Thanks for the Crepes

I don't know, liuzhou, because there is little transparency these days from the food chemists, bean counters and chemical companies seeking to control our food supply these days, at least in this king of the capitalists country. The government is much more friendly to business than to consumers and seems to acquiesce to business lobbyists for all manner of things that are terrible for their constituents. Granted in order to work, yeast as a living organism, must be alive, but I've got a three pack of envelopes of fast rise yeast that also has sorbitan monostearate and ascorbic acid. It's the former I'm concerned about. I think it's some kind of synthetic wax, and it makes me wonder why we would want to eat it. The other is just synthetic Vitamin C, and I have lots of recipes for baking that call for lemon juice or vinegar for a higher rise.

I bought some biscuits that were made (not by me) with palm oil. I was so very pleasantly surprised that this fat worked so well as a substitute for butter or shortening. I bought six at first and went back to buy a dozen more for the freezer. That was my first cognizant experience with palm oil. I understand vaguely that it's popularity and production may damage habitat, but I can also now see why people like it. These are some awesome biscuits.

Urm, you can clarify your own butter. Much advice on making ghee is available on the internet if you search. As for replacing avocados with avocados, is that supposed to be a bad joke?

So that's why I don't like the texture of all the meat stuffed ravioli I've tried. Spinach and ricotta ravioli is my favorite. We have a couple of Salvadoran restos here that offer some kind of meat paste in their pupusas. I can't bring myself to order meat paste in anything. It seems to invoke a deep distrust in me. I really like the cheese and loroco ones available at El Custcatleco.

@Franci, I too find subtexts in a video distracting and have to be really motivated and in the right mood to watch a video with them, but sometimes I will, if I really want to see the movie or video. I didn't think your accent interfered with my understanding you that much. I don't think you were trying to give a detailed recipe in the short video, but rather generate interest in your web presence and your products. I think you accomplished that. IMO your accent only adds authenticity to the provenance of your pastries. I understood your directions to click the link below the video to get to the recipe, but you may want to speak a tad slower and emphasize it more, so more people will get it. I think @Toliver missed this at the end of your video. Good job, and I am so happy for you! I got my first real perspective of you with the 11" tart ring in this video. You must be a petite little lady. I thought that ring was about 16" or more, and was wondering how such a huge thin cake was going to work. With your business, your YouTube presence should definitely be foremost to drive traffic to your website and that is a good place to do that with all the gazillion viewers on YouTube daily. One thing I might suggest is that some posters to YouTube seem to have a way to link their videos together to autofeed to the viewer if they keep watching. Another YT poster's video came up on autofeed after yours, so you are not currently doing this now. Please do not ask me how to accomplish this linking, because I am an avid YouTube watcher, but don't own a camera or even a cell phone. Maybe your advisers can help you to get your videos linked so they will autofeed to viewers one after the other? So exciting, and good luck.

I had SunCrest Farms country ham on biscuits tonight with seedless Concord grapes. I wondered why the ham was so much better with the good funky aged full flavor it lacked the last time I had it. Finally, I decided that when I was cooking for my husband, I was soaking to the ham in water to remove some of the salt because of his high blood pressure. Well, duh! That was taking flavor as well as salt out. So I have to take back my comment about SunCrest not being very good. It's still not the best, but it's just fine if you don't wash all the flavor out.

Here's a link to a video about Edwards country ham. I'm really interested in that since I know my mama's family comes from Virginia and her maiden name was Edwards. I guess there's really no way of knowing if I have a link to the ham-making family, since I was ordered to be cut off from them when I was orphaned. I picked up the only country ham available at Food Lion the other day. It's SunCrest brand, and not very good at all. *Sigh* I used to be able to get Stradler's at Food Lion, and that was very good indeed. SunCrest is incorporated in Elon, NC, but they still are not very good at all. I should look around at Harris Teeter to see if they have something better in the country ham department on offer next time. Gorgeous meals, as usual, @Kim Shook!

That is not old enough, but still shocking that it could have happened with a cup at room temp from a cabinet! If I did not know and respect you so much, that would be hard to believe, but I do know, trust and respect you, so it happened. That soda lime glass cheat cost cut is horrible and no way to sue Chinese companies for injuries or losses. Brought to you by businessmen/women who poisoned their countrymen's babies with formula tainted with melamine. Some of the responsible parties were eventually executed, but that did not bring the babies back to life. Here's a link to how the good and useful cookware became extremely dangerous. I "love" the statement that there has never been a recall on their products. They also rest on their laurels of past performance of decades, which is true, but things have changed and not for the better for the consumer. That is because the political climate here in USA and many other places is so friendly to business that even people who are severely injured by their lower than crap products nowadays have a hard time suing. Please don't buy soda lime glass. It is dangerous in your kitchen!

Hi Manav, and welcome to the forum. Here is a link to what Google brings up for "modernist cuisine" on this site. For future reference, note the format of the search: whatever you're looking for site:egullet.org. I'm afraid I can't be of further help because modernist cuisine is not one of my many areas of interest, but no matter what you are interested in you'll find a lot of good information on this site.

I think the exploding Pyrex is a problem with the later manufactured stuff after they switched from borosilicate glass to tempered soda lime glass. I have a bunch of pieces that I bought years ago and have never had a problem with them, but there is definitely a problem with the newer stuff, which you could not pay me to accept. @Lisa Shock, was your measuring cup of recent manufacture? That is so scary, and I am seriously wondering how that could happen. I've had several glazed stoneware pieces that are marked "oven proof" (they aren't) fail, but they usually just crack into two or three pieces, ruining your food, of course. I got rid of them because the oven proof part was most of the appeal. A live in boyfriend had a set of Visions pots and pans. This was in the late 80's to early 90's. I liked them because you can see inside as to what's going on with the food. I can't recall an undue problem cleaning them and I do remember missing them when he moved out enough to invest in some cookware with tempered glass lids so I could see my food cooking again. We used the Visions on the stove top with no problem, but that was then and this is now. I would not even consider soda lime glass for kitchen ware, but if you can find the vintage borosilicate, you will be fine, I think.

I also remember a flight I took with my mother as a wee girl. It was before 1967, but I can't recall the food, or airline. We were traveling from San Diego to Florida to visit her parents. I never felt like such a princess and I'm sure we were not traveling first class. The flight attendants were so nice, friendly and accommodating to everything you not only asked for, but would anticipate what you might want. Flying was fun then, but the terrorists have definitely won these days. Sometimes I think I might be hallucinating these memories in these current days of partial disrobing on command and doctors getting dragged out of seats they've paid for with broken faces. This link from the Daily Mail proves I'm not. And is that Jon Voight in the second photo to the right in the image of the charcuterie cart?

I flew in 1996 or 97 from Raleigh to Nashville to visit my then boyfriend's brother who is a songwriter there. If we were given anything to eat, I can't recall it. I do recall the beer. They were serving cans probably with plastic cups for you to pour it in, but it's the condition of the cans I so vividly remember. Every one was dented and crumpled to the point that you know some of their mates from the same batch got punctured and spewed out the contents. We were on US Airways, but after that the airline was known to us as "US Scare". The cans probably fell off a lift onto the tarmac, but they looked as if they had been salvaged from the wreckage of a plane! These would have been better reserved for a staff party or something instead of served to passengers. It was not a confidence builder.

Last night's dinner was kind of a weird combination, but I has some tomatoes that needed to be used ASAP. I made a pico de gayo with the tomatoes, a small jalapeno, white onion, and I even had some fresh cilantro. I also made some cheese dip from melted white American thinned with the juices from the pico that drained off after salting it. These were eaten with white corn tortilla chips warmed in the Dutch oven. Then I had a couple of pieces of fried chicken from a bucket I picked up from the Harris Teeter along with a buttermilk biscuit also from the deli. The biscuits are made with palm oil instead of shortening or margarine and are very good warmed in the Dutch oven and topped with honey. Dessert was seedless Concord grapes, which are not nearly as good to me as the regular Concords I thought I was buying. Tonight was more of the chicken, another biscuit with honey, baby lima beans and an iceberg, shredded carrot, bell pepper and tomato salad with lemon tahini dressing. I think I am going to try freezing the rest of the chicken for later. They do it with TV dinners, and while they aren't great, they're quite edible.

I had a couple of disappointing purchases at Harris Teeter today. The first was Concord grapes. I saw them on sale in the flyer for $3.00 a pound, and my first thought was, it is awfully early for Concords. No matter, I dismissed it and it was the first purchase I put in my cart. I also bought a 1 pound clamshell of Campari tomatoes without really looking at them, because they have been so good that I have not been tempted by any other tomatoes except for some "heirlooms" which looked the part, were juicy, but were an epic fail in the flavor department. The "Concords" in the clamshell were smaller than I'm used to and were sold alongside even smaller "Champagne" grapes for the same price. I popped them into the cart in great anticipation. Concords are probably my very favorite grape followed by purple muscadines and scuppernongs. I get my purchases home, and one of the very first things I do is pop open the clamshell of Concords, wash some and set them on the counter so I can pick them off as put away the rest of the supplies. I knew immediately something was dreadfully wrong. I wolfed the first one without thinking, but after I completed the task I was involved in, I wondered why I hadn't had to spit out a seed. So ... I went to look at the labeling, and sure enough these are Pure Valley Farms seedless Concords from Dinuba, CA. Too sweet, not tart enough, not what I was expecting, but my bad for not investigating earlier. I am sure they're engineered to appeal to more mainstream people and will probably be very successful. They do have more flavor than regular Thompson green seedless or the red seedless. Just don't buy them if you are looking for the tough skinned, tart experience of a real Concord. I also liked that they are forthcoming with the fact that their grapes are treated with sulpher dioxide. (Aside: Pepperidge Farm cookies that I also bought divulge they are made partially with genetic engineering. Another thing I found out at home after my scurry.) The Campari's were also my bad. There was a rotten, moldy one in a bottom corner of the clamshell, which if I had turned it up to look at, like I usually do, I would have seen and never purchased the container. Several others are infected enough to have to pare off bad parts and eat tomorrow or not at all. I washed them all and let them dry thoroughly. We'll see. There was a 20% chance of thunderstorms and I was congratulating myself on making such good time and not getting rained on or struck by lightening on my 4 mile walking excursion. Until I had a chance to properly inspect my purchases. Note to self: take time to inspect produce even if several people have been struck dead by lightening in the past week or so. We have the second highest lightening casualty rate in the nation, so I was scampering. My muscles ache. No pain, no gain, right. Well this one ought to be a pretty good gainer. They have dragon fruit on offer at Harris Teeter, and they are interesting and beautiful. I passed since I have heard they do not have a lot of flavor and are quite expensive at HT. I have never tasted one and just may do it next time just because of that. I bought a some yellow peaches, nectarines and pluots at Food Lion yesterday. Hopefully, some of these stone fruits will be good. I bypassed the "local" table for peaches because they were so bad and overripe/mealy last time. Coons got most of the five I bought and lovingly carried home on foot last time. They will eat nearly anything. That's okay though because the ones I bought earlier in the season were really divine. Juice dripping down the chin lovely. I can't wait until the real Concords, muscadines and scuppernongs come in. So tart. So good!

Yes, what @cakewalksaid. You are doing better then fine, and we are loving it!

@Arey, I would think the dressing would still be fine, provided the cottage cheese, mayo and milk you used are within their expiry dates. I am assuming you whirled this up in the blender. So if you used fresh dill, and I'm thinking you did because a full t. of the the dried would be very potent, the fresh dill might not be very happy at this point, but I doubt it would hurt you. Of course, if you only buy cottage cheese for this purpose and it might go to waste, I'd go ahead and remake it. You have given me an idea for a salad dressing I might like based on cottage cheese. I had never thought to use that in salad dressing, but I like it a lot and if it's offered on a salad bar, I always take some. I used to make a low cal dip with cottage cheese pureed in the blender, then Knorr dried vegetable soup mix and chopped spinach was added. You have to let it sit in the fridge overnight to rehydrate the veggies and that also thickens the dip. It was really good, so I think I will try a salad dressing with cottage cheese, but without mayo or vinegar. Or maybe a little vinegar and herbs for a nice creamy Italian. I'll think about it.

@Kim Shook, Beautiful breakfasts and pineapple bundt cake. I'm so glad to see you posting more again. The food you make and even the restaurants you share are always appealing to me. Your guests are very lucky.

Here is a copycat recipe for the torte and there is a discussion about it on Chowhound with other links. You might be interested to read some of the posts from folks who ordered from the bakery and/or used a copycat recipe. It seems the 50 buck shipped version of the torte does not even have the pastry cream filling, but just butter cream between the layers. According to some posters, they were able to make better versions than Prantl's using real butter instead of shortening/margarine. I will say that the Huff Post photo of the cut cake looks to me like a single square 8 or 9" cake that has has been split horizontally and then filled and frosted and all the copycats I read used two regular layers, so would make a larger cake. It would be a fun challenge to try to recreate it. I won't be doing it anytime soon with a broken oven and more 100 F temps on the way, though. And, yeah, you are not going to get the recipe from an official representative of the bakery.

Yes! Young people have such high metabolisms. I remember those days for myself, and could eat four or more times what I eat now and never gain an ounce. I was preparing to host my nephew and his fiance, at the time, now wife, with a Mexican feast a few years ago. My husband asked me why I was making so much food for the amount of guests. I told him he would be surprised at the quantity these two kids in their early twenties would put away. I was right too, and they loved the spread I put out. The next day they were both slated to take a long practice run in our summer heat to prepare for a fitness challenge test back at the military base when they returned from their vacation. I feel confident that I fueled them well for their run (which would very likely have killed me ). I actually love feeding people with ravenous appetites, but I'm sure that's only because I do not have a live-in teen/young adult. It would get pricey fast now. During my ravenous years we had Shaky's Pizza buffet with fried chicken and salad, Shoney's salad and breakfast bars, the Hungry Fisherman all-you-can eat specials on seafood, and food in general was much cheaper. I feel sorry for parents now, it would cost a fortune to feed a growing active teen/young adult these days. That center drink's glass is so narrow on the bottom, I think they were afraid to fill it all the way, because a breeze might tip it over. It's an interesting and pretty glass, though. It looks right on the brink of being stable. Perhaps it is just perspective, though. I have loved seeing your meals and the beautifully photographed scenery on St. John, VI, and thanks so much for sharing with us here.

Last night I cooked a ribeye steak and served it with the classic baked potato and salad with artichoke hearts that were leftover from a pasta dish that also used the next to last serving of the Argentine Red Shrimp from the freezer. Tonight was tacos with the leftover steak, refried black beans and Mexican red rice. These were the best steak tacos I ever had, probably since restaurant steak tacos do not use ribeye.

I agree because I dislike sweet mayonnaise too. I am a fan of Duke's, which is popular here in the southern US and contains no sugar at all. I use it to make tartar sauce and sometimes as salad dressing, and sometimes on a sandwich or burger. Sweet mayo seems popular, but I will never like it. @Duvel, the scenes you have shown us from your Hong Kong world are so beautiful! It seems though that from the insights @blue_dolphinprovided that there is a dark under belly to the society (and what society doesn't have one?). The domestic workers seems to spend their day off as homeless people do here with their tents and cardboard constructions, although since the recycling movement here, it's hard for them to even obtain waste cardboard. The corrugated cardboard boxes here have been monetized, as with perhaps everything else it is possible to do with. It is uplifting the "helpers" seem to celebrate the day anyway. It is a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit.

I'm loving this virtual tour of Hong Kong by our generous member @Duvel as well and appreciate @liuzhou's perspective as too! So many new things to see and learn about. I do not think the image in question is baleen, which appears more like a hair-like or course bristle structure with split ends. I don't think it's tripe either, because that usually has a rough honeycomb-style structure. Some of you know by now that I love a mystery, even if I am not very good at solving them all the time. The structure in the photo reminded me strongly of something. I kept thinking and nothing I have encountered came up in the anatomical department. Finally I settled on an old-fashioned automotive radiator. I think it's an efficient organic exchanger of some kind, so my first thought was lungs, but that went nowhere on image searches for dried lungs. So I moved on to gills and found this image which looks a little similar. It is being sold as Chinese medicine in a Malaysian market and is the most similar image I have found. So your doc might not think you are crazy after all, liuzhou.

Smithy, I was also aware of the toxicity of the lionfish species I was familiar with through my long ago hobby of keeping fish in fresh water aquariums. I was drawn to many of the beautiful salt water species in the stores, but after finding out they were even more work and expensive to maintain than the freshwater ones, I abandoned my interest in getting a lionfish. I had the same questions you did and went to find out more. I think I read an article about the wildfife management authorities in Florida having a campaign to push for eating lionfish as a means of controlling an invasive species. I can't locate that article, but here is what wiki has to say on the matter.

I have the Rival electric Dutch oven, as shown in the first two linked images with the domed glass lid. It looks much like yours. I don't care for it as a griddle due to the high sides, but have used it that way to cook breakfast off the generator during an extended power outage, which is the main reason I bought it. It has temp control too, and works well. I also use it on the back deck for fish and chip fries. I really like it, but I kind of think my model may not be sold anymore except on ebay. Oh, and while it claims to be dishwasher safe and completely immersible after unplugging the electrical supply, I ran it through the dishwasher the first time I used it and found a disturbing amount of corrosion on the exposed aluminum on the bottom of the unit where the encased heating coils run. I have hand washed it since and it has held up very well over about 15 years. When I was growing up, my family had an electric skillet that I believe was Presto brand, but it was square and aluminum and has a little vent in the lid that could be closed or opened. I used to make Chicken Fricassee for the family from this recipe in it. I'm not sure if Betty ripped off Irma or vice versa, but their recipes for dumplings are identical except the "Joy of Cooking" calls for butter in an equal quantity instead of the shortening Betty calls for in the 1976 cook book. I have always used butter, and the dumplings are divine. I like the chive dumpling variation from Betty that isn't mentioned in the link but is in my 1976 cook book.

Oh, I do love a good peach! We have had a really marvelous season for them locally here, but the last batch I bought, the first one I tried was inedible. Overripe and mealy. The subsequent two have been marginally edible, but not anywhere near what they were earlier in the season. So, it's kind of hard to tell about peaches just on looking at them. That's okay though, because when you run across the perfect ones, it makes all the disappointments worth it. A good peach is one of the high points of summer and life in general to me, and I feel blessed to have had a very good season for them. That does not happen every year.