Darienne

Back to Caldo de Pollo, please. ElseD informed me that this is available in her Mexican market, and the Tajin also. I forgot to ask her about the contents of the Caldo de Pollo. How does it differ from Knorr's plain old powdered chicken stock? I have lots of frozen chicken stock(alas, Morgan is in trouble again. Should I just add something to it?

I don't know the story on the marmalade, but I do know that Bailey's has a different formula for export to the USA. Perhaps many products do. Looking for a bakery pound cake or an angel food cake a couple of years ago in a pinch, we discovered that both were so much sweeter than in Canada. Canadians like more salt: Americans more sugar. Or so it seems to me.

Find a good used-book source. At a couple bucks a copy, you can have them all! Thanks for the thought Jaymes, but I live in the far frozen north, and we don't really 'do' much Mexican here, thus no second hand cookbooks. DH and I visited the latest Mexican restaurant to open in our nearby city and talked to the owner. He's quite discouraged. Business is nowhere and he can't use pork at all. Only beef and chicken. And not much more sells than burritos. I wonder who told him Peterborough was a good place to open a Mexican spot. One closed only last year or so.

If I could be allowed to add Ontario to your topic...I can't speak for anywhere else in Canada... Never heard of 'tenders' as in chicken tenders in Ontario for one. Of course we have English and French on our packaged items whereas you have either just English or English and Spanish. Our butter comes in one pound blocks...whoops, excuse me, in 454 gram blocks. (454 g = 1 lb) In fact, all our packaging is in Celsius, although much of it corresponds to some American measure, as in the butter. Instead of 500 gram packages, which at first glance might seem more sensible, the packages are 454 grams to equal one American pound. I'm sure there is lots more.

Thanks for all the suggestions for Mexican cookbooks. Now I REALLY have a problem.

I assume that 'molera' is someone who makes mole?

They all look good, David. Hmmmm.....

Hi Chris, I live in Canada and would get the book from Amazon.ca, the Canadian website. To buy it from the American website would be quite a lot more expensive because of postage and handling. Sorry.

I don't think that the authors often get the last word on the title of a book. I love a cookbook with stories in it. I'll look it up. Thanks, rg.

Mexican cookbooks: I have Bayless' Mexican Kitchen, Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking, Ortiz' The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking (1967), Fany Gerson, My Sweet Mexico and a bunch of non-descript books from my 'non-cooking' days. I would like to buy one more Mexican cookbook. There are so many out there, and I am still a novice cook. Suggestions please.

Thanks for the tip, Jaymes. Alas, we cannot get such a thing in our local city. ElsieD has a Mexican market near her and I shall ask her to look for this product. Or I'll get it next trip to the USA. For an unusual reason, I often have homemade chicken broth ...nothing virtuous on my part. One of our rescue Rotties came 7 years ago with digestive problems. Thus his diet, when problems hit, is a very old 'diarrhea' diet consisting of boiled white and sweet potatoes and some boiled chicken. Thus chicken broth in our freezer.

Thanks once again for all the work that you are doing, Kerry. I just wonder when you sleep???? Or if????? ps. Yes, I would like to taste Chocoa.

I think I may have just bought that horrible coconut milk that Djyee100 spoke of. For general concern: This was Kokosmilch. All the usual information, but the worst coconut milk I have ever tasted. Straight down the drain. Horrible. ps. Just wrote the company. They also manufacture Arroy-D which I have used and is OK. And the brand name on this awful stuff is Globe Brand. Missed it the first time round.

Made my first batch of Cocada tonight. DH loved it. Kept on sneaking pieces. Next time photos. I realize that there are a hundred different recipes for this confection. Anyone have a favorite?

I did it the last time I burnt my upper lip making hard candy. Idiote.

Went to the local library looking for Margaret Visser. Much Depends Upon Dinner. It was out. What I did find was also by Visser. The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners. Absolutely fascinating. Mind-boggling. Am savoring each section of it. It's the kind of book that I would take in the car on a long trip to read out loud to my husband (who loves being read to anyway. He has heard the entire Andrew Shotts. Making Artisan Chocolates and Peter Greweling's Chocolates & Confections: formula, theory,and technique for the artisan confectioner, the last title lasting the entire journey from Utah to Ontario.) It's an excellent way to learn stuff.

I want a kitchen outlet in my city. And then I want to buy everything that Andie has. So there!

The floors tiled? Beautiful, but is that not very hard on the legs and feet? Just asking...

I'm with Andie on this one: pyrex, glass, plastic, metal, a one-cup with a wooden handle even. The plastic bag storage blows me away but I'm pretty good about storing them in sets. I have a couple of 2 Tablespoon measuring cups and those I treasure. Found them at the $ stores years ago; bought a number, gave them to friends, returned to buy them...they were gone and I never saw them again. Also, Canadians are at a certain disadvantage in that their butter comes in one solid block like lard and it's a pain to measure. So I have a tiny plastic-covered cheat sheet I made myself which is on the side of my fridge with a magnet backing with the weight in grams and ounces of volume measurements of butter. Now if only I could simply remember them without looking...just to make sure.

For the jars and suchlike one the counter, you might buy at carousel. I was lucky to find a mega-carousel at a second hand store which the store was using to sell their wares and bullied the man into selling it to me. His wife would never have sold it to me. As for the height of our counters. I should have added that the sink side of our gallery kitchen was left at the original height and Ed works on one of the two small spaces on that side. It was a very tall friend, years ago, who had her counters put up higher who gave me the courage to ask my own DH to lower ours. Go for it, tall ladies.

Our kitchen, built by DH into a large pre-existing room which was an apiary attached to an old farmhouse, is a small galley which was perfect...in my former life which ended about four years ago when I discovered 'cooking'. Now it's too d*amned small. However, DH has lowered all the prefab counters and the stove by a couple of inches for me because I have long arms and I'm not too tall (no rude jokes please; it's not really noticeable) and also he built in spot lights right where they are most needed. And he built me a table with a large marble inset which is even lower than the counters and it's perfect for me to work on. Dear DH. :wub:

Time for me to re-read Visser's book.

Good thought, sir. The oil: canola, half was brand new, the other half had been used to blister the last very large batch of Poblanos, plus one load of Won Tons. Can't recall anything else. Filtered through a coffee paper filter each use. Kept in the fridge in an air-tight bottle. However, 1. my first use Sunday in the Teflon pan produced the alarming blurps and bubbles. 2. I then dumped the hot oil into a trusted pan...no blurps or bubbles. 3. Then later back into the Teflon pan. Much reduced blurps and bubbles with a visible 'coating' of tiny bubbles on the pot interior. 4. Third heating in the Teflon pan...no blurps and almost no bubbles. If it had been a problem with moisture in the oil, would there not have been evidence in the 'trusted' pan? I could try phoning the company. As for Mjx's question: I know next to nothing about Teflon. And my pot is not a deep-fryer at all, but an inexpensive pressure cooker pressed into use as a fryer. When I bought it, I had no idea that it was Teflon coated and had I known, I still would have known nothing.

Nope. That one has something over its lid. You are right about one thing. I don't use teflon anywhere else in my life and I'm going to toss it. That's my gut reaction. Thanks for putting it all into perspective.

The pot looks pretty much like yours, thock, except that it is black on the outside and inside and doesn't have bumps on the inside. The bottom has black rings painted on it. I'll take photos if it is necessary after this post. OK. As noted, I dumped the hot oil into a trusted pot and continued the chile process without incident. Now I decided that perhaps I had not dried the pot inside properly after washing it (subsequently proved that I had). So I wiped it down very well with paper towels, poured the oil back into it, turned on the heat and watched. This time I had my DH as witness to my endeavor. The temperature of the oil climbed much higher this time before the bubbles and blurps really began. About 120 Celsius, but bubble and blurp it did. Not as much, not as violently. It was able to reach 175 Celsius without major incident. But as we examined the inner surface of the pot under the hot oil, it was covered with little air (?) bubbles. What all this means I do not know. Can compressed air be in the teflon coating? It was not in the oil. This I can vouch for. Why was it lessened the second time around? Will it be gone on the third try and if so, why? I remain confused. Oh...the pot does not have a heavy bottom, but is probably the same as the sides, about 3/8" DH says. Third time round...no bubbles. I still feel very queasy about it all.