Darienne

And do you make your za'atar or make it and if so, how?

That is my thought also... I don't have enough to make a regular cake except I could make a teensy weensy one I guess.

Hi RRO, this sounds very good. I have made things out of yoghurt, including cheese, but never with a firm purpose in mind. I like your descriptions. Thanks. If I live forever, I'll get to try all the ideas I have stored up ahead of me.

Bear of very little brain that I am. The caloric value of the sour cream cheese would be just as high, if not higher, that that of the processed cream cheese, after the liquid is drained out of the sour cream. Thank you all or not pointing out what an idiot I am.

Added information (Ontario prices and measurements): Kraft cream cheese: $3.19 for 250 grams, and 1 TBSP = 45 calories Beatrice sour cream: $1.48 for 500 ml, and 1 TBSP = 25 calories So not only is my sour cream cheese tastier by far than the Kraft, it also has fewer calories and costs far less. I did not weigh the cheese before we used it last night on crackers and this morning on toast but I still have 200 grams left. Next time I'll weigh the sour cream before I start the process and then after the process is over.

Started the 'cheese' on June 28th...it's now July 1st. The cheese is wonderful. It's the best cream cheese I have ever eaten. I mixed the sour cream with thyme, cumin, sesame seeds, salt, pepper, smoked paprika in no particular fashion...until it tasted good to me. Thanks for the help, DLS & Kerry.

I like this topic...made me smile. In my intense blue phase I bought our family a set of cutlery with blue acrylic handles a couple of decades ago, and my DH never really liked it. He eventually insisted on buying a larger, heavier, more expensive set for eating purposes. So I put the smaller, lighter, blue set away in the garage for summer, picnic use. Bit by bit, I brought out one piece after another until I just gave in and brought back out the entire set and put them second down drawer. They fit my smaller hands perfectly and I use them for everything in cooking and baking and confection making that one would use a piece of cutlery for. I just love them, they're mine and I won't give them up. Ever.

Beautifully executed, PanCan.

Wonderful posts and videos, Lior. Definitely not Peterborough, Ontario.

Just able to get back to reading eG again. Thanks to all for the wonderful posts and particularly to David Ross, our host, for his terrific photo tutorials. I still have my potato/corn/poblano/black bean filling (now frozen) which is mixed with leftover sauce from the last Puerco Pibil feast. Alas! now I am stymied by a veritable overflowing cornucopia of empanada dough recipes and have to pick one to go with.

There is nothing 'wrong' with you. We all have foods which we prefer which go back to childhood. I like hot dogs only when they are burnt, in the cheapest buns with the French's yellow mustard and sweet relish. That certainly doesn't fit into the rest of my life at all. I also find that many Americans, who are otherwise fairly sophisticated in their foods, don't like dark chocolate. They were raised on milk chocolate and that's that!

I have a good recipe...at least we like it...that a friend gave to me. I have no idea where the recipe came from. She made us these meat pies because we loved them. And then she just made the entire thing as one big pie...so much less work she said. I imagine there must be hundreds of recipes for meat pies out there. One key to the entire process was that she put curry powder in the pastry and it was delicious.

Slow roasted pulled pork. Heaven on earth.

I'll try the Zatar mix. Dill is my most unfavorite of the herbs. It's also the central ingredient in a bowl of chicken soup which I threw at my DH's head almost 46 years ago when I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Last time I ever allowed dill in the house.

Naturally I had never heard of Zatar before...learn, learn, learn...and have now two definitions for it from Wikipedia. I left out all spice because I really had no idea what I wanted to end up with or what I would then do with it. I could still rescue it from its pouch and add something. Seeing as I am right out of zatar, what else could you suggest?

I've only made sweet filling empanadas thus far in my Mexican cooking career. This thread is of great interest to me. In the fridge currently is way too much leftover of a Hispanic-type potato dish (my own take on a Tex-Mex recipe) which contains basically roasted potatoes, fried corn niblets, poblanos, and black beans with assorted spices, etc, topped with broiled cheese (the leftover is untopped). Methinks I could add the cheese, then chop this dish more finely, add a tad more spice and heat, and then make and bake empanadas with it quite handily. It seems to me that if the potatoes are chopped finely enough, that the resulting empanadas can be frozen as easily as the sweet-filled ones. Of course, the dough will be for savory and not sweet. Do correct me where I am going astray.

Looked this one up on eG six ways to Sunday and couldn't find anything. DH bought too much sour cream...it was a deal...?...and now I don't want to make a cake or pudding or whatever with it. You can't freeze it. However, I did find a couple of recipes about making a cheese from it. Mix the sour cream with whatever spices you want (none in our case, I guess). Drain it into a bowl in the fridge for 2-3 days sitting in cheesecloth which is then in a strainer. That's it. If no one has tried it and can report about it, I'll report back in 2-3 days.

I love red bean buns, so I should try the ice cream. Do you have a particular recipe that you like?

Thank you Tri2Cook. You were so correct. So here I was yesterday looking online for a recipe for lychee ice cream because my friend had come to visit bearing Soho Lychee liqueur and a can of lychees,wanting to make lychee ice cream. Completely forgot about this topic which I started more than 2 years ago when I didn't make the lychee ice cream in Moab because date of the can of lychees I had been given was already very expired. Our lychee ice cream is delicious, although lacking in the creamy mouthfeel and now I learn, too late, after re-reading this topic, that I made the mistake of adding the drained chopped lychees to the base before I churned it, instead of at the last minute after churning. Next time, I'll get it right. (Actually it was my friend's fault...she bullied me into putting the lychees into the base. )

I've never seen quinua flour in our region. Could you grind up quinoa in a coffee mill?

So tell us about the cookies. Did you like them? Did they smell good? Did they live up to FG's ravings? Are you going to buy them? Again? Can we make them? Etc? No, I don't sniff my cooked food. But I think I'll try... I do sniff all meat before I cook it or before eating the leftovers a day or two later. I guess I am paranoid about eating contaminated foods and actually sniff a lot of leftovers because I'll eat them. DH would willingly eat all kinds of stuff which I am wont to pitch.

Unreal. Our hot stuff gourmet shop just started to carry them this morning and we bought some. Quite expensive. Quite delicious.

Just thought I would add for anyone living near Peterborough, that the Firehouse Gourmet is now carrying some Mexican cheeses, both hard and soft, and fresh made tortillas, both corn and wheat and a few other ingredients (which have slipped my mind), on an irregular basis. I have signed up for their newsletter which announced two days ago of an upcoming trip (today) to Toronto to pick up special orders of cheese and so on. Hooray for the Firehouse Gourmet!

Did you actually make the lovely flowers? Beautiful cake.

Double McAuley birthday, June 22nd & 25th. Double Chocolate Bombe: chocolate cake with cocoa. Two interior mousses: milk chocolate with Chambord & 60% chocolate with brandy. Mirror glaze glaze with 70% chocolate topped with little white chocolate covered cereal bits. Once a year. Now if only I could have had Kim Shook or Dystopiadreamgirl make it for me so that it could be beautiful on the outside too.