Thanks for the Crepes

I always used to pick sweet peas and cook them a few hours at most later after shucking. I picked them kind of small, because that is the way I prefer them for both texture and taste. Very short cook (1 minute), and no wrinkling. I also like them raw. Weirdly, our low end (cheapest grocery store, Food Lion), offers both frozen tiny green peas and regular, larger green peas. It is the only place locally I can find tiny green peas. I bought peas at Trader Joe's one time and was quite disappointed. They were overgrown for my taste. If I cook the tiny greens right away, no wrinkling. If I allow them to languish in my substandard fridge freezer for months, there will be dehydration and wrinkling. I can still use them for fried rice or other dishes as an accent. They never go to waste.

Glorified Rice, Thanks for the tip, and I'm sure many others who would desire seedless lemons will appreciate it too. For myself, I find it not much trouble to flip the seeds out with the tip of my knife after cutting off the white pith from the center of the lemon at the thin edge of the wedge. You can hold it up to a light, conveniently right over my cutting board area, and the semi-translucent lemon will reveal every seed. I also dig out the seeds on a lemon half before juicing it. I'm always annoyed when restaurants don't do this and serve you lemon wedges with seeds. It seems to be pretty universal, all the way up to high end places I used to be able to afford to go. In fact, the only attempt to deal with lemon seeds from a restaurant I've ever seen was at Jack Astor's with a seafood order, and they tied cheesecloth around half a lemon. Nice touch, but we never went back because of other issues not to do with the food. It always worries me a bit when food scientists try to interfere with the very way that our food plants reproduce, so seeds are A-Okay with me, and I just deal with them. Life is persistent and prolific. I can't get over how many species we lose every year, and now they want to mess with our food plants. That said, I do appreciate "seedless" watermelon (which contains both white and brown seeds, but fewer) and seedless grapes, but they also contain small edible white seeds usually.

Jaymes, I'm enjoying a version of the microwave bread pudding with raisins, cinnamon and a touch of nutmeg. It's very easy and good and is satisfying my craving for cinnamon raisin swirl bread, which we are out of. Thanks for the link.

radtek, Absolutely, the open slit cheese side should be grilled last. I forgot to mention it in my initial from memory posting of the recipe. You want to minimize the oozing out of the cheese, but some is going to occur anyway, and that toasty grilled cheese is A-okay, but I recommend doing this in a non-stick skillet or griddle pan. Also I modify the recipe to use 1-1/2 slices of bacon for wrapping, and that takes it all the way to both ends of the dog, and if you wrap carefully, with no gaps, that is going to minimize oozing too.

Okanagancook, Beautiful healthy, low-carb dinner! I agree with rotuts: perfect cook on the lamb, and more Yum Yums!

You will make some mistakes along the journey to becoming a good cook, but that's just an integral part of any learning experience. The key is to not let that discourage you. I remember serving raw chicken when I was nine and had to learn to cook after my mother died. There were tears involved, but I threw it back into the still hot oven, and we had delicious herbed roasted chicken that night anyway. There wasn't even a single cookbook in the house at the time, and I had gotten the verbal recipe from an older Italian neighbor who said cook it until it's golden and "done". No meat thermometer available either. Some culinary boo boos won't be fixable, so the ingredients may go to waste as inedible. This happens occasionally even for experienced cooks. Don't let it faze you. With time and experience, you can make food to please yourself and your family and friends. I knew an old boy who told me his daddy used to say, "If you're not making mistakes, it means you're not doing anything."

I found Emeril's recipe for the cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped dogs: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/stuffed-dogs-recipe.html I wouldn't grate the cheese as recommended in the recipe, but rather cut it into logs and put them in the freezer a few minutes. That way you can get the bacon crispier than shown in his photo before the cheese melts. I started doubting my memory, because as I said before, this is not the style of food that pops into one's mind when thinking of Emeril. The bad thing is, now I have an intense craving for them, so Hebrew Nationals went on the grocery list. Edit: I found the hotel Emeril referred to: The Beverly Hills Hotel, and this item is still shown on the menu of the Fountain Coffee Room under "Hot Sandwiches" as the Maison Dog for $16. So if you make these, just think how much money you're saving! http://www.dorchestercollection.com/uploads/documents/BeverlyHillsHotel/GeneralDocuments/FountainCoffee2013_1.pdf

paulrapheal, With all due respect, we will have to agree to disagree. To me the epic fail is coming out with a cloyingly sweet angel food cake that I don't want to eat, and I still won't be conducting any side-by-side experiments with two dozen eggs to prove my point that I can make a more desirable (to me and and my eaters) angel food cake. Ovens vary, and my old 1970's oven with a broken thermostat is very hard to work with. It's like tending a wood fire, which I have done many times. I can still cook a respectable cake in it, including my sugar-reduced angel food. I still have to advocate for anyone who wishes to reduce the sugar in a baking recipe to give it a try. It is not a structural component like it is in candies.

When I make angel food or any other kind of sweet baked goods, I will arbitrarily reduce the sugar, and I usually have very good results. I know this is sacrilege to the eG crowd with their insistence on scales for baking anything worthwhile. I don't think the sugar is much of a factor in the structural component like the flour and eggs are, and my experiences seem to support this theory. You can also find old, established recipes for baked goods that vary all over the map for sugar ratio, but not so much variance on flour, eggs, or other leavening ratios. I figure that folks have been baking stuff for many centuries without digital scales, molecular gastronomy ingredients, standard volume measures or even the benefit of a written language to pass down recipes and guidance. I'm not willing to let modern theory get in my way when I want to make an enjoyable baked good to my own taste without launching a controlled science experiment on a NASA scale. If you're like me, and don't like overly sweet stuff and want to test out this theory, you may understandably want to start with something using cheaper ingredients than the dozen egg whites angel food recipes typically call for. When I bake a cheap boxed cake mix, I will typically add some White Lily flour, and/or cocoa to a chocolate cake. Again with the eG sacrilege. Then I simply adjust the liquid called for upward to compensate since the sugar in the mix can't be adjusted. I may also add a small amount of baking powder or salt if I'm shooting for a less sweet result and have added a lot of flour, cocoa or liquid. After making hundreds of cakes, I know what consistency the batter is supposed to have. Adjusting all the ingredients around the fixed amount of sugar in a mix is more complicated than just using less sugar in a recipe where no other adjustments are necessary, but it does work. I have tried reducing the sugar in angel food cake, and I found no difference other than less sweetness in the result. After all, many meringues are barely sweet at all and still hold their loft, right?

I prefer bone in skin on chicken for cacciatore, and I have never seen it in a restaurant. They always use boneless and often skinless cuts. My way produces a much richer tomato chicken gravy with greater depth of flavor. If anyone is interested, I can tell you how I do it. I can also dig up a recipe for "Virginia Beach Chicken" that uses bone in skin on breasts, dried beef, bacon, rice, and (look away purists) cream of mushroom canned soup. I'm not a fan of breasts either, but this is a way to deal with them to insure moistness and flavor. When frying a whole chicken, I'll do the initial uncovered browning, then remove the breasts for about 8 minutes before adding them back to the covered pan with the rest of the chicken. I've had good result with the "turned roast chicken" technique from the "Joy of Cooking" for roasting a whole chicken. It keeps the breasts and everything else moister while allowing the thigh/leg joints to cook through.

Tonight's dinner was at Bosphorus restaurant here in Cary. It specializes in Turkish food and is owned by a Turkish family. We went with our friend from Turkey who was chattering away with the waiter in Turkish even before we were seated. It's in a strip mall, but manages to be a very attractive and comfortable place to eat with fresh live flowers inside and out, stonework and art with deeply padded spacious booths like the one we were seated in. We started with the complimentary and delicious freshly baked sesame pide bread, which is different than the pita bread I am more used to. This is served with an herbed and spiced tomato oil for dipping. We also ordered cigar bourek. These are cylinders of homemade phyllo rolled up around feta cheese and fried. These were really good too. On Sundays only they make real doner available only between 4PM and 8PM when they close on Sundays. We were lucky enough to get some, as they frequently run out. Our friend and I got the doner platters, and my husband got the mixed grill which comes with chicken, lamb, adana, kafta kebabs and doner on Sundays or gyro meat every other day. All the platters come with a nice salad, herbed yogurt cucumber sauce and bulgar wheat pilaf. I knew I would love the pilaf, because I adore wheat berries. It was all wonderful. We all also got Turkish tea which was very fragrant and good. I was happy to discover it comes unsweetened with sugar on the side as I don't care for overly sweet tea. We all boxed up leftovers to take home, but I got an order of baklava to go. I could't leave without it because I've been looking forward to this for over a year. Haven't eaten any baklava yet, but judging from everything else I had, it will be excellent too. Next time, I want to try the Turkish version of pizza that comes in an elongated bread boat. Still no camera, so no photos, but here's a link to yelp with over 200 pictures including everything we ordered, for anyone who's interested: http://www.yelp.com/biz/bosphorus-cary Here's another link for those of you who may not know what doner is (like I didn't until recently) and may want to learn more. It's a giant hunk of meat cooked on a (usually) vertical rotating spit and then sliced off thinly for service. https://www.google.com/search?q=doner+cooking+images&espv=2&biw=1097&bih=546&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=phR1Ve-UI8misAXt_4PADw&ved=0CDwQ7Ak

I found Pepperidge Farm top-loading New England style hog dog rolls at our local Food Lion recently for those in the Southeast area that Food Lion serves. This is the type of roll you get in Maine and Connecticut when you order a lobster roll from a shack or a lobster pound. I have never seen them down here before, and was very glad to get them. You can only toast them on the outside, but the make great containers for lobster rolls, chili dogs, or anything else where you want to pile on the toppings and eat it out of hand.

JoNorvelleWalker: Here's the ingredients, and my interpretation of Green Goddess Dressing from the 1968 edition of the "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook: 1-1/2 c mayonnaise 1/4 c finely snipped chives 2 TBS tarragon vinegar 2 TBS snipped parsley 1 TBS crushed tarragon 4 anchovy fillets 1 green onion, finely snipped All ingredients are mixed together, per the recipe, but get this: This enormous amount of dressing (to me) is supposed to be put on only: 6 c romaine 3 c curly endive 9 oz pkg frozen artichoke hearts 1/2 c pitted ripe olives 2 oz. can rolled anchovy fillets 2 med. tomatoes cut into wedges (optional) Which is enough salad to feed a small army, but to me, it would still be way too much dressing for the amount to be dressed. From the 1976 "Betty Crocker Cookbook": 1 clove garlic, crushed 3 TBS anchovy paste or finely chopped anchovy fillets 3 TBS finely snipped chives 1 TBS lemon juice 3 TBS tarragon wine vinegar 1/2 c dairy sour cream 1 c mayonnaise or salad dressing 1/3 c finely snipped parsley 1/4 t salt 1/8 t freshly ground pepper Mix it all up, and chill to allow flavors to blend. This is a very good dressing that has fallen out of mainstream favor. I've made it several times before, using dried tarragon and regular vinegar. My advice is to use Italian flatleaf parsley like in the last recipe from Betty. Plenty of fresh herbs, of course is the intent and essence of this dressing, so if you can find all of them, including the tarragon, that's the route you should go. It is very delicious, and Bon Appetit!

Kim Shook, It's always good to see you back again, and Godspeed to your healing.

Yes, Chris, When one slices a head of cauliflower there are only two or maybe three "steaks" from the very center of the head depending on the size of the head, and how thickly one slices them. I have used leftover roasted cauliflower to very good effect in quesadillas, including especially the little crispy bits that come off the edges.

Part of the goodness of the bacon-wrapped cheese-stuffed hot dogs' goodness is that the cheese oozes out and becomes crispy and brown. This can all be accomplished with cold hot dogs, very cold cheese (stick it in the freezer a few minutes after cutting your cheese logs) and raw bacon. It comes together beautifully. You want that browned cheese, trust me. Trust Emeril. Bam!

Congratulations, Panaderia C.! That is quite an accomplishment, and I am so glad for you!

I consider myself squarely within that 49 million poor people (which IMO is underestimated because some of us don't seek public aid). I still come down on the side of reforming factory farming practices for all the aforementioned reasons. This IS happening, as many of the largest US food suppliers are realizing that consumers expect more than the dreck that's available from the mainstream food suppliers, and McDonald's, Walmart, Pizza Hut, Subway, Taco Bell, and others are responding at least with lip service and some timelines to correct themselves. There's hope for the common folk, and there's hope for the hapless harvest chickens. Everyone will win except the stockholders, but they are the minority, and they need to be aware that even poor stupid victims have some limits that they cannot go beyond to satisfy their ruthless greed.

Okay, dcarch, Point taken. Unfortunately I know people here in NC, who are hardworking, good people, who consistently vote these "representatives" into power. They are the majority in this state, which is quite lovely other than that. Sadly, many of these constituents are the nearly broke farmers who own the land and take out loans from Perdue, et. al, to build these abhorrent chicken barns. They only get a little money for doing all the work while the corporations rack up, and we consumers suffer from very, very reduced quality. To the point that this is the only country I am aware of where salmonella bacteria are thriving on so much of the mainstream chicken available. Even when you take the probability of suffering of the harvest animals completely out of the equation, factory farming seems not to be a good system for anyone (including millions of U.S. consumers) except for the corporations and their investors. No one I can conceive of would advocate for giving poor children or grandfolks or pregnant ladies salmonella poisoning, except those with a strong monetary interest in doing just that as collateral damage to their profits, and perhaps their government puppets. Well-raised chicken just tastes so much better too.

dcarch, I appreciate the concept of "a chicken in every pot", but it has come at a terrible cost not only to the food harvest animals. The consumer suffers too. The lobbyists for more profitability for their rich and powerful handlers have brought us all laws that allow injections of chemicals we do not need for nutrition to hold the water they add so can up the weight you pay for. In my area they have "diapers" under the cut up chicken pieces and even smaller ones under whole ones lately. Whole is still your best bet. I complained to my local equivalent of the "weights and measures bureau", because one grocery had a practice of having a pint and a half of reddish-tinged water floating on top of the diaper on family-sized packs of chicken parts. Believe it or not, I practically don't, and was very surprised, this local grocery stopped having the extra liquid you had to pay for. I still can't conceive that a government agency actually acted in the consumers' best interest. But there you go, it happened. I can't stand the taste of cheap chicken anymore. They've just gone too far. It's so adulterated and the bones can be thin and/or broken. The organs are often not healthy-looking to this layman, especially the liver, the powerhouse waste removal system, and I have often found it to correspond to thin misshapen bones. I also realize that the liver I get in my gutted whole mainstream chicken may not be the liver that came out of that particular bird, but I have found this too often, that I believe maybe the batch of birds wasn't raised at all well. Anecdotal evidence I know. If I were rich, which is far from the case, I would conduct my own scientific study about stress hormones etc. The fact is, that people who have a huge economic interest in abusing food animals and ripping off consumers for profit, not only are not going to do a study on there own, but they are going to fight tooth and nail against anyone who threatens their monetary returns. I don't understand why you would defend Tyson and Holly Farms after actually have seen their obscene and embarrassing operations. Please watch this Academy Award nominated documentary, "Food, Incorporated": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/?ref_=rvi_tt for information about it, and this link to watch it totally free, and legally on this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D5twy--km0 If you can watch it with an open mind, and then want to spout scientific studies about lesser being food animals, I guess I'll just have to agree to disagree. Best regards, dcarch Do you think the chickens are ammonia breathers?

Darienne, I can totally relate to the "no more breakfasts out" statement in your post. Even mom and pop cafes in our area have quit bothering to preheat the serving plates. If anything calls for that it is breakfast eggs, meats, potatoes, pancakes, and so on. If you are very lucky anymore your breakfast may be served fresh off the grill, but it has a half life of about twenty seconds when served on a stone cold plate even if everything is cooked perfectly. The thermal sink of the cold plate saps all the heat almost immediately. This especially applies if they are serving it on thick china platters that used to be preheated, and were perfect for breakfast service when they were. That's okay though. Breakfast is cheap, easy, and fast to cook at home, and I know how to preheat plates, syrup, soften butter for pancakes, biscuits or toast. I just feel sorry for folks who are relegated to eating out all the time because they lack cooking skills or access to a good cook. No wonder cereal is so popular now.

I love orange marmalade as a base for dipping sauce for coconut shrimp, an idea swiped from the Outback chain when they used to be better, and you could still get Alaskan King Crab legs. We don't go there anymore. I balance my marmalade dipping sauce with vinegar, crushed red pepper and salt. I want to try the Seville marmalade next time I make it to TJ's. TJ's also has frozen coconut shrimp sometimes. You need to get your oven really hot to brown the outside and avoid overcooking the inside. When they are good, they are very good.

dcarch, I also was partly raised on my grandparent's farm where chickens were free range with a free access chicken house with nesting boxes. Hogs were also free range. Nothing like sow crates or battery cages in evidence. Cattle, when we had them, were pastured, but had a barn for milking and cold weather. They wanted to come into the barn at milking times for the grain and the relief they got from milking. You cannot go on a vacation or even take a sick day with a milking herd without other arrangements to see to the herd's needs. I have also been into a commercial chicken barn. This was back in the 70's. It was a part of the operation of a dairy farm in Vt. I was a friend of the family, and welcome at the facilities, at least the dairy barn and the home, but I didn't find out about the chicken barn until over a year later. Seems they were ashamed of it, as well they should have been. I finally convinced one of the son's to give me a tour after a lot of persuasion. When you open the door, you are hit with a wave of ammonia that will hurt your nose, lungs and eyes. The chickens are stacked in cages where there's barely enough room for their bodies, one on top of the other. You want to be in the top tier if you are one of these unfortunate chickens. If their is a system for waste removal like there was in the dairy barn with mechanized gutters, it was not in evidence, and was not even close to adequate. Even my curious, young self was not up to an extended tour in that hellhole, but I saw enough to have no doubt why the family was ashamed of it. Okay, chickens, may not be the brightest bulb on the chandelier, but I sincerely doubt they are ammonia breathers or enjoy being bathed in their fellow captive's wastes 24/7 unable to even move much. And yes, that is common sense and decency, as no one can know the tiny mind of a chicken. It is possible to raise chickens much more ethically; they've been doing it for centuries and centuries all over the world. It just cuts into huge American agribusiness corporations and stockholder's profits to do so. They hire lobbyists to keep their torturous but highly profitable practices in place. Kudos to Walmart (not my favorite corp. by any means) who has recently done a very good thing by announcing they will move toward more ethical treatment during the raising of the animal proteins they sell megatons of each year. As the largest grocer in the U.S., they have a lot of clout and the potential to be a very good influence on the supply chain.

As, I've said before here, I'm pretty much burnt out on hot, dogs, but try to eat them with Hebrew Nationals occasionally because my husband loves them so much. I figure if they are kosher, I can trust the ingredients more, and the taste seems to bear that out. I want to try a Chicago dog and a Sonoran dog at least once. I can't source poppy seed rolls or sport peppers easily, so I'll need to track them down at a restaurant probably. Kerry, I recently found the elusive New England top-sliced hot dog buns under the Pepperidge Farm brand in my local (not high-end) grocer. It might be a good bet if you have that brand up there. They are easier to grill crispy (on the outside only) without the roll falling apart and splitting. They made much better containers if you're going to load your dog down with condiments, and make it much easier to pick up and eat. I have tried bacon-wrapped dogs after seeing them years ago on an Emeril show, believe it or not. He said it was some hotel's recipe, which I can't recall the details of anymore. Doesn't sound like his usual style, but I'm sure that's where I saw it. Bam! His version calls for the dogs to be split lengthwise not all the way through then stuffed with slender rectangular logs of cheese like cheddar, then grilled until the bacon is crispy. It's possible to anchor the ends of the bacon strip under the wrapping if you do it carefully, so no toothpicks required. Even when your cheese is very cold, some will melt out and brown around your grilling hot dogs. This is okay, and just adds to the goodness, but do make sure your cheese is very cold when it goes into the dog. We like these dogs nekid in grilled buns; they have lots of flavor on their own. But as always, pile on whatever your heart desires. The cocktail wieners have been around since at least 1968, as there is a recipe in my "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook from that year. The "Betty Crocker Cookbook" from 1976 also has a recipe for them that is a variation on their recipe for cocktail meatballs. Betty calls for chili sauce instead of mustard with the grape jelly, but is no more complicated than the Better Homes version with mustard and grape jelly. Both recipes call for them to be done on the stove top and served hot. I don't know for sure that Crockpots hadn't come out yet, but neither I nor no one I knew had one back then. In the early eighties, my friend and co-worker served these at a party at her house (the mustard version) made in a Crockpot. She wouldn't say what was in them, and just told everyone to give them a try. After we did, and most people found them delicious and I found them edible, she told us what was in them. I was pretty shocked, but they were popular and disappeared. Edited for spelling

Oh my goodness! Why is ketchup on a hot dog always so controversial? There are WARS about it on Roadfood, and their moderation is not nearly as strict as it is here. You would not expect or believe the discussions! There are many restaurants on that site that prohibit ketchup so folks sneak in their own packets. If you're interested, go there. But it is absolutely crazy. I cannot BELIEVE how emotional folks can get over this (which seems to me, a tiny and dismissable issue). I say if someone desires ketchup on their dog, just let 'em have it and back off. w