blue_dolphin

My dishwasher does not use a heating element for drying. It relies on the residual heat from the last rinse and a small fan that runs for a short period of time so I rather doubt it's using a massive amount of electricity. Where I live, water is not expensive but we are in a pretty severe drought so I try to be mindful. I have solar panels on the roof that generate more electricity than I use.

I have the same or maybe a 14-cup and have also considered giving it up for a smaller one. Like you, I use it to cut butter into flour for pastry dough. Also for hummus and a number of chili, herb or nut pastes or sauces I want to have some texture vs super smooth from a blender. I have never used any of the slicing discs not do I intend to. My little Mouli Juilenne takes care of cheese grating. I generally like knife work but sometimes pull out a mandolin if I have a bunch of slicing to do. Mine is stored right at the front of a lower cabinet so it's not too much trouble to pull out. When I learned that the dishwasher uses less water than hand washing and started putting everything in there, my food processor hatred eased up significantly. It helps that I have the drawer-style dishwasher so I run one of those small loads almost every day. I won't get another big processor but I'll keep this one until it breaks.

I think it might be intended to be a fudgy candy, as @heidih suggested. I searched through the dulce de leche cookbook I have, Dulce de Leche: Recipes, Stories and Sweet Traditions (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), and it does not mention dulce de leche solido as an ingredient. Some of the recipes call for a thicker confectionary version, dulce de leche repostero, and there's a recipe for that but it's still a thick spread, not a solid like your photos. Hopefully, a truly knowledgeable person will come forth!

Tomato soup and grilled cheese The soup is the Creamy Tomato Soup (No Cream) from I Dream of Dinner. Instead of cream, tahini is stirred in at the end. Perhaps it was the canned tomatoes I used but the tahini wasn't enough to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. Also more garlicky than I like for a tomato soup. I ended up adding milk, which helped with the acidity. I might repeat with less garlic or not. The grilled cheese with Brussels sprouts and apple was something my cousin told me her daughter made. Sounded similar to this. It was good.

I'd love some leftover chili for breakfast! Not so sure about soggy cornbread but would love to know more. Is it all warmed up like a bowl of grits or is the buttermilk at fridge temp?

Crispy Salt and Pepper French Toast Savory Cheese-Crusted French Toast With Garlic and Parmesan Recipe I've made a few savory versions of stuffed French toast with spinach & mushrooms or ham & cheese. @shain shared an interesting one with green Thai curry paste here.

What are refrigerator cookies? Are they chilled rather than baked? …or maybe they need to be served cold? Edited to add that the dough for her caramel surprise snickerdoodles from the new book is to be refrigerated for 1 to 3 days. Does that count? The dough for the chocolate truffle cookies (also in the new book) gets formed into a log and refrigerated for up to 24 hrs before being sliced. I’m guessing that doesn’t count either?

If she can handle the nuts, you could consider making a super thin brittle, the kind you pull and stretch and turn so the candy in between the nuts is almost paper thin. It will pretty much melt in your mouth. Needs to be kept very dry and of course it’s extremely fragile so it wouldn’t be a good candidate for shipping. It’s the way I like to make my brittle.

High proof Everclear that's used in Nina's nog isn't available in California so I've never been able to try that one. Plus, I kinda like the flavors of the alcoholic ingredients to come through. That said, if I happen to find a bottle of that high proof stuff, I will give it a try. I mixed a half batch (6 eggs, makes a little under 2 quarts) of Jeffrey Morganthaler's Clyde Common's Tequila-Sherry Eggnog, made with Añejo tequila and Amontillado sherry. I made quite a bit of this last year for gifts and it was very well received. I noticed that he wrote an article for the Daily Beast, Eggnog Haters: You Need to Make this Delicious Recipe, in which he suggests a Manhattan variation with bourbon and Carpano Antica vermouth so I think I'll mix up a batch of that, too. Debating between using rye as I prefer in a Manhattan or bourbon as suggested. Bourbon might go better with the cream. I will report back 😉 He also has recipes on his website for a basic egg nog with brandy and spiced rum and a non-alcoholic egg nog.

I haven't eaten Saltines in ages but reading through this thread brings back some sweet memories of childhood snacks and lunches that featured buttered Saltines or little Saltine PB&J sandwiches. My mom remained a Saltine devotee until the end, switching to the unsalted tops in later years due to blood pressure concerns. They were always on my "Mom Food" shopping list when she came to visit, along with the specific type of American cheese slices she liked to fold into Saltine-sized squares and sandwich between 2 of those crackers. She made them for me when I was tiny and I made them for her near the end when almost nothing else appealed to her. A full circle of Saltines!

I’m not a sheet pan meal fan. I don’t doubt that it can work but it’s so dependent on aligning the ripeness/moisture level, cut size and distribution of ingredients on the pan. If I try, I always pile the ingredients separately so I can easily remove anything getting cooked too quickly and that kind of defeats the whole idea of cooking things together. Haha! That made me laugh, too. I love artichokes but not prepping them.

This recipe for a cranberry vanilla breakfast buckle got a lot of positive reviews when this book was covered by the baking cookbook group. Maybe I’ll start there!

Thanks for bringing this up again. And thanks to @Alex for sharing in the first place. I see the sessions are available to view on YouTube so I can catch up with them that way.

Not sure how you feel about Melissa Clark or if you've seen her new book, Dinner in One (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)? This was last month's cookbook club book. I'd pre-ordered the book but it didn't click with me and I only cooked a few recipes but there were others in the group who were delighted with it for ease in getting meals on the table with minimal fuss, though most allowed that they'd needed to tweak the recipes to add flavor. In her interview on the Salt & Spine podcast, Melissa described carefully combing through each recipe to make sure every nonessential ingredient, bowl, pan, step and transfer had been eliminated. Seemed to me that process kind of sucked the life out of the recipes. Maybe it was because this book followed Falastin in our lineup. That one has all sorts of little flourishes that make the recipes special. On the other hand, Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner is even more minimal than Dinner in One and I love that one. I decided the Melissa Clark books, Dinner, Dinner in an Instant and Comfort in an Instant give me a good sampling of her simple recipes and I've also got her Dinner in French and In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite so I'm going to let this one go. On a completely different tangent, I'm reading and enjoying another 2022 release: Jeremy Lee's Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many. That's an Amazon UK link as it offers a "Look Inside" sample. I ordered my copy from Blackwells after reading this interview with Mr. Lee that Russ Parsons wrote: Jeremy Lee: ‘I want to encourage people to go into the kitchen and in half an hour make something absolutely delicious’. Edited to add - Here's a little quote from the introduction of the book that I liked: I don't see a pub date yet for a US or Canadian edition and I'm not sure how it would fly with the US cookbook buyers who want brilliantly colored and styled photos of each dish. This book is largely illustrated with pen and ink drawings, which I find charming. Actual photographs are few and far between and most look like completely unstyled snapshots taken of a pot or plate on a drizzly day. Each chapter begins with an essay (which may be long or short), followed by a recipe or six. This makes for great reading as you can easily sit down and treat yourself to a chapter and get a bit of writing and a bit of cooking. The chapters are organized alphabetically, which means more or less randomly: Chard is followed by Chocolate and then Equipment. Aside from the chapter title page drawing, the only illustration in the Equipment chapter is a photo of crock full of wooden spoons. Speaking of spoons, metric measurements are standard here, aside from "soup spoons" which he uses quite a lot. I haven't cooked anything from the book yet. The griddled chicken livers, bacon and sage (half a strip of bacon topped with a sage leaf and piece of chicken liver, skewered and grilled, then brushed with olive oil & red wine vinegar) are first on my list. I've got another pile of 2022 releases that I've barely looked at so I am banned from purchasing any more until I make some major progress. If anyone wants to hear about any of these, let me know and it will give me a place to start. And yes, I know I have a problem 🙃

We actually have a whole Saltine topic over here - Saltines: Hopelessly Square - with some good comments.

In my vacation rental experience, one reason the knives are crap is at least partly due to the lack of a decent cutting surface. I’ve seen glass, ceramic, hard plastic and nary a knife-friendly cutting board in some otherwise well-equipped kitchens. All the sharpening in the world won’t last long under those conditions.

I’m surprised at that. Kitchen knives in checked baggage should not be a problem. Sheath or pack in a knife roll labeled “sharp kitchen knives” so they won’t harm anyone searching the luggage. Knives in a carry-on? No.

Maybe that roughness is just what's needed to stand up to all that cream and sugar at cold temps!

I've always thought of saltines as bomb shelter provisions. I'm pretty sure they were stacked up when we had to practice evacuating into a nearby shelter when I was a school kid.

I’m definitely interested! From the book title, it sounds like it would make a manageable amount.

I could go for that!

When you say you remove the ventricles, does that mean you are only eating the small upper chambers (atria) and discard the muscular lower part (ventricles) or does ventricle have another meaning here? Edited to add that these look like ventricles to me.

I agree and the second recipe I linked to above (on Leites Culinaria) is from that book. When it comes to go-withs, one could poll every chili lover on eGullet or anywhere else and come up with tons of options and little perfect concordance so I'd say the OP should go with what she or her audience likes and can get easily.

Yes! Taught to us by our guide on a hiking (tramping?) trip down under many years ago. Milo was the hot beverage and was tasty, warming and fun at the end of a wet, chilly day. Probably not so much at home at my age 🙃

Nice catch, @FauxPas! I didn't even try to read sideways! Target offered Tim Tams for a while but I haven't seen them there in a long time. One thing. Doing an "Aussie-style chocolate crème sandwich cookie slam" doesn't quite have the same ring as a Tim Tam Slam 🤣