OliverB

Dinner last night were the two very nicely marbled ribeye steaks from Trader Joe's. No photos, forgot to take any. Hot cast iron pan on stove top to brown one side, flip and stick in oven. Roasted beans in the oven before and sauteed a pack of crimini with butter, red onion, garlic. Turned out great, not much of a challenge though, as I had bought the stuff for that dinner. Lunch today is a piece of Sülze - roast turkey and veggies in chicken broth based aspic is probably the best description. Made that Monday and it came out great. More of it is left over for more lunch or even dinner. Dinner tonight is going to be something pork tenderloin - not sure yet what I'll do with them. Two in the package, one for tonight, one either made along and cut for sandwiches or I'll put it in the fridge and maybe try something asian. This challenge makes me realize just how much food we have in the house, I really think we could live a month with no problem. Would not have salad, but there are frozen and canned things, rices and beans, potatoes and lots more. Now I'm thinking about setting up a simple proofing chamber and start feeding my sourdough starter so I can bake some bread this weekend. Hopefully I'll think of taking some photos along the way :-)

I just finished a bag of puffed rice balls with sesame and sea weed from their snack isle, I think it's something new. TJ branded and I thought quite good. The kids love them too, but that's probably to be expected :-)

I'm gonna join in on this one too. Since I bought a small chest freezer this summer I've been hoarding and filling that thing to the brim, I'm pretty sure we could eat well into next year from all the food I have in the house. The fridge is overflowing too and I probably have enough rice to give to future generations if I add it all up. I mostly shop at Trader Joe's nowadays, as my son goes to Karate right next door once a week. Safeway is for some fresh things, milk and Oroweat Whole Wheat English Muffins. If somebody has a recipe to make these, please let me know. They are expensive but my kids insist on them for breakfast. So, I won't go shopping aside for a couple things like that. I might have to make something to bring along for Thanksgiving, but as that's an unusual event I won't count what I might have to buy. I also have a pile of new cookbooks and if I find that I need something like a special spice or ingredient to make a recipe using 90% or more of stuff I have in the house, I'll get that. And fresh salad. Dinner tonight will be some kind of dish done with the two nice ribeye steaks I got yesterday. Most likely I'll put them in my new Big Green Egg. Have potatoes and salad, all set. There's a bacon curing (and two small pieces in the freezer). I should probably make shopping lists, figure out how much the stuff might cost and then only take a fitting amount in cash with me, thus avoiding all the impulse shopping that I'm prone to. This challenge really comes at the right time, as I'm running out of space everywhere and thought about reducing and using. There's also a whole bunch of flower to bake some breads, just got some sourdough starters last week. And I've been meaning to make pasta from scratch for several weeks now. This will be interesting! If I find the time I'll follow this on my blog too. Hey, it'll also give me time to head over to one of the last comic book stores instead of going wild at Trader Joe's! Not that I need any more books, I should probably do a similar thing with my reading materials.....

On the resources page they mention bio-world.com for some of the salts, I'd try that. But first he mentions google (I thought that was funny) as their main source/resource. You could also ask at the drug store if they can order you some, but that might be much more expensive than some chemical supply house.

Same here, usually cut the end off. I love the little tip and leave it on. Might cut them, but mostly I leave them whole. Recently bought some haricort vert (spelling?) at Trader Joes, those were already prepped. Not impressed though, they had a somewhat grassy taste. Might have been just that package, but I'm not in a rush to try these expensive beans again too soon. Also love the yellow ones and the ones with purple dots or all purple. Fun to make a mix. True, great that they bred the strings out.

Unless you use it frequently, I'd def put it in the fridge. People have different sensibility to rancid taste/smell, my mom can't eat butter if it was carried through 10 sec of sunshine, LOL. But countertop is not a good place. You might fare ok with one of those butter bell things for frequent use. I put all mine in the freezer where it keeps for a long time. Different fats and oils go rancid at different speed, but all suffer if exposed to air and light (and warmth). Since your fats seem to come from strong tasting sources like bacon you might not taste the rancidness as quick as with straight fat, but it will still go bad. I keep my nut oils and those I use less frequently (truffle oil, sesame oil, etc) also in the fridge for example. Thinking about getting a small dorm size fridge for storage of these things.

I sometimes make pork roast in a Roman pot with an onion cut into slices underneath the meat. If the pot is soaked in water as it should be that's all you need. Maybe add a bit of water in it if you like. Some s&p and cumin seeds on the pork and you're ready to go, there's usually a nice (watery) sauce under the meat when it's done. Very Bavarian. Some nice Bavarian potato dumplings and a salad is all you need. For the dumplings you can get a Knorr or similar package if you don't want to make them from scratch. Good stuff! You can of course thicken the sauce if you like, I usually don't. Put a couple slices of meat on the plate, split open a dumpling (they're abut snowball size) and spoon over some sauce and onions. Delish!

Ah, fat! Love it, have it, keep it, and get more of it. Bacon fat, duck fat, chicken fat, pork fat, beef fat. It's all good! There's a neat book out there, "Fat" by Jennifer McLagan. Worth getting, good info and recipes and dispels with some of the nonsense "information" out there that was pushed by margarine manufacturers and others with monetary interests in other fats than those coming from animals. And Andie, I love these stories from the past! My family owned a very big farm and mill operation in Germany, sadly one uncle grabbed it all once my grandparents passed, which made visits from the rest of the family almost impossible. Mill was powered by a big water wheel and huge belts ran up and down through a 3 or 4 story building. So wish I could show it all to my kids... They used to cut ice from the pond in winter to put into a cellar for keeping things cold pretty much all summer long, love the idea of your well house also!

oh, no need to defend the coconut! I'll have to try that roast in oven first someday, the last couple I bought the meat was almost impossible to get out of the shell. I guess I could freeze what the kids don't eat, but I'm afraid it would end up in that nebulous dark area way back in the freezer, where the mystery packages reside ;-) Great idea with the bulk bins at Whole Food! I'll have to check that out, as cookie baking time is coming up quickly. I do love oysters and snails, but found the baby coconut meat to be a bit odd. Not very much of a nut feeling. More something squishy with not all that much taste. Why slugs are not eaten I have no idea. Maybe they just don't taste good?

I have a bunch of those 400 soups/sauces/whathaveyou books published by Hermes House. They sell for 4.99 or 5.99 and I find them useful. Lost of pictures, also of the prep work, simple easy to make recipes and the price is right. Not much more than the bare bones recipes, but what I've made from them turned out nice. If you have lots of other books you can probably pass on them, but if you're starting out or just like the idea of a whole bunch of recipes for one category (soups and sauces or all chicken for example) they are a good buy. Do look at them though, I have a soup book from the Barnes and Noble bargain bin (Soup Bible) that has a lot of the same recipes and the same photos as the Hermes House book. The later has many more and both have recipes that are not in the other, but there seems to be a huge database of recipes and "exlcusive" photos out there that some editor throws together. The how to photos can be great for somebody just getting into cooking too. Worth the price of admission I'd say.

ok, fine, was just an idea I thought would be interesting to toss around here I'll still buy it though, $70 list will be something around 30-40 on Amazon, doable

Well, price for full color publishing is way down, you can get some really nice full color books for very little money nowadays. I don't really know most of the French dishes, and I agree that some are not all that "colorful", which is why I like to see pictures of finished dishes. I'm a very visual person, and the idea of working on a dish for a while that then doesn't look all that appealing is not that great. Anyway, was just an idea. I'm sure if the book would come out today it would be full of photos. As it is, I love having it, but I've never cooked anything from it so far. That might change, but there are a couple recipes in the Saveur book that I'm gonna tackle before that, as I can see what the finished dish is supposed to look like. I just love my food porn and would think that such an edition would sell well. Well, I'd buy it :-)

and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'm sitting there reading Saveur cooks authentic French. Each page is full of wonderful recipes, decorated with great photos of the dishes, the people, the regions of France. That made my mouth water and made me wonder, why I never cooked anything from MTAOFC, which is sitting on my shelf. It does have pictures, but no photos. I think, a special edition with photos of the dishes and instructions would be a great seller. I'm sure Julia Child would have the pages filled with food porn, where she to write the book today. Back then it was impossible to print hundreds of color pictures and still sell the book for less than a new car. Not so today. I'd really love a copy of her book, a bit larger, and in full color. It might loose some of the oldfashioned charm, but it would gain so much. wouldn't it?

it would never occur to me to use bottled water. From what I read, the regulations for tap water in the US are much tighter than those for bottled water, and a lot of bottled water is tap water anyway, and if you look at it's price, it costs more than gas in most places Gas which is made in complicated factories from a resource shipped half around the world. And people complain about Chevron getting rich and being greedy, If you live in a place where the water is overly chlorinated or just tastes/smells bad, get a britta or similar filter or just have some water sitting out in a pot for a day or so. I can imagine that some super fancy restaurants filter their whole water supply, but that's certainly not the majority. Imported water is the biggest nonsense ever IMO. No - wait, it was recently topped by water sommeliers in some restaurants, haha! I would only use bottled water or filtered water in something very fancy and delicate, something that takes all day to make, where I'd think it might benefit (or be harmed by tap water). Some are concerned about the fluoride in the water supply here in the US, I'm not. But you can get under the counter filters at any hardware store, pretty easy to install. If you go that way, maybe combine it with an instant hot water heater, to get something quite useful. Immediate hot tea etc! I don't know about water quality in Japan, you might want to do some research or contact your water supply company, maybe they have test charts available? I'm pretty sure here in the US I could get the results of the most recent tests from my supplier (which has the somewhat funny and unfitting name of EBMUD), maybe that's the same in Japan?

I'm not a big fan of coconuts, though I love the canned coconut milk, go figure. But that aside, I just saw all kinds of shredded and cut frozen coconut in a new Asian market here (Seafood City). They had mature and young, and in different kinds of cuts/shreds. That might be something to consider? I sure don't like opening them and trying to pry the meat from the shell, I'd rather not have them at all. Occasionally the kids convince me to do it, then they eat 3 pieces and eventually I have to throw the rest out.... I did get a young one once and too found the meat to be very bland and very strange in texture. Like I'd imagine a slug to feel in my mouth - which would probably taste better, LOL. Anyway, thought I'd mention the frozen ones, as I'd never seen them. I might get that for coconut macaroons I make at x-mas, the shredded stuff in the baking section here has way too much sugar and who knows what in it.

One word: Offal

I think you just sold me one.... Have to wait 'till xmas, but I see the distinct glow of a VitaPrep on the horizont (going with the pro model for same reasons as poster above). Hey, it's almost December!

I put it on my reading table and page through it, read the introduction(s) and poke around. I never read one all the way through, though there are many I page through all the way. Then they join the growing family of "I'll have to eventually cook something from this book" books on my shelf. From then on I will randomly pull one or the other down while watching some nonsense on TV and occasionally I cook a recipe from them. Mostly they're used for inspiration. I might read something in an Italian book that strikes me as something I could do in an Asian way (since I might have the ingredients for that on hand right now) and go from there. I used to put sticky flags into them too, until it looked like some colorful bird molted (or got shotgunned) on my shelf. Now I just have a list where I write down the recipe name, book, and page of things I want to make. Like a great looking saffron rabbit recipe from the Lobel's book or a lemon mustard roast chicken from Wood Fired Cooking that will go into my Big Green Egg probably this weekend. I do pull one or the other (or more) down just about every day, some days might see an art or music book instead. If I look at the current pile on my reading desk: A16, Nancy Silverton's Sandwich book, Big Fat Duck (small edition), Momofuku, Molecular Gastronomy, Saveur cooks authentic French, The Cook's book, Wood Fired Cooking, Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking, How to read a French Fry. And then there's the Zombie Survival Guide, two books on figure drawing, Adobe Lightroom, Digital Food Photography, 3 on watercolor painting and one about landscape painting. Hmmm, I guess I need to clean up that table a bit.....

makes me wonder if it's worth seeking out the British edition? Would be interesting to compare if more than just the weights got changed. I'd guess they had to adjust for certain meat cuts you can't get here etc? DK has no info about the short version I can find on their site. I'd never have ordered it, but even on Amazon it's not all that clear, and most of the reviews and descriptions are for the long version, a bit misleading. Since I only paid $15 I don't really care, it'll be a nice gift to give and most probably could not care less about making foams etc. Still, they could make it more obvious...

Thanks, that's great info, thanks for looking that up! I'll be getting the full edition next week then I guess :-)

great, figures... I received it from myself, but it was only $15 and makes a nice gift. Seems to be a quite good food, interesting in that each chapter is by a particular chef who's known in that particular area. Lots of photos too. Thanks! Do you have the long version, and if so, is the foam section useful? With that I mean, not using extraterrestrial mollusk extracts or 27 times filtered and strained berry purees, but things one can actually obtain or make?

I just received a copy of "The Cook's Book - Concise Edition" edited by Jill Norman, and now I'm curious, what's the difference to the full edition? Supposedly it has 648 pages compared to 496 in this edition, and it appears to be much larger in size if the info on us.dk.com is correct. Other than that I can't find any info what the difference might be. It's a neat book with lots of photos about techniques etc, and lots of recipes. As with any DK book production values are high. If the contents are the same, I'm happy with the smaller version, but I'd really like to know what I might be missing on those 150 or so pages. If it's just filler, I don't care. If it's some fantastic recipes, I do care.... Anybody here know both editions? Google was so far of no help. Lots of the full edition are to be had used as well, I'd be happy giving this one as a gift and ordering the full edition, if it's worth it. Thanks! Oliver

I see a trip to the hardware store in your future :-) Plenty of hooks of all kinds there, stainless too. I doubt you'll get rust. It's best if they don't touch, so the air can flow around them. I have seen clusters curing in photos, but that's probably better left to a pro setup. Just enough room for them not to touch should be fine. Maybe you can build some contraption with hooks that you can set fix in place, so you won't move them around when you take one or the other out. Or just tape them down up there. What's a Johnson control, will that shut the cooler off? A regular fridge is too cold for curing AFAIK, which is why some use wine fridges. Curious what you're working on, can you share some detail?

hmmm, that makes me hungry! But the poster that adds a tsp of Dave's Insanity Sauce - insane! I have a bottle of that liquid lava in the fridge for several years now I think. I bought it since I was a segment on TV where they make it, wearing full haz mat rubber suits and masks! I tried one single drop once I got it home and my mouth was still on fire an hour later. I started laughing hysterically the moment it touched my tongue, wondering if I'd wiped out my mind! That stuff is insanely hot, edging on the completely useless novelty IMO. Which is why I still have it. Who ever makes Franks now also sells a ready made wing sauce. I have not tried it nor read the label, I doubt they can use butter, probably oil? Don't even know where I can get good wings here locally, but now I want some!

well, the recipes I've bee reading are in the new Mastering the art of Chineese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo that just came out. I had a 30% off coupon at Borders and not much time, this was the only book I could find that I did not yet have but figured I'd like to have. And I was right, I like it quite a bit. Recipes seem relatively easy to follow, once one added a couple things to the pantry. With two new big Asian markets within 10 min of my house I'm looking for more Asian cooking ideas. My guess is that Eileen knows what she's doing, I'd have to go back in the book to find the recipe that triggered my question here, but it was for a good portion of food and I'm pretty sure she meant regular, not toasted. I doubt you could eat anything made with a tsp of that stuff The bottle does specify to use sparingly, but should specify that it's (most likely) made of toasted seeds and is more of a condiment. I just read about laminated dough somewhere, but can't recall what it is? I'm almost ready to bake some sourdough bread with a San Francisco starter. Warming up more to that dorm fridge idea, could put all the hot sauces etc in there too, all the stuff that clutters my too small fridge. Not sure what temps you can set those to, but you can get one of those little wine fridges, they can be set to higher than fridge temps, some here use one as a curing chamber for charcuterie.