Darienne

Please do report on the recipes as you make them.

I've had trouble with eggs as a separate item to eat since an unfortunate childhood incident. But then I made my own scrambled eggs and loved them. And my own Egg Foo Yong and really loved it. And I can eat my DH's easy over fried eggs...most of the time. Perhaps it's time to try a fried egg sandwich. I'll still never even try a soft or hard boiled egg.

I am dipping into two food history books right now. One is A Medieval Home Companion: Housekeeping in the Fourteenth Century. Interesting life if you were the mistress of the manor...not so good for the servants. One thing which has always intrigued me is the fact that a number of confections seem to have been the result of accidents. However, about savory ice creams. I have yet to try one and am working up to it. Barring 180 year-old recipes, can you recommend one?

Hi Peter, I am not particularly up on computer lingo, but on chat lists DH is generally Dear Husband. (I googled it just for fun and did come up with some interesting and politically incorrect terms )

My current favorite is Viennese Crescents. Very short. I make them with ground pecans instead of ground almonds. Easy to make, yummy to snitch cookie dough. People LOVE them! My recipe comes from an old Fanny Farmer cookbook but I expect you could find the recipe anywhere pretty much.

Shalmanese's excellent topic on what we are the most and least excessive about, I kept thinking about obsessive...what am I the most and least obsessive about and decided that this topic might go in 'consumer' better. I share the cooking with my DH, but I am still obsessive about MY Paderno pots and pans. No one uses them but me and they don't go into the dishwasher either. When we had company last week and they had to help with the cooking, I simply took all MY pots and pans and hid them away. I also hate it when Ed adds something to my sauces or interferes in anything I am making unless I ask his opinion. But then I am a home cook and professionals would never do that anyway...would they? I am very casual about cooking neatly and make the most gawdawful mess as I go. I am very neat about the rest of my life, but can't seem to cook without mucking up everything. My DH is appalled by my cooking habits.

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!