Darienne

DH and I have just come back from our neighbor's sugar bush...my feet are cold and wet...but the bottle of fresh maple syrup they gave us is still warm from the pouring process. I would like to make some candy with it, especially since my neighbor doesn't make candy and her kids love it when I make something for them. I did find a 'Maple Candy' in Anita Chu aka Pastry Girl. Field Guide to Candy. It's just maple syrup and a bit of butter. Maple sugar basically. Any other good ideas, please?

Wonderful story. Perhaps you should write a lunching blog.

Hi Gap, My thanks also for that blog. I shall root around in it for certain. What appeals to me is keeping butter on hand, rather than whipping cream. The butter lasts much longer without freezing, and freezes well, and defrosts in the original condition as far as I can see. Whipping cream, on the other hand, keeps less long, and although it seems to freeze fine...I freeze it in 1 cup measures...definitely has a different consistency when it defrosts. Plus it won't whip properly. Furthermore, having a supply of whipping cream around the house is 'dangerous' to the occupants , whereas butter is not.

Thank you Karen. I wasn't thinking clearly...just assuming that there was not one. Found several around Toronto.

Great fun!!

Anything to do with the leftover coconut meat pulp after making coconut milk? I just threw it out.

Thanks jgm for the clarification. And the Williams-Sonoma pull toy looks like a good one. When we get back to the States, I'll find one. Don't know where to get one in Canada.

When we were in Moab, furnishing our rental a la secondhand and yard sale, I was given more curtaining than we could use on the windows. Moab is very ant infested and everything had to be covered big time. I found the extra curtains perfect for covering candied this and that. Brought the pieces home with me and have been finding uses for them ever since...including wrapping and twisting pulverized coconut meat.

You put in 2/3 of the batter. Then 1/2 the curd. Then the rest of the batter, topped by the rest of the curd. Then take a knife and insert it half way down the batter and draw it around a couple of times. It is so good. I make the curd extra tart and the contrast between the poppy cake and the tart curd was wonderful. Oh, it's all gone...

Cardamom Almond and Black Pepper Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies. What else could you put into a cookie that I would love. I adore cardamom. Chocolate of course. Almonds. These I must make. Cornmeal, Black Pepper & Rosemary Butter Cookies. Good Lord. Sounds incredible! And I must try pepper on melons. And then other fruit too. Any special pepper used here?

Oops. Prep? I was supposed to prep it? Ed opened the coconut for me and took all the shell off. I cut all the brown stuff off the meat, cut it into small bits, put it in the blender, added very hot water (from the kettle) and buzzed it on high for a while. Poured the stuff into a small piece of fine curtaining which I use for all sorts of things and tightened the piece and watched all the lovely 'milk' come out. What else was I supposed to do???

Completely forgot about the mixing of coconut butter with coconut milk. Will try it soon. However, today I made coconut milk using fresh coconut meat. It may be my imagination, but I think it has a fresher taste than any canned stuff I have ever tasted. We are on a very deep well on the farm and the cold water is completely untouched by any chemicals. Lovely stuff.

I am having this love affair with freshly ground pepper ever since I got my battery-operated pepper mill. A few years ago I would never had thought of putting freshly ground pepper in many of the places I now use it liberally: chocolate ganache, popcorn, potato chips, and ice cream (Orange-Szechwan Pepper thanks to DL). Others have added in recent posts in another thread: strawberries, watermelon and cantaloupe. These I have yet to try. Where else do folks use pepper that you might not expect it? Cake? Biscuits? Cookies? Or in/on a dish in a way that you might not expect it to be used?

Dare I even mention the following: a friend on a low-carb diet made both 'spaghetti' and 'lasagna'...in quotation marks to signify some distance from the real thing...using cabbage in place of pasta. It's not all that bad...if you don't think pasta while you are eating it. Well, it's not that good either. Today I am making a 'lasagna' using cabbage leaves, a tomato and meat sauce and cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan. Don't hate me because I am undeserving of being called a paesana. We've had company for the last few days and I have eaten myself into a weight I thought I had left behind. Time for a short low-carb path.

I'm old and I have trouble cutting things...usually get the DH to do it. A few more words on this issue would be very welcome. Never heard of the idea before.

Well put.

Weight for all items. Also like the three-ringer binder concept.

A new thing is on the market and NOT well publicized at all. It's called a Stove Guardand it sits in between your stove plug and the wall plug. It is both a motion sensor and a timer and has a number of options on it. The one trick is to remember to turn it back on after you have turned it back off. However, it has already saved our bacon...well, house and lives, not actually bacon...a number of times. DH will leave the stove on high and forget to turn it off...speaking of seniors.

OK. Just HOW OLD are these OLD people? I am an old person too . And I would like to learn to make mirror glazes and striped hard candy.

OK. Today was Candy Day. Yesterday I made the Nightscotsman's marshmallows (tinted a lovely St. Paddy's green) and today confectionery partner, Barbara, and I cut the pops, dipped them into white chocolate and decorated with green thingies. First white chocolate we used was Lindt's and it was very liquid. Had to double dip the pops. The second we used was Callebaut. Too thick. Added some Lindt and it worked out beautifully. Single-dipped only and a whiter coating. The kids will love them! Next time, we'll do the striped hard candy.

Not exciting, but a favorite dessert: Poppy Seed Coffee Cake with Lemon Curd filling and topping. And I remembered to photograph it before we tore into it. I've got to get a new camera with a macro lens!!!

Steal away. I'll tell the Laughing Ladies.

Very careless of you, m'dear. All best in quick recovery.

Two more for me: one on chocolate...a woman can never own too many chocolate cookbooks, top notch or otherwise...and my first all cookie cookbook ever. Both at a "Gently -Used Books" store.

If you need a title for the lunching group...I used to belong to the "Laughing Ladies who Love to Lunch"/ aka "LaLaLoLu". And my late Mother, when she lived in San Diego, belonged to the "Ranch Branch Lunch Bunch" which I thought was fine. What I really like are arranged / unarranged Pot Lucks. DH and I were doing a presentation a couple of years ago at a horticultural society in a small town north of Peterborough and most of the attendees (about 100) there were even older than we are. A Pot Luck preceded our event. I felt as if I had stepped back into a previous existence...the food was incredible and not current to say the least. Pineapple upside down cake, brownies, meatballs a la 60s, chicken pot pie. But what made me laugh the most is that there were only two salads and they both had tiny marshmallows in them.