Darienne

Watched 10 minutes. Words fail me.

For a regular salad for two...that's us every second night pretty much...I would do the following: 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, big dash of Lea & Perrins, dollop of chopped garlic and salt and pepper. And on the salad itself: parsley and mint. Not fancy, but in this household it's traditional.

Dare I even answer? I hate turkey soup. So there.

Interesting point. At the gathering of friends, referred to above, not one of Steve's friends brought food. Steve was 48. They would have all been between 35 and 50. But all our friends brought food...still the 'parental' generation I guess. ps. I use cottage cheese and a bechamel topping on my Lasagna.

Dear Tri2Cook, I am afraid your post got lost in a welter of posts of personal losses. You have my sympathy. Losses of beloved family and friends are so difficult and as we age these losses just keep coming. And sympathy to all who have posted their recent, and not so recent, losses. We have all had painful losses. I do have a food part to my post. When our son died a few years ago, we had a gathering at the farm of his friends and our friends and some brought food. And we, of course, supplied food. The most wonderful food gift was a pan of roasted turkey. Some of the turkey was off the bird and cut into immediately useful pieces. Some was off the bird and in larger pieces and the rest was drumsticks and larger pieces. A terrific gift in that turkey sandwiches could be made in an instant. And so on. We put one of the gift plates of sandwiches in the living room and one in the then sun-room. However, no one was in the sun-room and one of our dogs decided that the plate of sandwiches had been left there specifically for her enjoyment, and she scarfed them down while no one was paying attention. Quite a snack.

Interesting. From the days when Canada was so far behind the USA. So far behind...

So DH came upon the scene and now we have ordered the following scale: Accuweight Digital Kitchen Scale Electronic Meat Food Weight Scale. I report back when I use it. We are keeping the new mechanical scales. They are awkward to use but we won't be caught scale-less again. Thanks again for all the help. (I should add that this coming March it will be 57 years married. LOL)

Instructed by DH to see if I can find the scales locally. Then I guess we'll go with the MyWeigh brand. O, for the good old days when stuff was made out of metal, lasted for forever, could be repaired, etc, etc. Thanks for all for your replies.

Thanks Kerry. Ed and I will check this one out tomorrow morning.

Thank you, kind sir. I'll point that out to my DH. In the meantime, we are using a large mechanical calibrated scale. It's a Stokes brand, Stokes being the largest Canadian kitchen store chain. It can't break down on us in any way...but it's not convenient to use. Oh well.

Thanks Elsie. Strange, but the reviews on the Amazon.ca site are very negative towards this one. DH says no.

Our last Starfrit kitchen scales died. It seems that not only the batteries die...but the scales die too. Bought three of the new Starfrit models. Opened and tried two. Both pieces of..... (good taste precludes my use of the appropriate word to describe them). I use the scales continuously in my candy making, regular baking and to weigh the dogs' food. CONTINUOUSLY. That is at least twice a day minimum. I need a scale with a tare mechanism. I won't pay more than $100.00 for them. I need to be able to read the weight from under a flat round stainless steel dog bowl. The salient detail being that it has a platform spacious enough that it will accommodate larger containers with readable results. What to do? Any help here? (ps. I HATE the new electronic appliances which no longer have the familiar buttons. Too bad for me.)

Sanitation does not have to be a problem with wood floors. Ours are topped with a few coats of varathane (or whatever it is that my DH uses) and that can withstand constant cleaning.

On the subject of tile floors, I am completely with MelissaH. Nothing but wood floors for us for 25 years now. I love them and would never go back to anything else. The don't show dirt (we have two large Spoiled Rotten-weilers and live on a farm) and are soft on the feet. We spent two months in Moab Utah with tile floors and I thought I would die until we threw down mats to stand on. Also I love galley kitchens. I have one now (25 years) and had one before (about 10 years) and while they have their limitations...everything does, n'est-ce pas?...for me they are the best.

Hello Catherine T and welcome to eGullet, an amazing collection of cooks and bakers who are generous with their advice and recipes beyond belief. Sorry you have Celiac Disease but glad that you are finding ways around it. And I am very curious about the European flour and how you can eat it. Do let us know how your search works out.

We did eat the pie, the whole pie and nothing but the pie. And now it's November 3, our guest is here (out viewing the farm with Ed) and the pie is in the fridge awaiting dessert time. The same lime cheese pie with chocolate ganache topping.

That's two for eating the pie. Truth be told...we did eat some at lunch and will probably eat the entire thing over the weekend. It's a very unusual cheese dessert in that the ingredients are only slightly rich. One package of cream cheese only, one egg, part of a cup of milk, a little sugar, a smidgen of butter...hardly worth fretting over. And think of the anti-oxidants in that dark chocolate topping. Sold to the woman who has deluded herself once more.

Yesterday I made my familiar go-to simple lime/cream cheese pie with one egg, some milk, lime juice & zest, etc, covered with a dark chocolate ganache: heavy cream, a dollop of butter. It's in the fridge covered with a plastic topper but I can cover it with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Today's lunch guest is not coming...onslaught of sleet, freezing rain, and now snow...oh goodie...winter's here... Now she is slated for next Thursday. Is there any possibility that the pie can last that long and not poison or at least revolt us? Thanks.

Hmmmm...in the same vein...we usually have the mice coming in during the month of October and yesterday was our first mouse and today our second. Late onset of cool weather. We are on East Central Ontario.

Seeing as we are all sharing...we had no earwigs this summer (my chief hatred - I have an earwig story to end all earwig stories), but a bumper crop of ladybugs (Asian variety) in the spring, and a bumper crop of house flies in the summer and fruit flies ( constant apple production in the house). We live on a more than 100-year old farmhouse and you cannot get rid of the cluster flies which come twice a year, spring and fall, but only to the upper storey of the house. [Wow. Who knew that American spelling of storey was story?)

For decades I refused all ice cream. No thank you. My parents had one of those early freezer plans in the 50s with constant buckets of cheap ice cream. Ice cream was dessert. The constant dessert. The only dessert. And only vanilla, chocolate and Neapolitan. So who needed it? Then one day, many decades later, in Moab Utah, my home away from home, there was an ICE-20 ice cream maker for sale in our favorite local second hand store, Wabi Sabi, for $5. Could not resist. Started making ice cream from scratch and had an epiphanal moment in my life. Ice cream could be delicious. But still, I can have all different flavored home made and delicious ice cream in my freezer and not be tempted to overeat on it. Two tablespoons at a time is sufficient for me.

dcarch: the video was wonderful. I notice that the older man was more careful in his rolling process than the younger. Perhaps pride in a job well done for the older man...simply a job to endure for the younger. Or perhaps I am way off base. I love how the hands and fingers know what to do and how to do it. I am an artisan in a totally different medium and after some years of practice, my fingers do the work without my brain having to be very engaged. And after many years I am still fascinated by the process.

Thank you dcarch and liuzhou for those photos and video. I felt like a child again looking at it all. Wonderful. Magical.

I have a pair of gloves very close by each of our two large freezers to make sure that I don't freeze my fingers or hurt them...painful injuries seem to be much more easy to get once the fingers are cold... And my own rule is inviolate now having hurt my fingers...and always the more useful fingers on my right hand...so many times in the past. I often wonder how I got to be so old and so brainless at the same time.

My vote would be for Shortbread Cookies. Always.