Darienne

Tried once to make Divinity. Biggest confectionery disaster ever.

Hmmm...fruitcake. A friend gives out the booziest fruitcake every year. OMG, it is so wonderful. Add to that Tortiere which DH makes according to a French-Canadian recipe given to him decades ago.

Shortbread cookies. For Christmas only.

Deryn, I would love the recipe for your " 'family-famous' Rick Bayless-inspired sweet chipotle pecans". Thanks.

Found this recipe online just now. It's not the source for the recipe I have always used but I'm sure it's fine. http://www.marilynmoll.com/2007/12/enstroms-style-toffee/ If anyone wants my version of the recipe, I'll PM it, as I did for Jaymes

Deryn mentioned dipping pretzels in chocolate. Well, there's also coating pretzels in caramel and then dipping them into chocolate. Confectionery partner Barbara and I have done this one a number of times, with much laughing I admit. We fashioned the strangest-looking apparatus on which to hang the dipped pieces to make sure they had a nice rounded shape.

Chocolate-dipped candied ginger cubes or slices are a big favorite. And toffee. I found this terrific recipe online which is a copycat for Enstrom's Chocolate-coated toffee. It is my best gift. And of course, various brittles.

This is our modus operandi also. Thanksgiving pie was a Mexican Coffee Ice Cream Pie with a chocolate ganache under the topping of whipped cream. We all ate a piece for the big meal...and then our guests were gifted with the rest of the pie to take home. Always works.

Not so in our family. Keeping everything exactly the same...except for the dessert...is just what the tradition calls for.

Your banana nut bread looks divine, Anna. And so glad about the universe thing...

At the risk of sounding pathetic, I have to say that I never had a cake nor a party. My adult favorite is a Double Chocolate Mousse Bomb found in One Cake, One Hundred Desserts several years ago and I made it for a party which was thrown for me by some women friends and then ever since on my own account. My own kids loved a cake made from chocolate wafer biscuits put together with whipping cream and then cut on the diagonal. So easy to make.

Hello and welcome, asadus. Just the place to come if you like to work with chocolate.

Does the area have an Indian food restaurant? I make Indian food at home, but would love to eat it out again. We have only two Indian restaurants in Peterpatch, owned by the same people and we haven't eaten there in years. What about Chinese? Our local Chinese food restaurants are all the same...all you can eat buffets and not very good. Again we make it at home...Ed does the mises and I do the cooking...but I would love to eat out on occasion. My DH, JUST LIKE his late Father, would rather eat at home any day and says that our food is better than the restaurant food...which isn't true in the case of the Indian food.

Turkey, DH's stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes (which I don't really care for), Brussels sprouts ( which DH doesn't really care for), carrots, cranberry sauce (which DH won't touch). The rest is up for grabs. Ed does most of the cooking. I make the dessert. That's it. Thanksgiving is not such a big holiday in Canada as it is in the USA and it's more than a month earlier this year. (Can't recall if ours moves around like Easter or not.) Oops. Sorry. It was supposed to be only one thing. Too late.

I've done the flat bag trick for cooked rice, quinoa and the like and this means I can break off a chunk for our meals. But the bag in the box trick is brilliant!!! Have to do that one although I am not sure that there are any plastic bags available in our small nearby city which are truly safe in the microwave. But then Anna or Kerry usually can tell me where I can get everything...lol. Or I just decant the stuff and heat it in the toaster oven. I freeze meatballs and shredded meat on a half sheet in our dog freezer which is the coldest of our freezers and then when the pieces are frozen, I can dump them into a bag for the people freezer and still get just a few pieces out at a time. Friends from the USA bring me those jumbo slider 2.5 gallon hefty tough bags which are great for shredded stuff...wish we could get them in Canada.

Just a tad limiting a concept for those of us who live in the great frozen north... Nope. We don't do it. Not inclined to eat stored turnips all winter long.

I have to try the wild rice popcorn issue for myself.

Butter: Some in a covered dish in the cupboard for easy spreading; some in the fridge for making baked goods which call for cold butter and also cold butter for crackers, new fresh breads and suchlike because we just like it better that way.

Welcome richichi to eGullet from another Canadian...formerly living in Ottawa...but long gone now. DH actually born and raised in Ottawa. It's such a large and cosmopolitan city now that you'll have ready access to all those wonderful exotic ingredients that we in the Ontario hinterland must get either by mail or by travelling to a urban area.

And now I know what Baked Potato Soup is. Thanks. Will try some. I've been on such a soup-making kick this fall that I've run out of containers in which to freeze it and space in my freezer in which to put it. And not sure why I've done it either... Chicken soup, Lentil and Spinach soup, Hot & Sour soup, Bean soup, Albondigas soup, Squash soup and a new one for us, Harira soup. Found a recipe for Harira soup in one of the freebie magazines, Vitality, which bulk and health food stores give out and thought...well, a soup which combines rice, beans and lentils. What can that taste like? Not North American to combine all three in one dish usually (if ever? Surely someone will let me know and soon. ) So I tried it and we really liked it. Didn't have the one ingredient, smen, and am not likely to get it either, but it was good and so filling. Still have no Beef 'n Barley or Potato soup but they will have to wait. We eat soup for supper every second night pretty much.

I make meatballs from a Mexican recipe, half beef, half pork. Cook them in the oven. (Am very fidgety if I have to stand around and fry little things and turn them too.) Then they go into anything or over anything. A really good dish is the African stew Mafe which I make a lot and freeze. Chicken, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts. Not too exotic, but easy to make. http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/african_chicken_peanut_stew/ This is a good thread. I have a couple of friends who visit the farm a few times a year and they have troubles getting home from work and not knowing what to do for supper. It occurred to me that we could cook stuff while they are here and then they could take it home, freeze it, and have ready made suppers. We were discussing this idea just the other day. Oh, packets of shredded beef, pork, chicken, with or without extra saucy stuff...whatever he will eat.

I also use waxed paper to separate rows of cookies and bars, particularly breakfast bars. Use it to line small paper boxes in which I pack toffee and other things for giveaways.

I'm here...part of the usual bunch which follows your adventures up there. We've got to get up to Manitoulin one of these days.

I'm not a great cookie maker because I either undercook them or burn them it seems. My oven is not reliable either. Which makes two of us. Christmas cookies however always include Shortbreads handed down from a friend's Mother. Best Shortbreads I ever tasted. My friend used to make them every year after her Mother stopped making them, but now she won't do them and so the baking has passed on to me. `She swears by making the entire process by hand...I don't think so, but don't tell her.

To make a small cream cheese or mousse type pie absolutely fabulous for special occasions, I tend to cover it with a dark chocolate ganache topping. If you can cover it with chocolate...I do. That's only one, but it's one I live by.