Darienne

Thank you for your kind welcome. (I am much intrigued by your avatar) Wonderful looking Chinese food. The plates are so clean and fine looking. My DH adores Szechwan...my own preferred spelling ...food and all my many peccadilloes are tolerated and forgiven because I make him Szechwan a couple of times a week.

This may be quite embarrassing. My candied ginger, about 1 1/2 month old, kept in an airtight plastic container, has fluffy type mold on some pieces. I tossed it all out. Why did it mold?

Can I answer this one with a story about my DH? The very first time he did salmon on the B-B-Q with lime, it was so tender and sublime I was in heaven. With the most delicious crispy, burnt just so, skin. I did not share with the pups. Since then, it's always be good...but never again sublime. He has no idea why.

Wow!. You and my DH. Roasting garbage in the oven. Now that is worth of praise. I am NOT telling Ed about that one. I, like your DH, wonder about the end result. My DH cleans, opens and flattens every can we use. He cleans EVERY plastic bag and dries it in the garage and adds it to our recycling...even the gucky ones. (Of course, he usually leaves them in the sink for you-know-who. His heart is in the right place...the rest of him is elsewhere. ) He puts the coffee grounds in the compost...I put them down the toilet or in the garbage. He is good: I am bad. But I make Szechwan Chinese food and that makes up for just about everything in life.

I agree with Dave Hatfield on Amazon.com. Live in Canada and see what you are missing. I am only sorry that I did not order more last year when we were in Moab. We have Amazon.ca in Canada and everything is probably twice the price and the postage is way up and the deals are way down...assuming that you can even get the title on the Canadian site. As for Nakji's comments on Looney Spoons etc, I am mortified to claim the same citizenship as the authors of those books. I got them out of the library to check on some aspect of the recipes...forgotten now...and gagged over the 'cutesiness' of page after page, recipe after recipe, line after line... The contents were lost to me forever. No. I am not anti-Canadian. We just touched on two items which irritate me.

I USED to use my kitchen shears for all sorts of things and then last weekend my daughter tried to cut the woody stems of a considerable number of decorative woody stems in one fell blow and now my kitchen shears are no more. PLUS I cannot even find my studio shears...which makes me wonder...very much...

My very first posting on this thread. My friend gave me this wonderful cookbook on potatoes and the pictures are the bait every time. I know, I know. Not very sophisticated. So I made this dish, Potatoes baked with Tomatoes, a recipe from the South of Italy, and my finished supper looked as good as the photo in the book...my photograph does not look as good as the one in the book and I thought I would post it.

We once had black cake at a Christmas dinner and I thought it was wonderful. Could I please have a recipe for your black cake? Perhaps I could make them for my artisanal gifts this year. Attribution included, of course.

The joys of cookbooks from the UK. Today while passing the time in a long and boring medical procedure, I looked at my new potato cookbook, published in the UK. Wonderful photos, great recipes. However, although the staff helped me with gammon and lardons, and I already knew aubergine and courgette, asafoetida and pilchard had to wait until I got home and online.

Just discussing with the DH the fact that our newly acquired second-hand coffee maker...we run through them pretty quickly...has the most inconvenient carafe lid. You have to stick your finger into the pouring area to get it off. On the other hand, it is still functioning perfectly. It was made in Korea. That goes back. (Someone can no doubt supply dates.) That postdates manufacture in Japan and predates being made in China. And now some of the 'better' stuff seems to be coming from India. My new wonderful nested set of stainless steel mixing bowls with silicone bottoms are from India, purchased last year in Utah. And amazingly, my new Beater Blades are manufactured in the USA. The catalog for the Paderno wear says 'Prince Edward Island made', but it does seem a tad vague... OK. Just phoned Paderno and while the Fusion 5 pots are still made in PEI, other pieces are made in Indonesia and China. The staff person said that if your pots are old enough, they were all made in PEI years ago. Mine aren't and they aren't Fusion 5 either. What else is new? Interesting...to me, at least.

Our house has this special library section in the bathroom. Just looking at the verso of my new potato book, a gift from a friend, Potato: a celebration of the world's most versatile vegetable. Alex Barker & Sally Mansfield, Hermes House. London. There's a note stating that all recipes use medium eggs unless otherwise stated.

'Easy Recipe Suggestions' on the 'Cooking Forum' might be useful for you to look at. (I don't know how to do links). They are pretty simple, but they are also fast. It's better than cereal and eggs every night. I am not one to talk...I am just basically learning how to cook at this advanced age.

Well, we have the two enclosed bins and after many years, they are still not full. I know, I know, it is no way to treat compost. We need a young garden-obsessed person to come occasionally and take care of them. We used to have someone...but she moved away, bought her own house, has her own garden. Really, some people have no consideration! Our biggest fear is the bears. There are a number of smaller children in the area who must walk a fair distance on the road through the woods to get the bus and about 5 years ago we had a really serious bear problem. Don't get me started! Our local Ministry of Wildlife mishandled it SO badly. And we know they are around. We see their scat. I got involved in a fairly major way and we don't even have children at home. Oh, we have minimal woods...we are almost completely under cultivation. Oh well, that does not excuse my laziness on the subject. We'll try harder. (We do recycle like crazy.)

You all have such good ideas I'll have to look into some of them more closely and modify what we are and aren't doing. I didn't realize that egg shells are perfectly acceptable. We have deer, coyotes and bears, plus raccoons and porcupines (who ate part of our sun room roof while we were in Moab), not to mention large dogs, so everything must be animal-proof. Our daily lives are so complicated at present, and we are all incapacitated in some way, that our answers must be easy to follow. We are basically vegetarians so we generate a tremendous amount of vegetable and fruit refuse. (Our dogs eat real meat. Dogs are not vegetarians. Just reassuring all dog people.) We have more leaves than anyone wants to think about. Thanks for all the good stuff. I'll download and print it all out and rethink our position.

Tried some of the other nuts in the package and I think perhaps I just got the one bad nut in the bunch. The others are not exciting, but they are mild and sort of sweet. I should have tried a couple more before I came to any conclusions, but I was so taken aback that I didn't think of it then. Thanks for the help.

McClelland & Stewart.Macmillan, Broadview, Hurtig, NC Press, a few University Presses. Probably some of these are no longer in business.

Friends and acquaintances do not believe that I am not a chocoholic, but I really am not. Now, I could make an exception for gianduja. That stuff is lethal. However, I am a kettle-style potato chip fiend, regular or pepper styles only. I have to staple the bag shut to keep out of them. And wow betide me if I have even one...

Very nicely done, Chris! We have two plastic 'certified' compost things outside and an indoor old stock pot under the sink for immediate use. It gets emptied into the two outside bins. Why two? Because we are too lazy to empty them. Shameful, but there it is. We do not put any heavily protein scraps into our bins. That means obviously nothing with meat in it,no egg shells. Can't think of else at the moment. DH puts coffee grains into our in-house compost pail. I am too lazy and put them into the garbage. We do not put leaves and suchlike into the bins. Too lazy and too many leaves on our farm. Boy. Do we have leaves. (We also have a doggie compost bin. Dig a deep hole and put the plastic bin thing over it and that's about it. We have moved it once in 15 years. Filled in the old hole with a couple of feet of earth and dug a new hole. Right. It is not near anything like water or houses or septic system or growing garden (of which there is none at the moment.) Oh, also, our bins are animal proof (so far) and outside the dogs' fenced-in acre of backyard.

So then why were we taught to start with cold water and heat it to the boiling, not just for pasta, but everything pretty much? We do it in our house because our country well water is very hard and is run through a water conditioning process which uses salt. Only our kitchen cold water tap bypasses this treatment and has water straight from the well...which explains our constantly plugging coffee machine.

Thanks. Sounds like good advice. These are noted as ready to eat, with instructions on how to heat them for straight eating. It also suggests making ice cream, cookies, etc, etc. I'll look for fresh ones next time I am in the city. It's a small townlike city so they may not be readily available...but then I never looked for them before. In the meantime I am loathe to make anything out of an ingredient which tastes like these taste.

Bought my first ever roasted chestnuts the other day at our local bulk/health food store. Imported from China, peeled and ready to eat, vacuum sealed, distributed by an established Canadian company, Aurora. Followed the heating directions to try one. And immediately spit it out again. Now I know I can buy tahini which I like and some which I think tastes awful...ditto for coconut oil. And probably ditto for many other products. Last month I even bought some ginger which I had to toss. Question: do I have cheap, second rate chestnuts or is it an acquired taste which I haven't acquired?

Aha! Popsicle Toze second recipe just reminded me of something I saw in a Longo's booklet the other day: all sorts of uses for pizza dough. Besides making a pizza, you can make calzone, stromboli, garlic breadsticks, cheesy bread, buns, appetizers, even a dessert pizza. All the other ingredients can be on hand in the fridge or in cans or jars.

Mr friend gave me this recipe called 'Impossible Pie' which she believes was first handed down using hamburger and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Now that goes back. It's very flexible and has categories of ingredients, rather than ingredients. Into a small casserole dish or 10" deep pie plate, put a)a layer of cooked meat of any kind: bacon, sausage, ham, chicken, etc, b)a layer of vegetable: canned artichoke hearts, spinach, canned mushrooms, sauted onions, parboiled broccoli. Any number of things which go together. Any herbs or spices you want. c) add a lot of cheeses: grated cheddar, jack, cottage cheese, sliced cheese, commercial shredded cheese, asiago, parmesan, etc. d) top with a biscuit dough. Either use 1 1/2 cups Bisquick or use your own recipe, plus 3 beaten eggs and 1 1/2 cups of milk. It's quite thinnish. e) into a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. I have made this pie out of everything and anything. My friend lives about 45 minutes from a store and we live about 35 minutes so to make it at the last minute for unexpected company, you have to have canned, frozen, etc stuff on hand. The last time I made it I used: chopped cooked pork, fresh spinach and mushrooms, thyme and parsley, grated cheddar cheese, mozzarella and parmesan, and made the biscuit topping from scratch. There is no end to what combinations you might use.

All good points. However the grapes were at room temperature. Perhaps the density is the problem, but I did follow the recipe. Hmmmm...it called for 8" pans, which I used, but it did not specify how many. Rats. I did use two. Three would have been overkill to me, but it would have made the cake/bread flatter. Your two cents much appreciated. ps. Can someone please give me the pronunciation of the word schiacciata? She...ash...she...at...ta? 2nd edit: OK I am going to come clean about something. I did not follow the recipe directions to a 'T'. "Pour the water, olive oil, sugar, aniseed, and eggs into a bowl and beat with a fork. Add the grapes and baking powder to this mixture, and then gradually add the flour". I have never heard of adding baking powder directly to a huge wet mixture, and so I added it to the flour first and then added the flour/baking powder mixture to the wet mixture. Could someone please comment on this?

Thought I should finish off my Schiacciata con l'uva rant. Sudden thought...what if we split it in half horizontally, toasted and buttered it and presto, very delicious. Of course, like raisin bread which I like when toasted, not untoasted. Finis. ps. Not quite. Going to roast the rest to see what they taste like.