Darienne

Thermometers purchased in Canada seem to show both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. Of the two which are outside our kitchen windows...one to the west and one to the north...one shows the Fahrenheit number in bigger and bolder and the other one is the opposite.

It's been a long time since we had an orange with seeds in it, but as for the seedless Navel oranges...I would really like to know how to pick one that is tasty. They range from delicious to about as bland as you can get without being real cardboard, and how to tell which is likely to be which seems impossible. Is this a result of there being no seeds in the oranges???

Second-hand building stores like Habitat for Humanity/ Restore. DH has found amazing bargains while renovating our house. Restaurant and institutional cast-offs abound. We found 10 dining room chairs for about $5.00 each...living room occasional chairs...kitchen cabinetry...the list is endless. We bought our kitchen cabinets from a factory outlet years ago. Too long to remember. But then we live in a century farmhouse and are not very au courant in our tastes.

The traditional ploughman's lunch can work very nicely and serve folks with different tastes and dietary restrictions, which old guys, like us, often have. (Skip the ham for me...I have an aversion to ham. ) Add salady items. And I usually have a freezer with meals frozen in it which defrost well and can be served over some grain like rice or quinoa. And ice cream in the dog freezer.

I hope that your friends brought lovely gifts for you or that you are independently wealthy, because feeding all those people all that food must have cost a goodly sum...besides all the work involved. Or did they clean up and do the dishes? Wonderful photos. Delicious entrees. Would that we lived near and were friends. I would have brought desserts.

A website which might interest you, PanaCan.http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=6&threadid=134772

I know it's late for New Year's Day, but I did make Judiu's Johnny Mac's 4 can salad for supper tonight. Had to sub one or two ingredients, but we did enjoy it nonetheless. Thanks, Judiu.

Pardon my question, but are the scallops sitting on raw bacon slices? I would guess not. What is the meat? Really enjoying your blog as usual.

Where we live in the4 Great Frozen North, the only fresh Mexican/Southwestern chiles we can get are Jalapenos or Poblanos. And the Poblanos for only a couple of years now...and they are labelled "Hot". How would Poblanos fit into your recipe, Jaymes? (We can't get fresh tomatillos ever but I grow them every summer now and keep them frozen until needed.)

Thanks all. I suspect we are talking 'urban myth'.

Sorry. Somehow the address dropped off. The address dropped off again and I did preview the post this time. I don't understand why. I'll pm you the recipe.

That's the site of our favorite green chile recipe. Yes, it has tomatillos in it. Is this a problem? Our own eG's Andiesenji's favorite recipe.

I always used a muffin pan.

Fascinating, both food and scenery. Thanks.

What is a goose-neck spatula please?

I agree with DiggingDogFarm that making one's own chicken broth is always better. But I am stunned that he can buy 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters for $6.90...that 69 cents a pound. Sometimes where we live in Ontario, Canada, they are on sale for a dollar a pound, but usually they cost $1.70 a pound. (DH reminds me that we could buy chicken leg quarters in Utah for 70 cents a pound.)

Just finished reading In The Kitchen, by Monica Ali, finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Just grabbed it off the shelf in the library without looking at more than the photo of the kitchen on the front cover. No idea of what it was about except that it was fiction, a kitchen was featured, and it almost won a prestigious British literary prize and was nominated for two American literary prizes. It features a top British chef working as executive chef in a posh hotel with a restaurant and his very complicated life. Sorry to say, I really didn't like it very much...but I really enjoyed the parts about the hotel kitchen and the cooking. His life left me a bit cold.

And wild rice which the Canadian aboriginal peoples harvested from the lakes.

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my first post. I creamed the butter and sugar by hand mixer and then mixed the flour in by hand. Two processes in one batch of cookies. And my friend pronounced my cookies as excellent. She doesn't have time to make cookies this year and so maybe she was just being a tad kind. Don't know. I'll pm you the recipe.

A friend recently gave me her Mother's wonderful shortbread cookie recipe and advised me that that the sugar and butter had to be creamed by hand and then the flour mixed in by hand also...or else the cookies would not be the same as her Mother's were. Could this be true? And why should it be so? BTW, I creamed by hand mixer and mixed by hand and the shortbreads were exquisite.

Have you found that IR thermometers are reasonably accurate (with fresh batteries)? I have been wondering. Yesterday I tested, and both IR and non-IR gave approximately the same reading. Other times they have been too far apart for comfort. I am new to using IR and am still not confident enough in the accuracy. But they certainly are convenient, especially when testing two different mixtures at the same time and when one of them is tempered chocolate (it's difficult to remember that I mustn't dip a regular thermometer into some liquid and then into tempered chocolate). First low battery/low inaccurate reading for me, so I can't really comment.

As for the accuracy of IR thermometers... Confectionery partner Barbara and I were making toffee last week and using my IR thermometer. Strangely the batch was beginning to burn but didn't register the required temperature on my thermometer. Barbara brought out her thermometer and it registered much hotter than mine...which would explain the slight burning smell. (The toffee was scrumptious anyway.) Then Barbara noticed that my battery was signaling 'low'. Aha! So that was the reason. New battery in. Thermometer back in the running...

An early Christmas gift...totally unexpected. Today confectionery partner, Barbara, and I got together to make Copy-cat Enstrom toffee, covered in chocolate, sprinkled with almonds (both sides. Yum) for holiday gifts to give away. This is the first time we have both been well, without family complications, etc, etc for months now. Barbara gave me this wonderful cake plate and server.

Ingredients in the Ziplock bags sounds good. Monday is Toffee day and I think I'll measure out the ingredients before partner Barbara gets here. We have quite a lot to accomplish and I could do this tomorrow. Laughed when I found an old eG topic which I started on whether I could double or triple my toffee recipe. Had completely forgotten about that one.

Made the Orange Cookies Dipped in Chocolate for the neighbors up the road. Beauties. And yummy too. Made the glace orange bits first (thanks to first eG mentor Andiesenji)