scubadoo97

Home alone so I got to play with my food. I made some shrimp pot stickers with coconut milk and kecap manis/sweet soy sauce. I guess this also answers how the internet changed my cooking and eating. Posting pictures of food on eGullet.

Very cool Dave. Great kitchens from you and Bruce. Keep the pictures coming. Vanessa, can't wait to see your's when your done. It will be worth it. I love cooking in my kitchen now. Actually I loved cooking in the old one but now I can invite people over.

I thought his first dish was Kibbeh bel sayniyyeh or baked kibbeh. Maybe they served tahini dip or hummus as mezze/ appetizer

You can customize stock cabinets by adding a wood rail around the top of them to give you more height. You can increase the depth even using stock 24" cabinets by adding a deeper counter top but you do run the risk of having to reach further to get to the upper cabinets. We kept the standard 24" for this reason except over the wine cooler since I needed a little more space behind the wine cabinet for a gas line.

Bruce, my thoughts exactly. I just cleaned my hood baffles and notice how much grease was on them this time. I went with a 42" X 27"hood over a 36" rangetop to give more capture and still when using the front burner, if I don't have the blower near high it will not always capture all the smoke from pan grilling. With down drafts I would have to see it to believe it.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I don't own or use cookbooks. In a preparation of a Middle Eastern dinner that I hosted for 15 people last week I had 4 of my best Middle Eastern cookbooks out to survey how they each approached a certain dish. When I made my first attempt at a very large brisket on the grill for Father's day I turned to the internet and did a quick search which always includes eGullet and found several recipes on how to best cook that beast. I think cookbooks are great and in many cases find that you get a lot of inspiration from the author who has a lot of passion for their cuisine. I some books there is a lot of history written that if read gives you a much greater appreciation of the cuisine in question. So in reality I use both but I don't find that the recipes from the faceless people are that different. Again I look for general trends in a recipe. What are the common threads and how do people vary the recipe. The internet gives you the quickest mode to compare and is invaluable for new dishes that you don't have a cookbook for. And as a BB junkie I can attest to the fact that, it is the personal interaction and the sharing of ideas that makes the internet so much fun in the quest for knowledge of my hobbies.

grew up with the basic canned black olive and I have fond memories of cream cheese and black olive sandwiches. My kids love them but I'd much prefer something with a little more taste like a kalamata or other stronger tasting olive. I love the Moroccan dried cured black olives.

I keep my cast iron/ enamel dutch oven on the back burner because it weighs too much to put in and out of the cabinet. I also keep a tea pot on the stove just in case. Outside of that I only use it to set hot things from the oven onto since my wife refuses to accept that the granite can handle it.

We spent 3 days in Charleston recently and eat fabulously. Too little time and too many restaurants. At the suggestion of the folks at the Governor's house we dinned at High Cotton the first night. I thought the food was good, I had the short ribs. The second day we had lunch at Magnolias since we were meeting friends that evening for dinner. It was wonderful. I had a shrimp, scallop and lobster dish served over grits. I was sublime. The most tasty dishes of the trip. We meet our friends at a location called Mad River. A Fridays kind of place that I would not recommend to anyone. Glad I had my memories of my lunch to sustain me but the company of our friends which we hadn't seen in 25 years was the star of the evening. Our last night we dinned at McCradys. The food and service was excellent. I had a sous vide tenderloin that was melt in your mouth tender and had a great crust. A foie gras appetiser was delicious and well presented. Two places we missed but wanted to go to was FIG and Hominy Grill. We walked past FIG one afternoon but they don't serve lunch and I really wanted to eat at Hominy Grill for breakfast or lunch. Hominy was never near where we were walking and the Govenor's house served a great breakfast. Good reasons to go back.

The new power lunch. I use the Internet to research recipes. I don't look at cook books that often and find it easier to search the web and get 10+ recipes of a single dish. I usually use a recipe as a guide and not the gospel so I am looking for trends. I have learned a lot about different cuisines and techniques here at eGullet. I have a lot of little hobbies and with each there is a message board that has helped propel the knowledge of that hobby to new heights. Okay, I'm a BB junkie

In earlier plans I had a range placed between the two windows. The problem for me having a range or rangetop in front of glass is cleaning the oil splatter off the glass. I would be doing this every day. I had originally wanted a range instead of the cooktop and had first priced out a 30" Thermador, Wolf or Decor range. After thinking about it I realized that 30" was just too small for the big price tag and looked into a 36" range. At that size the price just got too high. The reason why I kept the rangetop where it was is that in having a rangetop, the ovens were going to be placed on the opposite wall. I didn't want to expand the work triangle any larger than it already is. I do a lot of pan roasting and I didn't want to walk around the island to take something from the stove to the oven. Another reason I didn't do the stovetop in the island is that it would necesitate a large hood over the island and I have wanted to keep this area more open since this is where people gather. I have never liked the visual intrusion a hood over an island creates. I would have like the major prep area to be adjacent to the stovetop. Sometimes you just have to make choices.

Q. What kind of cooking do you do? Family? Dinner parties? Ethnic? Gourmet? A. We alternate with my brother for Friday night dinners so we get together as a family once a week. My wife and daughter, (son is in college), try to eat dinner together each night even if it's late due to my daughter's dance schedule. I do all the cooking except baking which my wife still does. I enjoy making anything ethnic. Q. What were the 3 top goals for your new kitchen? A. Here my wife and I had big philosophical differences. In fact one of the reasons we could never do this earlier was we have fundamental differences on what a kitchen is. To me it's a work place and to her it's a show place. Q. What was the biggest problem that had to be over come? A. Poor workmanship. Having to be on top of everything even with a general contractor. Other than that, there was the usual problems of remodeling in an old home and having to bring some things up to code and deal with uneven floors and walls that may not be at right angles or be bowed. Things like that. Q. What are you most pleased about in your new kitchen? A. Love my new rangetop and the double ovens are great. Hate the counter depth refrigerator. I knew I wouldn't like side by sides but they came out with the freezer on the bottom with ice and water in the door right after we purchased ours. If I had it to do over I would also change my hood/vent motor to a remote. I do love the overall look of the kitchen, thanks to my wife it is a show place. Q. Least pleased about? A. Quality in the cabinets for what I paid for them. Q. If you were doing your kitchen again what would you change? A: Contractors Q: How much of the design did you do yourself? A: We did the layout our selves Our old island ran the other direction but we picked it up and turned it so we could see if we like the new orientation. We lost the space for our eat in table and chairs but still like the feel better this way. Eating at the Island okay. A double leveled Island would have been better for eating at since you separate the eating space from the food prep space. Here cost and already being over budget kept me from doing it different. Q: How much of the construction did you do yourself? A: I installed some new light switches, receptacles and wall plates around the house and did some touch up work but in the kitchen I really didn't do anything except find flaws and point them out to the contractor that should have been seeing them before me. Q. How long did the renovation take? How long was it supposed to take? A: We were told it would take around 6 weeks but in took almost a year to get the last of the small details taken care of. The majority of the work was done by nearly 12 weeks. We are still waiting on having some of the wood floor boards replaced due to a haze which has developed in one area and since it's Brazilian cherry we have a problem getting a good match with new wood. This is not kitchen related but part of the project and part of the headache. Q: By what percentage was the final cost over or under the budget? Percent deviation avoids delving into personal finances, and also avoids the problem of converting international currencies. A: how about 80% over but that is also because the project expanded to other areas of the house. Q. Did the relationship between life partners suffer any permanent damage? A: No we really didn't fight as much as we thought we would over things. Maybe it was because we were on the same team. Us against them.

I only eat them when in Mexico while visiting family. There they are served peeled and eaten as is. In Mexico they are ultra sweet and very delicious

We did a our kitchen make over last year. After living in an old 1970 kitchen for 10 years we final had to gut it. We had looked at doing this a couple of times before but it was always going to be way over my budget. Needless to say it was almost twice as much as when we priced it 5 years ago. I can't say it was easy. It took way longer than it should, cost way more than anticipated and was a general PIA. One of the problems is that one project leads into another and we removed all the old tile and slate floors and replaced it with wood. I kept tile in the kitchen, kitchen bath and laudry room. I just couldn't see wood in wet areas. Walls and ceilings were retextured and new lighting was installed. These are the things that really are the budget buster. Here are a few photos of our old kitchen with everything cleaned out just prior to demolition. And after the remodeling.

Mouldy cheeses can get other, icky moulds, but usually they look different. I don't think cheese moulds are terribly dangerous, so it shouldn't hurt to taste a little and see if it's still good. ← I find when I save a little chunk of blue cheese for more than a week it begins to take on the taste of a brie rind. A bit strong for my salad needs and in general too strong for my enjoyment. definetly a different mold than the blue variety or maybe it's just a lot more of the blue since I can't actually see other forms of mold growing. The taste changes none the less.

Peace is a tall order Rebecca. I'd settle for something more obtainable first, like you getting better. Prayers, good wishes and instant karma to you for total remission and well being then we can work on world peace.

Not all of them are ultramarathoners, but all are sufficiently crazy. I did the marathon last year, and even in August, when I got to the summit at ~noon it was 30 degrees. I do agree that someone should have given them a sanity check, but I doubt that they were checking in with the home office regularly enough for the home office to do that (if TVFN has that much sense...). Granted, they could have asked a local about the wisdom of their choice and then purchased gear. Oh well. I thought the third episode was better than the first. That looked like some STRONG coffee, though. I wonder if AB has more hair on his chest, now. ← Jsoloman, I was there last August when they had the marathon. We stayed at a little B & B at the base of Pikes Peak. No way I was a part of the marathon but when we took the train up the the summit there were wall to wall runners stranded at the top. There was nasty weather and hail. People were stranded alll over the moutain. It was crazy.

I agree. Bobby should go it alone.

last Friday I made beef satay and after looking at those gorgeous ground beef kabobs I have those slated for this Friday's family Shabbat dinner.

Thanks larrylee. I'll have to look for it. I just finished Kitchen Confidential. I haven't laughed so much while reading in a while. I also will not order the fish special on Monday.

That's what I'm sayin'.......although to be honest it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of 'sucking up and bracing himself' going on - if there is he covers it well. That's one fearless eater having a great time from what I can see. Me, I'm still all weepy over the Chupacabra puppy..... ← I agree. Tony seems to really enjoy the history and culture of it all. Watching him eat the sliced stomachs of several animals in the China episode and responding with a "that's very good" you get the feeling that is truely enjoying himself and there is no sucking up. In fact in that episode I think Tony found favor with all the food he sampled and some of it didn't look so good to me but after watching that I wanted to try it too.

How different is this from kanafeh? Our family made kanafi with shredded wheat (or at least I thought it was shredded wheat) and it was filled with pistachios or a soft sweet white cheese. I know phyllo dough is sold in a shredded form as kataifi dough.

Here in Florida I find tilapia in most grocery stores at the average price of $5-6/lb. I find the flesh very white and mild tasting. Most of the times it is quite thin so it cooks very quickly. I would say it has a similar texture to a small snapper but a little wetter more like a trout. I have not detected any muddy flavors in the tilapia that I've cooked. a recent articles in the paper on the decline of grouper revealed that some local restaurants have been serving tilapia as grouper. Now these are two very different fish in thickness, taste and texture. A fish supplier in the panhandle was just convicted of mislabeling boxes of frozen tilapia as frozen grouper. Sad to see this type of misrepresentation in the seafood industry and in restaurants that should know better.

Stuffed, rolled grape leaves will freeze very well. Our family makes these for many holidays and we always make them ahead of time and freeze them on a cookie sheet after which they are stored in plastic freezer bags until ready to use. The rice and meat filling is left raw. We mostly use fresh mulberry leaves that have been blanched but in a pinch have used jarred grape leaves. After cooking I don't think they would hold up as well after being frozen but freezing works very well for the uncooked product.

interesting note because I see them as sort of a retro design. In any event I suspect your talents in the kitchen would be where my attention would be directed to.