Tri2Cook

I'm trying to convince myself I should invest in that Premier melanger. I'd be happier if there was a Canadian source for it just to cut down on shipping and border crossing fees but I've been tossing the cost vs. potential around in my head for a while now. It's not difficult to come up with ideas it would be useful for.

But that only matters (potentially) when cooking for others... it's easy to get it perfect for oneself. When I cook for myself, I try to get things perfect for my taste. Don't really care if that makes it imperfect by traditional standards. Besides, there's recipe after recipe written for everything. Recipe volume doesn't really have anything to do with recipe difficulty.

I typed "molasses powder" into google and found a large number of culinary suppliers of said product. Be glad to link a few if you'd like but they came up right at the top of the search list.

Yeah, it was only available used anywhere I could find it. amazon.ca had one that was listed as being in very good condition (the used book seller that has the amazon store listed it as a former library copy with everything intact and no heavy wear) for $8 with free shipping but only 1 available. Felt kinda like a "he who hesitates" situation so I decided not to be he who hesitated. And then what you spelled out clearly in your post finally made it's way through the fog and I realized who's book it is.

I might as well go ahead and ask it, since I'm going to end up asking eventually anyway... is this a book I want? It's only available used on amazon.ca but I'm fine with that. Used books need love too. Edit: never mind, it was only $8 with free shipping so it's mine now regardless. Edit yet again: ok, I'm slow tonight. I just made the connection as to who's book that is. So there was never any question of whether I'd want it in the first place if I'd just been paying more attention.

Looks like I'm doing exactly what I said I was probably going to do for today's meal... nothing particularly special. Made the older daughter's b'day cake yesterday (a few days late but my work schedule and hers made it the most convenient time to do it), flourless chocolate cake topped with banana caramel and encased in passion fruit mousse. Younger, still at home, daughter wants spaghetti and meatballs today. Has to be miles away from anything Easter dinner traditional but it's what we're going to have. Dessert's going to be the extra passion fruit mousse I have left from the cake with shortbread cookies I'm working on right now.

That's what I was thinking. All this obligation and reciprocation and worry over whether a gift is right or wrong would just steal all the fun right out of it for me.

I hadn't actually approached it from that angle. You now have me rethinking my original comment. While I still can't imagine it being ill-received, I can easily picture it seeming a bit odd.

At a crawfish boil? What are these "leftovers" of which you speak? Seriously though, I like to dice any leftover potatoes and andouille, fry it with some onion and bell pepper in butter, toss in some leftover crawfish meat at the end and spice it up with plenty of pepper. Throw a couple fried eggs on top and it makes the morning belly happy after a night of crawfish and beer.

I'm going to guess that, since they are inviting people over for cheese and wine, they probably drink wine. Of course, that's not a guarantee, but it seems like safe odds. As for the etiquette involved, I'm no help. To quote Garth Brooks, I've got friends in low places. I never feel obligated to bring anything unless asked to. Bringing something is always appreciated and I often do but I've never had the feeling it was expected and never worried over what I take other than being sure it's not something I know they dislike. I can't imagine them being insulted by being gifted a bottle of wine but as I said, my grasp of the etiquette of high society is probably tenuous at best.

You can heat the glucose until it's bubbly and then add the sugar in a few additions, letting it melt before adding the next addition. I have had little lumps of sugar form when heating glucose and all of the sugar together at once but they've always dissolved out before I get the caramel where I want it. Melting it in additions gets you around that potential worry though, as does adding a little water. The recipe not calling for water doesn't matter, it'll just take longer to get the sugar where you want it if you add it.

The funny thing is, I don't even know if I care about thin boiling starch. I've never thought about making Turkish Delight, I've never even eaten it as far as I can remember. But the fact that it seems so hard to get the starch aroused my curiosity and I had to go on a search. And of course, I had no more luck than anybody else with finding anything. I guess the good thing for me is, I didn't really care too much whether I found it or not for myself. I was just hoping I might sniff something out that would help others. The bad thing is, now that I'm curious, if a source does turn up, I'll probably end up grabbing some... and have one more container of magic industrial powder sitting on a shelf with all the others I had to have and no longer use.

Just toss the sugar and glucose in the pan and cook it to the color or temp you shoot for. No acid required. I prefer doing wet caramel because it allows for multitasking. I can go do other things until late in the process. Sometimes I add a little water with the sugar and glucose. Takes longer to reach color/temp but requires zero babysitting until close to the end. You can hear when most of the water is cooked off and it's time to start watching things more closely.

Because MF french fries should never have been on a Taco Bell menu to begin with!

I'm not offering any excuses or disclaimers, on the occasions I found myself eating at Taco Bell ("found" instead of "find" because there is no Taco Bell anywhere near where I live now), I ate the place down happily. I don't go to Taco Bell with expectations of quality Mexican cuisine any more than I'd go to a White Castle expecting the Holy Grail of burgers... but there's a place in my gut for both. Of course, that place tended to be most vocal in the late night hours after an evening at a bar/club which is something I haven't done in a very long time. But I'm pretty sure if a Taco Bell opened locally, it would get some of my money from time to time. The "hot" taco sauce they had in the early 80's was my favorite sauce. They still had a red "hot" sauce the last time I was in one but it wasn't the same sauce from my youth. Seemed like they attempted to fancy it up a bit, I guess I like my Taco Bell sauce a little on the trashy side.

Yes it does.

Problem solved so thanks everybody for checking the site for me. Still not completely sure what caused the problem, though a friend who's good at internet stuff suggested the likely scenario, but all is working for me again.

Nobody is suggesting you're not qualified to comment. I think the problem began because it felt like you were suggesting others weren't qualified to have opinions unless that opinion was to kneel at the alter of those you respect. Wybauw thinks his rhubarb chocolate worked great (presumably), Jim did not. Why is it inappropriate for him to express that? I've been cooking in restaurants for a lot of years and I respect what a lot of the big names in the industry do but if they put out a recipe and I think it's a dud, I'll say so. Their status doesn't make them immune to critique. Insulting Kerry is another thing altogether. She has probably done more to help people with their chocolate questions and problems on these forums than the rest of us combined. That doesn't mean you have to kiss her feet but if you're going to need to be outright rude to her, I'll gladly hold the door for you so it doesn't hit you in the behind as you exit.

I'd vote for the love potion salad as well. Nothing against a caesar, but the blue cheese is the tie-breaker for me. I'm just not sure if it made me want a salad or a blue cheese burger.

Wouldn't that be nice? Make a couple at the beginning of March, tuck them away somewhere quiet and have all your production done when you take them back out at Easter. None of the bunnies I've made with that mold have been kind enough to do that for me though.

I've never seen a recipe specify a variety of rhubarb and I'm trying hard to remember if I've ever seen rhubarb for sale with the variety being given. I'm sure it's done but I don't think it's widespread enough to be part of a recipe in a book that's aimed at a large audience.

Gonna have to do some playing around at my end I guess, I still can't get to it. I already did all the standard stuff. Tried another browser, cleared the history, cache, cookies, etc. Temporarily disabled my firewall and antivirus. Even did a DNS flush and reboot. No luck, just keep getting "hmmm, can't reach this page". Oh well, as long as I know the site isn't down I'm ok. Scared me for a bit thinking one of my main chocolate work supplies sources was down. Edited to add... I've narrowed the problem down to being somewhere between the modem and my ISP. I can't access the site using wifi with any device in the house but can access it using the mobility service data on my daughter's phone (I'm a dinosaur who doesn't have or want a cell phone) so it's nothing to do with my laptop.

Just wondering if anybody would be willing to make a quick visit to their site. chocolat-chocolat I haven't been able to access it for a couple days now and can't find any information suggesting it would be down. I've even used a site checker page which said the site is up. I've went through all of my security stuff and there's nothing that should be blocking it so I was just wondering if others can access it so I know whether to keep digging for a problem at my end.

I have no idea what I'm going to make or if I'm even going to bother with anything special. Right now, a lot of work and a big mess to clean up isn't feeling too tempting but we'll see if that changes before the weekend. You have my sympathies. I suppose it could be worse, at least you're allowed sugar.

Fried okra is indeed delicious. Boiled okra is too, though it can sometimes be a bit off-putting if you don't know what to expect. As Jerry Clower described it... "I ate so much boiled okra as a kid, my socks wouldn't stay up". To say it can sometimes be slimy when boiled would be an understatement.