Tropicalsenior

As to birthdays, I finally found the solution. I found out that giving them up entirely doesn't work because the family insists on recognizing them, but. If someone can change their gender at will why can't you change your birthday. I did just that. My birthday is now February 31st. Love the headbands but the croissant could get mistaken for dandruff with all its flakiness and I'm flaky enough. And I'm allergic to bananas. As to the necklace, the only way I like pretzels is dipped in chocolate and that could get kind of messy.

When's your birthday? I would dearly love to find some of these and send you some. You would be the roast of the town, I mean the toast of the town. You would have every donkey in China following you.

Looks kind of corny to me.

Here is the inside of the large avocado. Probably could have used it yesterday but it didn't go with our meal.

No visit to the Pike Place Market was ever complete without a visit to Marketspice. The aroma of their tea mixes and the tea that they offered always hit the spot. If there's one place that I miss most in Seattle, it is the Pike Place Market.

You beat me to it. I was just looking at their website. I've been relying on them for spices for 48 years. All the time that I lived in Seattle and now when my grandson comes down here I always place an order from Marketspice. I do miss going there in person. Just to walk in there, the aroma put you right in heaven.

If that's all he's looking for, using ground beef should work just fine because I haven't found one box product that is anything but broth. As far as I'm concerned they're nothing but the cubes or the powder with water added. Making it himself he could control the salt content and not wind up with all the preservatives.

I refuse to give valuable cupboard space to one trick ponies. All my tools and appliances have to earn their place in my kitchen.

I do quite a bit of dicing for Soups, Olivier salad, and things of that sort. I never thought of dicing mushrooms and how would that Contraption work on tomatoes and avocados? For me, doing it by hand is just fine, thank you. I should add that I honed my knife skills in professional kitchens where I did do a lot of mass dicing.

The big one weighs 527 G and one of the smaller ones weighed 178 G.

I will do that.

Incidentally, I just checked my receipts and the big avocado cost about $1.80 and the two little avocados cost about a $1.25.

When I went to the store today I was happy to see that they had asparagus again. They didn't have it for a couple weeks and I was afraid it was going to be one of these things that was there for a while and once you got accustomed to it he never saw it again. Our high-end grocery store usually has it all the time but at about twice the price that I have paid for this and it usually looks like it came over on the Santa Maria with Christopher Columbus. I have seen it as much as $10 for six or eight scraggly spears. The ones that I have been buying are about $4 a package for 16 nice fresh spears. Until recently, the only asparagus available here was in the cans which, fortunately, I do like. A little known fact is that canned asparagus is very good for your kidneys and bladder. Drinking the juice from the can can ward off a mild bladder infection. I have never seen white asparagus here, canned or fresh. My weekly purchase of vegetables here. Not shown: a quarter of a watermelon and a package of fingerling bananas.

When I went to the store today, the only National avocados that they had were the long neck ones. So I bought one. There were others there with longer necks but they looked pretty beat up. Then I went to another grocery store, sort of the warehouse type store with cheaper prices and they had the Hass avocados for half the price of the avocados in the first store. The national avocado is pretty hard and will be ready in about 4 days. The little ones are ready to eat now.

I definitely second that approach. Living here in Costa Rica I don't have the luxury of being able to select premium beans and it seems like every bag cooks differently. There's no way that I can put them in my instant pot and estimate the time that they will take. One time they're mush and the next time they are hard as a rock using exactly the same time. The only way to accurately reach the proper point is to cook them in a pot and test them. Another thing about using the instant pot or any pressure cooker, for that matter is that you always want to use natural release. Releasing the steam lets the gunk from the beans escape through the pressure valve and it could clog it causing an explosion the next time you use your pressure cooker. I don't soak my beans, I use the boil for 1 minute and let's set for 1 hour method. A while back @weinoo mentioned using this method and I have followed his directions ever since. The beans have more flavor and I can always cook them just the way I want them no matter how long it may take. And yes I do salt the beans when I cook them. I don't add any other flavors because I may use them in four or five different dishes and they can pick up the flavor of the particular dish that I am making.

And maybe he's just trying to play with our heads or giving us 'food' for thought. You really shouldn't do that @Shel_B. When you get to be my age, too much thinking can be detrimental to your health.

Although we don't have much incidence of salmonella here in Costa Rica, I scramble them and feed them to the cat.

Interesting question. Like I said I've only tasted them a couple times and I don't really remember much about them. I do know that they are in the market all the time. I'll see if there are any tomorrow when I go shopping and pick up a couple. I'll give them a taste and let you know what I think.

They have tree Tomatoes here all the time. I don't use them but then I've only tasted them once or twice. They have a hard shell and you have to scoop them out. I can only describe the taste as kind of like a tomato but with a citrusy note.

@ElsieD I think that you could just use whole milk if you want to. I have substituted in the following recipe and it has worked out just fine. This is a nice light dessert to serve with Chinese food and I usually serve it with mango. Almond Jelly with Fruit 3 cups cold water 2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin powder ½ cup sugar 1 can evaporated milk, 14oz. 2 teaspoons almond extract 2 cups fresh or macerated fruit (to serve) In a large glass measuring pitcher, heat the water in the microwave until it boils. Stir in the gelatin and sugar and stir until it is completely disolved. Stir in milk and almond extract. Pour into a 9 x 9" pan (or individual serving cups if desired). Allow to cool. Cover and refrigerate until set, 3 hours. To Serve - Cut jelly into 1" cubes and place in individual bowls. Top with fresh or macerated fruit of your choice. Serve chilled. (Optional) Top with a splash of ginger syrup to taste.

@Smithy's mention of using gelatin reminded me of this mango pudding recipe that I have. I have also made this using pureed strawberries and a passion fruit nectar that I can buy here. This makes about six small servings but I usually cut the recipe in half. Mango Pudding 2 envelopes unflavoured gelatin 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar 1 cup water 3 cups pureed fresh mangoes 1 cup evaporated milk 1 tbsp lemon juice, optional Lime wedges, for garnish, (optional) Fresh mango slices for garnish, (optional) Dissolve gelatin in 1/2 cup cold water. Add 1/2 cup of boiling water and whisk well. add sugar and whisk until dissolved. In a large bowl mix mango puree, evaporated milk and gelatin mixture. Add lemon juice if desired. Pour into a large bowl or an 8 by 8 pan. Note: You will need 3 ripe mangoes, weighing at least 12 ounces.

I believe it. When my oldest daughter was little we had friends that had a pony ring and they had tiny little saddles. Somewhere I have a picture of my oldest daughter at 6 months old riding on their smallest pony. She used to go riding out there all the time and we bought her her first pony when she was a year and a half.

I've seen several recipes that recommend using creme fraiche or Greek yogurt instead of cream.

This makes me kind of sad because growing up on the farm, one of my favorite animals was an old donkey that we had that was his docile as a kitten. It followed us around like a dog and we could climb up, over and around it anytime we wanted. Now if you were to say mule, that's an entirely different thing. I never met a mule that I liked. As far as I'm concerned, you can eat all of those that you want.

I'm glad you asked that question because it sent me to my friend Google and I found out that yes, you can freeze mustard for up to a year and they even recommend freezing it in ice cube trays. Most replies say that it isn't necessary to freeze commercial preparations of mustard because they have a long shelf life but I make a version of Gourmet Mustard that has eggs in it and invariably I wind up pitching some of it because I'm not sure about the shelf life of this.