Darienne

Thanks to Heidi for sending me to this thread. Wow! I am going to do this very thing. I just happen to have two boxes of Phyllo in the freezer and orange blossom water and the nuts and all. Such an interesting thread. Thanks all.

The sad face is for the pecans.

Vietnamese and Israeli cooking. A great combo. Welcome to the forum Bryan. Coming here was one of the best things I have ever done.

But what about this aluminum getting into the food issue?

I'm not much of a cookie maker either. Funny how so many of us can really make some or many different kinds of dishes...I'm a whiz at ice cream. Cookies? Not so much.

I used to use my Mother's pressure cooker pot for deep fat frying. I don't know what metal it was made from but it was really heavy. Now my friend has given me an aluminum pressure cooker and I thought I could use the pot the same way...except that it's aluminum and although heavier than your average aluminum pot (of which I have none), it's not as heavy as my Mother's pot was. The information I can find on deep fat frying in an aluminum pot is contradictory and I don't have a very good sense about it. Can I burn a hole in this pot with the heat? Will the aluminum get into the food? Who knows about this one, please.

You are flying, my dear. I am in my very first Christmas cookie exchange next Saturday. I'm making Fanny Farmer's Viennese Crescents with added chocolate squiggles. my favorite cookie. So here I am, Christmassy after all. Hard to believe....I have no photos of them in my albums.

The batter filled two loaf pans for me. 5 1/2 by 9 1/2. Oh, I doubled the nuts called for.

I'm not Arey, but I have much experience with this cake. Never misted it with booze...but what a good idea. It does cut better the second day and yes it freezes very well.

Where's the icon for super yummy - potato latkes?

Now that's something I would love. I remember buying pecans in NM and being so thrilled with how delicious they were. And there was a pecan tree in Moab near a store we frequented and I often just pulled the nuts off the tree. Yummy. Lucky you.

We have a friend from South Africa who works in Ontario now as a PSW (Personal Care Worker) and she receives from her elderly clients the most wonderful 'gifts'. Mostly things which they have never used or can use no longer. Wonderful things. Now our friend is not what you would call a dedicated cook so I have been the lucky recipient of many of these items. To whit, today's haul: a never-used pressure cooker and several stainless steel containers with locking tops. Could not believe the containers...looked them up on Amazon...was stunned by the prices...they start in the mid-$30.00 ...that's apiece. And truth be told, I am a container enthusiast. Added: The locking dishes are from Zebra Thailand. Printed on their bottoms.

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.