Dianabanana

I completely agree with using a boxed cake in an instance like this. Personally, I'm not made of money, and I've also got limited time... why would I waste a really good, made-from-scratch cake on somebody who can't appreciate it? I know, I know, that makes me a bad foodie, but really... especially since you doctor them, I feel it's perfectly acceptable. (And my own confession: I have a few family members who prefer cake mix cakes. I found this out on accident when I had very little time and grabbed a box mix and added some pudding mix. They always compliment me on how much better cakes "made from scratch" are and how "it tastes just like the cakes I remember from my childhood". These are people who think Costco cakes taste great, so they get cake from a mix. Give 'em what they like, I suppose.) ← I do completely see the logic in not killing yourself laboring over a real cake for anyone that you suspect will not appreciate it . . . however, I just want to point out that I went the first couple of decades of my life thinking that I didn't like cake, because the only kind I ever got was cake from a mix with premade frosting, or grocery store sheet cakes with crunchy royal frosting.

Well, I haven't noticed any change this year, but I do notice that all the organic bananas seem to show up in the store at a greater degree of ripeness than the conventional ones. Although I'm in the very-slightly-green camp, I still buy the organic ones because they are the only ones that don't give me a stomachache. I always thought I just couldn't eat bananas until I tried organic bananas. I'd love to know what is about regular bananas that causes this, since you wouldn't think that any pesticides would make it through that thick skin.

Well, I'm thinking more like the fact that the $6.99 unscented, flavorless, eco-friendly dish soap costs only around twice as much as a bottle of Veggie Wash and contains something like a thousand times more vegetable washes, considering that Veggie Wash recommends a quarter-cup of Veggie Wash to a gallon of water and you'd use the other stuff a drop at a time (or possibly even less). ← Plus, if you are used to using scented dish detergent, maybe you can't taste it, but if you ever have guests who don't use it, they might taste it. I know I can. Perhaps it depends on how well you rinse, but there have been a couple of times when I've been completely overwhelmed by it. The worst was a bowl of oatmeal at my neigbor's that tasted exactly like a bowl of Dawn. So maybe you factor in the intangible savings of not risking having your meals taste Mountain Fresh. This sounds ripe for a scientific eGullet evaluation!

I kill two birds with one stone. I buy Planet unscented dish liquid (because who wants perfume on their dishes??) and use that to wash any produce that needs it. It works extremely well and there is absolutely no taste whatsoever.

Hiroyuki, I tried it and it was exactly as I remembered! Thank you. Next time I will try a full blown oden!

Those look great. Plus, they are rectangular! I'm forever ranting about how much more I could fit in my refrigerator/cabinets if everything came in a rectangular container instead of round. Looking at all that wasted space between the round jars and bowls and pans just makes me want to cry!

I've got 8 tiny glass bowls (2 T each) from Ikea, which I keep right in the drawer next to the stove with my measuring spoons and whatnot. Then I've got a ton of small Japanese bowls in various sizes, up to rice bowl size, which I use for prep as well as serving. I used to have those Pyrex glass ramekins and they were great, but eventually I broke them all.

What was the kamaboko simmered in? A simple broth, probably a dashi, soy sauce, and mirin mixture of a 15 to 20, 1, 1 ratio (same as oden broth)? ← I realized my question is awfully vague--sorry! Yes, it was just a simple broth, and maybe it was just oden broth. That actually occurred to me after I posted my question. Thanks, Hiroyuki--I will try that.

Okay, I just bought some chikuwa. When I was in Japan, we were served some simmered kamaboko, including chikuwa, at breakfast, and it was delicious. I was hoping to make this at home but I have no idea what it was. Can anyone help?

I became a latchkey kid when I was nine, and used to kill the three or four hours until my mom got home by trying to bake cakes without a recipe. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I guess we didn't have any cookbooks in the house, because it never occurred to me to try to bake a real cake from a recipe. I knew what ingredients went into a cake and I was determined to divine the correct proportions through trial and error. My best results were on the order of a fruitcake--dense but edible. After that I went through a phase of making Jell-O after school but I wasn't too keen on the delayed gratification aspects--as soon as it started to thicken I would eat it like a warm gelatin soup. I also made a lot of scrambled eggs, cinnamon toast, and, later, Toll House cookies and cake mixes. My mom tended to discourage my efforts in the kitchen, probably because my enthusiasm for mess making was not equaled by my enthusiasm for clearing up, so I didn't really start to cook seriously until I got my first apartment. Edit: When I got my first apartment, one of the first things I did was to get a copy of James Beard's Theory and Practice of Good Cooking and cooked my way through that. What a great book for a beginner!

"Famous," especially when used by ordinary home cooks to refer to some decidedly not famous dish of theirs. "I'll be making my famous wild rice soup." "Try one of my famous cinnamon rolls." If you really want to get me going, call it "world famous."

I really hope this particular oddity hasn't been discussed in this thread already--I need to use my Szechuan peppercorns and there's not enough time to read all 13 pages! My bag of Golden Flower brand Szechuan pepper states, alarmingly: "Raw food please wash under tap water at least 5 minutes before cooking. Please cook in hot boiling water for 30 minutes before consuming." What the . . . ??? None of my cookbooks mentions anything like this. My first thought was that the manufacturer knows their peppercorns are contaminated with nuclear waste or whatever and is helpfully offering suggestions for decontamination. But since when do manufacturers of contaminated products warn consumers about it? And they can't be serious--boil for 30 minutes? What should I do?

Like Rob, I'm no vegan, but I enjoy the challenge of catering to people's dietary restrictions. I don't understand the hostile reactions that people often have to those whose diets are different from their own, and I think it's lovely when a host tries to make everyone feel comfortable, respected, and included. It sounds like your friend just has a lot of anxiety over her diet for whatever reason, and also is lacking in social skills. We're all flawed. I think the approach of making regular food that just happens to be vegan, especially "ethnic" food, is the exact right one. Everyone will enjoy it and probably the only reason they would notice it's vegan is if your friend starts talking about it! If you take a look at Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone or Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, you will find a ton of delicious, authentic and only incidentally vegan recipes. Both of these books have gotten rave reviews from eGulleters of all dietary persuasions. You can tell her what you're doing, and in the course of the conversation tactfully address her rude behavior. Either she'll get it, and everything will be fine, or she won't, and you can reevaluate whether it's worth the continued effort.

Wow, and timely! I just bought a pomegranate! Thanks, Chufi!

I love pancakes but they always make me feel so bloated and enervated. In an experimental mood, I picked up a bag of Pamela's wheat-free buttermilk pancake mix. It's made with rice flour. I had seriously low expectations, but to my very great surprise it turned out to be really good! I make the batter a good deal thicker than the instructions would have it, and they come out light and fluffy and with a slightly nubbly texture. Best of all I don't waste all of Sunday morning beached on the sofa in a pancake stupor.

Pear. Gorgonzola. Repeat.

This sounds like the perfect date to me!!

Ha! I do, and it looks like this: Me standing in produce section, dialing husband at home to ask him to check if we have any ginger left. Then me standing in baking section, dialing husband at home to ask him to check how much sugar's left. Then me standing in dairy section, dialing husband at home to ask him to check how many eggs are left. Needless to say, I am never to be found in the grocery consulting an Excel spreadsheet or Palm Pilot for my grocery list! Only in the direst circumstance will I scratch out a written list. My theory is that memory is a muscle, and if I don't want mine to atrophy, I must exercise it by trying to remember what I need from the market. Of course this is complete crap, that's why I'm always burning up all my cell minutes in the grocery aisle.

Once, about 20 years ago, I ordered some extraordinary corn oil from Walnut Acres. It came in a metal tin with instructions to keep it refrigerated. It was amber in color, and it smelled and tasted exactly like delicious buttery corn. I don't remember how it was described--cold pressed? unfiltered? It would have been organic since it was from Walnut Acres. It was truly amazing, but expensive, and I didn't have the money back then to keep buying it and what with one thing and another I forgot about it for the next two decades. This morning the thought of the wonderful corn oil popped into my head and I checked the Walnut Acres site for it. Not only do they not carry it anymore, but they don't carry most of the lovely things they used to do, and you can't buy from them directly now either! It's just canned soups and the like. I'm feeling old. Does anyone know where I might find this corn oil today? Edited to remove overzealous use of the word "exactly."

I think it's a good way to get food poisoning if the cheesemaker isn't careful. I lost a weekend to a slice of pepper jack cheese once. Seems like it would be the perfect environment for the growth of anaerobic bacteria, doesn't it? Perhaps someone wiser in the ways of cheese can explain what goes on.

This from the FAQ section: ← Nice, but, to me at least, unpersuasive. I know glass and hot food is safe; I don't know if plastic and hot food is safe, and I'm not convinced that the FDA knows yet either. Not that the FDA isn't infallible and all . . .

All of the above, plus I wouldn't trust that plastic not to leach scary stuff into my food when heated.

I don't understand where these rinds are coming from. Why are they cutting them off in the first place? Do people not like to buy cheese with the rind attached? I don't like to buy a piece with rind on two sides because it's a pain to grate, but I'm happy to buy a piece with rind on one side because I know how great it is for soups. Can somebody please explain?

More from the prune-plum files . . . this weekend I made the Original Plum Torte, from a recipe that, according Marian Burros, has been reprinted in the New York Times at reader request nearly every year since 1981. I don't know why--it wasn't that great. It was certainly easy but beyond that it was just your basic quick coffee cake with plums on top. I even forgot to take a picture. I needed consolation after that, so I made World Peace Cookies. Much more rewarding!

Jmahl--That almond cake looks really good. I'm starting a quest for my perfect almond cake. I just ordered two cans of almond paste made by American Almond Products--$9.50 each! They'd better be good. The first cake I'm going to try is the Chez Panisse one. I've been seeing almond flour in stores more lately but I haven't bought it because I'm always afraid it will be rancid. Seems like it would turn really fast, all ground up, sitting at room temp, and exposed to the light in its clear plastic bag. Am I needlessly worrying? I love your map backdrop!