v for frequency?

What about tomato ketchup? Tomatoes are vegetables as well as fruit, so it should count as two of your five a day!

Send me another scout, I have just burst this one.

Generally, margarine is not recommended for cake making. Baking relies on a balance between water and fat. The water in margarine can produce undesirable results.

The purpose of the bain-marie in this recipe is to warm the eggs without cooking them. It denatures the proteins and makes for a better emulsion.

It does say "stand mixer". Sponge cakes are leavened by incorporating air into the batter.

Eggs are mostly fat, and contain an emulsifier (lecithin) that makes it easier to mix the oil with the whole milk.

Sponge cakes aren't all that popular in the U.S. Butter cakes rule the roost. They are leavened with chemicals such as baking powder or baking soda.

Safeway is not good for anything other than extracting dollars from suckers. Their meat department is sub-par. Nob Hill has better meats and produce and they don't require membership for deals.

Costco is far better for bulk shopping, milk and paper towels. Half the price of Safeway for higher quality goods.

The Costco rotisserie chickens are almost twice the size of the Safeway/Nob Hill/Raleys version and still $4.99 vs. $7.99.

The inventory costs of storing the cheese (and rum) appropriately is the controlling factor in the number of units produced.

Not me. I don't like heavy, acidic flavors. I am biased towards sweet, creamy, smooth. Mo is Italian and makes heavy red sauces that she simmers down for hours. My fix is to dilute them about 3:1 with heavy cream and add cheeses and garlic and tweak the spices, a light orange color when it's edible.

She likes grapefruit juice, and I'd prefer to die of thirst first.

You seem to be snobby and intolerant. Do you live in Berkeley or the Oakland Hills? I'd bet you like nasty IPA's.

The French bake sausages inside baguettes. Same idea. The quality range of available bagel dogs varies a lot, as does the range of hot dogs and, well, most everything else.

Bread? In Michigan?

The benchmark here is the Tartine sourdough country loaf, hot from the factory on Alabama street. It's usually all gone by about 11 AM. Fortunately it's a short walk from my office. It laughs at most knives.

Ditto here now. I'm in charge of breakfast. Today it's Peets and CDM and a fancy mixed berry galette. There might be whining for whipped cream. Yesterday I did pain perdu, with Hawaiian vanilla sugar that some relatives just sent.

Some people enjoy the process of cooking. I don't, I just like to eat.

If a thread is going to drift, food is not a bad direction.

My wife used to make a good sauce but it never seemed overly acidic. Started with Contadina tomato paste. Had to be Contadina.

After it cooked a while you tossed in the leftover chicken part and pork chop and let it cook more, finally the meatballs that were fried.

I think the added meat cut the acid and mellowed it out. The recipe goes back to her grandfather so very old.

Agree

I'll have to take your word for it; we don't have Safeway here. We have Kroger, which appears to be comparable. I don't shop at the local Kroger because their meat and produce aren't very good. My regular store (Meijer, a Midwestern regional chain similar to Walmart) has good prices, very good produce, and decent meat. If I catch stuff on sale, the price is as good as Costco; they're close to my house; and I don't need a paid membership. I have their affinity card. I consider it a fair trade: my buying information for lower prices on things I buy regularly.

I don't buy rotisserie chicken, so size doesn't matter.

Funny, I consider "creamy" to be heavy and "acidic" to be light. You favor mayo- or sour-cream based salad dressings? Sweet is for dessert, and plenty of desserts are too sweet for me. Smooth or chunky doesn't matter to me.

I don't drink juice at all, but grapefruit juice _is_ hardcore.

I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Berkeley of the Midwest.

Yep. Really, really excellent bread mainly in European styles.

Peets right after I wake up; a couple of hours later oatmeal with raisins, butter, and a touch of brown sugar. Washed down with a glass of milk.

I'm interested in the science of cooking. I've never cooked a meal for more than 200. Once a week we have take-out for lunch, but our other meals are all home-cooked. I've been cooking for more than 50 years; it doesn't seem like a chore at all.

Beats politics.

If you insist.

For that authentic Midwestern texture, you have to overcook the rice in plenty of water and drain it.

Heh. I have exactly that make, model and country of origin of bandsaw, bought in May 2005.

But I don't know how well metal chips go with sourdough bread. I suppose one could tout it as a new and improved kind of roughage.

Joe Gwinn

"It's your turn in the barrel, m'boy."

As for membership costs, my executive card at costco returns 2% annually, which more than covers my membership costs. I'm fortunate that I have one 10 minutes away, with a gas station (20-40% less expensive than the brand-name filling stations) and pharmacy.

I'm also a shareholder, so I get a quarterly dividend check.

I don't think you have fruit cakes much in the US do you? Even for weddings or Christmas. Poor things. And as for "plum" pudding... (That uses suet, unheard of across the pond.)

It certainly discourages start-ups. "We'll see a fantastic ROI in fifteen years." I've idly wondered at what point a liquor, cheese, or other manufacturer of aged products feels comfortable enough to divert a part of the current production to a warehouse for a decade or two.

Cynically, they had unsold product gathering dust and decided to exploit the situation.

Before they closed the Safeways here weren't too bad. Walmart is the one I associate with cheap, adulterated products. Yes, I consider meat with 'up to 10% of a solution to enhance flavor' adulterated.

They freeze well. I get the loin chops and vacuum pack then freeze them. They'll last 8-12 months in a properly cold frezzer. Same deal with the italian sausages and fresh salmon filets (after slicing into 3oz portions).

Smoke the 14# pork shoulders 11 hours, pull, defat and vacuum pack in

It's been a long time since I've been in the area but comparing Meijer to Walmart is an insult. Walmart is my local vendor of last resort and the couple of times a year I go in I'm not impressed by the meat. The veggies aren't too bad; it's hard to screw up an onion.

A Meijer warehouse almost ruined my day. I'd hauled apples from Washington in the middle of the winter. They threw a strip recorder on the load and it showed a dip close to freezing in North Dakota, not surprising since it was 25 below. After cutting up several random apples they accepted the load. I had visions of being parked at a truck stop selling crates of apples if they'd refused the load.

The kicker was the company was getting rid of their reefers and the whole trip was to get it back east and trade it for a Great Dane dry van.

I barely break even if at all most years unless I buy a computer, storage shed, or some other relatively expensive item. The gas is about 5 cents a gallon cheaper so with an average fillup of 8 gallons I don't go out of my way.

My first go-around with the optical department was interesting. She quoted a price and I started questioning. "Those are transition lenses?" "Progressive lenses?" The prices was less than half of what I'd paid for the previous pair.