Marlene

It was amazing! The food and company were the best. What I didn't get to say in my remarks last night was; it might seem a little strange that I would fly down from Canada for a dinner in New York. How could I possibly have missed the Society's first fundraiser? We are doing wonderful things, and I hope all of you are as proud to be a part of it as I am. I look forward to seeing you all again at the next eG Society event. Thank you Rachel and Jason for organizing a terrific evening!

My favourite way to eat spaggetti is with butter, sour cream and parmesan. I'm not a spaggetti sauce fan.

As does mine. I often make these for Ryan to take in his lunch.

I often do monkey bread in muffin tins. Then you've got individual monkey bread muffins!

If this is for children, you may want to make sure whatever you make is nut free. Or atr least check on nut allergies. I always made cupcakes for my son's pre school. Decorated wih lots of sprinkles and fun stuff for the little ones.

Dine OUT Vancouver, Owen. Like Restaurant Week.

Add Molly Steven's All About Braising for me.

Soup wasn't the right word I think. It appears what he's looking for is more like a stew. Since I'm going to be out of town for a few days next week, he can just heat this up for himself. Although pot pie sounds intriguing!

Because I drink so much coffee during the day, I was definitely starting to notice the "caffeine buzz". I've since switched to; a full pot of regular caffeine in the morning, then my second pot is half caffeine and half decaf and the last pot is all decaf. i have noticed a significant difference. Not only in how I sleep, but also my hands shake less from the caffeine buzz!

Oh. My. God. I'm in pot roast heaven. And I have to tell you, my husband, whom I've never associated with pot roast, not only had seconds, but has asked me to make a soup from the leftovers! Those of you who know me, know that Don does not. eat. leftovers.! The roast out of the oven: Now that I'm a Keller school graduate of straining, I strained the liquid from the roast and reduced it until it was a little more than a cup. The meat was not so much sliceable, as it was shreddible: And a lousy plating shot. I didn't have any bacon fat to hand, so I melted some lard and roasted the carrots in that: Amazing. Simply amazing. I can't believe how much my husband raved about this. It was incredible. Thank you all for your hints and helps along the way!

The recipe I'm using, from Cook's Illustrated says to turn it every 30 minutes. I'm very good at doing what I'm told , so I am. With dinner will be mashed potatoes and oven roasted carrots. No, not a green veg, but a veg nonetheless!

K, I've turned it down to 250. As I'm turning it every 30 minutes, I'll be able to tell whether that's too much or too little. It went in around 2:30, I'm figuring to serve it at 6:30 or so? Well, he didn't say they were Valentine's gifts.

i'm wondering if I should turn it down? Maybe to 250? It seems to be bubbling quite a bit

I'm using the braiser. After all, Don went out of his way to get that for me first. How could I not? Here's the start: The roast, from which I stupidly removed the netting from first So it kiind of exploded on me: Carmelized some onions and carrots. Added brown sugar and garlic Added beef stock and scraped up all the brown bits: Put the roast back in, sort of re-tied Added some water and a little red wine. I've covered it with the lid and put it in the oven at 300. I'll turn it every 30 minutes or so. Do I have enough liquid? Too much? Next time I'll leave the damned netting on

My husband surprised me with this set yesterday: The big one is 7 1/4 US quarts and the little one is 2 US quarts, plus the cute spatula. Apparently they had this set on sale at Costco. I've gone from having no Le Crueset to having a little family of them. Pot roast is on the menu tonight.

I made the Boeuf Bourguignon last week as you can see here. You'll also note I dispensed with the final part, I just couldn't take it anymore! But you'll get the idea of what it looked like. ms melkor, do the quiches. i'm working on a piece and looked at that chapter and it's like a doctorate in quiche-making. i learned so many tricks. i love it when i learn something from a cookbook, rather than just collect another recipe. not that the recipes are bad: i made the leek and roquefort quiche and it was really amazing. ← This is exactly why I made the Bourguignon. The recipe was far more complicated than it needs to be, but I sure learned a lot!

I've had the Grind and Brew Cusinart for a couple of years. The first one I had, the grinder stuck and I couldn't get it out. Cuisinart sent me a new one and I've had no trouble with it ever since. I love it and the thermal pot that keeps my coffee hot for hours. Having said that, the machine that I had for years was the Braun Flavour Select Braun. This is the easiest machine I've ever had to clean. The whole basket swings out and comes off for easy cleaning and it makes a wonderful cup of coffee. In fact I still have it downstairs on my bar.

Um, no. In fact I don't. Ok, that's not completely true. I have this no stick thing that doesn't have a lid that I sometimes use. But it's not a saute pan. Now what?

It is certainly cute! Yay! Fat Guy says I can keep it. (now I know how my son felt when I told him he could keep the kitten he found ) Seriously, it never ever occured to me to do a pot roast in the All Clad, for all they call it a Dutch Oven. I just don't know why. Now I have Molly's braising book, a dutch oven and a sort of braising pan, I am all set for the first course in the upcoing eGCI semester.

When it's just the three of u, we tend to eat in the kitchen at the island. We always eat in the dining room when we have company which is at least every other weekend. Occassionally the three of us will eat in the dining room. That's usually a Sunday roast dinner scenario though.

In reading Molly Steven's All About Braising, (yes, I managed to snag the book too!), she does talk about this particular pan and indicates that it is good for the smaller cuts like, chicken legs, chops and ribs. So if as Fat Guy says, my all clad is good for pot roasts, my slow cooker doubles in a pinch for stews and chillis, and I keep this pan, I should be pretty versatile. One of the things Molly talks about is making sure there isn't much room between the lid, the sides and the meat. With a 6 3/4 dutch oven, I'm afraid I'm going to have too much room between the lid and the meat. Remember, I'm not buying big cuts here. Yes, I can take care of that with a parchment lid as well. I think I just talked myself into keeping this pan Although just as an experiment, I'll try one pot roast in this, and the other one I bought in my All Clad.

Fair enough. I normally do my stews and chillis in my All Clad Dutch Oven which looks more like this: Plus I have a crockpot. I hadn't thought about using this for braising since the expanse of the bottom of the pan isn't that flat, and it's not that heavy, but what do I know. And since we don't do left overs in this house (it's not my fault, no one will eat them), I'm not going to be buying larger cuts. I can see me doing fried chicken in the Le Crueset, and my favourite ribs and saurkraut. However, I may be just trying to talk myself into keeping a cute pan that isn't really going to be serviceable. But my question above still stands. Do I need to have the sides of the pot higher than the roast itself for good braising?

Just to give it a little more perspective, I put the roast into the pot to give an idea of what i'll be cooking. I can't imagine doing a bigger pot roast than this as it's just the three of us, and pot roast isn't usually on my entertaining menu: The question is, do I need the sides to be higher than the roast itself? The paper towel underneath may interfere a bit with the perspective, but the roast was leaking and I didn't want it to get all over a pot I may have to take back.

So this is what the braiser looks like. There was some concern on the part of the sales clerk that this is too shallow for what I want even though it's called a braiser. On the other hand, the smallest dutch oven they had was 6 3/4 qts and I thought that was just too big. So, what do you all think? Will this do the job?

I am about to become the proud owner of The Le Cruset Braiser In reviewing my choices I settled on this since I would only likely use the dutch oven for braising anyway. The one I got is a 5 qt braiser. Hopefully, this will be the right choice. I'll let you know on Sat when I braise that blade roast! Now I'll be ready for Fat Guy's braising class!