Thanks for the Crepes

Very nice! I make crepes filled with ham and a thick mornay sauce and it is the small amount of Chardonnay that I add to the sauce that really makes the dish. Reisling will do this trick too, I'd think.

The owners manual for my Rival Crock Pot (copyright 1982) says to use 1/4 c water per 1/4 c raw rice, so a 1:1 ratio. It also recommends using long grain converted rice for best results in the Crock Pot. I always cook my rice on the stove top, though, so I haven't tried it myself.

These may have been cigar bourek (sigara boregi). They look like the ones called that at Bosphorus Turkish restaurant I have eaten before. The menu says they are feta mixed with chopped parsley and onion, rolled in "special" filo dough and fried. The wrapping seemed rolled out a tad thicker than the phyllo I've worked with from the grocery store. Man they are good! So is everything else I've eaten there. They are one of the best restaurants in town. Your Lebanese restaurant looks really good too, gfweb.

There are a lot of haters on American cheese. That is okay, but I hope none of them are the same ones who are buying "Modernist Cuisine" expensive publications and then spending a lot of time hunting down the micro-ingredients to make the creamy, smooth-melting cheese, that is actually almost completely based on, you guessed it, cheese. Admittedly, McDonalds's American cheese is one of the poorer examples of the genre. American cheese (not cheese food product) does have it's place though, for me. In mac and cheese, there is nothing better for bringing that smooth and creamy texture together. I buy actual American cheese from the deli, though. I like it on a cheeseburger, and I recently bought some white American for use in enchiladas, as I much prefer it to cheddar or pepper jack or other cheeses. The stupid thing is that real American cheese that does not have to be labeled "food product", like Kraft's version is cheaper by the pound from the deli than if you pick up a package of the plasticized stuff from the refrigerator dairy case. Now the Kraft plastic slices are individually wrapped with an expiration date months in the future, and that is their appeal, I guess. You have to use the real stuff sliced from a huge block in the deli up pretty quickly. You also have to wait for deli service. To me it is worth it. Also, liuzhou, based on some of your descriptions of Chinese interpretations of Western food, I might wonder if you have ever had actual American cheese that did not have to be labeled "food product"? They are two different animals, and I'm wondering if your labeling laws are the same as those here.

Thanks rotuts, I didn't know if they had microwaves, as all I've seen them do is pull lukewarm food out of a heat cabinet with a stainless front. I'll try to dig up the gumption to ask them to nuke it next time. It's hard to get salt and pepper in those irritating tiny paper packages, though. The last time, I suffered through without either, after a mix-up on my order which distracted me from the intense focus needed to get these jealously guarded condiments from behind the counter. I made a plan to carry salt and pepper with me in my back pack, which goes totally against starting out with even the smallest weight when you will be carrying all you are capable of for two miles back home. They also kept my receipt, which could have been used to complete the survey for a free sandwich. Needless to say, my McDonald's is not rated that high (1-1/2 stars, and remember that Yelp does not allow 0 or negative star ratings). There is even a review on there that suggests someone had spit on their order of fries. I go at an off time for them, about 4:00 PM, but they still suck. I've been there at 5:00 AM, and they still pulled my breakfast biscuit from the heat cabinet, but it was hotter than usual. On second thought, I think I'll fly under the radar and see if I can at least get a receipt to give some feedback and get a free sandwich. No one has even claimed their Yelp website, and there are not responses from management to the truly crappy reviews. If more people would go to mcdvoice.com maybe something will move toward improvement. Yelp sure isn't doing anything at that location. I've also had stale, hard biscuits from my store, but only on the last visit I bought them. They were always really good before. I haven't bought any since, because it made for some pretty expensive raccoon food. The sad thing is that if you go for some of McDonald's more expensive items, you'll quickly rack up a bill to exceed the food costs at places where you can get a half pound burger and fries cooked to order by people I do not fear will put bio hazards into my food. They have lots of variations on this "Angus" burger. It's good, but establishing the provenance of beef is not easy today, unless you have a relationship with the rancher. All come with crispy fries hot from the fryer, and are under $10.00. Then you have to leave a tip, but the quality and experience is so much better. I can't eat the whole thing. Why do I not go there instead? The Train Station Bar and Grill is not near a grocery store, which is the main purpose of my trip.

The grocers around here used to send sale circulars in the snail mail. None of them do now. They still have them by the entrance if you want one. If you'd like to peruse what's on sale in the comfort of your home, though, you have to go online. They periodically change the software, and currently, Food Lion's is malfunctioning to the point I just wait until I get to the store to look at it. Nowadays, you can't even get one of their shopper discount cards unless you fork over an e-mail address. I still have mine from the time before they started this policy, so I'm not bombarded with stuff I have to clear out of my inbox. Every once in a while they will send coupons through snail mail, but that is diminishing to almost nothing too. The last snail mail communication I got from Food Lion was just an elaborate promotion of their "app". Not very useful to me as I don't even have a cellular phone, much less a smart one. I was hoping for coupons. They did waste a lot of stiff, glossy paper complete with a clever pop-up like a greeting card. That went straight into the recycle bin. I will say this for them. They are getting smarter about what kind of coupons they send or print out at the cash register. I used to get tons of coupons for processed foods. I almost never buy those, and the coupons didn't change my behavior. I get coupons now for produce and just this week a coupon for $5 off my next shopping order printed out at the register and I can use that for anything. I have to come back within a week to get it, though. That may happen if I can work up the energy for the trek on a good weather day.

You can make pastry crust with cream cheese. I've got a sweet recipe in "The Joy of Cooking" and Martha Stewart's website has one for savory here. She credits it as follows: "From the book "Mad Hungry," by Lucinda Scala Quinn (Artisan Books)." Trader Joe's make these little mushroom filled mini-turnovers with savory cream cheese pastry that are frozen with raw dough, and probably cooked filling. Then you cook them up in the oven from frozen, and they're delicious. I can think of a lot of fillings that would be good in this pastry, though, and of course you can use it for any savory or sweet pie. Crab rangoons! I love these, and most of the restaurants that serve them around here don't splurge on real crab, either. Some use surimi, some use shrimp, some use finely diced red bell pepper, minced scallion, and one even used minced pineapple in the cream cheese for a while. That last one initially disappointed me, because I wasn't expecting it in something called crab rangoon, but I wound up really enjoying these. Baked crab dip is good too. There are probably other dips that use cream cheese too. I usually make a bechamel sauce to use in spinach artichoke hot dip, but I don't think leftover cream cheese would go astray there.

That is what I thought too! Added value is so rare these days, but I guess they had to recall it because of regulations, and someone could over-imbibe and then drive or something they might be liable for. I bet very few turn it in for a refund. For me it would be a bonanza, even though I don't partake of gin much, or basically ever these days. If I did want it, I'd take some juniper berries and infuse them in my (cheaper) vodka and see what shook out. I'm sure it's not quite as simple as that, but that is what gin tastes like to me.

There is apparently a recall in Canada on Bombay Sapphire gin, but not for anything really dangerous. Apparently it was bottled in the UK at nearly twice the intended alcohol content. According to the linked article, it was limited to Ontario.

I must say that I only bake with almond extract, and am embarrassed to admit I prefer the artificial to the more expensive real one. I can't offer a scientific explanation, but I just go for taste. I'm a huge fan of natural processes and ingredients, and still, I come to this conclusion. Unlike real vanilla extract, vs. vanillin, the artificial almond also smells better in the bottle. I only have a bottle of real almond extract at this point, and it makes me kind of sad. I won't be buying real almond extract again, and hopefully I won't get cancer or something for preferring taste over purity. I think this thread has also brought me around to buying artificial vanilla for baking too. I was so serious about buying the expensive stuff and then couldn't taste it in the baked product. I quit even adding it because of this. I think this is one tiny area where we can embrace food chemistry as an advance, and I NEVER say this.

At my local McD's, all of these sandwiches are offered with a beef patty, fried or grilled chix, whichever you want. I did not partake, as I figured they were overpriced and not cooked fresh to order, so I stuck to the leftover double cheeseburgers that I know I can tolerate on my visit. Now, if they start cooking these new sandwiches to order like Five Guys or some of the mom and pops' around here, It might pique my interest. My McD's store cooks everything hours ahead of time and serves it slightly above room temp. How they have gotten past the Health Department is beyond me. It can't be at 140 F which is the holding temp for hot foods under our law. I've not gotten sick from the luke warm double cheeseburgers, but I enjoyed them so much more when I able to drive home and nuke them to reheat to serving temp. Does anyone know if a request to do that at the restaurant will fly? I have a mental block to asking for anything from these underpaid people that I have seen on YouTube doing things to food that is just revolting. Some have even been prosecuted, but most of it goes without repercussion. My store is also offering soft drinks in any size for $1.00. I didn't go there either, because I don't partake much of sugary drinks, especially when I'm going all out on calories on a meal. I drink water at McD's. As for the frork. As a person who generates a full rolly container of recyclables and another container a third full of trash every couple of months, this is a horrible waste of resources. I walk my plastic bags back to the grocery store for recycling, because our municipal program won't accept them, and never throw anything organic into the landfill. The frork might be a joke to some, but not to me. At least McD's is using cardboard boxes instead of styrofoam for things like the Fillet o' Fish. I'll give them that, but this frork thing is a really bad joke to me.

"This is not a broiler, because broil is not a word." "However, the bread roll can also be referred to as a bun, dinner roll, bap, cob, barm, kaiser roll, bread cake, barm cake, batch, muffin, softie, or buttery, depending on where you are. This is a perfectly reasonable state of affairs."

That linked picture is pretty, but I'm skeptical that it could be produced from the recipe that follows. There's no leavening except eggs and no liquid except what little comes from the butter. Popovers work with only eggs for leavening, but they have milk to make that happen. Plus popovers and Yorkshire pudding cook initially in a much hotter oven than called for here. Do you use self-rising flour when you make this recipe? I don't mean to be confrontational, I'm just curious if the recipe as written works. I might learn something here. Also, the very first comment mentions adding orange zest. I make muffins with cranberries and orange zest, an idea I got from Betty Crocker, and that combination is more than the sum of the parts.

After finding Romaine lettuce after a long and fruitless search, dinner was feta "cigars". That's crumbled feta strewn along the spine of a leaf and rolled up and eaten out of hand. This was accompanied by Campari tomatoes, perpperoncini and reheated crusty bread with butter. That was all I had because I've been craving this since the produce shortage from the California floods. Since my oven has been broken, I have really gotten a lot of use out of my smallest cast aluminum Dutch oven. It took me a while to figure out how to use it. For heating the bread slices (one at a time) I preheated the pot on only warm on my electric stove for ten or fifteen minutes. When the lid is almost too hot to touch briefly, it's ready. The foil-wrapped thick slice goes in for five minutes, gets flipped, and heated for another five minutes. I even cooked shortcake in there one night to serve with strawberries. It's incredible how low the heat has to be for it to work well. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, this range will boil a gallon of tap water in about fifteen minutes on high in a stainless steel pot. On warm, that water would not come to a boil ever. It might simmer in my lifetime, but probably not. I might see if I can boil water faster in the thick aluminum pots, because I cook a lot of pasta.

Love it! Bully for this guy's sense of humor, but nasty disrespectful behavior in MY kitchen will turn me into a(n) passive-aggressive, screaming (rhymes with witch). I have to admit, that makes his take even funnier.

While grocery shopping today in my local Harris Teeter, I picked up some North Carolina frozen blueberries for pancakes from the Seal the Seasons Company out of Hillsborough, NC. They were $3.99 a pound, which is much cheaper than fresh are right now. While searching for what I wanted, I saw, for the very first time in my life: commercially frozen cranberries! I didn't buy any, because I have some that I froze from fresh from last season. But I'm not the only one who has said somewhere on eG that they have never seen any commercially frozen. So there were even two different brands. One was Cape Cod Select that offered a 16 oz. package for $3.99 and I can't remember the other brand, but the package was $5.99 for only 10 oz. Don't despair if you don't have a nearby Harris Teeter, though. Just buy fresh in season and pop them into a freezer bag in their original packaging and they keep well even in my crappy fridge freezers. Wash before using. Still nice to know that someone finally wised up and started offering the frozen product commercially. One use of fresh or frozen cranberries kind of out of the norm is to use them to garnish drinks. They float and look so pretty especially in seltzer drinks.

Huh? I didn't realize this was a PA Dutch recipe. I used to cook a ham hock and home grown pole beans (the flat kind) all day on low in a Crock pot. When I got home, I'd add the potatoes because I don't like potatoes cooked that long. Turn it up to high and and hour or so later, voila: dinner! This is good, especially with good bread or cornbread. It is cheap and easy too.

I scored a very decent head of Romaine lettuce on Thursday at Food Lion for $2.99. They also had iceberg at $1.99. I also scored Campari tomatoes in a one pound clamshell for $2.99 (these are SUNSET brand from Mexico), and Athenos feta cheese. I can't wait! Today (Friday) I was at Harris Teeter and picked up a head of iceberg in anticipation of Cinco de Mayo. It was supposed to be only 99 cents, but the cashier rang it up as cauliflower at $4.49. I didn't catch it until I'd paid and she handed me the receipt, but I knew something was wrong, so I stood at the foot of the checkout counter going over the receipt while the next customer's purchases were tallied. I pointed out the error to the cashier, and she told me to go to the customer service desk (where no one was staffing it at the time). This is very customer unfriendly, but it was only a couple of minutes before the long-haired, bearded young man who had greeted me as I came into the store showed up and gave me credit for the cauliflower. It turns out their policy is that if you are overcharged, your item is free. So my Cinco de Mayo shredded lettuce garnish is gratis.

My favorite is French Onion soup, but it has to be made correctly. I've had some pretty sad versions of it. It starts with slowly caramelized onions, of course, but also critical is a deep, rich beef broth, and good bread, dry and toasted. Wine or not is not critical to me, and the cheese is flexible. Compte is hard or impossible to find here, so gruyere, or emmental is fine, and even provolone, mozzarella or muenster works for me, as long as it is on top of a great French onion soup.

Believe it or not, there's a book about that.

Might be, but these folks were software developers who lived in Washington, DC area, and at that time, I doubt they had access to Food TV Canada. Everyone was on the internet by then, so it could have spread that way. Is this the guy you're talking about? My friends prepared a whole salmon in an empty dishwasher with no soap. They double sealed it in heavy duty aluminum foil. This linked video depicts an individual portion put in a dishwasher with dirty dishes and, presumably, soap. I remember reading a recipe a while ago that said to run the dishwasher through a cycle first to clean out soap residue and preheat it, then add your sealed packet of salmon and run it without soap. Seems to be popular for the novelty element, especially when everyone is drinking, but I've never done it. The scary thing is that on that link there are other videos dealing with dishwasher cooked lasagna and chicken. I did not fall down that rabbit hole, because to me, part of the appeal of lasagna is the nature that only dry heat can bring out and I don't think the dishwasher can achieve high enough temps to cook chix to a safe temp. Funny that people play with these ideas, though.

There is a serious recipe for foil sealed salmon cooked in an empty dishwasher, and I actually knew a couple who did this for a dinner party, and they reported good results. I think this was somewhere around 1999 before sou vide took off for home cooks. I fell down a rabbit hole over on the Responses to Guest Reviews thread where Kerry linked to an Eater article where a restaurateur responds civilly and quite logically to a diner's bad review on Yelp about changing their take-out policy, and wound up here and at this link. Don't click on the links if you seriously want to learn anything about cooking except how not to do it. I did find them amusing, though. Fried mozza sticks that look perfectly normal but aren't. Anyone?

Thanks @kayb! The fact that you can freeze the dough is perfect for me.

Kay, I hate to ask this as you have given me the link to your roll recipe before. I even made them once, but failed to put them in my permanent file, which is a handwritten hardcopy in a looseleaf notebook I keep. I had it bookmarked on my computer before it crashed last December, but that does me not a bit of good now. I did search your wordpress site and eG, but to no avail. If you will be kind enough to indulge my request, I will make the effort to transcribe it this time.

I had a horse at a boarding stable where we piled the manure trucked out of the stalls far away from the barn in the pasture behind the levee of a man made pond. This killed the bugs in it from the heat generated, and we could take as much as we wanted for free in the spring for our garden. Anyone who wanted it was welcome to carry it off for free too. It works a treat. I'm a bit surprised to see it for sale, as most places that have an excess would be more than glad to have it carried away. I was living at the time in Memphis, which is in Shelby County, TN, and had at least at the time, the highest per capita horse ownership in the country. Oh well, times change, and everything is commercialized now.