Boy R D

I'm not a big fan of sweet breakfasts so I've been playing around with savory oatmeal. My favorite so far has been butter, marmite, chopped green onions and topped with a little shredded sharp cheese. mmm mmm. I usually eat this with one or two fried eggs.

I really like that fake krab meat. You know the stuff made out of whitefish sugar and potato starch? I like to mash it up with mayo and crumbled blue cheese and have it on toast.

This is pretty bad but once in a while I crave Easy Cheese. Yeah, the stuff in the spray can. Skip the crackers, bread or any other delivery device, just shoot it directly into the oral cavity. One day when I came home after a particularly rotten day, my wife produced a can that she had hidden for just such an occasion. It helped.

I think my home of Portland OR is moving along nicely on the culinary front especially if your fond of organic free range vegetables.

This maybe a dumb question but, can a Cuisinart blade be sharpened. I've had the same blade and machine for 25 years. I bought a new work bowl a few years ago and I really can't even tell if the blade has diminished in it's performance or not. Seems to do the job but perhaps I'd be happier with a sharper or newer one.

sauteed mushrooms, bacon crumbles and a young melty gorgonzola

Yes, I came across a bottle of the stuff at a neighborhood surplus grocery store. As much as I like a good hot/sweet sauce, I found this one to be a little to syrupy for my taste. First ingredient is high fructose corn syrup.

I think this is cool. Stretch Tite brand, (now sold at Costco) acctually gives you a choice of what type of cutter to use. They put a slide cut insert inside the roll that if you want to you can snap over the serrated teeth. I tried it and I think it works pretty smoothly. Also Stretch Tite brand got top ratings in a recent Cooks Illustrated products testing.

Has anyone tried their Greek styled yogurt? The brand name is fage. I'm telling you, I think I like the full fat version more than sour cream and it's half the calories.

About four years ago I purchased a DCS 30" dual fuel range. The thing that sold me on the DCS was the 5 burners packed into a neat 30" space and that four burners top at 15000BTU and the center one goes to 17500BTU. But wait, there's more! The most impressive feature is not how high they go but how low they go. On the lowest setting you can literally lay a sheet of paper on the grate and it won't ignite. Other ranges handle the low flame issue in different ways. Some give you a heavy heat diffuser plate to put between the flame and your pot while others like the Thermadore turn the flame on and off to simulate a low output. I know that the Wolf range has as good low end performance but at the time it cost about $1000 more. Some folks complain about the size of the ring of flame on the DCS but this has not bothered me at all. Good luck and have fun shopping.

This is why I like CI. The other day I was sitting in a waiting room and happened to pick up an issue of Gourmet Magazine. Out of curiosity, I started counting from the front how many pages were devoted to advertising and how many were devoted to the subject of food and cooking. I got to like page thirty something and only had eight pages that were not advertising or adds trying to look like recipes. Point is, CI is not a "lifestyle" magazine that's always trying to make you feel like some looser if you don't own this or that. I believe that CI is actually trying to impart some knowledge here. Sure at times maybe they'll miss the mark or disappoint but but I've found this to be the case in all relationships, nobody's perfect. So, I get enough good info out of Cooks Illustrated to overlook the parts that don't work so well for me and if I want a mag with more authenticity, I grab my copy of Saveur.

I'm a big fan of the food saver vacuum sealer. It's expensive but it will do a good job of holding the quality of frozen food as well as non frozen dry goods such as rice.

I will never again grab a bottle of Tabasco sauce to deglaze a smokin hot pan. This was before the days of my fancy 900 cfm range hood. Yeah, whole family had to get out of the house.