Porthos

A game piece from the current grocery stores Monopoly game gave me 2 months free access to Rouxbe, an on-line cooking/culinary school. I signed up. I decided to start with their Food Safety course aimed at the home kitchen. I'm in the middle of it and stopping for the evening. The course does a reasonable job of explaining the 4 main sources of food-borne illnesses and what they are associated with. Until last year, I had no idea of the risks associated with cooked rice and then a culinary-school-trained friend explained that transporting a cooked rice dish at room temperature was a bad idea. I now have a better understanding of why. I don't intend to blog the experience, but I will comment on things that I think are of note, positive or negative. In general the user interface is very straight-forward and doesn't require much of a learning curve. Learning from this course. Aside from the rice safety issues I did an exercise to see how many seconds I actually spend washing my hands. 20 seconds is the goal. My "20 seconds" was more like 14. I am going to work on that since it applies to my ren faire kitchen food safety as well.

Since we don't bake a lot our baking spices and extracts are relegated to a couple of tubs in the pantry cabinet. This is the larger shelf of spices. This is the smaller shelf of spices. When my DD and SIL were living with us their spices (lots of peppery stuff we wouldn't use) went on the smaller shelf and ours went on the larger shelf and a convenient foot-long stretch of counter space. Looking at these pictures made me realize that I need to re-organize these 2 shelves. Discovering my (relatively) local Penzey's has been a revelation in what spices can be. I never realized just how much potency spices on the supermarket shelf have already lost by the time they get purchased. Also, with all of the promotions that Penzey's runs I have been able to pick up spices for my DD's new kitchen at little or no cost to me.

2nded. I don't use the Bluetooth feature of my Anova at all.

That does sound very useful.

I don't understand the Kindle reference in regards to Eat My Books, unless a dead tree version of the cookbook doesn't have this feature.

It's interesting seeing this feature. I have been using Eat Your Books to find recipes to use up ingredients that I don't normally stock but bought for a particular recipe.

There are magnets on both of our refrigerators (14 and 11), on the side of my gun safe (in the family room) (9), and on the back of our front door (7). Also on the hood over our stove for holding recipes (5). Yeah, we like magnets. Also, my DW does NOT like stainless steel appliances.

Pigeon Pie anybody?

My FIL's orange tree is blossoming, and I'm afraid that it is too early and not much fruit will appear. But for now, it's filling our noses with the intoxication scent of those blossoms.

I do heavy-duty thrift shopping once a week, normally on Tuesdays. Retirement allows for that. I will typically shop anywhere from 8-12 stores, sometimes more. Because I have a very specific focus I am normally in and out of any given thrift store in less than 10 minutes unless I have found something. The KitchenAid was basically dumb luck, right time - right place. It had just been rolled out on a cart of merchandise to put on the shelves. Why do I like to shop on Tuesdays? Senior citizen discounts. The knives I find mostly come from 2 stores, one of which I shop weekly, the other I only get to every couple of months because it is out of my normal driving paths and I don't find enough there to justify the gasoline on a regular basis.

Also handy for retrieving things in inaccessible cracks in your car.

Major score. Hobart KitchenAid 4 1/2 qt with the paddle, whisk and dough hook. Working condition. $21.25. After I clean it up it is going to a friend who bakes.

Persimmons, what a pleasant memory you stirred. At Christmas time my mother baked persimmon puddings, lots of them. She would let the persimmons sit on the counter until they were almost ready to spoil they were so ripe. She used them whole, but I don't remember what she did to mash them up. Eating of slice o it was pure bliss ...

Bought it the other day, made the tonnrelli cacio e pepe (substituting pecorino for the cacio per the author's comments) for dinner tonight. Mrs Porthos gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up, as did I. Thank you, enabler @Toliver.

My DW has a compromised immune system, not severe, but compromised. Although I was an engineer by profession, I think my awareness of public food service safety also influences me in my home. My leadership role in a volunteer kitchen feeding 80 renaissance faire re-enactors is why I started studying California Food Service laws. Since we are not selling to the public I am not required to comply; common sense dictates that I should, and I do as best I can. If you're interested in more info on my ren faire cooking here's the Link.

That's what happy flatware is. I guess it comes from "happy I don't have to wash it," but I don't know for sure

Since Dollar General, Like Family Dollar, isn't a 99 cents store or a dollar tree, you may get a 99 cents store.

One of my quirks in the kitchen is not believing in "happy flatware." Once flatware comes out of the drawer and onto the table I consider it dirty whether it was used or not. Since I am the one who does the dishes, it only impacts me. Also, I put the flatware handle-up in the dishwasher so that,, even though I just washed my hands, I only have to touch the handles when putting them way. Anyone else who doesn't believe in happy flatware?

The chicken adobo looks wonderful. Yay Stater Bros.

Light breakfast at 8:00, snack at 10:30, lunch at 12:00, snack at 3:30, very small snack at 5:30, dinner at 6:30, small dessert 9ish. I've had to eat like this since I was in my early twenties - over 4 decades now.

We eat at 6:30 for a variety of reasons. As a diabetic I try to eat on a schedule. It gives my DW time to relax after work before I serve dinner.** If my DW eats a meal after, say 8:00, she will be dealing with serious heartburn instead of sleeping that night. Having a consistent target of when to serve dinner helps me with planning and timing a given meal, since I don't have to try and remember when is dinnertime today. ** I cooked the family dinner when I was in high school and my father insisted on the meal being served as soon as he got home. Since he commuted on the freeway his arrival time wasn't consistent. That made timing difficult.

I spend a lot of money at Costco. Their prices on gasoline are about 10 cents a gallon less than gas stations in my area. I buy tires there. My wife and I have reached that point in life where we both take multiple maintenance meds and we use their pharmacy for them. Butter is less expensive there, sour cream is less expensive there, coffee is less expensive there, I find good sales on hard liquor, and so on. For me it is worth the membership, especially since we spend enough - having the executive membership - that our yearly rebate covers the cost and still leaves us with about $100 beyond the membership fee. I am clear on the fact that Costco doesn't work for everyone, but it certainly works for us.

Continuing my theme of acquiring books on Italian cooking: Marc Vetri's "Rustic Italian Food" Kindle Edition $1.99US

I'm liking my e-books so far. I don't cook from recipes regularly, but I like using my e-books. I also try to remember to add e-book titles that have been indexed to my "library shelf."

@DiggingDogFarm Thanks for the information on doing the "highlight- copy the highlight" technique. It sure beats screen grabs.