Pat

For dessert, what about something simple with fruit? This is something my mother-in-law makes: Oranges and Sour Cream Combine 1 cup sour cream, 2 Tbsp. light cream, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Grate 1 oz. semisweet chocolate and add to cream mixture. Stir until well-blended. Serve over segmented oranges. Enough for 6-8 servings.

I'm not sure if it fits with your theme, but I made the mushroom pie described here recently and it came out really well.

I'm once more having the problem with having to log back in again.

I just started making an olive oil brioche and as I added the yeast into the mixture for the poolish, I realized it was rapid-rise yeast. Is that going to work? I know that's supposed to be added in with the dry ingredients, but is it going to ruin the bread to do it this way? I went ahead with it because I'm running out of time and have pretty much the amount of ingredients I need for all the bread I'm baking today. Having to start over may mean I have to go out to the store. I'm really annoyed with myself for not reading the package ahead of time. I thought all the Fleischmann's yeast I had was regular active dry yeast and that all the instant stuff was red star. I just saw the brand and tore open the packet and added the contents, then realized what I had done. ETA: The bread came out pretty well. I searched around and saw there were some recipes online that called for making poolish with instant yeast, so I guess it's not as big issue as I thought it might be.

Ah! It seems to be working okay now. I'll cross my fingers, though that might make typing harder

OK, now I'm getting logged out while I'm logged in. I walked away from the computer while I had my browser up and was looking at posts on this board. When I came back, I'd been logged out.

I'm now getting the log in every time problem and I wasn't getting it before (I mean, I wasn't getting it after the problems first started, but I'm getting it now.) I'm using FF 1.0.6 for mac.

popcorn, the old-fashioned bad-for-you way: popped on the stove in oil and mixed with melted butter and salt. The last time I did this was near the beginning of the year, when I had a craving and went out and bought the corn. Before that, it had probably been a couple of decades. I've been having the craving again. I ate half and am putting the rest in a ziplock for my husband after he gets home from work...unless I eat it first

Ah, yes. I didn't know what it was for. I didn't see what this thread got split off from/evolved from.

The pork at the fall picnic, most definitely The biscuits at the DR.com dinner at Circle Bistro Sausage biscuits at RTC Lamb and Moussaka at Komi Pasta e Fagioli at Bebo That wonderful ham Rissa was bringing out at Corduroy this summer And, to round out my list...a really delightful charcuterie and cheese board at Sonoma one night when I was dining alone. It's rare for me to think of a meal alone as being spectacular, but that still lingers in my mind months later.

You're right. Le Madeleine only has one line.

I roast the bones and some short ribs for an hour or so before starting to make beef stock. The roasting adds some depth to the flavor of the stock. When I use a recipe, I've been using this one: Low-Sodium Beef Stock adapted from the Rittenhouse Cookbook (by Jim Coleman, Marilyn Cerino, and John Harrisson) 4 lbs. beef bones, in pieces 1 – 1 ½ lbs. beef short ribs (3 or 4 pieces, about 2" x 3" each) 3 - 4 quarts cold water olive oil to sauté vegetables 1 onion, chopped 2 carrots, sliced 3 celery stalks, sliced 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 bay leaf 1 sprig fresh thyme or ¼ tsp. dried thyme 5 peppercorns, crushed ¼ cup unsalted tomato paste, or 2 tomatoes, chopped ½ cup white wine Preheat oven to 350˚F. Wash the beef bones in cold water and place in a shallow roasting pan in a single layer, along with the short ribs. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer bones and short ribs to a stockpot and drain off the fat from the pan. Pour 2 – 3 cups of the cold water into the roasting pan and deglaze over medium heat. Add deglazing liquid and remaining water to the stockpot with the bones and short ribs and bring to a simmer. (Add enough water just to cover the ingredients.) In a sauté pan, sauté onions, carrots, celery and garlic in olive oil for 6-8 minutes over medium heat, until evenly browned. Add the vegetables to the stockpot with a slotted spoon, draining them, and then add the bay leaf, thyme, pepper, tomato paste, and wine. Bring stock back to a simmer and cook, uncovered, 6 to 8 hours, occasionally skimming the stock. Add water as needed to keep ingredients just covered. Strain stock into a large bowl and let stand 15 minutes. (Discard bones and solids. Remove meat from short ribs and reserve for another use.) Skim the fat from the stock and then strain into a second bowl through cheesecloth. Refrigerate until the fat congeals on the surface, and then skim off the fat. Cover and store in refrigerator for 3 or 4 days or refrigerate up to 3 months.

This sounds like the way La Madeleine is set up and brings people through, but they do what they do pretty well. I'd be willing to give this a try...I think.

That wild mushroom sauce has me salivating just from the description.I was planning to make a mushroom tart/pie tonight but am out of steam. Maybe tomorow. The pot roast finishing in the oven smells heavenly, though. We'll have that with more leftover prune bread and a small green salad.

Tortilla Soup more soft chicken tacos

Thanks. I'll have to try this.Tonight's dinner was soft chicken tacos with pinto beans, grated onions, green chilies, and cheddar (plus hot sauce).

I use carrots more than celery in day-to-day cooking, but I do use both. I frequently add shredded or minced carrot to tomato sauce. Sometimes I just chop them up with a bunch of other vegetables and saute them to add to rice or couscous for a quick meal. I include shredded carrots on sandwiches sometimes. I put both in salads, either green salads or things like Waldorf Salad (celery) or Curried Chicken (or Turkey) Salad. Carrot sticks and celery sticks make good snacks as well.

This sounds like a fabulous birthday meal. Could you give any details on how you did the scallops?

Last night: Blanquette de veal served over black bean and goat cheese ravioli (a surprisingly good combination; I've been doing refrig/freezer cleanout and found some packages of ravioli from Whole Foods) Tonight: Apple gouda chicken sausages simmered with cranberries and toasted pine nuts, with blanched kale thrown in at the end. Very red/green and Christmas-y; rice pilaf; prune bread (left over from the spring picnic--just pulled from the freezer during yesterday's cleaning).

If you want to do a different (or additional) starch with cheese, this is from the Mueller's macaroni box. It's my standard mac and cheese. It uses a different technique for the sauce than most other recipes. You'll have to bring or buy dry mustard. I always use the mustard: Classic Macaroni and Cheese 6 Servings 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard, (optional--I use it) 1/4 teaspoon pepper 2 1/2 cups milk 2 tablespoons margarine (I use butter) 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided 1 3/4 cups Mueller's elbow macaroni, cooked 6 minutes, drained In medium saucepan combine corn starch, salt, dry mustard and pepper; stir in milk until smooth. Add margarine. Stirring constantly, bring to boil over medium-high heat and boil 1 minute. Remove from heat. Reserve 1/4 cup cheese for topping. Stir in remaining cheese until melted. Add elbows. Turn into greased 2-quart casserole. Sprinkle with reserved cheese. Bake uncovered in 375° oven 25 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

If I'm in a restaurant where I would feel embarrassed to ask what certain terms on the menu mean, I'm probably not very comfortable being in that restaurant. I don't know that I'd be asking the distinctions between particular types of oysters, but sometimes there are terms I either don't know or am vaguely familiar with that I will ask my server to explain. If that means I'm not good enough to be there, I guess I don't have to go there.

I pretty much deduced that from working with the doubled numbers you gave, but I didn't find it too wet when replaced 1 to 1. Maybe that conclusion is by comparison, since the first time I made it the dough was excessively wet, but I've found that measuring the flour more generously (and when I add flour as I work, it's AP) and cutting the water back a little, produces a good loaf of bread. I've been following people's comments elsewhere too, and it amazes me how much you can play with this and turn out a good loaf of bread.

My dough is still fairly wet, though not as much so as the first time I made the bread. I've gotten it to a point where it's wet but I can work with it pretty well. I find that the 1 cup ww to 2 cups AP gives a nice whole wheat loaf that's not too heavy.

Tonight we had salad and pretty kickass meatball sandwiches, with ingredients that were mostly from Costco. I used this recipe from Bill Granger for the meatballs. I had bought veal stew meat at Costco and ground an equal amount of that to go with ground pork I had bought at Eastern Market. (My grinder is very old and seems to work best for grinding beef. Pork turns into a mess.) It was more than the 350 g each called for in the recipe by about 50 g for each type of meat. Since they were baked, each had a nice flat side that worked well to go in a sandwich without pulling hunks of bread out. As they were about done, I heated up some Classico tomato-basil sauce (from Costco ). If I don't have fresh sauce on hand, that's my standby. I put the meatballs I was using into the sauce briefly, and then ladled meatballs and a little sauce into the rolls. The rolls were mini baguettes from Costco that I toasted in the oven briefly. I topped the meatballs and sauce with slices of buffalo mozzarella from Costco. I guess it sounds goofy, but I mention the sourcing mostly because, for some reason, it amused me as I was eating to realize that most of the main ingredients for the sandwiches had come from Costco.

I'll be interested in the results. I've been using 1 cup ww to 2 cups AP and 1 1/2 cups water, with the original measures of salt and yeast put in with the flour. This is a really hard bread to screw up. No matter what I do wrong, I still get a great loaf of bread.