annabelle

KA mixer, for sure. It has pasta attachments for extruded pastas and a roller attachment for sheets of pasta. You can get all of its attachments* for $99 right now on chefscatalogue.com. All items ship for free if you spend $25 or more. Free returns, too. *meat grinder, graters and shredders, but no ice cream maker

I bought one of my sons The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (the three ring binder with the ginger check cover) and the two volume set of Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas last year, since he is living alone. I also tossed in a few 30 minute meal (not Rachael Ray's) cooking and one about pasta and sauces. He's been cooking since he was about 15 and recently sent me a picture of some pasta with pesto he had made with his new immersion blender. My mother sent him a set of knives in a block (Wustoff, I believe) for his birthday, so he is building a decent batterie de cuisine.

So ambitious! I love challah, it makes such wonderful toast. All I've baked so far is a pumpkin pie, but it came out nice.

At 16, she's undoubtedly more computer savvy than mom and dad (says mother of a 17 yo). Let her look for videos of her favorites and go from there. She can burn a DVD and you can watch it together.

For American home cooking, I agree with pbear about learning the basics and with gfweb when one has a better handle on the kitchen and cooking. All have lots of pictures and drawings as well as in-depth explanations. The Way to Cook, J. Child is excellent for learning French home-cooking. It has some photos that are in B&W as well as a lot of sketches. If you can find them, The Good Cook series from Time-Life is excellent for beginners. It has a book dedicated to each topic (e.g., cakes, poultry, beef, vegetables, et alia) and lots of technique pictures and an index with recipes from around the globe. They are available on eBay or in used book stores but usually not the whole set.

I thought of them, too judiu. A dachshund or a little rat terrier would do the trick. They are speedy little boogers.

Mukki, I also tried removing the terrified mouse since I felt sorry for it. It bit me for my troubles so I took it outside and put it in the garbage can that was set out for pick up in the morning. It was about 19 degrees, so I figure it didn't suffer long. I'd rather snap their little necks and have them not know what hit them. Heidi, when I lived in San Diego I had the same problem as you with the magic mice appearing. If you have trees or live next to a canyon (which iirc you do) you get critters. I had a possum on my back porch eating the cat food one night when I came home.

Nice challah, Norm. I always braid mine from the middle, but I can't do that many strands without making a mess of it.

I'm with you Martin. I think those "Gluey Louie" traps are cruel. The poor mouse gets stuck and then sets himself to screeching behind the stove or the refrigerator. At least that was my experience with them. The Victor snap traps are quick, loud enough that you can hear them release the bar and cheap enough to throw away, mouse and all. When I was a little girl, we lived adjacent to a very large commercial cornfield---hundreds of acres of field corn. One year after it was harvested, the mice decided to move into our house. My mother, although she is a farm girl, doesn't like mice at all. One morning, I heard screaming for my father around the time she was usually fixing our oatmeal and rushed out into the kitchen to find her standing on the table in her robe and slippers and brandishing a broom at a mouse that was trying to get the heck out of there. My dad came to her rescue and dispatched the mouse and got Mom off the table.

You will do no such thing, Norm. You NEED those mixers in case one fails or you need parts or you just want to switch colors.

Hi, Franci. I hope your landlady lets you have a cat. I know the children would like a pet and cats aren't destructive when they get attention. A young cat (who does not get too many treats!) will be a good mouser. You can sell the landlady on the cat not only being a pet, but a four-legged enforcer, freeing your home of mice. You should let the landlady know about the basement doors, too. The workers need to return and get the doors fixed before the weather gets too bad and you end up with ice and snow in between your interior door and the walk-out doors. Best of luck!

Get a cat, Franci. Or two. The problem with getting rid of mice and other pests in apartment buildings, is that you can be spic and span and doing everything to discourage/kill mice and cockroaches, but if your neighbors don't do the same, you'll get more invaders to replace the old. Is your Super in the building? Is he aware of the problem and is the Property Management company paying for the exterminators? If it's not in your lease, you're probably on your own. I lived in a row house once upon a time in an old mill town in Pennsylvania. There was a tannery down the road from me that was demolished and all the mice moved into my house or so it seemed! They kept chewing up my cereal boxes and pasta boxes and ate a hole in the plaster in the pantry even though I killed a dozen of them with the snap traps. I was ready to get a BB pistol and take them on before I moved to a nicer neighborhood.

The weather doesn't matter when you have central air conditioning.

My mother once bought canned okra. The horror is still with me.

I'm old enough to be your mom (I think) so that would work!

I'm starting to feel ripped off for having no Jewish grannies in my family.

I remember my German grandma making some fruit filled cookies that were like tiny pies filled with raisins and nuts or mincemeat or dried fruit. They were really good and nothing my mother would ever make because they were time-consuming and she worked full time. I never found her recipe but I tried making some a few years ago. But I out smarted myself by cutting them with an old fashioned ravioli press and then trying to bake them off. They spread out and became behemoth cookie with blobs of fruit scattered over it. I decided the ratio on the fat in the cookie dough was off and I'd need to try something else. But I still haven't tried it again.

I have that fryer and the little sister of your mixer. It's about 35 years old now and has metal gears. Love that rotary phone!

That's probably best.

Ah! Gotcha Norm. Can you exchange the gift for the bigger mixer? Then you can both have one with no mixer envy gumming things up. She'll just have to wait for hers.

Well, it's made of fish and crab and it says "Krab" on the package, so that's a tip-off right there.

So you show her the advert that you saw, Norm. She's a married woman now and can buy her own mixer. Splurge and get one for yourself for Christmas.

Me too, Shelby. We like it as a nice change of pace when we get those stretches of 100+ degree days in high summer. I'll have to make some enchiladas with it, now!

I like surimi, but you have to be careful about where it comes from. Don't buy surimi at the Asian markets, is my advice. Buy the Alaskan surimi that is made of Alaskan Pollack, scallops and crab and shaped into krab sticks and flakes. I use it in the summertime to make seafood salads. Naturally, it doesn't taste anything like crab, but it isn't advertising itself as crab either. It has a nice ocean-y flavor to it that is refreshing and not as aggressive as tuna fish.

Can you prepare it up to the point where the cream/milk is added and then freeze it? I'd do it that way and add the cream on the day of service. Cream sometimes separates after freezing and even vigorous whisking won't bring it back together. I am unfamiliar with many of Keller's methods, so this may not help.