Toliver

The world needs more roast pork sandwiches. Thanks for posting the picture.

Taco Bell seems to be upping its game when it comes to garnering fast food breakfast business: "Taco Bell to Add Breakfast Biscuits in Bid for Morning Sales" I thought it was odd that they are going to be dropping the Waffle Taco menu item, which seems to be one of their featured morning items. The picture of the chicken-in-a-biscuit-taco accompanying the article looks interesting, too. Guess I will have to take one for the team!

Sorry to revive such an ancient discussion... I was at work and had a cup of dried ramen-type noodles with seasonings...the kind you add the boiling water to and then let sit for a short while, then eat. I had poured the hot water into the cup of dried seasoned ramen when I got called into a meeting. An hour later ( ) I returned to my desk and re-opened the still-covered cup of noodles to find that a lot of the broth has disappeared, into the noodles (of course). The noodles were a lot more plump than when you just let them sit for the usual 3 to 5 minutes. It was still hot but not blazing hot so I could start eating it right away. After eating the noodles, there was some broth left to drink but not a lot. So now I don't fix the "Cup 'o' Noodle" type ramens any other way. I let them sit/steep for an hour before eating them and think the difference is eye opening, to say the least. Has anyone else discovered this?

My mom has the same issue...no sun in her backyard and, like you, she has resorted to moveable pots so she can move the plants into what little sun there is. She even tried moving a pot with a tomato plant in it to the front of her home, an area that is always in the sun. It just made it that much easier for the deer and other local varmints to chow down on her fruit. Lesson learned!

I just tried a new Trader Joe product...Baconesque White Cheddar Cheese Popcorn. It's pre-popped popcorn dusted with white cheddar cheese powder with a hint of bacon-flavor. It's not too bad. It is salty, though, so it's a great snack as long as you don't eat too much of it in one sitting. "Mmmm...bacon" [/Homer Simpson]

I love the Chef Rubber Ducky propping up the bread!

Just an FYI...Decaf coffee still contains caffeine, albeit in a lower amount than regular coffee but it's still in there. Here's a list of the caffeine amounts in Starbucks beverages: "The Complete Guide to Starbucks Caffeine" So even those off-the-shelf bottled Starbucks Frappuccinos you can buy in the grocery stores still have caffeine in them. Good luck in your search.

I had an early St. Patrick's Day meal of corned beef and cabbage on Saturday (sorry...no pics). I use my slow cooker to cook the meat and used that broth to steam/boil my cabbage, potatoes and carrots. Easy peasy. Of course, I'm an idiot, too. I didn't know it was going to reach 91°F here on Saturday. The slow cooker ended up add heat to my apartment during the day and I almost had to turn the A/C on before I went to bed that night because it was so hot inside. Live and learn.

No pics, but last night I had some of the season's first asparagus with my dinner. Delicious oven-roasted super thin pencil asparagus coated in some fat-free Italian dressing and some grated parmesan cheese added at the end to melt over the asparagus. Normally I would have used olive oil for the roasting but I had to toss the last of my olive oil earlier this week as it smelled rancid. I usually keep it in the refrigerator since it takes me a while to use up that much oil but left it out on the counter for some strange reason. Happily there was very little left in the bottle when I tossed it. One odd thing I did notice with the asparagus was that the fat-free salad dressing I had used seemed to have a lot of sugar in it. I know, of course, that fat-free doesn't mean calorie-free so I should have known there would have been some sugar in the salad dressing. Fortunately, I think the mild sweetness of the dressing added to the overall flavor of the asparagus.

Switch to serranos. The Food Police haven't dumbed them down (yet).

Local Taco Bells have been test-marketing a new morning treat: Captain Crunchberry "Donut" holes Sadly, though they sound hella awesome, they don't taste very good. I sampled a couple of them this past week. What you mostly taste is the grease they were fried in, making them quite Chalupa-esque (another Taco Bell item that I think tastes greasy). Then you taste some sort of Crunchberry-ness and that's it. The recipe needs more tweaking. They're not crispy or crunchy and the Crunchberry-ness gets lost quickly. A failure, IMHO.

4 grams is equal to one teaspoon so 37 grams would be just over 9 teaspoons of sugar per cup.

O.M.G. "Everybody Panic: Peeps-Flavored Milk Is Here"

A more accurate description of LIttle Caesar's deep dish pizza would be "deep crust" pizza. I'm not knocking it...I'm just sayin'... Regarding your comment: Thanks to this, I'm now jonesing for some bacon-wrapped shark. "Mmm...bacon-wrapped shark"[/Homer Simpson]

Yes, this. I think it's the mouthfeel. Compare a salad dressing made without oil compared to one that has it. It's a completely different experience. That's the word...unctuous! Perfect. It's one of the reasons why I choose to eat McDonald's McRib sandwiches when they appear yearly on the menu. It's because of the unctuousness of the mystery meat.

Thanks for the schooling. Having grown up on Weight Watchers, the one food you were allowed to eat tons of, was celery because it added little to no calories to your diet. There was even the myth at the time that it was a negative calorie food because supposedly your body burned more calories eating and digesting the vegetable than it received from ingesting the vegetable itself. So I stand corrected. edited for clarity

I'm not feeling any bacon-love around here.

In my experience, recipes usually call for butter. Not salted, not unsalted...just butter. I take that to mean, "use whatever butter you have on hand".

I performed an eGullet search and was surprised this pizza chain hadn't been discussed before. Here's a current article on a new menu item: "Little Caesars to Offer Pizza Wrapped in 3.5 Feet of Bacon" There's a picture accompanying the article. It's a limited time offer and I believe it costs more than their usual pizza-pizzas. The "deep dish" isn't really deep dish pizza, either. It's square-ish/rectangular (not round) so that there are crunchy "corners" which Little Caesars likes to think their customers appreciate. And now those corners can come wrapped in bacon. Anyone eager to take one for the team?

Thanks, everyone, for chiming in. It has never really happened to me before. An interesting solution...sans a(n alcoholic) solution. Does anyone know how much of a normal vanilla bean translates to measured extract? Swapping out bean for the extract would be an easy substitution and answer for the alcohol problem.

I agree with Thanks for the Crepes. Celery is nutritionally vapid. The strings, as fiber, are one of its few redeeming qualities. I leave the strings alone. I do appreciate blanched crudités when I encounter them though I'm too lazy to do it for myself.

A possibly stupid question about vanilla extract.... I recently made two different recipes, both using vanilla extract. One recipe turned out well. The other did not, The vanilla I used was from a Costco bottle of vanilla extract that I've had for quite some time. It looks great and smells like vanilla should. The first recipe I made using the vanilla was a batch of chocolate chip-type cookies. There was no problem with the cookies...they tasted great. The second recipe (a sweet dip for graham crackers or fruit) using the same vanilla extract, when finished, it reeked of alcohol. The second recipe was basically cream cheese mixed with some vanilla extract, a little sour cream and then some powdered sugar (and a couple of other ingredients). People kept asking me if I had added Kahlua to the dip because of the strong alcohol-y taste of the dip. My question is regarding the second recipe, did the vanilla extract somehow bond with the cream cheese/sour cream instead of dissipating evenly into the mixture and so the taste of the alcohol was prominent? If I had mixed the extract into the powdered sugar and then added that to the cream cheese/sour cream, would that have solved the problem of the too alcohol-y dip?

I try to use the sharpest knife I have to thick-slice the cookie dough. The last few times I've made them, I used a serrated knife and "sawed" my slices off. It's those little bastard chunks 'o' chocolate that are the troublemakers. They refuse to slice easily and instigate the crumbling. Of course I use the "mush the crumbs all back together to sort of resemble a cookie again" method. Whatever works! edited to add: The first time I made these cookies I forgot to add the salt and threw it in as the very last ingredient for the final stir. I ended up liking how the salt was more pronounced in the cookie to contrast with the sweetness. That's how I've been making them ever since.

What a beautiful photograph! Perfectly suitable for framing. Of course, the bread itself is singing a siren song to me. I enjoy a sourdough with a nice tang to it. All I would need now is some soft butter to slather on a warm slice of that sourdough. Thanks again for posting the picture!

So "Top Chef: Boston" held its finale in Mexico. The Bostonians who negotiated and paid big bucks to bring Top Chef to Boston must have been just thrilled with that decision.