ruthcooks

Shirley Corriher says that self-rising flour is better because manufacturers have access to more and better leavening agents, and are more thoroughly mixed than we can achieve. Also, she points out that many recipes call for an incorrect amount of baking powder or soda. I can see that southerners who make biscuits or cornbread almost daily would find it a great convenience. I may give it a try for baked goods, but can't see using it as my go-to flour for everyday use. Who wants self-rising gravy? I use those little packets of dishwashing detergent, mainly because the powders and liquids are very heavy for my arthritic hands, but also because those powders get up my nose. When I first started using the packets, they were much more reasonably priced than they are now. My candidates for "don't understand" are mixes for things that only call for a few ingredients. Popover mix for example. Perhaps people buy these things because they have no idea how they are made.

Re: the apostrophe thing... The worst case I've seen was right here on eG: pea's

I have one, too, but never thought of using it as an ice bucket. Guess the penguins should have clued me in. I remember using mine for chili (with corn muffins) for a fall picnic once.

"Add wet ingredients to dry." I do it the other way around because it saves washing an extra bowl. I whisk dry ingredients in the bowl, then turn out onto waxed paper. Next I beat eggs in the same bowl and add other wet ingredients. Dump in dry ingredients and fold. (I still have to use an extra bowl or cup to melt the butter, but it's a little one.) You can also use a food processor to mix, but washing that is even worse. As a matter of fact, I often change recipes using the "cake method" (cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, alternately add dry ingredients and liquids) to the above "muffin method", especially when I am actually making muffins or coffeecake. Oops...forgot to mention detriment. None I can see, except when I change from cake method the crumb is a little less fine. Doesn't bother me.

I never knew my German grandmother, so I don't know how she served her Potato Pancakes although I use her recipe. I fry them in bacon fat and don't need anything else.

Why not use bags of ice from the store? Doesn't cost much and feels like a luxury to me. I hate filling and dumping ice trays, haven't done it for years.

I have fallen in love with this recipe for grape and walnut flatbread. Even though I don't like walnuts, I have found that they are the perfect nut to off-set the flavor of the roasted grapes which is both too tart and too sweet for the bland-ness of other nuts. Sweet Flatbread with Grapes (SCHIACCIATA CON L'UVA) Adapted from www.west175productions.com/cucina_toscana/recipes/recipe008.html I find 1 1/2 lbs. grapes are a little too juicy for my taste. One lb. or a little more is good. 1 envelope (2 t.) dry yeast 1 C. plus 2 T. warm water 1/3 to 1/2 C. sugar, divided 3 C. (12 oz.) all-purpose flour 1/4 t. salt Extra-Virgin olive oil 2/3 C. chopped walnuts, not too fine 1 to 1 1/2 lb. black, purple or dark red grapes, the smaller the better, washed and dried. Dissolve yeast and 1 T. sugar in warm water until foamy, 10-15 minutes. Add flour and salt to a large bowl, making a well in the center. Pour yeast mixture into the well, and combine with a wooden spoon. Towards the end, use your hand to work in the last of the flour, and knead the dough a few minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl, wash and dry and oil the bowl. Turn the dough in the bowl to coat all sides with the oil. Cover bowl with a clean dishtowel and let rise for two hours. Dough should be doubled. Deflate dough gently. Brush a half sheet pan with oil. Roll out dough to roughly the size of the sheet pan. Use your fingers to push dough to pan edges, patching any holes. Dump all of the grapes on top and roll them around to distribute equally. Push grapes down with the heel of your hand. Sprinkle evenly with walnuts, then with remaining sugar. Let rise another 30 minutes. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until brown and crisp on edges. Let cool and cut into 8 or 10 pieces. To freeze, wrap pieces individually in foil, then in a freezer bag. I place a foil package, unwrapped, on a small baking pan and reheat 15 minutes at 325 degrees convection. It will crisp up nicely. Good for breakfast or light lunch or snack, with cheese if you like.

I remember when dates came in a box. I'd guess the box was about a half pound or possibly a little more. Yes, soft ball is 235, don't know what else it could be. Never heard of this candy, though.

If tomato sauce is "gravy", then what do you call gravy? I've always wondered about the term "creamed potatoes" in the South, referring to mashed potatoes. Creamed potatoes are boiled potatoes immersed in cream sauce, what do they call them? Aargh!

As one with arthritis in fingers and hands, I always scoop and chill. There seems to be no deterioration in the quality of the cookie. I scoop all the dough at once, placing the balls closely on a piece of parchment for later storing frozen in a zip bag and baking at my convenience. Or, conversely, spacing them on a cookie sheet ready to bake and chilling only 8-10 minutes per sheet before baking.

In Defense of Nathalie Dupree Nathalie Dupree came to cooking in the era when it was fashionable to select recipes on one basis. Not “it’s a new cooking method ” or “it’s by a famous chef” or “it’s low fat” or “it’s low calorie” but “it tastes good”. Not that she didn’t lower some fat and calories along the way, but that she didn’t use that as sole criteria for worthiness. The food heros and heroines of that day were not restaurant chefs, but cooking school teachers, newspaper food editors, cookbook authors and the “best cook on the block.” That’s the era I come from, too. And I treasure it. “Sounds good” is still my criteria for choosing a recipe. Possibly those of you who have panned Nathalie’s cooking show have not ever heard of her or seen her before. I have met her and attended a cooking class by her. She is a nice lady, no tantrums or swearing here. I own several of her books, and she is a terrific writer. In “Matters of Taste” she writes a recipe prelude about falling in love over cold tomato soup that is sheer poetry. Please consider her achievements; this woman deserves your respect. Like Julia Child, Nathalie attended the Cordon Bleu Cooking School (and earned an advanced degree) while in her 30s. Like Julia Child, Nathalie filmed more than 100 cooking shows for PBS (eventually 300 in nine series shown on three networks). Like Julia Child, Nathalie had a reputation for relaxed presentation and “klutziness” (although no one attacked St. Julia as many attack Nathalie here). Like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, Nathalie emphasized fresh regional ingredients and California-style grilling and baking (and she grew her own herbs) for her first restaurant. Nathalie founded a cooking school at Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. The school was active for 10 years and boasts Shirley Corrihor as one of its graduates. Nathalie is given great credit by the state of Georgia for preserving and expanding their culinary history, and for Atlanta’s becoming a “food town”. Nathalie is a past president of what is now known as the IACP, and in 2004 won the Jack Daniel's Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Nathalie has published about a dozen cookbooks, and is still going. Every recipe she prints is tested at least three times. Oh, yes…for those of you who care about such things…she is in her 70s and still maintains a fitness program. Reference: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3203

Nine months later I'm just now getting back to this thread to report that I did get the Sharp oven like Andie's. When I made the last check before ordering, I noticed that the price had been lowered so I again dithered. Next day, the price had been lowered once more and the "number left" had gone from about 36 down to the teens, so I jumped on it. Evidently it was a close out and they keep lowering the price as the number lowers. I am very satisfied with the oven. I do wish it had a visible reminder of the temperature you picked, because I never can remember when I need to cook something a few minutes longer. Once I meant to cook an individual casserole of squash au gratin and my hand evidently slipped down to the second row of oven temperatures and hit the highest temperature. I made carbon. Also, the instructions are not complete as to the time it takes to combine microwave and convection functions, and the recipe book just plain sucks. Half the recipes include either cilantro or cinnamon, which I don't like, but that's a personal preference. Over all, I use the convection more than the microwave, and don't know what I did without it. One of my Christmas gifts in 2011 was a pair of Silicone elbow-length gloves for reaching in for those hot things, since turntables and pull-out shelves are contra-indicated.

Hilarious! Steve's website should come with a note: " Warning! Reading this may cause your incontinence pills to fail."

What about scone/skawn? When it seems everyone is saying things wrong, you might as well give up and join 'em, lest "they" make you feel stupid.

What BeeZee said.

Back on the farm, we had a hickory nut tree and always made hickory nut cakes, too. The nutmeats are the devil to pick out, and you might as well be prepared to find a few shells in your finished product. Hickory nuts do not taste like pecans IMO, I would have no difficulty in telling them apart. Neither do walnuts and black walnuts taste alike. I will sometimes tolerate walnuts, which I find bitter, but black walnuts taste like aspirin to me.

My food mill is either missing or got tossed last time I moved, so when the applesauce bug bit, I ordered a new 2 quart (they also had 3 qt.) Foley from Amazon for around $28. It is exactly like the one I used for around 50 years except it's stainless and won't get rusty like the old one. Sure, it doesn't have several sizes of discs, but I find that some equipment like ricers have discs that don't stay put, and that suits me fine. Anyway, I like fine applesauce, not the chunky stuff. I will enjoy using this, even if I never use it for anything else.

To the Pilgrims, turkey WAS game! There were no farmed turkeys back then.

And people who pay over $1000 for a rice cooker never cook anything because they probably have a private chef.

Does anyone remember the Seven Up Bar? From candyaddict.com: "Discontinued sometime in the 70’s, the Seven Up bar began its seven-sectioned life in the 1930s, before the 7-Up Bottling Company began making its soft drink. Eventually the 7-Up company bought the bar and retired it, so they had the exclusive use of the name whichever way it was spelled: Seven Up or 7-Up. None of that mattered a whit to me, as I was only interested in one thing: those seven sections of chocolate-covered different candy centers, meaning I was getting seven big pieces of candy in one regular-sized bar. Quite a bargain to me back then for my hard-saved pennies and nickels (shoot, I’d pay just about anything for one today)! The Seven Up bar itself consisted of seven separated, filled sections connected by an outer chocolate shell. The shell was real milk chocolate, a bit thick on the edges, but thinner over the fillings, and had a good snap to it if bitten, and a smooth melt if left upon your tongue. The seven fillings were: Orange Jelly, Maple, Caramel, Brazil Nut, Fudge, Coconut, and Cherry; each was so distinct and different that no two bites were remotely alike. I loved the Seven Up bar for that reason especially, and, too, both the chocolate and the candy centers were really, really good." The Orange Jelly section was my favorite and I always saved it for last.

IMO best blog in recent memory. Thanks, Scotty.

For me, nothing can beat the old-fashioned Jonathan, which I grew up eating in Illinois. It bakes, makes pies, and tastes delicious raw. I also use Granny Whites (pies) and MacIntosh (sauce and relishes) for cooking, and will occasionally eat a Fuji or Gala or try newer versions. I am not too fond of apples, but my mother loved them and often complained that the skins were all too tough to eat anymore. One year I sent her two of each kind I could find (when the fall apples were in) so she could find the one which would suit.

Not only wires, but those tight rubber bands too close to the asparagus tips.

I ate my first Caesar Salad at Cardini's, made tableside, in Mexico in 1964. Real anchovies, of course. I took notes and made it for years. Now, it is impossible to get the tiny leaves of romaine hearts where I live. They are called that, but are great horsey leaves of romaine which has been left too long in the field. It's still the best and I detest some of the abominations that now pass for Caesar Salad in restaurants.

I soak my bread (almost any kind) until it's saturated and brown in butter. Than I transfer to a cookie sheet and bake at about 325 until the bread is very puffy. That way I know the soaking liquid is completely cooked. I spread the baked toast with softened butter, than sift over a coating of powdered sugar, then squeeze one or more lime halves over it until the sugar is all liquified. I can't remember where I heard of this, but I have never been tempted to eat it any other way since my first taste. A friend told me once that she could never understand why she didn't like anyone's French Toast but her mother's. Turned out her mother French Fried her French Toast!