Toliver

What about something citrusy? Samoas, thanks to their marketing, make me think of the tropics or South Pacific. The acid in the citrus could provide a balance to the sweetness of the caramel, chocolate and coconut. Perhaps a kiwi-lime tart, or pineapple-mango tart (with the crust being made from the Samoa ingredients)...

You could always make your own. There's a whole wheat spaghetti being sold on ethnicgrocer.com. I can't make out the brand: Spaghetti Whole Wheat link

Spatchcocking is also frequently mentioned in this eGullet discussion: "Roasting a Chicken, The Topic (merged)"

Hershey's Milk Chocolate filled with Creamy Peanut Butter The wrapper doesn't say "Limited Edition" so this must be a permanent addition to the Hershey's lineup. This is the King Size version. The bar is 5 connected squares, each filled with peanut butter. There's a lot of peanut butter in each square, enough to give a mouthfeel/texture as if you've just eaten some peanut butter straight out of the jar. For me, the yardstick for chocolate and peanut butter candy is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. The balance between the two in this candy bar isn't quite the same as a Reese's (which is surprising since Hershey makes Reese's Peanut Butter Cups). The peanut butter here is much more realistic in texture though the flavor was surprisingly subdued. Perhaps they should try using Jif instead. If you're craving the feel of real creamy peanut butter in your mouth, then this is the candy bar for you. It's no Reese's, but overall I'd say it's an okay candy bar.

Having recalled a previous discussion on non-stick sprays causing non-stick pans to start sticking ("nordicware bundt pan--loses its non-stickiness?"), I just saw an ad in the latest Bon Appetit magazine for Pam Professional. It's a non-stick spray supposedly engineered for high heat cooking. They must be aware of the stories being bandied about regarding how their spray has been turning non-stick pans into sticking pans because they have printed on the Pam Professional label "resists residue buildup for easy cleanup". Of course, the key word here is "resists". Has anyone tried this new non-stick spray yet? edited to close the dang parenthesis

Has anyone tried making their own fruit leathers? I once had a food dehydrator that I used to make beef jerky. It came with a flat plastic circular sheet that was used for drying your own fruit leather in the machine. I never used it though I thought it looked simple enough. Making your own would allow you to control the ingredients. I suppose you could even use a silpat in a low oven, too, for drying homemade fruit leather.

Moderators, If this has been discussed before (and I think it has), please feel free to merge it. Recently I was invited to a party and was asked to bring the artichoke dip I usually make for such gatherings. I make a double batch, a mild version and a spicy version. The recipe calls for one cup of mayonnaise so I always buy the small jars of mayo which contain 16 ounces, enough for both batches. Or, at least, they used to contain 16 ounces. I noticed that the mayo label now reads 15 ounces. 15 ounces?! I need 16 ounces. Whatzupwitdat?! Fortunately, I had the remains of another jar on hand so the recipe turned out well. Think of all those countless number of recipes, handed down from one generation to another, calling for a "small jar of mayo" or a "small box of Jello" but, thanks to sneaky corporate product downsizing, that small jar or that small box no longer contains the proper amount of ingredients to make the recipe a success. The downsizing of ice cream containers is well known. The half-gallon is no longer a half-gallon and the pint size hasn't been a pint for quite sometime. This is just the tip of the shrinking iceberg. It's a crime, I tell ya! It's a win-win situation for the companies making the products. They're selling us less product for the same amount of money (or more) and if we notice the product downsizing, we end up having to buy more of the product or buy the next larger size so they get more money from us that way. So the next time you make a batch of your Aunt Bertha's Famous Fudge and it doesn't turn out right, don't blame yourself. Your ingredients could have been quietly downsized on you.

In the latest issue of Chile Pepper Magazine, they raved about Jean Anderson's latest cookbook (to be fair, they rave about all the cookbooks they review). An eGullet-friendly link to the cookbook on Amazon: Jean Anderson's "A Love Affair with Southern Cooking" Does anyone have this cookbook? Do you recommend it?

You might find some helpful suggestions in this discussion: "Getting stubborn odors out of storage containers?"

I prefer the mixologist to think fondly of the vermouth but to not add a drop to my very dry Sapphire martini, straight up with olives. I shall bequeath to you all of my unused vermouth. My entry: Homemade (on the stovetop, not microwaved) popcorn. KISS. Real melted butter and some salt. No other add-ins, please.

I wonder if she could pre-grill the bacon off-site, store it cold and then heat it back up a la sous vide in the hot dog water? While this is not the same as (illegally) grilling it in the cart, it'd be a way for her to continue to offer bacon-wrapped hot dogs to her customers.

Ann_T, your dinner photos rock. I'm jonesing for ribs or rib eyes now!

Drop a book, it (usually) survives. Drop a Kindle...

Pam R started a discussion (Using Margarine, Sometimes it's just the thing.) and I thought I would bump this discussion back up as a counterpoint. When my mom was a child, one of her responsibilties was to mix the yellow coloring into the oleo so it's no wonder she has been using oleo in all of her cooking and baking as long as I can remember. Every year at Christmas she would make cookies called Butterballs and would always use margarine. As I got older and the baking of the Butterball cookies fell to me, I decided to use real butter in the recipe. I went out and bought the butter myself because my mother considers butter too expensive to buy when compared to margarine...which it is, but I think it's worth it. Wow! What a difference butter made in the flavor of the cookies. At Thanksgiving, it eventually became my job duty to make the mashed potatoes from scratch. One year I decided to use real butter in the potatoes and again, wow, what a difference! Then this last Christmas, I was making a huge batch of the Chex Party Mix (a yearly traditional snack for our family) and decided, on a lark, to use real butter instead of the margarine originally listed in the recipe's ingredients. I didn't tell anyone about the substitution and waited to see if anyone would notice. My older brother came to visit and started snacking on the Chex mix and just stopped mid-snack and exclaimed "This is the best batch of Chex mix ever! It tastes so...buttery!" I'll be using butter in the Chex mix from now on. Has anyone else noticed a change for the better in a recipe when switching from margarine to butter? Any other converts out there?

This has been an interesting turn of events. I received my February/March issue of Taste of Home and thought to myself "Wow, that's a nice cover photo" of a Layered Mocha Cheesecake. Then I began to read the issue and inside there were even more really nice photographs of the food. Obviously, the magazine has stepped things up a bit and has spent money on a food stylist and some really good food photographers. I'd say some of the photos were even comparable to those seen in Bon Appetit magazine. Then I noticed the ads in the issue. Hmm. I thought the magazine was supposed to be ad-free. While it's nowhere near as bad the ad content of, say, Bon Appetit, apparently Taste of Home magazine now carries ads. And the hidden toothpick is now a hidden cupcake! What's up with that? So what do you think? To channel Martha for a moment, are these changes a "good thing"?

Are you hungry? The Bacon Flowchart Sheer pork genius.

What Chefs do when they are bored There's no text explaining if chefs really created these images or not. Still, there are some fun pictures.

Hmm, what about "Foodthusiast"?

I made the Chocolate Peppermint Cookies (again) from the "Cotton Country Collection" Cookbook. They were a huge hit. The cookies are topped with a simple glaze (2 squares of melted unsweetened Baker's chocolate and 2 tblsp of butter) that melts as soon as you touch the cookies leaving you with chocolate covered fingers (as if that's a bad thing ). So I'd change the glaze in the future to something that doesn't melt so easily. The party hostess made "Stout-Marinated Ribs with Honey Glaze" from Bon Appetit (Aug. 1992, I believe) that were amazingly good. The original recipe calls for the ribs to be barbecued but she baked them in the oven. The meat just fell off the bones. You could taste a mellow back note of the Stout and the glaze wasn't too sweet. Pork heaven!

[HOMER] Mmm...laser fried turkey skin. [/HOMER] Thanks for posting the results and taking one for the team!

I performed an unscientific experiment with cheese that was a success. On Dec. 30th, I had opened a one pound package of sharp cheddar cheese to use for a recipe and didn't use all of the cheese. I put the remaining little block of cheese in one of the small sealer bags and used the hand-held vacuum to remove all of the air in the bag. I put the bag in my fridge and basically forgot about it. Yesterday, 34 days after storing the cheese in the fridge, I opened the bag. There was not a speck of mold on the cheese. There was some salt leaching on the sides of the cheese but that was it. It was still good to use. This little machine is a winner. Is there any trick to getting the sealer to start sealing right away? I usually have to move the sealer around on the bag opening before it finally "takes" and starts sealing.

Thanks for bumping this back up. The first time I'd ever heard of culantro was on the PBS series "Daisy Cooks!" hosted by Daisy Martinez. A lot of her recipes call for both cilantro and culantro. I could never find it in the grocery stores around here but did find it for a short time at a local farmer's market.

My mom's specialty is pork roast and sauerkraut. Once in awhile she'll use the country-style ribs instead of a pork roast. She prefers the ribs with the bone in them since it gives a better flavor to the final dish. The ribs are roasted low and slow. About halfway through the roasting she'll put the sauerkraut in the bottom of the pan with some water and put the meat on top to finish roasting. The meat usually turns out tender enough to shred into the sauerkraut before being served.

I started a similar eGullet topic once called "The Eating Out Generation, What used to be special, isn't anymore." I had a conversation with my mom once where she said she couldn't ever recall a time where eating out was such an "everyday" thing as it has become today. It used to be a special treat usually reserved for special times...a graduation, a birthday, etc. We did dress up for it and it was a big deal. Times have changed, to say the least. Is this because there are so many more restaurants these days? Has it become cheaper to eat out so it doesn't have to be a special occasion anymore? Or do we have more disposable income than our parents did? I agree with the suggestion that you dress up when "dining out". That's more upscale and special as opposed to "Oh, we're just going to Chili's." But the casual dining experience has impacted the fine dining experience. There's the instance of a fine dining restaurant in San Diego that once had a dress code. A Mover & Shaker in the city wanted to dine there but wasn't wearing the proper attire. He told the restaurant he wasn't going to change clothes and wanted them to seat him so he and his party could dine there. That was the last day of the dress code at that restaurant. edited for clarification

Today it's Feridies Garlic Peanuts. They were a gift from my brother and his wife so I'm not sure where they bought them but if I were a betting man I'd say they got them from Cost Plus World Market. Wow. These are some of the crunchiest canned peanuts I've ever eaten. I had the Cajun flavor (not too hot...just a litle heat) a month or so ago and they were just as crunchy. The garlic flavor is shocking. I say "shocking" because it's so IN YOUR FACE. And it's not a nice mellow roasted garlic flavor. It's like they just sliced up a fresh clove of garlic and somehow put that into powder form and dusted the peanuts with it. At first, I was taken aback by the intensity of the garlic. And then I had to have another handful....and then another and so on. Thumbs up! And the garlic stays with you long after you've eaten the peanuts. Thank goodness for Altoids! edited to expand and expound