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Shamanjoe

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Everything posted by Shamanjoe

  1. Thanks everybody too for the coments about whether or not you'd buy the cookbook. I know any book, cookbook or otherwise is going to be a hard sell if it's not from a well-known person or entity, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I'll just have to take your ideas and comments into account and make it interesting enough that once people hear about it, they'll at least want to leaf through it. Thanks again!
  2. When I used to use Adobe Pagemaker, it had a feature like that where you could have it auto-build an index for you, but we always ended up tweaking it a bunch to make it nice to look at, and a little more user friendly..
  3. A great place that I found in Anaheim thanks to Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is called Mama Cozza's. It's an old-school family-style Italian restaurant where just about everything is good. They also have a few house sauces that use the house red sauce as a base. The best one is their spiced up baby clam red sauce. It has additions of raw minced garlic and sauteed Italian sausage to give it a nice kick. I think they even have a private room in the back if you want some privacy for your meeting.
  4. Do you remember which Mission it was? I live in Los Angeles, and I'm always looking for an excuse to take a drive north..
  5. The best, and most used items in my freezer are packages of frozen fruits and vegetables from Fresh and Easy. Their packages are very convenient sizes, and the quality so far has been consistently good. The best out of the whole selection though has to be the bell pepper mix. It's a frozen bag of julienned red, yellow and green bell peppers. They last what seems like forever in the freezer, and have a wonderful (if muted) aroma when still frozen rock hard. And they are super sweet and thaw in under two minutes.. They also have peas, broccoli, a stir-fry mix (with beans, carrots, peppers, etc.) and green beans. The fruits include mango, pineapple, strawberries, bluberries and mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries and rasberries if I remember correctly). So if you have a Fresh and Easy in your neighbourhood, I highly reccomend the frozen fruits and veggies. My whole top freezer drawer is full of them, and they're a lifesaver for impromptu meals and morning smoothies..
  6. OliverB - I agree with you, a well thought-out index is a very important thing, and a bear to get right. I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time on that one. Dakki - I would absolutely HATE to have somebody tinker around with family recipes like that. What's the point of publishing family recipes if they're not family recipes anymore, right? Thanks to everybody for the suggestions, especially the family stories/anecdotes, those are a great idea and something I have a lot of to add Ditto with the photos, I've always been a shutterbug, so I have quite a few photos from past family dinners, etc, and it's no problem to take some new ones too. The only hard part about doing that is having to wait to eat all those wonderful dishes until after I check the photos..
  7. Dakki, I used to do some graphic design and photography work, so I can cut that part of the budget way down Heidi, Thank you! I remembered reading that thread a long time ago, but no combination of keyword searches seemed to be able to find it for me..
  8. Two additions to my collection after a long hiatus are a bottle of Absolut San Francisco and that new Cotton Candy Vodka, which the BevMo! store employee assured me tastes much more like a sophisticated fruit juice blend than cotton candy, contrary to the label's claims.. When I crack them open I will give a few tasting notes.
  9. I'm the recipe collector in my family, and as such have amassed an impressive collection of recipes from various sources, many of them other family members. I would like to organise all of these recipes into a printed cookbook, but I'm really not sure where to start. I know there are some decent self-publishing outfits out there where you can get your book printed, and I'll be doing some research into them and adding the results here. What I really want to ask the community is the best way to go about putting the book together. Have any of you made your own cookbook before, for just family and friends or on a wider scale? It's going to be a hodgepodge of different cultures, styles and ingredients, so I'm wondering if the standard seperation by main ingredient would be good, or by type of cooking (dinners, desserts, etc.) would be best. So please weigh in, how are your favourite cookbooks laid out, what order do you like to see, etc. I know for me, a comprehensive index is a must, but what are your "make or break" attributes? Finally, I'll be putting together a kickstarter proposal to fund the project, and I'll have to decide on an amount I want to raise. Again, what would you think would be ideal to produce a project like this, and if you were going to donate to such a project, what kind of stuff would you like to see offered as incentives (a lot of these projects promise free stuff, like a print, a copy of the cookbook, etc. for people who donate certain amounts)? I want to collect the recipes that make our family what it is, and share them will all members current and future. It would be great if I could share it with a wider audience as well, but that's not a requirement.. Thanks everybody!
  10. For these first tastings, I used the Tea Source recommendations for each tea. I used a rounded teaspoon of dry leaves for each tea, and placed them in lidded ceramic mugs with 1 cup of water each. The Puttabong was steeped for 4 minutes with water about a minute off the boil. The Namring was steeped also for 4 minutes with water about a minute off the boil. The Castleton was steeped for 3 minutes using water just off the boil. All three were strained after the brewing time, and smelled/tasted at hot, medium and room temperature to assess any changes.
  11. Now for the comparison. In order of preference, the teas are: Puttabong Namring Castleton The Puttabong was my particular favourite in this tasting, followed closely by the Namring. Both of these teas dry had a very clean scent, and some fruitiness that was very subtle, and reminded me more of apricot pits than the fruits themselves. The Puttabong will definitely be a hot tea, something to be drunk fairly quickly, as I learned that it takes on some heavy astringency as it cools. The Namring will get a go as an iced tea, since it has more of the characteristics of an iced tea than a hot one for me. The straggler in the pack was the Castleton. It had a heavy sweetness in the aroma of the dry leaves, and a quality I believe cdh referred to as papery. It tasted fairly astringent to me at first, though after letting it sit for a while, I am getting a hint of something fruity. I'll make a second cup sometime this week and try adding some milk to it and see if it improves. I might also try this as an iced tea, albeit a cold-brewed one. I'm hoping that method will cut some of the astringency out of it.
  12. Lastly, the Namring. The dry tea has a very pleasant scent, mostly sweetness to it, with hardly a hint of grass and no astringency whatsoever. I can't say I smell any fruitiness in it, but it does bring to mind peach pits, something akin to a very light scent that suggest some fruit rather than any actual fruit aroma. The brewing aroma is fairly mild, some sweetness and a fair amount of the nice clean fruitiness that the dry tea hinted at. First taste is a very mild tea that almost tastes pre-sweetened. I don't detect any grassy notes, and there is a very subtle, very clean fruit flavour to it, something halfway between a peach and an apricot. Just the slightest hint of astringency on the finish. This is a tea I would like to brew double-strength and use it as an iced tea. The sweetness for me suggests that it would make a killer sweet tea.
  13. Second is the Castleton. The dry tea has some grassy notes to it, as well as a very heavy sweetness. The brewing aroma has some hints of the sweetness as well, though the grassy aroma overwhelms it somewhat. On the first taste, it has some pretty astringent notes to it, and a hint of bitterness on the finish. Not tasting any of the sweetness that I smelled from the dry tea. I have to agree with cdh, the flavour is pretty flat, and I'm thinking a bit of milk would really open this tea up. Next brewing I'll have to give that a try. So far though, not crazy about this one.
  14. First, the Puttabong. The dry tea has a very mild scent to it, a little bit grassy, a little bit fruity and slightly sweet. Getting some sweetness and faint vegetal notes from the tea as it is brewing. The scent is telling me to expect a very light flavour. On tasting, the scent does not do this tea justice. It has quite a depth of flavour compared to the aroma, with a slightly grassy finish, and a first taste on the tongue that reminds me of something like an apricot pit. It has a very clean fruitiness to it, with a hint of astringency in the finish, complementing the grassy notes.
  15. Super chilly night tonight, brewing up all three for a head to head tasting. I'll post a seperate blurb for each one, then a comparison after sampling each one individually.
  16. The Bai Yun Oolong was a very nice iced tea. I tasted a little bit on an astringent taste, but I think I left it a few minutes too long. It did not detract from the nice toasty taste at all for me. This is quite refreshing as an iced tea, a little bit on the light side even with the much higher water to leaf ratio. I think this was my favourite of the three just because its not what you would expect from a standard iced tea, it is nice, light and refreshing.
  17. Pretty full already, so I made a light tea to finish off the night. A Lipton white tea with mango that we had in the cupboard. It's very light, with just a hint of mango in it. It's nothing spectacular, just a nice white tea. I do like their pyramid tea bags though. As far as tea bags go, it's a pretty good design. Also brewed a Bai Yun Oolong for the Iced Tea discussion, but I'm keeping away from it until it cools down. I have to have something leftover to talk about after it's been chilled. edited: to finish a sentence I almost forgot to finish.
  18. Finally putting the little one to bed, and brewing up the last of the three samples, the Bai Yun Oolong. Based on my hot sample tasting, I'll be brewing this one with a much higher leaf to water ratio than the other two in this tasting. 2 litres of filtered water (minus approximately a cup to make some hot tea to sip tonight) off the boil for a few minutes to get it down to the right brew temp, plus the remaining tea. I used two rounded tablespoons for the hot tasting, so I'll be adding the remainder to the water. I'll brew, let it cool naturally, then refrigerate overnight. I'll try it straight and over ice, and report back.
  19. I brewed an orange pekoe of the Lipton ilk and throughly chilled it as a comparison to the Classic. The OP tea seemed flat/one-dimensional and not noteworthy. It might be helped with some lemon or lime, but was NOT in the CITea league at all. I agree our sample version seemed a bit brighter than the standard Lipton, but for the life of me I couldn't taste much of a difference in the flavour profile. I forgot to add to the last post, I had the same problem with the Oolong. I'm going to have to brew it a lot stronger to make a good iced tea out of it.
  20. Finished off the Yin Yang last night. It was a very nice tea, but I don't agree with the decision made to flavour it. As soon as I smelled the dry tea I knew it was mango. As far as the flavour goes, it's a fine mango tea, but I felt that any green tea/black tea contrast that might have been there was lost. I'm not sure that the combination makes a more effective base for the mango flavour either. I have had my share of mango tea with a base of just black tea, and I don't think that the flavour came across any better using the blend. I do think that if it had just been green tea though, the flavour would have tasted somewhat off. I started by brewing a sample of the tea hot to taste it. Then I let it cool to room temperature before putting it in the fridge overnight. I tasted it in the morning by itself, and then over ice. The black tea in the base came across, though a little lightly thanks to the addition of the green tea, and it had a very mango-forward flavour. I followed the same procedure for the rest of the tea, and kept it in a pitcher in the fridge. Very nice all around, and very refreshing, especially on one of the warm evenings we've been having here. I'm just not sure that the yin yang concept makes much of a difference with the flavouring they chose. I'd be very interested in tasting this tea unflavoured.
  21. As much as I'd love an iced tea pop, I've been downing copious amounts of regular iced tea, with LOTS of ice. Nothing special, I ran through all of the Classic Iced Tea from the tea tasting thread in a couple of hours, so I had to switch back to the Lipton Cold brew for now.
  22. Baroness I had some of the same thoughts about the Classic Iced Tea. It was crisp and refreshing, but it didn't taste very bright to me. Maybe with the addition of some lemon the acidity would help it, but I'm not too fond of citrus in my teas. Other than that, it was very nice, just not distinctive enough to make it into a regular rotation for me. I think I brewed it a little lighter than you did, but it still tastes somewhat like Lipton to me. Any thoughts?
  23. Just finished brewing the Teasource Classic Iced Tea. I followed the directions on the package for a first tasting. I boiled a cup of water, and added a rounded teaspoon, steeping for 3.5 minutes. Then I strained it into a cup over ice. I have to admit disappointment in this tea. It's as if I brewed up a bag of Lipton tea (the classic yellow box) and poured it over ice. I guess I was expecting the flavour profile to be different, but it really is a classic iced tea. Both the scent and flavour profile have a pronounced grassy oxidised quality, and it has a hint of bitterness and astringency in the finish. It's not as strong as I usually enjoy, but it is good. I brewed the rest of it in the same method, but with a slightly higher leaf to water ratio to increase the strength. I'll strain it into a container and cool it in the fridge before I pour it over ice. I will report any differences in tasting after it has chilled.
  24. The past couple of days has been a generic cold-brew black tea. I left it in the container in the fridge for the past three days, and still no sign of over-extraction. A very refreshing late night sip, or an early morning wake up without any effort.
  25. Add another two for me. One I've wanted for a long time: Ad Hoc at Home and Chez Panisse Pasta Pizza & Calzone
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