nolnacs

I never say grace at home so I wouldn't in a restaurant either. However, I don't think I have ever even seen anyone saying grace in a restaurant. Not when I grew up in the midwest or now in Philadelphia. Admittedly, I don't pay that much attention to other tables so it is possible that I have missed it. I would be interested if others have seen it/do it.

I've found this thread to be rather interesting (political ranting included) mostly because I haven't noticed this trend. Much like heidih, I do most of my shopping at the farmer's market and at local purveyors of meat, fish and produce. Prices are highly variable at the produce place I shop at, but they don't seem to be on average any higher than they were last year. Meat and seafood prices are mostly unchanged. I do get sticker shock when I go to Superfresh to pick up staples like flour or cereal for my wife. I can't believe how expensive the packaged stuff is. And yet, I recently discovered that I can buy King Arthur flour cheaper at Target for less than I have ever been able to purchase it before. I'm also not seeing significant price increases on the items that I buy at Trader Joes - but again I'm not purchasing bread,frozen meals etc. Perhaps traditional supermarkets are more willing(must) pass on raw ingredient price increases to their customers than other retailers.

This is perhaps more of a project than you are looking for, but you could make duck sausage out of the legs. Ruhlman's Charcuterie has a recipe for duck sausage that has turned out well for me.

That's absolutely beautiful. Did you use cutters to do the numbers?

I've roasted salmon fillets in fig leaves before. It turned out pretty good.

I made the chicken leg confit earlier this week with some alterations. I didn't have the time or inclination to make the lime pickles that the recipe called for so I mixed up the seasoning a bit. Overall, I have to say that it makes for an extremely tasty chicken leg, but I would cook it longer than the 2 hours @ 150 F that they call for since the tendons/connective tissue were still a bit tough - especially with the drumstick

I couldn't possibly wait to put dishes in the dishwasher. My kitchen is too small and I need to use the sink while cooking. Unless you have a double sink or a ton of counter space, I just don't see how it is feasible.

I have many snack weaknesses - most of which involves sweets to some degree. Granola, dried mangoes, nutella on toast, peanut butter + nutella, cookies, pie, cake, pudding...... so yeah, I have a insatiable sweet tooth

I don't have the accuracy numbers but I have a wireless humidity/temperature meter (acu rite) that I picked up at Lowe's. I believe that it was $25 or so. I had bought cheaper ones before but the performance was lacking and I like the convenience of being about to see the temperature and humidity without opening the chamber.

I use a wine cooler for my meat curing and I haven't had any problems keeping the humidity relatively close to where I want it to be. To control the humidity, I just use a painters tray filled with water and I adjust the amount of water based on what the humidity is and where I want it to be.

I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but one thing that I always make the same way is pie crust, using my mom's recipe. I love the end result of the recipe and the dough is easy to work with so I don't feel the need to try any other. No butter or shortening for me, only lard.

I have to second the recommendation of Cafe Nhu Y. It calls my name every time I walk by on my way to or from the Italian Market.

Yep. There is a fair number of tables in the middle of the market but if you go at lunchtime on the weekends, it may be difficult to find a seat. I'm not sure how busy it is during the week. You will also see people eating outside on the other side of 12th street where there is a little plaza.

As a side note, in my experience (Chicago and Philadelphia), "standard" grocery store chains (Jewel, Acme, Superfresh...) are terrible places to shop, especially for produce. I have always been able to find far better prices and quality by going to dedicated produce stores or ethnic markets (Hispanic, Asian etc). As a previous commenter pointed out, the ethnic markets aren't going to have organic produce like Whole Foods but then the major chains don't typically have much of a selection either. I'm guessing it has a lot to do with turnover since I hardly ever see people spending much time in the produce sections of those chains....

I'm going to have to disagree. Undried peaches are essential! That is my preferred breakfast - steel cut oats cooked in whole milk with a bit of sugar, some raisins and topped with peaches. Sadly, I've used up all the peaches that I froze from last year.

As I understand it, sodium citrate is the salt form of citric acid so they are quite similar but not the same; however, citric acid is suppose to also work as a melting agent for cheeses. I'm not sure if citric acid is as effective as sodium citrate at a given weight so that might explain your results so far. I haven't played around with carageenans enough to know whether that is a factor.

Sorry, I can't accurately answer the price question as I've only been out to Lancaster once in the year and a half I've been in Philadelphia, but my guess is that they would be cheaper in Lancaster.

Some of my favorite things from the Reading Terminal Market: roast pork sandwich from DiNics pretzel dog (with cheese) from Miller's Twist french berry roll/gateau basque from Metropolitan Bakery bread pudding from Beck's Cajun Cafe Some of the Amish vendors (Kaufmann's is one) offer a wide variety of canned (jarred) goods - pickles, preserves jellies etc. I haven't tried them, but they might pique your interest.

My rental apartment does have a kitchen fan but as far as I can tell as it does it push the smoke around the kitchen resulting in zero benefit. I find it to be incredibly aggravating and does somewhat influence how I cook. For instance, I have started searing steaks with a blowtorch instead of in a pan since it produces much less smoke. When I bake pies, I make sure to have a pan or aluminum foil underneath the pie to catch the drippings before they fill my small apartment with smoke.

I received my Blendtec a few weeks ago and I've been impressed. I'm not particularly interested in smoothies, but I did test my new toy by making one which turned out quite nice. I was more interested in using it for pureeing vegetable soups and it does a very good job. For instance, I made a simple asparagus soup last week and typically I break off the tough and fibrous ends of the spears. This time, despite the thickness of the spears (1/2" to 1") I decided to leave the ends in the soup. I ran the soup through the soup cycle one time and it came out incredibly smooth and almost creamy. My wife asked me multiple times if I had put any cream or other dairy products in it because it was so smooth.

Salon ran a few articles from AoE - for instance, Consider the Prune. You might be able to find some other articles on Salon as well

I'm in center city Philadelphia and an enthusiastic home cook. I've been playing around with sous vide for about a year but haven't done much else with modernist techniques so far.

Cheese and quackers. Ha!! Good one!! I am wondering if I should make a sauce for the pan roasted breasts. Any thoughts? I could just make a quick brown duck stock veloute... or is that too easy?? Dan Last weekend, I made this sour cherry red wine sauce to go along with a duck dish that I made. I think it would go nicely with your pan roasted breasts. As a bonus, you can substitute your duck stock for the chicken stock in the recipe.

Quinces generally last quite some time so you might be able to hold off until you pick up the other chemicals needed - that is if you want to get those anyway.

Fair enough, thanks for the discussion. I would be interested in learning more about ground water depletion in other areas - PM me if you have any links to good articles/summaries