AlexandraLynch

I've had good luck with using James Beard's recipe for cooking fish. 10 minutes per inch thickness, double if frozen.400 degrees. I spray a cast iron pan down with oil, put the frozen filet on it, mist it with more oil, sprinkle thickly with seasoning (usually a blend from Penzey's) and then shove it in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. It's never failed me. I will add that I cook fish for other people. I grew up inland and am a supertaster and just really don't like it much.

Re Bacon: I lay it on a rack in a rimmed baking sheet (I keep a sheet just for this and other messy jobs) and bake it at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes or so. I bake it very crispy because I want to chop it for casseroles. This also gives me the bacon fat, which marries very nicely with various vegetables, and lives in a jar in my refrigerator. I don't mind the smell, any more than I mind the smell of chicken stock cooking. But that's me. As to cleaning the racks: I flip the rack over and soak it in hot water with soap until everything loosens, spray off everything loose, and hit the resistant spots with an electric toothbrush kept in the kitchen for such jobs.

That's why I was glad it was just the pound of sausage.

Let me know if it turns out to be low sugar. I can't use much tomatoes but I love various tomato dishes. (If I have one or two tomato-bearing dishes a week I can handle it. But if I did ziti with marinara for lunch and chili con carne for dinner and had fried potatoes with sausage and peppers for lunch the following day, by that evening I'd be so sore I could hardly stand up to cook the dinner.)

I am reminded of the fun in translating medieval recipes. "Take creme of cows milk or of Almond, do thereto Eyren and Sugar, Saffron, and Salt, meddle it fair, do it in a coffin of two inches deep, bake it well and serve it forth." Yes, that's a custard tart recipe. (I've made it with the almond milk version. It's very good. Reminiscent of sugar cream pie but better IMO.) But they never give you quantities or times. You're just supposed to KNOW.

I'm very glad to know I'm not the only person who's had a fingertip encounter with the slicer. It grew back, but the nerves in it are still a little wonky. I still have the scar up my forearm from the burnt caramel icing incident at 12, though the horizontal burns across my inner forearms from sheet pans faded finally. And my toe is still not happy about the pound of sausage that leapt from the freezer yesterday. I was just glad it wasn't anything larger.

HI! I'm a 48 year old woman from Indiana with an interest in historical cookery (focus is Anglo-Norman) and partners with various food allergies and intolerances. (An intolerance won't kill you, you'll just wish you were dead.) I'm intolerant of fructose, and have a condition that means I avoid eating legumes in general and most cruciferous vegetables. And I avoid nightshades because they make my arthritis pain worse. My boyfriend has had weight loss surgery and now cannot do a lot of bread, pastas, sugars, etc. My girlfriend, who lives with us, has an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts and problems with less-than-fully-cooked egg, and she has nightshade issues as well. But I figure that just because I can't dip my bread in honey or make them chicken with an almond milk-pomegranate sauce, that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy cooking on a daily basis and learn to do it better. I'm looking forward to participating in these forums and learning and becoming a better cook.