Darienne

This recipe for homemade "condensed milk" which has no liquid in it works as a substitute for a small can of liquid condensed milk? Yes? Your link led me to another link, another sub for condensed milk. Amazing. I guess I have to try these. Thanks Shelby.

Last night I made Smitten Kitchen's recent recipe for Apple Sharlotka mainly because right now I have a thing for apple and 5-yr aged Cheddar. Thought I would try it. Never gone wrong with a Smitten Kitchen recipe so far. Alas. For me...and I stress "ME" or "US"...this did not work. The cake part of the dessert is quite sweet and even though the apples are tart, they are not a contrast to the cake. Took the finished dessert apart and later today I am going to make fritters out of the apple part in prepared egg roll papers just for the heck of it. Made a wonderfully tart Lemon-Lime Curd from Chef Eddy and we ate it on the cake. Just right for us. Interesting cooking sequence.

Don't quite get what you mean. I can get frozen banana leaves in Peterborough and would mail them to you if that is what you are asking. I can find out where my local Asian grocery gets their leaves. At least I can try. Oh, the owner of a local Mexican restaurant uses frozen banana leaves. I know she would tell me how they get them. Do let me know if I can be of any help.

We don't normally eat fried foods. We don't normally ever eat deep fried foods. Having said that, allow me to confess that I love deep fried foods almost more than life itself. In the past month I have now made deep fried chile rellenos, egg rolls, and samosas. All to die for. Chile Rellenos are not a spur of the moment "I really want some right now" items and so DH came up with this brilliant idea, especially since we live far from any grocery type stores. It's easy to keep on hand: frozen packages of Tex/Mex cheese, Poblano rajas, and Chinese egg roll skins. Mix defrosted rajas and cheese together, package in egg roll wrappers and fry. Presto: a yummy meal or snack. Sometimes the man is just pure brilliance. (I don't own a deep fryer...I wonder if that should go onto the list of needs/wants/? ) ps. I've never made bunuelos, churros, falafel, Navajo Fry bread at home. I must NOT ever make them. Far too dangerous to my homeostasis. pps. Yah, I adore funnel cakes...go easy on the sugar please.

OK. If there is any way to screw it up, I'll find it. Left the sugared lychee jellies sitting in a container of sugar. Yep. The sugar is all soaked and so are the jellies. Well, I know, you could have told me that. Learn, learn, learn. Took the jellies out. Patted them all dry. Will shake them in sugar (in a separate container) at the last moment before we eat them. Just grateful that I checked them before we left.

I think there may be regional differences at play here, if not between states, then at least between Canada and the USA. DH does almost all the meat buying so I have asked him for his response to this question. (Plus we never eat hamburger unless it is ground from a roast.) That said. Where we live in Canada, there is very seldom any meat sold past its prime date. What they do with it we don't know. I'll ask when we are home again. Our local butcher, in our nearby tiny town, reduces meat prices regularly, but then his regular prices are higher than in the city and you have to catch the stuff on the fly and there's little of it. Mainly beef liver is at a sale price, all of which goes to the pups. DH will not eat liver. Period. (Oh, the main reason we have a butcher is that he owns the building in which the grocery is housed. Don't think that all tiny ON towns have butchers on the premise.) Here in Utah, the local Kroger has a huge past prime date bin and we have basically been living from it, both for the dogs and for us. American meat prices, to begin with, are quite a bit lower than anything we have seen in Ontario. The past prime costs are such a treat and the dogs have never eaten so well. (Not to mention that back home we NEVER see gizzards and hearts and the like for sale in a grocery store.) I have bought a lot of past prime pork and chicken thighs for us to eat. Just chuck it into the crock pot over night, and then debone, defat, cut up, shred, etc, in the am and pack it into the freezer. It becomes a variety of dishes as we go. BTW, we are NOT big meat eaters at all. "Lessmeatarians" as Bittman calls it.

Candy Tray Lychee Gels. Never heard of them before. Delicious little gems. Here they are sitting in a pile of sugar waiting to be transported to our Third Annual Chinese Feast. They should be rolled in sugar at the last minute, but I have already given them a preliminary sugar rolling and will give them a last minute shake before dessert is served and hope that this will work out fine. One of my fellow cooks loves lychees and normally I would make lychee ice cream but I don't have an ice cream maker with me. Was just googling around last evening and found this recipe under Chinese New Year Candy Recipes and thought Aha! I couldn't be more thrilled. And thus...

What could it taste like? What would be in it? And with gravy on top?

Oh my! How I would like to be the recipient of such a wonderful array! So beautifully done!

Then there is that wonderful fact that men lose weight more quickly than do women. Unfair. Unfair. My DH was a fat kid and this is back in the 40s and 50s when there was one fat kid per school it seemed. It has been a life long battle for him and one that he has won. But constant diligence and rigid self-control has always been there. I, on the other hand, have neither constant diligence nor rigid self-control and am caught in that difficult situation so well described by Simon_S. I can take it off...but I can't keep it off and each decade sees my "set-weight", or whatever you call the weight at which you can eat pretty well and NOT gain any more dramatically, up by 5 pounds. Right now I am doing fine...but for how long? And it's all further complicated now by Spinal Stenosis which means less pain with less weight but difficulty in walking or standing sometimes for any length of time. Sometimes in 'remission', sometimes so bad that I don't want to think about it. Just my story.

[Moderator note: The original Yard Sale, Thrift Store, Junk Heap Shopping topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Yard Sale, Thrift Store, Junk Heap Shopping (Part 1)] Bought an electric roaster two days ago for $10. 8 quart. Not sure why. But already it's turned out to be a little wonder. I am making another round of freezable Tex/Mex enchiladas for quick lunches and wanted to roast some poblanos and other useful vegetables to add to the leftover pulled pork filling. Normally I roast the stuff in the oven. But this was SOO handy. Like a frying pan in which I can't burn stuff. (Yes, I do have that kind of attention span now. The meds nurse brain is gone forever.) We have two more Sundays to go before we head for home and I shall look more carefully for roaster pans in the local second hand store. I know I've seen larger ones before. Never considered buying one.

Much here to ponder. Thank you.

Good point about the liquid coming from the meat. DH and I are just talking about it...the amount of water injected into the meat. Thanks for bringing that one up.

I cannot think of a time when the cooked meat (crock pot experience only) was not swimming in liquid. That's plain pulled pork with no seasoning, seasoned pulled pork (assorted) and puerco pibil (without banana leaves). But then I haven't made the foregoing more than the last two years. I drain the liquid and then remove the fat when it is solid. Use it mainly for the dogs over the next weeks. Or dump it. The juice goes for sauce or frozen for broths. The extra 'juice' always gets used up in one way or another. Have never added any liquid to the mix except for small amounts of li, lemon or orange juice. Could the cuts of pork be a factor?

There is a very interesting book on sleep Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival. It may shed some light on why we gain weight because of the effect of our living for an unnatural length of time in the light.

Here goes my last attempt. Here's a photo of two of the sheets, one right side up, one upside down. That's DH's hand holding the up side down sheet, showing how pliable the sheet is. He was using a fair amount of pressure to create this response. You can see the rigid frame. The young woman at the cash is fascinated by the problem and wants to know what happens to the sheets. Yes, I bought them at 50% off. She found them online starting at 'rubber baking sheet' and they are noted as 'silicone'. She said that they had a bunch of them and that these were the last two left. One thing for sure, they are immoveable and Kerry's idea of using them to keep some item still would certainly work. I was showing the young woman how immoveable they were and actually wiggled the counter accidentally while showing her. No identification at all. 11"x15". End of story.

Will do. However, if you go to the OP on this topic and click on the link, you'll get a photo of what this thing looks like. Ofr course it's only from one not too useful angle. I could take my camera into the store tomorrow and ask if they mind my taking a couple of photos of the item for 'educational' purposes. I think they'll agree. It's a pretty informal and friendly place and the staff were quite curious to figure out what it was also. I'll try.

At half price on Senior Sunday, each one will cost $1.50. And it's mostly curiosity that is egging me on. I don't need them or really want them. I just want to know who uses them for what and so far I have gotten nowhere. If I ever do find some use for them, I'll pass it on. On the other hand, they could well be gone. Right now I'm waiting for an electric roaster to be half-price...and still be there.

"Useless once it gets wet" constitutes exactly one of those things I will never again...

Silicone baking sheet. This kind of reference is the best that I can find. Some things are not going to work out and this just may be one of them. Thanks all for the help. (I just might buy them next Sunday if they are still there. Sundays are 50% off for old guys. )

DH is helping me to describe them. It looks as if a rectangular metal wire frame. about the thickness of a clothes hanger, with rounded corners, with a piece of rubbery stretched over the frame. While the frame is rigid. the stretched rubbery material is not. It has quite a bit of bounce to it, like a tiny pink trampoline. Quite strange looking. I know the photo is not all that clear and that's about the best I can do. As I said, I've never seen anything like it and the folks at the second hand store searched quite a bit before they figured out what it was.

Thanks for all the replies but I am wondering if anyone looked up the link I put in the top of my OP. This silicone item is unlike any other I've ever seen and this is what I am asking about. Thanks again.

Shelby, your decorated cookies are wonderful...but ya got me with the Margarita cookies. Got's ta have some. Soon.

Silicone baking sheets I can't find much information on these sheets and am quite curious about them. Yesterday, while amusing myself in the local second hand store while DH was looking for some guy type thing, I came across two odd pink rubbery type sheets with rigid edges...as if the material were rolled over an open wire frame... The flat surface is not at all rigid. Took them to the cash and asked what on earth they were? Silicone baking sheets was the answer. Right. Should have thought of that. Googled until I found what I think they are. Has anyone used them? They don't look all that useful to me but then maybe they are excellent for something???

Now this IS brilliant. We have a Chinese Feast coming up and there is simply too much work to be done. This short cut could be terrific. Do you reshred the mix to make it finer or do you find it's fine the way it is?