Panaderia Canadiense

If you've got some vodka and rocks, you've got the makings of good black russians with the Kahlua. Otherwise, you've got sipping liquors, not cocktail ingredients.

If reports from my family are any indication, there's all sorts of Eggnog going on in Alberta. Then again, we were always able to buy small-batch artisanal nogs there, so perhaps we were blessed. Here in Ecuador I have to make do with Rompope, which is close but no cigar. Falta spices.

Death By Chocolate Zucchini Cake, rum truffle ganache glaze, and "Happy Birthday" in as many languages as I could fit on it, written in mocha icing. My friend Kate didn't notice that I ran my fingerknuckle into the ganache near the Greek....

Turkey in black-pepper cream sauce, with veg and noodles. Lazy-ass dish, more than lazy-ass presenation, but dang it was tasty.

Honestly, I buy really cheapo odd-brand drip units ($22-25 range) and use them 'till they die, then replace them without much weeping. They make good coffee quickly, and the brand name isn't that important to me. I've never had one blow up, melt down, or otherwise cause a hazard - usually I replace them because I've dropped the caraffe in a moment of slack-handedness. I think my current one is an UMCO. It makes a nice big pot in about 6 minutes, and I paid less than $20 for it.

Is that a technical chef-y term? They DO sound good. It's my gooder unimaversity English. And yes, smush is a technical term for bakers!

Cup-o-everything cookies are exactly what they sound like. I cup of each of the following: sweet butter, panela (or brown sugar, at least demerrera), flour, peanut butter, chocolate chips, coconut, and oats. One egg, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tbsp milk, 1 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda. Cream the butter, peanut butter, and sugar together, beat in the egg and vanilla, then beat in the leavens, flour and oats, and fold in the chocolate chips and coconut. Drop by spoonfuls, and then either smush down with a fork or else use a half walnut to smush the cookie. 350 F for 8 minutes at my altitude. They're glorious. Edited because I'm scatterbrained and forgot the things that aren't one cup, ie the egg.

I've got high-molasses gingersnaps chilling, and there will also be maple-walnut shortbread, cup-o-everythings, classic oatmeal chocolate chip, mocha crispies, brandy snaps, chocolate-chip sugars, and probably some jammy dodgers using Mortiño compotes I put up earlier this year, if I've got time.

+1 for pistachios. Oooh, it's a good thing they're so hard to find here, because I can eat 2-3 pounds of them in a sitting without even pausing to think or breathe. The only other thing that does that to me are highly molasses-y gingersnaps of the type my Scottish gran used to make (which she passed, I inherited her recipe books, which gives me a terrible power in this respect). The recipe does something like 10 dozen snaps, and if I test even one for quality control, I'll return to consciousness and there will be crumbs left and nothing else.

Is it the flavor or the texture? I have no qualm with a nice Bearnaise and flat-out adore meringue, but the weird sulfurous flavor you get when you heat them above 190 is awful. Of course, I'm a student, so I eat a lot of them anyway. It's a specific allergy to egg albumin - I could probably just eat the yolks, but the smell of egg preparations is so off-putting, and I've had so many bad experiences, that I'm kind of reluctant to try. I've always wondered what I'm missing.

Photos! Please.

I had an excellent drink that fits this bill last night. 5 parts lemon-infused high-test vodka 1 part limoncello 1 part fresh squozen lemon juice dash absinthe twist of lemon Served in a martini glass with a lemon wedge and three cubes of CO2 floating in it, so it foamed in a very interesting manner and came out semicarbonated. It was lovely - not too sweet, not too bitter, and very much like having my brain bashed out with a wedge of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

I'm slightly embarassed to say it, but I'd just eat that heavy cream by the spoonful. It wouldn't last that long around my house. Other than that, absolutely, ganache! It freezes very well, and if you make it stiff enough you can scoop it out with a melon baller or tiny ice-cream scoop, roll it in coconut, and call it truffles.....

Of course. I realized, thinking about it, that I'm also completely adverse to eating feet. Of any kind - no pork hocks, no caldo de patas, and I'm grossed right out when I find chicken feet in my soup. Ick. ETA - although, oddly, I have no problem buying big bags of chicken feet when I want to make stock. I think it's their physical presence in something I'm eating that gets me.

I should point out that I wasn't being critical. Most people who strike insects off their list have never tried them, and I think that's a shame. It's nearly impossible to know that you flat out hate something without ever eating it even once.

I've been absent here, largely due to a metric f***ton of work. Consequently, most of my meals have been of the hasty, lazy sort that I'm always ashamed to show, because they tend to be wholly undinnerlike things like "a can of tuna and some chochos" or "cold pizza". Here's the best of them, made on nights when the ethic was "oh screw it, I want some real food." Chicken stew with quinua dumplings Some sort of beef thing with tomato noodles Tilapia baked in mushroom cream sauce.

I wanted to follow up. Kouign Aman was fabulously faboo and send me this monster (after much wrangling with my PO box!) You can see that I'm using it to chop entire quarter oranges, which it does admirably. Thanks to all!

What have you got against bugs? Well-prepared, they're delicious.

For me it's eggs in all of their myriad presentations - scrambled, fried, poached, omlettes, over easy, sunny runny, you get the point. I can't do it, I vomit. Explosively. Other things that could disappear entirely and I wouldn't mind: Lima Beans (my father was inordinately fond of them, which meant they were in absolutely everything, and I kind of burned out on them), Liver, and most Tripes.

I'd say one week for any cookie with medium to high moisture (so the chocolate chips, crinkles, and sablés for sure), two weeks for low-fat or low-moisture (biscotti, etc.) And then, only if they're well-packaged, say, heat-sealed in cellophane minimum, vaccum sealed even better. Lisa brings up some excellent points about butter and rancidity.

Reserve the base and cook a minute. This prevents wateriness.

My go to when I'm this stressed (as I am right now) is either to raid the leftovers or to have a giant green salad with plenty of chochos (lupini beans) on it, and possibly also a can of tuna. Then again, if I'm feeling really stressed I go straight for the Volquetero, which is a carb-protein bomb. That's a layer of plantain chips, a layer of chochos, a layer of popcorn, a layer of tostado, a nice hit of encebollado (onion and tomato, finely chopped, with lime juice), and a whole can of tuna in olive oil overtop, oil and all. Takes about 5 minutes to assemble one, and it's crazy satisfying.

Actually I don't know. It sprouted from a seed in my front yard. beautiful bright red leaves. dcarch Japanese maple is the most likely culprit.... Beautiful dish!

I'm here, I'm here. You know that Mondays are a complete wreck for me! .75 C butter, softened 1.5 C pumpkin pie filling (up to 1/2 C panela or piloncillo - your call, depending on how sweet the pie filling is) 1 tsp vanilla 2 eggs 2.5 C AP flour 1 TSP baking powder 1 TSP baking soda 1.5 TSP cinnamon (ground) 0.5 TSP cloves (ground) 0.5 TSP nutmeg (ground) 0.5 TSP ginger (ground) 0.75 C chopped semisweet chocolate 0.5 C walnuts, chopped -- Cream butter with pumpkin and panela (if you're using it); beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, spices, and leavens, and sift into the wet. Beat until just mixed. If it seems too stiff, add more pumpkin by TBSPs until it reaches the desired consistency. Fold in chocolate and nuts. For muffins, 20 minutes at 350 F, more or less. This version makes about 12 muffins, and scales beautifully.

I've got a cake recipe that could easily be converted to muffins, which has chocolate chunks in it as well....