Katie Meadow

Or maybe I thought someone ordered it? Or maybe I just assumed the food appeared like magic in front of me? My deli days are way behind me. I've lived away from NY a lot of years, but I can still tell slaw from a pickle, thank you very much!

Looks yummy. I made my cabbage and carrot pickle the other day, and this evening it will be a side with Dan Dan Soup. That's a version of the popular noodle dish that needs a spoon as well as chopsticks. Both the salad and soup are in regular rotation these days. I can't say I remember ever getting free cole slaw at a deli waiting for my pastrami on rye. Maybe a pickle quarter served alongside. Since I grew up uptown, Barney Greengrass was around the corner. My dad liked the Carnegie Deli best, so that was an occasional treat.

Sorry for any confusion. The steel is 3/8 inch thick.

I have a gas Viking oven. It doesn't want to get hotter than 475 or maybe 500 degrees. We used a stone for many years and then upgraded to a 3.8 inch steel. The steel shortens baking time by a minute or two and gets the bottom crust crispier. I wouldn't call it life changing, but it's definitely worth the expense. Of course it would be nice to have an outdoor pizza oven that cranks up to 700 or higher, but this is a perceptible improvement. The steel also makes it easier for the peel to slide out the pie.

A personal bias: I stay away from corn oil. When baking cakes, if I want a neutral oil I like to use Grapeseed. If I don't have any I will use Sunflower oil instead, but I think the flavor or Grapeseed oil is more appealing. I know there are downsides and upsides to various vegetable oils, some related to agribusiness practices and some related to health, and truthfully I don't know how to make much sense of it. Olive oil seems to be the healthiest choice, but that's a very specific choice when it comes to cakes. Canola is frequently specified for a variety of recipes and often for deep frying. But when it comes to Canola oil I'm like those people who think cilantro tastes like soap (not me!). To me Canola oil smells like fish, so I stay away from it. And I agree that carrot cake often benefits from oil rather than butter, but it need not be corn oil to get the same results.

Well no wonder.

I like the original cookie flavor but I hate the stuffing, double or single. I scrape it off into the trash. I'm waiting for "No Stuf" oreos, whatever that might look like.

Here on the west coast it is probably even harder to get Duke's on a supermarket shelf, so I just order it from Amazon. Pricing is confusing, so make sure what size jar you are buying. There are deals where two 32 oz jars cost the same as two 16 oz jars. Only once has there been a glitch: the mayo was separated and not usable. At this point it has replaced Best Foods entirely in our fridge.

Big fan of ham stock here! I use a couple of smoked ham shanks (way more meat than hocks). I briefly rinse the shanks with cold water to remove excess salt, then simmer with half an onion and some celery tops for at least two hours. When slightly cooled I pick the meat off the bone, and toss whatever fat comes off, which is done easily. Then I use my fat strainer to pour clean broth into containers to freeze. The meat also gets frozen in pint containers with broth to cover. When I make beans--southwestern style or red beans w/rice-- I simply cook the soaked dry beans in ham broth. If the broth is really strong I dilute it with water. If I want chunks of ham I defrost a container of meat and add that at the end. The final result is rich but not fatty at all.

I have one Silpat that I was gifted with a few years ago. I don't use it often, just once in a while, since I don't bake sweets that much. It works. I agree that it never feels truly clean, but I think it comes out of the box with a creepy greasy texture to begin with. Can't swear to that, but it has never been a feel-good object.

That, and the fact that you need an additional large bowl to put the blended soup into until the soup pot is empty and you can pour back in the blended soup. I have an old workhorse of a processor which I use consistently and a Ninja bullet blender which is really great for smoothies and also easy to clean. My first move will be to put the lousy blender up into high storage and see whether I ever really want to use it. Right now the only thing I can think of that a blender does best is make chile sauce from dried chiles. However, my blender really doesn't have enough power and makes an inferior sauce. Pros like Bayless and others have high tech super blenders for that job. Not going there.

Thanks @Margaret Pilgrimand others who recommended the Bamix immersion blender. That was my xmas gift and I used it for the first time today. It's brilliant! Made a large pot of leek and potato soup. Can't believe how well it blends. Perfect!

The navels available in our market for juicing these days are pale and tasteless. The Valencias have been better. Also helps to just add the juice of one blood orange. Even if one orange doesn't jazz up the flavor much, at least the color makes you think it's better. I love straight blood orange juice, but you need lots of them. I've used a mix with cara cara oranges and that's pretty good; they are often pretty juicy. I use Sevilles only for making marmalade, and that's where the seeds come in handy as well.

It sounds like I have two possible paths. The first is experiment with the steel in the oven while baking on it, under it or whatever. Science experiments take live synapses and concentration and organization. Like, yawn. The other path is the path of least resistance: check the oven to see if the steel is in there. Then ask pizza man husband to get it out. I'll think about it for a few days.

At some point I must have been told never to refreeze, and I don't. The advice must not have come from my mother, because then I would have ignored it

I do the same, but with the bananas. I'm good with meringue or whipped cream. Just keep the bananas out of it.

It never occurred to me to keep the steel in the oven. Does it affect the heat? If you put a cookie sheet directly on it do they bake hotter or faster? Does this qualify as a a stupid question? If so I've missed my opportunity to contribute to that thread.

Our pizza steel is 3/8 inch. Yes, it's heavy, but certainly isn't a problem with racks in the regular oven. The biggest hazard or irritant is that I often forget to remove it before heating up the oven for whatever gets baked next. Getting it out while hot is no picnic. Hint: remove the whole oven rack with the steel on it to the stove top. We've never used aluminum, so can't comment on it. Love the steel, though.

Me too. And right now my absolute favorite quick pickle is this one from Woks of Life: https://thewoksoflife.com/asian-pickled-cabbage/ It's very basic, which means, at least for me, that it is multipurpose: works well with most Asian dishes and also with Mexican since it adds nothing but salt, water, vinegar, garlic and chile pepper to cabbage and carrots. The first step is to massage with salt. I like to add 1 small chile de arbol to the final jar, at the top, because my current batch of chiles is very hot. After 24 hours I remove it, since the mixture will increase in heat by the day if left in. One whole big cabbage seems the right amount, and along with the sliced carrots, perfectly fits one quart canning jar. Ready to eat in a day. Doesn't last long in our house.

I buy two things whenever I am in an airport about to fly, which of course will never happen again. One is a package of m & m's and another is a cooking / food magazine. I simply go to the racks and pick out which ever one looks most appealing. It usually gives me 30 minutes of entertainment once I'm strapped in, often enough time for the plane to get off the ground. I gave up on subscriptions years and years ago when it seemed like the number of recipes declined and the double page spreads of overly curated foods took over. Also the general design of all these magazines started looking like they were meant for younger people: reverse-out type for a recipe? You couldn't read it, let alone copy it. But back to the plane. I still had the m & m's!

They look very appealing. Coffee Gator's philosophy seems to be to make a cup of coffee good enough to keep consumers buying the product again and again despite the rate of breakage. The reviews are hilarious. I've wasted lots of change on metal filters. I had a fantastic gold one that was a very fine mesh resulting in a slow drip. It tore after years of heavy use. They stopped making that model and all subsequent purchases were a disappointment; the water drained through too fast. I'm not sure I see the advantage of the smallest size glass beaker. Wouldn't it be easier to just style the mini size to fit over an 8 oz cup like that traditional melitta cone? No breakage.

Few things surprise me at this point. We may yet wish we had stocked up on MRE's at Costco.

More salt.

@Kim Shookmmm! Violet Crumble! Is the honeycomb candy you made like the inside of a Violet Crumble?

I'm sorry I ever said a word. I've never gotten dizzy from a handful of cheetos or a sliced tomato, and I've eaten plenty of both. This thread proves that people just love to defame or defend MSG at the drop of a hat. I'm out!