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I have to use a timer. I am genetically programmed to burn the toast. I have a lousy sense of elapsed time though I can walk outside, look at the sky, and be within 15 minutes of the correct time. I used to have one with a big chord to hang it around my neck. I can't find it now but am on the hunt for a replacement.

Now that I am picking myself up off of the floor and am somewhat recovered from a total incapacitation event... That post I made moons ago was the first thing that came to mind. I can't believe you found it. I can't wait to send that link to some of those guys. Thanks for finding that treasure! I do have to say that monitoring my remote thermometer in my Weber Smoky Mountain shows little variation and if I graphed it it wouldn't be much different. Once I get it lined out, the only time I have to tinker with it is if the wind really comes up, dies, or changes direction.

I don't think of salmon as a warm water fish. What we call warm water gets to the mid to high 80s in the summer. I am a cold water weenie and I can't bear to stick a toe into northern California or PNW waters and I am sure that Alaskan waters would be out of the question. I took some parasitology courses a bunch of years ago and as part of an ichthyology course. I know more than I like about the subject and think I would recognize a wormy fish. I can say that I have run into it a couple of times while fileting a really big speckled trout, redfish or snapper. Soooo... I am going to continue to delude myself that it is uncommon.

Oh. My. Goodness. Expanded by two thirds? Will I need a crane to transport it from my coffee table to my lap? I wasn't able to get a new copy of the original in hard cover when I bought it years ago. I won't let this one get past me. I can't wait. :happy dancing smilie:

Excellent question. I can't wait to see the answer. I am up for trying to do some duck confit this fall, in preparation for a cassoulet. I see that onion confit has been mentioned. I think we have that covered in this thread. Woodburner really started something. Warning... it goes to 10 pages. I used to really like my crockpot for all manner of beans. However, when I found out about the Russ Parsons method in Dried Bean thread I pretty much abandoned the crock pot. Well, not entirely. If I need to be gone all day and want beans to be ready when I get home, I still revert to the crockpot.

Freezing is a good idea. I have also loaded up when it was good and fresh in my Asian market. It seems to be somewhat seasonal here. In the past, I have cleaned and sliced it and stored it in rice wine vinegar in jars in the fridge. You do have to adjust the sour note when you use it, though.

I remember picking wild plums that grew in the creek bottom of the country place when I was a kid. My grandmother just made jam with them. I remember that they were mouth puckering tart but made pretty good jam. If the flavor were really remarkable, I think I would remember it. We just thought it was fun to use something that we "found". And now a totally different question... Over in Cooking, the glasswort/samphire discussion produced this post. I had never thought of trying to grow the stuff. I am thinking of trying to start some on my little piece of bayfront. I will probably have to import some beach sand and water with salt water from time to time. We get some salt spray on the bay but not like on the beach. I have found some information on the plant itself here and propogation information for California here. Does anyone here know anything about this? If not, I will persevere and go on the hunt for seed producing plants and see how it goes.

For a little different approach to pickled peppers, I picked up a jar of "bread and butter" style jalapeno's that I read about in a local publication. It is a local brand, Joy Peppers. I tried them and they are GOOD! I am not usually a fan of sweetish bread and butter style pickles (I like them either really sweet or totally savory.) but this is a good fit for the sweet/sour taste. I haven't tried to adapt a recipe to the jalapenos as yet but this has possibilities.

In the discussion on "free range chickens" in the General Food Topics forum, snowangel posted this bit of information. I had bemoaned that being deep in suburbia, my chances of finding a friendly neighborhood farmer were about slim and none. Then snowangel brought up the 4-H connection. That was one of those *strikes forehead with the heal of the hand* DUH! moments. My sister is on the Chicken Committee for the Houston Livestock Show so there may be a resource there. Through that connection last year I bought 2 "pens" of chickens ($50 for a pen of 6) but those are actually a pretty normal chicken put up by a packer on contract. The idea is that the money goes to the scholarship fund, not necessarily to provide utopian chickens. I could also call my local school districts (Clear Creek, Dickenson, Texas City). Has anyone here ever taken advantage of the 4-H clubs as a resource for truly excellent chickens? Other livestock? Does anyone know how that works? Don't limit your replies to my immediate area. I am sure that any information for any part of Texas would be appreciated.

Now THAT is a great idea! Some of our more outlying high schools have active 4-H programs. My sister is on the Chicken Committee for the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show so I will bet that they have some contacts. I could also call the school districts around here. Hmmm... I wonder what other lovingly raised beasties might be on offer. At least the kids would know that their animals would be going to a place where all of their care would be appreciated.

First, I would question the fish guy's knowledge. Salmon is not a warm water gulf fish. Next, I have to disqualify myself from addressing the smoking environment. I mean to try it as soon as I get my hands on some fresh fish. My last opportunity was some large trout and redfish we caught. Then, my nephew cooked it up for a bunch of friends before I got my hands on it. GRRR!!! But I have cooked our local warm water fish including really big specimens that would be expected to have worms if any would. Slow cooking methods have not revealed any worms and the temperature is comparable. If the smoke environment makes a difference, I don't know. It is pretty common to see various parasites jump off the gills when the fish hits the deck but I have never seen what you describe. ICK! YUCK! EEWWW!!!

I did have something odd happen a couple of years ago. I shop infrequently at a large Asian market here. I don't usually buy meat there but they do have the best pork. One day, I did notice chicken backs and bits left over from trimming and it was packaged for making stock. I was in need of stock so I couldn't pass that up. I put the stock in the fridge to solidify the fat as usual. The next morning I took it out and the fat was still semi-liquid. I have since referred to that as my encounter with polyunsaturated chicken. Obviously, that chicken had eaten a different diet of some kind. The stock was very good but not something to do a happy dance about. Hmmm... Maybe I should try some of that chicken.

I live in suburbia, far away from the kindly farmer that might be able to supply me with a bird that was chasing bugs and flapping in the sun an hour earlier. That utopia doesn't exist for a great majority of us. So... I go to my local grocery and see what is on offer. Ah Ha! There is "Laura's" something or other. (I suspect that the name is a tug for baby boomers that grew up with "Little House on the Prairie".) I take my prize home, slather it with goose fat and salt, and shove it in the oven. This is my ultimate simple recipe for chicken from David Rosengarten. The results were underwhelming. Not a lot of flavor, to be sure. I could continue to use this chicken to feel all warmy and green. But I did go back to my industrial Butterball chicken that tastes like a chicken until something better comes along. BTW... This isn't the first "organic, free range, blah blah blah" chicken that I have been disappointed in.

Recipes are great things. I grew up learning how to cook the basics from hanging out in the kitchen with our extended family. But then, when I wanted to venture into other cuisines, recipes were my open door to adventure. After getting good advice on which books were reliable, I started gaining confidence to venture forth. I am further along the path with Mexican, getting there with Thai, haven't begun yet with Indian. So... That is the great thing about cooking. The paths are endless and can be endlessly fascinating. Recipes have a place in there. I guess I use them in all the ways mentioned above. I also enjoy testing and tweaking my own creations or rifs on others' ideas. Then when I think I have it where I want it, I write it down along with its story. I got the biggest thrill last week when my son tried my lemon/white wine chicken recipe in his new little Le Creuset. He called all excited... "Mom! It tasted just like yours!" Er... Um... I did puff up a bit.

David Thompson's Thai Food appears to be the definitive tome. It is very thorough and judged by those who know to be quite authentic. Victor Sodsook's True Thai is more accessible. That book is where I began to explore Thai cooking. There are also some good suggestions on extending Thai flavors into other foods. There is a whole chapter, "Cooking with a Thai Accent" that is a lot of fun. dano1 makes a good point about not really being able to substitute ginger for galangal and other chiles for birdseyes. I would add that there really isn't any substitute for lemon grass, Thai basil and kaffir lime leaves. Luckily, my interest in Thai cooking coincided with availability of ingredients in our larger Asian markets. I was also lucky enough to have a friend that had a kaffir lime tree, then the leaves showed up in the freezer case in the market. (If you decide to order the books, please use the Amazon connection below. I can't seem to get the eGullet friendly links right this evening.)

Salicornia virginica looks closest to what we have here on the Texas gulf coast.

If I ever get my house built, I have delusions of catching a trout or red fish from my pier, crusting the filets with pecans from the tree in my backyard. Those mallards wandering around just outside my current balconey are starting to look kinda tasty. I will pass on the seagulls. I know a guy that tried seagull one time. He said it was the most awful thing he ever tasted. My sister is the family forager. She uses chickweed (tastes sort of like watercress) and dandelion in salads. We find samphire when bumming around the beach and salt marsh. The thick beds of coquinas can be washed and steamed for a clam broth to die for. We make chowder with that. When driving around just about anywhere, the passenger has the responsibility to scope out what is growing by the side of the road, in the ditches and such. "Stop! Stop! There was a huge stand of elderberries back there!" What follows is a screaching of tires and probably the abuse of various traffic rules to go back and investigate.

I will tell you what I know, which isn't much. I made Thai red curry paste... once. I used the recipe in Victor Sodsok's book. Likewise, I made a mole... once. I used the recipe in Zarela Martinez's book. I have moved on to the little plastic buckets. If I didn't do that, a thai curry would be very rare in my kitchen. Unless I had been making these complex mixtures at the knee of my grandmother and mother, this is not something where I would like to wing it, therefore my reliance on recipes from a trusted source. There is just too much work invested IMHO to muck around. I suppose you could take a recipe you like and tweak one or two ingredients at a time. I will not say that I won't do it again. Sometimes I am up for a project. The next time my garden is overflowing with herbs, I will be sorely tempted to do one of the green Thai curries. On that occasion, I will drag out Sodsok or maybe Peterson. Now THAT is one curry that I will bet is worth doing fresh. I hope someone that knows what they are doing pops up. This is an interesting question.

It grows here on the gulf coast in the sandy areas in the salt marshes and sometimes in the dune areas at the beach. We usually just munch it on site. I have never harvested it to serve as a separate dish. I can't imagine cooking it or pickling it. I would hate to mess up that lovely texture. The variety that we have here inevitably has that core. The technique for eating it involves stripping off the succulent parts with your teeth and discarding the core. Now that I think of it, if stripping it were easy enough, I can see adding it to a salad or actually building a salad around it.

Hear! Hear! Sharon. A logical rebuttal if ever there was one. Elie... there is a "Contact us" link at the Chronicle site.

I don't know that it is common but I always assumed that there was stuff in there that I may not have added in my kitchen. That is why when I was counting calories I always added numbers when in a restaurant. I just always assumed that the chef would add calorific ingredients that weren't taken into account for my published calorie numbers for Marinara.

If I run into a sale, I stock up and freeze. Mostly, I keep butter in the fridge. I also keep a bit out at room temp for spreading on toast or bread. I intend for the room temp stuff to be used up in a week or two. I wouldn't advocate storing it at room temp long term. It would certainly go rancid. ICK!

I am confused with the concern for room temperature butter. I will have to admit that my go-to butter is the salted variety. It is what I grew up with and I don't care for the unsalted variety for spreading on toast and such. I keep a half stick in a porcelain crock at room temperature for weeks without any sign of decay or problem. Once or twice I have seen a sign of mold and thrown it out. I have never seen any signs of rancidity or any other pollution. Even unsalted, the composition of butter does not really lend itself to proliferation of food poisoning bacteria in most situations. So... What is the concern?

Yeah... We (my son and I) went on a hunt for goose fat that extended for several months. We finally found the stuff canned at Spec's here in Houston. It is the Rougie brand Even Dean & Delucca didn't have it at the time. They supposedly also have duck fat but Spec's didn't have any the other day when I was there for the Spec's Cheese Festival. I do chickens in goose fat all the time but I have yet to try it in a convection oven so I can't comment on that. Rosengarten seems to be convinced. I wonder how duck fat would work? I am a duck fat virgin. I can't wait to do potatoes in it.

I went on the hunt for goose fat after seeing a Rosengarten show on a baked chicken that he had had in France. He elaborated on it here in his Q&A some time ago. He expounds on the virtues of the convection oven for this bird. I can't wait to get my convection oven. Now I am on the hunt for duck fat. I may just go buy a duck.