runwestierun

I am wondering if anyone has tried making macarons with duck eggs? I bake with them regularly because they make my baked goods fluffier. Duck egg white has more albumin/gram than chicken egg white. My ducks only lay in the spring but if it's a good idea I bet I could find some eggs at Whole Foods. Have you heard of anyone trying this?

I think my process is very similar to yours. I am very conscious of one thing about myself that is quite limiting, though: there has to be an end benefit to me for the recipe to be good. I can't just think, "I wonder what I could make out of beets and anchovies?" I have to want the outcome. I have to want a better bagel, or a very impressive but rustic vegetarian entree, or a really beautiful kumquat torte. Does that make sense? Maybe I am just lazy, but for me to put the work into it and get good results, I have to want to eat the outcome. I have to be motivated by not being able to find the thing I want and having to figure out how to make it myself. The idea has to be born out of desire, not just thumb twiddling.

Chris, Not to stray off the subject at hand, but I bought this wok http://www.amazon.com/Eastman-Outdoors-37212-22-Inch-Carbon-Steel/dp/B0002OOMRG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1281144936&sr=8-2 at Amazon (free shipping) because I was having the same problem. You have to use it outdoors, but propane burns so much hotter than natural gas. The thing throws 65,000 BTU's and is like cooking on an afterburner. It works.

Last Christmas I was at my mother's house and I found 2 little spiral notebooks that belonged to my grandmother. She kept them in her purse and whenever she ate something she loved at a party, she would ask the hostess for the recipe and write it down and date it. These notebooks span 50 years. My grandmother was an intuitive cook and didn't follow recipes for her own cooking. These notebooks have been invaluable in trying to recreate her dishes. For instance, most of the baking recipes in her notebook use sour milk, that must have just been the custom in her community. That information helped me finally figure out her apple kuchen. I love that the recipes are written in the voices of the hostesses. Many are written like most recipes--a list of ingredients and then a method. But my grandmother had 2 friends who cooked like she did and those recipes are the best. Especially the ones from her friend Florence. Grandma would write down just what she said--"What you do is you take enough flour to come halfway up my yellow bowl and work the lard in right." I have been trying to make one thing a week from the notebooks since I found them. The best so far has been some date stuffed cookies.

You can serve the sandwiches in a big bread container ("pain surprise") and shape the container like an apple for teacher, or a tea cup, or any object that would relate to the play. http://www.cuisine-facile.com/recette.php?id=98 This is way easier to bake in a stock pot than doing the parchment collar thing. I use hot glue and whole spices to decorate mine. I've made a house and a tree. You can pack the inside with anything you want.

I remember scalloped potatoes, very buttery garlic toast and those giant multi-tier trays of cold seafood. I have had clam chowder at El Gaucho in PDX: http://www.elgaucho.com/elgaucho/images/menus_portland/dinner.pdf

I do have a favorite cold wild rice salad. Cook wild rice and make a dressing of olive oil, garlic, dijon, shallots, celery seed, white pepper, salt and parmesan. Pour over warm rice, chill. Add grape tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, sweet red pepper, scallions and peas (the peas at the last minute). I am originally from Minnesota so I do have many WR recipes, but this is the one I make the most.

I've been a lurker here for quite awhile but this is my first post. I joined EYB last month as a lifer (they've said that they will no longer offer the lifetime option once they are out of beta). There are 2 features I like that I haven't seen mentioned here: I have friends that joined EYB with me and we can search each others' cookbooks libraries. That's just plain fun. Also, you can search the whole EYB library for recipes. While the site won't give you a recipe, it can help you intelligently fill in holes in your cookbook collection. For instance, I like borage, and I've grown a ton of it, but it's not something that I commonly find recipes for. If I put "borage" into the EYB recipe search, it comes up with 44 hits (including borage ravioli), many in books I don't own but can now seek out. It's such an exciting tool. And every week they are indexing more books. They've also said that they will soon accept volunteering--if you have an extremely esoteric or old rare book that probably has no chance of being indexed, but you want it indexed for your library, you can index it yourself and upload it into EYB. They are still working on the site but it has been significantly streamlined since I first looked at it in April. It's brilliant.