Darienne

Found this little goodie in our local Value Village today: Great Meals in Minutes: Mexican Menus, Time-Life, 1984. Contributing chefs include a VERY young Rick Bayless. VERY young. The cookbook is incredibly dated, written at a time when the quintessential ingredients which we count on using in Mexican foods today were not only not available in Canada, but obviously not available in the USA either. Still I am looking forward to poring through the book for ideas. Anyone else ever use this book? Gosh, the summer of 1984 was our very first trip to the Southwest. Our first Mexican food. Wonderful! The rest is history.

Oooh. I am jealous. They look lovely. I've never made taffy to this day and I look forward to seeing what you do next in this line. Whose recipe did you use? And anything special we should know? Something to look out for? Etc? Good one, Minas6907

We have our second Champion. Here's the Champion website. We plumb wore out the first one. That's at least 20 years. No regrets. No problems. Great machines. Workhorses. The main reason we use it now is to pulp our dogs' vegetables. They eat pulped greens every day with their meat and yogurt, etc. Of course we have used the Champion for making juices of all kinds, and running through frozen fruits for a kind of sherbet.

This topic for me should be called ‘Salads: 2009 & 2010 Reprise’. Over the last two years I have collected a good number of wonderful salads, lots of ‘company’ salads among them. Firstly,we eat only salads for supper every second night. And we put on our Annual Dog Weekend for which I need massive quantities of food. Many eGers have helped me over the past two years with salads. Calipoutine sent me the very best Bean Salad. Cathy, as in What Would Cathy Eat? has provided several, my favorite being her ‘Tangy Quinoa Salad’. Other favorites from somewhere are: ‘Marinated Broccoli and Cauliflower Salad’, ‘Black Bean and Sweet Potato Salad’, ‘Carrot, Walnut & Dried Cranberry Coleslaw’. Old favorites are Taboulleh from Roden (no tomatoes, pul-eeze) and an untitled ‘Chickpea and Grape Tomato Salad’ which I have been making for decades now. Wait, I do have a new entry and probably this summer’s go-to salad. It’s my own amalgam of several salads each of which contain two or more of the following (but none all): corn niblets, black beans, potatoes and Poblanos (plus onions, etc). Because I print out my recipes without sources (I’ve got to stop doing that) I can’t give most of the above salads’ websites and I can’t print them online. I will PM any of the salad recipes however.

Thanks so much for posting about the e-book. Downloaded it and now I shall try some of these goodies. Thanks again.

Ed got them at a local convenience/lunch bar/ etc place, named Charlotte Pantry. I suspect you could get them at a bulk food place or a small Mom & Pop breakfast type restaurant. I know that our local bulk food store has round pails which they sell for a few pence. I just checked three of the pails. They're all labeled Tasty Batters and all contained muffin batters. That square shape is the best!

Many of my daily smoothies start with pomegranate juice. Don't have a favorite tho... Does anyone make smoothies with vegetables in them? I can't quite wrap my limited mind around the concept. Oh, except for avocados.

Mitch got there just before I did. To have enough raspberries to make a really luscious ice cream would be wonderful.

Hello AnneN, and welcome to eGullet, place of much learning and much sharing.

Pails: #1 upper set of pails, lids off to accommodate stuff (cracked my head on the support beam taking this photo. Forgot how low the ceiling is on this very old cellar) #2 pails: one with lid partly on; other lidless Larger pails: 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" x 13 1/2" Smaller pails: 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" x 8"

Now that I am finally older than dirt, I have finally put my freezers into order. Of course it helps that we bought another chest freezer: all the dog stuff goes in there now freeing up everything else. After last year's "Great Freezer Cleanout", DH bought all these large recycled squared off deep plastic pails...the kind that muffin mixes, etc, come in...about $1 per...and they stack beautifully in the freezer and no space is wasted. I made a diagram on the computer which I then use to note the contents roughly in the freezer, changing the notes when I have to. The diagram is then pinned by magnets to the oil tank which is just beside the freezer. It then takes only a few minutes to pull out the entire freezer and go through the contents. I can't believe what a change in my freezer life...

Lovely Jenni, I await the recipe...

Found this Torta de Garbanzo for Lent yesterday on "Cooking in Mexico", a blog I get. I also have a lovely chickpea salad that I was fed years ago in another lifetime. It had no name. I just called it the chickpea salad. Ingredients (as I remember them, and as I make them. It was our dear Steve's favorite. And mine too. DH does not like it. But then he is not a chickpea aficionado) Can of drained and rinsed chickpeas Grape or cherry tomatoes sliced into halves Lots of chopped green onions Olive oil Lemon juice Salt & Pepper Lots of finely chopped parsley Chile powder (the kind you get in the grocery store marked "Chili Powder".

The recipe sounds good. Do you make your own naan?

Hooray for Cathy and her recipes.

Astro Balkan yogurt has minimum whey so that it never a problem. The other kind we use (when I am too lazy or preoccupied to make it) is Liberte (can't do accent aigu) and it has quite a lot of whey. We have two big dogs and they get a large dollop of yogurt for breakfast every day. Problem solved.

I would kill for your kitchen. Well, maybe not kill, but definitely maim severely.

Sounds like an idea to me which brings up another. What about putting a silpat/silicon mat on a Salton tray, the kind which my Mother used to use when giving a dinner party to keep stuff warm?

Ditto for everything that Kim wrote...except for the part about being good cook. I had succeeded in never becoming a 'cook'. And now I am gaining a reputation for being this terrific cook and I have so much to thank eG for including the mentorship of folks like Kim and Roberta (and many others.)

Ha! REAL bagels.

Bravo Pierogi. Well done.

Excellent point!

We have purchased both artificial and pure chocolate extract. Have never really given it a thought because it's used in frozen coffees in the summer, along with vanilla, coffee, sugar (substitute), creamm ice cubes, and whatever liquor and liqueur we have on hand. I'll think about it now.

Ours runs on gasoline and in the spring DH drains it and refills it with new gasoline...just regular gasoline. He says the gasoline must be changed at least once a year.

Interesting tidbit on an unnamed restaurant in today's Flo Fabricant column. A restaurant in NOTL does not live up to its billing.