hummingbirdkiss

left over cold pizza with French press Tanzanian Peaberry coffee lots of heavy cream ... my favorite!

when I make jerk I rub the thyme between the palms of my hands right into the mix...even if I am using the mortar and pestal there is something about the way it rubs that just gets all that flavor to the surface..same thing with sage ..I rub it too that works perfectly!!! ..and even better if the dried thyme leaves are still on the sticks because then it rubs some of that flavor into the leaves as well .... fantastic jerk is (in my opinion) like fantastic curry in that every spice that goes into it ..needs a moment of though and individual consideration as to how to get the best flavor so it will all meld together in the final taste

I am also a Supertaster and love drinking coffee but am very picky about what I drink and can blindly distiguish the crappy stuff..I like all the foods they say I shouldn't especially spinach one of my favorite vegetables! I am very picky about eating out and tend to break the foods down into flavors when I am eating and critique every bite ..I do this in my mind now because it made my family and friends nuts to listen to me pick apart food ....the more I enjoy a food the more I break it down trying to figure out how to recreate a dish ..

the single best apple pie I have ever made had a goose fat crust ..it was so flaky and perfectly cooked ..the taste was to die for around the apple filling ..it heald up perfectly!!! I rendered it myself and used it in a basic pastry recipe if I could have goose fat around when I needed it ..I would be very happy ....

I shun the use of sugar if I am able to get the right sweetness by cooking a food ...like carmeized onions or sofrito or whatever if I can do it with technique I would rather do that any day ... however..if I am in a hurry or the recipe is actually wanting sugar to make it correctly ...I will do it... I personally am a true sugar junky and try hard to avoid it when I can that is for sure .... cooking is my stress reliever so I try to not rush though the process is all

I keep saffron a long time and buy it by the oz ..just keeping it in an airtight can keeps it safe and fragrant ..it has never lost its aroma and I have had my current can for over a year now... re finding wierd stuff you forgot about... I found some dried lobster mushrooms in my pantry today and they smell ..well lobstery? any suggestions I remember buying them ages ago and whatever I did with them I did not like so they got pushed to the back of the shelf ...now that they have resurfaced and seem to be ok ..I guess I should try to make something ..so if you have any ideas ...please share with me ..or they will get shoved back again!

Thank you so much that place completely confuses me when I go there it is one strip mall after another and there are all these hospitals that have the same name!!! My dad was in "Memorial" you know how many "Memorial's" there are there??? she will drive on Biscayne or has with me anyway so I will check this out as well ..I do appreciate this ..it is so hard to buy older folks gifts when they have everything they need ...eating is still the most favorite thing for them ....they are not in Century Villiage.... but kind of across and down the road from it and right now for the life of me I can not think of the name of the area!!! Well, it would depend upon wether or not she considered 6 lanes, divided north and south, a freeway. That would be Biscayne Blvd., and living half a block north of County Line Road, two major intersections south of what becomes Pines, that's the way I would go to get to Michy's. It's not I-95 by a long shot. I go surface streets to Little Havana and Coconut Grove. Faster, if you want to know the ugly truth. 441, or NW 2nd in Dade, is not a bad north/south corridor either. The big thing about Pembroke Pines is that it extends so far out west into the Glades, and is relatively large in area for these communities down here. In some parts of Pembroke Pines you could sneeze and be in Ft. Lauderdale, or Hollywood, or Hallendale Beach, or Dade County. You could also be in the swamp. It all depends. Here is the thread on Michy's: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...&hl=michy's ETA: If they are very far west, say west of 441/SR 7 an afternoon at the Hard Rock Casino on the Indian Reservation in Hollywood might be fun for them. http://www.seminolehardrockhollywood.com/ There are several restaurants with varying price ranges, a mall, some shopping. Not sure how they feel about that sort of place, but we spent a day there when my stepdaughter and her hubby came to visit last month. That's not everyone's cup of tea, though. ←

... that is, until Adams Chunky has a recall.Sorry, don't mean to be snide, just an observation that it could happen to anybody and with any company. Take, for instance, that scare with spinach a few months back. Who would ever think that those fresh-looking and nicely bagged "organic"/"natural" and "healthy" produce would ever be re-called. I remembered that they cleared out EVERY thing closely related to the spinach family in the markets for weeks - couldn't find leafies, dark or otherwise, anywhere for a month! I guess my point is: you never know who/what could be contaminated. I've heard many times in this past week, "I'm so thankful that I don't buy Peter Pan, and that I use brand X." Perhaps. Truly sorry to hear about the chaos at the RN station. I can imagine that it's not a pleasant job. Thanks for making our lives better. ← you are right of course about the peanut butter ..I was just being a smart#$% thank you so much for saying such a nice thing about RN's I love my work ..almost as much as I love cooking !!!

I have to say I just cringe when food is recalled ..because I am an RN in a very busy urgent care clinic ...and well for the most part ...it can be mass hysteria for me when this kind of thing happened... however..this time ..we have had confirmed cases of very sick kids and elders ...an entire nursing home was affected locally ... argh.... makes me glad the brand I have always used is Adams Chunky

Ok I am reporting back I put the tiles in the oven and made my first pizza last night and OMG it is fantastic!!!! I am so happy ...my house smelled like Providence where I grew up and the Pizza was almost perfect!!!! I just have to adjust my dough recipe for not having to try to make it crispy ( I always added a tbl of masa or gluten to it and with the stones that is obviously not needed at all!!!) today I am going to do my first Italian loaf and see what happens!!! I am just beside myself at this ...so thank you all so much for this wonderful advice ... I have tried pizza all over the west coast and it is good here but not what I would call "real" pizza having grown up in Providence RI that is what my standard is ...now I am blown away that I can do this great a job with very little investment in time and money ....I have to get my kids over for dinner soon they are going to be blown away by this!!! next week I will try to bake something with tiles on the grill ..this is a HUGE box of tiles for the small amt $10 I paid for them ..any other trick things I can do wth them I wonder? lots of OOOXXX's to all of you !!! PS they do not say "lead free" but they are made in the US and honestly acid (like tomatoes and stuff) leaches lead into food and I am hard pressed to think that bread would leach it out if it is in there ..but I doubt being made here and with all the restrictions on lead in products that it has any in it any way...so I am not stressing on that ...

I have to say the starter I mentioned at the beginning of this thread the one I had that I brought here from Arizona and just passed away... stayed alive and produced tons of wonderful baked goods ..was over 24 years old! ...I never had to start another one just kept feeding it ..so that is why I was so upset when I finally lost it ....it was "vintage" sourdough starter ....so vintage I had never looked to see how to do this! I will just mix some flour and water up and see what happens .... Juniper berries in the AZ had a visable coating of white powdery yeast on them ...it worked wonderfully to just drop those in to the mix the yeast bubbled and it worked pretty quickly from what I remember ..but again it was forever ago...

what if I left it outside for a while with cheese cloth over it? just to catch some wild yeast that way? does anyone think that would work?

I would like to find something that just grows out here like the juniper berries did in AZ and has yeast all over it ...that way I could dream about the ancestry of it and make up stories ... like I did the AZ yeast.... sadly the only junipers I find around my neighborhood smell like cat pee so I dont want those!!!

Jenny mine looked like that a lot over the years I would just stir it up well ..then scoop half off and refeed it with equal parts flour and water .leave it openish for a day to catch more yeast maybe? ..Clovis is ok if there is no gross smell I would think!

I dont like him .....I love food adventures and will eat most anything at least one time...usually three times ..but he is just gross and honestly I find no appeal to what he offers in the way of an eating adventure I find the way he goes at this to be offensive and insulting......I mean if someone came to my house and shot a piece on something I considered a very special delicacy..and then ate it for the gross out factor of the US population to get a kick out of it ... honestly I would be very upset and offended ...

Ok my bottom oven rack is lined with quarry tiles and I want to bake a pizza ....do I need to season them or do anything at all to them I just wiped them well with a damp cloth and stuck them in there ... just preheat well and toss the pizza on them???

Thank you so much I will check it out ...they would most likely enjoy all of what you suggested so I will see if I can make the contact!! much appreciated!!! They lived in Grand Cayman for almost 20 years and it is kind of a culture shock for them now ..my mother will drive 100 miles out of her way to avoid driving on the freeway!

yikes I dont know!!! I know my mother will NOT drive anywhere on the freeway if that helps ...I will see if I can find it and mapquest it from her home addy ..thanks so much for the rec can you tell me anything else about this place?

oh might I add more? for the dough 2 cups warm water 1 packet regular yeast a pinch of sugar 4-6 (more or less) cups of unbleached white flour mixed with, 1 tbl of kosher salt, 1 tbl of either gluten or masa harina (the masa gives it an insanely good flavor and texture ( just enough to make a nice elastic but soft dough and it varies highly for me how much I use that is for sure ...I go by feel ....) Need however you usually do ..I have done this in the food processor ..but moving it with my hands feels so much better!!! I never put oil in my pizza dough ..but I sure as heck dump it on the outside! and dump a lot on top..I always fork the dough as well so the sauce and oil soak into the top and then you have the crispy bottom and the wonderful flavored top under the cheese...(I hope I am understandable! it is so hard to describe..what I mean by what I think is the texture of the perfect pizza!!! ) I love the way the crust tastes when the whole outside bottom and top edges are crispy with the flavor of the olive oil! I am buying a stone today and can hardly wait to try to make my usual that way!!! thanks for starting this thread it is really inspiring!!

On a more caring note, I agree with you that growing your own sourdough is a big time commitment. I cared for my last starter for almost two years, having taken it with me on many journeys to many different countries. It passed away a few months ago with a bad case of flu or some other disease. I haven’t had the emotional courage to start another. thank you for the empathy ..I just know my yeast went back to the days of the wild wild southwest so when it died a little piece of me did as well on impulse I ordered some "authentic" San Franciso starter off a site someone rec someplace else on this vast board....and maybe I will do both ..use it and also just see what happens ..then I can compare .. ...other than working all the time I have nothing else to do but collect yeast right? Who knows maybe I can start my own NW legacy?

I would love to call and order my folks a gift certificate near their home in Pembroke Pines ..there has to be something good there? ..they keep telling me there isn't anywhere to go??? ...they love well prepared foods ...they will eat ethnic ...love spicy foods...and just really anjoy nice guiet casual ...good dining experiances ...not upscale just good.. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. it would be so fun to surprise them with a night out they really would enjoy it I know ! thanks in advance

ok that settles it ..if Julia said to use them... then I am going to use them... thanks I will go buy some today!!!

When I lived in Southern Arizona many years ago ..I collected juniper berries and used them to make a really good sourdough starter ..it took a long time to cultivate it ..but I had nothing but time then so it was fun and worth the efforts...I just dropped like 9 berries in a jar with 1:1 of whole wheat flour and water and waited...I was at a high altitude and it did not take much activeyeast to get really good results there... ...I have since moved to the Puget Sound area of Western Washington ..and sadly not too long ago my starter met its demise ... I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share some good methods of making good sourdough starter by gathering somehow their own local yeast? ..what besides juniper berries does it collect on? ..or should I just leave the jar open someplace to find it's own ( I am afriad it will just be gross if I do that) ? ..and really..is it worth the effort? or should I just save myself the trouble and just buy or beg a starter that has already been proven? thank you so much in advance for any advice or info you can share about this subject

I can not even imagine chicken soup with out it!

I am not sure about slow cooked squid or octopus ..I usually barely cook these two ..I cheat a lot and buy blanched octopus at a Japanese market slice it up and eat it that way with dipping sauces or in tacoyaki ... ...but I can tell you if you make a nice pot of marinara and toss in some cleaned calamari rings at the last minute just before serving.. it is absolutely wonderful over spaghetti ...