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jsolomon: do tell more about your mead brewing adventures... did you determine any factors that increase or decrease the quality of your product? I've been meaning to try to brew some for years, but have always been put off by the logistics of it. I've only got the one fermentor, and tying it up for a year or more has never struck my fancy. That, and the fact that I've never tried mead in any of its many and varied forms other than one poorly remembered glass of ethiopian honey wine with dinner once, so I don't even know whether I like it at all, or whether I have a preference for still or sparkling or fruity, etc. Brewing the stuff seems an easy enough project, insofar as the technical side of things is dead simple compared to beer. It's just the long long wait. All these problems could, of course, be solved by overcoming my personal inertia and picking up a few airlocks and gallon jug-wine jugs and doing the long slow secondary fermentation in the jugs, with different adjunct stuff thrown into each one. Anybody up for an eGullet mead brewing adventure like we had on the Chef's Beer thread?

Does the whole saberage trick work for bottles that are not under pressure? I thought that the pressure inside the champagne bottle was essential in getting the knock to crack the bottle. I never would have expected sabrage to work on a still wine bottle, if for no other reason than the have a very different shape than a fizzy wine bottle.

I agree that this is interesting... I'm a little surprised at the Lowest Common Denominator approach being advocated here, insofar as (IMHO) choices as to what to ingest are personal, and rational folks should be able to accept the personal choices of others in their presence as well as their own... The pork/kosher issue is something of a canard in my experience, as those of my acquaintance who are so frum as to care about strict kashrut observance will inevitably decline invitations to my house, as a rabbi has never been within a mile of my kitchen, and it is a trayf-o-rama. Those who know this and still come know that kashrut is out the window. I absolutely refuse to sink to the LCD, as amongst my regular guests is a vegan, and there's no way in hell I'm going to subject the whole of a dinner party to bunny pellets because of one guest. Veganism and religion are in the same boat... personal choices that should remain unaffected by the behavior going on around them. If the religion insists on ritual purity going beyond the personal, then the observant will have to make the choice to subject themselves to other people's kitchens, or not.

This issue has been acrimoniously disputed here months ago. There is no coming to any resolution, and the acrimony will only increase. It will inevitably get personal, as failure to agree with one side or the other is a clear moral failing to some. Proceeding further is unwise. The old fight.

Well... try it for yogurt... you're adding cultures, after all, so what's been killed is less relevant. Keep the UHT package sealed and heat it to 110F, then toss in the yougurt starter culture and let it sit at that temp for however long it takes to get the yogurt to your liking... 3 to 6 hours usually. You could do panna cotta with it... You could curdle it with lemon juice and end up with a chevre type cheese, albeit one that won't get much more interesting as it ages.

This "new system" only makes sense if it were possible to identify a bad bottle before opening it... then, not having done so would have been laziness or negligence on the part of the restaurant staff, and the diner had done somebody's work for them. However, this is never ever the case, since it is impossible to detect a bad bottle before opening it. On the other hand, getting a hunk of dirt inside a cooked leek, or sand on the trout, or a cockroach inside an eggroll certainly calls for something comped... or no argument when the diner complains, stands up and walks out of the place. Those events really are a sign of somebody behind the scenes not doing their job.

Have randomly run across a very nice dry pink wine made labeled Schiava Valdadige Concilio 2001 ... a bit of research indicates that Valdadige is a place... which makes sense, if there is an Alto Adige, then there must be something below it, and the Valley of Adige is a reasonable thing to find below the High Adige. Schiava appears to be a grape that often makes a red wine, so this pink is a little unexpected given what's been written about the grape... So... who knows more about this wine, and what other producers (assuming Concilio is one) are worth trying? Who imports any other good ones into the USA? Is a dry pink wine a standard variation from this geography and grape, or is this a unique one-off?

I love all Barmes-Bucher's wines... Everything from the Sept-Grains and the Herrenweg vineyard in the non-classified realm up through the Rosenburg and Hengst is meticulously crafted. I don't think I've tried the 2000 Hengst, but will keep an eye out for it.

Might be crazy liquor laws too... I've certainly heard of states that disallow chilled beer to be sold... maybe DC goes both ways and allows cold and warm sales, but taxes them differently... All dumb liquor laws should be repealed... write your elected critter!

Looking at a price to quality ratio, ordinary Anglo supermarkets offer pretty shabby value... As to the assertions that supermarkets make no money, I have a real hard time believing that... between personal knowledge and reliable gossip I've heard of not one but several families that became exceedingly wealthy in the supermarket business. Kinda tough to do if there is always a miniscule margin on everything. And I also wonder how it is that local Asian and Mexican get such good produce and sell it so cheaply... maybe it is all about turnover... us anglos don't buy much fresh produce, so the selection sucks... so we don't buy the sucky fresh produce... so there's no market for fresh produce... and it becomes a specialty luxury item and is priced accordingly, even though it still sucks.

I've ordered from Adagio many times and love their products. They get good quality tea, and sell it in containers that keep it that way. They have a great variety of teas, though they go deeper into the esoteric Chinese and Japanese teas than they do with Indian. If you're an Assam hound or Darjeeling nut, then they're probably not your shop... if you like greens and oolongs, then give them a try.

Doesn't freshness play a role in geuze tartness too? The lactic bacteria take a while to really get going, so a fresh geuze should be less tart than one that has a year or two of aging on it... and I've met some older lambics that did a pretty good impression of battery acid.

Which executive? And how would they enforce it? And isn't any transportation of alcohol across state borders also illegal? And nobody ever does that, eh?

not quite-- scotch + sweet vermouth == Rob Roy rye + sweet vermouth == manhattan Bourbon and canadian make unnamed variations, as far as I'm aware.

Those virginia monopoly prices look a little high... Hunt around for another state. In PA our monopoly is asking $35 for a 1.75 fat bastard of the Grouse, and only $22 for a 750. In states with competitive markets those prices should decrease...

Well... let me say that, as a man, going to some extent formal is wonderful... If you've gone to the bother of buying formal wear, you've gone to the bother of having it tailored so that it is comfortable to wear. I own both a dinner jacket and a tailcoat, and when the need to look fab comes onto the horizon, 90% of my wardrobe decision comes down to one or the other... Whether to wear a white winged collar shirt and tie or a black banded collar shirt, or a turtleneck or something else is the biggest decision I have to make. Actually my avatar pic is me on New Years in my tailcoat with a white turtleneck under which felt great and looked dandy too. Wearing full on formal wear out to dinner at top restaurants is always plausible... if you dine early, you're obviously going to something fabulous afterwards... if you dine late, you've come from something fab... and is a good excuse to abandon the tie and tuck it into the breast pocket as though it has done its duty and that time has passed. Keep those thoughts in mind, and you'll always feel comfortable in the black and satin.

Hmmm... Dewars always strikes me as very slightly bitter... uyck... and J&B has a little too much of the 'burning tires' note to mix into a Rob Roy... fine plain, bad mixed... I like Famous Grouse... but it is a little pricy for a blend... lots of other British home market blends have the proper sweeter notes for rob Roy mixing... Teacher's and Bell's spring to mind... don't know about their availability in Colorado...

Down in Miami I ran across coffee called cortadito, which was an espresso with a splash of cream in it... well, I'm not exactly sure what the dairy product was, but it tasted richer than plain milk.

Somebody in the Reading Terminal used to do it... not sure if it's still there or not. Look in the southwest side of the RTM... that's where I remember seeing it.

Peaches and black pepper Watermelon and chevre

Have *$ ever actually used the "No!" mark anywhere? In order to get a registered mark, they have to claim that they've used it... anybody ever seen it? The TM office certainly doesn't verify the claims...

Blimey! Was just there for dinner last night and nothing looked amiss... Hopefully the place hasn't been financially damaged by whatever shenanigans that have gone on.

The original questioner never mentioned where this lemonade stand was located... If it's in Texas, then find a Central Market, where they run lemons and limes through their industrial orange juicer and sell the fresh squeezed juice by the pint.

Keep in mind that there are different levels of quality in those mexican lime squeezers. The first one I got, one of the cast aluminum looking ones, couldn't stand up to one particularly intransigent lime and one of the handles snapped in two. So in looking for a replacement I aimed for a larger one, and one made my a different factory.

If you've already got a hand blender, you have all the power tools you need. Halve a lemon with a diameter about the same as your hand blender's business end. Drop a lemon half into the bottom of a pint glass. Insert hand blender and pulverize the fruit while leaving the pith behind. Pour off juice and repeat. Some hand blenders work better than others for this purpose.