blue_dolphin

Thanks! Now I have my own copy of that ranch dressing so I don't have to hunt around here for it....you know....in case I ever decide to make it!

David Lebovitz has been making daily Instagram cocktails in lieu of his book tour for Drinking French. The other day, he made a cocktail called The Truth Serum from one of his previous books, L'Appart, that you might modify, subbing vermouth for the herbal Izarra or Chartreuse. Maybe swap out the mint for another herb if there is something else that complements the vermouth. Sérum de Vérité (The Truth Serum) 4 fresh mint leaves 1 tsp simple syrup 2 oz tequila 3/4 oz lime juice 1/2 oz Chartreuse or Izarra Muddle the mint & simple syrup in a shaker, add the remaining ingredients, shake with ice, strain and serve up.

Not sure where you are located but if shops are open then be persistent with trolling through different thrift shops in your area and do it often. Whole sets of 6, 8 or more are extremely rare in the thrifts in my area but estate sales can be good for that. eBay can be a good option as well, especially if you have a specific pattern in mind. Replacements.com is helpful if you just need to replace one or two in a set but their prices are much higher. For whatever reason, the Salvation Army shop nearest to me rarely has much that I like, but when they do, the prices are excellent. My Goodwill has quite a rapid turnover so I used to stop in there often. All that stuff is shut down at the moment in my area so glassware acquisition is on hold for me!

I am neither a bartender nor a glassware expert, so take my 2 cents for what it's worth. That general size/shape glass in your photo is often called a tall champagne/sherbet glass or tall sherbet/champagne or some variation. In contrast, low sherbet glasses have similarly shaped bowls but much shorter stems. I think the "pinched waist" shape of the bowl is a characteristic of the particular glassware or crystal pattern rather than the glass type. I see the tall sherbet/champagne glasses with many different bowl shapes. Hopefully someone can offer you more assistance with the "rules" you are seeking. I purchase vintage glassware to use for cocktails and use whatever I fancy to serve my friends, often adjusting the volume of the drink to suit the glasses.

My tree is still loaded, you are welcome to come by and pick all you'd like!

Wow, did you deliver the wines, too? Please sign me up for both!

I have some short ribs in the freezer and intended to cook them for Easter but now that I have nice eggs back in the house, I was thinking Eggs Benedict might be a nice treat. That would be more brunch than dinner but these days I don't seem to have an interest in cooking more than one thing per day 🙃

"Poached" eggs on toast The quotes are because I used the little silicone poach pods that I received as a gift and have been kicking around in my cupboards for years. I know @Anna N has used them in the Instant Pot and others have used them as well. I just used the basic simmering water method for 4 min. Looking down at the top of them, I feared they were over cooked but no - just right for me!

Appliance? Like blender or KitchenAid mixer? Cooking method? Like microwave or induction or boiling?

Just went down to the local weekly farmers market. Not sure what was more odd - the masks and distancing guidelines or the rain and chilly temps. Not freezing by any means but our high temp was only 50°F and it's been raining steadily all day. Lots of local messaging for Los Angeles to avoid going out at all, including for groceries but I was down to my last 2 eggs and feel strongly about supporting our local farmers. Also, not that viruses pay any attention, but I'm in Ventura county rather than LA. I wore a mask because I need the practice and wanted to see how long I could tolerate it. My glasses got fogged up on the inside from the mask and covered with rain on the outside so my vision was quite impaired but I survived! Got eggs, escarole, green onions, radishes, celery, parsley, cilantro, watercress, kumquats, lemons and tomatoes. No need to decorate these beauties for Easter: My favorite egg vendors are an older couple (mid to late 70's, I'd guess) and I was a little worried because they weren’t at the market last week. I was delighted today to see that he had a young man helping him out and doing all the handling of the money. I bought 2 dozen, more than I ever use in a week but I'm ever so happy to have them! The rain kept a few vendors away and a lot of shoppers as well. I have to say that made the experience much more pleasant. The last few weeks, it was necessary to queue up at each stand but I didn't have to wait at all today. Vendors have streamlined the way they display their produce (sadly, more plastic bags, but that seems a necessary vice right now) and shoppers have gotten down with the process. I hope enough people shopped to make it worthwhile for the farmers.

There are quite a few mentions of that delicious recipe around here - and for good reason - so delicious! This has been my breakfast for the last 3 days. Sweet potato and bacon quiche with parsley from Melissa Clark's Dinner in French. Not bad but not my favorite quiche. It is lacking aliums. Because I am hoarding flour and am generally lazy, I used a ready-made pie crust that must have been past it's prime as it developed so many cracks. The random slices of cheese you can see here and there were my attempts and plugging them 🙃 I put some roquefort on top of today's slice and found it an improvement.

Sounds like you have lots of great options for fresh pasta, so no need to get into this again but I give you an A+ for what you accomplished in one day. Setting up and getting the hang of rolling pasta with one of those manual crank machines for the first time isn't easy. Just doing that with a small piece of dough is plenty for a day 1 lesson. Cut them with a knife, toss into the pot of water and enjoy a little bowl of noodles with butter & cheese for extra credit. You went way above and beyond on your first day!

Don't sweat this too much! You've put a lot on your plate. Sounds like you are not only making fresh pasta but also making something with a filling AND a sauce. Is it lasagne? ravioli? I think either of them are projects all on their own. You can still put everything back into the fridge and pick up later. You've gotten a lot of good advice her from people with a lot more fresh pasta experience than I have but my very beginner recommendation is to make a basic cut noodle with a very simple sauce for your first run. You can make a full 1 lb batch of dough, but just roll and cut what you need for a meal and put the rest back into the fridge. No need to work out details on drying, freezing, etc. for the first time. Just roll, cut, drop them into the water and enjoy a nice meal. If you are up for more and ready to go right into fillings, etc. then don't let me discourage you - I'm impressed and pulling for you!

Tuna salad on pita

Good luck with the coffee roasting! I used the popcorn popper for quite a while and it was a good learning opportunity. I found the Sweet Maria videos very helpful. Do take notes on your batches. Two downsides from my perspective. First, it's LOUD but you can't just turn it on, set a timer and walk away. I found it helpful to stir the beans around a bit in the beginning to help ensure an even roast and you want to listen for the cracking sounds so you need to stay pretty close to the noisy thing. If you've got some noise-cancelling headphones, try them. My Bose over-the-ear headphones that I use for plane travel very much helped to muffle the popper noice but let me hear the cracking sounds. Maybe mine was unusually loud or I am unusually sensitive to noises, but I found that aspect quite unpleasant. The second issue was the relatively small volume of beans that can be roasted at a time in a popper. Not a problem just for myself but when I had coffee-guzzling guests, I was needing to roast more beans almost every day or sit there for a long time doing multiple small batches. A few stretches of caffeine addicted houseguests led me to go back to buying coffee. I should reconsider roasting the beans again I'm unlikely to be hosting crowds anytime soon!

I've never been one to argue with a good idea especially since a packet of balsamic roasted onions with sage was handy in the freezer. Not everything in my freezer is "handy" but these had fallen out and landed on my toe yesterday when I was looking for something else so I knew right where they were 🙃

When I pulled out Mark Vetri's Mastering Pasta yesterday, I spied a recipe for Farfalle with Chorizo and Favas. I had favas in the freezer and was convinced there was a small piece of Spanish chorizo in the fridge so I embarked on making the farfalle this morning using the Whole Egg, Bread Flour and Stone-Ground Wheat Dough from his book. The chorizo went missing so I settled on some 'nduja instead. Vetri calls for Pantaleo, a hard, aged goat cheese from Sardinia. I subbed Cabrillo, a Spanish-style goat & cow cheese from Stepladder Creamery on the California central coast. Next time, I'll roll dough a little thinner but it was a good learning experience - I used pinking shears to cut the dough 🤣 and a satisfactory lunch with a glass of syrah.

In American Sfoglino, Evan Funke recommends blanching filled pasta for future use. He says that if you refrigerate them directly after making, moisture from the filling can sweat through the pasta, resulting in a tacky dough but that blanching cooks the surface protein of the pasta and seals the moisture inside. I imagine that's why Teo recommends putting them directly into the freezer and I'd suspect that a blast chiller would be even better. Funke says to just boil them until they float, transfer to a towel-lined surface and turn them every 5 min or so, ideally with a fan blowing on them, until they are completely dry (20 - 40 min) before refrigerating for up to 10 days or freezing for up to 3 months. I have not tested multiple methods but I've done this a couple of times and it's worked nicely.

This 2019 paper, Water-indexed benefits and impacts of California almonds, doesn't specifically address the 1 gal/almond claim, rather they use a measure called "water footprint" but they use the same metric across a large range of California crops to compare water usage vs nutritional value vs commercial value and also compared the water usage of almonds grown in different areas of the state. As to how those water usage values were derived, they cite a 2011 paper, The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products, which goes into much detail on the mathematical formulas used to calculate the water footprint values they present in the voluminous tables in the paper. Kinda interesting. Obviously, I don't have enough to do 🙄

Thanks to this thread, I pulled out my KitchenAid pasta roller and made fettuccine with the Whole Egg, Bread Flour and Stone Ground Wheat Dough from Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta. Used some here in Marcella Hazan's Fettuccine col Sugo di Tonno con Aglio e Panna, a recipe from Marcella's Italian Kitchen that I was reminded of by @Margaret Pilgrim's recent post in the dinner topic. Recipe available online here: Food52. It's a super easy, one pot/one bowl pasta and an excellent option if you want to try fresh pasta as a weeknight meal. Mix up the dough, then pull together the simple sauce and maybe a salad while the dough rests. Boil the water while you run the pasta through the rollers, drop it right into to cook, toss and serve. Last time I made this (see here), I found the sauce a bit rich, so this time, I tossed some broccoli and red bell pepper into the salted water along with the pasta. Delicious with or without the added vegetables.

Yes, that's right. I like this method for making quick "micro stock" in the Instant Pot from vegetable trimmings. Of course, the rest of your asparagus is probably long gone by now so it may be no help.

A very sturdy breakfast here. Two of the Cheese & Spicy Pepper Potato Balls I ordered from Porto's bakery "bake at home" service and a 6.5 minute egg At first, I thought I might be able to balance a poached egg atop those balls but I could see that wasn't going to work so I went with the soft boiled.

Those mushrooms of @Anna N's have been taunting me since she posted them on Saturday. Sadly, no mushrooms in the house. Happily, I remembered that I'd roasted up the last round with some rosemary and garlic in preparation for something that was never made. Even more happily, they were in that super cold region of my fridge and aside from being almost frozen, seemed OK. I reheated them in a little oil and a splash of sherry, finished with a splash or two of whipping cream and piled them on toast I think I could eat another plate of this!

What's the cheat? Looks awfully good to me!

Nice! I see their little country ham biscuit slices are 30% off. Maybe not the lowest price per ounce for bulk ham but they are so very handy to have on hand, either for a breakfast sandwich or when a recipe calls for a small amount of diced ham.