Thanks for the Crepes

No. 1 espelette peppers No workable guesses on the other two.

Here's a link to Vivian Howard's episode "Pretty in Peach" on PBS where she does a lot with summer peaches, including a home-canning session with her mom, and survives a crisis at her restaurant where someone booked a reservation for a party of 35 on the day after it was supposed to be. Yikes!

Here is a link to season 3, episode 7 of " A Chef's Life", our homegrown gal, Vivian Howard's series. The episode title is "A Casserole Says Plenty", and it originally aired on Oct. 13, 2015, but is being offered in reruns on our local PBS station. She makes a fancied up version of the green bean casserole that I have failed at when I tried to replicate the convenience food version when trying to hit that holiday comfort food spot, so I gave up, but there are others in there too, and it's worth a watch, I think. Also her version of the iconic casserole is really fancied up with shitakes, ham stock and buttermilk marinated fried onions, and she's a chef, and I'm a home cook. I haven't tried her version, but it looks tempting.

I fried zucchini planks that were dusted in a little flour, drained, blotted on paper and salted for a first course. We both love zucchini made this way, but like all fried food, it needs to be eaten right away for maximum quality. Then in the same oil and skillet, I dropped a pork butt steak that had been dry rubbed with cayenne, chili powder, seasoned meat tenderizer, and black pepper, given an hour rest in the fridge, then dredged in the same flour in the same recycled produce bag I used for the zukes. The meat was also drained and blotted. I love fried food, but I don't like it greasy. The meal was completed with a big microwave-baked sweet potato, which we split and finished with butter and salt, sliced garden cukes and cherry tomatoes. Everything we ate was from right here in my home state. Well except for spices, oil and such. The oil is from Tennessee, and who knows where the spices are from.

Not in the running here, and I have only bought and cooked one Opo squash in my entire life. It was delicious fried like zucchini with only a light dusting of flour, and coarse salt after draining and blotting. I also cooked the second half of it over a charcoal grill as part of a mixed grill with a meat and lots of different veggies. The squash was great that way too. I will buy it again next time I make it to the Indian grocer. So it lends itself well to Italian treatments as well as traditional Indian ones. It is so cool to hear @Bhukhhadis growing Opa squash. Perhaps she would care to share with us what else she is growing in the Gardening thread? I hope, I hope, I hope. I can't wait to hear about what Bhukkhad decides to cook!

Your popsicles always look so good! What kind of chili did you use for the pineapple ones above? It is such a bright, contrasting red.

I think it was @Tere who grew water spinach this year, and said her husband banned it from the garden for subsequent years. I was unable to confirm this on a search. Could whoever grew this plant this season expand on why it was banned please? And yeah, @ElainaA, it doesn't sound worth the risk to try eating your morning glories, although they are very beautiful.

What is more bitter than unadulterated chocolate/cocoa? Well a bunch of stuff, but you get my meaning. Chocolate is almost always adulterated with sweet and pairs well with many fruits, IMO. The balance between sweet, bitter, salty, sour and spicy makes my world turn.

OMG! that is so awesome. I would still like an answer to a question I asked upthread about the flowers you had in mind when you created these awesome things, if you don't mind. You probably missed it, but I'm feeling ignored. (Pout icon) And yeah, Crisco sucks! Grocery store bakeries here sell cakes that are beautifully decorated, but the icing that they used to use was Crisco and sugar. It tasted like it too. I always scraped it all off before eating a portion at a birthday party or something. EEW! Now that even the powers that be have realized the horrible dangers of trans fats, I don't know what they use now. Cakes are homemade (no Crisco) at get togethers in my family, but we had some Crisco frosting cakes where I used to work. Pretty dang horrible. This country is trying to phase out trans fat, and about time. We are making progress.

@Bhukhhad^ ^ ^ What ElainaA said. I have been offline until now. Absolutely no offense taken. I am so glad you have joined the community, and value your posts very much. You may be right about the dosa and idli batter at the Indian grocer, but it is in quart takeout plastic containers like you get Chinese takeout soup in with the contents hand written in magic marker on the side of the container. It is refrigerated, and for all I know, may be made in a licensed kitchen somewhere. The samosas, while they may also be made in a licensed kitchen, I am sure the fact that they are unrefrigerated on the front counter does not comply with the laws here. Nor does the unrefrigerated fried fish or sushi sold at my beloved Asian grocer. I am aware that we as a species have survived for millennia before refrigerators were invented. My mom and grandma continued to refer to ours as an "icebox". Both the products at the Asian store and the samosa at the Indian one are very popular. I have never visited the Indian place when several customers did not purchase the samosa. Heck, these products are probably a lot safer and healthier than some of the artificially colored and flavored processed Franken Foods offered at mainstream grocers here. Just sayin' they might not be in compliance with the law. In fact, I had not seen the dosa batter when I tried to make them last year, and the next time I can get to the Indian store I had planned to buy some to try. And do keep posting, and speak your mind. Most of the rest of us aren't shy about it, either.

I spent a while looking at all the cloudberry images Mr. Google offered up. They all seem to be composed of separate bits like raspberries and blackberries. There is a name for the way they are constructed with a composite of many small fruits with individual seeds, which eluded me until I looked it up. It is aggregrate fruit composed of small druplets. Even when I pop the teaser image out, it looks like the individual berries are a solid globe? The leaf configuration and the way the berries are born in a central cluster seems to fit, though. So okay, since the only cooking I have heard of with cloudberries is in Sweden, Norway or Finland, and they all seem to have basalt formations, my guess is from the Nordic Countries?

For those of us who might not be able to find the actual print copy, here is a very amusing website: The Gallery of Regrettable Foods. I believe it is by the author of ElainaA's book. Here is a sample page. Certainly not high-brow, like many of you have posted, but I can guarantee it's interesting, revolting, and you will get a laugh out of it.

@rarerollingobject, Gorgeous work, as usual! Your intricately worked red and yellow one with tiny green leaves sticking out between the flowers reminds me of this or this one. Your coral and white one reminds me of a hydrangea. Your burnt orange one brings to mind a chrysanthemum. The roses are obvious, of course. Did you have any particular real flowers in mind when you created the others? I know you have some spectacular ones in Australia, like the Sturt's Desert Pea, that might not be familiar to some of us.

Now, while a sweet tomato ice cream might not appeal, I just thought of a savory tomato sorbet with basil. What do y'all think about that one?

Thanks to @blue_dolphin, I roasted some peaches and pluots alongside some biscuits I was baking for dinner. The twelve minutes for the biscuits at 450 F/232 C was just enough to soften them, bring out their natural flavor and sweetness and just start to release a little thick, syrupy juice into the pie pan I cooked them in. I poured the juices over after turning the halves cut side up to serve. I just sprayed the pie pan with oil. It's almost like eating a delicious pie without all the added empty calories!

So is it in Australia? Time for another clue, maybe?

@Bhukhhad, Thank you so much for your valuable contribution to this thread! I am so grateful. I was sort of looking to make my own batter with the equipment I have, but I have seen prepared dosa batter in my Indian grocer. It looks homemade, as in someone's home. They also offer samosa's at the checkout counter, unrefrigerated on a big tray under aluminum foil. I am sure neither of these things is strictly according to our local health department rules. I'm also sure I am not going to turn them in, as I so appreciate their presence in our community, and hope they prosper. I am so glad you have joined the eGullet community and are being so generous with your knowledge of Indian cuisine.

Somewhere in Australia? If so, maybe @sartoric is the member?

Will we be taken on a virtual trip to Hawaii? Wherever it is, I'm with kayb, and I'm really looking forward to reports from the generous member who has agreed to share their experiences with us!

Your plum chutney looks and sounds lovely! Thanks for posting the recipe. If you have time, would you please post how you make dosa the next time you make some in this thread? My posts from last year begin on page 3 where I tried to make them at home with an old blender as the grinding equipment. Sorry, but it's not possible for me to buy a proper Indian grinder for this. I would so appreciate your input on this subject, as I'd love to be able to make some as good as those I can get at Udipi Cafe. Anything you can share about dosa making would be a cherished gift to me.

The worst mashed potatoes I've ever had were made at "someone's home". Mine! When I made them the first time ever, I followed a recipe from the "Betty Crocker Cookbook" from 1969. I just looked up the recipe, and I still blame her for the "beat vigorously until potatoes are light and fluffy" part. No mention of ricer or masher. Boiling the potatoes in their jackets wasn't her fault, though. I must have used my "better judgement" that all ignorant youth seem to think they possess in abundance, thinking it would be quicker and easier to peel them after cooking. With the cooking the potatoes whole in their peels so excess starch had no opportunity to leach into the cooking water and taking a hand mixer to them, these were by far the gluiest, worst example of mashed potatoes I have ever tried to eat. The dog was happy that night, though. I've since learned to make nice light, fluffy mashed potatoes the way I like them. It's probably not the way most like them, because I use just a little butter and more milk than most recipes call for. Nothing but my trusty Oxo masher with comfort grip handle ever touches them. It takes some elbow grease and time to get them smooth, and that must be done before adding any milk, but it's worth it to me.

Faux Pas, All of your meal looks beautiful, but the blackberry pie bars looked so good I bookmarked the recipe. Your bars look prettier than the ones posted in the linked recipe. Your topping looks finer, crumblier and crunchier. Did you make any adjustments? I'm suspecting the recipe would work well with a lot of different fruits too.

That someone was me, and I said I had had crispier results with conventional oven fries using Asian sweet potato like these here, than with the far more common around here orange sweet potatoes we grow tons of in this state. The Asian sweets are not as sweet as the orange variety, and seem to have a higher starch content, lower water content, and do come out crispier than the orange sweet oven fries, but still not as crispy as Idaho potato oven fries. I also remember Anna N tried them and did not agree. Personally, I like and prefer the flavor of orange sweet potato fries, but agree with the consensus here that they will never be close to as crispy as Idaho fries. I wonder what pre-soaking in salt water would do to pull some of the moisture from the fries through osmosis? I might give that a try next time I try some. @Tri2Cook's story about trying to make this item in a restaurant setting was both comical and empathetically exasperating. No wonder he/she hates to see them on the menu. I'd have to have the patience of a saint, which is not one of the things I'm known for.

rotuts, That is how I make chowders. Cook the bacon till crispy in the pan I will make chowder in, set bacon aside, and crumble when cool, but reserve it to top the finished chowder bowls. I use the bacon fat to saute the onion, or any other ingredient I think would benefit from it, and proceed with the recipe. After plating, I put the bacon bits on top, and sometimes a little grated cheese if I feel like. I'm not in love with the kind of flabby texture the bacon takes on if simmered in the chowder, but it still tastes good, and individual tastes vary.

I went vegetarian tonight with a small baked potato with sour cream and butter, sauteed spinach with a little onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, black pepper and eggs scrambled in at the end, then topped with grated parm. I also boiled up some speckled butter bean, and we had TGI Friday's brand jalapeno poppers stuffed with Cheddar. I remember these being better last time I had them. I wound up pulling off most of the breading tonight. The husband also had an oven-fried chicken thigh. My brother brought over another cucumber, normal-sized this time, and some cherry tomatoes from his garden. He also brought back my cake carrier with about a third of the cake left. It turns out my brother-in-law and the eldest niece did go back to my brother's house for cake and ice cream, where the nephew was staying. Everyone really liked the cake and reported it was delicious. I need to plan a no-carb dinner tomorrow so we can have a piece for dessert.