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I've trotted on down to San Marcos for their July and December sales, but never thought of January - wonder if there would be any little gratins wanting a new home.... ← Ummm... That is where I got mine. But I wouldn't wait until January. I was just looking for those for a friend. My individuals measure 9 1/4 inches the long way. I can't find them anywhere. I am beginning to think they may have discontinued them. That is a shame. I love them and now wish I had more than 4.

Amazon has a great price on a 2 1/2 quart oval oven... $55.99! I was dancing in the aisles when I got mine about 3 months ago at $65. That pot is my new best friend. I am cooking for one but it will also work for two. (If you decide to bite, please use the link below.) The neat thing about LC is that it is also great on top of the stove. Here is how that works... The other day, there was this nice little package of beef short ribs that called to me. I browned them really well, took the meat out, threw in some onion/celery/green pepper and sauteed that, added some red wine and cooked it down, put the meat back in, opened a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes and added that, some thyme and bay leaves. Into the oven for about an hour and a half. Woo... Hoo... You can get really good flavor if you take the time to do the browning. You can assemble the other ingredients while the browning is going on. Total prep time was about 15 minutes.

That is a truly excellent question. And I don't have a truly excellent answer. I do a lot of low/slow cooking and sometimes use the crockpot and sometimes a covered Le Creuset in a 250F oven. If I am going to leave the house and go shopping, I may crank the oven down to 225F. One thing that amazed me was that the LC in the oven seems to cook a lot faster. Over in the dried bean thread, we attribute that to the fact that the pot with conductive lid is completely surrounded by heat and the crock pot has a "cold side"... the lid. The real test was Camellia Red Beans to make that classic, Louisiana Red Beans and Rice. To get to real creaminess in the crock pot normally takes about 4 or 5 hours. The LC in the oven method took 2 hours from bag to the bowl. I was astounded. I had a similar experience with cooking paprika chicken. It was all nice and falling apart at about 2 hours I think. All I know to do, like I did with the beans and the chicken, is just peek and see what is happening. Then I have made a note of the time for dishes that I will be repeating. The good news is that this method of cooking is very forgiving. Then there was the time I thought I had turned off the small beef brisket happily crock potting in a sugar/soy sauce/ginger concoction. I thought I had hit the off button. I woke up to brisket a la charcoal! Live and learn. Slow cooking is not forgiving of sheer idiocy.

I just thought of something. For your first trial run around the block, you might want to do a pork butt if you have no objections to pork. They are a little more forgiving than beef brisket. If you search the site for pork butt, you will probably find a lot of information... and shame on me for not putting in that link to the eGCI course. If you do either a butt or a brisket, do not trim it. Fat is your friend. (I think col klink originated that phrase.) I generallly brine pork butt, 24 hours for a big one, before smoking. One of those probe type thermometers is also really handy for monitoring that internal temperature. The Virtual Bullet web site will also educate you on cooking times and the magic of the temperature stall. Aw to heck with it... read klink's course.

Actually, the family moved the restaurant (or opened another, I forget) to New Orleans around the turn of the century, I think. A few years ago, the remaining family, two elderly sisters as I remember, closed the venerable establishment, much to the dismay of loyal patrons. After a couple of years, the sisters approached Emeril to buy out and reopen the place, which he did. The Las Vegas venue is a legitimate spin off. A lot of classic dishes originated at Delmonico's. I will see what I can find on that. Some of them have name associations like the steak.

That picture looks like a Brinkman. Those are pretty good and will work fine. True afficianados prefer the Weber. The temperature control (vent design) is a bit better and you can load more fuel, but why quibble. A water smoker is a wonderful thing. Using the Minion Method of firing the thing, I can keep my Weber at a steady 225F for at least 12 hours with very little fuss. That web site has a lot of good directions for smoking. I suggest a thorough perusal, Weber or not. BTW... Contrary to popular opinion, the pan of water doesn't really add "moisture" to anything, much less the meat. Its purpose is to act as a heat sink to help moderate the temperature and keep it steady.

Oh wow! I remember crunching into quarters of iceberg with blue cheese dressing on a beach in a shameful disarray. No. No more details. Who knew that icegerg lettuce had such a "shameful" rep.

I have to confess that I love iceberg lettuce. We have a recipe from an old farmer friend. He would thinly shred iceberg lettuce, sprinkle it with a rich apple cider vinegar (that he made) and a little sugar. It was sublime. Shredded iceberg is also the just right crunch for tacos and such... not to mention the right texture for a good hamburger. Long live iceberg!

How could I forget The San Jacinto Inn? That place was a culinary icon for many years. When I would visit the plants in Deer Park, we would always adjourn for lunch there. What a tradition. The food was good, not great, but the history and tradition prevailed.

Sorry for the double post but I just remembered... I know that the tradition of frying in deep fat came over with the slaves from Africa. But, I read somewhere recently that the native americans also had that tradition of frying in clay pots of goose and bear fat. They would particularly fry whole birds. There is some speculation that that is where the fried turkey tradition of south Louisiana came from. I don't know if that is true and I can't find the source that it came from but that is what I remember. I wonder what other parts of the world have a deep fat frying tradition?

Andie... You are so right about the potatoes. That is my method as well. Funny that I have never done them with the fresh lard. I will have to try that. Unless I am on a chicken frying binge, I only keep one of the small cans of Crisco in the pantry for the very occasional crust and the potatoes. Lately, I have had difficulty finding good quality, nicely dense pork fat for any large scale lard production so I have had to revert to Crisco. BTW... Other brands need not apply. I made that mistake... once.

Not a silly question at all. I haven't made it in a while but when my mother made it the apples had red skin that she left on. I recall pieces roughly 1/2 inch and maybe a little longer in one direction. I think she sliced the cored apple into sections then did a cross cut. I haven't been able to find the crisp tart apples with a red skin (red delicious seems to be really mealy lately) and have been using Granny Smith. Sometimes I have peeled those and I think I cut them up something like my mother did.

I have never seen that. My sister has one that is at least 25 years old and no problem. It sounds like something is wrong and it may be a candidate for replacement. I am wondering if it ever got overheated to the extreme.

I buy a bunch of cans when they go on sale around Thanksgiving. Then I submerge them in a stock pot under plenty of water. You only keep the water at a bare simmer. I also put a dish towel in the bottom so I don't have to listen to the bump bump of the cans. I check the water level over the 3 to 4 hours that it takes. In a deep pot, this is never a problem. The next thing is that you never try to open one of the cans until it has cooled to room temperature.

One time when we were frying turkeys at Thanksgiving, someone brought a "fresh organic" bird. (We used to invite friends to bring their turkeys since we already had the pot going.) I don't know anything else about the origin of the bird. We were curious so we did a taste test. As I remember, we decided that it was maybe different but not something we would have gone to any extra expense for.

My all time favorite, IHOP I think, is Moons Over Mi-Hammie... Or something like that. Who is the Diane in Steak Diane?

Ok you guys... That is my GulleyLaugh for the day. Actually, using apple juice concentrate to cut the mayo is truly inspired. I'm gonna try that on the "traditional" recipe. I will bet it is a wowser. I have always found that straight mayo is a bit "heavy" and usually use sour cream or yogurt to cut it a bit.

When trying to time sales at the outlets, I have found that the closest one to me (that I know of) in San Marcos Texas, has their best sale in January. They are struggling to bring in some business after the Christmas rush and there are some real deals. We sometimes plan a roadtrip around then. I got my first haul of LC for really cheap. Then they had a deal that if you bought x pieces, you got another 50% off of another piece, and they counted lids as a piece. We ran into similar deals in other shops in the outlet mall. There were 4 of us on the trip and the car was dragging its butt back to Houston. None of this was advertised.

To reprise my frequent rant... We don't have "real" farmer's markets here. A couple of small start-ups are interesting but hardly comprehensive. I find that seasonality creeps in because of price and freshness so that is what drives me. I don't really think about it much. I have learned to be wary of produce shipped in from the southern hemisphere. We went through a bad patch last year with Haas avocados that were shipped in. Most of them had black spots indicating to me that they were stored at too low a temperature. I gave up on avocados for a while. Our Hong Kong markets, Fiesta Marts and HEB stores are generally the most reliable for varied and fresh produce so I am not totally bereft. And... If some lovely asparagus shows up, I will probably enjoy it whenever.

So... I finally know what the volume is. That is an excellent price. I thought I was making off like a bandit at $65. The prices at Caplan Duval are incredible. I hate it that the link is for the "white sale". I have been collecting the white since they quit making the dark green.

I have to say that I grew up with margarine. My family being basically "Southern" cooks, that is curious. There is this discussion running over in the Southern Food Culture forum on this subject. I suspect that the shortages of the war and the bleating about how "healthy" this margarine glop was influenced my mother for a while. Sometime in the mid 50s, my mother started being really suspicious of this margarine thing and started adding butter to the mix. By the time I got all grown up and scientific, I started really wondering. About 20 years ago, I decided that margarine couldn't be a good thing. This decision was not based on data, just an instinct that natural foods were better. I am gratified that my instinct may actually be correct. There is no margarine now in my fridge. Living alone, I go through a pound of butter in maybe 6 weeks so I must be applying the moderation principle. Perhaps if my bread consumption went up it would be more than that. BTW... I also cook with fresh rendered lard that I do myself.

Wow! Andiesenji does it again. I have always made the simmered cans of sweetened condensed milk. I now have a source of really good goats milk and the slow cooker method sounds like a winner. I will be trying this on some cold and drippy day and see how it compares. Please make a note to add this to RecipeGullet when it is restored. I have used a warmed version of the canned product, with some added good bourbon, as a sauce for a classic bread pudding. It got raves.

My visual mind created a scenario of the tile melting together and sliding out the door. There was this madman chasing the goo yelling... "Back to your places... Back to where you belong!" BTW... I am curious from a question upthread. Are you going to lay it square or on the diagonal? I have a selfish reason for asking. I have been pondering the same question for the new kitchen since I am considering the classic black and white checkerboard for that and I find the diagonal somewhat strangely disturbing.

I have had it for about 6 weeks now and have used it at least a dozen times. I didn't mention that I am a Low and Slow cook for a lot of things. My grown kids are single and I bought each of them one for a treat. They are also thrilled. Check out the russ parsons method for beans, 2 or so hours from bag to bowl, in this thread. Le Creuset is imminently suited for this method. It even works on South Louisiana style red beans. The small one is perfect for a 1/2 pound even though it will hold a pound.

Some of these variations sound really good. However, there is nothing like the original. However... My family used to substitute pecan halves for the walnuts. Occasionally, my mother would add golden raisins and I would have a hissy fit. Marshmallows??? NEVER! We always used Hellman's but sometimes cut it with a little sour cream. Whenever we tinkered with it beyond the addition of the pecans, we always called it something else. Another addition that I like is yogurt with the mayo and whip in a bit of curry powder... the traditional English version in the can. BTW... the addition of chicken and the mandarin orange sections is one of my all time favorite chicken salads. No... It is not Waldorf salad. It is a very good chicken salad. All of that being said, the original is sublime in its simplicity... one of those things that is more than the sum of its parts. And it is so good that you can mess with the classic and come up with something really good. I like the tart snap of Granny Smiths. Any other favorite apples for this?