Darienne

Thank you Andie and Baroness. He will hear of this to be sure. Of course, he will have already known about it.

May I horn in to ask about this book please? India's 500 Best Recipes. Lots of great photos...I am a sucker for photos. I can't comment at all about the recipes. I've made a couple with no complaints. I'm thinking about getting it.

Totally. Perhaps you recall World's Best Chocolate Bars which charities sell to make money. Or chocolates wrapped in foil from the Dollarama? It doesn't make any sense to me. Or you. I can always used lollipop sticks, cardboard presentation boxes, foil candy cups, etc. Real vanilla. Still now I am beginning to sound like a misery-guts. (What a strange expression.) A second fridge is terrific. Our late son lived with us for a couple of years a few years ago and then we bought him our second (second-hand) fridge. Then last year we bought a second (second-hand) freezer dedicated just to dog meat (NO! meat for dogs!) and it's now filled with apple juice and apple sauce. We had the biggest bumper apple crop of the last 17 years.

I work with chocolate. So, I am often given chocolates as a gift, especially in women's group which exchange small gifts. Sometimes they are pretty dreadful. Why would folks give chocolates to someone who works with chocolates?

Name? Photo? Amazon.com link?

My DH is insisting that we put in a new propane furnace and hot water heater. OK. I said. I want a gas stove and oven. OK. He said. It's a done deal for the spring. But it could count as a Christmas gift. Tomorrow morning I am stopping at the Mississauga Kitchen Stuff Plus and picking up: a new pastry blender, a little specialized lime juicer, a handled micro-plane and a ruffled chopper. (My pastry blender broke after 50 years of little use, and I can't stand the non-handled Lee Valley micro-plane any more. It hurts my hands after a while. I WANT the lime juicer and yesterday in my 'Edible Gifts for Christmas' class we used this chopper gadget for 'chopping' the chocolate. It's designed for ruffled French Fries, etc. I have a 'real' chocolate chopper but this one I can lean over and use my body weight instead of hands and arms alone.) Can I count these as Christmas presents also?

Took a local cooking class just for fun with a couple of other women yesterday. We made: Tex Mex Chili Chocolate Truffles, Istanbul Spice Market Exotic Chocolate Bark, New Delhi Fragrant Indian Brittle, Florence Renaissance Chocolate Dipped Almond & Orange Zest Biscotti, and Hot Spiced Cider. It was fun. The chocolate couldn't be real in that particular situation, but I knew that ahead of time. The teacher asked me to explain a bit about tempering to the others. Not enough spice for me in anything. One friend agreed with me...the other thought it was all too spiced. I thought the overall effect of all the pieces was too sweet...the other two thought it was fine. Interesting. I did pick up a couple of useful tips I had never heard of. Putting a second sheet of greased parchment paper over the brittle and rolling it quickly. Made a lovely flat candy. Also I had forgotten about rolling truffles in other than chocolate. The finely chopped cookie crumbs worked much better than the icing sugar or cocoa I thought. You could make a quite non-sweet cookie to use. The icing sugar tends to darken and come off and the effect is too sweet for me. The cocoa, while delicious, gets on your mouth and hands if you are not very careful. Nuts are good too. I'm going to make the brittle again, adding finely shredded fresh ginger to it. The ginger is taken from PanaCan's Ecuadorian recipe for Dulce de Mani and it's fantastic!

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have just reminded me that I can actually GET a Buddha's Hand with any luck this year. I had completely forgotten about them and couldn't get one the last time we were in the Southwest because it was too late in the winter. No idea of what I am going to do with one...but I'll get one from Albuquerque if I can.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than I am can help you better. The world of cooking and baking is still relatively new to me and although I feel free to add nuts to just about everything, I still don't mess around with the eggs or oil or flour. The muffins IMO are quite moist, but I wouldn't call them greasy. But then, last week I made some carrot muffins last which I plus others...who may or may not have been being kind...considered delectable and a friend...who, I might say, delights just ever so slightly in putting me down...said they seemed a bit greasy to her. Who knows? Not sure about cutting down by 1/3 in the butter. I could certainly cut down on the sugar next time...but then the DH loved them as sweet as they were. And definitely add nuts to them. Walnuts being the best to me in this case.

I don't know about the Wasabi part, but I am definitely trying the rest of this recipe...a king of Oriental Pulled Pork.

I can almost taste it. Looks lovely.

Twelve large muffins. They are SO good. I had eaten a similar muffin a couple of years ago at a friend's house and always wanted to try making them. And so I did. I used a large naval orange.

DH and the roofer just declared these the BEST MUFFINS EVER! Can't get much more praise than that. Recipe comes from Cadbury, an eGulleter and is here: Orange Muffins The only changes I made were to add 1 cup of chopped walnuts and use AP flour with the additions to make it 'self-raising'. DH likes nuts added to everything that man or womankind could add them to. Moi aussi.

Now THAT'S an apple pie!

Lovely meal. How I envy you both. Haven't had an onion bhaji for decades, but I have never forgotten them either.

How does the powdered buttermilk fare against the fresh? The usual?

Of course I could always give them to the pups, but I do have a lovely basic cake recipe which calls for 3 large eggs and 3 large egg yolks. It comes from One Cake, One Hundred Desserts .

If I am out of milk, I'll use half half&half and half water. It seems to work just fine. No one has complained so far. White/bechamel sauce always brings back memories of Grade 7 in Intermediate School and the Home Ec teacher, Miss Hutchinson. Won't tell you what we called her behind her back. Not a nice lady, but then who would want to teach classes of 11 and 12 year old girls over and over. White sauce was the FIRST thing we learned and woe betide the girl whose sauce had lumps in it. No electric mixers either.

Beautiful work, Kerry. And beautiful packaging too. I love the idea of crunchy frogs. Seems to bring a Monty Python memory which won't come to the surface.

Must have been a curry sort of night last night. We had a coconut milk curry with roasted vegetables and rice

I don't suppose there's a chance it is galangal?

Should be fine. Just remember to thaw and bring the batter close to room temperature before baking. Even more reliable if you use double-acting baking powder. Baking powder is formulated to start rising immediately when the mixture is moistened. Double-acting will have a second rising-powder reaction when heat is added. Brilliant idea. Now why have I never thought of that? (no answer, please) I have whipped up two batches of muffins...chopping nuts, shredding carrots, etc...in the last few days to give to our stalwart outdoor renovation workers...it's cold in east central Ontario...and it would have been handy if the muffin batter had already been frozen in papers as my own days are full of massive confusion right now. Thank you muchly, minas6907.

Biggest problem making confections!!! Not the sugar, not the butter, not the mixture, nor the heat, nor anything like that. It's the insatiable mouth of the confectioner. Been there, Done that. Etc.

Thanks to this topic I have learned a lot about roasting root vegetables which I am doing as we speak. No longer just tossed in oil and into the pan, but seasoned with whatever ahead of time. Makes a difference for certain. See...I can learn... Thanks again all.

I vote for the freezer. For one thing, no one can get into them easily if they are packaged and frozen...(and hidden under something else preferably).