Stephanie Brim

Actually, those would be a nice touch for my husband with overly sensitive front teeth. He can't bite into popsicles like most people. Same with any type of ice cream treat you can't eat with a spoon. Edited to remove the word 'frozen' before ice cream. Duh, me.

Hubby and I were thinking about making this our destination for an early Saturday night meal in Des Moines. The menu looks good (PDF link, for your information), most of the reviews are good, but I'm curious to know if any eGulleters have been there and if they had a good experience.

Close to something I love: Hormel Chili and cream cheese heated together. Hand me a chip and watch out! Salsa and cream cheese for me. Strange, I know, but quite good on chips. Also good just buzzed in the food processor a bit and spread on wrap sandwiches. Considering I never buy salsa spicier than medium, the cream cheese dampens the spice somewhat and makes even hotter salsa little more edible to me.

I just thought of another one. Canned Hormel chili (no beans, please) + Velveeta + tortilla chips = party staple when I was growing up. I still crave it about once a year. I grab the smallest thing of chili, the smallest thing of Velveeta, and bite-size Tostitos and have that for a snack for a few days. Yes, it is super ghetto, but delicious in this really horrible way that I can't describe.

Slightly off topic, but I'm curious nonetheless. Is this something you're testing that could be implemented as a new feature of the site or is it just for, say, things like this? Because, in all seriousness, I'd definitely be subscribing if a live chat option was available for subscribers. I'll pop in tonight (even though I can't watch Top Chef anymore with no cable) to see what it's like.

Hm. Shameful... I make casseroles occasionally with Campbell's cream of whatever soups. I buy canned beans instead of dried because I don't want to deal with the cooking time. I tend to stick to Italian and American-Italian foods because they're generally simple and the flavors are very much to my family's liking. I'll try anything once, but I will probably never eat artichokes again. I buy canned broth and boxed stock and use it most of the time. I make my own for things that really need homemade, but when it comes to something like gravy or an occasion when the flavors of whatever it is are going to overpower the delicate broth anyway, I just use the canned or boxed variety. And I just use Swanson, too, not anything fancy. Me and hot things have never gotten along. To me, the flavor just ends up bitter; there's no real good about it. I tried sriracha recently, though, and I think it's the first time I've met a hot sauce I can actually stand. It's quite good, not too bitter, and I can actually imagine using it on eggs like all you people. I've still not mastered pie crust. I can make an okay crust, but I've not had the perfect balance of flakey and tender yet. It's one of my winter plans to work on pastry, so I'll probably get it down by next year. I really like McDonald's chicken nuggets, too. And the chicken selects are better than KFC's version of chicken strips to me. I've noticed lately that KFC anything has become very, very peppery and that's not something I enjoy. The pepper they use seems to impart a very bitter flavor to the breading and, again, I just don't like overly bitter things. Same with McDonald's McChicken. I used to be able to eat it, but now it has just become overwhelmingly peppery. Maybe it's me. I've not cooked a French dish in my life. I've cooked with French flavors, but never something traditionally French. I think I've already mentioned peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches on plain white bread.

I started some today. 2 Tahitian grade A beans went into an old glass spice jar with vodka amounting to two of the very tiny Absolut bottles. 1 Madagascar bean went into an old vanilla bottle with vodka amounting to ONE Of the tiny Absolut bottles. This weekend I'll be picking up more vodka, some white rum, and some bottles to put it all in. Once I do that, it's vanilla extract, sugar, and syrup for the fam.

My first try modified the yellow cake that Deb from Smitten Kitchen came up with. Way, way too light and airy for my purposes...which just kind of makes me wonder about myself a little. I guess I was going for something a little denser. I just used Carnation malted milk powder. THAT turned out to be a horrible mistake. On tasting it plain, I guess I didn't really catch the absolutely amazing amount of salt that they put into that stuff. Add to that the fact that I was using kosher salt for the first time and the fact that I think salted butter slipped past my brain as unsalted and you have some very salty cupcakes. Needless to say, that batch went in the bin. I'll try this one with some better malt powder, I think.

For my son's birthday I wanted to do something non-chocolate. I figured that a vanilla malt cake would be an interesting thing to do since he likes the vanilla malts I end up getting from ice cream shops, so I did a search...and came up very short. Does no one make a vanilla malt cake? Did I just miss all the recipes? If someone has something I can start with, or a better Google-Fu than I, it would be much appreciated. Considering I just got the pound+ of beans I ordered today, I'm itching to do something with them.

I think I want this. I've been throwing around the idea with my husband of getting cookbooks that would introduce me to certain types of cooking. Most of the time I've just looked up recipes online or winged it and, while I'm okay at it, I'd like to get away from that for a bit and follow some recipes. Can anyone tell me if this would be a relatively good introduction to French cooking? I assume so, considering it comes from Dorie. Don't worry, though. I'm picking up Mastering the Art one and two eventually.

Well, I guess that is one way to limit the noise.

The only thing in my kitchen that beeps is the oven. It beeps when it's done preheating, and then the timer beeps when things are done. That is the way it should be. The worst thing is that the timer beeps until you turn it off. Really. I wanted to see how long it went, and I think I finally got annoyed after about a half an hour. I don't know how long it would go if I just let it go. Maybe forever.

I use butter and a little bit of almond extract in the dough. I prefer that to lemon, though I know there are people who swear by the recipe as written. I tend to use whole milk, scalded, in the dough, though I have put in a little cream or some half and half if I have some that needs using up and I don't plan to frost the rolls.

Man, I wish I had seen that bundt pan offer. I don't even own one. How are you going to package the kits? I don't really like the look of a plain Ball jar, so I'm always on the lookout for ideas.

I just ordered a pound of extract quality beans from Those Crazy Vanilla Guys On Ebay so I'll be making quite a bit, I think. I'll be getting some Tahitian beans, too, since I bought enough for a free 1/4 pound. Those will be interesting. I've never had them.

It's that time of year again! What are we making? I know I'm making vanilla extract and vanilla sugar this year (husband is sick of me spending $10 for 4 ounces at least 8 times a year so I may as well share the wealth), I'll be giving a couple vanilla beans to each person (in a nice little glass tube if I can find some), and I'll be giving each person a nice album of pictures of my kids from this year with recipes opposite the photos. I'm excited to start, but I have to reread the vanilla extract thread first. And the beans have to get here.

*shrug* I have to choose one by next year. I'm having issues. In theory I like the bottom freezer models because you can stuff a lot of crap in there, including a bowl to a counter ice cream maker, without a whole bunch of fuss. The point you make about not being able to get anything out really comes down to freezer organization...which, at the moment, I suck at, but I'm getting much, much better. I'm pretty much stuck with either a French door-bottom freezer model or a side-by-side, though, because of the incredibly small amount of space I have to work with. I don't even know if I could get a normal refrigerator door open in the area where the refrigerator is. Oh, and I should probably say that the French is winning out due to the fact that I could actually fit a half sheet pan on the shelf in one. Would make retarding any type of sweet rolls or bagels overnight a much simpler task than it is now. Having to break them up onto two trays for refrigeration is just a bother.

I guess that's a no. I think I'll just grab one in a couple weeks to see what I think of it. The 5.5 quart casserole is the pot I originally planned to add to the 10 piece set. I'll probably pick that up.

http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=408325&PseudoCat=se-xx-xx-xx.esn_results I go looking at Macy's to find The One wine glasses and stumble upon cookware. I've been wanting to replace a particularly bad Wearever sauce pan for a while now and this would be a more affordable alternative to the All-Clad I'd really like to buy. Has anyone else bought them? Do you have an opinion? I'm torn.

I'd watch that show.

I love them. I use them in fajitas, make stuffed peppers using them, love them in an omelet with really sharp cheddar and onions, and have a fondness for them raw, dipped in ranch dressing. Then again, I also love the red, yellow, and orange varieties.

I think I may have finally stumbled onto the best non-buttermilk pancake batter I can make. I prefer my pancakes in the middle between thin and thick, richly flavored instead of sweet, and soft enough to soak up the syrup you'll be pouring over top. So here's what I've come up with: 2 cups all purpose flour, dipped and leveled 2 tsp baking powder 1 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 1 egg and one yolk, lightly beaten 2 1/2 tbsp butter, melted 1 1/2 cups milk Stir together dry ingredients. Beat eggs, slowly drizzling butter in as you do. Add milk and beat until combined. Add wet to dry and stir until combined, but lumpy. Finished product. That was the only one left by the time I got to take the picture. Hunger. You know how it is.

How I could forget this one is beyond me... The smell of chocolate baking into cake, brownies, and cookies. Oh, and baking bread. That's probably why I have a hard time waiting the whole 24 hours or so before cutting into a high rye sourdough.

See, I love the smell of good coffee brewing, but I don't get to have it in my house. My husband hates it. He used to work in McDonald's back in high school and the smell of the coffee left in the pots on the warmer to burn got to him. Now he hates the smell of it. He forever associates it with the bitter, burned smell. But bacon? Mmm. I love me some bacon, too. I got some really nice, extremely thick cut bacon to attempt carbonara sometime this week. You can't get pancetta within 40 miles of here.

I'm roasting tomatoes and garlic at the moment, drenched in olive oil and lightly salted and peppered, and my house smells like garlic. This is one of my favorite things. It's one of those scents that permeates everything in the house for a short time and makes waiting for the final preparation of the dish, this one becoming a very, very garlicky pasta sauce, so much harder. I also love the smell of bell peppers and onions. I put them on sandwiches, in fajitas, in pasta, in eggs. There's a never-ending amount of things that they just taste amazing in. What are your favorite cooking aromas and why?