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I was going to give someone a bottle of the durian extract as a gift until I got home and unopened it stunk up my whole apartment. It's much more potent than just a durian fruit laying around in your kitchen. My thought was cookies but you would have to bake it in something you plan to throw away or ask to borrow the oven of someone you really hate!

It was fun meeting you, Suzanne! I had a really good time! Let us know when you come to town again!

Bourdain described the French Laundry as food porn. I refer to Margaret Braun's Cakewalk book as my "hardcore patisserie porn" .

Somewhere above there's talk about PMS treatments, so I'll put my two cents in. After years and years of dinking around with it, I have found that calcium over time relieves my pms problems. It takes a couple of months to build up enough. It starts with more days of weak cramps instead of one day of knock down drag out cramps and eventually they disappear. I've found that B vitamins in the huge amounts that they tend to put in vitamin pills labeled to help pms, they make me suicidal if the amount is high enough and just angry as hell with lower doses. I've been doing better eating Odwalla high protein bars a couple times a week but the Luna bars which taste better are apparently too high in B's because I damn near went postal on the office this last month. As far as cravings...is any food really safe? Hide everything you got 'cause if it's that time, I'm eatin' it! There just isn't enough chocolate in the world!

I'm glad I'm not alone. When I'm around certain people and comment on how nasty that one small taste of durian was, I get dirty looks. Here I feel at home and say, "Hey, Tony! Just be proud of me for lugging that huge sucker home, carving it open in my kitchen alone and being brave enough to take a lick no matter how bad it smelled!" I'm proud of myself for trying it. Nasty stuff.

My favorite has always been a Snake Bite, half Guinness and half hard cider preferably a good pear cider when available!

I agree with Ripert's Return to Cooking and the French Laundry. And if it's not blasphemy to say so in the same post, I would suggest Flavors by Rocco. If we're talking just coffee table appeal, there is a lot of spirit and personality in it. I disagree with the reading part. I think coffee table books should have some interesting reading as well and I'm enjoying actually reading Rocco's book. Too many times we just flip through the recipes and don't really read it like a book. There's a lot more than recipes in all three books mentioned here. If it's just about pictures, I'm more likely to pic up Chocolat or the Grand Finales books. But we are talking restaurant books here, aren't we?

Thanks for the reminder. I meant to pick it up this week. And thank you for adding the PDX on your posts. It helps so I can go straight to the posts I want to read and not waste so much time trying to figure out where things are. It's helpful considering I don't own a computer and don't get nearly enough time to do this already. Thanks Nick!

My favorite at Burgerville is the small cheeseburgers! I can't believe they took the bbq bacon cheeseburgers off the menu! Those were the best! The odd thing is that I love their fries with ketchup (evil thing MSG, I know) and a little mustard. I don't even like mustard. It just works well with their fries. I don't know why. I agree on the fry thing. It's all a matter of your personal taste. You can't please everybody. I've sat with a friend at Mickey D's and picked the opposite fries. I go for the wimpy ones and she would go for the ones that were overdone in my opinion. We've gone to Wendy's and she requested that they fry them twice! Completely ruined them as far as I was concerned.

I've been wondering about this one. I'll have to go check it out. Thanks for commenting on it !

Conrats Jim!

Our local library in Portland OR has all the issues. I'm always amazed at all the magazines they don't have but they do have all the Chocolatiers. You can always find some old ones on e-bay but they generally go for quite a bit. They are prized collector's items. I know I'll never give mine up!

Nope. It says they will be going to four copies a year on Chocolatier rather than six so obviously they are going to continue. Whew! Give me a heart attack. If nothing else, now Michael should know that we really appreciate what he does. My oldest Chocolatier I've come up with is an '85. Have I really been buying it that long? Geez...I'm old. I remember younger years of flipping through all the rock 'n' roll mags, reading them, putting them back and then grabbing my Chocolatier and taking it home. It's the only thing I've saved through the years. Looking forward to the next twenty years!

The loss of both wll leave a big hole in the industry and on my desk. Now there will be little reason for me to ever cruise a magazine rack. I was at the library recently going through the old Chocolatier issues and realised how many I had and that I have been buying it since nearly the beginning of the magazine. It's been a wonderful ride and I'll cherish the old issues I do have. Thank you Michael and if you start up again or do something new in the future, please check in here and let us know.

Broccoli...broccoli is the most intense craving I get. When I'm in the mood and I'm home alone I make a huge bowl of steamed broccoli with butter or bearnaise depending on the mood. Oh! And foccacia dipped in bearnaise too. Just every once in a while it calls to me.

Congrats! I'm very, very excited for you! The Bellagio...WOW!

The Republic of Tea's Vanilla Almond is my fave. I have it every morning cream and sugared and since it gets more flavorful as it cools I decided to toss it in the ice cream maker and freeze it. It's wonderful!

What are the best sites out there for learning about pastry and what do they teach? What resources have you guys come across? Books are spendy and I have a limited budget, especially when the books on things like sugar pulling can run into the one. two or even three hunderd dollar range. Are there sites out there that actually teach specific skills? What have you guys found?

I forgot to mention that I usually use LaBrea french bread when making Famie's recipe and it's wonderful the next day. The leftovers actually nuke really well. I was surprised.

The coconut sarahs are to die for! And the cocoa nib ice cream is wonderful! It's like a Wendy's frosty when it's soft and fresh out of the ice cream maker, only better!

My two favorites are from Gordon Ramsey's Just Desserts and Keith Famie's Adventures in Cooking. Gordon's is a nice basic recipe, heavy on the cream, and instead of the preserves on top, I tend to sprinkle mine with a little cinnamon and sugar. The recipe that I've got the most intense responses from is Keith's Michigan Bread Pudding with Maple Creme Anglaise. It has dried cherries in it instead of raisins which gives it a little more depth and sophisticated flavor than your average bread pudding. I've baked for a lot of years and it's the first time I've ever heard my mother moan over my cooking. Brought down the house at work too. I was really blown away by the intense reactions. When you're cooking it, everything in it seems a little intense at first... the spices, the fruits, the bourbon, but it all cooks down into a wonderfully subtle mixture as long as you don't forget the message in the end about the tin foil cover. If you don't use it, the bourbon can over power it a little. Wonderful recipe.

Okay, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one that bangs jars upside down on the floor to pop the seal. Maybe I'm not as weird as I thought. It does work though.

I ordered a venison tenderloin for Christmas from New Seasons. They special order a lot of things and will search for you. Cool meat buyer. You pay a pretty penny for what you order though. It was a wonderful piece of meat. Great dinner.

More commentary on the portland food.org bbq crawl... I loved the potato salad and the coleslaw at Campbell's but the thing we had that stood out to me was the smoked turkey. That's something unique that's not on everyone's menu. I really enjoyed it. And my brother the Q freak made the comment that a lot of people do good ribs and good sauce but at Campbell's the sauce is custom made for their style of meat and compliments the meat so perfectly. At Yam Yam's I loved the mac n cheese and the yams. The yams are great! Yes, they are sweet. Some of us like sweet. "Hi, I'm Pam...(group response "Hi, Pam!) I like sugar...." I also enjoy their catfish. It's not too fishy, crispy outside, moist inside. And I was told the 7-up cake was great. And I did enjoy the ribs because I'm one that doesn't care for fat and gristle. I like to be able to pick out just the meat and Yam Yam's ribs are meaty and easy to seperate the meat from the fat. Over all, it was a very good bbq crawl. A good time was had by all.

My brother and I were talking about my post here on the peanutbutter/tuna/cottage cheese/dill pickle transgression of my childhood. He looked at me and said "That is just wrong. That is so wrong. But now peanut butter and flank steak sandwich...that's good!" And the four year old in my life just gave me a reminder that in his world a plain peanut butter sandwich is fine...as long as it's dipped in ketchup.