Darienne

Oh...an apple fritter recipe...a good one. I love apple fritters. Please.

I enjoy it all, but along with Deryn, I like the breakfast chronicles which remind me that breakfast doesn't have to be cereal or bacon and eggs. ...although I've yet to try any of the tomato/cheese/meat combos.

Interesting post, Nancy. I must Google Patzcuaro and see where it is. (Did it and you are still up very high. Looks fascinating. )And how right you were about the flowers. I was so remiss this year in not cutting off the flowers. I did that finally and then the fruits really began to fill out. But, alas, it was very late. As for freezer space, I am just about completely out now after adding yesterday's huge bag of tomatillos. On the other hand, I just didn't have the time or energy to work in making the Chile Verde at that point. Could have just cooked them I guess.

With applesauce. Don't forget the applesauce.

Can almost smell it baking...I think I'd better get out the ingredients and pans and get to work.

Thanks LindaK. The husks would be easier to remove dry...if the husks were dry on mine. Because they aren't really ready for harvest, the husks are still green and for me easier to remove in the water. Roasting under the broiler would be better, but I am lazy about some things (and thank heavens, not about others) roasting them on a half sheet in the oven is easier. Not to mention that I had pounds and pounds of them at one time. As noted, we cannot buy them in our area. And now one of the chains which carried Poblanos has quit doing so, leaving us with only one store. We do not have much of a hispanic population in east central Ontario. I have frozen the tomatillos cooked and I have frozen them raw and then cooked them later. If it makes a difference, my uneducated palate can't tell.

Love Middle Eastern cooking but have cooked only from two cookbooks: Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food and Habeeb Salloum, Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa. I could spend the rest of my cooking life just trying the dishes in these two books. No Middle Eastern restaurants in our area, alas. I look forward to following this thread as you cook from this cookbook.

Aha. Vinegar. Of course.

Thanks, eGers. I throw them all into a couple of basins of water, de-husk them, and then try to get the sticky off them in a few changes of water. Then I dump them into a huge stainless steel bowl with a bit of oil and then 'roast' them in the oven until soft...when they will be combined with the 'roasted' poblanos, etc, and thrown into the blender to blend. Hmmm...sounds like a lot of throwing and dumping... Not traditional method...but then my take on 'Mexican' food falls short of Bayless and Kennedy, but works for us. So, unless I hear other in the next couple of hours, that's just what I'll do. Oh, I found the non-dried husks easier to remove from the watery base. No bugs. Too cold. ps: I used the word 'roast' in apostrophes because my method is just too careless to be called 'roasting'. If they tend to steam more than roast, then that's what happens. Actually the above is pretty disgraceful when you consider the traditional methodology and I should be ashamed to have admitted any of it.

Not sure which forum to put this in... First of all I am not a gardener. Almost zilch is what I know about growing things. We live in Zone 5 Ontario which is not prescribed for growing tomatillos, although I grow them every year to make Andie Pasinger's Chile Verde which we love. Also one store only in my area carries Poblanos and I have a passel of them on my counter right now. OK. This summer was colder and wetter than usual and the first hard frost was two nights ago. I thought I'd better bring in the tomatillos. Also we never eat them raw. Now I have some questions: - is it safe to eat them (cooked) when none of them has a dried husk? (we've done it but I thought I'd ask anyway) - are they more mature when a paler green rather than a dark green? - does size count for maturity? - what about when the fruit is small but fills the husk completely? - what about when the fruit is only half as large as the surrounding green husk? - do you have to get all that sticky off them before eating them? I know I have more questions...thought about them as I was de-husking the little devils, on and on and on...they'll come back to me no doubt. Thanks for any and all help.

You two certainly do eat well.

Tried once to make Divinity. Biggest confectionery disaster ever.

Hmmm...fruitcake. A friend gives out the booziest fruitcake every year. OMG, it is so wonderful. Add to that Tortiere which DH makes according to a French-Canadian recipe given to him decades ago.

Shortbread cookies. For Christmas only.

Deryn, I would love the recipe for your " 'family-famous' Rick Bayless-inspired sweet chipotle pecans". Thanks.

Found this recipe online just now. It's not the source for the recipe I have always used but I'm sure it's fine. http://www.marilynmoll.com/2007/12/enstroms-style-toffee/ If anyone wants my version of the recipe, I'll PM it, as I did for Jaymes

Deryn mentioned dipping pretzels in chocolate. Well, there's also coating pretzels in caramel and then dipping them into chocolate. Confectionery partner Barbara and I have done this one a number of times, with much laughing I admit. We fashioned the strangest-looking apparatus on which to hang the dipped pieces to make sure they had a nice rounded shape.

Chocolate-dipped candied ginger cubes or slices are a big favorite. And toffee. I found this terrific recipe online which is a copycat for Enstrom's Chocolate-coated toffee. It is my best gift. And of course, various brittles.

This is our modus operandi also. Thanksgiving pie was a Mexican Coffee Ice Cream Pie with a chocolate ganache under the topping of whipped cream. We all ate a piece for the big meal...and then our guests were gifted with the rest of the pie to take home. Always works.

Not so in our family. Keeping everything exactly the same...except for the dessert...is just what the tradition calls for.

Your banana nut bread looks divine, Anna. And so glad about the universe thing...

At the risk of sounding pathetic, I have to say that I never had a cake nor a party. My adult favorite is a Double Chocolate Mousse Bomb found in One Cake, One Hundred Desserts several years ago and I made it for a party which was thrown for me by some women friends and then ever since on my own account. My own kids loved a cake made from chocolate wafer biscuits put together with whipping cream and then cut on the diagonal. So easy to make.

Hello and welcome, asadus. Just the place to come if you like to work with chocolate.

Does the area have an Indian food restaurant? I make Indian food at home, but would love to eat it out again. We have only two Indian restaurants in Peterpatch, owned by the same people and we haven't eaten there in years. What about Chinese? Our local Chinese food restaurants are all the same...all you can eat buffets and not very good. Again we make it at home...Ed does the mises and I do the cooking...but I would love to eat out on occasion. My DH, JUST LIKE his late Father, would rather eat at home any day and says that our food is better than the restaurant food...which isn't true in the case of the Indian food.

Turkey, DH's stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes (which I don't really care for), Brussels sprouts ( which DH doesn't really care for), carrots, cranberry sauce (which DH won't touch). The rest is up for grabs. Ed does most of the cooking. I make the dessert. That's it. Thanksgiving is not such a big holiday in Canada as it is in the USA and it's more than a month earlier this year. (Can't recall if ours moves around like Easter or not.) Oops. Sorry. It was supposed to be only one thing. Too late.