blue_dolphin

Seasonal breakfast bruschetta. Cubes of roasted butternut squash and some (not very) blue cheese warmed together on toasted ciabatta. A few pickled cranberries alongside. Later in the day, I would have rubbed the bread with some garlic and had a glass of wine with this but coffee was fine, too.

Based on this answer from the Periscope help page, one would think that the live feeds would be viewable. "...You can also watch videos on the web and with other mobile browsers. If a broadcaster tweets out a live broadcast link, click on it and you'll be able to watch on your browser. Periscope on Web doesn't have chatting or heart capabilities at this time...." That said, my experience was the same as yours, huiray, with Safari and Firefox - audio only, no video on the live feed but it worked fine on the completed video. I was able to watch the live feed my iPad with the Periscope app. It was fun to watch, but I was getting worried for gfron1 during the busy parts and wished I could reach in and offer some help!

My spell checker would certainly agree with you. I had to go back and edit my post to get it right....or wrong....or whatever...to use oven as a verb !

Thanks for the Crepes, a while back, I also tried those so-called Heavenly, sounds-like San Marzano tomatoes and found them bland and sort of mealy in texture. They were indeed a disappointment. I'll be interested in hearing how you do with dissection of the TJ's Cheese Spiral. The outermost rings are fairly loose and should come apart easily. The inner ones seemed a bit more stuck together, but perhaps by the time you get down to that point, it will be small enough to just cook the remainder. From yesterday's trip....first off, no turkey dinner potato chips at the TJ's I went to. Sold out and no more on the way, according to the staff. They did have these Sriracha Lattice Cut Kettle Cooked Potato Chips but I did not bite. Maybe next time. I tried this blue cheese from Germany: The TJ's label calls it "Grand Blue" but it seems very similar to this Grand Noir from the Cambazola people. It's covered in black wax and I can read "Grand Noir" printed on the wax on the piece I bought. It's firmer than the regular, Brie-style Cambazola that I'm more familiar with. The blue-cheese flavor is a bit stronger but it's still on the mild/creamy side of the blue-veined cheese spectrum. It was $12.99/lb. I had a bit with some of the pickled cranberries and butternut squash that I made last weekend and a hunk of crusty bread and called it lunch. Possibly from the same folks in Greece as the Cheese Spiral, I got these sundried tomato/cheese phyllo triangles. They are a bit bigger than the spinach or mushroom phyllo triangles that I get at TJ's. That means more of the rich filling and means that I probably wouldn't want to eat too many at a time but it's easy to remove one or two from the packaging and heat them up, as I did today. I liked them, but they are rich. Maybe rich enough to turn a salad into a meal. One was really enough but I ate 2. Also, I have learned a new vocabulary word from some recently purchased frozen items: Ovenable Here it is again: Cracks me up! Since I removed and ovened my 2 triangles on a baking sheet, I did not oven the tray itself so I can't verify the claim.

hummingbird kiss, that last post brought tears to my eyes! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, too! Last night, I received my Thanksgiving assignment - pies! Not my forte but at least I don't need to worry about keeping things hot when sit-down time is delayed by hours! Old: Pumpkin-pecan layered pie modified from this recipe in Southern Living. A layer of pecan pie type filling on the bottom and a creamy pumpkin layer on top. New: Apple Cranberry Crumble Pie My lime tree is loaded so I may make some sort of lime dessert as well. Or maybe just a bottle of my lime-cello - my favorite dessert after a heavy meal, a little glass of something tasty to sip!

Emergency duck legs - I love it! I have flashlights, hand cranked radios, bottled water, peanut butter, canned soup and granola bars but I am clearly missing a key item in my emergency supply cabinet ! Host's note: this topic is has been split to allow our servers to work efficiently; the next segment may be found here.

Wow, BKEats! That was a whole Egullet foodblog in 4 posts! Very fun to read. Now I need to go eat!

I like the idea of the liquid smoke (gfweb) and chipotle (gulfporter) additions!

I've been making the recipe for Nikki's sweet potatoes from 101 cookbooks for years now. Dead easy and always a hit. Not too sweet, just a tablespoon of maple syrup. Coconut milk makes them creamy and they are topped with unsweetened coconut and macadamia nuts. I've sometimes used other nuts instead.

Ditto. I'd love to see comments utilized for the recipes. For me, numerical ratings would not add value but I'd have no problem just ignoring them if they were of value for others.

I roasted up some little cubes of butternut squash this AM and added them to my hot cereal along with raisins, nuts and maple syrup. Very tasty. Picture over in the breakfast thread in case you want to see a bowl of oatmeal with squash !

Chilly morning here. This hit the spot and warmed me up nicely: Hot multigrain cereal, cooked with cinnamon and nutmeg. Served with roasted butternut squash, raisins and walnuts. Sweetened with just a bit of maple syrup. Cup of joe alongside.

Yes, that cranberry color is so festive, isn't it? I was a little disappointed that some of the cranberries sort of exploded (as they do) in the brine rather than all remaining intact. For some reason, I thought maybe the acid from the vinegar might help keep them all whole but that was not entirely the case. As a condiment, it's probably not a big deal, and there are certainly whole berries in there but I think I'll try to be more gentle with the heat and stirring with the next batch.

Yesterday, I made some butternut squash pickles (posted over here in the winter squash cook-off thread) and also tried some pickled cranberries, both small pilot batches to see if they'd make good holiday gift add-ins. I used this recipe for the cranberries but doubled the ginger and grated it instead of slicing so the ginger flavor is quite punchy at the moment. I suppose that may mellow over a bit of curing time. I only used 2 bags of cranberries instead of 3 so I ended up with a good amount of leftover brine or as I'm calling it, cranberry-ginger shrub. I already tried it in the cranberry shrub cocktail recipe that David Leibovitz posted the other day and it was quite tasty indeed. And the cranberries themselves are very nice with some sharp cheddar and crusty bread.

Cooked up a few crustless mini-quiches in the cuisi steam oven: And had one for breakfast, along with some cuisi-toast and grape tomatoes:

The best explanation that I've come upon for the relatively recent guidance to avoid distilled water in steam irons is to avoid producing superheated water (due to the lack of nucleation sites) that could bump and spray the user with steam when the iron is moved. I would think that the average home iron, even if refilled with purified water, would end up with enough particulates or surface irregularities inside that this is unlikely but perhaps not. And I wouldn't think the oven would be subject to the sort of movement that an iron would but maybe everyone is just being very careful lest they be sued.

I bought the French Champagne at my local Total Wine shop. It's a bottle that I generally reserve for gift purposes. TJ's used to carry the mini toasts but I have not seen them there lately. These (made in France) were purchased at Sprouts. The TJ's pâté comes in a little black loaf pan. It is nice and small enough that you wouldn't do irreparable damage even if you ate it all. I usually like a more rustic pâté but today was about making it lovely. My former boss was French. I visited his home right after his family had suffered a tragic loss and the menu above is what he served us that day. It was a lesson to me that I am implementing now. Edited to add that the cornichons are from TJ's too.

I had never heard of pickled squash until David Ross mentioned it and went to Google. Though cucumbers, melons and squash are sort of in the same family, so it makes sense. I was looking for something else to include in holiday gifts and figured I'd give these a try. I think the cooked one has potential if the flavors mellow out over the suggested 2 week curing time. I can see serving it with cheese or as a condiment with roast pork or poultry. Not sure about the quick one. Although the brine is very simple so it would be easy to scale down (no counting out 2 peppercorns, 1 clove and half an allspice berry!) and just make a little with some leftover squash.

Sometimes you just need a treat: Vive la France! Trader Joe's Truffle Mousse Pâté on whole wheat mini toasts with cornichons and Champagne. All from France.

I made small pilot batches of both of the pickle methods that I linked to above using butternut squash. The green topped jar in the middle is the quick refrigerator pickle with onions and dried chiles (the recipe called for pequin, I used del arbol). The squash is cut into 1/8" slices, boiled for 2 minutes then cooled before being packed into a jar with the sliced onion and chiles and covered with the boiling brine. These should be ready to try tomorrow. They have just a bit of crispness to them. This recipe only calls for 2t sugar for 12 oz of squash. The jar on the left is from the other recipe that cooks 1/2" pieces of squash in a brine with a good bit of sugar and typical "warm" spices (black peppercorns, cloves, allspice berries, cinnamon sticks and a bay leaf) until they are fork tender before packing the jars and processing. The recipe recommends letting these cure at least 2 weeks. I also made some pickled cranberries and thought it might be pretty to pack a few berries in with the squash. The result is the reddish looking jar to the right of the quick pickles. The processing time for the squash recipe was 20 min and the cranberries, which had already been cooked in brine but not processed, sort of fell apart. That was a little too much cooking for them! I'll report back later with a taste test.

It is challenging to combine shippable, protective packaging and lovely presentation. You could wrap the vacuum sealed pouches in tissue paper and tie with a ribbon, or with brown paper and string with little hangtags identifying the contents. If they are the right size, you could drop them into brown or white paper lunch bags, fold over the tops and close them with a pretty sticker or piece of bright colored tape. Or keep everything functional but print out a pretty "tasting menu" that describes the contents and place that on top of everything so it's the first thing your friends will see when they open up the box.

hummingbirdkiss, I admire your fearlessness in taking on such a big project and your creativity in making it so personal. The countertops look beautiful and I love, love the real coin backsplash. Your enthusiasm is contagious and makes me look forward to more posts please do continue to share when you have time. Thank you so much for posting!

That sounds really good. I placed an order for RG beans yesterday and included a lb of Yellow Eyes to try this out. I'm a little skeered about the idea of making my own salt pork (recovering vegetarian who has no idea where to even buy a pork belly ) but I'll give that part some thought as well. Thanks for the link there, too.

I enjoyed reading this article, The House that Julia Built, in the real estate section of the NYT about the cottage that Julia and Paul built in the south of France in the mid-1960s. It's apparently listed on the open market for the first time (~$880,000) with her original kitchen mostly intact. Photos show the same sort of pegboard as in her kitchen now in the Smithsonian. Lots of Julia threads here. Mods should feel free to combine this with one of them.

Yes, that might be good. When I saw it in the store the other day, it just looked so odd to me to see nuts bobbing in a jar of brown liquid. It did not appeal to me as I always like nuts to be as crispy and crunchy as possible. At $6.99/jar, I don't think I'm going to try it but I'd certainly be curious to hear what others think.