Martin Fisher

What is the recommended time and temp for chicken leg/thigh 'confit' prepared via sous vide?

Douglas Baldwin on pasteurizing from frozen...... http://forums.egullet.org/topic/144300-sous-vide-recipes-techniques-equipment-2011/page-11#entry1802737

What type of cheese do you want to make?

Cuisinart stick blenders have a serious weakness...a cheap plastic splined chuck...they won't last. The Waring light-commercial stick blender works good.

If "cookbooks" includes all food related books with recipes I have in the neighborhood of 3,500....give or take a couple hundred. I don't have many newer books like most folks in this thread (I buy maybe 15-20 new cookbooks per year), most of mine are older, some very old. I inherited about 300 cookbooks from my grandmother when she passed 7 years ago. About 2000 of the books are digitized....I've added many out-of-print/out-of-copyright cookbooks to my digital collection in the past couple years since I built a DIY book scanner.

Absurd!!!! They should leave that area!

The chicken feet should work just fine. I think the gelatin is intended for use by folks who are using store-bought stock.

I highly recommend The Fannie Farmer Junior Cookbook, it's a great beginner's book that does a good job with definitions of terms and such. You should be able to find it dirt cheap.

My grandfather woke up one morning with a mouse on his forehead! LOL

We have two cats that do a reasonably good job of keeping mice under control but they don't have free access everywhere. I absolutely hate the idea of poison for several reasons. Plain old-fashioned Victor snap traps that are baited with peanut butter have always worked great for me. The secret that I learned from my grandmother is to tie a piece of butcher's twine on the bait area of the trap letting the ends of the string extend out about a 1/2 inch. By working some peanut butter into the ends of the string the trap is made much more effective due to the mice tugging on the string and easily springing the trap. Trap placement is also important, the metal bait tab should face the wall. Doubling up on traps at each location is also a good idea.

Yeah, why bother with such things when almost anything can be cooked, caveman-style, on a stick over an open fire?

500 degrees for the first half-hour and then 350 degrees until finished? Roughly 3 to 3.5 hours total.

C'mon! It's an eulogy for goodness sake!!!!

Yeah, who would expect them to be real busy a week before Thanksgiving and 5 weeks before Christmas?

Me too! http://www.cookingissues.com/2013/03/17/patent-pending/

@Smithy That's a neat little kitchen!

American Holiday...American Wine. Finger Lakes Riesling for me.

re: low-hassle winter squash If you're lucky, you may find crookneck squash (sometimes called neck pumpkin) at a farmer's market. They're like a butternut squash on steroids. They're usually relatively low in moisture and easy to prepare because they have the long neck (sometimes very long) that's seedless.

We're definitely all different. I'm carbohydrate intolerant, carbohydrate in any form beyond about 40-50 grams per day causes all sorts of problems for me....anxiety, depression, high-triglycerides, fluid retention, hyperglycemia, metabolic syndrome, etc.

My maternal grandma also made a lot of filled cookies....I loved the mincemeat ones. She did a lot of baking....Boston brown bread was surely one of her favorites based on how often she made it. Here's a picture of grandma..... Not the best picture, but the easiest to find. We often called her Grandma Grunt because of all the fruit grunts she made....that was okay with her...she had a great sense of humor. Grandma's house....rural north-central Pennsylvania...our house, where I grew up, was just across the dirt road.

In the context of true confit and lengthy preservation, saturated fat (solid at room temperature) is stable and resistant to rancidity which makes it better for preservation. HIstorically, saltpeter also played a roll in inhibiting rancidity.

Hudson Valley Foie Gras is a good source for duck fat and legs.

A little saltpeter is or was traditional in some confits, so a touch of pink salt shouldn't be considered totally nontraditional. A small amount will improve finished color without affecting the flavor much if at all.

Here's a good short article by Harold McGee......Bending the Rules on Bacteria. Pretty much the same risks apply to your situation.

That could actually increase the risk in terms of anaerobic pathogens.