Arey

It's Chuck e Cheese for billionaires.

I joined 02/28/03, after reading a newspaper article about a controversy on the forum back then. I haven't posted a photo since 2005 when I was severely traumatized by imagegullet, but I do enjoy looking at everybody else's photos. edited because my typing has if anything gotten worse over the past 12 years.

Well not all cultures regard rice as an important part of every meal. For instance the Arapupu-Noxcxa peoples of the deepest parts of the Amazon (a hitherto undiscovered tribe of indigenous peoples) have never even heard of rice. Their main staple is the tuber of the Xcha plant which they boil for days, and then mash vigorously. It's a foul smelling and worse tasting mess which they render edible by generously dousing it with HP sauce.

Last year I asked at the farmers market I go to about Silver Queen corn and he said that farmers don't like to grow it because it doesn't keep or travel well. My mother always insisted on Silver Queen corn in the 40's and 50's but she used to buy it at a farm stand a few miles outside of Woodbury . The stand took up a small area between the shoulder of the road and a big field of Silver Queen corn. Yesterday the farmers market I go to had the first tomatoes they grow for sale. I bought some, and today I bought the bacon, and iceberg lettuce . Tomorrow morning or Saturday morning I'll be baking a loaf of pain de mie. Astronomers may get excited about the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, but I find the conjunction of locally grown tomatoes, plus mayo, lettuce bacon and toast much more exciting.

You really shouldn't rush out and buy anything until you give friends and relatives a chance to get rid of all those things they have , but don't use, and can't bring themselves to throw out by dumping them on you. Mind you, I'm speaking from my viewpoint, when I moved out my mother gave me a set of knives and forks she'd gotten with green stamps, some spare plates and cups and saucers, and a cast iron pan. As you cook you'll find the things you need and can buy them as you need them. If money isn't an issue I'd get a food processor, stand mixer, blender, Breville smart oven, some really good knives, and some nice pots and pans. Since you moved out a few months ago you may be past the initial stage and ready to lay out some real money. If I had the space I'd get a Breville Smart Oven, but I've been living on my own for over 50 years and have reached the point where I have to decide what I'm going to give the thrift shop before I can buy anything new. I just hope my oven and fridge outlive me.

I store all my flour in the fridge except for all-purpose which I store in a canister on the counter. Before it goes in the canister, it goes in the freezer for a week or so. I buy KA flour which gives a best by date on the sack. I also store things in the fridge such as pasta, potato flour, rye improver, and such.Since I'm just cooking for one I have the space in the fridge to store stuff. I even store stuff which doesn't have to be in there just to have all the similar items on the same shelf. At one time I was plagued with pantry moths so I try to avoid making my kitchen too inviting for them.

Will somebody please tell me what Pringles is advocating doing with pringles besides eating them. I've googled this but have only found things to do with the empty cans. This information doesn't interest me since to get the empty can, you first have to eat the pringles. When they first came out I bought a can of pringles, I ate the pringles, and that was the last can of pringles I ever bought, and I probably threw the can out. Now Glenfiddich canisters, there's a canister you can do any number of useful things with. I had to google twizzlers to find out what they were, and anything you can do with a twizzler that doesn't involve eating it is an improvement. I'm with the others who prefer the old style of marketing. My split pea soup recipe comes straight off the back of a Jack Rabbit split pea bag.

I grow most of my own herbs, except for tarragon which I've given up on and rosemary because just when the plants are really doing well and growing, along comes another record cold January or February and it's start all over again. The parsley I freeze in the Fall, and the basil which I turn into pesto with all the ingredients except cheese and freeze in small portions. I also cook meals which would serve 4 and freeze 3 of the portions for the future, and I always make enough rice to freeze at least two portions. My mother was very big on buying fresh produce, strawberries, green beans peaches and such and freezing them for the future, and buying things and putting them aside for the future. After getting home with the shopping she'd say "Now comes the worse part putting everything away". After I've put a lot of things away for the future, I get this nice feeling of accomplishment and doing something sensible and worthwhile, such as a woodpecker that's stuffed as many pinon nuts into a cactus that it can, or a chipmonk with an overflowing stash of nuts in its burrow must feel.. I do it because I enjoy doing it, I think she did it because she got married and started a family during the depression, and she had to do it when she had the money to do it, because she never knew when there wouldn't be any the money to do it. Like many housewives of her class and generation her motto was "Make do". Some were proud of how good they were at "making do" others got depressed or anxious over always having to "make do"

Shucking split peas is a basic pleasure. You can sit down, relax, have a cup of tea or coffee, turn on the tv, watch the umpteenth rerun of a Law and Order episode and still have the feeling of accomplishment afterwards, as opposed to sitting down having a cup of tea or coffee, and watch the umpteenth rerun of a Law and Order episode.

Andiesenji's" suggestion in other places should be repeated here. Remove the paddles,at the end of the kneading cycle, reshape the bread and put it back in the machine for the rising and baking. If I ever make a whole loaf clear through the baking I hope I remember this valuable suggestion.

The total time of the bread cycle is 1 hour 50 minutes, so you could be doing other things during that cycle, and you do have to check in the mixing/kneading part of the cycle to add more flour or liquid as necessary. The time you're actually saving is in the mixing/kneading cycle and is only about 20 minutes at most, so you're right, very little time is actually saved.The first 20 minutes is the preheating part of the dough cycle which even the KA people (and that is where I bought my ZO) don't seem to feel is necessary. However, since I keep my flour in the fridge and don't take it out until I'm ready to start the machine I like the preheating part of the cycle.

I've been using my ZO BBCC-V20 for over 16 years. I think the BBCC-X20 is the latest version of this model. I've always been happy with it, but I only actually used it to bake bread once, just out of curiosity. It has a dough cycle which is the only one I use. I've never enjoyed the mixing and kneading part of bread baking. So the ZO takes care of the mixing and kneading, and first rise. Then I take it out and shape it and bake it. I made a loaf of pain de mie using my pullman pan and I'll be making whole wheat pain de mie tomorrow. I have a rye bread pan for making sandwich rye, and large and small brotforms along with brotform liners and also a baking stone for hearth bread and peasant rye bread. The only breadsI buy are dinner rolls and Italian bread. The rolls because despite having a few really good recipes for rolls, after making them my wrist hurts like the dickens, and Italian bread because no one can make Italian bread except for two Italian bakeries in Atlantic City.Also, if you're making a sponge or biga, you can make it in the bread machine,using the dough cycle, turn it off once the sponge is mixed, let it sit over night in the machine turned off, and the next day add the additional ingredients and let it run through the whole dough cycle. If you want something to do the mixing and kneading for you the ZO will do that. The one I have can also make jams, jellies, and quick bread but I've never used those cycles. I just use the dough cycle, and I don't have a thermomix or a mixer so the bread machine takes care of that for me.Frankly I wouldn't buy a one lb. bread machine, or one that makes those strange looking vertical loaves with the hole in the bottom.

Mustard (Kosciusko Spicy Brown) sweet pickle relish (Heinz). And of course, potato chips (Lays Classic in the 3 serving(theoretically)bag) on the side.

I've never understood this myself. There are two different Northwest U.S. Pinot Noirs that I drink that keep well for a few days, and another one that doesn't keep well at all. There's also a French Pinot Noir I like that keeps well. I use one of those Vacu Vin gadgets, and rarely keep an open bottle over three days. I also refrigerate open bottles. I don't buy expensive wines since I don't have the sort of palate that can appreciate expensive wines.Also, I don't have the sort of budget that can afford to buy them, so everything works out nicely.

I'm from the generation that didn't have picky eaters because our mothers wouldn't tolerate any nonsense about food.I ate what was on the plate - unless - it was lima beans, and it was long while before my mother would accept that I wasn't being picky, I really truly hated lima beans. If what I didn't like was something my mother didn't like, that wasn't being picky, if I didn't like something she did like, that was being picky. Hence the lima battles. When fresh corn was in season at the local farm stand, she would invariably ruin it by making succotash. I tried lima beans once as an adult, and my original opinion was confirmed.My mother enjoyed them because that was the only time in the ten years she lived with me that they made it onto my dinner table.

Some people just don't care about food. Meals are an interruption and take them away from what they want to be doing.It is nice that they have a way to get all their necessary nutrients without wasting any time doing it. I am happy for them, but much much happier that I am not now and never have been one of them.

It's just following the usual downward spiral of cable TV. Look at what happened with A & E and Bravo.

I've used the Scotch Brite non-scratch scrub sponges, and have never noticed this problem, and I probably use the individual spongers longer than I should. But, I stocked up on them over a year ago, so maybe they've changed their formula since then. I opened a three pack and rinsed one in a bowl and the water didn't look anything at all like the water on the Happy Baby site. I do give a new sponge a shot of dish detergent and rinse it out well before I start using it to wash dishes.Now I have 2 sponges, one only a week old, and one never used yet. I'll put one with the slightly used handi-wipe I've been saving for when I have an "absolutely positively must do something about that sink" moment.

One of my recipes from King Arthur warns not to let the bread overproof or it will collapse. but will rise a little in the oven. Maybe sticking it in the fridge while it was waiting to get into the oven, would have slowed down the rising so it wouldn't have collapsed.

If this was advertised on TV as a combination wok knife and ginger grater for only $8.00, and the first 500 callers could get a second one free for just the shipping and handling I might be seriously tempted.

I never knew they made a sweet Lebanon bologna. Why would they want to? But then, I wonder that about a lot of things food and non-food.

All right. I'm not embarassed, I'm proud! I have two 2 oz. bottles of Tasters Choice with a best by date of Apr. 2003 and a can of dried egg whites with a best by date of 2010. However, the state of the actual top shelf in my kitchen cabinet is embarassing. I also really like Cooper Sharp processed cheese. Laugh if you will, I don't give a fig for your caviar and foie gras, just give me a toasted cooper sharp cheese sandwich on wonder bread with yellow ballpark mustard, and I'm as happy as a pantry moth in an open sack of all-purpose flour.

Bittman's How to Cook Everything and Fish. Julia Child's How to Cook. Judy Gorman's Vegetable CookBook (I really need to find a better vegetable book. Jennifer McLagan's Bitter. (I wish she'd given a bit of space to Swiss Chard) Jack Bishop's Pasta Verdure There are other books with a recipe or two that I use so frequently that I've typed it out and have it filed in a loose leaf binder so when I want to use it, I can clip it to the cabinet above my counter space. These are mostly recipes where I'm actually going to measure ingredients and try to follow the recipe faithfully. Bread recipes for instance.

Cooks Illustrated. (I rarely cook recipes from the magazine since as a senior citizen living alone there's a limit to the number of utensils and ingredients I'm willing to use to achieve the perfect glass of tap water.) Every Day Food (it was basically simplified recipes from Martha Stewart Living. When Martha's empire stopped publishing it, instead of offering refunds they switched Every Day Food subscriptions over to Martha Stewart Living. I wouldn't have minded so much if they'd sent it in a plain brown wrapper.) Edited to add that the list would be much longer if I included the magazines I leaf through while in the checkout line at Bon Terra Market.

A bottle of Taster's Choice Instant Coffee with a best by date of 2003. It's at the very back of my top kitchen cabinet, which I can't get to it without a stepladder. That's probably why I still have it.