CompassRose

And I will add one of my favourites, Chuck Taggart's Looka! It isn't all about food; sometimes it's about politics and sometimes it's about blues -- but there's certainly plenty of delicious bacony goodness to be had, not to mention his regular explorations of the art of mixology in "The Cocktailian".

Eggs. Eggs are all about the magic, from the shell all the way in!

I would like to thank this thread for the fact that I had to make myself Vanilla Crumb Cakes this morning. I thank you. My a$$ thanks you. My recently-hired trainer who will now have to remove said crumb cakes from said a$$ thanks you -- probably more fervently, since this kind of thing doubtless keeps him in a job...

He doesn't like fruit in savoury dishes. (Sob!) He likes El Cheapo baked goods (like powdery supermarket donuts) and that repulsive frosting made of Crisco and sugar. He drops his vegetable peelings in the sink. Otherwise, also foodperfect!

Yes. If fresh. Gumbo -- yeah, yeah. And A. makes the most wonderful bindi ... I think bharta. Also, once I started cooking okra for myself, I realised what my very favourite bits were in childhood bowls of Campbell's alphabet soup -- yes, you guessed it, the little okra slices! I used to save those and the lima beans to eat for last.

My favourite ever breakfast baked treat is leftover home-made birthday cake -- Black Forest cake, to be exact. Mmmm. I like muffins, too. For a while, I would prep up my muffins the night before (dry ingredients in one container, wet ones in another) so that I could mix and go in the morning -- it was then that I discovered that most muffin batters will cook happily in a waffle iron, too. I love scones, but for some reason rarely make them. There's also a crunchy-granola health-food bakery here that makes a fantastic muesli bun, simply stiff with nuts and dried fruit. Their main location is way out in Big Box Land at the edge of town -- but a few years ago, they used to have a stand in a nearby mall, and I'd get one of those almost every morning.

Maybe there are advantages to being shooed out of the kitchen in childhood then! I had only just started cooking (age 18) when I had my dead chicken experience; I mostly learned how to cook with the vegetarian limitation already in place. I think if I had never been turned off meat, I would still be a very boring cook, following my mother's pattern (my mother is a competent cook, but doesn't care for the process at all -- she doesn't get anything creative or fulfilling out of the act of cooking). Meat, veg, potatoes. Might never've tried garlic... (it gives Mummy indigestion). Being vegetarian for those years has been the start of a lifetime adventure of food in all sorts of ways, and I'm very glad.

I was vegetarian for many years (ten? eleven?) and vegan for about three of those years. It was a traumatic experience with a raw, whole chicken that did it -- I suddenly found myself unable to face the idea of eating bodies. Dead ones. That's what happens when a person grows up without knowing anything about cooking; when my mother did all the messy dealings, I was a great fan of meat. I did start eating meat again during "recovery" -- but it was recovery from my late-onset eating-problem phase. I wasn't eating enough, and was craving meat. I started eating bits of chicken and tuna again, and the improvement in my health was quite dramatic. Now, of course, I'm into bodybuilding, and go through eight large breasts of chicken a week... It's hypocritical, really; I still have a lot of problems with "things" in my dead flesh -- you know, those body things. Bits of vein and cartilage, shudder. Skinless, boneless chicken breasts, neat little cans of anonymous tuna... I sometimes wonder about trying vegetarian bodybuilding, it has been done before. My husband is vegetarian, and he's been so even longer than I, since he was sixteen, which makes it over twenty years (does he mind my flesh-munching breath? He's never said.) Mind you, culinary bear -- he just joined the army. They do have vegetarian food in the army these days (my sister, who's an officer for Cadets, is mostly vegetarian too; she says it's usually a choice of cheese with pasta, or pasta with cheese) but until A. managed to get and fill out a form which said he was vegetarian (finally did that last week) apparently there was nothing provided for him. He spent the first week and a half of boot camp living on very, very large bowls of broccoli with sides of French fries, he said.

Try this huge very useful site all about vegan baking. Compares all the different potential egg subs, with the positives and negatives of each. Looking at your recipe, I'd try flax slurry myself.

It maybe shouldn't be, but it can be, and I've done it. As I say, results not ideal and other forum members are turning away revolted as I speak, but it's still better than many a purchased cheesecake from roadhouse restaurants. And I've certainly liked cheesecakes I've made with spreadable Philly (with low-fat spreadable cream cheese no less) better than my experiments in the pureed cottage-cheese line! (cue further revulsion! ) However, I also find that the spreadable stuff is better with an admixture of either drained yogourt or Quark cheese. Technique hint: don't mix it the same way, as it does occasionally tend to clump. Place the cream cheese in a bowl all on its ownsome, and whip it smooth, then add in whatever other creamy stuff you're using, then the sugar, eggs &c. Mileage may vary, and I suppose it depends how picky you're prepared to be. However, a baked cheesecake made with the spreadable stuff, while not perhaps best in show, is still more likely to hit a baked-cheesecake jones than one of those cold-set ones, which go to a completely different dessert stomach.

Ah! so that's what this is about. I admit I didn't really "get it", but I don't like fruit and chocolate as a rule, and bergamot is pushing that boundary. I like tea with everything. But most particularly, I like traditional black teas with plain baking -- simple sugar or shortbread cookies, biscuits. These sorts of sweets aren't usually my first choice -- but with tea, perfect.

Interesting. I've never had fromage fort, but the description of the finished product sounds a lot like a Mennonite/Pennsylvania Dutch smelly cheese of which I am especially fond -- cook cheese.

The spreadable Philly should be acceptable, if not ideal. Can you get yogourt? I have made quite nice (low-fat) cheesecakes with combinations including drained yogourt. I suspect that full-fat drained yogourt, used in combination with the spreadable cheese, might go a long way to counteracting the slight goo of the additives that make it spread -- while the cheese would keep it cheesecakey rather than yogourty.

I ate a half a stick of butter when I was quite small -- four or five years old. (That's a Canadian stick, which is four American-style sticks -- a cup of butter.) My mother had it out in a bowl coming to room temperature for something or other, and I'd walk past the kitchen and snitch a pinch, walk past the other way and snitch another pinch.... That night I was most horribly ill, and I didn't eat butter, on anything, for years. I'm still a bit ambivalent about it. A.'s father used to slice up butter in slabs like cheese, and eat it on bread. The sight made me shudder internally. But nothing is better than a new potato in its tight blonde skin, boiled to that perfect creamy state and topped with melty butter and some fresh dill! ETA -- winebabe, no, you're not the only one. A. specially went out and bought a toast rack at a flea market. He likes cold toast for that very reason -- he doesn't care to have his toppings get all warm and gooey. (Before the toast rack, he used to stand his two slices of toast on his board at right angles, leaning against each other.)

I will only add from sad experience that unless your proposed customers are a far cry from the usual bake-sale lot, you may find your unusual, not immediately recognisable items will be scorned in favour of the easily-identifiable chocolate chip cookies and Rice Krispie Treats. That strange-lookin' stuff might have something weird in it! Something funny-tasting! If you want to do something a little out of the ordinary, use the offerings of your local Starbucks equivalent as a guide; I usually have success (after my initial non-successes) with more unusual types of squares cut large and individually wrapped.

The Bob's grits are not real grits. I know, cos I went through just this exact search in Ontario! I finally found grits -- real, white-corn hominy grits -- in a South American groceteria in Kensington Market in Toronto. And I came across more in a random supermarket that clearly caters to a lot of different ethnic niche markets (they also had a wide array of, for instance, cool Caribbean hot sauces and canned goods). Not that that helps you any in a concrete way -- but they may be (must be, surely!) somewhere in Vancouver if you dig deep.

Six ounces fresh and supposedly wild Atlantic salmon, broiled with a bit of lemon juice. Simple, but oh so succulent. And so not plain baked chicken breast!

There must be two products. My "Just Whites" are liquid refrigerated pasteurised whites. I've never even tried whipping the powdered whites. Interesting.

A kitchen. I'm currently fixing the bathroom, and the other day, whilst in the hardware store, I wandered over and looked at faucets and sinks. I looked at the old-fashioned neo-Victorian tall chrome faucets I've a hankering for. $700-$900. Then I looked at sinks. Even a simple crappy double stainless (like the one I have) is running about $400 or more. A stunning apron sink? $1000. The French doors I'd like to put in between kitchen and dining room, to brighten up the place? $800 (it's a large doorway, they'd have to be custom). And let's not even discuss cupboards. Or counters. It was a hard, bitter drive home, knowing that I will never, ever have anything like the kitchen of my dreams -- and in fact will barely be able to afford to replace my shoddy, leaking "landlord faucet" with the same again as my next project! If I had the kitchen of my dreams (including some counter and storage space) then I could have the appliances of my dreams. A chocolate-temperer would be lovely. And A. was going to buy me a KA stand mixer one birthday. Fortunately he did slip me a hint to make sure I wanted it, so I could head him off at the pass -- I don't want it badly enough to carry it up and down from the pantry (the only storage option) every time I want to use it.

I'm weird. I like wild, crazy colours -- at least for non-food. Blue and purple candy? Oh yeah! Chocolates tinted and marbled in neon? Coooool! Condiments that look like the Scary Alarm Fluids that drip out of the bottom of my car? Sure. And on the rare occasions that I go and get ice cream at a scoop-shop, I usually head straight for the lurid kid's colours. But I want them to taste lurid, too. I was very keen on the bizarro Shrek colours Baskin-Robbins had this year, and I have a shameful addiction to those extreme-sour candies. It's fun, seeing how far they'll go. On the other hand, I never did like tinted milk from junk cereals. Even as a child, on the (extremely rare) occasions that my mother bought Froot Loops or other such stuff, I'd always eat it plain and dry, with the milk (she insisted I have milk) in a glass on the side. I was fine with Strawberry Quik, but cereal-tinted milk is leachate. Or something.

I use mine every single day, for nearly every meal I eat at home (there's the very occasional supper munched in front of a movie, or snack eaten over the laptop). I've lived in a lot of apartments that had "eat in" kitchens -- barbaric practice! I could tag-team with Taboni (though I'm getting better), and I just like sitting down, at a table, without the need to stare at the promise of dishes needing washed. I adore the dining room in my older house, with its lovely door between it and the kitchen -- which can be closed!

And yet I've never had a problem making angel food cake or even meringues with Just Whites (blue box?) bought here in Ontario -- even though the label says the same thing! I do find it helps to leave them out on the counter for about fifteen or twenty minutes to take the chill off. But they whip perfectly fine and stiff; slightly less volume, perhaps, but not distressingly so.

I bring my three mini-meals to work every day. Sometimes they are interesting leftovers (and full of garlic) but no one's complained -- plenty of people (used to!) tell me my food smelled delicious. Lots of other people also bring lunch, although there's a concession in the building as well (there are certain regular offerings, like potato-skins day and chicken fajitas day, when many of my co-workers will buy lunch instead). It's an athletic facility, so a lot of people bring lunch, then spend the rest of their lunch hour walking on the track or skating. And every few weeks there will be an office-wide pick-up of falafel pitas or pizza for everyone (which I never go in on, being that sort of spoilsport). I eat lunch at my desk cos I'm not comfy about having people comment on my food -- especially now, when my food is boring and pretty unattractive (precomp diet again). No one wants to watch me eat plain cold oatmeal with protein powder! And you get tired of the comments -- "oh my God, I could never do that! You've got such willpower!" (no, not really, ya get in a pattern and just keep going, it's no big deal as long as you don't think about it.) Microwave popcorn -- yuck. Everyone seems to love that stuff! Although I will say that more people than I would expect bring home-made food, soups or salads or leftover stir-fries.

Yep. In my brother-in-law's front yard in flocks, for one. (Though don't imagine I'll tell you where he lives! ) I also once found a gigantic crop of morels in fresh mulch on the flower beds of a new Canadian Tire in my town. Boy, did I get looks as I squatted down and greedily harvested the lot into my bag of batteries or whatever it was.

Mmmmm... Branston pickle and cheddar! I first had that while travelling in England, and I'm so glad I can find Branston pickle easily here. I came home on Friday, and A. was eating something that looked rather peculiar. I asked him what it was: Ezekiel bread (toasted) natural peanut butter raspberry fruit spread processed cheez slices It wasn't bad. I thought it would've been even better grilled, so that the processed cheez got all ooey-gooey, but I didn't put it to the test.