kitchensqueen

We just did a little bourbon marinade on pork chops for the grill for dinner. Maybe a quarter cup of bourbon, 3 tablespoons or so of brown sugar, dash of soy sauce and a couple of diced garlic cloves. We let them set in the marinade for about an hour before hand and grilled them until just done. They were pretty good, but next time I'd make up a little more marinade to reduce into a nice sauce for serving.

Ah, the birth of a new topic. :-) I'm the same way - I bring my own shopping and produce bags, but not containers for the bulk bins... I've heard that Whole Foods will weigh your containers for you before you fill them so you're not paying for the cost of your own containers, but which containers to bring? Canning jars seem to bulky/breakable to me... maybe plastic zip tops bags that you reuse every time are the way to go.

I've got a weird assortment of things in my freezer than need to be used up before the summer onslaught - - Bags and bags of diced green bell peppers. I'm just going to start putting them into everything feasible - pasta sauce, chili, perloo - any other suggestions? - Bags and bags of assorted berries - mostly blueberries and raspberries I think. Maybe jam that can be canned and stored in the pantry? - Half a dozen pre-cooked crawfish. What am I going to do with half a dozen pre-cooked crawfish? - Half a dozen bags of leftover (maybe 1-1.5 cups each) assorted dumpling fillings. I'll just have a dumpling dinner some Saturday night and clear those out. There's probably more stuff lurking in the back too - I vaguely recall ducks breasts and phyllo dough...

At our house, we typically get Israeli couscous, rice, herbs and spices - though we don't usually buy the herbs and spices in "bulk" quantities, except for thyme, which I use alarming quantities of in my cooking. In conjunction with Chris' original question, I'd also be curious to know if people are bringing their own containers when bulk goods shopping, or resorting to plastic bags/containers at the store.

Me too! And I actually hate real bananas... totally shameful, I know. :-)

That's probably not too far off the mark. When I want ham and scalloped potatoes, I want the un-fancy version my mom made when I was a kid. Crumb coffee cake, pot roast - don't really get to adventurous on those either. Food is a pretty strong thread running through life, regardless of situation or background. It can take you to a place of comfort and joy just by recreating something you experienced positively as a kid.

I completely agree with this!

Our warm-weather farmer's markets are due to start up at the end of May and I will be watching for morels like a hawk. They're my favorite springtime edible by far. I always like to do coq au vin once or twice at the height of the season, with fresh herbs and baby onions too... can't wait!

All of this food looks so good. I've really got to start photographing my food - this thread is so inspiring. Chris Taylor's lamb shoulder and Mifi's fondant de canard look especially delicious. Tonight, we're firing up the grill to do some steaks marinated in red wine and worcestershire sauce. Green beans and croissant rolls on the side - nothing fancy, but a simple Saturday night dinner.

I wash mine in soapy water like the rest of the dishes, but I'm careful to never let them sit in water. I also dry them right away and never leave them point-down in the dish rack - they get washed, dried and hung back up on the magnetic storage strip right away.

For me, it's the bolognese I make. The recipe I work from is an adaptation of Lynn Rosetto Kasper's Country Style Ragu in The Splendid Table. I start with a mirepoix, add in some diced pancetta, ground beef, ground pork, tomato paste, red wine and beef stock. Season with salt, pepper and thyme. I omit the cream/milk that most bologneses call for since my husband and I are lactose-intolerant. She has so many other great meat sauce recipes in her book that I always intend to make - game ragu, meat ragu with marsala - but I can never get past my stand-by version. When I crave pasta bolognese, it just hits the spot.

I've been on the quest for bulk duck fat myself, and thought I would share a source. While not local to Chicago, I found that Hudson Valley Foie Gras has an Amazon store where they sell one gallon containers for about $35.00.

I've also been thinking about working with a whole duck lately. My main goal is to make duck confit. How much fat will one duck render? Enough to cook and store both legs with thighs attached completely submerged in fat? Or will I need to obtain additional duck fat? And I saw mentioned above doing stock in a crock pot - that's an interesting idea. Are there are any special tricks to it? I assume you roast off your bones and veg in the oven first as normal, and then just put it into the crockpot instead of a low simmer on the stove?

I'm jealous of those that have found enameled cast iron recently - what a score! I'll never forget the time I found a complete set of blue Le Creuset at a thrift shop when I was in college, for maybe $30 for the whole set - and left it there and didn't buy it! I rejected it because it was dirty (couldn't been cleaned up with some elbow grease) and because the knobs were cracked (if only I had known Le Creuset sells replacement knobs for fairly cheap). Talk about the one that got away. That one haunts my dreams to this day.

It's a major consideration when I pair wine with food. The saying is only about the body and full flavor of a wine. If you paired a "lightweight" wine, like pinot grigio, with a heavy-duty grilled steak, the wine would be lost. So instead you pair a charred steak with a heavier wine like cabernet sauvignon or petite sirah. Or if you paired that cabernet sauvignon with sauteed scallops, the wine would overwhelm the delicate seafood. That's when you reach for the pinot grigio. Why did you think this was counterintuitive? Actually, the way you explain it makes perfect sense - maybe the word "heavy" just threw me off. I just had this impression of a heavy dinner with an equally heavy wine sitting with you like a ton of bricks... which didn't seem like a good post-dinner state of affairs! :-)

This is a great thread! I've thrifted so many things over the years - enameled stock pots, dishes, linens. My favorite find (that I still have) is a hand crank food mill - I got it for $1.00. Oh, and reading this makes me really want to go thrifting. A dangerous thread, this is...

I'm lactose intolerant so I really miss cheese - fresh mozzarella, provolone, freshly grated aged reggiano-parmegiano. And vanilla bean ice cream and cream sauces... cookie dough ice cream, freshly churned salted butter, fresh whipped cream... and sadly I became lactose intolerant in my early twenties so I know what I'm missing. :-)

Today while listening to a podcast on food (I forget which one, it was hours ago) the host said "the heavier the food, the heavier the wine" in reference to making a good pairing. Now this seems counter-intuitive to me (or at least not a hard-and-fast rule), but what do the oenophiles in the house think? And what wine sayings/wisdoms has everyone else heard?

I've often wondered how many magazines have actual test kitchens. I've heard a few similar complaints about Saveur, though I personally haven't tried a recipe that I haven't liked from their magazine. No experience trying the Paula Deen stuff though... that woman kind of scares me.

I like this idea!

I've always hand washed, so maybe that's where the cleaning nightmare comes into play. And maybe my loathing also comes from the fact that I have a mild love affair with my chef's knife. :-)

Hm, the sloe gin sounds pretty interesting; I'll have to give that topic a read. Maybe I'll take half of it and turn it into sloe gin, and throw some juniper berries into the other half, just to see what happens. I do like a nice gin and tonic when the weather turns cooler...

And it seems like bay trees are pretty popular; I love mine. Mine is still a baby at about a foot and half tall. How big are everybody else's? Nothing beats fresh bay in cooking.

I'm surprised you can keep them outdoors in Vancouver over the winter - are you going to cover them in some way so you keep harvesting them?

I think garlic presses are useless personally. They're very wasteful with half the garlic pulp getting stuck in those tiny little holes and they are awful to clean. Much quicker and cleaner to just chop it with a knife - where you'll actually get texture instead of paste.