Tropicalsenior

Everything looks so good. Next time with your fruit salad try a dressing of sour cream, lemon or lime juice, and honey to taste. You will have to make a double batch because everyone will love it. They make the very best brownies. I don't even bother to make them from scratch anymore.

We had our Christmas Tourtiere tonight and I think my practice paid off. I made it entirely with lard so it didn't get as golden as usual but it's the flakiest that I've ever made. I looked at about 25 recipes and adapted one to my taste. Since I can't use onion or garlic I need to up the other seasonings. If I do say so myself, it was delicious. I served it with asparagus with hollandaise.

I just checked the recipe and it looks pretty darn good. Do you think that the 25 minutes of simmering is enough to make them tender enough?

Carlos just gave me this for Christmas. It's from Italy so I have high hopes. It's chocolate and caramel. The little one is a Costa Rican fruit cake. The wine of course is just sparkling grape because we're both teetotalers and that's about the limit of our indulging.

Sometimes it's just not your day. I'm so sorry that this happened to you because I know that with all that you've gone through clean up must be a b****.

I've had this app on my telephone for about 5 years. You can set dozens of timers and groups of timers. You can set a different sound for each one if you want. With that and my alarm app I don't have any excuse for forgetting anything.

I had some pie dough leftover from the quiche I made yesterday so I made six little Cherry streusel tarts to have for Christmas Eve tomorrow night.

I've used this type of peeler for about 20 years. It is definitely the best kind to use.

It didn't make a very pretty plate but it did taste good. And I dodged the bullet again. No MIL crust.

I made another quiche for dinner tonight and I tried something different. It looks a little strange but I hope it doesn't taste strange. Didn't have any swiss cheese so I used cheddar with Spanish chorizo. I put a bit of taco seasoning in the egg mix and we'll see how it turns out.

It depends on how much you are willing to pay for a treat. I wouldn't pay that much because I can't afford it but if you can, go for it at least once. OMG! I'm turning into an enabler.

Nope! Never never never!

This may seem pretty mundane to those of you that have big Gardens but here I've only been able to have a patio container Garden. Two years ago we had so much rain that it drowned all my herbs. I was able to get to a good nursery yesterday that had some good ones and I bought rosemary, sage, tarragon, and basil. These I will keep in my laundry room where I can control the watering. The basil looks kind of wimpy but I have high hopes for it.

I just opened my fourth one of the year. It's a cheap mass produced One but it's pretty good and it's a good thing that I'm not too picky. I'm hoping that they will still have them in the store next week and I can pick up a couple more.

Not at all, in fact it is an excellent suggestion. In Costa Rica we have something called cola de res which is an oxtail soup base made by Maggi. It has a thickener in it and it makes an excellent gravy. The one thing that you do have to take into consideration if you are are using a gravy mix is that it has salt added. So you want to make sure that you season your stew after you have added the gravy mix. Otherwise you can wind up with something totally inedible. Been there done that.

You are so lucky that you can order all these things. I have to make them if I want them. I have made Kouign Amann from this recipe but I can no longer roll out the dough. However I do have two tourtieres in the freezer.

I agree. They certainly are pretty little peppers. If they are so delicious and fragrant and expensive why aren't you going to eat them? Do you plan to press them in the pages of your OED and frame them?

My husband always got sick when we went on trips. Everything from dehydration, food poisoning to Montezuma's Revenge. Most people would look up and make a list of all the attractions they wanted to see. I always had to know where the closest doctors and Clinics were.

My grandmother had one of these. It didn't help her cooking any but I loved it and I always wanted one. Instead of the food grinder on the right, hers had a great big old can opener.

We just finished our third one of the year. Next one, next Saturday.

Instant mashed potatoes also make a pretty good thickener although the stew will be pretty cloudy.

You can always use cornstarch. It does have its limitations but it is gluten free, if that is what you are looking for.

Yep, I definitely did a double take.

I think extract nowadays has an entirely different meaning than what we used to think of. It is simply the flavor of whatever it claims to be and that flavor is made up of chemicals not the actual product. For instance, If I buy a maple extract, I don't expect it to contain any actual maple. This article is rather lengthy but it explains the process by which these extracts are made.

I found this salt in our supermarket this week. I'm going to give it a try. The interesting thing is the ingredients. Yodo is iodine. Costa Rica seems to have the lowest requirement of all the central American countries.