Pat

I'm glad you worked it out. It sounds great. I hate working with leeks, though I love leeks. The formatting in this article is a bit off, including missing recipe titles, but it looks like it's here. (It's second from the bottom, the one that's from Cover and Bake.)

smoked turkey leg (microwaved) baked potatoes with lowfat sour cream* warm roasted beets tossed with with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar roasted brussels sprouts with toasted sliced almonds and pecorino romano *These were a last-minute addition when I realized my husband wouldn't be eating brussels sprouts. The sprouts came out quite well, and I had them all to myself .

I've found some good products there. My favorite hot sauce find is Hula Girl chipotle-habanero sauce. I like to use that in my turkey chili. I can also get the Dave's (of Dave's Insanity) dried chiles/chile powder collection (6 sections in one canister). They have it cheaper than Dean & Deluca, and it's a lot shorter trip . I usually keep a bottle of the Uncle Brutha's sauce on hand (fire sauce #10), but I find its usefulness limited. It's good when I use it, but I don't use it that often. A hot sauce shop was a brilliant idea for that block.

Fennel-orange salad with balsamic-maple vinaigrette Baked chicken legs Fingerling potato salad

In all the years I've been cooking, I've never had this happen before, but my vinegar has gone bad. The pinot grigio vinegar I poured into my potato salad has definitely gone off. When I looked at the bottle after I realized something was wrong, I saw that the mother is enormous, taking up almost the whole liquid portion of the bottle. I can't describe how it smells, but it just smells wrong. I noticed it because the potato salad smelled funky, and then I tracked it back and realized what it was. It does not smell like vinegar. It smells like a bad chemistry experiment. Rank. I opened it earlier this year, probably no more than 6 months ago. It's stored where I usually store vinegar. I don't what the deal is, but . Since it has an impressive mother , is this something that can be salvaged to make more vinegar? I often end up with dregs of wine bottles that stay open for a long time. How would I convert these components into more vinegar, or is it just not worth it? FYI: I chopped up a whole bunch of pickles and threw them into the potato salad, and that seems to have evened things out a bit. I don't figure funky vinegar is harmful. (It's not, is it? ) Maybe it prevents flu or something .

I'm looking forward to your blog a whole lot and I'm not your mother, but you leave food cooking on the stove when you go out? . I'm reluctant even to have a crockpot on, but stock simmering on the stove?

If you don't get an answer here, you could try the beer and wine forum. That also covers cocktails and other beverages, and you'll find beverage professionals there . There are some threads about recommended restaurants that a search should bring up, but if that doesn't give you what you need, there's no harm in creating a thread. If Don decides it duplicates an existing thread too much, he'll just move it there.Welcome.

A friend of mine had dinner there last night and seemed generally positive. She liked her lamb chops but was unhappy that she inadvertently ate a hot pepper that was part of the vegetables/garnish on the plate. Apparently, it's part of the garnish on every entree, from what she said. She didn't realize it was there. Since she does not eat any hot peppers at all, it was difficult to get a description of the offending item out of her, other than that it was green. I realize that most people aren't as sensitive to hot peppers as she is (even mildly hot peppers bother her), but be forewarned .

On a whim, I made a recipe last night I hadn't made in ages: angel hair pasta with sour cream, chives, and caviar. I was amazed I actually remembered which of my cookbooks it was from (the classic 365 Ways to Cook Pasta ) . It's very simple but I made some changes because I didn't have the ingredients. I rarely change a recipe much the first time I make it, but when I have a feel for a recipe because I've made it a bunch of times, I'm not as concerned about how changes will turn out. I didn't have angel hair so used vermicelli, which was the thinnest pasta I had. I didn't have the chives, so I used chopped parsley for some green. I had salmon caviar (the reason I decided to make the dish). When I made it before, I would use red or black caviar from the supermarket. Since I had the salmon, I also topped the final dish with some pieces of smoked salmon encircling the mound of caviar on top of the pasta. (We also had a big green salad.) The other main change was something I've done most times I've made this. Instead of tossing the cooked pasta with butter and then topping it with a dollop of warm sour cream, I omit the butter and toss the pasta directly with the sour cream. So, I pretty much didn't make the recipe in the book at all .

Interesting find. I believe I know which shopping center that is. What did you get there?

Ah, you're right. They did get more rolls. I just looked at the post again. So is CityZen having an epidemic of people getting upset about having a hard time getting more rolls? I hope that doesn't mean they'll discontinue giving them.

I was wondering the same thing. It was either the same person or someone else in the party. I found Todd's basic response amusing. Whether he was intending it as a putdown to the questioner or not, saying that hard core foodies would understand the rolls are a gift from the kitchen but regular people can't tell a gift from the kitchen from the bread service because bread is just bread to them...ouch. I believe it was Mark who commented on the CityZen thread that those rolls are baked off for each party. With a fairly large party, if this was at a bad time of the night, maybe it really wasn't feasible to prepare another box of rolls on request.

Yes. I don't think it would work if it's not pure beef fat. I've reallocated beef fat from one beef dish to another, but it's not a kind of fat I normally save. If it's been long-cooked and has other stuff in it, it's probably not going to work out.

Tom's "Dish" today sounds far more clear-cut.

Last night was kapusta, made with some recently acquired polish sausage and bacon. I don't know that it was the most authentic recipe, but it came out well. We also had garlic bread and more of the smoky mayacoba beans. The beans could have gone right into the kapusta for serving, I think. I served them separately but ended up mixing mine together .

Make soap? My first thought for recycling beef fat is to use it in a dish where you are sauteeing/frying beef for something. If you're making a beef stew or a chili where you're not starting out with a whole lot of fat on the meat, you could substitute beef fat for using oil or butter.

The phrasing in the article is a little confusing. I'm quoting, since if I paraphrase, I'll muddle it more:

Mayacoba beans from Rancho Gordo simmered with smoked turkey parts Delicious! The beans held the smoky flavor really well, even if the turkey pieces were too big to fit in the soup bowls . The only other seasoning was some minced toasted Penzeys onions I tossed in while the beans were cooking. It didn't need anything else. (I would have put more flavoring in, but I was busy and distracted. I'm glad I didn't.)

Years ago, I gave a friend's young daughter Fanny at Chez Panisse. I thought it looked like an interesting combination of story and recipes. I have no idea how much it got read/used.

I make chicken and beef stock when I have room in the freezer. I have contemplated veal stock, but given my freezer space, I have to choose between that and one of the other two. Probably soon after the new year I'll have things cleaned out enough to make some stock. I'll have to decide which to make. ETA: Somehow I missed Zora's post. I guess if I reduced it enough, I shouldn't have to worry so much about space.

When we did our kitchen, we used ADU. They only worked with builders and contractors, rather than being directly open to the public. You tell them who your builder is, make an appointment and go in to see what they've got. They had a substantial selection of refrigerators, as I recall, but we weren't interested in a bottom freezer, so I can't help too specifically on that.We bought 2 refrigerators from them at a good price (as well as the rest of our appliances). The one for the kitchen is a kitchenaid superba, with water and ice on the door. It's a side by side. I like it but it doesn't have enough room (of course, I cram any refrigerator too full of stuff, so YMMV). The one we got for the basement so we'd have a fridge while the kitchen was being worked on is smaller than a full size but has a great deal of room inside. I'd have to look up the information to see what that one is, but it's a great second refrigerator (top freezer). We dealt with the Takoma Park location (Kelly, who was a manager, if she's still there).

I stopped here on an errand-running trip to Rockville (Penzeys, as well as Yekta and European Delight grocery in the strip with Joe's Noodle House). At first I didn't think it was open, despite the "Grand Opening" sign, because it looked empty from the outside. When I went in, I discovered that the store as currently set up is oriented towards people coming in from the back of the shopping center, not the Rockville Pike side. Presumably, they'll do more with the Pike side of the store once they're open a while. They have a number of products in common with European Delight, and may be a source of competition. KF is Polish and EuD seems to be primarily Russian. Both have fresh baked goods and deli counters, but Kielbasa Factory has more sausages, particularly (duh) kielbasa. I bought 2 kielbasa with garlic, something that translates as hunter bacon, some sliced veal loaf, and several packs of frozen pierogi (mushroom, sauerkraut and mushroom, and potato and cheese). I was the only non-Polish speaker in there. People were quite friendly. I bought a hunter sausage (veal and pork) at European Delight, and I'll have to see how it compares to hunter bacon. I also bought a nice loaf of Russian bread there and some kind of pastry roll thing that looked good, but I don't know what it is .

Tonight was a big salad platter. The platter was covered with fresh spinach and baby arugula, with proscuitto-smoked salmon-mascarpone rollups around the edge and cured black olives scattered around. I drizzled lemon juice over the whole thing and then put warm spinach gnocchi (coated in olive oil and black pepper and dressed with a tiny bit of creme fraiche and fat free half and half, and sprinkled with grated pecorino romano) in the center. I grated a little more Romano over the whole thing and added a sprinkling of crushed hot pepper flakes over the gnocchi. We also had baguette slices with soy spread. Very nice meal.

Ry-Vita spread with with hot pepper peach preserves and topped with cottage cheese

I would think the cucumbers would be good. Would some form of tofu be workable to compensate for the texture and flavor? I'm thinking of the fried tofu that gets wrapped around/stuffed with rice. Is that called inari? Somehow that seems like it would fit flavorwise, but I'm not sure if that's just something that appeals to me or if it is a totally bad idea .ETA: It occurs to me that finding the inari might be a problem, especially if you're asking this here because you need to know soon. What about avocado?