Landru

Foreman grills are fantastic for Reubens. I have heard that the removable surface ones don't get quite as hot as the non-removable one. I feel the original poster's pain. Up here in Seattle the Reuben is just something to mess up and try to vary at the cook's whim. One brewpub has the audacity to say their "Reuben" is classic when it is 1) baked and 2) using pickled red cabbage slaw. This is not a Reuben. This is a baked corned beef sandwich with thousand island and picked red cabbage slaw. Hmmphh! I do find classic Reubens at little lunch grills downtown that are run by immigrants - they know what customers want and deliver!

I made a "Pod" cocktail last night: 1 part vanilla liqueur 1 part tamarind liqueur 1 part sage liqueur 1 part light rum All liqueurs were homemade. It was divine - the flavors all melded into a deep and rooty autumnal surprise.

I made paw paw liqueur from some frozen paw paws my Mother-in-law transported on a plane from Virginia - I wonder how the TSA dealt with that... In any case, since I had no idea what the taste would be like I infused it with vodka. It had a banana custard flavor and was naturally thick. I think rum would be a natural mixer or base for the liqueur. Bourbon would go very well too. I use the liqueur to make cocktails with my nutty liqueurs - hickory, black walnut, hazelnut etc. Since it also has a "tropical" side to it, I wondered if it would go well with citrus - from KatieLoeb's post - it sounds like it does, I'll try it with my citrus/tropical liqueurs and see what happens!

Last week at our house: Jug of Hot Brewed Tea with ice cubes in it (to make iced tea) was put next to a half gallon of milk. Half gallon of milk was ruined. Lesson was learned - didn't think it was really possible, but it is!

I've made a lot of raspberry (and black/blue berry as well) infusions. I'll give my thoughts on your numbered questions: 1. I have not run across any fermentation issues at all with my berries - I do use freshly picked as we have great sources in Seattle. The alcohol should stop any fermentation - I would stay away from Everclear though, it might be too harsh if you end up with subtle berries. 2. I have made cough syrup whilst thinking I was making liqueur. My Robitussin 2008 was famed for it's particular "robust" cough syrup taste. The problem was that I used a book's hint to add clove/cinnamon to my raspberry infusion. My advice is to stay away from adding spices to raspberry. I've never had the cough syrup thing happen on straight raspberry, blackberry or blueberry infusions - or with the berries infused with citrus peels. 3. Infusion time is so variable with the fruit - for raspberries I generally use at least a month and sometimes up to three (but three is more out of laziness than intent). Never had a problem. 4. As I said in no. 2 - I avoid spices! Citrus is always welcome in berry liqueurs - the lemon peel is probably more congenial than orange. Raspberry is very forward and sweet so to balance it you may want a "bitter" liquor to infuse it with - try tequila, brandy or gin! Vanilla goes very well with raspberry - split a vanilla bean or too and add to the infusion and it will round it out as well. Other ideas are grapefruit peels, rosemary, basil, or sage leaves. Think what you might like on a raspberry dessert!

Paul Masson Brandy - cheap and surprisingly useful as a brandy.

I agree, the Roundup/GM issue is enough to worry about Whole Foods doing business with Monsanto, but it's the ethos that Monsanto has consistently demonstrated that makes one want to run away as far as possible from them. Suing the farmer who had contaminated crops that weren't his fault is not a unfortunate incident - it is a cornerstone of their policy. You know Google's motto "Don't be evil"? Monsanto's is more like "Just be evil".

Fish lips. Don't know from what fish. All I know is that I was with my family in London's Chinatown and we couldn't agree on a place to eat. Touristy Chinese place beckoned. I like adventure so I got the Fish Lips. It was tasteless gelatinous goo. My brother and I both came down with violent food poisoning afterwards.

You are correct about wrapping fish in the leaves and baking/smoking them gives the fish a nice coconut flavor. Don't really need a recipe - just do it! I've also made a fig leaf liqueur which came out fabulous. Though I do wonder as well about the latex so I don't give it to my friends :0).

Yes, a vacuum sealer would work - at the expense of easy access though if you're using bags. When we've dried peels (orange and lemon) we have noticed some alteration of flavor - you get more "carmel" notes - which can be very attractive when making a Grand Marnier type of liqueur but maybe not want you want when making limoncello. That was from drying it in a dehydrator - maybe it wouldn't happen if air dried?@Rooftop: Simple syrup will round it out a bit. Also using a drop of orange bitters when making drinks might give it another dimension beyond Pledge.

Luke - Lemon zest does freeze well, but since it is kind of hard to get an airfree seal on a container suitable for the zest, it might pick up freezer odors if left in there too long. Ours also gets ice crystals from the residual moisture, but it doesn't harm it.

Tequila always seems to go well with citrus and maybe strawberries as well. My favorite tequila infusion is grapefruit. I've also done a cactus flower infusion in tequila - the taste for that batch was a little too subtle, but the bright red color was fantastic. Kent, I've had terrific batches of blackberry and boring batches of blackberry liqueurs. I wish I knew what made the difference, because I think I didn't really prepare them differently. My bet is the state of the fruit at the time - whether it was early or late in the season and therefore sourer or sweeter. Right now my favorite infusions are paw paw made with vodka, however bourbon would have made it a knockout; fennel seed in vodka, using fresh fennel seed gives it a sweet, piney taste - and as a mixer just adds so much dimension to a drink; bay leaf rum, again as a mixer; and finally hickory whiskey (try saying that after 3 or 4...). BTW: Paw paw is a fruit native to the Southern US, tastes a little like banana, but much more custardy and deep.

This definitely happens in office cultures. A box of donuts or bagels appear in the breakroom or kitchen. Soon thereafter there is a box of cut in half bagels and donuts. Then those bagels/donuts get cut into quarters (by the same people who did the original halving) and so on. Not being one of those halvers, I don't know the philosophy of it, but my suspicion is that it would be *too much* to take a whole one, therefore "I'll leave half". Of course, subsequent people don't want somebody's half donut, so they cut a new one...and so on. Of course, I also suspect that the halvers end up eating the whole donut/bagel over time. Me-I just brazenly take a whole one and don't shilly-shally about it.

For what it's worth - I did a pitch-perfect replication of Robitussin with my infusion of raspberries, vodka and a few whole cloves. I thought the cloves would add a "spice" to the mix. Nope, I got a liter of cough syrup...

Hey - that's also my go-to brandy for making liqueurs - it really has a perfect profile for a liqueur base. My favorite is a black walnut liqueur. And you can't beat it's price.

Most books err on the side of sweetness. The benefit of adding the sugar at the beginning is that you don't have to make a simple syrup - it will dissolve during the steeping time. But, you are left without a way to modify the sweetness if it is too sweet at the end. I recommending adding 1/4 to 1/2 the called for amount of sugar at the start and taste at the end to add simple syrup if you need too. From my experience, a too sweet liqueur overwhelms the characteristics of whatever the base of your liqueur consists of. My rhubarb liqueur ended up a little too sweet and I wish I had cut back the sugar to get the "bite" back. I used a recipe similar to what you described. It's still good though!

Technically speaking, corn is a starch. My mom does the same, though. She'll make corn but then will also make another veggie dish. Is it an Old School thing? The thing that drives me crazy is [sTANDS ON SOAPBOX] when someone brings doughnuts to my workplace. Invariably, someone will take half a doughnut. Half. Not the entire thing. C'mon, people! Channel your inner Homer and take the entire freakin' doughnut! Is it really that difficult?! Do you really think someone else is going to come along and take that remaining half of a doughtnut that you tore in half with your fingers that have been typing on your computer keyboard or dialing your phone. Have you ever stopped and looked at how dirty the number pad is on your office phone? And you used those same fingers to tear that dinky little dougnut in half and expect someone else to eat the remains because you just can't bring yourself to eat an entire doughnut? Grow some stones and take the entire doughnut back to your cubicle! Then eat half and throw the other half away if you don't want it. We don't want it either. Thank you. [DISMOUNTS SOAPBOX]. ← NICE. I too am pissed off by this occurrence. I actually saw someone doing it once and made them take the whole thing. I think they were a little annoyed, but I didn't care. It felt good to be a doughnut nazi. ← You are my hero. At my workplace, the doughnut goes through various stages of disintegration. First it is halved, then that half is halved and so on. I call it Zeno's doughnut. As far as my food neuroses - wow, I've seen them in this thread already. No fresh tomatoes if they are the only thing - too slimy. However, in a hefty sandwich or casserole then they are fine. And also it was pointed out to me that I always leave something on my plate as well. I am sure this a control thing from childhood and my mom making me sit at the table all night to eat the strip of tire rubber that somehow had replaced her pot roast. It wasn't until I made pot roast as a well-seasoned adult that I found out that it could be chewable AND delicious. Who knew? The other minor neurosis is that I can't eat raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies. This is more a ontological point than a neurosis in my viewpoint. I am sure that there exists a universe without chocolate where raisin cookies are very delicious and I would love them. However, this universe has chocolate chip cookies. Choosing to eat a raisin cookie when there exists a minute possibility that it could have been a chocolate chip cookie, for me is a mistake of cosmic proportions. This neurosis I'm sure came from my childhood as well when I thought I had picked a chocolate chip cookie to eat and but then found something VERY different in my mouth. The words "betrayed", "sucker-punched", etc. do not convey the ravishing of my soul that occurred. How can one believe in a benevolent universe after this?

I was wondering why no-one has spoken about that egullet elephant that's been hanging around the bar with or without a laptop. I have to admit that I put off joining egullet for quite a long time and just lurked because the joining policy irked me. I'm sure there were reasons, but I did not feel encouraged or welcomed like I have at other forum websites. I felt guilty of something and I didn't even what it was! I now realize that the forum administrators have made a decision to get only committed people in here to raise the level of discourse than they saw in other websites and hence the extra hoops to gaining admittance.Perhaps the laptop banning bar/restaurant owner is trying to raise the level of discourse? I happen to agree with him, in that I tend to view a laptop denizen as one who has chosen to "bubble" themselves out of the rest of the room - they seem to cut off communication or even acknowledgment. It seems that their universe is happening on the laptop and we are secondary. But, somehow that doesn't happen with solo reading/writing - solo readers/writers still seem part of the room's society - they seem more open to me - in a way that the laptop-bubbled typer doesn't. Don't ask me why - could be just a prejudice. In any case these are my two-cents. Hope this doesn't get me kicked off the forum as it's only my second post...

Okay, here's my first post on eGullet! I've been making liqueurs for the last three years. I started when my wife came home with two crates of strawberries and wondered what to do with them. I now have made over 40 different liqueurs. As far as Tomek's question - I've made a liqueur from the berries of our mountain ash tree which is related to the European Rowan. These berries can't be eaten fresh, but can be made into jam and liqueurs. I tried two batches, one of a neighbor's tree which was a different species (the typical orange berry) and from my tree (littler pink berries). The liqueur from my tree turned out well - a gingery, berry kind of taste. The liqueur from my neighbor's tree did not turn out - a few berries that turned bad ruined the whole batch (with a moldy smell and taste, blechh).I've also made delicious blackberry and prune liqueurs (in fact I've got two new batches aging right now). I've learned mostly from a few sources - the book Cordials from Your Kitchen and these web sites: LiqueurWeb, Gunther Anderson's Liqueur-Making, and Danish Schnapps. The main things I've tried are fruit, spice and herb liqueurs. Here are some guidelines I've adopted for the most success: 1. Try to add sugar syrup or honey (if desired) after the aging process. At the beginning it is very, very, very difficult to gauge how sweet the liqueur is going to end up being. At the end of aging, a simple taste test of putting two teaspoons of liqueur and a teaspoon of sugar syrup in a tasting glass and adding either liqueur or syrup until the right level occurs works well. Then you can use that proportion in making the final liqueur. I don't think the sugar really helps during the initial aging and might retard it from what I've read. 2. The "bigger" and "wetter" the item being made into a liqueur, the longer the aging. A cinnamon or other spice liqueur may take a couple of days to a week of aging, while some berries could profitably take months to get a good strong infusion. 3. Use medium priced spirits. I've had some batches made with cheaper brands of vodka where I could taste the "metal" harshness through the liqueur. But putting Grey Goose in isn't really going to raise the level of the liqueur. Some say that cheaper brands can be filtered, but I haven't tried it. All those points (and more) are made in the above mentioned book and websites. The fun I'm having now is combining my liqueurs into fascinating cocktails, the one I had last weekend: 1 part Grapefruit liqueur, 1 parts Limoncello and 1/2 part Fennel liqueur - WOW!