abooja

I've been asked to contribute rugelach to Thanksgiving dinner at my sister-in-law's house. I'll bake several dozen each of apricot-walnut and raspberry-chocolate. As I've recently been forced to remove gluten from my diet, I will also bake some sort of portable gluten-free treat to sustain me through a grueling three day tour of Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. Oatmeal raisin cookies, in all likelihood.

No, it's fine (well, as fine as it is for anyone). "Glutamate" isn't wheat gluten. Just one last comment on this subject... While I realize that glutamate isn't the same thing as gluten, I was under the impression that it was sometimes derived from wheat gluten. Apparently, this is no longer the case. My apologies for the distraction. Oh, and thanks for starting this discussion. hzrt8w's description of YangZhou fried rice sounds like precisely the type I enjoy the most. I'm going to have to give it another shot.

I thought that MSG was a no no for gluten intolerant folks.

Glutino honey nut cereal. I spit out the one spoonful I tried. Vile. And, at $5 a box, expensive bird food.

With the exception of an outright ban on hydrogenated fats, all of these things fall under "protect its citizenry". No, we should not feed poison to public school children, nor attempt to lure them into a lifetime of nicotine addiction, but adults are another matter. If I choose to pay for a salt encrusted lard pie, or consume one that I've prepared myself, that is my right. At least, currently. Not for long, I'm afraid.

Governments should pave roads, help with natural (and man-made) disasters, and protect its citizenry, collecting as few taxes along the way as is absolutely necessary to accomplish these things. To suggest they should regulate salt content is Nanny Statism at its worst. If government bureaucrats have so much free time on their hands that they can dream up such intrusions into our personal freedoms, then perhaps they should donate a portion of their salaries back to taxpayers and do something more worthwhile with their time. Like, learn how to cook.

I have successfully used this eG recipe for sugar cookies that keep their edge. Worked really well.

We bought four bags (2 for $5) of snack-sized Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kats, Snickers and Nestle's Crunch, and still have every last one of them. Not one visitor. I counted them all (79 in total) before dumping them into a giant, red bowl. Unfortunately, I do not actually have 79 GPS tracking devices to attach to each candy, as I threatened, ensuring that my diabetic husband actually distributes them to his staff, and not to his belly. Thank god for the glucose meter.

I must have experienced this last night when I polished off a bloody strip steak in record time. I just couldn't get enough of it. Quite the lipsmacking experience, especially for a supermarket steak cooked stovetop. My vegetarian self of 20 years ago would have been utterly horrified.

Flare-ups?

Is there no issue with ash deposit from above? Or do you not wait for the charcoal to turn grey with this technique?

I brown them, cook them in the sauce, vacuum seal them with a little bit of sauce in each bag, then freeze them.

Even I was able to make them, and they tasted a heckuva lot better than the stacks of thick, fat-laden corn tortillas available in the refrigerator section of my local markets.

I have a wonderful, sweet, adoring and attentive husband who gladly does the dishes each and every day, often pushing me aside when I offer to do them instead. He has not cooked one thing for himself for the 4+ years that we have been together (2-1/2 of them married). Like most of you, I am an obsessive, control-freakish cook/baker, so that works out quite well. That said, he has lots of food dislikes, including entire categories of foods that he would be all too happy to eliminate forever more -- primarily, vegetables. He likes iceberg lettuce, carrots, peas, peas & carrots, carrots & peas, corn (now that he can eat it again), potatoes -- basically anything with next to no nutritional value, and containing lots of carbs. I have tricked him into eating raw spinach (he hates the texture of it cooked), telling him it was some sort of lettuce, and sweetening the pot with mandarin orange slices. When I finally got him to try roasted brussels sprouts, he confessed to thinking that they tasted like potatoes, then wondered why we didn't just eat potatoes. Whenever I offer him some extra vegetables, even those he can tolerate, he tells me, "Go ahead. You enjoy them". It's quite maddening. He is also diabetic, which is even more of a problem since I love to bake so much. I feel very guilty about this, and so try to counteract dessert with something a bit more healthy. I'll also try to serve less pasta, and more protein or, gasp!, vegetables, and that never goes over well. He doesn't seem to understand the concept of carb control and moderation. He doesn't test his blood sugar nearly as often as he should, just guessing as to the amount of insulin he should be taking. I sometimes threaten to stop serving dessert altogether, but then I know he'll just pick up a box of Entenmann's or a quart of ice cream on the way home from work. However, where dessert-deprivation threats fail, deal-making succeeds. I have gotten him to be a bit more receptive to different foods, including certain ethnic foods he would previously have never tolerated, as well as the occasional icky, green vegetable. We recently started working out together on a regular basis. The motivation behind this sudden open-mindedness? Let's just say that our "deal" is mutually beneficial.

Beautiful macarons, Emily. And interesting about the jam. I made some seedless strawberry jam recently that has much the same consistency. Might have to give that a try myself.

I made this mini blueberry pie for us after baking two full-size pies to bring to my brother's house on July 4th. What you see is a failed attempt at a blueberry branch design. Eh, still tasted good.

This story made it to the Drudge Report, via a UK paper. Now all the world can know our shame.

I have purchased flash frozen sour cherries from this website in the past, and plan to do so again. After picking, pitting and freezing 15+ pounds of sour cherries in Princeton, NJ in 2008, I realized they weren't near the (frozen) quality of these Michigan-grown cherries from the aforementioned website. They also weren't any cheaper. I'll never pick cherries again, at least not on that scale. Not while great frozen cherries are available.

I made this cherry frangipane tart to bring to a friend's house last night. Too well done for my tastes, but it seemed to go over well.

Limes were still 3/$2 at Giant here in the Philly suburbs as of a few days ago. Not terribly juicy, either.

Cathy, that looks and sounds fantastic. I may have to give that a shot the next time my husband's (vegan) daughter visits. Thanks!

I never bothered to research this before, but Wegmans sells bags of raw potatoes that they call "Salt Potatoes". Who knew that they are intended for this very dish?

I wish I were not so lazy. I picked ten pounds of beautifully ripe and sweet strawberries one week ago today. I made a strawberry cake with around two pounds of them, and left the rest to sit in my refrigerator until yesterday, when I finally got around to making three pints of seedless, low sugar jam. I've got about four+ pounds remaining, and I need to hull, wash, and freeze them, but I've managed thus far to avoid this task. Fortunately, they're all still in very good condition. Unfortunately, refrigerating fresh berries for one week before preserving them is not exactly capturing that fresh-picked flavor.

I finally made the toasted coconut ice cream, which I've avoided this entire time because DH claims not to like coconut. Well, he ate it, and enjoyed it, primarily, I suppose, because he thought it tasted like vanilla. I added stracciatella to it, however, which also disguised the flavor of the coconut. Next time, I think I'll omit that. Incidentally, I used a Tahitian vanilla bean (grade B) this time, as opposed to the Madagascar Bourbon vanilla I always use, and it made for an interesting combination with the coconut. Very nice, as a matter of fact, but subtle enough to easily be overwhelmed by mix-ins. Perhaps, next time, I'll infuse the coconut into the mixture overnight rather than just for one hour. Or maybe working in some coconut milk will help enhance the coconut flavor. I used the dried, tiny, unsweetened flakes from the bulk bin in the organic aisle. Probably not the most flavorful coconut in the world.

no, it's vanilla. but the key thing is huge slabs of salty peanut butter going through it. so good. Interesting. Thanks. That actually sounds even better at the moment.