Darienne

The Christmas give-outs are almost finished and the finished packages are sitting on the dining room table. Chocolate dipped glacé ginger (I bought the ginger this year) and Enstrom copy-cat toffee...guaranteed to be the best toffee you've ever tasted. Still to make for my library cookbook cooking club on Saturday are David Lebovitz's Spiced Candied Pecans. Made our cleaning lady ( I feel foolish calling this dear young friend a cleaning lady but what else can I say?) a carton of an ice cream which she asked for. I make her coconut milk ice cream because she doesn't do dairy and then she said she'd like a raspberry pie in the ice cream so I added two cups of raspberries and a baked pie shell. It was delicious. Amazingly delicious.

I would serve it with beans. Probably black, Ed's favorite. And an artisan bread and butter.

@Kerry Beal and @palo...you are both gentlemen and scholars to go to the trouble of helping me out. Ed has already arranged with out local Merrett's Home Hardware...and yes he taught both the sons...to buy one there. It's put away under his name. But thank you so much for your help.

Well, I'm back. Again. Both Oxo can openers have hit the round file and while the recently purchased Lee Valley little job works well, for Ed, I now have severe degenerative arthritis in my wrists and can't use any can openers. I'm going to look up the Hamilton Beach Smooth Touch Opener next on Amazon Canada with a view to buying one. Thanks for all the answers which somehow I never saw three years ago. I'm gasping...the USA Amazon price is $37.00 and the Canadian Amazon price is $99.00. Maybe not...🤪

Just grabbed the latest cookbooks off the "new" shelves (oops. did it again....shelves at the library) and was quite delighted with one of them...Desiree Nielsen, Good for Your Gut: Plant-based digestive health guide and nourishing recipes for living well, Penguin, 2022. Now that I have more or less stopped eating gluten...the jury is still out...and dairy...ditto...I am always on the look-out for good bread/cake/cookie/etc recipes. Had no idea that the first 103 pages were all about the gut and how it works. Well explained and even some things I'd never read before. Nielsen certainly pulled it all together in a very useful way and she's not singled-minded or narrow-thinking about it all which was a delight. Plus I found about 8 useful recipes that I am going to try.

I like Shirley Corriher's Cookwise and Rose Levy Beranbaum's books for that very reason.

Hello Ratatata, Welcome to eGullet. What caught me eye initially about your post was your name: Ratatata. For reasons of pure joy, that's what I call my recipe for Ratatouille....so much easier to type on labels than to spell the name correctly...which I did not in this sentence...thank you, Spell Checker. It's not so much that I can't spell...as that I can't type properly. Never learned how. So your name...may I ask why? Thanks, Darienne

Yes.

I've read that series also...I'll bet...and I've always wanted to try a Scottish bacon bap. Sundays we have bacon, eggs and toast for lunch and I always make a bacon and tomato sandwich out of my toast and bacon. I notice that in English detective series, the police often stop for bacon sandwiches...these folk usually live in the more northerly regions.

Just landed on another gluten-free site: Gluten Free Alchemist. Has anyone else found this site? And what does he/she think of it? It seems very detailed and very complete...but then I'm currently drowning in information and not feeling competent to make any judgements. (New endeavors always see me drowning in information for a while...)

Strangely enough, Malva Pudding is not included in my South African cookbook and yet according to Google: Malva pudding. Possibly the most iconic South African dessert.

Yes, thank you I do have a couple of versions of the dessert. (I've never made it though...) In fact, Annette, the daughter, has gifted me with Magdaleen van Wyk, Cooking the South African Way, 1986. I've made Bobotie and Blatjang and the Malva Pudding a number of times since for Canadian friends and they are always well received. The South African father, Karl Van Der Fliegen, for whom this meal was originally designed in 2015 has by now passed away at 101 years. The irony of my attempt to give him a 'familiar' meal was that he had never eaten South African food at all. His wife was English and was, according to Annette, a terrible cook who stuck closely to that reputation that the English have of being terrible cooks. She never once made any South African foods.

The little bit of the bakery we saw in the photo looked amazing. Sometimes I am so grateful that our local city has nothing to offer in the way of baked goods (and if it does...please don't tell me about it.)

My favorite living comedian, Danny Bhoy, once again quoted in this blog, on the Scottish Diet....We in Scotland officially have the worst diet in the world. Everything...deep fried.

Warning: long story: We now have a cleaning lady who comes every two weeks. She's has become a young friend which is lovely. She's the age of our youngest. She and her husband are financially worth ten of us. I note that only because most cleaning ladies are not financially well off. She owns the cleaning company but loves to clean and picks her clients according to some set of criteria...mostly old and to quote her own words concerning me... 'you really are a dear old lady'. Background now set. Her husband has some kind of incredible job where he travels a lot and last month he and the other executives went on a fishing trip where he caught many salmon. Neither my friend nor her husband like salmon at all. Today, cleaning day, every second Tuesday, she brought me I'd say roughly $75.00 worth of freshly caught salmon frozen professionally in water. I was stunned to put it mildly. Talk about an unexpected food gift. I am now going to make her a raspberry pie ice cream. Like my apple pie ice cream, but with raspberries. Oh, and feed her some salmon cooked by Ed in two weeks time. She said she cooked it once and it was just awful.

And that is why? Personal or what if I may ask?

Reviving this topic after 7 years. The December/January issue of Cook's Country has a recipe for Chickpea Fries (Panisse, Panissa, Panelle...depending upon where you live). They are now a popular restaurant snack in Boston at Chickadee. They really appeal to me...I could not live without chickpeas in some form or other...and I wonder if anyone has tried them in this format. Sending Ed for some chickpea (gram, besan) flour in the next shopping jaunt.

Very interesting. The choices for gluten-free are becoming so much greater and I am finding pretty much no problems at all in cooking and eating gluten free. I'm not celiac but find I do much better WITHOUT gluten in my life. Now...about the problems of being dairy free...mainly the loss of good cheese.

Welcome to the forum, Sipegaos123.

Welcome to the forum. I am definitely not a no fat, no oil vegan, but our daughter is and I could do with some treat recipes to make for her. Alas, I find it quite difficult to feed her.

Lots left to learn and with luck, master. Still drowning learning about the various flours. Made the same cookie using two different gluten-free flours...Bob's Red Mill and Robin Hood, and the cookies came out somewhat differently. Hmmm....

Made my first loaf of gluten-free bread in a machine with a gluten-free setting...my second-hand Breadman stainless steel bargain. Again I used a whole wheat recipe from All Recipes. The loaf has a good texture...if you like 'substantial'...and we do. The shape turned out pretty well...except the top fell, apparently a common problem with gluten-free homemade loaves. I'll try other recipes as time goes by. Ate my new loaf of bread toasted for breakfast today with almond butter and prune spread. Very good. So far the breads I've made taste far better toasted than un-toasted.

I give neighbors and friends food gifts, usually chocolate-dipped glacé ginger or a container of ice cream, their pick of flavor.