pax

Sadly, I am a food snob. If it's not worth it, why put it in my mouth? It's just consumption for consumptions sake, at that point. I've evolved a lot in the last 15 years, and my eating/cooking has changed with it. Very few convenience things have survived the cut. Ben and Jerry's is one. Excellent butter is another. Really good meat, sparingly. Frankly, I can cook 90% of anything I can buy, and it'll be more healthy, less expensive, and better tasting. I tend to reserve my buying of premade foods to stuff I can't /don't want to replicate easily. Sandwich cookies. Fig Newmans. Really good potato chips. Lost: all chain fast food. Even my PMS secret burrito issue has been resolved by an organic mexican joint in town. Grocery store type chocolates. Coffee from anywhere that doesn't have a real espresso machine and real cream.

but only the mini ones that have the proper chocolate to peanut butter ratio, right guys? ← Huh. See, I'm thinking the Big Cups are just right. More peanut butter. This month I've been sucking down vats of Edy's Chocolate Peanut Butter. The kind in the big supposed to be family size turquoise coloured half gallon, or whatever it is. The pint sized ones are different, they have chocolate chunks in them and they don't work for me. Homemade vegetarian southwest beans (beans, garlic, onions, spices, a little butter, some water, simmered), Kettle Chip's Black Bean Tortilla Chips. Cabot Extra Sharp. Onion and carefully chosen tomatoes in a roughly chopped salsa.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check them out asap.

I put the metal things...not the rings but the actual metal trivet type things that are over the flames..into the oven when I put it on the self clean cycle. Burns everything right off. Hat tip to Old Ironstomach for that tip.

Pancakes with whipped honey cinnamon butter and maple sausages. White garlic sausage onion pizza. The whole pizza. A pint of Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream. Reese's Peanut butter cups. And it's only 2:30.

My kids used to make bread in kindy...I'd let them put the yeast in water, watch it get all foamy, then kneed it up with some plain old flour. Since most kids just want to play with it, and don't really care too much about the results, they could knead the stuff until it was rock hard and then shape it and decorate it anyway they choose. Take them home, bake them off, and deliver hockey pucks the next morning. Or, do it with salt dough and call them holiday ornaments.

Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Pepper. Yummy goodness.

Grill as in flat top? Griddle? ← That's what they told me.

On the grill! I just asked, I'm kind of shocked. But, the emphasis here (as it is in a lot of funky places in Ithaca) is on healthy eating, they don't fry anything except for french fries if you ask for them that way, and there's a $1.50 surcharge for it!

Heaven is the Smart Monkey Cafe, of Ithaca, NY, where I can walk in and get organic, homemade, handmade potato pancakes for the asking. They are not as good as mine, of course... but they are the only potato pancakes I've ever encountered in public which I would actually eat.

Ithaca's Smart Monkey Cafe. I splurged, diet-wise, on a bacon cheddar cheese burger, with carmelized onions, a REAL tomato, and fries to die for. Oh my. I is still drooling.....

Thank you both very much, I appreciate the help.

I bought one of those silicone holiday molds for my kid, bats, witches, ghosts...and then realized, I have no idea what to bake in it. Anything I can think of is going to rise and make it hard to lie flat to ice. I don't want to trim the bottoms, because I'm not going to ice the bottoms and the kids will get everything all crumby. Please help. My kid is looking forward to baking this weekend. My plan is to bake this weekend and freeze them so I can frost them right before, if that will have any bearing on your suggestions. Much thanks.

I am looking at a used one on Ebay, a propane 6 burner w/oven, really cheap, compared to the nice new stove I'd like to have but would probably need to donate a kidney to get. I've never heard of these things and it appears the company is no longer making them. Anyone? Any good? Any bad? I am so desperate to get rid of this electric tin can in my kitchen that I am almost to the point of going to get tissue typed.

We bought a house in Ithaca, NY and moved in right before Labour Day weekend, but thank you so much.

Choke cherries are poisonous to livestock. I have no idea if they are to people.

they are water soluble but especially B6 can concentrate and cause neuropathy. happened to me. course i can't take calcium since it concentrates in my kidneys. ← Well, thanks. It's completely opposite to what I thought and I guess I ought to do some research, because I am chronically low on Bs to the extent I get shots every month.

That's what I thought too.

I developed gestational diabetes with my first which never went away. It's weird, really weird, the stuff that makes my glucose values spike. I can eat candy all day long and my blood sugar doesn't move a bit....but let me eat carbs like pasta or bread and two hours later I can be sweating like a pig snuffling through every drawer in my house for candy so I don't pass out. I think someone whose trying to figure this stuff out is really well served with a food diary and a meter.

Really good ginger marmalade, with cream cheese

I thought his response about whom he'd have dinner with was really very odd. Something about wanting to dine with himself.. my magazine is out in the truck or I'd quote it.

I like these "rules" a lot.

I have been eating with a purpose (health, weight, pregnancy, etc) for a long time. It can be a drag no matter what way you're trying to go on the scale. Eating out might be the only way he can go, that or hire a personal chef. It's the cost of training, otherwise he'd be so busy peeling spuds he wouldn't be able to get into the pool. He eats twice as much in one meal as I probaby eat in a whole day. Maybe even two days. It makes my tummy wobbly to think about trying to cram that stuff in, I'd have sausages coming out my ears.

Don't forget the Penn Dutch as a unique culinary culture. I don't know what books I'd suggest, though, does anybody have any ideas? There's got to be a Head Cheese for Dummies, dontcha think?

No seriously? My hands get tingly when I'm low on Bs and my understanding was you can't od on Bs, they are water soluble so they flush through. I'm right with you on one thing, though, I'd rather do cheese than vitamins.