Porthos

I use a spaetzle press like heiidill pointed to. 6.5 Oz flour 1 Egg Salt 1Tbsp Oil Work the flour, egg, and some salt into a dough. Pour 1/3 cup of water into the dough and mix in. If it's too stiff to go through the press add more water. I use a 3 quart pan with about 2 quarts of boiling water. Working in batches, lay the press over the water, spoon in some dough, then work the slide back and forth to release the dough, then pull off the press. When the noodles begin to float, give them a stir with a Asian Spider Strainer allowing the rest of them to rise, pause several seconds, then scoop out into a waiting bowl. I keep my bowl in a 170 F oven. This recipe is adapted from a German-language cookbook. My Sweetie speaks German, not me. These noodles are great with gravy* or you can make kasespaetle by add emmentaler cheese to it. * I always make these to go with saurbraten.

As always, thank you for sharing your travels and your food adventures. When you were near my Sweetie and I, I was sad that the flurry of pre-surgery appointments for my Sweetie's back surgery made trying to see you undoable. Surgery went well, 7 1/2 hours worth, and she's home. Rehab/healing will be on the order of months. Again, thank you. I look forward to this every year.

My Sweetie and I have a refrigerator that is anything but counter depth, but we could never imagine having less refrigerator space. For that same reason a side-by-side wouldn't work for us. We actively use the width on a regular basis. Here's how it fits in our current kitchen, and will be in the same relative position in our new house in Arizona:

My Sweetie and I both grew up in homes where mom cooked from scratch. My Sweetie and I cooked from scratch, not quite as much these days - health issues, and our daughters learned to cook from scratch. That has stood them well in their lean times. My younger daughter needed to be on WIC for a couple of years, and knowing how to cook, worked well for her. WIC was a supplement but covered most of her needs.

What a stunningly beautiful photo.

They do pop off. I ditched those and the flaps on the cutlery baskets in my Bosch in short order.

I haven't been able to get any of my"getting-the-house-ready-to-sell" outdoor chores done in at least a couple of weeks. There's more wind today. Grrr.

Does your darling eat casserole meals?

My upright freezer is badly in need of defrosting. I took my 3 1/2 Y/O granddaughter out to the freezer to get her her weekly treat of ice cream and when I opened it she said, "Grandpa, you've got snow in your freezer."

Congratulations, Rob. Twice is just wow.

We're west of @DesertTinker by maybe 60 miles, and I am SO VERY TIRED of the wind. We're trying valiantly to get our home of 37 years de-cluttered and ready to put on the market in late spring. Having wind, more wind, and then even more wind makes doing the outside stuff difficult to impossible. Very Off Topic. Our younger daughter commutes from the San Bernardino area to Yucca Valley and the daily change in climate wreaks havoc with her sinuses.

Various corporate chains in different retail markets send out layout schematics for how things are supposed to be arranged. I didn't know this until my wife was the manager of a dearly departed fabric store chain. in my not-so-humble opinion Kroger destroyed Ralph's. We were die-hard Ralph's shoppers until the Kroger bought them out. Now I only go there for the loss-leader sale items. (Ralph's, Costco, Lowe's and a branch of our bank are very near each other)

Penzey's Bavarian Excellent for sous vide pork chops Italian Herb Mix Fox Point Garlic Festival Lemon Garlic Garni Smoked Garlic Sea Salt Sweet Lou's Local So Cal Herb and Garden Greek Isle There are others from Penzey's that my Sweetie has picked out but then not liked when I used them. But then we can't bat 1000.

For us this is a holiday/special dinner dish. It graced our Christmas dinner table.

For my Sweetie and I tube steaks only mean hot dogs. I consider hot dogs snacks food; Polish, bratwurst, etc. are meal foods. Typing this has inspired me to make brats and potato pancakes for dinner tonight. The one exception to hot dogs for meals is beanie-wienee, cooked to have with our grandchildren, 3 and 7. It's cut up hot dogs in Ranch Style brand beans, with shredded sharp cheddar and sour cream as optional toppings.

Sent along to my best friend. He asked if they were gluten free napkins.

Santa brought me 3 Classic series Wusthoff knives: the 8" chef's, a maybe 3.5" paring, and a bread slicer. The chef's knife feels way,way better in my hand than my 8" Henkel International. I'm mostly a 10" chef's knife guy, but sometimes the 8" better fits what I'm cutting/slicing up. I keep two 10" CKs in my knife block, one strictly for veggie prep that gets hand-washed, and the other is for use on proteins and, like most of my knives, goes into the dishwasher. That knife is 39 years old and still going strong.

Not a gadget per se but the many discussions about knives in conjunction with getting my Edge Pro years ago spurred be into a related hobby, finding good knives that had been thrashed at thrift stores and bringing them back to life. Several are in both my and my Sweetie's knife blocks, and more in my knife roll for traveling. My Sweetie and I are visiting my brother who became a widower very recently and putting many, many meals in his freezer. I grabbed my heavy-duty Chicago Cutlery 8" chef's knife today for Veggie prep.

I will miss Tim. Thank you for the link.

Edge Pro,, thank you Chad Ward Anova circulator Thermapen Charles Viancin Silicone lids I'm sure there's more but I'm away from home for a few days. For others who are hearing- compromised I highly recommend Thermoworks Big and Loud Timer. No IP here. My younger daughter loves hers. We talked and she doesn't see it to be a good fit for my kitchen. And a special thanks to @Toliver for the bargain books thread. I've converted to ebooks, so much easier to handle than dead tree books for this old arthritic guy.

Pardon my envy. What a wonderful view to enjoy that sip by.

I'm curious how many of my fellow egulleters order spirits neat. I've noticed the need to explain what neat is in response to puzzled looks from people who serve alcohol as part of their livelihood.

Beef prices here in southern California have gone up similarly. I'm buying less beef. I did spring for a 9 lb choice prime rib roast for Christmas dinner.

I suspect that your "oldsters" lived through part of the depression and/or WW2. My mother was a young mother during the depression and that fear of running out of food never left her. In her later years she had turned a hall closet into her pantry. Just before she turned 90 she moved from California (she'd lived in CA all her life) to North Carolina to be near her first-born. As a widow she only cooked for herself. When my sweetie and I cleaned out the pantry for her we found so many canned goods that it boggled our minds. As an example there were maybe 15+ cans of fruit cocktail.. Stuff that hadn't expired was packed up for some friends who could use the extra food. We threw some stuff in her trash barrel but knowing she wasn't going to be happy about that we lugged most of the no-longer-consumable stuff home and threw it away there. We're driving over to Arizona tomorrow, and on Tuesday we will be making our choices for the kitchen cabinets. One of the things that helped sell us on this house was the walk-in pantry. There is plenty of cabinet space in the kitchen but for us old arthritic types the pantry shelving will help us with access to canned and dry goods more easily. Oh - and the freezer and spare fridge will be right out of the door into the garage. We're only two, but we tend to buy in bulk, but only things that we do use.