blue_dolphin

I keep a spare sewing gauge in my knife drawer: I find it very handy for measuring the thickness of a piece of fish or meat and as a sense-check when slicing and dicing. I have a plain old ruler and a variety of implements with a ruler etched or printed on them but I find the little slider on this gadget and the mm/inch markings useful to gauge things. Indispensible? I dunno. But very handy!

Well, since I don't have an Instant Pot, I have to make up easier experiments with my popsicle molds ! I am also tempted to try some Vietnamese iced coffee pops but I didn't have another use in mind for the rest of the can of sweetened condensed milk so I tabled that idea until I have enough limes on my tree to make another batch of the lime pie pops. Also until my freezer is less full of popsicles - I need to have people over an serve them popsicles for dessert!

I can imagine this experience has been very frustrating - after spending a good chunk of money, it's reasonable to expect a quality product. I agree with you that the Blendtec doesn't function well with small volumes and I was frustrated by this as well. I am pleased that that they introduced the smaller Twister jar that does a much better job handling small volumes of chili pastes, etc. and I think it should be a part of any standard package Blendtec sells. That said, I'm happy with my Blendtec. I've never had the base "jump around" on the counter in any way. If I run a jar full of ice, the jar itself will jolt a bit for the first few revolutions but the base stays solid. I use it for a lot of vegetable purees and soups and find they come out perfectly smooth. As daveb said, I hope you will find a blender that works for you.

My last effort on the sour cream/strawberry/brown sugar combo (sweetening the sour cream with a bit more brown sugar - still significantly less than the original recipe - and including some crushed ginger snaps into the dark brown sugar mix for crunch) was OK but still not exactly what I wanted with respect to that sugar crunch. I could experiment with some larger sugar crystals or making some brown sugar brittle but I think dipping the tops of the pops into some turbinado sugar before serving will be good enough for this round of experiments: Next up is a test of an iced coffee pop. I wanted this to be like an icy iced coffee, not a coffee ice cream, although that certainly has its charm! I used approximately equal parts of coffee and whole milk plus a bit of simple syrup to sweeten it just a little. I piped a little bit of Trader Joe's Nutella-like Cocoa Almond Spread into the molds, alternately with the cold coffee mixture and was pleasantly surprised that it didn't all sink to the bottom but stayed distributed in the pops. I did chill the coffee mixture until it was almost frozen before filling the molds. Without much fat or sugar, these are on the icy side. Not sure others would like them but I'll probably make a few from time to time when I have leftover coffee. Perfect for those days when it's just too hot for a second cup of coffee! Last up are some yogurt pops. One of my favorite combos is mango, blueberries and yogurt, lightly sweetened with maple syrup so I made these: I used 2 cups of Greek-style yogurt, 3 T maple syrup and alternated that in the molds with diced mango (Trader Joe's frozen mango chunks, thawed and diced) and fresh blueberries (cut in half). I'm happy with these, too. Not too sweet, something I'd feel comfortable having for a snack. For comparison, the Paletas recipe for yogurt and berry pops uses a 1/2 c sugar + 1/2 c water syrup to sweeten 1 1/2 c yogurt and adds an additional 2T honey, which would make a much sweeter treat. I don't think the mouthfeel of my pops suffered from the reduced sugar but someone accustomed to commercially sweetened yogurts might not like the yogurt tang that comes through on these.

Pasta again. I added some zucchini from today's CSA box to the slow roasted tomato sauce I made last week:

There are silicone pop molds available. The Zoku molds like this seem to be popular. Upthread, disposable paper cups were proposed. The Paletas book suggests using shot glasses or any vessel that isn't too wide and has smooth sides.

Here we have strawberry, sour cream and brown sugar pops. As mentioned above, I thought a sour cream-strawberry combination sounded good. I remember the first time a friend served a bowl of perfect strawberries with small dishes of sour cream and brown sugar for dipping. So simple and so good! I tried making this combo into a popsicle, using the cherry, sour cream, tequila pops from Paletas as a starting point: I wanted the three components to stay separate but still have a bit of each in every bite. I reduced the sugar in the sour cream mix from 1/2 cup to 1/8 cup. I was concerned this might make it too icy. The texture was a little firmer, but still good however reducing the sugar that much made this component a bit bland. For the berries, I chopped them a bit and used about 1/3 of the original amount of sugar, plus 1/4 t balsamic vinegar and heated them just until they barely began to soften. That worked out very well, and yielded firm, flavorful bits in the pops. For the sugar, I used a mix of mostly dark brown sugar and a little turbinado sugar, thinking some of those larger crystals might retain some crunch. I tried 2 variations, stirring the sugar into the sour cream mix (on the right above) and layering it separately in the molds (pictured on the left). The separately layered sugar had a slightly more distinct flavors but the sour cream base tasted bland due to the reduced sugar. The mixed-in sugar compensated for the reduced sugar in the sour cream mix and made for a tastier pop, even if the flavors were less distinct. I'll give this one more go, using a combination of stirring in a bit of brown sugar and layering a bit more in with the berries. I might try adding some ginger snap or molasses cookie crumbs with the added sugar to see if it might add that little bit of crunch you get when dipping the fresh berries themselves.

Roasted chicken (Zuni cafe recipe), potato salad (Red Norland potatoes from my CSA box, cooked in the pressure cooker as inspired by recent egullet discussions) with tomato and fresh corn (also from the CSA box).

I can't say I'll make a linzer torte any time soon but thank you for posting this and providing me with a lovely bit of Sunday morning reading: With a flair for music making and baking from the NYT in 1991 and Richard Stoltzman's Linzer Torte from The Splendid Table. Queued up some nice clairnet duets to listen to as well!

It's been unusually hot here and I've been reluctant to run the oven and the AC at the same time but I really wanted to try the recipe for slow roasted tomato sauce that ElainaA posted in the gardening thread and Okanagancook mentioned during Shelby's recent blog. I had a bunch of little tomatoes from my CSA box so I got them into the oven early this AM and was able to enjoy some pasta for lunch. Ready for the oven: Finished roasting: Ready for lunch: Some of the tomatoes fell apart in the oven and I thought maybe I should smoosh the rest to make more of a sauce. I'm glad I didn't as each bite of one released a burst of fresh, hot, acidic tomato flavor. Given the 3 hr roasting time, my whole house smells like garlic and now, I do too!

Sour cream, cherry and tequila ice pops from Fany Gerson's "Paletas" These are very tasty. A little tang from the sour cream balancing the sweet cherries. I love to sneak frozen cherries direct from the freezer as a sweet treat and I was a little disappointed that they were cooked down with sugar to almost a jam-like consistency and marinated in the tequila. It absolutely works in this combination but I missed the firm texture and fresher flavor of the plain fruit. I think this sour cream pop would pair very well with strawberries, using some of the berry-infused tequila por mi amante instead of plain tequila. Mmmmm!

Anna N, If you make any of the Paletas book recipes, please do share. The lime pie pops are very good. I've made them several times. Another recipe that intrigues me (not in the book) is the Mexican Street-Corn Paletas that Francis Lam wrote up after an afternoon with Fany Gerson. My popsicles, well, last batch that I'd just unmolded and left on the top shelf don't look as pretty but I think a few can be salvaged. Thankfully, the melted stuff stayed confined to the waxed paper lined baking sheet and didn't decorate everything on the shelves below. And the other pops had been packed up into freezer bags on the lower shelves and were fine. Sort of silly to complain about melted ice pops when there were several crews on my street working up on the poles all that time! I will make more careful note of these outages in the future and on hot days, I'll consider getting some dry ice for the freezer in case the outage runs longer than anticipated.

We have warmer weather predicted for the next few days and I've had a lot of melons in my CSA box so to use them up I've stocked my freezer with melon popsicles: Round 1 was Saticoy melon (similar to canteloupe but sweeter) and lime: 4 cups Saticoy melon, ~1/3 cup lime juice, 1/4 cup homemade lime cordial and 1/4 cup homemade melon liqueur The mixture was rather foamy coming out of the blender and I noticed that it separated a bit. I sort of tried to hide it in the picture by putting the tops down in the glass, but you can see the separation. For the other batches, I stirred the mix a bit to de-aerate it and used a gravy separator to leave the top layer of foam behind. Round 2 was yellow watermelon-margarita popsicles: I used 4 cups of yellow watermelon, 2 oz tequila, 1 oz Cointreau, 2 oz homemade lime cordial. I tossed in a few cubes of pink watermelon for color. Round 3 was pink watermelon and rosé wine with sort of a sangria-twist. I intended to just use the watermelon and wine but I decided to add a little more fruit. I ended up using about 4 cups of pink watermelon, 1 and a half cup of rosé wine and the juice of 2 smallish oranges and half a lime. I added diced orange, yellow watermelon and cranberry. Cherry would have been nice but I didn't have any. Now, here's the sad part. I started this post around 8 this AM, right after I unmolded the last batch and took them out for their photo. My post was interrupted when the power went out. Ah, I forgot, planned outage from 8 - 4. Really not the best day for this since it was 97 by 10:30 AM. I came home from some errands around 3 PM and decided to risk a quick reach into the freezer for a popsicle. I had to eat it REALLY fast as they were almost melted already - they were on the top shelf in a rather elderly side-by-side. And the power didn't come back un until after 7 PM. I haven't opened the fridge or freezer since and I'm wondering if I will have any popsicles left or just big blobs of frozen fruity ice! Anyone else making popsicles? I want to try to recipe from the Paletas cookbook with cherries and sour cream next. Depending on how warm things got and how my fridge recovers, I may have plenty of room in the freezer for more!

My dinners are not worthy of this thread but I snapped a picture tonight so you shall see it. Missing my mom, who passed away recently, I made one of her favorite summer suppers: Chicken macaroni salad (elbows, leftover Zuni Cafe recipe roasted chicken tossed with mayo, onions, celery, bell pepper and olives), corn on the cob and a slice of bread subbing for the Parker House roll that should be with this meal. Simple food and good memories!

Second course: refreshing melon drink with newspaper on the patio: I made lime-melon popsicles (4 cups Saticoy melon, ~1/3 cup lime juice, 1/4 cup homemade lime cordial and 1/4 cup homemade melon liqueur) After filling the molds, I had some left over so I added some ice cubes and gave it another wiz in the blender. Very nice!

Another fan of thin, crispy bacon here. Usually cheap, too. Today's breakfast had a little bacon but it was really about the lovely Celebrity tomato from my CSA box: Also, from the box is some supers sweet and fragrant Saticoy melon.

Just wanted to thank you for this reminder about tagging and making notes in EYB. I do take my time going through new cookbooks but tend to make only mental notes that are increasingly fleeting! I'm not sure I can approach your impressive level of organization but I can certainly make a start with better use of these features.

This was my understanding as well. I've only had one use for it, a "smoked" salmon spread. I remember that the person who gave me the recipe told me that I'd only need to buy it once and it would last forever. I did indeed use the same bottle for about 15 years, until it unfortunately broke in the Northridge earthquake.

One of my former coworkers used to eat Oreos regularly. Almost ritualistically - 2 oreos each afternoon before he went to the gym. No more, no less. Anytime I spotted a new flavor, I bought a package, tasted a couple and passed them off to my coworker so I got to try them without the risk of eating a whole package. He was happy to try all the flavors but didn't want any double stuffed, triple decker or chocolate covered versions. Something of a purist there. I thought the peanut butter ones had potential but the filling was too sweet, not surprising, but they'd be good if it had more of a salty peanut buttery taste. The cookie dough and marshmallow crispy flavors tasted like their names would suggest. I recall trying 2 types of mint flavor. One was pretty good and the other not but I can't remember the specifics. The raspberry flavor seemed very artificial. Lemon was OK. I never tried the birthday cake flavor since my coworker told me that he had tried them and didn't like them.

From left to right: Best Foods, Dukes, Trader Joes: Like gfweb said, who eats this stuff with a spoon? Not me. But I did try some tastes. Dukes and Trader Joes are both a bit more yellow than Best Foods. Like gfweb reported, Dukes has somewhat heavier, more oily (maybe eggy?) texture. A little more like a homemade mayo. I find my homemade mayo too heavy for my standard comfort food tuna or egg salad sandwiches. Dukes wasn't that heavy, but leaned a little in that direction as compared with the lighter, more fluffy texture of Best Foods. To me, Best Foods also tasted a little more salty and sour. Trader Joes was very similar to Dukes in color. I thought the texture and flavor of Trader Joes were midway between Best Foods and Dukes but I believe they are different. All three tasted fine with some tomato on toast. Having grown up with Hellman's, Best Foods is my standard west coast mayo but I'd use any of these three on a sandwich. I boiled up some eggs this AM and I could try mixing up some little batches of egg salad but I'm not sure I want to go through the trouble. I'll post if I do. Curious to hear from rotuts. Edited to add: Of these 3, Best Foods is the only one to add sugar. I tried to taste for differences in sweetness but couldn't really pick up a strong difference.

Those carrots do look good, Anna. I should give that recipe a try. I had leftover spiralized potato pancakes and a couple of scrambled eggs. Could have used a side of Shelby's tomatoes!

We usually had Roman Meal for sandwiches, too. Assuming it was available from the "Day-Old Bread Store" where all our baked goods came from. I had the same experience reported upthread of being put off the egg salad sandwiches that I liked by the, "Ewwww, stinky! Who's got the egg sandwiches?" comments of my peers. Like MelissaH, I remember the daily "lunch counts." We were asked to raise our hand if we planned to purchase lunch from the cafeteria, the teacher recorded the total and our room number on a slip of paper and dispatched a student to the cafeteria. This duty was highly coveted as it offered the opportunity to dilly dally in the halls for as long as one could. I think the teachers got dinged if their count was late as they seemed to find the whole thing an annoyance that got in the way of teaching. Cafeteria lunches were an occasional treat for us. 25 cents when I was in third grade and I think inflation had pushed it up to 65 cents by the time I graduated from high school. The elementary and high school shared the same cafeteria. All the meals, including soups were cooked on-site by the cafeteria ladies. There was a fair usage of canned fruits and vegetables but the mid-winter fresh produce aisles in the grocery stores were pretty sparce at that time in the wilds of northern NY. I think they did a decent job of serving hot, nourishing meals with what they had to work with.

This discussion piqued my interest so this AM, I ordered a small container of Duke's. Amazon tells me that it's scheduled to arrive by tomorrow at 8 PM. I will compare it to Trader Joe's and my usual, Best Foods. I'd have to recruit others to make it into a blind or double-blind study. I'm sure the question would come up and I don't want to admit to anyone that I paid $6.99 for an 8 oz bottle of mayo !

I woke up this morning in such a panic! I'd been dreaming of tomatoes. A tomato nightmare! Heaps and heaps of beautiful homegrown tomatoes like Shelby has been showing us. Except that they were all in my house. Covering every surface. And every time I turned around there were more of them! I knew it was my responsibility to put them up but I had absolutely no idea where to begin or how to go about it and no one to ask. And there were more of them every minute. And all the garden work was going to be wasted if I didn't figure something out right away. Yikes - it was a glimpse into Shelby's world and I was clearly not up to the task. Shelby, I'm in awe of all you are doing!

Sorry for not describing the cookies! They are little shortbread nuggets coated in a layer of confectioner's sugar. Given their small size, that's a lot of sugar for a small volume of cookie so they are quite sweet. But that layer of sugar also has a good bit of tartness. Not sure if that's just citric acid or if there are other "natural key lime flavors" in the sugar layer but the overall taste is sweet-sour, tempered by a bit of buttery cookie. For me, the sweetness of these guys is sort of a good thing as it limits my consumption. They are a nice sweet treat but I'm happy to stop after 2 or 3. I've made some lemon-rosemary pressed cookies that are much less sweet but I could nibble away a whole plateful over the course of a few hours! Also, an update on that TJ's pinot rosé. I just made a TJ's run to restock and learned that it's no longer available for reorder so whatever is in your local stores is it. I bought a case of it and then picked out a few bottles of other rosés to audition for my next "house rosé." Sorry for recommending something that won't be available for long but such is the nature of Trader Joes!