blue_dolphin

One thing that it's great for is thawing anything that can go into the bath. Of course, you can cook things sous vide directly from frozen, too, but it's also handy to speed up thawing without the uneven heating you get with MW thawing. Just set the heat as low as it can go and drop in a few ice cubes if your tap water isn't chilly enough.

A cocktail in which I substituted almost every ingredient but still enjoyed a tasty drink. Starting with Damon Boelte's Radio Silence, served up last Friday on NPR's All Things Considered in honor of news anchor Robert Siegel's upcoming retirement. Radio Silence from Damon Boelte of Grand Army Bar 2 ounces Brooklyn Gin - subbed Barr Hill Gin, which I'm sure is nothing like Brooklyn Gin but is awfully tasty 0.75 ounce Lustau Manzanilla sherry - subbed a Lustau Fino 0.25 ounce Bénédictine 3 dashes Bartlett pear bitters or sub 1 dash Angostura bitters - I used a couple of dashes of Boker's bitters (because I thought they would go well with the Barr Hill gin) and a dash of Clear Creek Pear Brandy (because I have no idea what Bartlett pear bitters taste like but figured a bit of pear couldn't hurt) Stir with ice, strain, lemon twist. I'm sure the honey in the Barr Hill Gin turned this in a very different direction than intended so I'll look forward to trying it again when I get some Brooklyn Gin.

Absolutely true!

Perhaps the messiest egg sandwich ever.... This is Gail Simmon's My Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich from her cookbook, Bringing It Home: Favorite Recipes from a Life of Adventurous Eating. The recipe is available online here. I wasn't sure about the dill pickles and peppadews but I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tuna salad on toasted ciabatta

Thank you for sharing your lovely photos, @ProfessionalHobbit - I'm now very hungry! Which SONY camera did you settle on?

You remind me of the little girl in Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock, explaining what she is doing out of bed on a very bitter night in Quebec, "Papa, j'ai peur pour le persil." - Papa, I fear for the parsley.

I made a Blood Orange & Campari marmalade last year. I used that, along with a splash of fresh orange juice and fresh cranberries to make this stuff for Thanksgiving. I've been enjoying the leftovers with brie and other cheeses.

Toasted ciabatta, spread with Silver Goat Chèvre and topped with a tart and ever so slightly bitter Cranberry-Blood Orange-Campari preserve:

Oh my! I wasn't going to buy more but now I may need them !

I don't usually have a big sweet tooth but I was unusually hungry on a recent TJ's visit and picked up a number of seasonal sweet treats. The little peppermint "Hold the Cone" ice cream cones are tasty little fellows. The very bottom of the cone is pretty much filled with chocolate....to prevent leaks, I'm sure ! 260 calories each. - Note correction below from @patris - the serving size is THREE cones for 260 calories! I've also been enjoying these tiny shortbread cookies - Mini Dark Chocolate Mint Stars A serving of 13 cookies is 120 cal so they can be a more frequent treat than the cones. I can't find these on the TJ's website - Stelle Di Notte "Stars at Night" Cocoa Hazelnut Crispy Cookies made in Italy These are very light and crisp, not terribly sweet. Nice with a cup of coffee. Four cookies for 140 cal.

I spy David Lebovitz's My Paris Kitchen for $2.99 on both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.

The info I've seen attributes price increases to the delays in opening the Washington, Oregon and Northern California (Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties) commercial Dungeness crab seasons in order to give the crabs more time to fill with meat and harden their shells after molting.

Thanks for the reminder. I had a bunch of stuff in my cart but almost forgot to go back and pull the trigger - got in under the wire!

Good for you! I'm afraid I will hear them calling to me from inside the freezer! These got convect bake @ 400F for the first 10 min then, after rotating the tray, I bumped it up to the recommended 425F for another 10 min. I'm thinking about using steam-bake for the next round as they'll be coming direct from the freezer. Will report back when I do.

I'd never made sausage rolls but decided to try the recipe that @Anna N mentioned in response to a sausage roll question. I used the sweet Italian sausage called for in the recipe but seems like a very adaptable recipe. Baked off a few in the CSO and have the rest stashed in the freezer. Oh, and my puff pastry was NOT made especially for me - Trader Joe's sells this stuff to anyone . It's actually a nice all-butter product and I should pick up a few boxes while it's still in stock.

I think this T-shirt is the most food-related gift I received: I also received a number of more beverage-themed gifts: A "Novino-phobia" tote bag, a couple of little decorative items, a Irish whiskey chocolate bar and several nice bottles of bubbles. I also received some Amazon gift cards which will surely go towards kitchen-related stuff.

Turkey was always a Christmas tradition when I was growing up and many of my family still adhere to that. Last year, the cousins who I joined for the holiday served ham for the big Christmas Eve dinner and received so many squawks of "Where's the turkey???" that they resolved never to do that again! Christmas Eve dinner with my cousins for 26 guests - Nibbles: cheeses, salami, crackers, spiced nuts, black bean, avocado, corn & pomegranate salsa with chips Main: roast turkey with stuffing (actually 2 turkeys), gravy (mass quantities) mashed potatoes, green bean/mushroom casserole, Swedish meatballs, lefse and lingonberry sauce Dessert: Homemade Christmas cookies - my favorites of the 9+ varieties: kolaczki, chrusciki, spritz, Russian tea cakes and peanut butter pinwheels Christmas dinner for 10, with the same cousins - Nibbles - same as above plus marinated, grilled shrimp Main - broiled, maple-glazed salmon, rosemary roasted fingerling potatoes, green beans with almonds, Brussels sprout, apple & pomegranate salad with blue cheese vinaigrette Dessert - eggnog gelato with fresh berries and more Christmas cookies

Smitten Kitchen's Mushroom Bourguignon, which came to me via the Food52 Genius Recipes cookbook that I recently I picked up for a song when it was an Amazon/Kindle deal (still listed @ $2.99, at least for me in the US) Served over Instant Pot polenta, using my grandmother's dishes.

I agree! Your loved ones know you so well - no doubt some of them have been the beneficiaries of your culinary adventures and hope to encourage further efforts!

A number of people mentioned making orangecello/arancello over in the Limoncello topic. Since the method is quite similar, you may find some helpful discussion over there. I only tried making a small batch of the orange version and ended up with a layer of orange oil on top - maybe because I used more peels than recommended. The flavor was very nice though!

Wow! Bespoke puff pastry - I'm ever so impressed!

I kinda think you're going to have to eyeball it to some extent. The 9oz box of Birdseye frozen creamed spinach says it contains two 1/2 cup servings. The recipes I've seen for using fresh spinach to make creamed spinach are all over the place as far as the yields go and some only call for "bunches" of spinach. Of those that actually specify the spinach in weights, I've found a couple that use 2 1/4 lb fresh spinach leaves to make 8 servings and another that uses 10 oz fresh spinach for 4 servings, and some that use 30 oz fresh spinach for 10 servings. Those are all pretty consistent, and although they don't state the serving size, you'd probably be fairly safe in assuming something around 1/2 cup.

Eggnog French Toast I put a glug of bourbon and plenty of freshly grated nutmeg into the egg-eggnog mixture and another spoonful of bourbon into the maple syrup. Feeling festive !

I was wondering that as well. I do see the value of having a kitchen-dedicated tablet. I've got a bunch of Kindle cookbooks on my iPad and it's great for reading but I find it a nuisance to go find it, make sure it's charged, change the settings so it doesn't power off as quickly, put it in a bag or cover the screen with plastic wrap, etc. each time I want to actually use it in the kitchen. Lazy, I know ! Just last night, I pulled out an old iPad that I'd given to my mom and I'm going to update it with the cookbooks and try keeping it handy in the kitchen.