Arey

I once sat several hours at the dining room table rather than eat lima beans. My Mother loved lima beans and took my dislike of lima beans as just one more example of my contraryness. The revulsion I feel for beets, is known only to the psychologist I went to in the mid 1980's to find out why I was so miserably unhappy at work. Her conclusions were that I was miserable at work because I had a thankless job which didn't even offer the consolation of decent pay, and if Mother or Father had explained what happened that night in the sun parlor instead of shouting at my brother and me to go to our bedrooms, take the dog with us, and stay there until morning I might not find the appearence of beets so distressful.

That makes two of us.

I think it is the opposite case. I think the customer was still very hungry. It's almost impossible to get full on the abstract. My experience is that if you eat something abstract , 2 hours later, you're hungry again. While the lemon napoleon sounds absolutely delicious to me, your customer would have been happier with one of those Pennsylvania Dutch apple dumplings, they're the size of a cannon ball, and after eating one, he would've been full for at least the next two weeks.

When you don't wake up at 2:00 AM with heartburn

If somebody has a poor appetite to start with there's nothing like bloody chicken to guarantee they won't eat. For the last ten years of her life my mother lived with me. She was an octogenarian with a bad heart and severe arthritis, and she was barely eating enough to stay alive. I frequently cooked chicken thighs for our dinner, (400 degree oven and 25 to thirty minutes on each side)and at the first sight of a bloody bone, there went her appetite. Of course, a single bone in her filet of flounder also wiped out her appetite, and even putting too much on her plate wiped out her appetite. Fortunately she did like my home made soup and even paid me the ultimate compliment by telling me that it was "almost as good as what comes out of a can".

I use my 5 qt covered Calphalon sauce pan and usually have it with noodles, and my home made pain de campagne. Thanks for all the suggestions, now I have to go to the library and check out Saveur, and go off to the local discount store to check out ales. I have both Blue and Red(Brown) Chimay in my cupboard, are they both usable?

Now that Belgian beers are readily available I would like to know which is best for Carbonnade de Boeuf Flamande. The recipe I use is from an old edition of The Joy of Cooking. Carbonnade de Bouef Flammande Recipe By :Irma Rombauer Serving Size : 4 Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- 2 pounds Boneless beef chuck -- cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, and dredged in seasoned flour 2 tablespoons oil 1 medium Onion (1/4 cup) -- thinly sliced 1 clove Garlic -- crushed 1 cup Dark beer 1/2 teaspoon Sugar Saute 1/4 cup thinly sliced onions in 1 tablespoon oil. Push the onions aside, add more oil, if necessary and brown the beef. Drain off any excess fat. Bring to a boil, the beer, garlic and sugar and pour over the beef and onions. Cover and simmer for 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours Strain the sauce before serving.(Optional - add 1/2 teaspoon vinegar to the sauce) Source: "The Joy of Cooking (1975 Edition page 418 - not in later editions)" Yield: "4 servings" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Also I've always used a lot more onion than the recipe calls for. From what I've seen of recipes on the internet, this recipe isn't all that close to the real thing. Does anyone have a better recipe that brings it closer to the actual carbonnade, but doesn't go as as far as spreading stale pain d'epice with mustard and covering the top of the stew with it while it cooks?

I had two Rosemary plants in containers for years. The variety was Arp, and the containers are about 11 inches square at the top, and 8 inches deep. Each year I'd bring them in in the Fall and take them back out in the Spring. Since I'm not into the level of commitment that house plants require I decided to plant one outdoors on the south side of my goldfish pond where it could be warm and sheltered. It seemed to do well here in coastal So. Jersey, about 6 blocks from the ocean. The other one I gave to my sister-in-law who lives on the bay side of So. Jersey, and she planted it in her garden. Well, the Winter of 2002-2003 seriously damaged mine and slightly damaged hers. This past winter has just about done mine in and seriously damaged hers. You could also grow thyme in pots, but from whatI've read, tarragon doesn't take kindly to containers. I've grown basil in containers with no problems. For a plant with a brief growing season, growing it in a contaioner allows you to dump it when it's growing season is over and use the container for something else like basil. Landscaping With Herbs by Jim Wilson, published by Houghton-Mifflin has a good section on growing herbs in containers. You might also check out the garden web forums which probably has a forum for gardening in Colorado along with herb gardening forums.

Parsley is a biennial, the first year it germinates, puts down a thick taproot, and puts out a lot of leaves. The second year it flowers and dies. Some people say that first year parsley has a superior flavor to second year parsley. I plant it new every year, but always let a few overwinter to go to seed the next year. It reseeds itself well. Right now it's cold, damp and overcast in So. Jersey, perfect parsley planting weather, since Parsley doesn't like hot humid summers. After planting the seed, I pour boiling water over the rows to encourage germination. This is also the time for planting dill. When picking either parsley or dill you hjave to carefully look them over for small swallowtail caterpiller instars, and relocate them to the parsley and dill plants you aren't going to harvest. That's where the second year parsley plants come in handy. It's best to plant mint in containers if you plan on staying where you are for any length of time since it is extreemly invasive and difficult to get rid of.

Dinner in the Arey house is at 6:00 PM. This rule is very rigidly enforced although I've been trying to break it for years, with a noticeable lack of success, which is surprising when you consider that it's just me and the cat, and he eats when he damm well pleases. I envy his freedom from rules and regulations. In my childhood, we ate at 6:00 PM. It was just mother, father, my older brother and me, and if Dad wasn't home by 6:00 PM we ate without him. His shop was about a mile from the house, and closed at 5:30, so we ate at 6:00 PM whether or not he was home. When he was home our sins of commission and ommission were reviewed, our manifold faults were brought up, and he and mother sat at opposite ends of the table looking glaciers at each other. My brother and I were not above starting arguments at the tables in hopes that we would be sent away from the table as punishment. We always said grace, and mother , my brother and I always said please and thank you, and we didn't talk with our mouths full. On better nights we didn't talk with them empty either. My father always expected me to do something clumsy. I could feel him watching me, waiting for me to knock something over, or drop something or spill something. Father never said please. He always said "I'll have more potatoes" or "I'll have the ham". One night I didn't pass him what he wanted, so he said it louder. I still didn't pass him what he wanted, and mother said "Arey's waiting for you to say please". His response was "It's my dinner table, and I don't have to beg at it!" Sunday dinners were the worse. We had to sit at the dinnertable until he was done, and he was a very slow eater. First the ham, then the potatoes , then the peas, then the ham again, (he ate consecutively, not concurrently), then the potatoes again then the peas again. On weeknights having a lot of homework was a valid excuse for leaving the table before he was done, but on Sundays there was no escape. Mother once said to me that she felt sorry for my brother and me having to sit at the dinner table, so long on Sundays. Not, mind you, that she was blameless when it came to the atmosphere at the dinner table. Frequently she would begin a conversation at the table with "You may not like hearing what I'm going to say but........." When my brother was grown, and married with children, instead of a dictatorship at the dinner table, anarchy ruled. His children were free to come and go as they pleased, were allowed to offer their blunt opinions on what was being served, and weren't required to sit down to eat. The only thing that really bothered me was that they weren't required to allow the people who weren't done eating yet,to finish their meal in peace. This is especially annoying when you consider that unlike my mother, my sister-in-law is an excellent cook. In my mother's defense, I must say that cooking for my father was a thankless chore. An example: My father had just been discharged from the hospital following minor surgery. Mother, who was always a patsy for Dad, when he wasn't well, asked what he'd like for dinner, going through a list of his favorites. "Would you like macaroni and cheese?" "I don't care" "Do you want chipped beef on toast?" "I don't care," "Would you like bacon and eggs?" "I don't care," So she made him Welsh rarebit, and when he sat down at the table he looked at it and said, "If I wanted to eat shit like this, I would've stayed in the hospital" All these years later, I still feel that if dinner isn't on the table at 6:00 PM my well-ordered existence is threatened, and chaos will reign, while my cat, lucky little bugger, eats his Science Diet Adult Cat Food, original flavor, whenever he damm well pleases. Arey

The worse food commercial I've ever watched was a MacDonalds commercial. Actually, it was the circumstances under which I watched it that made it so horrible. I had decided to cook a beef tongue, using Julia's recipe, and I had picked up the whole tongue , and I do mean whole as in my butcher whacked off the tongue, wrapped it in butcher's paper and gave it to me. After trimming it I put in my stock pot and set it to simmer. I then went back in the living room and sat down, and started to watch the TV. Over the space of an hour and a half I began showing symptoms of stomach flu, half an hour after that I was flat out on the sofa asking the Lord to please take me, Now! Then the timer in the kitchen went off, and I staggered out into the kitchen, and confronted the beef tongue. A beef tongue in its natural state even after being simmered is not attractive. So, I opened the back door, and threw the pot, tongue and all out into the yard. I then went back into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa, just as the MacDonalds commercial came on. It was where every ingredient of a big Mac, comes down from the top of the screen and bounces a couple of times before settling on the other layers. When the special dressing came down and splashed all over the burger I went into the bathroom and splashed all over the floor.

Thanks for the nice reference. The line about tapioca starch "The starch is also sometimes used to thicken soups, stews, and sauces, but the glossy finish looks a bit unnatural in these kinds of dishes." reminded me of the time when, after a busy morning of picking slugs off my hostas and dumping them in can with washing soda in it, I went to a nearby mall to go to a book store, and passing through the food court, the slick and shiny coating on the chicken and broccoli in the Happy Wokker stall made me want to tell the person behind the counter that they had a serious slug infestation.

My local grocery store has Arrowroot in its McCormick spice and herb display. The only time I ever used it was when making Julia Child's duck with orange sauce, when a translucent sauce was the goal.Tapioca flour also makes a nice clear sauce. Most oriental groceries carry it. It also freezes well, and unlike corn starch doesn't turn gloppy when reheated. There are several situations when corn starch is the only thing to use, but they have nothing to do with food.

My curiosity was piqued so I went and looked in mine, but first I had to remove my pasta pot, bamboo steamer, and 5 qt covered pot from the top of the refridgerator. I'm sorry I looked. One more reason for me to ask my brother if I can set up a table on his lawn for the yard sale weekend his town puts on each Spring.

I'm wondering how your pan got warped. Was it from baking?I almost never use the baking cycle . I use the dough cycle and then shape the dough and bake it in one of my bread pans, or on my pizza stone. Prior to getting my Zo I always had problems with the kneading and first rise. I had to replace my pan because the gaskets around the paddle arms were worn and leaking oil.

The Zojirushi model, linked above, is in my gold box again, another $20 off, now for $110.49. Check yours if you're interested, I don't see how much lower it can go. Note: New ASIN number, so click the link in this post, not the one upthread. This one will show it on sale for $120, then check the gold box (but of course, there's no guarantee that it will be in there. It cost me $50.00 a couple of months ago just to replace the pan in my Zojirishi, and that didn't even include new paddles. My Zo is over five years old so I didn't mind replacing the pan I also have the Rustic European Breads book and like it, and the Bread Machine's for Dummies book, which is also good but calls for all sorts of ingredients that you'll never have any use for in any other recipe. I'll have to check my Amazon Gold box.

I believe this receipe actually called for a cold pan to start it off I don't get CI anymore so I wasn't familiar with the recipe, but I suspected that sounded like something they might try. Do they let the chops sit in the pan at room temp before heating, or does the pan sit in the refrigerator with the chops in it? Did they brine the chops first? Brining, especially of pork, is one practice I observe in large part due to CI's influence. None of the above, which is why I was left wondering should I turn the burner on after I put the pan with the pork chops on it? I can't ask them directly, since I refuse, as a matter of principal, to subscribe to their website. I expect C. Kimball would applaud my principals on the one hand and deplore them on the other. Oh yes, this recipe was supposed to enable you to make 20 minute porkchops (the title was Juicy Weeknight Pork Chops) without brining.

I liked the pork chop recipe too (and I come from a long line of cooks who turn pork chops into a nearly indestructible substitute for leather shoe soles), but I have a few questions. When the recipe says that those of us with electric stoves should set the stove to medium do they mean before or after putting the pan with the pork chops on the burner. The directions to turn the stove on come before the directions for placing the pork chops in the pan. Secondly, is there any way to tell just how hot an electric stove's burners are? I can achieve a very nice simmer on my stove, but unless boiling something (think of the stove dial as a clock with HI at 1 and Lo at 11) I rarely use the settings from 1 to 6, and even when boiling, I turn the stove down to 3, once it's boiling. Using 7, the pork shops were sizzling in a minutes time, and then I moved them to the back burner which I had set at 10, which, for my stove, produces a true simmer. I am totally frustrated by recipes, usually ones for stir frying, that say to set your stove on medium high, and cook the minced garlic and ginger for a minute or two until it's softened and fragrant. On medium-high, my stove burners incinerate anything I put on them.

Over 60 years later, I still fondly remember Freihofer's Vienna Bread. I still like the end of a nice crusty loaf. I still love carbohydrates and always will, and I still have a weight problem, and always will, but it shifted from under to over a few years after this picture was taken.

When are they going to issue the original French Chef series on DVD? Over at Amazon.com, on rare occasions when you're looking for a DVD, if it isn't available on DVD they have a radio button you can click to indicate that you want it on DVD. They say that they'll let the appropriate people know that there is a demand for the show on DVD.

I couldn't agree more. When baiting your House Sparrow trap, to give the Martins and Tree Swallows first choice at the nesting gourds, nothing beats Wonder Bread.

Noir Lite - only half the number of corpses as Noir Regular, and no Choler. For people on the run, Noir Lite is the way to go. Joe Cairo, chef to Kasper Gutman, the famous gourmet and collecter of objects d'art, is a proponent of Noir Lite and his fresh gunsel salad with scapegoat cheese is featured in the current issue of Cooks Eliminated.

W.A. Mozart, F. J. Haydn, Doc Schaeffer and Garbriel Deutsch. I'm assuming there would be a pianoforte in the room and while having coffee the first two would be tossing off melodies and doing all sorts of marvelous improvisational things while Doc Schaeffer and I would be listening, and when necessary, Doc would tell Gaby to be quiet in the most tactful way possible. It's not that I don't want to talk to anybody, it's just that anybody I want to talk to has gone and died. Talk about lack of consideration for others

I'm not a sports fan, but if I were, in view of where I live, I'd be a Phillies and Eagles fan. So I suppose I'd be serving an herbal dip made with rue and wormwood, humble and crow pies, sour grape tarts, and stuffed spleen, all washed down with small beer.

Maybe it was the Drugstore Beetle (Stegobium paniceum) which seems to like almost anything and has been found breeding in bottles of cayenne pepper, according to Mary Berenbaum in her book "Bugs in the System". Doing a Google on Drugstore Beetle will bring up more information on this pest of stored products including drugs. Once, in a very dull moment was standing in my kitchen reading a can of imported paprika, and at the bottom it said "Keep refridgerated", so I have kept paprika refridgerated ever since without knowing why, until now.