Marlene

Baby carrots, throw them into the slow cooker with a little water, brown sugar,honey and butter. Stir them up. Set slow cooker to 4 hours. Done. Sprinkle with parsley. No, it was a lot pink in spots.

I'd add some robust red wine to it, and garlic. always garlic.

And that voice my friends, is the "late to the party" (I got him signed up here weeks ago), but always avid supporter of my egullet endeavours, my husband. (we're both sitting at the kitchen counter with our dueling laptops.) eGullet, say hello to Don.

Pfui Maggie? I love doing carrots that way. Throw them in the slow cooker and I don't have to worry about them until it's time to eat. An added sidebenefit is Ryan really likes them that way. I keep saying it,but the glaze was awesome. Next, the finalized menu for the party etc.

Maggie, I'd think the top would be dificult as a work surface. Why not screw in a butcher's block over top of it? That curvey bit is charming, but for working, i can see it as a dirt and germ catcher, and won't be practical in case our hero is thinking of rolling out pie crust or something. Red knobs yes. Red kickboards too in MHO Ok, let's not get carried away here.

Rye and coke. Canadian Club. Maybe that's why the hats looked funny!

for the record, here is the lasagne I did:

Hey hero! i'd weigh in on the KitchenAid ovens, but that's because I swear by mine. In my new house, the oven is a Miele, and I'm sure it's nice, but the second oven I'm going to put in there will be a Kitchenaid. And you still didn't tell us whether you bought the kA mixer or not.

Two things. I did rotate the roast pan halfway through, and I was not using convection because I had tin foil in the oven. For some reason, convection does not like aluminum foil.

Thanks! I deliberately didn't take pics of the raw pork The glaze was truly awesome though. Both in looks and in taste.

Well, all in all, it was an interesting experiment. Keep in mind, I've never done one of these before. The men threw a curve into my timing, when they decided to take the kids to see a movie. That left Teresa and I to drink heavily and talk about life in general. She decided that we needed paper hats for the roast after all, so she made some: You can see we we're already drinking I made Dave's glaze and had to subsitute chili powder for ancho. It reduces to a pretty thick syrup, so I needed to thin it out a bit. The other thing I would suggest, which I didn't do, is to line your roasting pan with some foil. The glaze made a mess of the bottom of the pan. Here's the naked roast: In the end, I decided to stuff it as well. I made a simple bread stuffing, and stuffed the roast after I had roasted it unstuffed for an hour or so. Before stuffing, I made a large ball of tinfoil and put it in the centre of the roast. Here's the finished roast: And adorned with "hats" What was interesting, was how unevenly it cooked. One side, in spots, was nearly raw, but the other side was perfectly cooked. You can see in this picture, hints of how pink it was in some places. Added to this, we had glazed carrots, done in the slow cooker And a tomato, onion and bleu cheese salad, with a balsamic vinigrete dressing. Teresa brought a raspberry chocolate cheesecase, which she wimped out and bought! I won't bore you with a repeat of the parisianne potatoes or the brie that I reprised for this dinner. All in all, it was a sucess, although I had near panic fits with the rawness of some of the pork. I'm very glad this dinner was for friends and not for clients, that might have thought I was trying to poison them! I'm pretty sure that stuffing the roast half way through, skewed my cooking time. We've decided we'll try this once more to "perfect" the technique. Sorry, Dave, I never got to the intermezzo Next up.......The major party is this weekend.

I used my leftover spagetti sauce which did have meat in it. Sadly, there were no leftovers.

chili powder I have. Thanks!

Ok somebody help. I could not find ancho anywhere. What can I substitute for it?

Well of course I'm interested. Bring it on!

I doubt it. I don't have any

I have to put on a dinner party for 16 for my wife's co-workers. Most of them could be considered "country folks" who don't care for fine dining, but I always try to do something a bit different for them. This year, I'll serve them two types of beef: grilled, aged sirloin and then beef cheeks. I won't tell them about the beef cheeks until they're done. I do need to come up with another name for this cut, however. Any ideas? Another problem with this crowd is dealing with a laundry list of dietary concerns: lactose intolerance, allergic to shellfish, chocolate and nuts, don't care for seafood, won't eat red meat, and so on. I'm still serving the beef, because it's Mrs. Varmint who doesn't eat the red meat. I'll cook some tuna for her. ← If they ask, I'd just mumble "beef" and quickly change the subject. What are you serving with these beef dishes Mr. Varmint?

For the first thing, I favour the smoked salmon. and for the second thing, definately I light salad of some sort. Or skip the appetizer and do as Dave suggest by serving a sorbet inbetween courses. Your dinner party sounds lovely

Now here's a question. The WS cookbook specifiies roasting a crown pork, bones down. Really? And would I still cover the bones with foil if I did this?

This one particularly intriques me. Do you have quantities Dave? Also a general question on roasting carrots. Normally when I roast carrots, I do so by putting them around the roast. That won't work this time I don' t think since the roast will be sitting on a rack. So to roast them separately in the oven, just throw them into a pan and roast? Add butter? lard? anything? for how long?

The lasagne was more than edible, it was fantastic. The Balsamella sauce made all the difference in the world. Thank you everyone for your help!

I think I will go unstuffed with the roast and do parisianne potatoes and roasted carrots to fill the middle. Maggie's potatoes will have to wait for another day, although I'm anxious to try them. My husband will make his famous tomato/ onion and blue cheese salad. Nibbles will be the brie in phyllo, and shrimp cocktails and one more thing that I havent' figured out yet. I'm still torn between Dave's glaze and Jamie's mustard paste.

The lasagne is in the oven as I type. I made the Balsamella as per Dave's instructions except I didn't use all the milk. The sauce would have been too thin. I used probably 2 and 1/3 cups. I used both mozzarella and grated parmigano because I figure you can never have too much cheese. I'm baking it at 375 for about 40 minutes at which point I'll take off the tin foil and let the top brown up. I'll let you know if it's edible.

I have a number of WS cookbooks on my list. In addition, I would add On Food & Cooking by Harold McGee Les Halles - Anthony Bourdain Like Water for Chocolate ? Really, I'd take any food related book anyone wanted to give me.

Snowangel, would you mind adopting me? Had I been taught these things in my youth, I'd be so much further ahead today.