Darienne

As noted...and not very clearly...using half the cream of the normal ganache worked perfectly...so far....

Not really laughing. The food industry is not a nice one.

This could turn into a very long topic indeed. I'm keeping back my best one to top all others....LOL Added: or rather, my worst one...

Or a drawer...or the dishwasher door...

Somehow I knew I could count on you for an answer.

Well, I guess I am more curious than embarrassed. Although I use fairly good quality chocolate to make dipped citrus peels, bonbons and so on, I also use a lot of less than good quality chocolate to make toppings on pies and cakes, particularly for friends and neighbors who think that Merkens is delicious. Well, that's unkind, but you know what I mean. In Canada, we have a chocolate called 'World's Finest' and it is truly awful. Oh well. So here is the situation. I have purchased from Canadian Wal-Mart for a good number of years now a bar, Waterbridge Imported Belgian, 400 grams, in Milk, Dark and Extra Dark varieties. And my topping is invariably 4 oz of chocolate and 1/2 cup of half and half or whipping cream. And it always sets just fine. Perfect. About 3 months ago, I made a Milk chocolate topping for a friend who loves milk chocolate. It didn't set. It was soup. OK. But the Dark and Extra Dark still worked fine. Two days ago, both of those were soup. I wrote to Wal-Mart noting the change, and also that the ever-present gold cardboard is now missing from the bars. They apologized profusely and offered me my money back. (In the meantime, I figured out that 1/4 cup of cream would work perfectly.) The ingredients are: for the Extra Dark: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, soy lecithin and the Dark: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter and soya lecithin. What do you suppose they did to the mix to make it so different?

Well 'everywhere' may likely be where Elsie lives in a major Canadian city...but it sure ain't where I live...outside a small city which is more like an overgrown town and very non-cosmopolitan. And in Canada, Kensington market in Toronto is the place to go for the real basics of Mexican ingredients.

This thread is making me realize just what a cheese tyro I am. And thanks, Porthos, for that excellent idea.

And I thought to myself...I'll bet that's from chromedome. Next time we go to Halifax, we are going to stop off and say hello!

We have two new cheeses in our life, both from Costco: for Ed: Balderson Double Smoked Cheddar (I don't care for it) and for me: imported from Wales, Collier's, a Welsh Cheddar. As for Canadian Cheddars: well they are excellent. And we eat an old sharp Cheddar with Apple Pie (just an Apple Pie note). As for American Cheddars: except for the northeast stuff, they are pretty awful. I do have a funny cheese story (it seems that my life is a series of fairly amusing events): We had an epileptic Rottie many years ago and after seizures we always fed him Breyer's ice cream. In fact, our female, Chloe, would race to the fridge when Nigel had a seizure, knowing what was next. For the car, we carried crackers and cheese slices. Well, in time Nigel died from cancer and the crackers and cheese got buried under other stuff...no, our car is not a palace. I found the stuff one and a half years after Nigel's death and it had come through two summers and a winter on the car floor. And it was still like new! I've read that chimpanzees will not eat processed cheese because they do not recognize it as food, which indeed it is not.

Thanks Andie, I'm trying your recipe next time. I will have to supply my own 'self-rising' flour, but I am hoping that it won't make any difference. I do have a funny biscuit story. My Mother was NOT a "cook". And her biscuits were always made from Bisquick and like hockey pucks. I knew naught else. And so married, and not knowing how to cook at all, I bought Bisquick also. One day I had run out and thought to myself. There's probably a recipe for biscuits in my one cookbook. (I still have that cookbook. It has weathered [badly] 59 years of marriage. Lost both covers long ago and many pages. Have no idea of the publisher or anything.) Found a recipe. Made the biscuits and lo and behold! Became a dedicated and 'expert' biscuit maker long before I 'found' cooking.

OK. I stand duly corrected. I posted the apple pie/ice cream/cheddar cheese question on my Facebook page and was surprised to find out that most folks...and this includes friends in far flung countries...eat apple pie with ice cream and many have not even heard of eating it with Cheddar cheese. And @highchef I apologize for inadvertently hijacking your post.

Yup, there is.

I shall enquire with some western Canadian friends. Interesting. Also son in NS...but you are saying that you don't eat cheddar with apple pie in NB?

We don't get the WSJ and I am not knowledgeable about sage. Ed doesn't like it. Period. What I can say is that I find it strange that someone, as experienced as Mark Bittman, doesn't mention cheddar cheese in his recipe for apple pie. I could be wrong...often am...but it seems to me that Americans usually eat apple pie with ice cream or whipped topping. I would think that most Canadians eat apple pie with a good strong cheddar cheese. Not meaning to start an argument...

I'm with Smithy please, Porthos.

I did note on page one that chez McAuleys we were going to have a spiral ham. I have no idea at this point how to cook it. Or if it comes fully cooked and I have only to reheat it. I've spent a lifetime hating ham and when my friend in Moab announced three years ago that her son was bringing a spiral ham for Christmas, I had a small meltdown (quite small). We brought a French Canadian tortiere...made by Ed as always. (OK. I've forgotten again how to put accents into this format). However, I was pleased to eat this spiral variety. Nothing like the traditional ham studded with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries and quite wet. And so our decision for Christmas 2018. There will also be tortieres made of course. Four to be exact.

My sincerest apologies, dear Kim. Indeed, it was Shelby...

Now, I am no saint, but rarely throw out anything. All vegetables which are wilted get roasted and frozen for soups. And as for throwing out limes...Kim Shook... not if you live in Ontario and have to pay Ontario prices. Zest them and juice them.

I'll go along with that. We no longer participate in them...and we don't go to them either. Craft showed out. I seem to have lost track of this excellent thread. Well, I'm back and happy to look at all the wonderful items you all have made. Loved those cookies and lollipops, Rwood.

No but I'll PM it to you. He sent it to me PM.

I have joined this Cookbook Club at our local small library, mostly because I owe so much to the librarians who constantly go out of their way to order in for me books they think I might like to read. The object of the club is basically to increase library circulation and for me the problem is that they really want the members to make the dishes from recipes in the library books. While they do have some excellent cookbooks, as you can imagine, a lot of the books are second rate (or worse) cookbooks. We bring our creations to the library and sample each other's dishes and discuss the books involved. To date, half of the dishes presented are not from local library cookbooks. This month is stews and soups. So my next project is to find a recipe in a library cookbook and make it for the 24th. Not really in the mood for a new soup recipe at this point (being currently obsessed with making suitable Scalloped Potatoes for DH). Still if this were the worst thing on my horizon, I'd be doing very well.

Right! No more words needed.

Thanks gfweb. Looked up Bourdain's original recipe also. Garlic to the sky. My Mother-in-Law probably never put garlic or thyme or rosemary in anything. And no Gruyere cheese for sure. We are talking 1950s and a family in which my Father-in-Law never tasted something so foreign as spaghetti. The question for me is: Did she use onion or not? Probably not. And would that matter to Ed now or not? She probably used flour. And does he really remember 'how' they tasted? Oh, and he will help with the slicing. (You see...Ed's Mother was an excellent cook. She made cream puffs even. And my Mother hated cooking...and really didn't. And I couldn't make anything when we got married, except for what my family called French salad dressing...which we now call Italian...and that was it.)

So far I've mentioned the spiral ham for our Christmas dinner as something we've never had before. And now Ed has asked for Scalloped Potatoes which I think I've made only once or twice, and haven't made for decades, and have no idea what recipe I used. Now, Mr. Ed, having been the one who taught me to cook, is quite happy to interfere (my words) in everything I cook if he has ever had it before. Or even worse, if his Mother ever made it. (Which is partly why I specialize in dishes which he's never eaten and has no preconceived idea of how they should taste.) So now begins the Scalloped Potato recipe search. And they must be like his Mother's...which he hasn't had for almost 59 years. It took 5 recipes to get the salted caramel sauce correct to his liking. I wonder how many recipes it will take for the Scalloped Potatoes......?????? And he can't recall if they had onions in them or not.