Katie Meadow

Surely poblanos are available in southern CA. Working with Anaheims would be harder, to say nothing of less flavorful. The poblanos we can get here in the Bay Area are not always hot, but every so often I strike gold. Even if not spicy I would chose them over Anaheims.

Wow I forgot all about that thread, including my own contributions to it; always a somewhat disconcerting occurrence. 2020 was a very bad year, although skewering hot dogs to char them over a gas flame while naked but for spike heels is something you can do whenever house-bound. Alone or not.

I assume a good home-made marshmallow uses pure cane sugar. Peeps have some sugar, but are mainly corn syrup, pork gelatin, yellow dye and wax.

Here's a somewhat more scientific experiment than the middle-school microwave test: "Emory University researchers tested the durability of the marshmallow candy. One of the tests demonstrated how dissolvable they were in water, acetone, sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid. Peeps stood strong against those chemical foes. Then came phenol. After an hour in this protein-destroying chemical, toxic to even humans, the only thing left in the solution were the Peeps’ eyes." The peepers!

My experience is there's nothing easy about making good chile rellenos. I lived several years in NM and successfully learned how to make good enchiladas, chile verde and chile rojo, refried beans, chile sauce from dried chiles etc, but never mastered chile rellenos, and neither did anyone I knew. For that we went out. You have to start with structurally sturdy poblanos. They need to be roasted, but not over-roasted. Making a slit and stuffing with melty Mexican Oaxacan style cheese is a very slow operation, especially if you want to scrape out ribs and seeds. The batter should not be thick or too crunchy, but more delicate. And then you've got to fry them very carefully so as not to destroy them. It's an art I wish I had time and energy to practice, because I've never had goods ones outside of NM. When they are good they are great.

You see how raisins are insidious? Originally there were no raisins in @Pete Fred's recipe. But they just jumped in while he was looking the other way. And they travel in large groups. A pod of whales. A murder of crows. An insurrection of raisins.

The raisin dump truck is on permanent retainer to never even drive on my block.

That looks yummy. I've never made a baked rice pudding, only stove top. Do you have a good recipe? There don't appear to be any raisins in yours.That's very good. If a raisin so much as looks at my rice pudding I reach for my anti-anxiety meds.

Thanks for that link. Now I understand why cowboy's dusters had a flap over the shoulders!

Amazing menu! Chop Suey and Foie Gras, both for the same $2. The celery, on the other hand, seems a bit pricey.

Three plastic storage bowls for $59? And the Tupperware copy suggests you use them as serving bowls? That $59 would cover my portion of sushi at a restaurant and be a lot more fun! In with @MaryIsobel's daughters on this one.

Our Easter dinner is going to be Passover redux; mostly all leftover's from yesterday's seder: Sephardic charoset, fresh grated horseradish (extremely potent this year for unknown reasons), matzoh ball soup, lamb, roast potatoes. And a simple green salad that my husband wants to make. I don't have to lift a finger. Woke up this morning to lots of pix of my granddaughter twins on an egg hunt. One was super into it and commandeered her sister's basketful. They are going to be two years old!

Yes, the second one.

Indeed. All CA commercial salmon fishing has been canceled for this coming season. And I heard the same might be true for the Oregon coast.

After a good flocking I like a wee dram. From @JoNorvelleWalker's description whatever that appliance is it turns oat groats into rolled oats. Wrong?

Howdy night owl! Can you explain the meaning of flock in this context? I thought oat groats were whole kernels and steel cut oats were the whole kernels that have been cut with a steel blade. I haven't cooked steel cut oats in several years but my memory is that they take about half an hour, so how can groats cook in fifteen minutes? How do you cook your groats? I'm just talking about a pot on the stove, no appliance involved. I used to buy Scottish pinhead oats. But I simply got tired of them.

Resources for brands and ingredients from both Andrea Nguyen and Momofuku are very useful as suggested above, but availability may vary according to where you live and what Asian groceries exist near you. Beyond that, many products may be a matter of personal preference. I don't find any one brand to be excellent across the board. Just a few of my favorites: Peanut oil: Love Lion and Globe. Red Boat fish sauce. Yes it's pricy but I don't use a lot of it. Huy Fong chili garlic sauce. The most used basic Asian hot sauce in our house. I prefer it to Sriracha, generally. Grandma chili crisp, the real brand name escapes me just now. Blank Slate Sichuan chili oil. I order it from Mama Market Wok Mei all natural oyster sauce. I like the taste. Don't get too excited it does say "Oyster flavored." Mala Market brand Chinese Sesame Paste SOY sauce: Although I really don't cook Japanese food much, my two current favorites soy sauces are: Haku Black Garlic Shoyu. This brand makes several others that I've not tried Smoked Shoyu. I get it from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soy-Sauce-Japanese-Additives-【CHAGANJU】/dp/B08VGBWQJW/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?crid=11CUS1WL6973J&keywords=smoked+shoyu&qid=1680725024&sprefix=smoked+shoyu%2Caps%2C171&sr=8-3-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyVVdRNk5SRkdPUjM2JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMDAwNTM0M1VXQUtKWjNOM0hFJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA2Nzg2NDgxVzFGMlE3OE9YQ0kwJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ== Peanut sauce: Jade brand, easily available in big supermarkets. I flinch every time a Chinese recipe calls for peanut butter. This Jade stuff is really useful, and it pack a punch. I use it for chicken stir-fry as an additional ingredient for a sauce. Dry red chiles: I use a lot of Chiles de Arbol for various things. I also like the Mala Market Facing Heaven Chilis. The aren't that hot, but the have a very nice flavor. Dried black tree fungus: I prefer the smaller more delicate cloud ears, but they aren't often available in the Chinatown markets that I depend on. So, I splurge on the ones from Mala Market. Yeah, Mala Market is expensive. They also have an extensive selection of Sichuan peppercorns. Thee are a few off the top of my head. I'm not very adventurous; once I find a product I like I tend to stick with it.

Five minutes is about my max. That's why god made toast and we make marmalade. But surprisingly my husband does seem to like making breakfast every so often when we've run out of toastable matter. He used to make very good waffles, but something happened to the waffle iron and we had to get rid of it. He's perfected biscuits and now has a popover recipe he's happy with and now is thrilled to be using the vintage 6-cup popover pan we inherited from his mother who never used it once but who inherited it from her mother. I just mosey on down five minutes before the stuff comes out of the oven. I admit that I have become so lazy in the morning sometimes I can't even bother to make hot tea, so I drink it iced, home-brew kept on hand in the fridge. Just to make sure I pay for my laziness I read the breakfast thread in the morning before getting out of bed. It's awesome to see how many of you can actually function before 11:00 am. Congrats to @Ann_T, @Senior Sea Kayaker and @blue_dolphinand many others!

The smashed part is clear.

I don't consider peanut oil neutral, either. It has a distinct peanut flavor and I use it for my Chinese food, so at this point it tastes like Chinese food to me. The definition of neutral seems a bit fuzzy. I know canola is typically suggested as neutral, but I think it has a fishy unpleasant taste. Sunflower and Safflower are neutral to my tastebuds. So are grapeseed and rice bran oils. Grapeseed is my preference in baking.

I have one of those that I use for sorghum. Very handy.

Are you positive that tiny ricer wasn't actually a garlic press? This is a hilarious thread I forgot all about. One of the silliest gadgets I owned was a little plastic contraption with no other use than to split string beans lengthwise. I don't know about any of you, but no string bean of mine ever needed such a death trap. Are some of the posts above describing those nut choppers that were used with a pint canning jar? There was a wooden disc that sat on the bottom and them the four bladed cutting stem was attached to the screw on lid. They never worked efficiently; some nuts ended up powdered and others stuck to the blades preventing further chopping. Totally ridiculous. Cutting the nuts with a knife took less time and trouble. Part of the reason we keep these things around is because they are so historically funny; invented for a bygone use that were either appreciated then or not. Small town flea markets provided so many moments of amazement and curiosity.

In my dotage i've become a fan of long-cooked green beans. For smoky flavor I use bacon or ham broth. Sometimes I add tomato fo extra flavor. Toward the end I add a little Steens cane syrup, which is a bit sweet, and then for balance, a splash of vinegar, Cooking beans in milk is a new one fo me. @FeChefwhere did your stepfather get that from?

What about Wheatena? Has a little more bite than cream of wheat. I like grits for breakfast, but real grits take an hour to make, so I usually have leftovers for breakfast. You could try instant grits? I prefer grits to polenta, but there's also instant polenta. What's nice about corn cereal is that it lends itself easily to sweet and savory variations. And even better, if you form your hot grits from dinner into a slab, you can cut it and fry it in butter so it it gets crispy. Cheesy grits are good with hot sauce if you like spicy. Bob's Mill has several types of mixed cereal, if those appeal.

We weigh our pasta. I spent many years eyeballing it and don't know why it took me so long to avoid the guesswork. If my husband didn't have a hollow leg we could get away with a half pound for the two of us. But often he likes to weigh out .55 lbs or a few sticks more, just to complicate matters ; of course that means there's always a partial box in the cabinet. In our house if we have pasta it's the main event.