, we started buying it frozen. We buy pasta and bread, & jarred sauce which my husband then doctors extensively. We buy blocks of cheese, grate and freeze it. I also use the jarred chopped garlic on weeknights. When I havent seen the munchkin all day, minutes count - for both of us. Are you single, married or living with other(s)? Married. Do you have children? One, age 2.5 What sort of work do you do? Biotech, fulltime. Do you feel you have enough time to cook the sorts of foods you like to eat? Not yet. The time is just starting to become available, so Im starting to climb the learning curve, slowly, slowly, because I dont know how to cook many of the foods I most enjoy eating. As a question for "extra credit" , is the form of your daily cooking/eating/dining different than it was in your family when you were growing up, and if so, how is it different? Very much as it was the first 10 years or so, growing up. Editted to add: except my mom 'plated' (portion controlled?) most meals in the kitchen, and my husband grew up eating 'family style'. I've let myself be converted to his tradition (despite the extra dirty dishes it creates)

I thought it was the seedpods of nasturtiums that got pickled? To become giant 'capers'? The buds do too? Thats a spot-on description of the scent of the average geranium leaf! There are geraniums with chocolate scented, lemon-scented, mint-scented, rose-scented, etc leaves. My neighbor grows them all.

Linkie to Helenjp: Well, Pickle me!

I just purely love the way you write, ma'am. We, my dad, sister and I, used to pickle onions. The sight of the large jars, somewhat amber from the cider vinegar & spices, gave my dad joy and my mom heartburn. I kept being reminded of one of the foodblogs from Japan (Helenjp's, I think). Also a devoted pickle maker and the techniques are so different. Buckets of bran in the hall instead of gleaming jars, etc.

I dont have a link for a demo, but one easy way to take care of a pineapple is to slice it flat across the bottom, then shave the skin off in vertical strips, not worrying about the eyes. Then lay the naked pineapple down, and go around it in a spiral, from eye to eye, cutting a small v-shaped groove. This removes the eyes. Takes a couple spirals to get em all. The leaves make a good handle for this part. Then, its time cut into rings, or remove the leaves and cut into wedges as you prefer. This is a juicy messy job. I usually put a towel under the cutting board to contain the flow and ease cleanup. Sorry your son's been ill, and I hope no one else catches it!

Instead of yogurt to increase Ca content, could you use a thick paste of nonfat dried milk? Casein Calcinate is available commerically. Its a foaming agent usually, and is essentially flavorless (tastes like calcium mostly). Its a booger to get into solution tho. Start with a paste and add liquid slowly is easiest IME (not for this kinda of fun use tho). I hope you make terrific choc caviar. Im having a hard time liking the thought of chocolate jello. Perhaps your rave reviews will open my mind a bit.

Bay laurel is on the list, but not sure I want it in the ground. Gotta look up its water-seeking characteristics. Citrus are so well behaved. Thanks all for the info. Buddha's hand - dont have, have just begun to fantasize finding one. If I do, I'll be sure to share where. Meyer lemon maybe too short for where I hoped to put it. Might have to go with a std lemon. I need about 12-15 ft. Happy days!

Was Aof E perhaps where I got the little snippet about the straight-laced schoolteacher whose lunch consisted of a paper-wrapped baguette filled with small broken bits of chocolate? She sat incongruously upon her sandwich until lunchtime, then consumed it---warm, flattened and melty. Or does anyone remember that from another source? The memory has been rattling around in there for quite a time. ← Oh my! I have that same snippet in memory! (Its been there a long while too.) It inspired me to eat ghiradelli and sourdough sandwiches in college. yum. Not a huge fan of that chocolate, but its very good with the right tourist sourdough loaf! (I never had the patience to melt the chocolate tho, by that method or any other). I just got thru AoE and didnt bump into it. Now Im wondering if its Time-Life Foods of the World, because that's the only other food writing I remember reading back then. (Except for this incredible book of cake decorating, with color plates of international contest entrants, that I nearly kipped from the library til my conscience forced me to both return it AND pay the late fee). If its TL FotW, I think it would have to be in the Provincial France volume, which also included this recipe for porkchops in cabbage and cream that is to die for (gastronomically and cardiac-ally). Editted: On topic - one of the descriptions that spoke to me in AoE was MFKF's description of eating old dried rubbery pressed caviar in the bar in Paris: to be mumbled over in the mouth.

When last I drank a slurpee in the US (it was, er, a while ago), they were icy, not foamy. I wonder when they changed, and why? Perhaps to keep costs down for those insanely oversized cups they started selling here? Funny to see how everyone makes chicken stock differently. Stock is so forgiving. Has anyone any experience with cooked vs raw bones?

excerpted: I'd say eater.com has misunderstood the utility of egullet. I dont know what egullet was designed to do, but its not now primarily functioning as the source for 'the happening restaurant'. Its much broader than that. Certainly, I've found it educational as well as entertaining. I've learned techniques, terms and been introduced to the completely unfamiliar. Based on the number of new members I encounter regularly, egullet is alive and strong. Yes, ego gets in there, and some threads are interminable with it. There are a lot of threads to choose from, and those so affected are but a small percentage.

Egg noodles? Pickled beets, with a few cookie cuttered into heart shapes?