V.H.

4.25 cups (19 oz) bread flour 1.5 tsp (.38 oz) salt 3 T (1.5 oz) sugar 2 tsp (.22 oz) yeast 1 lg (1.65 oz) egg, slightly beaten, room temp .25 cup (2 oz) butter, room temp 1.5 cups (12 oz) whole milk (I use 2% w/no problem), room temp 1 egg beaten with a tsp of water until frothy for egg wash I mix in the Kitchenaid with the dough hook for 6-8 minutes. You can knead by hand but I'm weak and lazy and am usually standing there eating cookies or something while the machine does the work. Let rise in an oiled bowl until doubled in size. Remove dough from bowl, cut into 12 equal pieces for normal sized hamburger buns or 24-36 pieces for slider buns. Shape into rounds and let rise until double in size. Brush rolls with egg wash before baking at 400 degrees until they are golden brown on top, 15 minutes for regular buns, less for slider buns. I've had great success with adding in fresh rosemary or raisins after the first rise to make flavored dinner rolls. I just squish the add-ins into the dough lightly before cutting the dough into pieces. I suppose you could add the additional ingredients during the initial kneading but my daughter and I prefer the rosemary rolls and my husband prefers raisins so this way we can make everyone happy.

Grilled Cibola buffalo flank steak with rosemary and garlic, broccoli sauteed with butter and fleur de sel, mac and cheese For dessert, used up various brown bananas and made banana muffins with a generous fistful of Valrhona 61% disks thrown into the batter

Puffy baked apple pancakes lots of cinnamon and some fresh whipped cream Pan fried sausages later that night, homemade baked char siu bao using some really terrific Cibola Farms pork shoulder

I finally tried the Bailey's Crossroads location (easily accessible via a contiguous parking lots from Trader Joe's) and have to agree with everyone that this place is great. I got a Hausmacher brat with sauerkraut and mustard on a Portugese roll. The roll was fantastic and definitely added to the whole experience. Also, for those who are wondering, they do serve currywurst. The freezer section had a variety of sausages including rabbit, duck, elk, venison, and buffalo. I'll have to stop back some other time when I'm not starving and only singlemindedly interested in lunch.

I tried these a couple of weeks ago and they were amazing. I got a sampler of six flavors: mint, caramel, chocolate, raspberry, lemon, and coffee. I had every intention of sharing these jewel toned treats but didn't quite have the self control. The flavors were bright and fresh. The mint flavor tasted of fresh mint leaves rather than peppermint oil and the caramel macaron is a must try for anyone who is a fan of salted butter caramels. These would be a lovely hostess gift for those upcoming holiday soirees.

I was recently stuck at home with a napping baby but needed hamburger rolls for dinner. A quick look in The Bread Baker's Apprentice turned up a fairly easy recipe for hamburger buns and since I had all of the ingredients handy, I gave it a spin. The dough is incredibly easy to pull together, especially if you have a Kitchenaid mixer to do the kneading for you. It's a bit richer than your standard hamburger bun what with the egg, sugar, and a bit of butter, more like a light challah roll. The great thing for us has been that I can shape normal size hamburger buns for the adults and smaller slider buns for the munchkin. I can post the recipe if anyone is interested in trying.

I was just going to slice and vacuum pack in bags but after I saw your question I did a bit of googling and ended up adding a bit of light syrup and ascorbic acid to the bags before vacuum sealing them.

Because I didn't want to do all my cooking in my one huge Le Creuset pot or the hodge podge of cheapo stainless pots that got my husband through grad school. The rest of my stuff is Calphalon, which would not work with the induction cooktop.

I canned the peaches and meh. They taste better than storebought but they still taste like canned peaches. I brought another half bushel home from PA this weekend and I'll be simply slicing and freezing these.

Since you have a gas line into the house, it may not be too bad to outfit your kitchen for gas. When we remodeled this winter, we added gas to the kitchen plus another line outside for a grill hookup for about $1000. I looked at induction cooktops but they were pricey and I'd need to get new cookware so we went with the Thermador gas cooktop. I have the same star burners as Pool Boy but I don't find them difficult to keep clean.

Kotobuki-no high chairs or changing tables but very family friendly. A bowl of rice and a few slices of egg omelet, and a bowl of edamame was our go to toddler meal. Added bonus is that you can generally be in and out in under an hour. Pietanza-This place is almost too kid friendly in that the noise levels at dinner time can approach jet engine level decibels but it's good pizza and they have a great kids menu, high chairs, and infant seat slings. Liberty Tavern-Awesome kids menu. Look no further if you've been lamenting the lack of places that offer fruit or veggies with a kids meal. Included in the kids meal is two scoops of the housemade ice creams and sorbets. Pretty much any Asian place. When in doubt about high chairs, one of these is pretty handy to leave in the car just in case you need it.

I think you are looking for bun thit nuong, rice noodles served with grilled meat. I can't help as far as recommending a place since my favorite is my mom's and everything else seems to be a pale comparison. Have you tried the place in the shopping center across from EC? If they serve it, their rendition would probably be pretty good.

We got this sandwich cube contraption from The Container Store with a closed compartment for a sandwich on the one side and two open compartments on the other side. It works well for dry things and cuts down on plastic baggies. I've been wanting to go back and look at their other containers. Thermos are definitely back in a big way. Those food jars I linked to are sold out locally and in most online places too.

I was wondering how successful people have been packing warm/hot things in their child's lunches. My daughter started kindergarten this year and we are going the packed lunch route. We got a nice kid's drink cup made by the good folks at Thermos which keeps her milk cold all day without needing an ice pack. I'm now looking at their line of food jars and wondering how practical it would be to put hot things in them other than just soup or chili. Specifically, Lily would love to have something like rice and meat or mac and cheese in her lunch.

Our family tradition is a chocolate mousse cake for everyone's birthday. If you are at all inclined to make it yourself, it's pretty easy and can be made in discrete steps over several days. I cheat and use one of the butter recipe yellow cake mixes which yields a moist cake with a nice crumb. For the mousse filling, I use Mark Bittman's recipe from his "How to Cook Everything" and make a double batch. The frosting is a chocolate glaze recipe I got from a chocolate class at 2941 and super simple to work with. PM me if you want assembly instructions or recipes.

My favorite are those bouchot mussels at Eve. They are small but plump and delicious.

Red beans and rice can be made for next to nothing.

One recipe I saw called for precooking them for 5 minutes before putting them in jars and processing for an additional 25 minutes or putting them in raw and processing for 30 minutes. The total cooking time is the same but some online reviews claimed to prefer one or the other. I will probably do the precooking method since I would imagine that you could pack cooked peaches a little more densely in the jars.

I've been looking at a few different recipes but they seemed to offer differing opionions on cooking/not cooking. Thanks for the experienced recommendation!

Do you add any Fruit Fresh (Vitamin C) to your peaches before you canned the halves? Also, did you cook the peaches a bit before canning or did you can them raw?

I make jam and because we are a no outside shoes inside kind of household, I jam barefoot. I have been known to jam while barefoot and pregnant. I have a bushel of peaches waiting to be canned and guess what? I'll probably do that barefoot too. Fortunately for my friends and family, I have the whole opposable thumb thing going and don't actually involve my feet in the canning process. Congrats on the great article, Heather.

I don't think the extra days of cold ferment will hurt, if anything it should make the dough more flavorful. I would portion the dough into balls for each crust before putting it into the fridge but not bother stretching the dough until you're ready to bake. It only takes a few minutes to stretch out each crust so you don't save that much time.

You'd be surprised at what survives freezing well. I routinely make huge portions of meals since we pack leftovers for lunches and love leftovers for dinner. Occasionally the family only wants a dish for one dinner and one lunch it and in those cases, I often just freeze the leftovers for another day. Things that have frozen/thawed well for us: marinated grilled chicken (especially thighs), cooked kafta (purchased from Lebanese Butcher) and rice pilaf, curries, soups, most anything that won't change texture after freezing. Fruit and fresh veggies don't tend to fare too well but grilled veggies seem to do just fine. When you do feel like cooking, making double and freeze half. Sometimes when I can't bring myself to get in the kitchen and make dinner, we have breakfast for dinner. Somehow it doesn't seem as hard. Bowl of oatmeal dressed up with cinnamon and maple syrup with some fruit on the side. Waffles with fruit. Scrambled eggs with some toast and nice jam. It's not fancy but it's satisfying. Those little packs of breakfast sausage from Ecofriendly thaw quickly in a bowl of warm water and cook up in just a few minutes.

One is for you and one for the baby. The baby didn't finish it so you stepped up.

A favorite and super quick fall dish of ours is to get a pound of the marinated lamb kabobs, sear in a hot pan and add a pound of frozen spinach, a couple of cans of garbanzos, and a can of crushed tomatoes. Even better the day after!