Thanks for the Crepes

Hey Kim, I agree with cakewalk that glass doesn't conduct heat well, but you'd eventually get their anyway. We bake in glass pans. Did you use any cut and stored lemons or older uncut lemons? Cut lemons have a really short shelf life, and citrus in general, to me, has a short shelf life for optimum flavor. Limes will show their age with brown spots on the skin, but actually taste better than old lemons whose skins do not reveal their age. I usually make "key" lime pie topped with meringue with common limes, because real key limes are scarcer than hen's teeth around here. It's always delicious with no off flavors, but because I need so many limes, they're always bought fresh for the purpose. One of my staples I like to have on hand is a lemon or two in case the husband comes home with a fish or so he wants cooked, but I have to keep an eye on the lemon's age, and use them up in beverages or something if no timely fish appears. Aged lemons are really nasty tasting. Don't know if I'd call it metallic, but it surely is off-putting. So glad to hear you're feeling better.

Hey Jeremy! Welcome to eGullet. So glad you're pursing your life's passion by going to Culinary Institute of America. I absolutely love Lagunitas pislner, but it's tough to find in my neck of the woods. This site is a wealth of information for anyone who cares about good food, it's preparation, provenance and tools to make it happen. I'm pretty sure you're at the right place. One word of advice: the paragraph return key is your friend.

Hey c oliver, I'm not Mmmpomps, but I recognize "that white stuff on the left" as a delicious northern USA style steamed dumpling. Her version looks like a really good one. Even though I'm a mostly GRITS (girl raised in the south), I just don't care for southern style dumplings. They are sort of like way-too-thick, gross, doughy unleavened noodles cooked "down under" in your soup or stew. Northern style dumplings are biscuit-like leavened dough cooked on top of a simmering stew. The lack of dry heat allows an amazing amount of spring, so they're light and fluffy, and they take on the savory flavor of your gravy. At first I thought they might be unappealing because of the lack of browning. Who likes soggy bread? I still make an old Betty Crocker recipe for chicken fricassee written so long ago it calls for a stewing chicken, that we can't get here anymore unless we're raising our own chickens. It's pictured in her book with chive dumplings, and everyone I've made it for has loved it. It calls for making your bone-in parts chicken stew with gravy, then plopping dollops of biscuit dough infused with herbs on top. You simmer 10 minutes after the dumplings go on, then reduce heat and simmer another 20. Joy of Cooking has a dumpling recipe with similar ingredients, but only cooks them uncovered for 10 minutes, without the 20-minute subsequent covered steaming. I've not tried it, but I believe they would be dense, doughy and gross to my taste. Mmmpops post has inspired me to guild my next beef stew with some ethereal herb dumplings! Edited to add an "s" to It'

Hey, Anna! Thanks for reporting on your failures. Sounds like a pretty epic one, too. Sorry. :-( Weirdly, this place has a 5-star rating on yelp, with 12 reviews plus two "not recommended" ones??? There's a photo on that site, that's dated 10-15-14, of a chalkboard sidewalk sign that claims the lunch wine pour is FOUR ounces. Scrolling through the photos on yelp, photo no. 2 (dated 10-15-14) depicts a lunch pour of red and of white, that are probably about a half cup. It also comes with an overly cutesy stuffed bunny rabbit. Self-plugging reviews, anyone? They stole your Manitoulin kitchen name, and definitely did not run with it. You and Kerry are still the Masters of the Test Kitchen Universe! On the upside, they seem to have been in business for less than a year, and if your experience is typical, they shan't continue to rip folks off for long. I'm sure you'll have much better luck next time. You're in the 99th percentile for success; just chalk this one up to an "interesting" experience. Thank you for sharing. Edited because I am apparently unable to correctly spell a two-letter word. I hope this condition is temporary.

The corn cakes are very intriguing; there's been a lot of interest in them. I posit that it's because they're approachable by Western standards. Looks like they are bound with maybe cornstarch, and very good on their own. I would want to add a smidge of sauteed onion, and red pepper, hot or sweet, depending on your audience's heat index. Again, thanks so much for this intimate glimpse into Chinese food, basquecook, that so many of us will not be fortunate enough to experience in our lifetimes.

Turkey is a very challenging meat to cook well especially if you follow the directions of the old school cookbooks I raised myself on which practically guarantee a dried out, unappetizing waste of effort. Fortunately, from my very first effort at cooking one, I used a Reynolds cooking bag, which provides a moist, thoroughly cooked bird that also browns beautifully. God knows what chem-i-kills are leached into the delicious meat, so I have rethought my approach to this. My mom used a covered enameled roaster, which are hard to find now, but I may try to search one out if I decide to roast another gobbler. I've had good results deep frying them, but it's dangerous. ER visits go way up on Thanksgiving because of this popular practice. Oil boils out of the pot all over the lawn. You have to stand WAY back. Kids and pets need to be kept indoors. I can't imagine an indoor fryer like has been recently discussed here being remotely safe. Also a full on TG dinner is one of the most labor intensive meals I've personally ever cooked if I'm doing all the work myself, and not as fun as some thing like spanakopita, empanadas, egg or spring rolls, lasagne, filled crepes, chicken cacciatore, or other stuff that requires effort, but which can be done in stages over a couple days. I'm usually so burned out and exhausted at the end of a full TG traditional dinner prep that my appetite is diminished, and that's definitely no fun at all. I find it unrewarding. The thing I hate most is the last minute prep of both mashed potatoes and gravy. Don't get me wrong; I love both these dishes; but by the time I have slaved in the kitchen for two or three days, I'm just not in the mood for that last minute rush to get everything on the table hot. Thankfully, I'm no longer expected to host TG dinner for my full dysfunctional family, and am free to approach it with a much freer and creative hand. I have made everything from duck, wild goose, many of the dishes I mentioned above, to seafood. I want to make something special, more expensive and labor intense than a humdrum everyday dinner, but something that isn't going to spoil my enjoyment of the meal. So, boudin noir, I'd suggest to you, if you are not bound by familial expectations of the traditional to make something that makes you happy. Something you can enjoy too, and not be worn out by the time dinner is on the table. I find that when I am enjoying the creative process and not being a slave to others expectations, that I can usually produce some food that's far superior to slogging through what I should be doing. Usually the beneficiaries of my efforts are over the moon as well. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, thank you, basquecook! I and many others are enjoying this vicarious culinary tour of China. The odds of me ever traveling to China are extremely slim at this point in my life, so your sharing this is priceless to me.

We had no cookbooks growing up. I bought the "Betty Crocker's Cookbook" 1976 edition. It's a great cookbook for beginners. Thoroughly tested, and recipes are streamlined as much as possible. White bread America, mostly yes, but it has recipes like egg foo yong, sweet and sour pork, lasagne, sauerbraten, krumcake, fatigmands bakkelser, kugelhupf, and pannetone, if one wants to branch out. None of these are probably authentic to their roots, but they are accessible with available ingredients, and practically idiot proof. It was pretty adventurous for the young American cook in the 1970's. I also have the 1973 edition of "The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook". I never liked this one as much as Betty's, but I to this day make some recipes from it. I love their "Garden Stuffed Peppers". I melt cheddar on top of the tomato/succatosh stuffing for a vegetarian entree. They are better at breads than Betty, and many of the recipes I still use are from the bread chapter. KILLER cornbread! Both the above are ring-bound loose leaf style with laminated fabric covers, and have held up really well over the years. Later, I bought "The Joy of Cooking," 1997 edition used in real good condition then, and it's now my most battered. The hard cover spine is completely split between pages 170 and 173, with page 171/172 lovingly preserved between them. I know there's not a lot of love on this forum for JOC lately, but I adore mine. That said, I'm very glad it was not my first. I'm kind of baffled by a previous poster's recomendation of this book for beginners. It frequently assumes that one knows more than beginners would, and does stuff like telling you to have ingredients for Yorkies/ popovers at room temp without telling you how to do that efficiently. Later, I figured out on my own to put the eggs in hot tap water and nuke the milk a little. The results are poofier that way for sure, but the first time I tried it, when I had time to kill, I just wanted to see if there was anything behind their suggestion. Once I found out that it really worked, I set my mind to doing it in a time-saving manner. I have many more cookbooks since then, but these are my workhorses, and the basis for my preliminary education in all things culinary.

I know Shel_B has already decided on brussels sprouts, but I just decided we're having spanakopita. That is unless I can snag a fresh stalk of sprouts from TJ's. They usually have them at my local one in time for Thanksgiving, but I missed them last year. You might want to keep an eye out for them at your local Trader Joe's. Hmm. I wonder what spanakopita would be like if you substituted shredded sprouts for part of the spinach?

Hassouni, If your finite cabinet space is already cram packed, and prone to avalanches, it will be tough to find any organization system that will provide easy access within that same space. I think you may want to expand beyond those cabinets and maybe beyond your kitchen. I know other eGulleters have kitchen supplies and equipment stashed all over the house like I do. I have a big screen TV in the dining room, but the cabinet in the stand under it holds kitchen equipment, not DVD's. The two microwave carts in the kitchen/dining room hold more kitchen stuff. I have a four shelf pantry cabinet in the foyer crammed with more kitchen stuff. The laundry room has one wall with floor to ceiling shelves and about eight feet long in all, crammed with more. There's another shelf in the laundry room with three shelves that's about 4 feet high and a little over 3 feet wide with even more. I have a mirrored wash stand (not antique) with a two-shelf cabinet underneath that is, you guessed it, crammed with butter warmers, a bundt pan, a rotisserie for the grill, custard cups, a hand mixer, and everything else I can get in there. Upstairs, I keep things in the linen closet that I use infrequently like a huge V-roasting rack, paper plates for power outages, larger pots and pans, and holiday baking pans and stuff. I even have some stuff in my bedroom crammed in the wasted space behind my water bed where you can't see it. I don't like storing spices in glass or plastic in wall racks because light exposure degrades them, but I do have one in a corner of the dining room that never gets direct sunlight. I have two over-the-door storage units. One is in an upstairs bedroom closet, so even though you don't have a door handy near the kitchen, you might find them of use anyway. They have wide, flat enameled steel hooks that go over and are bent to the shape of the tops of the door, and enameled steel pipes suspended from the hooks that support six basket down their length, which goes to within a foot of the floor. You can adjust the spacing of the baskets for different height bottles and cans. The baskets are about two feet wide, and deep enough and sturdy enough to hold 28 oz. cans. Where the steel pipes bend into the door, they have flexible plastic caps so there is no damage to the door at all. They have held up for over twenty years, and I have really loaded them down. I was worried about the door hinges not handling the weight at first, but no problems with that either. I also have a couple Rubbermaid turntables for spices I keep in a cabinet for the spices I want at my fingertips every day. These have held up over 20 years, too, but I've no idea if their products are still made here and haven't turned to cheap, disposable junk like so many goods available now. You might want to start thinking outside the box (kitchen) and see if you can utilize space in other areas of your home for your cooking supplies. If you can use more distant space for storing less frequently used things, you can free up storage for every day stuff in the kitchen.

Welcome to Egullet, Jerry-oh. My husband has had a stroke and then had a heart attach, which resulted in a stent placement, so I have to pay a whole lot of attention to cholesterol and salt in his diet. I try to limit eggs, including hidden eggs in baked goods. Keeping fiber up is good idea. There's some evidence that it helps bring down blood cholesterol. Oatmeal, beans, apples, greens, and other high fiber stuff make frequent appearances in our meals. If you roast your lamb, just deglaze your pan with a little water. That makes the best jus to me. Organic, free range chicken is lower fat, cholesterol and tastier. Unfortunately, it's also pricier. Also recently there's some research that supports that fats are not the true enemy to heart/circulatory health, but that it may be sugars especially, and carbs in general. I dunno, they change so often it's hard to trust, but I thought it was worth some research, and I know for a fact that a lot of people (including my husband and me) can lose weight more painlessly by limiting sugars and carbs.

Hey Katie, I've found this to be true too. My husband often compliments me when I bring home a particularly fragrant cantaloupe, honeydew or watermelon. I try to find large ones that maybe have lighter areas on the side where they rested on the earth, and if you can smell them through the rind, (only applies to cantaloupes) so much the better. The watermelon is supposed to sound hollow when thumped. I get "lucky" way more than half the time, so I figure I'm onto something. But I can use all my knowledge and decades of experience and still come home with under ripe duds. We usually eat them anyway, but they're no where nearly as enjoyable as one that has come into its own in its field. If anyone knows any foolproof secrets about how to select ripe melons, I'm all ears. New Foodie: I have purchased Charentais melon at my local Trader Joe's in Cary, NC. The season is very short, so much so that either I miss it some years, or they don't carry them every year. The ones I have gotten there have not been as fragrant and desirable as a fully ripe regular cantaloupe/musk melon. I find them too sweet without the deep aroma I crave.

Hey Quesmoy, I love blackberries! You're so lucky to be getting a whole flat. They are very expensive around here. The birds, raccoons and other wildlife always beat me to the ones in my yard before they're ripe enough for me. Ditto the grapes. You could make pies and freeze before baking. I've not personally done this with blackberries because I never had enough of them, but I've literally done it with hundreds of apple pies over the years. Also the processed food companies sell unbaked frozen blackberry pies and cobblers, so you most probably can do it successfully. Blackberry muffins are good, and they can be frozen after baking to preserve them for a while. Coffee cakes and quick breads are great with blackberries, and can be frozen after baking too. I like them in pancakes with syrup made from the cooked berries too. They'd be great in a salad with spring mix or baby spinach with a blackberry balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and to really gild it, some candied pecans with a little course salt. Maybe a little goat cheese. You can also just freeze the blackberries. It changes the texture, and makes the seeds more noticeable to me, so they can't compare with fresh, and are only good for cooking after freezing. That doesn't stop me from buying them frozen out of fresh season though. Like others, I can't see how you can candy and preserve them like glace cherries, pineapple, or citrus rinds, but you could make a pate de fruit, I think. Have fun with your berries.

Hey SylviaLovegren, I've only been to Toronto once, a long, long time ago. Here's a link to an article about Toronto's "top 20 pizza places": www.nowtoronto.com/food/story.cfm?content=190800 This article is dated 1-17-2013. I looked up the first ten on yelp, and Libretto Pizzeria sounded the best to me. Picea 997 and Stradi 24 have closed per yelp. Terroni sounds like it's run by the Pizza Nazi, but might have good food if you can put up with that. I wondered if you had tried any of the restaurants in the article. It seems that such a large metropolis as Toronto would have a lot of options for many cuisines, including Italian. I remember eating very well while I was there, but I'm the type more likely to be impressed by a restaurant recommended by Michael and Jane Stern than my Michelin. :-)

I also freeze fresh cranberries for use throughout the rest of the year. I make a simple muffin with cranberries and orange zest that is more than the some of its parts. They're also good in quick nut breads, cookies and coffee cakes.

I just dug my melon-baller out of the very back of the utensil drawer to use for seeding hot peppers. I hate using gloves in the kitchen, and I hate Fiery Finger Syndrome, so thanks so much for that idea! I'm also going to try my ice cream scoop next time I make drop biscuits, and keep an eye out for smaller scoops for drop cookies. I love e-gullet for ideas like this. It has helped me so much to save time and money over the years.

This is great, Chris. You get superior, tasty pork, and the hogs got a much better quality of life than their commercially raised brethren. I love the photo of the pigs cooling off on a hot day!

I kept my porch light on until 8:45 when husband went to bed. He actually turned it off, I found a half hour later when it crossed my mind. We had no trick or treaters again this year. Some years lately, we have two or three groups of usually older/borderline too-old groups. A few have been scary, and not in a Halloween way. This neighborhood used to be a good one, in the heart of old downtown Cary, consistently awarded safest city to live in the country kudos. Not so much anymore, at least in my nabe. I moved here in 1989 when it was a working class bedroom community. Now some low-income housing has surrounded us, and I no longer feel comfortable walking in my neighborhood. I used to not worry about locking the doors every second. No more. I so miss the cute little ones that used to come in the early years, most of whom I knew, along with their parents. One year, when I was still in my twenties, an adorable little girl in a mouse costume I handed candy to on Halloween asked me what I "was supposed to be". I hadn't taken off the dress I'd worn to my office job, though I can see why she may have thought I was a fairy princess or something. It was cornflower blue with three ruffly flounces edged with white lace in tiers down the skirt with ruffled sleeves with the same lace. My husband bought 2 bags of fun size M&M's, although I clearly stated in my note to only get one. Neither of us need to eat candy, but I'v already had two of the little bags with about 16 candies in it. I only counted the first bag.

dcarch, Very creative and cute monsters for Halloween. I'm curious as to how you got the celery stalks in front of your kabocha one to appear as if they have double root ends.

Well, liuzhou, I have to agree with you, although I've come across my share of disagreeable restaurant websites in my time, for sure. This link you provide, was absolutely nothing but an image of red velvet curtains, with no scroll bars at all. I zoomed it out,trying to get scroll bars (control of my own screen back). Nothing. Smaller red curtains: no control returned. Shut the window down. Came back here to give my views, but thought I'll give it another chance. Mind you, I regularly stream videos with no problems, so this wasn't a limitation on my end. I went back to this cursed site, just to be sure, and sure enough, more stuff happened. Will report back in a few minutes. Okay. All I could get it do do was open and close those abominable red curtains. Granted, I don't speak Italian, but I do speak some French and Spanish. GAH. You have the prize for worst restaurant website so far!

Hey, OrangeBlossomom! Welcome to eGullet. I was already passionate about food and cooking when I discovered this wonderful site. You're so lucky your husband is a good cook. You're a lucky gal! I hope that we can spark an interest in you that will lead you to some culinary delights.

Welcome to eGullet, Jenny! I'd also love to hear about the culinary differences between Texas and Australia. I remember reading a food blog from Australia that depicted a gorgeous and overflowing fresh seafood market, one of the most awesome, I have been exposed to, even though vicariously. As I understand Australia, most habitable locations are close to the sea, as the interior of the continent is quite an arid desert. I'm only two hours from the Atlantic ocean, but due to this country's insane political food philosophy to process absolutely everything, put the consumer last, and make sure the middle man and stockholders get their oversized slice of the pie, I don't have very good access to fresh seafood. I am eager to hear about your culinary world, in general, but especially about the fresh seafood available to you. :-)

I think the really long cooks are designed not for ground meat, but pork spareribs, beef ribs and tough chuck cuts where you'll be rendering flavor from bones and collagen from your meats. To me, these are the really flavorful "gravies". I don't cook a ground meat sauce over an hour, but many do, including Marcella, with her recommendation in her Bolagnese sauce recipe to cook for a minimum of 3-1/2 to 4 hours. I love the ideas for freshening up a long cooked gravy at the end of cooking. That would be great on top of those long renderings of tough cut, bone-in meat.

Kim, The pork looks perfectly cooked to me for lean pork like you have there. I like fattier pork cuts cooked pretty close to well done to render and crisp the fat. Where do you get haricot verts? They look cooked from fresh, which I can never get around here unless I were to grow green beans and pick them young. (Too much shade, but I can grow impatiens like crazy.) We do have access to Trader Joe's who sell a quite good frozen version of haricot verts imported from France for pretty cheap. Is that mascarpone cake with ginger and pears on your blog somewhere? If not, would you be kind enough to share the recipe? I love all these ingredients, and I'm on a mission to get to S-Mart to buy masses of ginger for stem ginger biscuits anyway. I'm so glad to see you in good enough health to be cooking up this storm! ETA: more pedant stuff, sorry. Why in blazes don't I see the first time?

I also advocate for an extensive, thorough and accurate index. I have so many hand drawn asterisks and notations in the margins of less than perfect indices, so that I can quickly find favorite recipes that I want to use again. This includes, but isn't limited to "The Joy of Cooking" and Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cook Book". I have one cookbook that really does what I consider a very good job with their index. There are listings for their chosen names for the recipes, and each ingredient, down to subheadings under chicken: "chicken, cooked; chicken pieces; chicken breast, boneless and skinless." I still have notations in that one too, but it does the best job of any I have. If eggplant, shellfish or tomatoes are used in a recipe, you can find them in the index, even though they are not the star of the show. Mark Bittman also does a good job with the index on "How to Cook Everything," but he's not exempt from my corrections to his index either. You'd want to work on the index right from the beginning, but of course it can't be finalized until the page layout is. The page numbers are going to shift as work progresses. Fortunately, I believe the publishing software of today has matured to the point that those details (page numbering in the index) are handled automatically, unlike when I was in that business. Extra pages in an index are never wasted IMO. It'll also help bulk out the book to please your publisher. :-) ETA: a semicolon in place of a comma. I know, I know, I'm cukoo. Whatcha gonna do?