Katie Meadow

My best guess? it's a weapon to prevent cats from jumping up on the table. My next best guess? Something used to grab corn that accidentally finds its way into the kitchen so that you don't have to touch the corn itself. In that case either you invented it or you are the only customer.

Always good advice to avoid green, interior or exterior. Although if you glance at Houzz these days you see that green in kitchens is gaining fans. But it's not for me. Benjamin Moore Arugula, no thanks.

Do you mean the color of decaying food or the exterior paint color? It's a light grey now, and we're bored of it!

I wanted the chocolates, but he felt it was def time to paint the exterior. I lost the first challenge, but the real struggle is yet to come: what color? So far I am a little bit ahead in this one. Prep work should take three weeks or so. That means we still have plenty of time to strategize and undermine each others' ideas. We don't fight about money. We don't fight about chores. We don't fight about where to go on vacation. We fight about color. Needless to say he has some terrible ideas, however my positions are weakened by the fact that I no longer can distinguish pastels at all and am not reliable on hues of darker shades, either. This is not to say that we never argue about food. When it comes to anchovies, he uses too much. We also disagree about at what point rotting food needs to be be tossed.I prefer when it's green. He likes black. I thought I was getting back on topic, but no.

I really hope it isn't something I need.

If it comes to that, @weinoo, I want a divorce.

With roast potatoes or fries I like a paprika-laced aioli. Great idea to combine sweet and smoked paprika. It never occurred to me to simply flavor the salt. Sounds yummy. \ idea of combining sweet and smoked paprika

It may sound ordinary, but with martinis you can't go wrong with high quality Virginia peanuts. Or Marcona almonds. Give yourself a break! Keeping those saltines warm and crispy sounds very challenging.

I assume you have tried Tokyo Market and Ranch 99?

For a house gin we often use plain old Bombay. Sapphire is pricier and I don't actually like it as much. Bombay clocks in at 43%.

Thanks, you're a doll! Some of the recipes I've found (sans sel) recommend bread flour, so experiments will be made.

A question for you bread bakers: For cocktail hour in Decatur GA my daughter needed a quick carb fix and ordered a Hawaiian Roll which was actually listed in the starters. It came as a very tall slightly squarish chunk of soft fluffy brioche-like bread with a shiny brown top embedded with large salt crystals. It was buttery on the bottom, sweet and salty and utterly delicious. At another restaurant the same thing was simply served as a bread course, also with crunchy salt on the glaze. Also delicious. Then at a funky cafe they sold sweet rolls about the shape of a Mexican sandwich roll, glazed all over that had a similar taste, plus the salt and with a buttery crisp bottom. What are these? Just Hawaiian rolls topped with salt? And why was it so common around Decatur? I've looked for supermarket Hawaiian rolls, sold in trays of a dozen, similarly lofty and glazed but without any salt crystals. No recipes on line seem to have salt crystals on top. Anyway I'm craving the sweet/salty/buttery things. So maybe my husband, currently on a brioche learning curve, can duplicate the rolls we had in GA.

Girl, you are a cheap date! I'm a cheap date when it comes to martinis; I'm under the host after just one. But chocolate is another thing. My favorite is Neuhaus from Belgium. This year we had to decide whether to buy a box of Neuhaus dark chocolates or paint the house.

Over a lifetime of cooking I've collected enough spice jars so that I can buy my spices in paper packets ("refills") and rarely need to buy anything in little bottles. This saves money, and my spice source is high quality and local, which helps. Needless to say the spice bottles are not "matchy matchy." One benefit for me is that the lids vary in color, so I've accumulated jars with red, black, white and blue tops. My spices are mostly in four shelves, each about 2 jars deep. Each shelf houses jars with one color, loosely organized by use. This is the only way my husband knows where to put back any given spice once he's removed it from the shelf. I use a labeler, since years of washing out jars makes them appear tidy and clean, without funky paper labels. Just curious: I looked at the Penzey's website and see no indication that spices can be bought without bottles. packets Do any online spice purveyors offer 2 - 4 oz packets w/o bottles? Shout-out to @weinoo: I'm impressed you have saffrons, i.e. more than one kind. Oh, my one regret is that spice bottles have not typically been square.

In fact he did. He kept all the PB and dark chocolate for himself and gave only milk chocolate to the Reese's Co.