nduran

Never bought any, but the 20oz bottle of Golden Mountain they want $6 for costs about $1.25 here. I imagine that puts the store's actual cost at somewhere around 50 cents. And the very same $40 mortar and pestle they have I got for $12. I don't even want to know what the shipping charges would be for that hunk of rock. Yowza. I realize the land-locked have little choice in the matter, I'm simply amazed by the profit margins.

They do have a lot of stuff, but their prices are like 500% of what I pay retail for the exact same items. I should start my own reselling business

I think stirring it while it cools is about all you can do. Google turned up this

I spent months looking for one of these things that could compare to the one my mother's had since before I was born and came to the inescapable conclusion that "they don't make them like they used to." I'm currently using a Progressive model that seems to have strong enough teeth, but the plastic the rest of it is made out of will almost certainly crack in the very near future. Williams-Sonoma has one that's $16, but it looks virtually identical to the Progressive model and I haven't tried it out personally. The world seems to be hung up on those rotating piston style hand choppers these days, and those things just plain suck.

For certain orchids and lilies with complicated reproductive organs that absolutely must be molded, probably not. For most of the common flowers tackled by beginners, fancy equipment is an unnecessary crutch that will ultimately become a hinderance. I'd go so far as to say that if you cannot make do with a knife, your fingers and some ingenuity, then you're not learning so much as you are regurgitating a memorized formula. The latter approach will almost always yield symbolic representations with a paint-by-numbers/cartoony sort of aesthetic rather than realistic representations that make peoples' jaws drop, but each has its place in the world.

I was going to say that sounded bizarre, but then I remembered that when I was in junior high the "cool" thing to do was to suck on pieces of rock salt for no apparent reason. The object of this practice seemed to be to see who could develop the most disgusting looking white coating on their tongue in the course of the day, but I never actually participated so I can't say for certain. Also back to the point, be careful when buying cinnamon oils, as there are those which are meant for eating and those which are meant for aromatherapy related products. I confused the two once and it was not an experience I care to relive.

I don't agree that one should start out with the cheapest materials one can find in any discipline. If you want to learn to play a musical instrument, you will experience nothing but constant frustration if you go pick up some junky knock-off at Sears that doesn't play properly. Same applies to painting, sculpting and cooking--cut the wrong corner and you're actually costing yourself more money in the long run. I also cannot say that any of your work looks particularly realistic. It's decorative to be sure, and I'm sure many clients would be thrilled with them as they are, but can you honestly say that anyone would be fooled into thinking that those were real flowers?

Yeah, Wilton is pretty much cheap crap and their instructional materials don't even attempt any degree of realism that I've seen; you'll basically be making little blobs that vaguely suggest flowers if you use your imagination. As far as coloring goes, there are no steadfast rules, but you generally want to work the same way you would with watercolors. Start out with your lightest color mixed into the base and brush the darker colors on top of that.

I never said that everyone should like it, I was simply perplexed by the number of people claiming to despise it so vehemently and was curious to know what specifically they were basing their opinions on. I've had "San Francisco Sourdough" in Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and New York that was absolutely inedible and in no way indicative of what you would find at even the most pedestrian of bakeries in the city itself. I don't know where any of that stuff comes from, but it IS ridiculously tart and it also leaves this disgusting, yeasty taste in your mouth for hours (sometimes days) afterward.

Are the flattening/fixing stones meant to be used wet or dry?

I had no idea so many people hated our sourdough. Have the people who are complaining so loudly ever actually been to San Francisco or are they passing judgement on all the products which are simply sold as "San Francisco Sourdough" in supermarkets across the country?

I don't think there's a magic, universal figure that will apply to every type and brand of chocolate out there. You more or less have to eyeball it.

Not really a secret so much as difficult to obtain: quality New Mexican hatch chile. You can buy the stuff online from a million different places, but most of the powder is secretly cut with crops from California and Texas, reserving the pure stuff for the locals who don't mind driving several hours into the desert to get it (no, the corner market in Santa Fe doesn't count--that stuff is all tainted). There is absolutely no comparison in my opinion, and the flavor it lends to everything from enchiladas to hot chocolate never ceases to amaze.

The wiring work is not always obvious and it can be very helpful to have a pictorial laid out in front of you depicting how someone else solved a similar structural problem, but otherwise it's essentially just sculpting and painting. Some people are naturally good at these things and some people have to work their butts off, so whether or not it would be worth taking a class depends on which category you happen to fall into. As far as equipment goes, you can get by with an X-Acto knife and very little else. Worry about the specialized cutters and making your own silicone molds once you start producing several elaborate pieces a week and need to get them done as quickly as possible in order to get paid.

Problem is it takes about 4 hours for the "sauce" to reduce to the proper pasty consistency anyway, so while it may be an interesting experiment, I'd ultimately just be lengthening the total cook time I've never bothered soaking darker beans (though I absolutely rinse and sort them having found many a bean-shaped rock in my day), but the lighter varieties always seem to need a lot more time in the heat no matter what they're in.

I'm not so sure this is going to fly for all types of beans, either. I've been making baked beans for years and even when I soak and boil the little navy buggers for a considerable amount of time before putting them in the oven, they take over four hours to soften up at 250. There's definitely plenty of acid in the recipe, though.

I suppose it depends on the brand of white chocolate you're using, but it should be pretty much nothing but cocoa butter to begin with. I don't think you're going to have a sweetness problem going from milk to white. Consistency problem, maybe.

I slice up the firmer fuyu variety and cook them very, very lightly in a little bit of butter, cinnamon, nutmeg and palm sugar then make a sauce from basically the same ingredients only with a puree instead of slices. I usually cheap out and just go with the preservative packed Hostess dessert cups for the base and top them with some form of cold sweetened dairy product. Truth be told I tend to go through a couple pounds of the things per week just eating them straight out of the sack, but that probably wouldn't qualify as a "dish" for this thread's purposes Lychees show up around May-ish I believe, though they aren't usually ripe enough to buy until later.

Persimmon shortcake. This season was particularly short, so I felt cheated. Lychee pudding. Canned works, but always has that heavy syrupy taste no matter what.

This probably falls into the "crazy" category you don't want, but I've found that a small amount of diced jackfruit yields a compellingly different texture and very subtle sweetness to even the most generic of salsas. I prefer it to the more popular peach/mango recipes out there. Ultimately it's all up to the chile, though. As a descendant of native New Mexicans I have a hard time swallowing anything that doesn't come from a tiny field in Chimayo, but if your guests are expecting Chevy's level heat, you shouldn't have any problems with a basic mixture of tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapenos and maybe a little vinegar.

Very little of what is sold as cinnamon in this country is actually cinnamon, it's cassia, and yes there are many different varieties. Alton Brown's got a whole show about it if I recall correctly. Whether a given cinnamon based product will be sweet or hot depends largely on the ratio of oil to sugar and other ingredients.

If they're not peeled they'll have sort of a purplish skin on them with a dark line along one end. If they are then they'll be mostly white. I've never tried fresh ones, but I'd be inclined to think there would be too much moisture in them. Worth a shot to try, just keep a screen over your pan in case they start popping.

I was just thinking of a classic miter joint with some reinforcement, but it looks like you're only going to have wires running along one axis, so the butt joint might be better there. Yeah, they're not cheap. I just happen to have a couple sets laying around from scrapped guitars. I think the ball end strings would make setup a bit easier, but maybe not if you want to be able to adjust the spacing. You'd be surprised. I used to frame pictures professionally and the wall mount almost always gives before the actual frame does, even when you've got some insanely heavy mirror or triple-glassed shadowbox display in there. The typical pre-cut Nielsen kit parts you'll find on the rack at the craft store probably would not be able to take it, but if you had one of their wider, deeper mouldings custom cut for you, I don't think there would be any buckling issues at the dimensions you're working with.

I would definitely get those corners cut at a 45 degree angle on a vertical band saw before welding them together. The joints will be stronger and much more attractive. You could also probably save some effort by simply picking up a heavy duty deep channel Neilsen aluminum frame from a picture framing shop and drilling it out. I was going to do something similar only I intended to use actual guitar strings and machine heads for the business portion of the cutter. I'd be afraid that bolts would snap the wires prematurely.

It's getting so you can't swing a dead cat without hitting something labeled "organic" these days, and I've never been impressed by any of it. The food that comes from chains like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods is frequently horrible on multiple levels, but rich yuppies pay the ridiculous markup just because they've been convinced that "organic" is synonymous with "good" (like all that organic spinach that was killing people a few months ago). I come from a long line of farmers and growers and I had my own little organic garden as a kid (though the term "organic" had not been popular at the time, I just liked squishing the little bugs with the hand trowel more than spraying things) including a variety of fruit trees. I know what fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts are supposed to taste like, and the cheap pesticide laden stuff is almost always closer to what I expect than their overpriced organic counterparts when it comes to chain stores. Farmer's markets and roadside stands are another matter entirely, but as a general rule, I don't buy anything that says "organic" on it unless there's no other choice. $3 for a tiny, flavorless garlic bulb my fanny.