Toliver

I was also going to suggest the knife-in-hot-water trick. Is it possible, after taking them out of the oven, to try and pre-score them? Or would the topping just melt back together? Hmm. Or maybe let them cool and then use your hot knife to do the pre-scoring of just the topping. Then when you'd go to actually slice them through with your hot knife, the topping would be more forgiving. Good luck! Let us know what works, if anything. edited for clarity

Yes. That's it.

The article: "Japanese designer of soy-sauce bottle dies" A simple and efficient design...iconic would be an understatement.

My brother in San Diego staggers planting his tomatoes (in containers) so the tomato growing season can last longer than just the three summer months. Last week have gave my mom a bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. She was thrilled with the gift of the fruit. It's turning out to be a strange, if warm, winter for them. edited for clarity

The original intent behind buying the pre-peeled garlic cloves was not to replace fresh garlic in all of CI's recipes. CI goes through a lot of garlic when testing recipes. Pre-peeled cloves of garlic would be much easier to use in their test kitchens so they tested whether there was a major difference in flavor when using pre-peeled garlic in baked/casserole dishes versus using fresh garlic. They found that the taste difference was either negligible or that there was no difference. Using garlic in sauces, salsas, dressings, sautés, marinades, etc, was a different story and I'm sure CI uses fresh peeled garlic as opposed to the pre-peeled cloves of garlic for such recipes.

Now that sounds like an even better idea than just plainly adding the zest.

If it helps...In my Costco, the peeled cloves of garlic are in the refrigerated areas where they sell the sliced cheeses and fresh pastas (as opposed to the freezer units area). They also have the jars of the crushed/diced garlic in the spice section.

Just a quick followup on the Orange Creamsicle Cookies that Andie recommended. I made a batch for a Super Bowl party I attended and they were a huge hit (again). This time I did cut back a little on the white sugar (from a half cup to a generous 1/3 cup). I left the brown sugar measurement alone because that made the cookie a soft cookie (as opposed to a crisp cookie) which I liked. I also bought extra oranges for the zest. I even tried zesting a couple of tangerines but failed at that rather quickly. It turns out that tangerines don't give up their peel so easily and you quickly pass through the peel and pith and get right to the fruit itself if you're not careful. I am seriously considering throwing my kitchen rasp away. The first time I made this recipe I used my rasp to zest the oranges and it seemed to take forever to get enough zest. This time I used the smallest side of my box grater and was floored to see it make quick work of the job. I have a dedicated (for food use) toothbrush I used to get all of the zest off the box grater and out of the small grater holes. This time I was able to firmly pack the two tablespoons of orange zest with probably a half-tablespoon of zest leftover. Is there any reason why the zest is added at the end (with the white chocolate chips)? It would make more sense (to me) to add the zest when you're creaming the butter and sugars together to make for better distribution. Or add it when you add the egg and vanilla. When you add the zest at the end the dough is drier and it seems to me that you're more likely to get clumps or pockets of zest in the final cookie. Unless that's the point. Still...a great cookie. edited for clarity

Thanks, Kim. They gave me a good laugh for the day.

I was thinking the same thing. The buds are a quick thickener. Call it a cheat, call it a "truc"...a rose (red) by any other name, etc.

I just tried Nabisco's Triscuit Thin Crisp Wasabi & Soy crackers. I like the wasabi & soy Smokehouse Almonds so I thought I would give these crackers a try, as well. The flavor combination on the crackers is just about the same as on the almonds. The wasabi has a nice spicy kick. There's a nice saltiness from the soy. And finally there's the taste of the Triscuits themselves. Since the crackers are triangular, hence, half as small as regular square Triscuits, they're probably not intended for holding anything on top of them. Which is fine with me since they're a nice cracker to snack on. Thumbs up from me. And what's with the added Long Grain Brown Rice and Whole Grain Wheat mentioned on the ingredient label? It's not they are adding anything to the cracker. The fiber per serving is ridiculous for something that sounds so "healthy" for us .

"Farmhouse Rules" with Nancy Fuller? I don't think it's Sandra Lee (blonde) though the food sounds like hers. Maybe Sandra went red in one of her seasons...

As far as I know, the "classic" (aka, Original flavor) does have the skin on.

Brava or Bravo, to the unnamed elf! A tip of my imaginary Santa's hat to them. What a wonderful way to start off the New Year. Please post what you make with the black walnuts and the pecans. Congrat's on your gift!

This perceived loss of spiciness wouldn't apply to their extra crispy (which doesn't use their spices) or their grilled (skinless) chicken, which is brined/marinated. This issue is just with the regular KFC fried chicken, AFAIK.

My mom loves eating KFC chicken so when I visited her during the recent holidays, I bought the regular KFC chicken + sides for dinner one night. She was in seventh heaven. However, I swear there's something different about the chicken and not in a good way. It used to be that the breading/coating on the regular KFC chicken had a distinct spiciness (not "spicy hot" but "spicy" as in "you could taste the spices"). But not anymore. That spiciness seemed to be missing, turning their chicken into something dull and ordinary. Could it be that at the location where I bought the chicken they were under-seasoning their chicken? Is that even possible? I would assume KFC would provide the breading/coating premixed with spices for their franchises so something like this couldn't happen. Or is this lack of spiciness pervasive throughout the chain? Has anyone else noticed this KFC lack-of-spice phenomenon? Or was this just a one-off?

My current snack is leftover Chex Mix (made from my mom's original recipe from the 60's). Oh, so good!

Thanks for that tip. The meager zest I came up with barely filled the measuring spoon (twice). Packing it into the spoon makes more sense and would make the orange flavor stand out better which I'm all for. Have you swapped out the orange zest for another kind of fruit zest? I think lime zest or lemon zest would offer enough of a twist to make it into a summer-ish cookie. There seems to be a lot of potential in this simple recipe.

My oldest brother gave me a quite large smoked brisket for Christmas. I cut it into chunks and put it into the freezer and will take out pieces as needed. He also gave me a nice home-made North Carolina-ish BBQ sauce to go with it. Plus, he ground up a variety of dried chile peppers that he grew in his garden and gave me a shaker of the hot pepper flakes. He's enjoying the pasta/sauce books I gave him for Christmas to go with the pasta machine I gave him for his birthday a few months ago. We're a family of foodies.

Andie, I was intrigued by these cookies and gave them a go over my Christmas vacation. I copy and printed out the recipe but didn't include your comments with the recipe and now I wish I had. As you mentioned, they are a tad sweet. I think next time I would cut back a little on the white sugar (dropping from 1/2 cup to either a third of a cup or just a quarter of a cup). I was a naive goofball and thought I could get the requisite 2 tablespoons of orange zest from the one (small-ish) orange that I had. Ha! Live and learn. Thankfully, my mom had another small orange on hand so I barely got what was needed for the recipe (I seriously considered sneaking down the street and "borrowing" an orange from my mom's neighbor who had a tree full of fruit in his front yard but it was quite late at night and didn't want to risk the transgression). Next time I will buy extra oranges to make sure I get the quantity of zest that the recipe calls for. I was also thinking of trying a mixture of tangerine zest in with the orange zest for the cookies for an added flavor twist. That being said, the cookies are quite good. Everyone who has tried them has enjoyed them. I got 34 cookies from the recipe and wish I had flattened them out a little as you suggested. But the cookie is a keeper! Thanks for posting the link.

Thank for taking one for the team! We used to have Uno's around here but they have all disappeared. I loved their pizza crust...yes, a little on the sweet side but good. Thanks again.

I agree...eating a favorite meal is a good way to start the New Year. Beans or peas be damned. I originally planned on corned beef and cabbage for New Year's Day. I enjoy it on St. Patrick's Day so why not start the New Year with it, as well? But I just got back from a week's vacation spent with my family down in San Diego and while I was there my mom made a huge batch of beef noodle soup from the leftover prime rib bones we had for Christmas Eve dinner. She freezes large jars of the soup and hands them out as our family members visit her. She gave me a mammoth jar of the soup to take with me back home so I will be eating the soup for quite a number of days/meals. I helped her make the soup so I already know it's going to be tasty.

Fortunately, a few of my local grocery stores still have a meat department. When I need strips of bacon for topping my meatloaf (great minds think alike! ), they sell it by weight. So I can ask for a quarter pound or so for topping meatloaves without having to worry about what am I going to do with the rest of the bacon in a pound package.

My parents subscribed for a while when I was a kid. I think my dad liked it for the recipes and for their explorations of the back country of Southern California. He always enjoyed the proverbial Sunday Drive (back when gas was so inexpensive) and sometimes used the magazine as his guide. The Sunday trips used to scare the hell out of me as my father wasn't the best driver in the world. A lot of times we would find ourselves on a two lane road high up in the mountains east of San Diego with semi trucks screaming past us coming from the opposite direction on one side of us and a drop of a thousand or so feet on the other side of us.