Darienne

I forgot Szechwan peppercorns on my list. You can't make Orange-Szechwan Pepper ice cream without 'em.

Very nice. If my cupboard weren't such a mess I would post of photo of it. The one my DH inserted in between the wall studs.

Now that is an excellent point!

The dog people and their dogs are gone. Report on ice creams: favorite: DL's Orange Szechwan Ice Cream...gone, gone, gone 2nd: tie between the chocolate (cornstarch base) and the vanilla (Philadelphia type). Last was the raspberry made with coconut cream. Was too much like a sherbet. Best sauce: DL's 'The Best Chocolate Sauce Recipe' from 2005. Also made DL's butterscotch sauce and my own raspberry sauce which is heavily Chambord (what's not to like?)

Hi tsquare, I've really only tasted my raspberry-coconut gelato so I can't give you a full report. However, the doggy crowd starts to descend upon us today for the weekend...weekend?...and I'll get back about this ice cream after the weekend. ← Post weekend: The raspberry ice cream was the least popular of the offering. The consensus was that you could taste the coconut milk in it and that it made a nice sherbet type dessert, but definitely NOT ice cream. So, tsquare, you were correct!

If you own your abode and you or your DH is handy, you can make an excellent spice cupboard right in your wall. Open up the wall between two sets of studs and you have a space which is perfect for spices and other little thingies. A small door hides it all from view. Perfect.

You have to love those second hand stores. Took a visiting friend into Value Village to show her the tan slacks available for her daughter and just took a quick peek at the cookbooks. Someone was getting rid of some goodies. Mark Bittman. How to Cook Everything. Christian Teubner. The Chocolate Bible. Practical Cookery. Chocolate. (lots of yummy photos and I'm also impressed by books with the English 'cookery' in them. The colonial in me, no doubt) Roz Denny. Rice & Risotto. (don't know how 'good' it is, but it certainly is timely) Elizabeth Wolf-Cohen. Step-by-Step Irresistible Chocolate. (Wow! $.22 on Amazon.com. My friend wanted it and then left it here by accident. It was free. Buy 4, get one free.) That's 5 more for me.

I can't live without Thyme and Cardamom.

Brilliant! Never thought of that.

I haven't done a double-blind test on the subject, but a friend once gave me two ginormous bottles of garlic from Costco. I think it was two years before the second one was completely used up...what with roasted garlic and fresh garlic and such...and I kept wondering about the food poisoning issue. Maybe we were just lucky.

Perhaps not to have as the 'only' cake cookbook, but a very useful cake cookbook, is One Cake, One Hundred Desserts by Greg Case and Keri Fisher. It does exactly what it says it does: takes one basic cake recipe, with very detailed and very easy to follow directions, and turns it into 100 different cakes, pudding, bombes, etc. The "Double Chocolate Mousse Bombe" is a family special occasion favorite. I have worked 5 different chocolates into it now. I love RLB's Cake Bible , but agree with your reservations for a first time baker. Oh, but how wonderful to have such interesting and useful explanations of why and how.

Gotcha. Thanks. All I have to do now is to make sure that my chum pays for my stuff on my account instead of hers.

Anything that combine all those ingredients has got to be excellent. Thanks.

Sounds fabulous!!!

My pie-making skills are very tiny. This Christmas past, inspired by a photo in RLB's Pie and Pastry Bible, I made the Christmas Cranberry Galette. Mine was very delicious, but looked a little askew. My favorite pie though that I make at the drop of a hat is from an old Culinary Arts Institute cookbook from 1982, Cooking with Cheese. It's a lemon cheese pie which calls for only 1 egg and 9 oz of cream cheese and still tastes wonderfully tangy and rich. I add a bittersweet ganache on top...not in the recipe...and it's a delight. My friend, Mel, makes the best Jamaican meat pie in the world with a curried pastry crust is making us one immediately because we kept their two dogs all weekend...allergic son problems. The curried crust is my favorite part.

Hi Kerry, Just found your thread. (Dog Weekend, you know.) This is so terrific. Can't wait to tell my confectionery chums, Barbara and Mary. And maybe we'll be your first students in your new lab!!!

Wonderful!!!

As for the sweetness, I regularly cut back on the sugar amount suggested. And truthfully, I don't enjoy milk chocolate at all. Let me know how the Orange Szechwan turns out.

Shipping to Canada...ah, there's the rub. The cost of shipping to Canada often makes me blanche!

I have some "super" super magnets that will hold anything to anything steel or iron. I bought them at the feed store and they are called "cow" magnets. The purpose is to be fed to a cow so the magnet will settle into her first stomach and attract and hold any bits of metal that she may ingest, such as nails, pieces of wire fencing, etc., and thus protect the rumen. They are incredibly strong - the one I use on the pantry fridge will hold a thick stack of papers. The only place on the kitchen fridge that will take a magnet is on the side. You should be able to find them at your local feed store - I usually get the "ceramic" ones but do have a couple of the alnico round ones. cow magnets ← I love the concept. Thanks for sharing it. Perhaps the cow magnets are the same as the earth magnets from Lee Valley. I love that they are knobs and so I can handle them. I also use them in the vehicles. Affix a metal disc to the dash somewhere and then I can hang up the 'In Town' list, or the maps and suchlike when we are traveling.

Hi stuartlikesstrudel, The whole field of 'cooking' is quite new to me after a lifetime of avoiding as much of it as possible and so the descriptive part is new too. I like that word 'complex' and I think it does apply to this ice cream. First it tastes like 'this' and then it finishes up like 'that' after passing through another phase of the 'other'. I've wondered just what others have meant when they spoke of say, chocolate, having a complex taste. Thank you. This ice cream is probably one of the most amazing food items I have ever made. But then both the DH and I love Szechwan and eat it constantly...part of my new cooking life. He helps with the mises and I do the cooking. I am intending to try this flavor combination in a ganache soon.

Hi tsquare, I've really only tasted my raspberry-coconut gelato so I can't give you a full report. However, the doggy crowd starts to descend upon us today for the weekend...weekend?...and I'll get back about this ice cream after the weekend.

Why, why, why did you have to post about those? I was hoping to leave Winnipeg without spending my usual fortune at Lee Valley, but now I'm going to have to pick up some of those pourers! And you can always find more to buy there (hence spending a fortune.). Curses on you andiesenji! But thanks! ← That makes two of us about to buy them!!!!!!!

My Lee Valley catalogs are out of date. Barbara, confectionery partner, stops by every time she goes to Toronto and picks up stuff on behalf of herself and friends. (Just phoned, am getting new catalogs, the pourers are in them. I'm gonna get me some.) I've been looking at their mandoline for a long time now...yearning... A couple of really neat things that I do have: super magnets for the fridge. They are knobs so you can pick them up and they hold really well and I often fasten my recipe to my stove hood or somewhere nearby to have it on hand while cooking. Another one that those with arthritis especially might consider buying...I couldn't live without mine... the Lee Valley Jar Opener. Like magic. I have gifted many with this one. Also my knife blade guards. We travel a lot and the knife guards are invaluable. No, I don't work for them or get discounts for touting their wares. Thank you Andie so much for showing me those pourers and getting me back into new catalogs.)

OK. I still don't have a decent pepper mill and I don't have a decent mandoline. I wonder if Unicorn is available in Canada...or is it just online?