Thanks for the Crepes

Thank you for the kind welcome, Kim Shook! Yours are always among the posts I look forward to. I'm very sorry to hear of your health problems and wish you a speedy recovery from everything, and it, unfortunately, seems like a daunting lot. I have followed this forum for many years, and you have always been kind and helpful to everyone. It would be a privilege to know you in real life, I am convinced. I love your down home Southern cookin', lady! I hope you continue to delight people with your cuisine for many more years. It is such a pleasure to meet you in virtual space.

I use waxed paper in my kitchen for many of the things that have already been mentioned in this thread, but something I find it indispensable for is nuking already made and assembled breakfast sandwiches. I can't stand nuked leftover pizza, and always spend the money to heat the oven because it comes out crispier. (Yes I'm aware of the covered skillet/griddle method from Serious Eats, too). Ham or sausage or bacon, egg and cheese biscuits seem to reheat and steam beautifully in the micro when wrapped in waxed paper, and I trust it a lot more than I do plastic wrap, even the ones that claim they're microwave safe. It's good for nuking burritos I send in my husband's lunch too. It keeps the bread component from becoming unappealingly tough. I do overwrap in plastic though for transport and storage with instructions to remove plastic before nuking, because it's a lot better at keeping moisture in the food and ambient moisture OUT of it from the condensation effect of the ice packs in his lunch box.

Shel_B- I see what you are saying, but the alternatives: plastic wrap and foil are even more environmentally unfriendly. This comes from a person who has one small bag of trash weekly, mostly styrofoam meat trays, egg cartons, used tissues and other stuff, and yes, waxed paper, that our local recycling program won't accept. The recycle bin, about 70 gallons is full to the brim every other week. I miss the days of cardboard egg cartons. You can still get them at Trader Joe's. I know you are a fan of their franchises, but I can't always get there when I need eggs. ETA: The bit about cardboard egg cartons.

Well, I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know what "spread organically" means. I just Googled it, and nothing meaningful came up. So I think it would be necessary to explain what you mean by that if you want to appeal to enough people to make them want to buy your cookbook and be profitable. Also, many of your ingredients would be extremely hard to find for most people. Even die hard food enthusiasts might be taken aback by the percentage of ingredients that would either take a lot of work to source or require them to risk their credit information online for what seems to be one bite of food, even superlative food. So I suggest you make more recommendations for substitute ingredients like you did with the canola for harder to find rice bran oil. Perhaps some mainstream nut that could be ground to flour at home for the acorn flour or almond flour? It sounds like you are going for a niche cookbook. I just think it's going to be kind of tough to attract enough audience with so many esoteric ingredients and unclear instructions to make this a profitable enterprise. Also pictures of a finished dish that complicated would be extremely helpful to let your target audience know what they're shooting for and to tempt them to spend the time preparing it and sourcing the ingredients. Anything you can do to expand your appeal will widen that niche and make more people want to spend their money for your cookbook. I know you are an accomplished James Beard nominated chef and very passionate and energetic in what you do. I'm going to come and eat in your restaurant in Silver City one day. I'm sure it would create a memory I would cherish for the rest of my life. I want to see you succeed in your cookbook endeavor! edited cuz I caint spell.

Thanks, Smithy.

You know those nylon? or otherwise very durable flexible plastic mesh bags that produce like onions or fresh brussels sprouts sometimes come in? The ones that are sort of a diamond shaped mesh that's expandable and very strong to contain heavy produce that needs to breathe. Well, I used to toss them in the landfill trash because our local recycling program won't take them. Now I've discovered you can save and use them to clean icky stuff like bread dough bowls and melted cheese stuck onto dishes that will gunk up the scrubbies you buy to the point they can't be cleaned. These durable mesh bags, wadded up, will make short work of scraping the worst gunk off. Then rinse in running water and shake the bag into the sink, and the gunk goes down the drain. They can be thrown in the top rack of the dishwasher for sanitation. I always do that after using with something like cookie dough which contains raw eggs. They last a long time in a home kitchen, at least, cost you nothing, and they also keep waste out of the landfill for quite a while. I've also found that they don't scratch anything, unlike the green Scotch Brite scrubbies. Those things will scratch 18/8 stainless with some vigorous elbow grease.

Thanks for the welcome curls, and I'm very excited to be here at last.

I've lurked on this site for over a decade, and I'm delighted to finally have joined. I'm from Cary, which is a suburb of Raleigh, and followed Varmint's pig pickin's avidly. He's a lawyer from Raleigh, but sadly, he seems to be inactive now. I found EGullet during a culinary search, though it's been so long ago, I can't remember what I was looking for. I bookmarked, and have been back nearly every day to learn from kind, generous and erudite members. I made my first crepes because of the EG "Cookoff" about them. I'd watched the hapless "Hell's Kitchen" crew screw them up so badly with their method, that I was even more intimidated than before. The cookoff made it clear to me that I could swirl batter in a non-stick skillet. I used Marcella Hazan's recipe for crespelles from "The Classic Italian Cook Book". (She really does make cookbook two words.) I had success the first time, and have made them many times after. For folks who remember fondly Stouffer's frozen entree, crepes with ham and swiss, I include my recipe for their discontinued item: Stouffer's Ham and Cheese Copycat Crepes 12-10" crepes (your favorite recipe) 16 oz. deli shaved ham (I use Land O' Frost hickory smoked) 8 oz. swiss cheese, grated 2 c. med. thickness bechamel sauce 2 T. drinkable white wine Make crepes. Make bechamel, and stir in wine and cheese until melted and sauce is smooth. Oven 350F Assemble crepes by laying them all out and placing 3 slices of ham (Land o' Frost brand has exactly 36 slices to the pound) lengthwise down the center of each one. Then use a small ladle to divy up the sauce down the center of the ham row. Roll up, and either bake them off immediately or wrap individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. I usually do that with half the recipe to feed my husband and myself the next day, and pop the other half into the freezer for another lovely meal. They freeze beautifully. I have individual oval gratin dishes which fit 3 filled crepes perfectly. If refrigerated or frozen, you want to have them come up to room temperature before baking. Thaw from frozen overnight in fridge. Bake 10 minutes at 350, then either reduce heat to 200, if you have a normal, decent oven, or if you have a crummy oven like my landlord's, turn off oven, and leave in for another 10 minutes, until the delicious cheese sauce is starting to bubble at the ends and it and the crepes are browning just a tad. ________________________________________________________________________________ I hope someone enjoys this as much as I have since they discontinued this item. Stouffer's just isn't what it used to be. They must have been bought out by Wall Street. Even the lasagna sucks now. Two thick noodles are fused together because they don't bother to put sauce in between them. Stouffer's history is an interesting read, and they maintained good quality for many years, but that is over. So difficult to get even acceptable food now unless you make it yourself. Thank you all so much for helping me to do just that, and I hope to be able to contribute now that I have joined. Just like StuartLikesStrudel said a day or two ago, "A bunch of people helping each other in the name of cake... kinda restores one's faith in humanity and the internet :P"