Toliver

Clara’s Brownies (aka Texas Brownies) got my Mom to give me the recipe of her version of the Texas Brownies. It has an icing you put on while the "brownies" are still hot. It's very cake-like and not at all like a normal brownie. The "Clara" in the recipe title is a friend of the family. Feel free to call it what you want. 2 c AP flour 2 c granulated white sugar 1 tsp salt 1 c (2 cubes) butter 4 T cocoa 1 c water 1/2 c buttermilk (can substitute ½ cup milk with a capful of cider vinegar) 1 tsp baking soda 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 tsp vanilla Icing: 1/2 c butter (1 cube) 4 T Cocoa 6 T Milk 1 box of powdered sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 c chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans), chop til chunky...not fine. Sift flour, sugar & salt into a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine cocoa, butter and water and bring to a boil. Once to the boil, pour over flour mixture and blend thoroughly. Add buttermilk and baking soda. Mix well. Add slightly beaten eggs and vanilla. Mix well. The batter will be “soupy”. Pour into a greased (but not floured) 13x9 cake pan and bake about 20 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. When you take the brownies out of the oven, start the icing. The hot icing will be poured onto the cooling-but -still-warm brownies. Icing Combine first three ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add last three ingredients. Mix well and pour over hot brownies. Spread hot icing evenly over hot brownies. Let cool completely. Serve with homemade vanilla ice cream. There's nothing like taking a bite of this frosted brownie and getting a big chunk of walnut in the icing. edited for clarity Keywords: Dessert, Brownies/Bars ( RG1048 )

Clara’s Brownies (aka Texas Brownies) got my Mom to give me the recipe of her version of the Texas Brownies. It has an icing you put on while the "brownies" are still hot. It's very cake-like and not at all like a normal brownie. The "Clara" in the recipe title is a friend of the family. Feel free to call it what you want. 2 c AP flour 2 c granulated white sugar 1 tsp salt 1 c (2 cubes) butter 4 T cocoa 1 c water 1/2 c buttermilk (can substitute ½ cup milk with a capful of cider vinegar) 1 tsp baking soda 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 tsp vanilla Icing: 1/2 c butter (1 cube) 4 T Cocoa 6 T Milk 1 box of powdered sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 c chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans), chop til chunky...not fine. Heat oven to 375°F. Sift flour, sugar & salt into a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine cocoa, butter and water and bring to a boil. Once to the boil, pour over flour mixture and blend thoroughly. Add buttermilk and baking soda. Mix well. Add slightly beaten eggs and vanilla. Mix well. The batter will be “soupy”. Pour into a greased (but not floured) 13x9 cake pan and bake about 20 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. When you take the brownies out of the oven, start the icing. The hot icing will be poured onto the cooling-but -still-warm brownies. Icing Combine first three ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add last three ingredients. Mix well and pour over hot brownies. Spread hot icing evenly over hot brownies. Let cool completely. Serve with homemade vanilla ice cream. There's nothing like taking a bite of this frosted brownie and getting a big chunk of walnut in the icing. edited for clarity Keywords: Dessert, Brownies/Bars ( RG1048 ) edited to add oven temp

Gosh, I can't seem to recall whose recipe it was (Ina? Paula Deen?) but before grilling the corn, they pull back the husks, remove the silk and then wrap par-cooked bacon around the cobs. Then they put the husk back up and grill the corn that way. I haven't tried it but doesn't it sound like it would be delicious?

A suggestion for the Le Creuset: Pork roast & sauerkraut. Add dumplings later on and some fry some potato pancakes on the side. A little heavy for this time of year but that pot is perfect for it. edited for spellling

You can also use Reynold's Release Wrap which is aluminum foil with a non-stick surface on one side of the foil.

I got my Mom to give me the recipe of her version of the Texas Brownies. It's similar to what Trish posted but a little different. It has an icing you put on while the "brownies" are still hot. It's very cake-like and not at all like a normal brownie. The "Clara" in the recipe title is a friend of the family. Feel free to call it what you want. Clara’s Brownies (aka Texas Brownies) 400 degree oven 2 cups AP flour 2 cups granulated white sugar 1 tsp. salt 1 cup (2 cubes) butter 4 tblsp. cocoa 1 cup water ½ cup buttermilk (can substitute ½ cup milk with a capful of cider vinegar) 1 tsp. baking soda 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 tsp. vanilla Sift flour, sugar & salt into a large bowl. In a saucepan, combine cocoa, butter and water and bring to a boil. Once to the boil, pour over flour mixture and blend thoroughly. Add buttermilk and baking soda. Mix well. Add slightly beaten eggs and vanilla. Mix well. The batter will be “soupy”. Pour into a greased (but not floured) 13x9 cake pan and bake about 20 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. About five minutes before the brownies are going to come out of the oven, start the icing. The hot icing will be poured onto the hot just-from-the-oven brownies. Icing: ½ cup butter (1 cube) 4 tblsp. Cocoa 6 tblsp. Milk 1 box of powdered sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans), chop til chunky...not fine. Combine first three ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add last three ingredients. Mix well and pour over hot brownies. Spread hot icing evenly over hot brownies. Let cool completely. Serve with homemade vanilla ice cream. There's nothing like taking a bite of this frosted brownie and getting a big chunk of walnut in the icing. Yum!

8 pages on Roasted Cauliflower is a close second.

Their success and the lines at the door say they are. I didn't mean "destination" as in "Let's go to New York because the Four Seasons is there." I am saying these restaurants (Chili's, Outback, etc) are determined choices. Why do people choose to go to one restaurant over another? If they stand out in the restaurant crowd, then it's more likely consumers will choose to eat there specifically for a reason, making them a "destination" eatery instead of something randomly picked after a round of "Where do you want to eat tonight?" "I don't know...Where do you want to eat?" kind of thing. Edited to clarify

Borscht? Deep red with a swirl of sour cream should look very photogenic. edited to elaborate.

What the heck are "riblets" and what animal do they come from? Seriously, though, I would be concerned with Applebee's identity in a market saturated with similar restaurants...Chili's, Outback, etc. What differentiates them from the rest of the pack? Everyone is familiar with Chili's "I want my Baby Back Ribs". Outback has the Australian voice-over in all their commercials and the Bloomin' Onion. What does Applebee's have that makes them unique, let alone a dining destination? I never think "Applebee's...Ooh, I really like their [insert favorite dish here]..." because I don't think they have a menu item that really stands out. What dish is Applebee's answer to Chili's Baby Back Ribs? I can't think of a thing (and don't say "riblets"! Ugh). We have an Applebee's here in town yet I rarely see any television advertising for them, especially when compared to their competitors. Does this mean they don't need to advertise because they have enough business already? Not likely. What kind of advertising campaigns do they have planned for the coming year(s)? Also, as an investor, I would ask what kind of growth (new franchises) they are projecting in the coming year(s) given the increase in fuel & energy costs as well as with inflation rearing its ugly head. Sales of SUV's have plummeted as gasoline costs have skyrocketed. The waiting list for hybrid vehicles (with high mpg ratings) grows with each passing day. With more of their money going towards the cost of fuel, the consumer is quickly becoming more economy-minded. Will this impact how often people eat out? And how will Applebee's counteract this to convince the consumer that they can afford to eat at Applebee's? I hope this helps.

My mom has a similar clotting problem. She has to be told by the Coumadin clinic at her hospital when she can eat dark green veggies or when to stay away from them based upon her blood work. Vitamin K, I believe, is one of the culprits. She really misses her spinach salads! My difficulty is time & self-worth. As it's been previously posted, during the week I just don't have the time to whip up something. And then I also think, "Well, it's just me...why bother." I do try to make a lot of something on the weekend that will carry over into the week. But there are still days where I have to force myself make something that's good and good for me instead of just nuking something that's not.

This thread where I first heard about Spatchcocking .

There's enough salt in the soy sauce, fish sauce, etc, so they don't have to add any from the shaker.

You can put a couple rubber bands on the body of the peppermill and on the top where you do the twisting to prevent your hands from slipping.

Exactly. The aromatics are there to flavor the oil that you're using to cook everthing else in. Once you've tossed them in to the hot oil, their job is done. In fact, if you don't need the tiny pieces in the final dish, don't chop them up. Smash the garlic cloves and shallot pieces with the broad side of your knife, toss them in the hot oil, stir briefly and then remove the chunks. The oil will have been flavored enough to start cooking everything else in it.

I ended up making the black & blue berry pie from the recipe link that Gifted Gourmet posted (click). It was so stupifyingly simple it surprised me. I ended up with a huge mound of berries in the pie (imagine a berry Mt Everest) which worked out great since they collapsed once they cooked and I ended up with a nice full pie that wasn't too tall. The recipe only called for cinammon as a spice so I also added a dash of ground cloves, a dash of ground ginger and the zest of a small lemon using my awesome microplane (I hate people like me who don't follow the recipe exactly!). The pie came out quite tasty and not overly sweet. The only drawback was I didn't let it cool completely so once I cut into it, I had berry goop innards oozing all around. Which, if this is the only bad thing happening in my life right now, it ain't bad being me. I also decided when I do this again to wait until the weekend instead of making it on a work night during the week. Whew! Up next will be TrishCT's Grunt.

Of course, that could be it. My mom always used bread crumbs, too. She always said it was her budget stretcher since adding a filler like that meant you could get a bigger loaf. She also made a freeform loaf in her 13x9 cake pan. She topped it with strips of bacon and slathered it with ketchup which turned into a glaze once cooked.

Thanks, fifi. You're close to being an SSB (you gotta work on the "smug" part ) so I appreciate you throwing in your two cents. The weird part is I make the salmon recipe often enough to know that it doesn't usually turn the garlic blue. That only happened one time. So I am trying to think what other variables could have been different that one time that sent the garlic over the blue edge. Since I always line the pan with foil, the only thing that might have really changed from each time I made the dish was either the kind of white wine I used or perhaps even some sort of difference in the garlic I used (more acid in the garlic?). Very odd. Maybe one of the wine bloggers will pop in with some info to either rule out the wine or frame it as the culprit. And wouldn't it be funny if blue garlic became this year's "foam"?

And wasn't that the same wheat the Tribbles ate up on the original Star Trek series? Uh...I saw it in re-runs. Yah, that's it.

Would 20% fat be too low? I know that very lean beef makes hamburgers that crumble due to the lack of fat to help bind the meat. I think my dad always used hamburger with a higher percentage of fat to counteract the crumble.

What kind of steel are you using (in terms of texture of the surface). I need a new one and am trying to decide what to get. Brooks, Sorry about the delay in answering but I had to wait until I got home so I could get the brand name of the steel I have in order to respond to your question. Here is the "steel" I have. I put the word "steel" in quotes because this is nothing like the steels one normally thinks of when the word arises. I never would have bought it myself. This was a gift from the same person who gave me the set of Forschner knives (we took a knife skills class together last summer so she knew how much I enjoyed using a "real" knife). The text on the web page is technically incorrect in calling this a "sharpener". The box this "steel" came in also says it's a "sharpener" but it's not...it's a steel which means it's an edge honing tool. Then again, it's made in England where they drive on the wrong side of the road, so what can you expect. The picture doesn't show it off very well, but there is a set of two small steels set up in a spring-loaded X-formation (you can see one part of the X in the picture). You draw your knife through the top of the X to reset your knife edge. The handle is suppose to allow for stabilty when using the steel. However, I am uncomfortable having my own flesh and bones so near an edge that being resurrected. I usually hold the base on the left side and use my right hand to draw the knife through. It just takes 4 or 5 swipes through and the edge is back better than ever. The "steel" rods are supposed to be replaceable, too. It's not as cool to use as a real steel, but it gets the job done.

Szechuan peppercorns?? What country are you in? I believe Szechuan peppercorns are still illegal to sell/import in the United States. I just Googled the company and they're in New Jersey so now it makes me wonder if they are really Szechuan peppercorns given the import ban. I would love to have a bag of those peppercorns if they're the real McCoy! Color me green with envy.

Have you ever tried what are sometimes called "Texas" brownies? They're definately cake-like (in height, too) though I wouldn't really describe them as "delicate". They usually have a chocolate icing with walnuts that is supposed to be poured on while the brownies are still hot so the icing melts into place. I am sure the recipe would be easy to Google.

I wonder if it's a cost-cutting tactic on the store's part? Why sell one 1-inch thick steak when I can sell two 1/2-inch steaks?

I agree with what's been said. My mom couldn't stand the smell of certain foods when she was going through chemo. What little she could eat (and keep down) was bland foods. Of course, that was 20 years ago and I am sure the meds have changed since then so perhaps your friend may have some sort of appetite. To play it safe, try not to cook foods at his house. Reheat it, yes, but don't cook it there due to the odors and the possibility he won't be able to tolerate them. Be prepared to roll with the punches, so to speak. One day your friend may not want to even hear mention of food and the next he may want to eat everything in sight. And what a blessing you are, NeroW. Here you are taking cooking classes and now a door has opened for you to use your skills to help a friend. Sometimes our paths through life are unlit...How fortunate that yours, for a time, has been illuminated. Here is the "nutrition during chemo" section of the American Cancer Society's web site. Some of the sections have a lot of sub-sections covering a wide range of concerns from "When treatment causes eating problems" to "side effects of treatment". I hope this will help you.