browniebaker

I think you have mistakenly inverted the "ah" and "eh" sounds in the word. It's in fact "tahs-tuh-VEH(N)," the last syllable accented and ending with a nasal sound.

Having lived in England for a year in 1987-88, I figure I may have gotten mad-cow disease already, or maybe not. But life is too short not to enjoy, and I must have a Cornish pasty once in a while!

I love CI's anal-retentive approach to cooking and baking; it's a lot like mine. I do appreciate having someone else do the experimenting with different ingredients and techniques so that I don't waste my effort, money, and time unnecessarily. I do learn a lot from them, whether or not I use their recipe. However, there are two things I don't like about CI. First, their cookbooks have proliferated to the extent that they have multiple "best" recipes for, say, brownies, each recipe differing from the others only very slightly. I can't help feeling that they change their old recipes just a little so that they can publish them as new recipes in each new publication. The second thing I dislike is that sometimes they lose all perspective and prescribe the most excruciatingly painstaking technique for preparing what is, fundamentally, a simple food. For example, one issue of the CI magazine (I think it was the magazine) prescribed a ridiculously convoluted and messy and wasteful and counter-intuitive way to cut and form ice-cream sandwiches. I mean, these are just ice-cream sandwiches. Ice-cream sandwiches should not be this difficult. Get a grip!

ohhh... can you teach me this trick? This is a problem for me too. But don't people notice that the wine level in your glass is staying the same? ← No one's ever said anything. But two tricks help the wine-level go down: (1) wet the lips with wine and wipe with napkin, repeat, repeat, and repeat; and/or (2) have your spouse, significant other, date, or the person next to you accidentally drink from your glass instead.

I confess: I appear to be sipping my wine but I am not actually swallowing. I have never enjoyed the taste of alcohol, but often I accept a glass of whatever just to avoid the questioning and the urging I get when I say I don't want any wine.

Is it bad that I know the answer to this and that it's "yes"? Or at least they were still available up here last time I was in Safeway ... ← That's scarey-good to know. See you in aisle 9!

I will never again preheat the oven without first leaning down and examining every rack, even the highest one, to make sure I don't have plastic items stored there. I just ordered replacement plastic lids for my Nordic Ware 18" x 13" jelly roll pans ($4.50 each that I didn't need to spend!), and the customer service rep said the replacement lids come with "a beautiful sign to tape on your oven door -- just kidding" -- LOL!

Either. It's all good.

The oft-unspoken or unknown truth about English and Scottish scones is that they are supposed to be rather dry and leaden. They are merely a vehicle for generous heaps of rich clotted cream and dollops of sweet fruit jams and curds. No, they are not supposed to be fluffy or flakey like an (American) Southern biscuit. No, they are not supposed to be eggy and cakey like an American muffin or coffee-cake. American scones are mutations from the original: fatty, cakey, sugary, and overloaded with fruit, nuts, and chocolate precisely because people try to make them into pastries good enough to eat in themselves.

There's nothing as good as warm sweet rolls and strong Indian tea for breakfast! Saturday and Sunday mornings are when I take the trouble to bake for breakfast, my absolute favorite breakfast pastry being cinnamon rolls with cream-cheese icing. Other favorites to bake are Southern-style biscuits, English-style scones (not the cakey, sugary, overloaded American ones), yeasted Belgian waffles, bagels, and buttermilk pancakes (I just can't imagine going to a pancake house when pancakes are so good and easy to make at home.) The pastries I buy are the ones that I can't make or usually won't go to the trouble of making, my favorite going back to childhood being the Chinese bo lo mien bao a/k/a pineapple bun (though I have a recipe for it; it's a bit of trouble to make.). Others I prefer to buy rather than bake are danishes (almond bear-claws!), croissants, and pains au chocolat.

Kah-rrrrruh-FOOH-(rrrr), the last syllable in parentheses because barely pronounced, and the "rrrrr" referring to what I call the about-to-expectorate sound at the back of the palate

He doesn't like coconut! Juice of the coconut is all right, but not the meat. I wait until he's out of town to indulge. I have to make sure the kids are exposed to coconut so that they don't grow up weird.

While at a meeting recently in Europe one of my Dutch colleagues introduced me to one of his colleagues. "He's from Howda. You know, like the cheese." I figured it out, but only after a few moments of forehead wrinkling. ← However, with some food names, there is simply the reality that there exists a standard American-English mispronunciation. Even if I know how "Gouda" is pronounced in Dutch, I am not going to use that pronunciation if I anticipate that (1) my listener will not understand what I am referring to, and (2) my listener might consider my pronunciation pretentious. When I am with non-French-speaking friends, I consciously tone down the French pronunciation of French words for foods, using the standard English (mis)pronunciation instead. The times I have forgotten to do so with Americans, my listener has appeared put off or intimidated by my use of correct French. Many of the English persons I have known have take almost a chauvinistic pride in insisting on the standard English mispronunciation of French words such as "fillet": they maintain, "It's FILL-ette!"

Nine years ago, when I left the work force during my fifth month of pregnancy to became a stay-at-home mom, I started cooking and baking from scratch. I bought The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking and read them cover to cover. It seems such a long time ago that I was stirring up Bisquick pancakes, mixing brownies from a box, and slicing tubes of refigerator-section cookie dough. While many of you seem to have expanded the repertoire of dishes you cook, I have actually gone the other way and narrowed mine down to just my and my family's very favorites. Yes, for a couple of years after I started cooking in earnest nine years ago, I experimented with ambitious recipes in various cuisines: French, English, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, Korean, Italian, American Southern, you name it. I enjoyed cooking through Julia Child's two-volume masterpiece. But now I am so busy and exhausted with two young children that I stick with the tried and true, the foods we really like. That's what works for me at this stage in our lives. More recently, about a year ago, I finally started salting food enough. And just last month I finally resigned myself to the reality that I detest giving dinner parties at home. I have always dreaded giving dinner parties, even though I knew dinner parties at home were expected of me by (American) society. Now I just tell my friends that this is the way I am. I take friends out to dinner at restaurants.

Thick slice of white bread toasted golden-brown, spread generously with 1/4 brick of cream cheese, and glazed on top with chunky strawberry jam

Pink cocktail: maraschino-cherry juice stirred into a glass of cold, whole milk Cheap-o fake danishes from the grocery store, cello-wrapped onto a cardboard tray, and made with hydrogenated fats and yellow food-coloring -- I could eat all six in one sitting Mom would grate carrots into a batter and drop spoonfuls into hot oil to deep-fry -- delicious eaten hot, out of hand At dinner, the special treat was the fatty layer off the red-braised pork belly -- unctuously good! After dinner treat: We five would be watching TV and someone would say, how about some turnovers, and my mom or I would run to kitchen and whack a tube of refrigerator dough against the counter to quick-bake up jam-filled turnovers with white icing from a plastic tube squeezed over them. Gosh, I wonder if they still make sell these in the refrigerator section. I'm another of those parents who are laid-back about sugar, fat, trans-fats, food-coloring, and deep-frying. Everything in moderation.

Wow! I'm stunned just reading about it. Yes, the reception of our baked gifts can be thoughtless sometimes. At least he loved the cheesecake, bless his heart. My nephew was a houseguest at my house when he asked for another chocolate-chunk cookie and I had to say that my son had just eaten the last one. I offered to bake up another batch right away. He said okay, then changed his mind and asked whether I could make his favorite cookie instead. What cookie is that, I asked. He said he liked chewy molasses cookies. I had never baked any, so I quickly searched through my cookbooks and found a recipe, baked a batch, and brought them to him. He took one bite and said they were puffier and less chewy than he liked. Of course I was disappointed, especially as I was exhausted after several days of being a hostess. If I had been in his position, I wouldn't have criticized the cookies. But he's still my beloved nephew, so what can I say? Nothing. I hope that, at least, he saw it as a case of "it's the thought that counts." Yea, giving of yourself makes you vulnerable, truly.

I agree, there's something presumptuous and condescending in it. Would I ever be able to put less than my best effort into a gift? Sometimes I am so tired I am tempted just to buy something from the bakery, but my heart wouldn't be in the gift.

It's not so much a lack of appreciation for my dessert that I am talking about. In fact, the Cool-Whip lady did appreciate my brownies in her own way, which is with the Cool Whip dessert topping that she adores. What I am talking about is more abstract: the feeling of someone not being simpatico, which I think cannot help but make two persons less close. The friends I like most are the ones who are considerate of others' feelings. I was being considerate when I answered that I would not object to her putting Cool Whip on the brownies. But I think a considerate person would know not to ask. The fact that she asked whether it "would be a sacrilege" indicates that she knew she was asking A LOT.

I'm pretty old and, as a result, have been in this "friendship" business for some time. Sorry to say this to you (but one luxury us old gals allow ourselves is honesty); however, truly "showing someone you care" involves figuring out what they would like and doing that. Not doing what you like, and wanting them to appreciate it. And certainly not doing what you like and think they ought to like. As if you're trying to improve them. Some of your friends may really appreciate home cooking. Go one step further here and learn exactly which dishes they'd like and make those. Maybe they don't like ethnic food, but love casseroles. So make them one, if you're really trying to please them. Other friends may long for lunch in a nice restaurant. So for them, do that, instead of trying to get them to understand it took you hours to prepare something. Other friends may just not be food oriented at all. So find out what they do like. And give them a book, or a CD, or take them to a movie, or concert, or mow their lawn, or wash their car. And all of my friends are "worth the effort," or they wouldn't be my friends. True kindness and compassion and generosity and thoughtfulness isn't giving somebody something that you like, and then getting your feelings hurt when they don't appreciate it as much as you think they should. Save your best home-cooking efforts for people that you know understand and appreciate them. I mean, the lady with the Cool Whip has the exact same problem you do. She was trying to be helpful, thoughtful, kind, generous. And you didn't appreciate it. The problem was that she didn't take the time to figure out what you would like. She just barged ahead with what she liked. That's the lesson there. ← Good points here. Indeed, in this case the Cool-Whip lady and I have known each other only two months (raising the question of how well you should know someone before asking him or her to your potluck), and she and I are just learning each other's likes and preferences. What I have learned is that I might not need to expend so much effort for her potlucks in future. I'll show her "I care" in other ways. As far as your point that I made what I, not she, liked for the potluck, I have to point out that she asked me to bring a dessert, and I cleared the brownies with her beforehand after offering her several choices.

Hellman's only. I'll go without mayo if I have to, until the next sale or coupon comes along. The ideal is always to have a couple of backup jars of Hellman's in the pantry. I use Hellman's mayo everywhere: on hamburger buns; on the outside of grilled cheese sandwiches before grilling; in sandwiches of just mayo on soft white bread; to make my pimiento cheese, potato salad, chicken salad, shrimp salad, and tuna salad; to make cucumber finger-sandwiches -- so much better than butter; and, sometimes for old time's sake, in certain Jello ("congealed") salads, folded in with the likes of whipped cream, cream cheese, and canned fruits and/or marshmallows, just like Mom used to make. One reason I use the same mayo always is so that I get consistent results wiuth my recipes. Also, I love the mayonnaise-based sauce used in Chinese-style dish of Honey-Walnut Shrimp. I love mayo on almost any savory (not sweet) sandwich. Is there any problem with mayo on pastrami? I don't think so! The only place I can't stand mayo is in chocolate cake, ick. And lips that touch Miracle Whip won't touch mine!

I agree, Auntdot. Some people are worth the effort of making good hummus for, and some people are not. If I think about it, it's clear that my friends and family members each fall clearly into one or the other category. Stuff straight off the grocery-store shelf or freezer is good enough for the latter. The fact that a certain friend obviously does not appreciate the effort you put in your cooking or the quality of your food, does that make you feel less close to that friend? I think it can drive a wedge, just as lack of sympathy for one's deep interests can make one less good a friend. Cooking or baking for someone is a major way I show I care, and if my gesture is scorned, well, I can't help feeling less close. How about you? What do you all feel?

I've always liked the spice cake recipe in the most recent edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. It's very moist, nicely dark, fine-textured but dense enough to pick up and eat out of hand (as I was wont to do to an entire cake, piece by piece as the day wore on when I was pregnant with my first child!), and spiced with, among other spices, a touch of cayenne. But my favorite spice cakein the world is any spice cake that has sweet potato in it. The moistness, denseness, and unique flavor are incomparable. The Regan Daley recipe that Kit posted sounds delicious. What I do in practice is simply add a riced sweet potato or two to whatever spice cake or spice muffin recipe I'm using.

Lisa, thanks for your interest. I certainly don't claim to have a better recipe for brownies than any other eGulleter out there. My recipe is simply the one I have honed over time to suit my own and my family's tastes (fudgy, very chewy). If people find them good, it's probably due in no small part to the tender loving care I put into baking them. You know: good chocolate, good vanilla, having the ingredients religiously at room temp, going to the trouble of wrapping wet metallic baking strips around the pan to retard the setting of the edges, and hovering around the oven close to the end of the baking period with a wooden tester. Even if I had made my brownies for the potluck from a store-bought mix, the brownies should have been served the way I had brought them, not adulterated by the hostess with Cool Whip, whipped cream, creme fraiche, Devon clotted cream, or anything. I've posted my Bite-Cha-Back Brownie recipe on the eGullet recipe board before, but here it is, Lisa, with the addition of a cheesecake layer that's swirled in. Enjoy! A MARBLED BITE-CHA-BACK BROWNIE Cheesecake Layer: 8 ounces Philadelphia cream cheese 1/3 cup sugar 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 large egg Chocolate Layer: 6 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate 3/4 cup unsalted butter 1-3/4 cups packed light-brown sugar 3 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1-1/4 cups bread flour (using dip-and-sweep method of measuring) 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt Place oven-rack at center of oven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light-colored aluminum 8' square cheesecake pan, or line 8" square pan with a sheet of foil with overhanging edges (so that brownies can be lifted out), then grease. To make cheesecake layer, mix together cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Blend in flour. Blend in vanilla and egg. Set aside. To make chocolate layer, microwave chocolate and butter until melted, stirring periodically to distribute heat. Stir in sugar until no lumps remain. Stir in eggs and vanilla, just until blended. In separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir dry mixture into wet mixture, just until blended. Spread three-quarters of the batter evenly into pan. Spread cheesecake batter evenly on top of chocolate layer in pan. Drop heaping tablespoons of remaining chocolate batter on top. To make marbled pattern, run sharp knife through batter without touching bottom of pan or lifting knife during its course. Wrap soaking-wet Magi-Cake strips around walls of pan. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes (30 to 35 minutes if not using wet strips), just until center has risen and fallen and is firm to the touch and wooden tester inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs attached. Remove from oven. If center of cake subsides and is lower than edges, gently press edges down with spatula so that cake is level. Cool in pan to room temperature. Remove from pan. Cut into 16 squares with plastic knife. Let sit 24 hours before serving (a must for the chewy texture). Serve at room temperature. Makes 16 brownies.