Darienne

For my birthday party with friends a couple of years ago, I made MY OWN cake. Chocolate cake bombe, filled with two chocolate mousses: milk and dark, covered with 70% ganache, with white chocolate shavings on top. 'Partway through the massacre' ps. Kim, I hope someone is reimbursing you for all the expenses....

I can't personally add to this topic, since I am not much of a baker at all. However, fall and winter of 08-09, we lived in Moab UT, a very small unsophisticated town basically, about 5,000 swollen by a factor of gosh...I don't know what...for the tourist trade. 61 motels at last count. Tourists don't bake. Now I live near a small city in Canada, 75,000, and in any given grocery store you'll find only a very few flours of any kind: white AP, white pastry, WW...not much choice. Ditto for the sugar. However, in Moab I was stunned to find so many many different flours and sugars also. Who uses them in a town so small that there's no Wal-Mart even (a sign of shopping excellence ) and folks travel 2 hours to Grand Junction, CO to buy much of ANYTHING? I couldn't even buy a lollipop stick. Very curious.

You certainly have lucky co-workers with a lot of birthdays. Do you suppose some co-workers have more than one birthday a year because you keep on making them such beautiful cakes and things? Does someone make you a cake on your birthday?

Thanks for your answer, Percy. And I do think 'incredible' is well suited to the dishes you make. We always eat a sizable breakfast, although not always interesting. I am not usually concerned with that aspect of my morning food. Now, my morning coffee...there's where I am concerned. DH, Ed, brings me coffee in bed every morning for the past few years and for that he is beyond reproach.

Good Heavens! I am impressed. What sophisticated palates those young children have. I had to look up Paillards of chicken.

The Chinese Milk Candy is made. The candy is delicious, but it is not white. The commercial candy I bought is pure white. I would have added a few more instructions to the recipe, notes which I'll add in the margin. There is NO WAY the candy makes 50 pieces if pulled according to the directions, 1/2" rope. We made about 70 and thicker than 1/2". Worked with DH, Ed. My hands would not have stood the pulling and cutting by myself. DH had lots of ideas of how we should do it. (Some of you can see my broad smile ) Oh, last note: The candy cost next to nothing to make. The twisty waxed paper from LorAnn's was incredibly expensive!!

Thank you for the wishes. Lovely muffins and you deserve a nap!!

Thanks all for the answers. I guess I am curious because Ed, DH, and I had breakfast together for years after he retired. And he mostly made it. And it could be a bit of a production. And he could get quite ratty over the short order part of it. And then sometimes he was annoyed because it ate up (good one, just tumbled out! ) part of the morning. And increasingly we didn't eat the same things. So about three weeks ago, we called an end to this familiar pattern and life is much better. (We did have bacon and eggs together today and he made it. No way on this earth that I am cooking him a fried egg. Scrambled? That's my job.) Now he eats about an hour before I do while I work on the computer catching up. He eats hard-boiled eggs (yecch) or granola (which I make but don't eat right now on my weight loss regime). I have a low carb smoothie or lox (he hates:I love) and something or nutola (low carb sub for granola), etc. Sorry, no photos. BTW, Friday, March 5th is our 50th anniversary, so something must be going right!! I don't know about breakfast that day, but supper will be 'dessert as supper' night.

We Canucks don't have Target...as far as I know...well, not in our fair small city...and I'll look in Wal-Mart.

The key to the freezer problem is accessibility and there is so little answer to that one. Something is either behind something in an upright or under something in a chest. And the best laid plans are followed for only sooo long and then chaos reigns once more. If my DH had his way, his entire life would be one item deep in any given direction: fridge, cupboards, freezer, basement, drive shed, closets, you name it. I have reorganized that chest freezer so many times, labeled stuff...no such thing as a label that will not fall off...magic marked...it comes off, rubs off, becomes illegible. And just one thing hastily tossed into the mix ends up the start of the ensuing chaos. Got some free squared off pails from the grocery store yesterday, complete with handles. Maybe....

Have to ask someone. Anyone. Where do you all find the time and energy to make such incredible breakfasts? And how often do you do it? And how early do you have to be at work? And do you really feel like going to that much trouble in the morning? And do you really care what you eat in the morning? Thanks. ps. Not to mention photographing your breakfast too!

DH and I know nothing about Vita Mixes. He just picked one up at the local Transfer Station (aka the Dump) on the shelves which are free. It's been there for a couple of weeks at least. It even has a book with it. The blades work perfectly and no parts are missing. Yes. People really do leave incredible things there. We have done it ourselves. One day there were two full size working electric organs, the kind you find in a smaller church. Oh, it's an older one, the 3600. I guess I'll have to buckle down, read this topic, try the machine, see if it actually works or not. Amazing.

Because of the make-up snowstorms we have been having lately in our corner of the woods, our candy date got canceled, so I am going to have to go it alone with Chinese Milk candy this weekend. Maybe I can get DH to help pull it. Anita Chu (Pastry Girl). Field Guide to Candy.

And then there are those wonderful folks, who will eat something and enjoy it, until you tell them there is: yogurt, tofu, goat's milk, etc, in it, and then they'll literally spit it out and refuse to eat any more. How did we find such friends? (I am still hugging to myself the fact that once this particular man ate and loved my lemon cheese pie, and he still doesn't know that there was tofu and goat's milk in it. I'm saving it for just the 'right' moment. Yep, I do have a mean side. )

Ditto for a Canadian store, XS-Cargo.

This topic is very close to my heart. Gosh, I didn't even intend a pun. I have had high cholesterol and triglycerides my whole testing life. I've been put on Lopid and I can't remember two of the others and Lipitor with no good effect. I had the strange abdominal pains on Lipitor which are very 'dangerous' and went off it. Then when I got well again, the heart specialist said...well, let's try it again. No thank you. I live with high numbers (Canadian numbers don't match US). However, I had, when last tested, normal homo-cysteine (whatever it is). Some think it's a more useful test for heart disease. And my carotid doppler was satisfactory last time too. My Father was the first in his family to live past 60. I am just pushing 69. Ten years ago one day, I was talking to my favorite ever prof in the world, planning to meet for lunch. His cholesterol was perfect and he was making fun of me. He was also dead the very next day. Half of all the people who die from heart attacks have perfectly normal cholesterol levels. I don't make anything of any of it. I sleep with aspirin beside the bed. My diet is mostly vegetarian. So far, so good.

Never tried strawberries with pepper, but popcorn without pepper is now unthinkable. In the last few years it seems that many more foods/dishes feature pepper than I can remember from before. Pepper in potato chips...very nice. Orange-Szechwan Pepper ice cream from DL's The Perfect Scoop...exquisite. My new absolute favorite: oranges and pepper.

That's the second time today to Google. Never heard of a coolata before. We have made a variation of them, both hot and cold, for years. Sorry your daughter has immune-related problems...and that she's a teenage too!! Shall look up the drweil.com website. Oh, one thing you can do vis-a-vis pasta is to use shredded cabbage. You'll be amazed at how it works. DH doesn't like brown rice. Rats. We do eat pretty simply, a lot of home cooked Chinese, and our large meal is at noon which is good. We are both almost 70 and while his metabolism has changed for the good...although we'll never know why...mine hasn't. I ended up carrying more weight than I should have after years of being OK. After the last 9 months of wretched pain and not being able to walk or stand much, I am finally back on my feet...at least for a while. Dx of Spinal Stenosis with impinged L5. I've lost about 15 pounds without 'dieting' and that's to the good. And am at a sort of confused dietary cross-roads after too much food nutrition input. That happens. What to eat? I'll get it worked out again. I had 2 eggs with cheese for breakfast and was once again not feeling all that well and cranky. Can't do that total lack of carbs thing. I didn't mean to...it just happened. Now I'm fine after a lunch of vegetables with a bit of meat. Someone on this topic suggested earlier that I probably had a candida infection and perhaps I do...but I've been like this since I first tried Atkins and that was decades ago. Have to each find our own path. Thanks.

Thanks llc45. Had to look up SCD...never heard of it before. We do use almond meal already and I have made some of the recipes/concoctions on PB (Primal Blueprint), as in Nutola instead of Granola. Probably would choose almond butter over peanut..and I can do without bananas, although DH loves them. I've never been a banana fan...except when fried in butter, preferably with a few raspberries, then a chocolate ganache topped with a soupcon of whipped cream on top. Now that's a banana I like. Thanks again. I look forward to hearing from you with some recipes. ps. Why have you given up the stricter adherence to the regime?

Hi Penny, Thanks for all the good information. Have downloaded the interview and will read it as soon as I can and this afternoon will request the two books on I.L.L. from our local library. Should make fascinating reading. This topic is for me one of the most rewarding in a long time. Life altering, I would say. Thanks, all I do have a question: dinner (we eat it at noon) and supper present no problems. But breakfast...ah, breakfast. Today Ed ate hardboiled eggs (ugh) and I guess I"ll have scrambled, but exactly what do you all eat for breakfast? And please, nothing that is complicated...unless it's a question of eating/reheating something already made. We gave up the more leisurely breakfast a couple of months ago...forever I hope. (Yes, we are both retired but live a full, working life, just not on a preset schedule.)

Now that is brilliant. I am going to steal your idea and use it.

I would definitely like to come to your house for this dinner.

Little beauties

As I recall, Menudo is made from tripe and other less enticing parts of the cow...

Gotcha. I'll be back...