Toliver

An eGullet discussion on tots: "The Tater Tot Topic - Creative Uses for The Little Buggers" Shelby, I have pork envy/lust now. It looks great!

I didn't see a similar one but my mom has a three-spoon spoon rest. It's a ceramic "leafy" looking spoon rest with enough spaces for three spoons at one time. And yes, she's cooked large enough meals that all three spaces were in use. It's a little worse for the wear these days but then, so am I.

When I was a child, my dad would always buy me a waffle ice cream sandwich at the local fair. It was simply two waffle pieces with a small slab of vanilla ice cream between them. I suppose you could also get gild the lily and "paint" the interior/ice cream side of each of the waffles with a chocolate sauce. Or make chocolate waffles. Or gingerbread waffles. Or even add sliced strawberries to the interior. The possibilities are endless.

Natasha, that is stunning. The school colors tweak is a brilliant idea. I suppose you could do the same for holidays (red, white & blue for the 4th of July, greens and reds for Christmas, and so on). Congratulations on your successful dessert.

Often when I make rice I will use chicken stock instead of water (and no added salt) for extra flavor. I might throw in some sliced green onion/scallion before eating it. I've always made my fried rice with leftover rice, not freshly made rice. The leftover rice will be drier due to the refrigeration and doesn't clump together like freshly made rice would during the stir fry. The stock just adds another level of flavor to the final dish.

The article: "Flip camera inventor turns to high-tech grilled cheese" Are there other fast food restaurants taking advantage of new technology in a similar fashion? Assuming it's a good meal/product, will this influence where you choose to eat your meal?

You could try pm'ing eGullet member andiesenji. I believe she makes her own crystalized ginger as well as candied fruit/peels.

You're the yin to my yang. I'm the guy who buys leftover bananas. There is balance in the universe.

I was in Santee/San Diego for this past holiday weekend and saw Copper River salmon selling for $12.99/lb. at Henry's.

I was in the produce section of my local grocery store and watched as a woman picked out the pineapple she wanted then proceded to twist off the crown of leaves and left it behind. It shocked me, to say the least. Mushroom stems...pineapple crowns...what's next? Perhaps taking a few extra produce bags may not be the biggest crime performed in the produce section. As for using the eco-friendly reuseable bags to tote your groceries home...maybe not such a good idea: Problems With Reusable Shopping Bags Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I used to be a keeper (Bon Appetít & Chile Pepper Magazine). But it just got to be too much. So I became a clipper and a tosser. Now I just have to wade through what was kept and clip & toss.

That's not stealing. There is not a produce item you buy in a grocery store that shouldn't go into a produce bag before you put it in your cart/basket. You should assume your grocery cart/basket is contaminated (and a lot are) and protecting the food you buy from that contamination is a very good thing. I put every produce item I purchase in a produce bag, the exception being produce that's too large to fit (eg, watermelons). The problem with this logic is that they are assuming my plastic bags are ending up in the landfills. I have the option of recycling my plastic bags at my local grocery store either through re-use or through their own recycling program. I also re-use the plastic bags I get at the grocery store by using them to tote my Costco/warehouse store purchases into my house. Costco is too cheap to provide me plastic bags for my purchased items. They give me giant cardboard boxes (if even that...sometimes they just throw the items into the cart without any kind of box or bag). I open my car trunk, move everything from the boxes into my reuseable plastic bags and leave the boxes at Costco. My plastic bags do not end up in the landfill, if I can help it. Steven, I don't think it's stealing. If you feel any pangs of guilt about about it, break up your bunch of bananas so it's one per bag. Or your bunch of grapes. Methinks this is a mountain being made out of a molehill.

Perhaps they were trying to think of a pack animal handling a heavy load and intended Donkey but went with Monkey instead, which sounds cuter. As for the coffee, perhaps it's a riff off of the "Air Bender" book series? Marketing can be a puzzle sometimes.

Hershey's Drops I'm not sure how new these are. The bag states on the front: "No candy shell - No mess". How do they do it...prevent the chocolate from melting in your hand? If you've ever had a Milk Dud, you know the answer. There seems to be some sort of waxy coating on the outside of these drops, very reminiscent of the exterior of a Milk Dud. The Hershey's Drops are somewhat flat-ish (imagine a squashed Milk Dud) and are 100 percent Hershey's Chocolate. The drops taste just like a Hershey's Chocolate bar. This can either be a good thing (if you like Hershey's Chocolate) or a bad thing (if you prefer the real McCoy). I am not a fan of the sour-ish taste of Hershey's Chocolate so I would probably pass on these.

Some on eGullet consider it dessert: Showstopper Jello Desserts

To be fair, Graham Kerr was the first to make such noises decades ago on his "The Galloping Gourmet" cooking show. Regarding the food-travelogue shows, while I can understand how such shows could annoy you, I also think it can go hand in hand with the terroir aspect of cooking. By Lidia taking us to a farm in southern Italy, perhaps she's showing us how the dish evolved and why it uses the ingredients it does. Sure, it takes away from valuable cooking time, but I'm still learning something about food and cooking. It's funny how "Molto Mario" achieved almost the same thing as Lydia but without the travelogue. On that show Mario, while he cooked, would talk about the mythic Italian housewife and her knife skills and the ingredients she would use depending on where she lived, and so on, all without leaving his cooking set. You still learned something about the recipe's origin while he cooked. Perhaps the change can be attributed to cooking shows having bigger budgets these days.

I have a friend who uses her torch to make a copycat Honeybaked ham. She said she found the recipe for the sugar-spice coating mixture on the internet.

Yes. This. Don't throw the rind away. There's some flavor still to be had in it.

There's Got Let Chicken. A chinese dish that uses the wings, sort of like chicken lollipops. See my post here (post #287).

Thank you for the info. Does refrigeration help delay the oil from becoming rancid? If so, how much time does it buy?

Rocco DiSpirito is launching yet another food related show called "Rocco's Dinner Party" debuting on the Bravo cable channel on Wed., June 15th. It sounds like a weekly Top Chef competition with some H&G channel thrown in. According to this article, Rocco says: So now you not only have to be a great chef but have to be able to channel Martha Stewart, as well? The man continues not to cook. Is that a travesty? Or a good thing? Will the show be a train wreck or something worth watching?

Perhaps the question should have been more succinctly put "Is the orange juice freshly squeezed"? The word "fresh" does not imply "freshly squeezed" to those without the experience or common sense to know better, as you found out.

Locally, all of the Thrifty Drg Stores were bought out by Rite Aid. They still sell Thrifty's brand ice cream in their freezer section. There's a Carnation plant just outside of town. I believe Nestlé owns Carnation now but still sells under the Carnation brand. I wonder if Carnation is making the Thrifty ice cream sold here in town.

The farmer's markets here usually sell at a higher price. But then most of the produce on sale is picked the morning of the farmer's market. Local grocery stores can't offer that. There's also one vendor who is certified organic and offers a wide vareity of produce. Most of the vendors are local farmers with a few of them coming down from the next county. The largest vendor is actually a produce broker and I don't buy from him because who knows where he bought his produce. I go to the farmer's market specifically to support local farmers and to get the freshest produce. I have no problem paying higher prices for that.

Yes, they count! I know they have the different colored fish crackers aimed at kids but I don't think I could eat them. I'd be thinking of the purple dye everytime I ate a purple one. My niece loves Cheez-Its. Every year at Christmas time, I make a special batch of the "Chex Mix" for her but use only the little pretzels and Cheez-Its for the mix. The Ritz Cinnamon & Sugar flavor made me think of the infamous but long gone "Mock Apple Pie" recipe that used to be on every box of Ritz crackers. I bet that new flavor of crackers would go great with a slice of apple.