Toliver

The Pepperball. One handed useage, no batteries. I have one but wasn't impressed with the output considering the effort used. Though if you like Popeye-like forearms this sucker is for you.

You should read fifi's eG foodblog "Foraging the Texas Gulf Coast" She featured a lot of wild food in her meals.

With as much BBQ'ing that goes on around here, I'm surprised there hasn't been an eGCI class on the basics of Q'in' and/or grilling (aside from col klink's meat smoking class).

Alas, I am conflicted. I enjoy raisins (especially in a nice rice pudding and bourbon-soaked in a warm bread pudding) but when I see them at my local farmer's market, to me it's a sign that summer is coming to an end once again. Persephone supposedly ate six pomegranate seeds but they could have been raisins for all they portend. They are a good-bye to home grown tomatoes full of the promise of summer. They are a fond farewell to champange peaches so ripe, juicy and fragrant you wonder why Chanel hasn't bottled them, yet. When I see raisins make an appearance at the farmer's market, I quickly look away and feign interest in the next farmer's booth in an attempt to put distance between me and the little Heralds of Autumn. I look away and try to convince myself that I haven't seem them and that summer is still here and is still going strong. But come they do and summer does end. 'Tis truly a bittersweet love affair I have with raisins.

Funny you should mention firmness. My mom uses the "gives" method to test ripeness and commented often to me how this year the red tomatoes seem to be staying quite hard on the vine. She attributed this to the long spell of "May Gray/June Gloom" (the omnipresent marine layer that lingered most of the day) they had this year in San Diego.

they might be green zebras? ← So do you know if they will remain green when ripe? I want to let her know how to tell when she can harvest them. It reminds me of the time many years when my dad was growing tomatoes and kept waiting and waiting for the yellow fruit to turn red. My mom finally got brave enough to pull some off the vine and taste them. Yes, you got it. He had unknowingly planted yellow tomatoes (don't people read the tags that come with the seedlings? ). Thanks for identifying the little buggers. Now we know what not to buy next year!

Slice it and grill it. Slathered with some olive oil and red pepper flakes or siracha.

Houston, we have tomatoes! I posted some pics on the main Gardening thread here. My brother has lemon cucumbers up the wazoo. Funny thing is he can't eat them since they give him heartburn. As you can see by the picture, they're quite seedy. Last year I had bought lemon cucumbers from a vendor at my local farmer's market and they were nowhere as seedy. In fact, the seeds were almost like a hothouse cucumber so I was surprised at the difference in the lemon cucumbers my brother is growing. His yellow zucchinis are just now coming in as are his tomatoes. To go off-topic, his tuberose are also getting ready to bloom. Their tropical fragrance is amazing.

I just came back from a visit with my mom in San Diego. Her tomato plants are producing like gangbusters. She staggered her plantings so she should have a good harvest clear into October. This is a picture of one of her heirlooms: She has no idea what it's called since she didn't keep the plastic tag that came with the young plant. They seem to look a lot like Pippin apples. Unfortunately, none of the fruit was ready for picking so I didn't get to try them during this trip. She also has a mystery on her hands. She thought she planted a cherry tomato plant (of course, she didn't keep the plastic name tag) and got a bush full of these instead: As you can see by the picture, they grow to be no larger than a big green pea. They seem to be more trouble than they're worth since prepping and cleaning a basket full of these suckers gets quickly tedious. Anyone know what these pea-sized tomatoes are called? I think someone mentioned them before (probably in a previous page in this discussion! ) since they seem familiar to me.

Isn't that interesting? He uses cake flour for his "The Puffy" cookies as well as some baking soda. Doughs with a high ratio of butter to a low ratio of flour will spread. A good example of this is the Irish Lace cookie which usually calls for 2 sticks of butter while using a scant 1/2 cup of flour. As you (ShoeBox Oven) suggested, perhaps upping the amount of flour would also help decrease the spread.

What flavors do you like, because I haven't cared for any of the ones I've tried? ← I buy the Costco mega box of Crystal Light Lemonade. It's far cheaper there than what I can get at the regular grocery store. To alleviate boredom with just the one flavor, sometimes I mix the Crystal Light Lemonade with either ice tea or a little bit of juice (blueberry and pomegranate taste great with it and you don't need much to "kick it up a notch").

The melting point of butter is lower than shortening, so subbing shortening may decrease the spread of your cookies. There is a butter-flavored shortening but as you point out, it wouldn't really be a butter cookie if you used shortening. Have you tried subbing cake flour for the AP flour? Cake flour is lower in protein so any moisture in the dough could evaporate more quickly possibly allowing for less spread. You could also try adding a teaspoon or so of baking soda. The baking soda will "set" up your dough quicker so it may not spread as much.

Limited Edition Coffee Kit Kat This was a little better than the Mocha Almond bar from Hershey but not by much. Kit Kat is made by the H.B. Reese Candy Co. which is owned by Hershey. The wrapper states that it's "Crisp Wafers in Artificially Flavored Coffee Milk Chocolate". Sounds yummy, doesn't it? The biggest difference is olfactory. You really smell the (fake) coffee in the chocolate coating. In fact, that's where the coffee flavor stays...in your sense of smell. When you taste this Kit Kat, it tastes mostly like a regular Kit Kat bar with just a small wisp of coffee flavor. But while you're eating it, you're mostly smelling the coffee flavor emanating from the candy bar itself. It was quite odd. As I scanned it for this post, I noticed the wrapper still had a lingering fake coffee aroma to it. I don't recommend this version...stick with the original.

Dude, since you're not smoking it, make Carnitas. It's a crowd pleaser.

Limited Edition Hershey's Mocha Almond What a great combination...chocolate and coffee flavor. That is, it sounds like a good combination until you take your first bite of this candy bar. The mocha flavor is artificial and while it does taste a little like coffee, it's more along the lines of a "fake" coffee as opposed to the real thing. It's very strong in the first bite. But as you eat the candy bar that very present flavor subsides and then it begins to taste okay. The almond bits are good but I kept wishing for whole almonds like in an Almond Joy. As I previously commented on another Hershey Bar, the picture on the wrapper is a complete lie. Whole almonds and coffee beans are shown on the front of the wrapper and there are no whole almonds or coffee beans (or coffee for that matter) in this candy bar. And what was very odd was after I finished the candy bar, there was no lingering chocolate or coffee after-taste in my mouth. It was a completely transitory experience, leaving only the wrapper as proof that I'd even had a mocha almond chocolate candy bar. Weird.

There's local and then there's local. At my local farmer's market there are a lot of booths run by local farmers selling their locally grown produce. And then there's the largest booth (with an equally large line of customers) which is run by a produce broker selling produce that is most likely from other counties around the state. You could say it doesn't matter where you buy the produce in the farmer's market since you're buying California-grown produce and you're supporting the California agriculture community. But bypass the produce broker's booth and buy from anyone else in the farmer's market and you know that you're not only supporting California agriculture but your also supporting a neighbor, someone from your county. This has a couple of bonuses attached. The produce the local farmer is selling has less travel miles on it and is likelier to be more fresh. Plus, any money you spend with the local farmer is more likely to stay in the community. When WF decided to stop allowing local farmers in the "back door" with their locally grown produce, it hurt the local farmer and the local community as well as the customer.

As I said before, it is possible to eat healthy at a salad bar/buffet. You just have to be aware of what you're eating, as mizducky pointed out. At one time, the US Olympic Men's Volleyball team trained in San Diego at the Olympic Facility down there and had a dining/sponsorship deal with the Souplantation. We used to see team members at the Point Loma Souplantation on West Point Loma Boulevard (close to the beaches). I'm assuming they ate in a healthy manner at Souplantation.

That's almost exactly what Souplantation offers, from the baked potatoes to the soups to the pasta bar. Here's a menu sample: Souplantation Menu (scroll down) They also have monthly specials. The month of June they featured all things Lemon. Click on the link in Fat Guy's post and then click on the graphic with the date on it for this month's specials. The nice thing about these kind of salad bars is that you can choose to eat as healthy as you want. Or not.

Come to think of it, Claim Jumper has a small salad bar as does Home Town Buffet (never thought I mention those two restaurants in the same sentence! ).

I second the Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes recommendation. They spoiled me as far as salad bars go. There's always a line out the door during their peak times. My sister-in-law used to take an empty foil-lined purse when she and my brother went to the Souplanation so she could take some of the muffins home (they used to have huge muffins and now they're comparatively dinky). I love their tart sourdough bread. There's also the Fresh Choice chain which is here in Central California but I haven't seen any in San Diego (I see by their web site they're located mostly in California, with some in Texas and one in Washington). I much prefer Souplantation. edited to add we have a locally owned salad bar restaurant called the Garden Spot that does brisk business but doesn't offer quite as much as a Souplantation salad bar.

A photo of the menu at Hodad's (menu is a little hard to read) Picutres of the food and restaurant Make sure you order the onion rings. It can be pricey, depending on what you order...but take a look at the size of that burger! When he goes to Hodad's, my brother has his daughter feed him french fries so he doesn't have to release his two-handed grip on the burger. I hope you get to go there...have a great time, Chris!

If the crabs were held live, then yes, according to this new policy they should go, too.

"Whole Foods stops selling live lobsters" Will frozen lobsters make do as a substitute? As discussed previously, apparently selling dead animals doesn't seem to bother Whole Foods. It's the live ones that they have problems with. The cynic in me says this is all a ruse so they don't have to go through the expense of having sea water tanks in every store for live crustaceans.

Sounds like chapter from a Stephen King novel...

jtnippon1985's added two more batches of nam yu. So you'd recommend tripling the portion of nam yu in the original recipe?