snowangel

I'm with fifi on sponges, and I treat my counters just like she does. The most effective spill-wiper-upper are diapers. Those cloth ones that are "padded" in the center. They are cheap. Our family has been battling illness after illness for almost a month. We normally never get sick, so I am taking that disinfectant to doorknobs and the telephone, as well.

Susan, welcome to the world of Thai cooking. I grew up in Thailand, so know first hand just how wonderful the food is. Don't know if you are aware of the ECI course Mamster and Pim did on Thai cooking at home. Do read it, and the accompanying Q & A. Cookbooks. Go to the library and check out every Thai cookbook they have and see what strikes you, and then purchase accordingly. One of the books I have recently acquired is Crying Tiger. It's not fancy or huge, but has a tremendous section with great photos of all of the different ingredients, including all of those odd greens. It is worth the purchase price for this along. Although I occasionally make my own curry paste, I have tubs (you can buy cans or tubs; the tubs are much more economical) of all sorts of curry pastes -- masaman, red, green, yellow, panang -- in the pantry at all times. What's the asian market scene where you live? Have you experimented at all with noodles?

Diana was helping plan meals, prep meals (I probably shouldn't mentioned that she had her first knife lessons, but she was responsible, listened well, and respected the tool), saute and clean up the kitchen (wipe off those counters) at about age 5-1/2. Kids can also sort laundry at about age 3. It's all about the teaching moments. For laundry, it's about colors. For food, it's about color, taste, texture. Now that I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm very disorganized, and shop for food and whatever far more frequently. Note that I waited until my youngest was going to kindergarten and my oldest was old enough to be home alone before I decided to make that move (when they are old enough to be home alone, they shouldn't be, in my book).

Dinner looks great. Did the veg have points? Did you make the pasta yourself?

As with risotto, if you wouldn't drink it, then don't cook with it. Soba ← So, if you don't drink much wine, buy a better bottle for this dish and freeze what you don't use/drink. I can't drink white wine (three sips and I have a screaming headache for days), so when I need to cook with us, I get a bottle, use what I need, and freeze the remainder in ice cube trays.

How does a WW decide whether or not to do this "core" thing that has been referred to instead of points?

I was just comtemplating what to cook over the next few days as the temps tumble to well below zero. My butcher has chuck on sale, the liquor store is having a wine sale, and I have bacon on hand (as usual). I see this dish in the immediate future.

How fun! Pay attention to the light that this spot gets, and plan accordingly. I made a big mistake this year when I put tomatoes in. I put them in early in June, and a couple of the trees weren't fully leafed out. And, as this was the first summer in this house, I didn't know exactly how the light would travel around the yard over the course of the summer. Be sure and prep the spot really well. Till in way more organic matter than you think. Keep us posted on the progress. As we approach sub-zero this week, my seed catalogues and gardening books will remind me that yes, summer always comes.

Somewhere (I've searched but can't find it), long ago, Fat Guy posted the "ultimate" guide to making hash browns. Maybe someone else will have better luck searching for it.

I second what everyone else has said. Plan and freeze groceries accordingly. There's nothing worse than planning tonight's dinner when are are on the bus, on the way home. Inevitably, you don't have on hand what you need. When you are cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, and you know you are going to have pasta the next night, fill that pan with water and set it on the stove. If you know you are going to have rice, put that rice in the rice cooker. Don't forget about "clean out the fridge" meals. Frittata comes to mind. Quesidillas are another one. Stuffed baked potatoes are another one. If you keep stock on hand, soup can be really, really fast. I also found it helpful to have a few easy "pantry" main dishes on a list posted on the fridge, and before grocery shopping, I checked to make sure I had all of those ingredients. (And, it was no more difficult with more than one child, once they each got past that newborn age.)

So, how many points do you get in one day (may have missed that up above).

For that pot roast, you want to be a Braisin' Hussy. Braise. Stovetop or oven (oven is much easier). Should this thread fail you, run, do not walk to your local library and check out Molly Steven's All About Braising (or buy it). And, do is a day in advance and follow Wolfert's advice about keeping it overnight.

At every grocery I've ever been to, it's with the baked beans. Try there. Otherwise, you are SOL for the canned and will have to bake it yourself.

Make Larb! I also make a wonderful chicken dish (courtesy of Michael Field's Cooking School). Brown some chicken pieces. While it's browning, peel (but to not slice or chop) about 15 shallots. Remove chicken from pan, brown shallots. Return chicken to pan, put on lid and cook over very low heat until chicken is done. Deglaze pan with some dry white wine or stock. This dish perfumes the house with a most wonderful aroma. I always have shallots at home. They are dirt cheap at my local Asian markets; considerably higher at the supermarkets.

Don't forget to ask about chicken feet! You may have to buy more than one of each of these items, but if you have a freezer, freeze them on a cookie sheet and then put them in plastic so you can just grab a couple at a time.

Jen, thanks for better explaing the points thing. So, do you weigh the portions for you, Squid and husband? Or just yourself?

Several bases tried to be covered here. Marlene, how cold is your freezer? I should add that I usually make a deep freeze worth of stock in the winter, on one of the way sub-zero days, when things freeze instantly outside. But, things highly gelatenous freeze much slower. I forten find that once the cubes are in a ziplock and in the freezer, the bag needs a good whack on the counter to get them apart. Smoked pork stock. It does have a place. When I have smoked a butt load of butt, some ends up in the freezer, so when my neighbor had a pig roast, I took advantage of them bones. But, as fifi said, it is not for everything. For moistening and hydrating frozen smoked butt, it is the best. Regular pork stock. Like Fat Guy and Dave the Cook said. YOu need a foot or two. Roast them. NO CARROTS (as I said before, I don't do carrots in any of my stocks, but that just me). When I'm at the Asian market, I ask specially for pork bones. They give me whatever. They are fairly meaty ( I always augment with a few meaty, not fatty country ribs). At the Asian market, they bone a lot of pork, and I usually end up with some shanks, the stuff that is left after you bone a rib chop, whatever. But, most of all, I use chix stock. I simply can't understand why a person would buy boneless skinless anything. Why pay way more for someone else to do a simple task and get those wonderful bones? What happens to those bones, anyway? Strikes me this latter item is a subject for yet another topic.

Edited to add my reply: To your ast two questions. Yes and yes. Lentils need more. Smoke or spice. How wrong can you go with some nice smokey bacon or ham or butt?

Smoked Butt. They expect it now.

Should your fridge be a dehydrator, and your winter be cool enough, might I suggest the garage (put a thermometer in there) or a closed container on the deck) as a substitute for the dehydrating fridge? And, Paula, what is it about crumpled parchment? Recommended many times in your cookbooks as well as Zuni Cafe Cookbook. (Hit me, I'm being dense, it's that headcoldfromhell.)

I have my best luck getting chix feet at my Asian market. I also get meaty pork bones there. They have such a nice selection of bones, probably because they tend to get different kinds of cuts of meat -- whole sides, etc. -- and butcher them in-house.

My favorite brand is MAMA from Thailand. They actually include a packet of GREASE along with the dried broth and hot pepper packets. They are also $5.00 for a case of 30 packets at my local store.

So, if you really want to get to the root of the problem, if you have any of the duck fat left over, and any of the potatoes, cook a potato naked, heat up some of that duck fat, and taste each independently. Freezing is interesting. If you are using a deep freeze (dedicated freezer), it is one thing. If you are using the freezer that is part of a fridge, there is often "air interchange" which I think leads me to think that if you had something stinky or off in the fridge while the duck fat was freezeing and the duck fat wasn't as sealed as you thought, there could be some "smell" contamination.

January 8, 2005 From yesterday's Star Tribune's Taste section: Excerpts from Lilla's Feast, a book I must look into. Tells the story of "Lilla Eckford, born in 1882 in a British enclave in China, kept track of the foods she loved as she criss-crossed the globe: to India as a young wife, later to Great Britain and back to China. When the Japanese took over her Chinese province in 1941, Lilla spent three years in an internment camp. There she compiled a cookbook of meals past. In "Lilla's Feast," her great-granddaughter tells the remarkable tale of an ordinary woman and her extraordinary life." Restaurant review: actually three mini reviews, concentrating on heat: Victor, Mojito and La Perla del Pacifico. Click here. Restaurant News. The big news is that the Big E is back, but sans Eric Austin. Oh, and the Sawatdee in St. Paul is now owned by Supatra Johnson and operating under a different name. Al Sicherman has again contributed his Tidbits Read about food Trends. Food Events and Local Wine Tastings. The best from the Strib this week was from the weekly North section. A review by our very own Schneier and Karen for Udupi CafeUdupi Cafe. This is, I believe, the best Indian to be found in the Twin Cities, good enough that a serious carnivore like me doesn't even notice that this is a vegetarian establishment. Housed in a former Pannekooken (sp?) Hus, to boot. Then there are Dara's Top Dozen Dishes of the year, as reported in Citipages. So, just how many Twin Citians know where Hilltop is? Think it's on my map. <><><><><> Media Digest Notes... Updates from some Twin Cities media outlets, which do not 'go to press' by Friday each week, may be edited into each week's post as they become available. Please do not reply on this thread. For discussion of any stories which are linked here, please feel free to start a new thread or contact the forum host or the "digester" who will be happy to do it for you.

Received the new Gourmet cookbook for Xmas (yes, the yellow titles are a bitch, but I've decided to pen over them with black ball point every time I make a recipe). And, with a bookstore gift certificate, purchased two I've been drooling over -- Breath of the Wok and the Molly Stevens Braising book. I've renewed these from the library to the point where I can't anymore, so just had to. Since gift certificate, I didn't need to sneak them in the house.