Tri2Cook

Hopefully this won't cost me my eGullet membership but I don't have a method for buttering my toast. I use whatever butter or margarine happens to be handy at whatever temp it happens to be at and just spread it around on the toast as best I can with whatever utensil I happen to have at hand. Butter is my preference but I'd be lying if I said I never use margarine. I prefer the grease component melts on the toast if I'm going to use jelly/jam, otherwise, I don't really care if it melts or not.

I have no idea what the reason would be. But something I just learned while sitting here reading this while I eat some good quality strawberry ice cream in the attempt to get my freezer cleared out as much as possible and drink a cup of coffee because it's not really warm enough for ice cream here today... for me personally, strawberry and coffee seems to be a combination I might want to consider avoiding in the future. Considering all the other ingredients in the ice cream are coffee friendly, I'm blaming the strawberries for the odd taste overlap I'm getting. But it could just be me.

I've never tasted it either and I'm not going to order pineapple preserves to make it but it was mentioned in an earlier post that apricot can be used as well so that's my plan... whenever I get around to doing it.

As long as it's not Dallas. Yep, that one's even made it as far into nowhere as where I live.

Kinda sad to hear that. I bookmarked the site because it said they can ship most items to most places without trouble. I don't even know if there's anything I want, I'm not up on essential oils enough to be confident about what is or isn't safe to use in a food situation, but I was going to take a peek. But I know there's nothing I want bad enough to deal with import hassles.

10-days-in-the-fridge uncooked chicken... that wasn't cowardly, that was smart.

I have my grandmother's recipe. If I can find it without unpacking the boxes I've already packed for the move, I'll post it. Otherwise, it may be a week or so before I can get to it. May not be any different or any better than what you're using but you'll be able to tell how it compares to the recipe you used. I don't remember having trouble with them staying together but it's been a while since I made them.

You're really calling up the memories for me now. My grandmother used to make those every year at Easter. She coated the outside with chopped pecans before baking and instead of filling them with jam/jelly, she would mix up a big batch of a relatively thick icing sugar glaze, divide it into smaller bowls and color each bowl a different pastel color. She'd then fill the cavities in the cooled cookies with that and let it set. My mom later took over making them only she did them as part of her Christmas cookies.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

No problem. Though, to be completely honest, that was entirely tongue-in-cheek. I was just pointing out little unimportant nothings under the guise of being merciless as sort of a joke. Nothing wrong with the way you did your ganache and the thing about the milk chocolate was just a little jab I like to take now and then because I personally like milk chocolate. Maybe. Wouldn't think it would be any worse than using a strawberry puree though. I guess it depends on the shelf life you're shooting for.

I bring an empty large (16 liter) oil container home from work. I dump the cooled oil in it, put the lid on and store it on the stairs to the attic (which are behind a door located in the kitchen). When it's full, I take it to work and leave it with the ones from work to be disposed of by whoever picks all that up and I take another empty home to start the process again. But I realize that's not an option for everybody.

Yeah, most of this cooking stuff was a lot easier before we started figuring out all kinds of ways to make it more complicated. Now, instead of just cooking the chips like you used to, you have be precise with temps, use the right potatoes, use the right oil, use multi-frying techniques, etc. And somehow, knowing about all those things makes the old way of doing things suddenly not work anymore. I've always thought chips benefitted from a double cook but thinner cut chips do fine with a single cook. I don't really have much in the way of suggestions other than a double cook will definitely solve the excessively brown exterior/under cooked interior thing. I've tried the triple cook with the boiling first and didn't think the results were worth the extra effort over what I get from a double cook in the fryer.

You asked for merciless, so here it is... I wouldn't have sieved the berries out of the cream, I would have pureed them into it then sieved to get rid of some of the seeds (unless you want the texture, which I assume you do not since you sieved out the entire berries). Also: don't let anybody make you feel the need for disclaimers when not using dark chocolate. There's nothing wrong with milk or white chocolate. Some people don't like either and that's fine but that's on them, not the chocolate. Otherwise, nice job! Hope you had fun and look forward to doing more filled chocolates.

Not all that far... food goes in, food goes out.

Moving to a new place very soon so my Easter menu will be the same as most other days for the past couple weeks... whatever I find in the freezer that I can eat so I don't have to move it or throw it out.

Man... talk about first world problems. Sorry but I find the notion of "really caring about your customers" being reflected in the type of lock used on the bathroom stalls/doors a bit over-the-top. But carry on... I'm actually kinda interested in seeing where this goes.

I mix a packet of dried coconut cream into a can of coconut milk and, according to the information on the packet and can and assuming my math is correct, that puts me almost spot on with the fat content of heavy cream. As Kerry mentioned above, it's a different type of fat from the dairy and has a softening effect greater than the sum of it's parts but, as Jim mentioned, that can be compensated for by ratios and I only use it in shell molded chocolates so I don't need it to be as firm as I would for cutting and dipping.

I personally don't care what they call their pie. I think intent needs to be taken into consideration. If they're using something in an intentionally hurtful manner, that's pretty much always obvious. But we've gone way too far with the whole things-that-are-no-longer-allowed-to-be-the-subject-of-humor bit.

That'll take care of itself. They'll spend half their time forgetting what they were supposed to be doing and the other half running to the convenience store for more munchies.