Tri2Cook

I'm not sure that's what happened to either of you. I wasn't recording it, I was watching it as it aired (on foodnetwork Canada) and it just suddenly cut from them being about to announce the results of the elimination round to You Gotta Eat Here starting. No "to be continued" or "tune in next time for..." or anything. Just cut off and went to the next show. Like there should have been another couple minutes of show that they just weren't willing to make room for or something.

I generally make a plan for the week, shop for that plan on Saturday, follow the plan over the weekend... and then often completely fail to follow it through the rest of the week. One of my favorite after-work techniques is looking through the freezer, fridge and cabinets then waiting patiently for something to make itself. That plan never seems to work too well though.

It's on page 236 in the book I have (the one with the black cover, not the red) but it sounds like we're probably talking about the same thing. Thanks!

I'm sitting here laughing at myself because that's such an easy and obvious solution and it never crossed my mind. Thanks! So, could his mint fondant recipe be made, allowed to cool and then pinched and pressed into the shells before the invertase goes to work or am I still over-complicating things? I have fondant, invertase and peppermint oil but I was kinda liking the idea of his addition of the fresh mint leaves as well. At least, I think I like the idea. I keep having this image of people eating them and having little green pieces stuck in their teeth in my head and I'm not sure how much I'd like that.

Thanks! That's what I was afraid of with the fondant. If I want to get a mint fondant (preferably with invertase so that it softens) into shells, is there a good way to do so?

So hopefully my questions haven't already been asked because I didn't want to read through pages and pages to find out and it didn't turn up via the search. My first question is, can the mint fondant recipe be cooled enough to pipe into shells or will it be too firm by that point? The recipe says to deposit it right away with a warm depositor and then enrobe after cooling so I'm guessing it can't be cooled enough for shells but I thought I'd ask anyway. My other question is, I know the meltaways can be used in shells but should they be? What I mean is, does the chocolate shell take away from the whole experience of them melting away?

People bring food because they want to help and don't really know how. At least, that's my theory because I never really know what to say or do in those situations. One of our neighbors 30 year old daughter recently passed away from what is apparently a ridiculously rare thing and I had no idea what to say, I don't really know them that well but their daughter was always really nice to my, much younger than her, daughter. Taking food kinda opened the door to talking to the parents rather than just avoiding them out of not knowing how to approach them. Thanks Darienne, I really do appreciate that but it's okay that the focus stayed on the subject being discussed. I wasn't trying to steer the focus towards me, I was just relating my experience in answer to the question. It was difficult (basically, impossible) not to see it as entirely personal for a while but time has let me remember that it really isn't personal beyond the loss itself. It happens to people and families everywhere, every day. Doesn't make it any better, just easier to not slip into the depths of "why do bad things happen to me".

In a restaurant or convenience store in the wee hours of the morning after a night at the bar/club, anything that resembled a nacho or burrito was the best thing in the whole world. The bigger and messier and more full of stuff, the better. Fortunately, my time in that stage was short and long ago... but I'd be lying if I said it never happened.

Actually, I thought about that today after I'd posted it and left for work and I'm fairly sure I unintentionally lied. I think I remember one time during the summer when people were posting about their Eeyore's Requiem they were enjoying and I remembered how much I like that drink. If I'm not mistaken, I think I actually did mix one of those one evening. That doesn't really mean anything in the context of this discussion but it was going to bother me if I didn't correct my previous statement.

If I bought raisins and wanted rice pudding for dessert, I'd toss the raisins in the trashcan and then make my rice pudding.

My sincere condolences on the passing of your brother. It's never easy but 33 is way too young. When my wife passed away several months ago, food came from everywhere and most of it didn't get eaten. I lost quite a bit of weight in the first couple months or so after. I didn't feel like shopping or cooking and didn't really feel like eating. I made sure there was always something for my daughter to eat and that was about it. Whenever I got to a point where I needed to eat, I usually just grabbed a soup and sandwich at Subway and called it good enough. Booze was never a factor, I haven't even opened the door on my liquor cabinet since we lost her. That seemed like a potentially slippery slope in the early stages and just hasn't interested me much since. In the time since those first couple months or so, I've put on more weight than I'm happy about. It's not so much from finding comfort in food, I'm eating less than I did before. I think it comes from an extreme lack of motivation to do much of anything I don't have to since she passed away. I'm not getting the exercise my body was used to getting. So I don't think I can claim any certain foods actually helped me, unless it could be argued that Subway was a temporary fix of convenience that kept me from not eating at all.

I'm semi-ashamed to admit that my entire purpose for opening this thread was to comment "McDonalds". The fact that somebody already beat me to it is possibly even better than if I'd done it myself.

Back in my party years, at ~2 am, after a night at a bar, I would have worshipped the person who made me one of those. I don't really see the problem with it. Nothing particularly classy about nachos anyway, they're just stuff on a chip... and almost always tasty.

I don't really care too much about the host one way or the other. I just kinda like the show and the Canadian equivalent, You Gotta Eat Here, because it's sometimes interesting to see what people are doing in their restaurants. You see a lot of "uh huh, seen it" but every now and then you see a "wow, wish I'd thought of that".

I remember that Ideas in Food post now that you brought it up. I'd kinda skimmed over it at the time and not thought much more about it. I'm liking the idea that you can use calcium lactate or lactate-gluconate instead of lime or calcium chloride. It's been a while since I was working with those ingredients but I'll never forget the nasty bitter taste of calcium chloride and I don't generally have lime on hand. I do however have a fairly large supply of lactate-gluconate sitting around doing nothing...

I can't give a number as far as longevity and I'm sure there is the occasional lemon but they seem to be pretty durable in general. There are 3 of them on the dishwasher at work pumping the various cleaning/sanitizing solutions and the dishwashers run that thing very frequently for about 12 hours or so a day. In the 7 years I've been working there, they've never had to replace one.

Last night, the older daughter cooked dinner for me for my birthday. Pork loin, mashed potatoes and corn. I would've been happy even if the food wasn't good... but it was good. Loved every bite.

If you have a Sobey's and a Superstore, you are in a different level of small town than I am. We have a single small independent grocery store. It's over an hour's drive to the nearest larger town. They have a couple of slightly bigger grocery stores but not much more selection-wise than the local store, just slightly better prices. In between that town and the town where I live, there are trees... and not much else.

Still happy with the MyWeigh I purchased on recommendation in the link above. The ability to disable auto-shutoff was worth the price of admission for me but the a/c adaptor and large container that fits perfectly on the scale (which I didn't even care about when I ordered but works really well for weighing out the amounts of chocolate I usually work with) are nice too.

Actually, the health department doesn't give a flying fork what a person does in their home kitchen... unless it's a home business setting. Even then, it's pretty rare for them to bother.

Yep, no serranos here. The only fresh peppers of the hot variety available here are jalapenos (very hit and miss on the heat), habaneros and Thai chiles. The habs and Thais are reliably hot. The fresh Thai chiles are kinda surprising for here but somebody besides me likes them because they keep stocking them.

Sounds tasty, might have to give sage/onion/parmesan a try myself. I'm liking the texture of this for a quick bread. I'm able to slice it ridiculously thin without it crumbling or breaking.

It's tasty. Not as hot as I thought it was going to be after tasting the habs and jalapenos while cutting them. We get some pretty wimpy jalapenos here sometimes but these actually had decent heat. And of course the habs are hot. The semolina flour didn't do any actual harm. There's a slightly gritty crunch that doesn't bother me at all but wouldn't bother me if it wasn't there either. Still gonna have to remember to pick up more flour though... and after it was already in the oven I remembered that I have a large amount of whole wheat flour on hand that needs to be used.

It's in the oven. And, because I apparently hate myself, I did a 50/50 split of jalapenos and habaneros for the peppers. I omitted the chili powder. A final tweak wasn't intentional. In a moment of brilliance, I completely failed to grab the flour that was on my list when I was at the grocery store this morning. So I dumped what I had in the house on the scale without much hope. It was about an ounce and a half short. So I made up the difference with semolina flour.

Thanks for the diligence! I'll definitely be trying the jalapeno cheese version... and now I'll probably be trying a few of the other variations as well.