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I had one of those, too. It was my first appliance purchase for my post-college apartment and I used it for years. I was especially fond of the little one-cup mini blend jars that I used to chop nuts, grind spices and coffee beans and blend up small amounts of sauces. As I recall, the mixer wasn’t the best at handling stiff doughs and that’s what pushed me to get a KitchenAid stand mixer.

This video?

Me, too! I bought 3 bags of each for little gifts!

If you’ve seen the “Cooking with Six Seasons of Pasta” topic, you’ll know that I’ve been cooking a lot of pasta lately. With all the talk of impending tariffs on Italian pasta, I decided to try out a more local source, Etto, manufactured a few hours from me in Paso Robles, CA. I ordered a few shapes from them but it’s also available at Whole Foods. And for holiday stocking stuffers, I got their novelty dog and cat shapes, Fido and Figaro:

Let us know what you find out. I know a lot of shippers have stopped accepting packages for the US. The apple pie version is calling my name but it says the last day to preorder is tomorrow,

Radiatore with golden beets, raisins, pine nuts, and sausage p 209 in Six Seasons of Pasta. The golden beets play well with the classic Sicilian flavors. I loved the beautiful gold color they added to the pasta. Per the recipe, the beets can be either shredded or cut into thin wedges. I chose the later and they did take a while to cook. I used regular raisins which worked fine and added a handful of arugula.

That’s much more like the way we did it back in the olden days!

I’d never tried them before but they are very tasty little treats! I’m looking forward to trying all the flavors!

Very true!

Wow! Back in the day, I probably made thousands of Egg McMuffins at McD’s and would have been totally in the weeds if we did it like that! Of course, we were scrambling eggs and making pancakes on the same flattop and cooking sausages over on the side we turned up to a higher temp. So different!

Yeah, I agree with you on Duke’s being pretty equivalent to Best Foods. I also keep Kewpie on hand. My local Smart & Final carries a lot of niche items that sometimes surprise me. Easiest place for me to get dry ice. I don’t go there often, even though it’s close by, but when I do, I try to go up and down the aisles to see what’s there.

I said I’d report on this and am still waiting on the Coop’s fudge gift pack (edited to add that I just got an email that Coop’s is coming tomorrow) and the frozen gougeres from Bougie Gougies but have received everything else. Each item or set was shipped from that company so it was kind of like the 12 days of Christmas with something arriving every day or so. Everything has been full sized, most packaged like a gift and several included hand-written, personal notes. The olive oils from Portugal via Wildly Virgin arrived first, two 500 ml bottles with a little booklet about the growers. They sent the Forte and Verde (priced at $38 and $40 on the website. I didn’t take photos of everything since they were mostly just as pictured in my previous post but I liked this little card with serving suggestions for the Effie's biscuits. They’re on sale this week at Whole Foods so I might pick up the flavors I didn’t get in this gift package.

I listened to the episode last week and enjoyed it. Thanks for the heads up!

Next up, the pasta with kale, spicy sausage, cream, and lemon from Six Seasons of Pasta I thought this was delicious. I used baby kale from the farmers market so it cooked in a flash and I especially liked the crunch from the breadcrumbs. I’m up for trying a version of this with white beans, in addition to or instead of the pasta.