Darienne

I had to double coat my PB balls...leaky little critters. No one complained. My confectionery beneficiaries are all taste and not presentation oriented thank goodness. I see there are already a couple of topics on favorite peanut butters...maybe I'll visit one. I can't find a smooth natural one so far. When I say smooth...I mean SMMOOOTHHHH.

Sounds good. My question would be was the peanut butter really, really smooth, slightly crunchy or quite crunchy? (We don't have Safeway here where I live.) I had the hardest time finding a smooth peanut butter for the PB balls. All the 'natural' smooth butters have little crunchy bits in them. Not that that is reprehensible, it's just that I was looking for SMOOOOTH and had to fall back on one of "THOSE" peanut butters that we don't eat to get a smooth enough texture. Just curious.

Lovely, RWood. What peanut butter ganache do you use? Or is it your own recipe? My dentist loves peanut-butter/chocolate anything and I might try truffles for Christmas. I gave him last Pastry Girl's recipe for Peanut-Butter Balls dipped in chocolate. Big kudos for DH and me.

My abject apologies, PanaCan. I cannot imagine why I said such an all-encompassing remark. You can't get much more multicultural then Toronto. I'm just lucky that no Torontonians read my foolish remark. However....Peterborough? Not cosmopolitan nor multicultural. Except around the university maybe. We do well for Asian foods in our local Asian market...even some fresh things...but that's about it. Our daughter's BF is from Grenada and he always comes laden with stuff from the GTA and then he cooks for us. Deadmonton...I like that.

Thanks again for more posts, all. Kouign: will do that. I have not wanted to eat chicken for a long time now and have so few recipes for it. Cooking chicken will be one of my aims now. Thanks. Kaszeta: always have pesto in the fridge but have never frozen it. I guess I don't make that much at once and I guess I also thought it pretty much kept forever. I have added extra olive oil to it on occasion. Hmmmm. KarenDW: Don't know exactly why. Of course I do use frozen ingredients. It's the frozen fully prepared dishes that I am reluctant to serve. I think it stems partly from my sense of not being an experienced cook except in a very few areas. I spent most of my life avoiding cooking as much as I could, and am feeling that a woman of my age should be able to put on an excellent meal at a moment's notice...and I really can't. Thus perhaps my insecurities. Perhaps more than you wanted to know...

Perhaps we should have a party with apple and rhubarb desserts. We have several patches of 100 year old rhubarb plants but we don't do rhubarb and every year I try to give it away but can find no takers. What a shame.

Sir, thanks for the info. As you know, we are near Bowmanville although the search may have to wait for next year. Sorry about the gender confusion.

Happy Birthday, EN. Your cake looks and sounds delicious.

Thanks so much to all of you who have sent such great replies.

We are on our second Champion. I mean over many decades. Very expensive to buy, particularly in Canada, but well worth the money. We mostly use it for pulping green vegetables for our dogs, but it does yeomen service for apple juice and so many other things. Thanks for the thoughts of the frozen apples. Makes sense.

Lucky Ashen if she can get Russets. Used to be my favorite. Haven't seen one in a couple of decades. Never heard of most of the apples named in this topic. I can name an apple I don't like: Delicious. Our two best apple trees are the Mackintosh and the Northern Spy :wub: , right in the backyard. No spraying nor nothing. Our farm is the old "Salter place" and our farmhouse is the second house on the property and it's 100 years old in 2014. We have 19 apple trees on our property and the only ones I can name are the two in our back yard. We have been making apple juice for a few years now. And I am about to start the process once again. Oops. Sorry. East Central Ontario.

And how long do they last PtheE? Our cellar is almost the same as our house heatwise. Our garage is unheated...but warmer than the outside air. Oh, that is in the winter, which it is not. NOT WINTER. NOT.

In a box? With holes? Wrapped separately? Not wrapped?

How exactly?

OK. Here's the gist of the situation. - we have a really heavily laden Macintosh this year - we want to make juice again and freeze it for the coming year - DH has NO time right now to stop and help - I can wash, peel, and cut the apples into chunks - I cannot core or juice the apples - DH will be able to work with the apples in 2 weeks - no, we have no help available, even for trading free apples My proposal is to wash, peel and chunk the apples, put them into plastic bags and toss them in the freezer for two weeks. Is this sensible? Useful? Stupid? (Found no useful info on Google in a modicum of tries) Thanks.

Time to trade us both and the hand mixers in on new models I fear.

Laugh for the morning... 1) not really and 2) no way

I googled Rendang and it sounds very delicious. Can you share your recipe, please? Thanks.

I'd like that recipe!!! Please. I really need some chicken recipes. I am not fond of chicken, but it's always safe to serve. So many people it seems no longer want to eat beef...and never did eat pork anyway. Thanks.

TheCulinaryLibrary said on 23 September 2011 "No matter how lovingly cooked and wonderful smelling something is when I freeze it, it always has that unloved, abandoned, frozen-hearted feel when thawed." This in response to my question about unexpected guests and what to feed them. I often feel exactly the same way. Family eats reheated thawed dishes...company doesn't. Well, not until I am satisfied with what I am able to freeze, thaw and reheat. So, this time the question is: what are your best finished dishes, casseroles, curries, chiles, meats, etc which not only FREEZE the best, but also THAW and REHEAT the best?

Never heard of them or seen one, but it does look like a very handy piece of kitchenware. Will look them up... ps. Roughly half hour later: OK. Who knows where to get one in Canada? pps. Found one on Amazon.ca

Thanks Pierogi. Yet another sad kitchen story. What to do? I think in the end, I'll simply stick with the ugly cracked old Sunbeam, which doesn't work well, but works. When it dies, I'll revisit the issue. (She shakes her head in sorrow.)

Terrific pain the last time I worked with Poblanos without gloves. Hours of agony. A first for Poblanos. No one answered my ps question. I tried googling it in a dozen different ways and couldn't make Google answer my question. I want to know. They can't have latex gloves in deepest inner Mexico. And they certainly didn't have them before quite recently when they do have them. How did they survive the procedure. Please.

You hit it right on the head. I can't seem to get my DH to see this, but I feel it deeply inside. And no, I will not serve frozen pizza any more. Not in this life. Unless it's for teenagers. Those days are long gone. Put that together with the astounding number of folks in Canada...maybe we just pick people who are this way ...who don't do spicy / hot / exotic / foreign / etc and Houston, we have a bit of a problem. Or maybe too many of our friends are as old as we are and by this time have developed all kinds of digestive problems. We are lucky? And maybe many Canadians are not exposed to 'foreign' cuisines. It's only recently that we could buy so many of the ingredients needed. Or maybe I am too new to cooking and have not assimilated so many of the basic recipes and concepts. Not that I can't do it, but that I can't do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. And the thought of serving my cooked food to friends throws me. My DH keeps after me to serve Chinese food. He thinks mine is the best he has ever tasted. Ever. Seriously. And so, this morning, we are going to sit down and figure this one out for future reference. I should add that he does the mises for me and all I have to do is to cook it ( :laugh: ). Right. And I might add that I have typed out the most clear-cut step by step instructions for said mises for each dish. As noted in my last post. This thread has been an unexpected learning lesson for me. Thanks. CulinaryLibrary: I read your statement out loud to my DH and I said: a great statement. It just resonates. That's the word: 'resonates'. How I feel too.

Lovely Minas6907. Good going.