Shamanjoe

Thanks crinoidgirl, that's a wonderful idea. I occasionally have times where a pound or more of bacon is going to be fried up, but that's usually during a breakfast party. A normal breakfast is my wife and me, so a quarter pound would be perfect (expecially since she'd like to see me cut down my bacon intake). And don't hesitate, unless you're shopping at Fresh N Easy, most supermarket packages of bacon are still 1 pound. Even Fresh N Easy, whose packages used to be 12oz recently came out with a "new" 1 pound package. I have to ask though, how do you wrap them for freezing? My mother used to freeze bacon, but that was in the 1 pound cryovac package, straight from the grocery store and into the freezer. If I'm going to be quartering the package, should I wrap in parchment or butcher's paper, then wrap in foil and stick in a plastic freezer bag? That is my usual way of prepping meat for freezing, but I'm wondering if it's too much. As long as it's air tight the fat in the bacon shouldn't pick up any off flavours, right? As far as Pam's comments.. I already have a bigger fridge than most, and it still doesn't seem big enough. But I would love to have a walk-in for brining my own bacon, keeping a huge vat of kimchee, sauerkraut, etc. or dry-aging my own steaks. Not all of us have mansions though. edited: to correct word usage, grammar and punctuation

I use bacon in fits and starts, so I would love to have some raw bacon in the freezer for when the mood strikes. Aside from fifi, has anyone frozen raw bacon? I'm interested in how you freeze it (the whole pound+, or individual strips) and how long it lasts. I'm trying to cut down, so a good bulk package from CostCo might take a year or so to be used up (if it were frozen, obviously I wouldn't keep it in the fridge that long). edited: to add a closing parenthesis

Both my mother and my grandmother would clip recipes from virtually every magazine they read and save them, but most of them were never made. We only have a few actual family recipes, my grandmother's cheese pie for example, so I don't think that a compendium would be worth it at this point in our lives. My sister and I are the ones who really love to cook and experiment, so I have been writing down the recipes that we use and saving them for our kids. So far there's only half a dozen or so, in addition to about 3 from my mother and grandmother. I'll keep the habit up as well as I can, and hopefully I can make up a nice volume for my kids later on in life. edited: to fix some typos

I have to second the sheet pans. I bought a set of two at Sam's Club and was so happy with them I went and bought another set no more than a month later. I use them for just about everything, from crisping up some bacon in the oven to flipping it upside down to melt the cheese on my burgers when I make them on the griddle. A salamander would be wonderful too, if we're dreaming. edited: to correct some funky scentence construction.

I have relatives in the Philippines who grow black pepper commercially, so every time I go (or they visit) I get a huge bag of peppercorns. Sometimes I don't put it on anything, I just sit there and smell the bag I also love a healthy dose on asparagus.. yum.

I live in California as well. I just like using the dried as well as the fresh. They give up radically different flavours than their fresh versions. Just to clarify, when you say ancho, are you using a fresh or dried chile? Because an ancho chile, as far as I know, is a dried pasilla (or poblano).

Does the marinade call for chopping up the whole dried anchos? I've been using the powder a lot in various dishes, including adobo, and I haven't had too much sweetness come through with it..

The biggest problem with that is that (in Manhattan, at least to my knowledge - don't know about the other boroughs) apartments aren't allowed to vent to the outside. So, no matter how powerful your range hood, it's still a recirculating model, which means that some of the smoke is just being recycled back into the apartment. Evidently there are some apartment dwellers who illegally vent to the outside. As one who occasionally barbecued (okay, grilled) on my fire escape, I wouldn't say breaking laws is a good way to go. Now, as to the bong water... Wow, I had no idea about the venting issue. Is that because apartments are close together or something? I would think the smell of BBQ wafting through the neighbourhood would be a plus..

I know I may be making a "far into the future" suggestion, but since you love the layout and style of the house so much, and since the kitchen looks to be on the street-facing wall, it might be more suitable to just move the kitchen. Depending on layout, you could make the current kitchen a bedroom, siting room, den, etc. and either put the kitchen in an existing room, and bubble-out the side or back of the house to make a new kitchen that you could have custom-matched style-wise to the rest of the house. I understand that's a far-off option at the moment, but it's something to think about, especially if you intend to make this the house you live the rest of your life in.

I second the comments about liquid smoke. It's great in moderation, but I find real smoke (that is, smoke straight from wood to meat, and not condensed and bottled) to be better in the end. That said, I have a backyard and can smoke meat whenever I want. Since you're limited on space, I'd go with the oven approach for something like a pork shoulder and add some liquid smoke. It won't be exactly the same, but it'll still be darned tasty. I still like the "buy a green egg and make it a day in the park approach" though

Chris, I think what is meant by JB wannabes is the new trend among people (especially gun owners, hunters, etc.) to carry and wear all manner of tactical gear. We call it tactical chic because it's mostly weekend warriors doing it. Good point about carrying bottles as well. I didn't think about that when I suggested the gun cases. A soft-sided tactical bag would probably fit the bill there better than a hard-sided case. My personal preference though would be to carry the bottles separately. I just don't like the idea of bottles that could break or spill in with my equipment. I know, I know, it's all going to be used to mix said liquids, but I'd rather have any spills or broken glass in a separate bag/container that can be cleaned out or stuck in the washer without having to dismantle the whole kit. Any way you choose, good luck, and be sure to show us the final result!

One of the best solutions I can think of Chris is a gun case. These days they make a variety of shapes and sizes, designed to hold anywhere from a single gun to your whole collection (for shooting matches, exhibits, etc). The basic scoped double-gun case is about the size of a briefcase, and comes with foam in both sides. The generic cases come with egg crate style foam that forms to whatever you put in it, but you can get higher-quality cases that have high-density foam that you can carve out into the shape you want. They also have double-sided cases that open from each side for even higher capacity. Those cases appeal to my OCD nature when it comes to organisation. Everything is held securely, but gently, so that even fragile things can be tossed around in the trunk without fear of breakage. You should be able to fit a shaker, shot glasses, bar spoons, etc without any problem.

How old is your ventilation system? One thing to consider in an open-concept kitchen is that if you don't suck up all the smoke/smell/what have you as soon as it's produced, it migrates to the other room. Work-only kitchens are a little better, especially if it has two outside walls, like my kitchen. Then you can open a window and a door, and create a draft that will keep it out of the rest of the house. I guess that's one tick in the plus column for cooking-only kitchens. I've made it for three years in a cooking-only kitchen that has no ventilation except for two windows simply because it's a cooking-only, and naturally seperated. If it had been open-concept I would have needed to break down and buy a vent hood years ago.

Get a balcony. Seriously though, the stovetop smoker is a good idea as long as you have a good vent hood, or open a lot of windows and turn on the fan.

The kitchen I grew up in was a long, narrow, galley-style kitchen. It was open to what we called the family room (being the biggest room in the house earned it that designation) by virtue of a half wall at that end. Consequently, whenever anybody cooked, everybody else was in the kitchen or in the family room. When I moved to a new house, the kitchen was almost completely cut off from the living room. You had to walk down a short hallway to see anybody, so everybody ended up in the kitchen, whether they were doing anything or not. People tend to congregate in the kitchen if there's no good flow to another room, so I'd say get ready to have a crowded kitchen in your new house if you don't open it up. Even when it's a matchbox-sized kitchen, people always tend to crowd in, rather than staying in another room.

I'm the same way. I have half a dozen or so reusable grocery bages that I have picked up at various stores for $0.99 here and $0.99 there. Even if I did remember them, I'd feel kind of funny handing them a shopping bag that says VONS in big red letter at Ralph's or Whole Foods. And I use the plastic bags for the trash too

The oldest thing in my kitchen is probably the wiring. The house was built in 1949 and the pipes have been changed, but not the wiring. Come to think of it, most of the kitchen is the same age. As far as cooking utensils, the white porcelain O'Keefe and Merritt freestanding stove/oven is the oldest thing in the kitchen, bought brand-new when my grandmother moved into the house (right after it was built).

I had a friend selling those and making a good bit of money. She had business cards and everything. Luckily even in high school I knew what a good knife was. She gave me lots of business cards, but I never gave in.

Ray - I bought the steaks fresh from the butcher and they got pushed back in the fridge, still wrapped in their butcher paper, for about a week. I usually like my Ribeye rare, done on the grill over high heat (like Shalmanese suggests) with salt and pepper as the only seasoning, but after they had been in the fridge wrapped like that, I felt some longer cooking was in order. Holly - The tomatos were from Peru or something like that, the brother-in-law bought a flat of beefsteak-looking tomatos from CostCo that needed to be used up before they went south. The flavour of the tomatos was good enough for the dish, but they didn't flavour the meat as much as I wanted them to. Shalmanese - My butcher has nice-looking chuck steaks. I'll have to try some for this dish. Have you tried buying a chuck roast and slicing it yourself? I'm thinking it would be cheaper to buy the whole roast and either cut it myself, or have the butcher cut it for me (if he's not too busy).

David, I was only in elementary school 20 years ago, but I don't remember what we were eating in the cafeteria. My mom packed my lunch every day (even if it was Lunchables every once in a while). I do remember lunch in high school though. Only the "poor" kids who were getting free or discounted lunches ever ate the cafeteria meals. The rest of us usually ate from the school's "Snack Shack" which sold soda by the giant styrofoam cup for $0.60, and had packages of Little Ceasar's crazy bread every Wednesday for a $1 and KFC chicken for $2.50 on Thursdays. I never saw anything resembling a healthy lunch in the hands of my classmates and personally never saw the inside of our school cafeteria. In my group of friends, half of us brought lunch, and the other half bought from the snack shack. Only the home lunches were close to being healthy. Even then, we had Lunchables, pudding cups, etc. I really hope people watching this show start to realise how their kids actually eat at school. Even with a lunch brought from home, we were still eating a bag of crazy bread each once a week. I look back at it now and it's just ridiculous.

If the meal programs are that screwed up, I can't imagine the other facets of government. I would really like to see this changed, and thanks to Jaime for at least getting a glimpse of it out there. Hopefully more people are intelligent enough to at least see there is a problem.

When I eat brownies, I skip the edges and go stright for the middle, so this pan was always one of those "stupid" kitchen gadgets for me. After hearing the lasagna idea though (I love crisper edges there..) I might give it a try. Has anybody done it? edited to correct font and add a couple words..

Have you tyried the jarred roasted piquillo peppers? I dice 'em and add them to their boxed organic roasted red pepper and tomato soup. Nice combo. I LOVE the piquillo peppers. I stuff them with homemade cream cheese into which I have mashed some onion confit, then roll them up in a section of flour tortilla and top with a dollop of guacamole or sometimes just a piece of avocado. Wonderful combination of flavors and textures. I forgot all about those! I love to buy the peppers, some prosciutto and a block of good aged white cheddar. I take a piece of the cheddar, wrap it up in a bit of prosciutto and stuff it into the pepper. I never make enough to serve because they all end up getting eaten about as soon as they are made..

Does anybody living in Southern California know where I can go and buy a whole pig, or someplace that would raise a few for me? I'd love to have one or more to fatten up myself, but it's kind of frowned upon in the suburban environment.

I wouldn't laugh at you John, I'd ask if I could come over and take it for a test spin before I bought it too.