Darienne

Potato Latkes. Yummm.

A fourth attempt with the All Recipes recipe. Taking out the collapsible paddle was a success. And I cut down on the liquid prescribed and actually added some extra corn starch at the last minute because I felt the batter was too wet. OK. So the top didn't fall as badly as it did before, but it's still far from acceptable. I think I'll change recipes and find one from a gluten-free bread machine on-line specialist. I liked the All Recipes recipe because it was for whole wheat, not white bread. (But then, I'm still not convinced that I am gluten intolerant. I ate a piece of regular whole grain bread for supper...just because it had been one of 'those' kind of days and I 'felt' like it...and there was no change of any thing discernible. As stated before, it was a naturopath who administered this electronic test to me about 18 months ago which reported that I was intolerant of dairy and gluten. I still really don't know...are those tests really valid? Inappropriate question in this thread.)

Don't Worry, Just Cook: Delicious, Timeless Recipes For Comfort Bonnie Stern and Anna Rupert. If I were going to buy a cookbook, I might well buy this one.

Googled it, but could not find GBP in a suitable frame of reference. Please explain.

Pulled pork. Pork, except for overcooked pork chops, was never part of my eating life. Then, one day in Ohio, at a gourd festival while Ed shopped for gourds (which as a bystander is less exciting than watching paint dry), I meandered over to the food truck area. Now as an innocent Canadian lass, I had never in my life eaten anything from a food truck. We didn't have them in Montreal or Ottawa when I was growing up and then when after we got married, they were never in our snack bracket which took many years to get beyond the stage where we brought our own sandwiches. All of which is to set the scene for this Canadian to actually buy a pulled pork on a bun. I thought I had died and gone to heaven right there and then. Life for me changed forever and to this day I always have pulled pork on hand for myriads of edible causes. My favorite recipe is Puerco Pibil as done by Roberto Rodriguez, who wrote, directed, produced, photographed, scored, and edited Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a truly violent and appalling film staring Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas, except for the banana leaves and Habanero peppers which we can't buy in East Central Ontario.

Oh yes!!!

Sad to say, Ed returned without Poblanos. Apparently they are not selling well and the grocery store is no longer carrying them. Very sad news.... Added: just remembered that friends come fairly regularly once a month to stay over to attend a gourd (my avatar photo is a large gourd which Ed and I sold many years ago) workshop. She lives just outside of Toronto...where they would carry Poblanos...and I could ask her to bring me a large amount.

I have a goodly number of first food stories. I've posted the one about the soft-boiled egg already in the past and I may have also mentioned my Brussels Sprouts and Mother story. 'Not in my house you didn't eat Brussels Sprouts' my Mother said with some pride... Huh ????? And what about the amazing Almond Cookies from the now long gone Canton Inn in Ottawa when I was pregnant for the first two offspring. (Our Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau used to eat there.) But a first with much joy was Mexican food which I had never had until 1984, Ed's and my first trip to the Southwest. Mexican food had yet to make it to East Central Ontario and I wouldn't give you two cents for what's available now. And especially for Chile Rellenos. Oh frabjous joy! I order them over and over when down there. Eating heaven. I've made them once...just too much work and we can't buy the correct chile in our area. So I buy Poblanos....which Ed is out buying I hope as we speak...last week there weren't any at all and we can get them in only one grocery store...and I'll make a Chile Rellenos Casserole which we will eat next week.

Of Basque Chicken. I looked up a couple of recipes and onions, although present, did not seem to be in any way featured. I hope the OP gets back to us. I didn't get at the Onion Soup as of yet and could possibly use another recipe.

Tried kayb's recipe for caramelizing onions. After about 12 hours, I really just gave up. No doubt, my error...but the onions were so wet that I wondered if indeed that kayb, living far south of both @Anna N and me, had a different onion available to her. (I must say however that they are delicious.) Possibly in a similar vein , I thought of making cucumber salad out of English cucumbers. How when I first made the salad, I added the called for 1 cup of water in the mix...and now I never add even a smidgen of water...the cucumbers are so very wet. So I found a recipe online, Spendwithpennies, for a slow cooker french onion soup. That will be what my onions become. Alas, without the French bread and Emmenthal and Gruyere cheeses. Oh, and the dry sherry. And Bay leaf. Which leaves mostly the onions and beef broth. Sorry about that.

I cut off almost all of the onion and leave only an inch or two above the roots. No problem so far.

My most recent batch of gluten-free shortbread cookies did what Kim Shook's cookie log did in the first posting...just kind of fell apart. (The recipe is actually supposed to be rolled out and cut into shapes...definitely not my thing and so I just make a roll, chill it and slice it before baking.) But this last batch was not behaving well. So I dumped it back into the bowl, added a small chunk of butter and began the roll again. Success this time. Probably not something that most cooks would never do...no doubt the dough is handled too much...but I can be extremely lazy and nonchalant sometimes, and for me, it worked perfectly. I'd rather do slice and bake any time. Hate doing roll and use cookie cutters.

Mine is in my den window and I'm now harvesting for the 6th time from the same little white roots.

kayb said this.

I would add: making prune and other spreads, cucumber salads and pepper salads, cheese pie, and pureeing soups and sauces. My FP sits out permanently.

Thank you, thank you. I just feel as if I've received the best Christmas gift of all (besides getting our power and our water back again.) Thank you kayb.

So another loaf of All Recipes Wholewheat bread has been made. I took the paddle out of the machine just a few minutes after the 'kneading' process was complete and that was a success I think. The bottom of the finished load had only a small hole in it from the bit that sticks up in the bottom of the machine's container and normally holds the paddle. Getting the paddle out was a bit of a challenge at first. Settled on using a yellow plastic spatula type piece to hold the dough back and a pair of substantial pliers to pull the paddle off. It's one of those paddles which folds over after the kneading process and so it doesn't stand up and tear a great hole in the finished bread....except that it stays standing up and tears a great hole in the finished bread. So that part was a success. HOWEVER: my bread mixture had either too much yeast or too much liquid. Here's a photo of it just so you can all have a good laugh. Would not have even made bread yesterday, as we were expecting (and received) a power outage which was just lifted this morning at 10:30 am, except that there wasn't a loaf of Promise bread available in the horribly over-crowded stores.

I know that no one requested a photo of the rolling table Ed made for me but I thought I'd post it anyway...it has a very helpful handle on one side. Ed didn't actually construct the table...I imagine he bought it at the ReStore, his favorite department store, but he added the wheels and the handle. (As usual, my apologies for my dreadful photographic skills. ) The dining room table is just feet away and I can unload all the stuff onto it in a minute to wheel in my humongous stand mixer or my new ice cream maker (gifted to me this August by a friend who never once used it) They are in the Southwest style cabinet (also a ReStore purchase (we are nothing if not frugal) to the left of the table.

Good stuff! I'm not the most agile or nimble on the stairs, and I do them two feet to each stair, but I can still do them, thank heavens.

Much of my life is in the cellar of our house and Ed, bless him, has put up a second handrail on the cellar stairs...yes, it's a cellar, not a basement...which is an incredible help to me. I'm not that handy on the stairs any more. I also have two large pails. One lives in the cellar and the other in my den. Thus I can much more easily and safely transport stuff from up to down and down to up, holding the pain handle in one hand and the railing in either of the other two hands. I can also rest the pail on the stairs if I need to.

No answer here. This is the first I've heard of them and boy! are they expensive! Do you drink a lot of nut milk? It seems that some of the Google posts suggest that buying it is cheaper than making it because the commercial establishment s obtain a much cheaper price on the ingredients. Or...you might have almond trees on your land I suppose.

Absolutely. Has given me a new life in the kitchen. I no sooner recovered from two Carpal Tunnel surgeries to a Dx of severe degenerative arthritis and wearing once again two hand braces. Not the happiest of campers.

Hmmm....Ed made me a rolling cart on which I could keep the stand mixer. I don't actually...having given up on it completely...but it might be an answer for you. My cart is kept in the dining room. As for paper thin slices...I made a cucumber salad which Ed loves...and I couldn't possibly cut it myself. Zip, zip, zip...and it's done in a trice.

Sorry to read about your mate's allergy but glad to read of your terrific attempt to make that mate's eating experience as good as possible. I have a very close friend with the same problems...no onion, no garlic, no capsicum of any kind...any kind...just the basis of most of our cooking. She has other allergies also so when she comes to lunch...it's grilled cheese sandwiches. This is pretty funny now that I am no longer eating gluten or dairy so I have a scrambled type egg sandwich on gluten free bread.

That is terrible news! But thank you for posting it, @palo