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Fear not, I come bearing links for chocolate bacon bars.... Vosges Anyone clicking on this link must order an extra one for me. I like the ones shaped like a flying pig.

People save the oddest things. Why can't you save it, if you love it? My first Kitchen Aid mixer was cleaned up, adorned with Sharpie love messages for good memories of bread and pizza past, and it lives in my pantry. Technically, it's there in case I need a smaller mixer.

I have bought a new house which has an old coil type electric range. I tried to cook on it and it was horrible and wimpy. In my current house I have a Viking Pro 6 burner which I have a love/hate relationship with, love to cook on it, hate to clean it. We are putting in a brand new kitchen. What would you put in? Also...I hate my Jenn Air convection oven. I find the baking function makes little difference, but I do like the convection roast. I'm looking at things called Trivection and Invection and VectionVection and TurboVection and I am totally lost. Any advice on ovens? Edited to add...is there any reason I couldn't put a ceramic cooktop up next to a gas one? If I got the four burner version of each.....would that be an advantage?

We have bought a new house (in Ithaca, NY). It has a weeny, barely functional kitchen but it will work fine while my husband guts the kitchen-to-be. I've read most of these threads with much interest, and I'd love to ask everybody's current opinions on cookers. I'm leaning towards a gas cooktop and wall ovens, but I'm looking at these fancy induction surfaces with lust in my heart. Are they any good? Am I missing out? Do I need...shhhh....both? My current combo is a Viking Pro 6 burner (thumbs up) and a Jenn Air wall oven w/convection. ( thumbs down) Love the convection roast feature but dislike the oven in general. In the new house there is a Joe Homeowner electric oven...I made pasta there the first night and it took me an hour because I couldn't time everything out, it was so pokey. What would you buy, if you were outfitting a new kitchen from scratch? Looks don't matter, it's all about functionality in this house. I don't need matchy-matchy, I need workmanlike and easy to clean, and although bargains would be great I'm willing to pay to get what I want.

Sorry I missed your question, but it got answered. I cook almost exclusively with cast iron and antique LC I had to marry my husband to get. (j/k). He came with a full line of LC which he'd been collecting for years, plus his Grandmum's cast iron. I am religious about how I care for this stuff because it means so much to him so I am careful of temp changes, exposure to direct heat, cleaning, etc. This Lodge was bought to fill a gap in my size line up and was given the same love and care, it just didn't hack it.

Well, here it is now a year on with that pan and I would like to report in that the Lodge did not hold up as well as my LC. The interior is seriously crazed, the lid has warped in some way. This time I'll bite the bullet and replace that size with a good'un.

I am glad this topic got reopened, I've been wondering why I was getting such sucky results from my double frying. I think the answer is I was not letting them cool between fry sessions. As much as I love fries, Red Bliss potatoes are so good steamed in butter and herbs, and then eaten cold the next day, I couldn't bring myself to fry them. : ) I stick with russets.

My dad sent my some great rib eyes. My family shared one rib eye sliced over asst wilted greens with red steamed potatoes. I then sent them on their merry ways. Then I pan seared another one I had marinated in a little balsamic, salt, pepper, and basted it in browning butter in a big ole cast iron fry pan. I let the steak sit on a warmed plate, added another knob of butter, and sauteed some roughly minced onions and garlic until adding the potatoes in time to let them get a little crusted up but not burning the garlic. Threw a mess o' potatoes on to the pan juices, topped with steak, onions, and garlic and just died and went to heaven in a melty fat/onion/garlic/salty/buttery wallow. And I ate it with a batch of sangria I made last night which I have to say is the best I ever made. I ate the wholething. I am so fat I just crawled into bed and my husband tucked me in. But there's a bunch of little tartlets I made down there, a honey roasted cashew crust with some spicy chocolate creme anglais... Maybe I'll just nap off the steak and plan on the tarts around midnight?

Ce'nedra, that's funny. I would have been freaked out too, since they weren't "there" until the eggs got mixed in. sparrowgrass, thank you. Good to know. Like I said, my first time ever using them, I was being a little cautious. Also, I was using my brand new kitchen for the first time, which honestly was as much as an adventure as the duck eggs, and maybe I should have stuck with one new thing at a time.

I saw balut on Andrew Zimmer's show, before my automatic gag factor started kicking in every time I saw his smile and I had to stop watching. This was not balut, but it was enough that I was worried, because I'd never used duck eggs before. My friends raise ducks on commercial feed, and in a field with running water but no fish. Also, no drake. I'll beg a few off them to try. Thanks everybody!

Well now the fish thing makes sense. I'll experiment again, but maybe from another place. Thanks!

Yes, I thought so too, and I maybe wouldn't have minded fishing out the "beans" and till using them but the fishy odour just put me off completely.

I bought some duck eggs at a Farmer's Market on Saturday, a half dozen of them. Sunday morning I went to scramble three of them and I noticed odd little dark spots in the albumin. The kitchen was dark and I was still not quite awake, so I whisked some more and realized they weren't whisking out, so I isolated what I'd been seeing out of the egg and it was a small bean shaped thing. In fact, it looked *exactly* like a full dog tick, minus the head and leggs, of course. I found one more in the bowl, and just to be sure, cracked a fourth egg and there enough, sure there was another one. When I used a knife to cut it in cross section, it looked full of coagulated blood, just like a dried up dead tick, just lending to the illusion. Also, they smelled kind of fishy. Anyway, this is the first time I've ever used duck eggs. Was this normal? I tossed it all and gave them toasted cheese and squash blossoms for breakfast.

I bought a cheap wooden peel at Bed, Bath and Beyond, maybe $5. It has two sides, a convex and a concave. I don't know which I am supposed to use, but I find the concave side works more easily. After one very sad unpeeling (before the cheapo wooden peel, I was using a cookie sheet) I never ever even try to slide the thing into the oven unless I can see it sliding on the peel. If it's not sliding I lift edges and toss more cornmeal. I've wondered about the parchment sheet, but my oven gets up to 550, and with the convection feature on it's even hotter, I reckon, so I've been afraid to try. I Hoover the burnt corn meal out of the oven the next morning. It's mostly fine ash after laying on the bottom of a 550 oven for an hour, which it does because I do multiple pizzas. I found the comment about using olive oil to damp proof the dough interesting, because I've been doing this a lot because I liked what it brought to the crust top, and maybe this is a coincidence along with the wooden peel that's made me unpeeling work so well. Also, if you totally hose it up, go ahead and fold it up on it's own and call it a calzone. I'm sure it's delicious no matter what it looks like. If you need help disposing of the test cases, just sign me Pizza~Calzone Freak

Meat loaf, mashed potatoes with half a cow's worth of butter, and onion gravy, with juicy sweet corn and peas. And a chocolate shake.

I am disgusted with the use of the term "ghetto latte". He can keep his steenking coffee.

If I buy the Hobart I can put my kids and dogs through it, right? They can hold their breath for 90 seconds.

My Dad put in a long pvc tube in his pantry, and it goes down through the floor into the basement, where it's end is just above the recycling bin. Works a treat.

I want to thank you. We are about to redo a kitchen and it's been really good for me to read your experiences and collect all these fabulous links. Your kitchen is beautiful.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to put it into context for me, I had no idea that was his intention, didn't HST die around that time? I can see that, then. I appreciate you setting me straight. I was kind of on the mark with the dharma bum thing, I guess.

The Las Vegas show really turned my stomach. I was so excited about seeing four good restaurants..it started out ok and then just got so strange. I love ironic and cynical but this dharma bum stuff, I'm kind of past it. ETA: I'm watching the Singapore episode right now, which is especially interesting to me cause I have been there. It's ok thus far. There's a mention of some chef injecting mozarella balls with gazpacho. I am SO stealing that, only it's going to be some kind of marinade. I hate serving drippy marinated mozzeralla but I LOVE to eat the stuff, I'm so up for trying this out...marinating from the inside out.

My father is an eccentric of the first water, and YEARS ago he ripped out all his upper kitchen cabinets, elevated both his dishwashers slightly so he wasn't constantly bending over the bottom shelves and he doesn't even bother to unload them. There's always one clean and one dirty. Why bother transferring dishes around, why are they so special? I like the arrangement so much it's my intention to do the same thing in our new house.

That ricotta recipe is the one in the Gourmet Yellow Book. They credit that place in Australia you linked to. They also give us Americans a recipe for the honeycomb candy used in the butter, but I discovered that in a pinch I can buy the honeycomb crunch, (it's called Violet Crumble or something like that) in World Market and Giant. I actually used the honeycomb butter in a batch of tart cherry scones and it was wonderful. I recently made poppy-sunflower seed pancakes from the 101 Recipes blog but my family panned it, although the chunky orange syrup was delicious.

I don't know what Caluccio's is, but if you're digging butter sauce, try Marcella Hazan's Onion Butter Sauce. I know it's easy enough to google. I tend not to include recipes because I make work for the mods when I do it wrong. It's a very yummy, very simple, buttery sauce. I think most people here would concur.

Oh yes... I loved those. We still have them here in Virginia, in the 99 cent category. When I was a teenager Roy Rogers did a taco meat and cheese stuffed baked potato that was so disgustingly gloppy and greasily good that I would gorge on them. The other thing I miss was a weird little chip called "Chipsters". They had the looks of a thinly sliced packing peanuts, and were kind of bright yellow.