Tropicalsenior
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Posts posted by Tropicalsenior
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On 6/5/2017 at 4:55 PM, liuzhou said:
The dreaded Chizzas have turned up in China.
I haven't seen any here in Costa Rica, but then, I haven't checked for a while. They serve something here that is almost as bad. A chicken fillet topped with beans and rice, (called Gallo Pinto, Costa Rica's national dish) and coleslaw.
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19 hours ago, kayb said:
God help us all. That's about the nastiest thing I've seen today.
I went to that link to check out the ‘Chizza' pizza. Absolutely revolting! The chicken crust sounds bad enough butt chicken ham and pineapple and a sweet sauce, I don't think so. Even worse, I checked out the links for the Burger King burgers. Bright-red Samurai hell-burgers: https://www.cnet.com/news/burger-king-japan-debuts-red-samurai-burgers/ and Burger King Japan unveils burger dark as night: https://www.cnet.com/news/black-cheese-burger-king-japan-unveils-burger-dark-as-night/ Can you imagine eating one of these for lunch before a business meeting or a job interview?
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1 hour ago, Shelby said:
It really does work
(I checked with mom about how she learned )
I'm so tickled with this hint that it is hard not to get mushy about it. It's probably the best one I've had in 10 years. In fact, I had three tomatoes that were headed over the hill and I peeled them and made a nice fresh tomato sauce to serve over penne pasta with a nice spinach salad for tomorrow night. I may even go buy some more tomatoes tomorrow and put peeled tomato wedges in the salad.
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21 minutes ago, andiesenji said:
They were not intended for use in the oven. Only for stove top use.
I'm sure that mine weren't Pyrex because they were colored, more like the CorningWare. They were a gift so I really have no idea what they were. Not a very good gift, as it turned out, but it's the thought that counts.
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2 hours ago, Shelby said:
I learned a trick from my mom, I'm sure she learned it from her mom
Well, I'll be darned! It just goes to show that you can even teach an old dog new tricks. Remember some years back when every chef in the cooking shows prefaced their segments with a lesson on how to peel a tomato? I've hated peeling tomatoes ever since. This really, really works.
Tonight my housemate is out with his girlfriend so I'm having my usual solo sandwich dinner, with a twist. Today in PriceSmart I found some beautiful Hillshire Farms Polish kielbasa, which down here is a real treat. So I'm having a big fat, juicy sausage sandwich with nice, peeled sliced tomatoes, and creamy coleslaw with some orange slices in it.
Thank you, Shelby.
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36 minutes ago, Nyleve Baar said:
I keep bees myself and there is a LOT of misunderstanding about these creatures. First of all, most people can't distinguish between bees and everything else that flies around - like wasps and yellowjackets. It's almost always a wasp or a yellowjacket that is the culprit when someone gets stung, yet everyone says they were stung by a bee! My honeybees are reasonably docile and can't be bothered to sting unless provoked. Yellowjackets and ground hornets will sting for no damn reason at all - you're just walking past and boom! Last year I got badly attacked by ground hornets just because I walked past their hole. On the other hand, I might get no more than one or two stings a year from my own bees, and I'm right in their hive messing with their stuff. They have work to do and unless you get them upset, they mind their own business.
Urban bees are not a menace to anyone. They forage in gardens and park spaces and are important for the ecosystem. You'd be surprised at how much there is for a bee to do even in a city environment - look around and you'll see all kinds of flowering stuff everywhere. I don't know what the local by-laws are, but many municipalities do permit beehives on private property as long as they're situated a certain distance from the property line. If anyone gets stung, I imagine it would be a difficult thing to prove where, exactly, that creature came from - a domestic hive or a wild colony. And as I said, most of the time it would have been something other than a bee anyway.
We have a little black bee here that doesn't sting at all, it can't. I have been told that it is one of the major pollinators of the mango crops.
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30 minutes ago, cakewalk said:
I can't help thinking about that poor woman!
She survived. Fortunately, the owner of the house had the presence of mind to turn the hose on her and she didn't get badly stung. But the friendship did not survive. The owner of the house was devastated because her poor little humble house was almost destroyed. She felt that the friend should contribute to rebuilding it since it was her action that caused all the problems. The neighbors eventually, before the rains came, bought lumber and patched up the outside. Doña Elena is now living all alone in her little house, without her bees, and she didn't even get to keep the honey.
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I like Johnsonville sausage. But living here in Costa Rica with very little imported sausage I don't have much of a comparison base except for the sausage made here, which is over-fat and under-seasoned and all tastes the same. PriceSmart (like Costco) started importing Johnsonville about six years ago and then suddenly stopped carrying it. Their reason, no lie, was that people were buying them too fast and they couldn't keep them in stock so they just stopped buying them. Later, one of our high-end supermarket chains started carrying them and as their popularity grew, so did the price. They are now almost $10 a package for Italian sausage or breakfast sausage. I like them but not that much. I just went back to making my own. Mine don't have the casings on them but I have more money in my pocket.
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On 9/12/2017 at 1:21 AM, Thanks for the Crepes said:
They are not aggressive unless they get crossed with the African bee strain which can happen.
You are absolutely right. I can't think of a better illustration of this than something that happened recently in our neighborhood. It was discovered that an elderly neighbor had beehives in three outside walls of her house. She had to have lived with them for years without any problems, and there is a busy restaurant next door with outdoor seating, that also had never complained of problems. She, supposedly, had no idea that they were there until a visitor pointed out bees coming from the side of the house and poked a stick in the hole. The bees attacked her ferociously, but not the owner of the house (which really causes one to wonder about the intelligence of bees). The firefighters were called and they removed all the siding and took out the honey. The exterminators were then called and they killed all the bees, which I think is a shame. I had to wonder how many fruit trees in our neighborhood would not be pollinated this year.
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Yes, I remember that one now. Thank you, Norm. The one that I remember came with a set of three dishes, probably CorningWare copycats. In order to put the handle on you had to angle it down and snap it up. The first time I used it, I burned my hand on the oven rack and I pitched it in the trash. Pot holders worked just fine. The dishes themselves didn't last much longer. One exploded in the oven and one broke in the dishwasher. I never had a problem like that with CorningWare.
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1 hour ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:
If they go, we will follow them shortly.
So true. One in four of the fruits that we eat is pollinated by bees. Bees and bats are essential to life on Earth.
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15 hours ago, andiesenji said:
I have these, pan grabbers that came with sets of utensils back in he early '70s.
I remember these well but wasn't there another one that had a one piece handle? As I remember, it was rather poorly designed as you had to angle it downward to attach it and risked hitting your knuckles on the oven rack.
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Welcome, so glad you joined us. I hope that you find lots of recipes and the help that you need to become an experienced cook. You're going to find that cooking by Metric measurements and by cooking by volume measurements, as we do is a bit confusing. If there's anything that we can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask. In fact, maybe our Australian friends and we can start a new topic so that you can help us with our metric and we can help you interpret some of our recipes. And you can explain to us some of those quaint expressions you have and we can explain some of our more confusing idioms. Although we, supposedly, speak the same language we have a lot to learn from each other.
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3 hours ago, andiesenji said:
I use loose tea and brew a quart of tea - 2 tablespoons of loose tea, a quart of boiling water, steep for 8 minutes. Strain into the pot of beans that have been soaked overnight and drained. Add enough water to cover the beans plus about an inch.
You can re-steep the tea with about a pint of water and leave it to steep for 30 minutes or so, in case you need more during the cooking, if the beans take up too much liquid and look dry on top.
I use this tea in baked beans, I add some to the little new potatoes that are boiled in their skins. Any food that is enhanced by a smoky flavor.
This sounds like such a good idea, I can't wait to go to Barrio Chino and see if I can find some of this tea. Thank you.
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2 hours ago, BeatriceB said:
I am about to dispose of my copy of "How To Cook Everything," because I find it useless, but parting with any of them is hard
We each seem to have our own personal reason for clinging on to a particular cookbook. I have one old favorite that I'm sure no one here would even give shelf space to. It is called Better than Store Bought and when I moved here it became my Bible. It had recipes and instructions for all those things that we have become accustomed to just grabbing off the shelf. I made things in large batches because I was never able to be sure that I would find the ingredients again the next time that I went to the store. That's probably the Genesis of my hoarding problems, which was difficult to do in our first apartment because my kitchen was 6 by 6. I wound up turning half of my 9 foot clothes closet into a pantry.
Then there was also the language difference. Not being totally fluent in the language I made some very disastrous and hilarious mistakes. Like the time that I tried to make pudding with laundry starch instead of cornstarch. Another time I thought that I had found some great flaky kosher salt. I set about to make a large crock of dill pickles only to find out two days later that I had tried to make them with epsom salts. I can't even describe the smell or the texture of that mess.
Sometimes hoarding has its advantages and sometimes not. My little book is tattered and it splattered and it wasn't in very good of shape when I bought it second-hand, but I know that that's one book I'll never part with.
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10 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:
stainless steel bowl one might use for
pressure steaming rice
Do you have a restaurant supply business in your area? I can't buy things from Amazon here, so I went to a Chinese restaurant supply house. I bought so many great accessories that will fit in my instant pot that I probably will never use them all. They are of excellent quality and will outlast me. Just be sure to measure the inside dimensions of your instant pot to make sure that they will fit. Don't forget to measure the height of the rack that they will sit on like I did. I now have a nice stainless steel pot that I am trying to figure out what to do with. Maybe I'll plant basil in it.
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12 minutes ago, BetD said:
This sounds like a great idea..
If you think this sounds great, go to her website and check out her method of using the tea to cook sausage. In fact, just go to her website. You will love it. She has so many more good ideas.
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50 minutes ago, lindag said:
(some of the roads are pretty rough)
Probably the understatement of the year.
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3 hours ago, Norm Matthews said:
. I have two gadgets that serve the same function: grabbing hot things from the oven.
I had one like that and I like this one so much better. The way the handle is, and those Tyrannosaurus jaws give this one unbelievable leverage.
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1 minute ago, Kerry Beal said:
Looks like a husband tamer to me
Ouch! I'll bet every man reading this cringed at that.
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1 minute ago, Alex said:
Is it safe? (Not for the faint of heart.)
For whom. The extractor or the extractee?
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27 minutes ago, lindag said:
I think you might actually be able to change a tire with it.
You might be onto something there. I think I'll buy another one when I go to the Chinese store just to keep in the car. The last time that I went to the Bridgestone tire shop to get a squished valve repaired, they didn't have a socket that fit the lug nuts on my car. I had to drive five miles to my mechanic, borrow his, take it to the shop, and then drive five miles back to return it, then ten miles home. The clincher was that, unbeknownst to me, there was one laying right on the spare tire in the bottom of the trunk. I'm sure that little gadget would have chewed them right off.Oh well, everything in Costa Rica is an adventure.
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6 minutes ago, cakewalk said:
Whatever it is, it's got a very serious grip.
It has a tremendous grip. I would say this is a case of extreme over engineering for its purpose.
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28 minutes ago, IowaDee said:
Bet it involves seafood though
No, I bought it in my favorite Chinese restaurant supply store. On the package, it was called a microwave grabber. I wish that I had saved the package with the directions. It was hilarious. It is supposedly used to take hot dishes out of the microwave. I use it to take inner pans out of my instant pot. it's got a grip like a bulldog and won't let go of even the heaviest pan.
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Road food
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
In 1991 my husband and I moved from Seattle to Costa Rica and he thought it would be a great adventure to drive there. Most of the food that we ate on the trip is just a blur but one meal was particularly memorable. One morning we had just entered Mexico, and had been driving for about two hours. We were hungry and we hadn't seen any place to eat for miles. Finally, we saw one place off the side of the road with tables set up under some sort of an awning. The place seemed busy with about 20 customers. It didn't seem particularly impressive but we were hungry. We stopped. There were no open tables but the people make room for us at one of theirs. Without even ordering, we were brought mugs of delicious Mexican hot chocolate and big plates of food from the kitchen. We had beans and rice, quesadillas, carne mechada, and big bowls of menudo. I had to decline the menudo but my husband loved it. We stayed longer than we meant to and fortunately, we knew enough Spanish to be able to hold our own in the conversations. As we got up to go, we asked how much we owed them. We were told no, no, no, absolutely nothing. This wasn't a restaurant it was just the family sitting down to breakfast. They were happy to have us as guests. We left not knowing whether to feel ashamed or honored so we chose the latter. This was easily some of the best food we ever had in Mexico.