Thanks for the Crepes

@DiggingDogFarmI have never seen a cat that would tolerate a vole in the yard. We used to be overrun with them, but cats make short work of them. I have not seen one in years, although I am down to one small, elderly, but very spry and hale, female feral cat. Her name is Mista Jiggy Fur, after a stupid, but amusing Geico commercial many years ago. Females of the species have always been the best hunters in my experience. We used to have lots of snakes too, and most of the watersnakes (we have a creek that runs through the backyard) in NC are poisonous. Cats take care of them too. I have had to assist by chopping a couple big ones with a shovel. I guess snakes with their teeny tiny brains are hard to kill, and I've had cats bring them still alive twice up on the back deck and meow at the door to proudly inform me of their prowess. I can't say I feel remorse about it either; snakes seem to bring out a hatred in me. A snake's the only animal I have ever shot, on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River. Still no feeling but relief that the threat was negated. Haven't had any in the yard lately. Cats are the best for garden patrol and rabbits soon learn to move to a safer environment when you have a good hunter or three. @ShelbyI knew this day had to come if you wanted a garden this year. I think they are cute and endearing too, but there's not really a way to grow vegetables with an overpopulation of rabbits. Everyone knows how they multiply too. I hope you enjoy your rabbit dinner. I'll be looking forward to hearing how you prepare it.

What @btbyrdsaid. I mostly worry about how meat has been handled before I got it. If I ever screwed up and left it out at room temp overnight, I wouldn't even try to cook it, or even open the package. I have to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo screams most of the time, but your scenario's just not safe, so I would resign myself to the loss while mentally beating myself up for such waste. But that is me, and I'm very glad that @BarneyDorfmanwas able to successfully serve this abused meat without health consequences. Our ancestors managed to survive without refrigeration for millennium. They hunted and butchered large animals for their meat and feasted after the hunt. Then they would dry and/or smoke the meat, maybe preserving it with salt if they had any. They also died a lot earlier than most of us do now. No one knows how many of those prehistoric deaths can be attributed to food poisoning. My life is worth more than $18.00. Also there are fates worse than death. E-coli, for instance, can leave a person alive, but perhaps wishing they weren't. Read up on this, and I'm pretty sure you'll not be cavalier about food pathogens again. With the mass slaughterhouses we have now, and one knows all the cheap meat comes through just those horrible places, it's no time to take chances on food safety.

It is going to be tough to achieve the leoparding of the best Neapolitan pizza's with just a home oven and no expensive specialty set up. The linked photo was produced at a now defunct restaurant when they used coal. I have to say your kids have very good taste, though. A proper Neapolitan pizza is food of the gods. I agree with @Wayne's assessment to reverse your arrangement of stone and steel though. Steel or cast iron stores up and releases heat at a much faster rate than stone ever can. If all your heat is coming from the bottom gas element in the oven chamber, and your first experiment burned the bottom crust prematurely, I think he's right on point. Franci, your ancient top broiler scares the beep out of me! Yikes! Would not want to be involved with a kitchen mishap with that monster! I bet it's very efficient at cooking fish or meats as long as one is extremely careful.

Fried rice needs to be made from cold leftover rice. All restaurants make it that way, as well as anyone who makes it at home that knows what they are doing. It passes food safety requirements for local Health Departments as long as the rice is cooled quickly and promptly refrigerated, then reheated to hot, food safe serving temps. I am a stickler for hygiene in the kitchen, often served fried rice, and have never made anyone sick from anything I cooked. I know there is a health risk from rice being left at room temp for too long or even stored at fridge temps for too long. I do not let that keep me from enjoying fried rice as long as I prepared it, or it was prepared to order by a restaurant. I do pass it up on a buffet, which may or may not be a breeding ground for Bacillus cereus.

You guys and gals are killing me as usual! I won't mention my dinner, because it is unmentionable. I am not starving, and for that I am very grateful. It's hard on one hand and good on the other to look at all of the beautiful food here and imagine I'm a guest at any of your tables. The good news is that we will have money coming in tomorrow, and if my husband has forgotten my birthday, as seems to be the case, I will be going out to eat somewhere nice on my emergency fund even if I have to walk. I did receive some cards today, which he carried inside, so unless he's completely clueless, he probably does know, but hasn't mentioned it. I also called the landlord for maintenance on the dishwasher and the oven, so cooking might resume soon at chez TftC.

I guess I'm lucky in that I can always feel even a small chip of bone from, say pork that wasn't washed by a restaurant to get the bone chips from the saw off the meat or even very small, fine fish bones. I had a little trouble with it right after my stroke because my lips and tongue weren't up to speed, but I could still feel them and very awkwardly fish them out with fingers. I don't believe I've ever swallowed one, and I'm thankful for that. Good to know y'all's helpful remedies if I ever do though. They say that once fine fish bones get past the esophagus, that the hydrochloric acid in the stomach can make short work of them.

Jo, of course you know that leftover rice can be saved in the fridge for fried rice for subsequent meals. I made planned over rice the night before last for just this purpose. I'm working through a chicken too, so it was to be chix fried rice with peppers, eggs, onions, mushrooms and peppers. Then a leak developed in POSTI (my Piece of Shit to Infinity dishwasher) again that made it necessary to turn off all hot water supply to the kitchen. I washed the few dishes by boiling water on the stove and we had takeout from McDonald's because we're broke as usual. I've been washing dishes by hand for about a month by hand, because it just wasn't worth it to ask for help from the overlords. I'm going to be forced to call the landlord tomorrow to get any functionality in the kitchen. The last time I called them for maintenance on a broken furnace on a cold winter day, they fined me. I'm really not looking forward to it at all, but at this point, I really have no choice. I think it's a check valve in the dishwasher that failed that is supposed to turn the water off when POSTI does, but it leaked internally at first slowly, and when I turned it on, then quickly off to get it to pump itself out, it began to leak quickly enough that I can't turn on hot water long enough to do dishes, unless I want another external leak flowing into the kitchen. So no choice. At this point my dinner and kitchen life is POSTI, and I hope to report back with much better news soon. TftC

Fascinating. Must try this. I was intrigued by @huiray's dish too, kayb. It reminds me of "Hangtown Fry" which supposedly, and it sounds very believable to me, was introduced in California here in the USA in the 1850's. I think there were a lot of Chinese immigrants in that area working as cooks and also building the railroads. The story about the history of this dish in our country agrees with the one in my old copy of "The Joy of Cooking". I just love it when there is a story behind a recipe, although some of them are hotly contested. Also interestingly, the word chien translates from the French to English as "dog". That raised an eyebrow, but I was unable to find a Chinese translation for chien to English. If huiray would care to chime in with a literal translation for "Oh Chien", which means "oyster omelet" in Chinese, that would only add to the fun of the history of this dish.

I like the sort of gelatinous flavorful stuff around some fish bones, that huiray mentioned. Savory bone lollipops. There's so much extra flavor that's lost when this fish is boned. In fact, I rarely buy filleted salmon. My favorite way to enjoy it is steaks cut thick through the spine and grilled with bones and skin intact. Salmon with bones isn't even a challenge to eat because the bones are big and won't come away from the spine like the tiny fine bones of croaker that many end up in one's mouth and need to be picked out with fingers or chopsticks if one has skill with them. I know a lot of people don't want to have to do any work to eat plated food, and my husband is usually in that category, but bone-in grilled salmon steaks and fried croaker are so delicious they're worth the effort even to him, and I am very happy about that.

The bottom crust appears in your photo to be a little charred. If that is the case, it could have transferred too much heat too quickly to the bottom of the loaf, setting the dough directly above it prematurely while allowing the top of your still unset boule to rise like crazy in the steam.

This contradicts advice to add vinegar to the water, but may be based on better science. I don't know, but I do know how to boil eggs successfully without the dreaded green ring around the yolk. If I'm making deviled eggs for a party, I always use older eggs so they don't have any chips out of the white. Any recalcitrant mess ups are, of course, cook's treat.

Something weird is going on with egg shells. I have no desire to prove the science or debate it. After I read somewhere on here that if you are trying to fish a small fragment of shell out of eggs that you've broken into a skillet or bowl, your best tool is the shell the eggs came of. I didn't believe it because it made no sense within the science I know. After a bout of attempting to fish a piece of shell out of eggs with a stainless teaspoon several times, I tried one of the discarded shells in desperation. Like it had some sort of magnetic property, it magically fished out the shell fragment on the first try. I haven't deviated from the method since. Works efficiently every time for me, but I haven't a clue why this is so. I have also had this cowboy coffee and it does help to settle the grounds when just cooking coffee grounds in a pot of water. Can't explain that either, but it works. Handy during a power outage. I believe that a little salt would balance out an overly bitter flavor, but since I've never run into a coffee too bitter for me, I haven't tried it. I will keep it in mind if I ever do.

I always liked the taste of the seeds. They are good raw, and sort of like pine nuts but totally different. They might have even more flavor when roasted, but I never tried it. Back in the 70's my first husband and I lived with his late dad briefly. The dad, who was in his late 50's, found some seeds on the floor, and we thought he'd be angry. He said, "We used to feed these to the birds in the old country (Greece). Made them sing."

@Shalmanese, your technique will work with many fish, but definitely not with croaker. They're small bony throughout and delicious enough to motivate me to carefully pick and enjoy the flesh.

I've had several big mishaps with water in my kitchen similar to cyalexa's. A broken pipe under the kitchen sink that happened behind the cutoff valve was definitely the worst. Unrestricted water flowed into the kitchen from under the cabinet for thirty minutes until my husband found a whole-house cutoff valve in the crawl space under the house. At least we know where that is now, and it's accessible from outside through a vent. Another time, a dishwasher leaked, and I've had cyalexa's problem with the A/C condensation drain backing up into the kitchen four times over 25 years. That's in addition to everyday kitchen spills that are going to occur in a kitchen that get used as much as mine. I have and like vinyl sheet flooring, and wouldn't have anything else in a kitchen or bathroom. The original vinyl flooring lasted through 31 years of hard use, and was replaced about 10 years ago. Only once was there any damage to the subflooring which is only pressboard, and when that gets wet, it's toast. A small area of subfloor had to be replaced (with marine plywood) the first time the A/C backed up. I had no idea this was possible, it was a slow leak, and went on quite a while in the closet in the kitchen that houses the furnace and where the drain pipe is that gets clogged when the A/C system backs up. I would not have anything that was "moisture resistant" in my kitchen if it was free. But that is only my opinion. While I love beauty, if it's not also utilitarian when I'm trying to get some work done, I will opt for function every time. That said, there are many designs of vinyl sheeting and some are very beautiful to me, and might even be to you to.

I say it does count. Homemade stock made from poultry frames contains some protein and lots of flavor and can be used to extend rice into a very tasty meal. All the better if you have saved a little of the meat for those like my husband who insist on it, but @JoNorvelleWalker's dish sounds mighty fine on its own to me.

I like braised beef tips over rice. My recipe calls for browning the sliced bits, with some onion and garlic. Then add beef broth, red wine, and simmer slowly until your meat is tender. That happens faster than with a whole roast. Then add a slurry of cornstarch (gasp), soy sauce and a little water, and stir until it thickens. Served over hot cooked rice, it's hard to beat this dish in my book. I have a frozen chuck, so that may well be where I go with it. It might be good with mushrooms too, but the original recipe is so good, I've never strayed from it.

Yes, I am partial to the Italian approach of letting wonderful fresh ingredients shine through in a dish with a few unobtrusive ingredients to enhance it. I would certainly break out my fish grilling flat handled basket for delicate cod through. Your dish sounds very appealing, @Orbit.

@Okanagancook, you know your beautiful fresh radish greens are edible too, right? Usually, by the time they show up in my grocery stores, the greens are iffy and have been broken and abused by a rubber band or wire retainer on the bunch. Sometimes, if I cook them that same day, they are great. The prickly little hairs disappear with cooking.

Hi @thelaowaichef, Good to see another member from China, and welcome to the forum.

I like fresh fish too, and am so thankful that I have a few local sources. One of the boniest fish that I enjoy is croaker. Both the Atlantic and the fresh water variety are tasty, but I think I prefer the freshwater kind. It takes patience and care to safely partake, but in my opinion, it's very worth it. I can also get my fishmongers to fillet larger fish for me or buy frozen fillets at any grocery store. As with any bony fish, even fillets may have a stray bone or two. When I cook a fillet, while I wash it, I use my fingertips to feel for any bones. These can be pulled out of the flesh with a clean pair of needlenose pliers. The Chinese/Pan-Asian restaurants in these parts serve many dishes with boneless fish, but maybe they are adapted to Western tastes. They also serve many dishes with whole gutted fish that come complete with head (eyes!), tails and fins. All are delicious to me. Here's a link to a photo of Sweet and Sour Grouper that was posted on Yelp about a dish from Banana Leaf. Here's another link to a photo of Super Wok's take on Fish Cut Like Squirrel Tail. I can't say that one looks like a Bloomin' Onion. Both restaurants are right in my neighborhood, and both linked dishes are served boneless. I did run across a stray bone or five in the Sweet and Sour Grouper once. It happens. It will never stop me from enjoying fish, though.

shain, that's a pretty and imaginative dish. I don't think I'll be trying it because I love my crepes crispy and light, so I never put any sauce on top, but do use it inside. I actually use Marcella Hazan's recipe for crepes. She calls them crespelle, but they are exactly the same. The Italians use them like cannelloni, roll them around fillings, top them with a little meat/tomato or bechamel sauce and bake. Marcella has some recipes for crespelle stuffed with spinach or meat sauce, and I don't see why your cheese filling couldn't work. She also has a good recipe for homemade pasta and several recipes for stuffed ravioli. If you want toothsome ravioli, I would go with standard recipes that have been developed over centuries. Or you could just enjoy your fusion creation for what it is. It looks very nice to me. Leftovers here at our house again, but they were good.

I roasted a chicken yesterday and served it with baked potatoes and a salad with iceberg, tomatoes and cucumber topped with cheddar. Neither of us wants a dressing when we have the shredded cheddar. Today I made Chicken Tetrazzini and served it with leftover succotash medley, but melted some cheddar on top during the reheating. There were also sliced tomatoes. This was very good. I'm glad I have the old recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook, because in checking the spelling on Tetrazzini, I went to the BC website. The current recipe calls for Campbell's cream of mushroom soup instead of a homemade sauce. It also does not involve any wine!!

We used to get country style ribs around here that look like Kerry's photo around here mixed in with meatier pieces from elsewhere on the carcass. I haven't seen any in years.

Thanks for the link liuzhou. It's always good when someone strives to bring something back from near extinction. Monoculture is dangerous IMO, but it is proliferating at a frightening rate. I also enjoyed reading the comments, many of which agreed with me that without the distinct, sharp flavor of garlic, what's the point. That said, who doesn't like slow roasted conventional garlic which mutes the sharpness, and sweetens the flavor?