Darienne

My KA handmixer came with a balloon whisk. Glad you received one for free. I now have the new whipping cream. Alas! I have no use for it for days.

The one thing I was raised making at my Mother's knee was salad dressing, so I have never been able to understand why people buy it in bottles. For one thing, most of it is full of sugar. Italian dressing especially, which we used to call French dressing, oil & vinega...I use lemon juice because I cannot cope with vinegar... takes only a few seconds to make even with its additions, and so why on earth would someone buy it premade?

DH has just entered the fray and wants to know about the stainless woks by Cuisinart and others? Do any have aluminum bottoms? Are they useful? Thanks.

Great, but why?

What about a barbecue outfit? We have one of those outside.

I think I like this answer best of all. Makes my life simpler. I'll get back with what the store/company says and does. Thanks, Chiantiglace ***Just phoned the store and the manageress says to get right down there and she'll replace the cream. Yay team! and thanks to all.

I am no expert, but I thought that gelatine was simply a stabilizer and not to be used until the cream was already whipped. I don't have an ISI gas whipper although I shall begin to think about getting one. Thanks for the help.

Thanks Nickrey, that is a new consideration for me. I must go and taste it straight and see how it stacks up to the usual taste as I recall it. I just came up with another possibility. This cream could have been inadvertently frozen before I received it on the truck, in the store cases.... That would do it. I had ordered this cream over a week ago and apparently the dairy shorted the order. Then it unexpectedly arrived to my confusion. Could there have been some problem of that nature. I know that you can't whip pre-frozen cream.

Thanks for your input. Interesting link.

I think if I learn one more thing today, my brain will burst for sure. Not to mention my DH who said...'don't tell me that you actually told everyone what you did? ' So the half-whipped cream went back into the bottle and will do nicely for ganache or something else. And I'll buy another bottle of Cream of Weber Whipping cream and see what happens, and then follow up on this thread. Thanks for the additional information. I knew about egg whites and cleanliness and somehow thought it was true of whipping cream...which makes no sense when I think about it, because it is fat you are trying to avoid with whipping the egg whites. And if Alanamoana could heat the cream and then cool it and beat it satisfactorily ...it means the mystery remains unsolved. The cream I used is, of course, of a slightly lower fat content than the specialty heavy creams which the professional chefs use, but it has always worked before. Fascinating. I cannot believe the sheer weight of the stuff I have learned since joining this Forum in August. After a lifetime of avoiding cooking as much as possible, I am almost drowning in a sea of information and new experiences.

Can you see my face, how red it is? I forgot all about it. I actually left the cream out in the van overnight. That's from about 5 pm until some time the next day. Put it into the fridge and forgot all about it. It was in the fridge for several hours before I tried to whip it, but I guess that the damage caused by however much heat there was in the van was too much. Oooh, I am embarrassed. But hey! Life moves on. I am indebted to you for your post. I received it before I made a total idiot of myself publicly. (Talk about your learning experiences...)

I think I have died and gone to food heaven. I downloaded all the photos and I see that they each have recipes to accompany them. Thank you for this wonderful boon.

Still no answer. DH was a witness to the controlled whipping session. Everything was scrupulously clean and in the freezer at the start. New cream from the same quart. Used balloon whisk. It was much cooler today also. Low desert humidity. As in the first two attempts, the cream began to thicken somewhat after a few minutes. Aha! I thought. This time it works. Wrong. It never got any thicker. Just a sort of a medium thick and that was it. I phoned the market from which I got the cream and am to call back tomorrow. I might also just mail the company with my predicament and see what they say...or if they replace my defective/? cream. Thanks for helping and listening.

Thanks for all that information. It gives me something to think about. Added: I think I'll just let it go until we get home. We're only a couple of hours from Toronto and our daughter lives in the Chinese section so perhaps we'll go to Toronto to find a thinner cast iron wok.

We, OTOH, used crock pots to dump our finished dishes into to keep them warm and it worked well. Still, what about the wok on the electric stove problem? It was great last week, we cooked on gas, but in my Moab house we have only electric and at home in Ontario we have only electric. Can't even get gas. Is there some method which makes cooking on an electric stove more satisfactory?

Thanks to you all for the input. Answers: - yes, the beaters were in correctly. I checked. - no, it was not ultra-pasteurized milk. Cream of Weber is a great dairy. And I beat their whipping cream with excellent results just two weeks ago so I don't think they have changed their formula. I am going to write to them. - I tried first with the KA balloon whisk. It felt strange, in that there is only one whisk and I was used to two. Gave up and put in the regular beaters. No better. We have been out all morning and right after lunch, I am going to attempt to beat the cream one last time with all new and spotlessly cleaned and freezer-cooled stuff. We shall see what we shall see. Thanks again everybody.

Last night we had one of our dinner=dessert events, a very simple one, strawberry shortcake, more or less. The problem was the whipping cream...it simply wouldn't do its thing. OK. the cream is from Weber which is a good dairy, its expiration date is March 29. The bowl and beaters...my brand new KA handmixer...were in the freezer. The ambient temperature was probably about 80 F and the humidity was probably about 20 %or lower. It tried to whip, but it was taking forever, the guests were assembled, etc. I thought...well, perhaps the bowl was not scrupulously clean. I took a second bowl, scalded it, cooled it, put it into a bowl of water and ice cubes, all the good stuff, and began again. No difference. We used half-whipped cream. And sour cream and yogurt. Could it be the cream itself? What have I missed? 80 is not that hot and I've whipped cream at home in hotter kitchens and with 95% ...our summer-long humidity. All input gratefully received.

I second all the above!!! The Cookwise book is a delight to read. I want to try so many of the recipes. Alas, I am in my 'Chinese' mode. My DH wants Chinese food and here we go. The old Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook is much in use. Its recipes are very basic and that's good, although it was written in 'pre-Chinese greens in the supermarket' days.

I like The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook but her recipes call for CELERY! (yucky face here). Not cooked celery in my Chinese food, dammit. It's too easy to find Bok Choy! Maybe this is just a factor of when it was published, but it's just WRONG! ← I think you are correct about the date of publication and the ingredients called for. 1981. You probably couldn't even buy Bok Choy anywhere in North America except for a few cities in which there was a sizable Oriental population. And then only in an Asian grocery store. Now it and Lo Bok and Lychees and so on are available in mainstream markets...except in Moab, Utah. We are off to Grand Junction...two hours away and where many folks from Moab go to buy 'stuff'... to pick up a friend at the airport in April and will stock up on Chinese goodies. Meant to add that several of the new books are Sainsbury cookbooks. They seem wonderful...I have a few at home...but I still don't know the relationship between the stores and the books. 2nd edit: found one more Sainsbury cookbook today...missed it yesterday. Also four of the books fit into a little box and are from Bon Appetit. Someone was clearing out their life for sure.

Many thanks.

I must make a late New Year's Resolution in order to become a real eGulleter: to take photos of my culinary successes...and occasionally failures I suppose . Lots of those. Recently I have made a lot of firsts for me: wonderful shaped candies for the children to decorate, Valentine lollipops, and recently Almond Cookies and a steamed Chinese sponge cake. Nothing on the scale as the rest of you whip off, but still, it's a start. And who knows, I might encourage some of the other lurkers and newbies to post their food events. Still, I had never taken photos of food that I had made, and the concept is slow in setting in. Now I resolve....

Add 13 more for me. Most from a second-hand $.25 sale. Others include Corriher's Cookwise and an old, but wonderful, Chinese cookbook, The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook.

(I tried to search a dozen different ways and found no such topic.) I missed buying a second-hand electric Wok the other day and then wondered if they are really worth buying anyway. I have a regular wok...back home...of course...but none here. And you can't buy one here anyhow. This is Moab, land of red rocks and blue skies. Actually mountain bike capital of the world. Comments about electric woks most appreciated.

Frontier sells vanilla from India & Papua/New Guinea. I haven't tried the Indian, but I have the Papua/New Guinea and love it. It is rich and fragrant, without the sharp smell of alcohol that some vanillas exhibit. ← I bought the Singing Dog vanilla. It seems fine, a bit sweeter (?) than the Wilton but it specifies that it contains no sugar. FYI: Doo-doo-doo-doo. I had to buy the Singing Dog vanilla. My DH and I are gourd artisans and our studio is named Singing Dog Studios because the dogs we had when we first went into business used to howl at the sound of the rotary drill. Furthermore, the daughter of my next-door-neighbor/friend/landlady here in Moab rescues New Guinea Singing Dogs...a dog which few people should have.

Many thanks.