curls

Next time you are in St. Louis I recommend Comet Coffee (http://cometcoffeestl.com) for coffee and pastries. For dinner I recommend Bulrush (http://bulrushstl.com).

1 hour ago, ALB said:

I do! I will go back and look at it. I put it quickly back on the shelf years ago when it said to boil apples to make your own pectin.

I will definitely look for her peach jam this summer! Thanks for the reminder.

It all depends on the fruit you are preserving, for the peach recipes you don’t have to create your own apple pectin. Perhaps strawberries have enough natural pectin too? Will check the book when I get home.

I haven’t tried Ferber’s strawberry jam recipes but I have made a few of her peach jams and really like them. Do you have her book, “Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber”?

@zgast thank you! What great choices! Just looked at Gadaleto’s takeout menu and it sounds like a great option. Mercato looks good too but I’ll save that for another trip. Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing the tulips and other spring blooms!

Thank you all very much for your suggestions!

@zgast thank you so much for the recommendations. No need for upscale on this trip but maybe for another trip. What do you recommend if we continue towards West Chester?

Google was recommending taking Route 1 for the last bit of the drive and I was going to go that way but nice to know that a you recommend it too!

Planning a day trip to Longwood Gardens. Any recommendations for lunch or dinner along the way or in Kennet Square? Looking for outdoor dining or take away options. 

@saf the dinners sound good. Where did you find ramps?

On 2/26/2021 at 10:20 PM, saf said:

Oh, the harbison is so good. The cheese place that used to be at Union market and is now in Charlottesville had it. And Wegs has it. So good. So stinky. 

Whole Foods also has the harbison. It was also one of the sale cheeses during the WF 2020 12 days of cheese. Delicious cheese.

11 hours ago, saf said:

I like bread pudding.

Dinner tonight was chili verde out of the freezer, over baked potato. Guacamole. And salad. And it was good.

Great! You could use up the rest of your left over frozen bread cubes and make sweet and/or savory bread pudding. 

14 hours ago, saf said:

Fondue!

There was leftover bread last week. A LOT of leftover bread. So I froze it. But I didn't want it to sit too long in the freezer. So we had fondue. Raclette, emenntaler, Eyrie Pinot Gris. (They had a really great sale this fall. So much fun to get wine in the mail!) Bread, broccoli. And of course, salad.

(There's still leftover bread in the freezer. Now what?)

How about bread pudding?

1 hour ago, naxos said:

David Lebovitz recently  had a recipe for chocolate marshmallows that looked interesting.

Yes, I saw those! Thank you for mentioning it.

I’m making holiday treats to give to our neighbors and will be making spritz cookies, chocolate chip cookies, caramilized peanuts (per the David Lebovitz recipe), and cinnamon marshmallows. I’m thinking about dipping some of the marshmallows in dark chocolate.

Zingermans has nice gift baskets & boxes and they ship. 

If you want to send a nice tin or box of pecans, I highly recommend Pearson Farm in Georgia. Just ordered and received a variety of pecan products from them and the quality of all of it is excellent (taste & packaging).

@Pat if you have an ice cream maker you could make eggnog ice cream. Just think of your eggnog as a custard ice cream base and pour your eggnog into your ice cream maker. The cookies sound good too.

I buy from Central Coffee Roasters in Sperryville. Great coffee beans, freshly roasted. They ship. http://www.centralcoffeeroasters.com

Pulled a homemade sourdough waffle out of the freezer to enjoy with sautéed bananas & pecans, Vermont Creamery cultured butter, and maple syrup. If any of you are making sourdough, I highly recommend King Arthur Baking’s sourdough waffle recipe https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-sourdough-waffles-or-pancakes-recipe.

12 hours ago, saf said:

Tonight is salad, and gingered carrot latkes with apple salsa (from Epicurious). Later, angel food jelly roll with vanilla ice cream. (Trying to use up jam. There is quite the backlog here. Ideas gratefully accepted.)

David Lebovitz’s jam tart is an excellent use for excess jam. https://www.davidlebovitz.com/jam-tart/

Last night, grilled hamburgers, grilled shishito peppers. Wegmans white cake with chocolate frosting for dessert.

Not sure where the nicest place to stay is but the Dunes Manor Hotel and Inn on the Ocean (an oceanfront B&B) are nice places. I’m not sure that luxury hotels exist in Ocean City. Given the current situation, it might be best to look for the nicest rental condo or house.

@curiouskitkatt so sorry to read this. My condolences to you and your family.

If you’re considering a Big Green Egg, I recommend looking at a Kamado Joe as well. They are both very well made kamado cookers. I went with the Kamado Joe... it came with accessories that I wanted and was cheaper than the Big Green Egg. Also, the Kamado Joe comes with a hinge that makes it easy to open and close the lid. When you try to open & close the lids on the larger Big Green Eggs, it requires a bit of muscle. The hinge on the Kamado Joe makes the weight of the lid a non issue.

Interesting project. Have you considered adding Tanqueray and Hendricks into your comparisons? I think of Tanqueray as a typical London juniper forward gin and Hendricks as one of the first new non-juniper gins.

Jumped on the sourdough bandwagon. Knew the bread baking would be fun had no idea how much I would like tracking down and making sourdough discard recipes.  All the sourdough discard recipes that I have tried from the King Arthur website have been winners. Also, the same can be said for all of Andrew Janjigian's sourdough discard recipes.

sourdough discard drop biscuits

14 hours ago, deangold said:

Just completed our best batch so far: started from the Mexican Chocolate recipe. We had a container of heavy cream that was past its best buy date and a little soured, but not really off. We decided to use that as it had a creme fraiche edge to it. I bet we could recreate it by leaving cream out overnight.

I used Valrhona Manjari 64% chocolate and bourbon instead of vanilla {generous 2 Tablespoons.} But the real difference was the spicing. I ground aleppo pepper, black peppercorns, all spice & cinnamon all in roughly equal proportions and small amounts of cloves and black cumin. I used about 2 teaspoons of this spice blend and it worked beautifully/ This is the kind of spice mix we used at the Grotto for Boar sauce to creme au chocolat. Last, I used more chocolate and trader joes toasted coconut as mix ins with 5 minutes left in the spin. My question is if the coconut will stay nice and crispy. All I can say is this batch was superbly fun to lick off the blades and side of the freezer bowl!

If the coconut doesn’t stay nice and crispy, a suggestion for next time... enrobe the coconut in chocolate or cocoa butter. The chocolate coating will prevent moisture from getting to the coconut and softening it. Sounds like a tasty batch of ice cream.