Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

A thought just occurred - maybe I'm eating them wrong. Are they like sunflower seeds, which you are supposed to shell before eating, or do people eat them whole?

First: probably Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls. I admired the hair on the girl on the cover, but loathed the recipes, which often involved making faces or other representations with food and offended my sense of the fitness of things. It's in interesting period piece now. The first real cookbook was (and is) the Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer, published 1946 and a staple in our home. I often turn to it when I want to make something that is currently out of fashion, such as plain rhubarb.

Thanks - I guess the regular potatoes work just like the purple ones. I'll try it soon, with and without the paper towels (I don't have a steam basket).

For at least 40 years, even the idea of breakfast before being up at least two hours made me sick; eating it made me sicker - my digestion just plain didn't work. Now things have changed a little, and if I'm hungry after I've been up a while (minimum of an hour), I eat - usually leftovers from yesterday's dinner. If I'm not hungry, I save them for lunch. Coffee, however, is necessary upon awakening, and I have always thought of that as my breakfast. Other people, other practices - it all depends on what works for you. It's silly to follow a rule just because it works for someone else.

The old metal grinders do work, but in my experience, they sort of gather the gristliest bits in the holes and you have to stop once in a while and clean them out, which is a bit messy. But they do grind, rather than chop fine. And I still haven't found a place to screw mine on that doesn't let it slide while I'm trying to grind; my breadboard will never forgive me.

Okay, please distinguish between simple syrup and rich simple syrup - I am assuming you mean more sugar, but how much more - what proportions sugar and water? Otherwise, you join the ranks of my dear departed great-grandmother, whose recipes often called for a "large cup" of sugar, which is hard to translate when you are baking.

No cheese. Of course not. Don't be silly.

Yay mom!

Okay, I do the 10/$1 kind too, but I cook them for three minutes in two cups of water, drain them, add them to 1.5 cups of boiling water, and add the flavor packet. Am I getting fewer calories? They still taste good; the broth is just less thick, and I don't drink it, anyway.

My affection goes to the immersion blender inventor - and to the person who figured out that hand-drying dishes spreads more germs than letting them air dry. Both made my life so much easier!

NotAmerican, my guess is that something was left out in a cut-and-paste maneuver, between "Pour the egg mixture" and "in the pan like the spokes of a wheel." I speculate that it goes something like, "Pour the egg mixture into the pan and wait a bit while the bottom cook, then arrange the asparagus like the spokes of a wheel; . . . "

I would be snippier about this if I hadn't just recently put the wrong phone number on my own wedding invitation (transposed numbers) . . . boy, do mistakes ever happen!

This recipe sounds yummy.

Okay, I'm not clear on the concept. I've had omelets I've loved and omelets I've hated - the latter had distinctly runny, uncooked egg inside; I repeat, uncooked and runny and nasty and horrible. Tell me why this would ever be considered a good thing. The ones I've loved had egg that was just barely cooked through, but definitely cooked (not slippery and sticky and icky, not suitable for making paint but not for eating). Yet I have paid quite a bit for the awful ones, and practically nothing for the good ones. I may be the only person I know who has sent an omelet back to the kitchen to be replaced with a cooked dish, in spite of the server's eye-rolling and patient explanation that it's supposed to be coldish and sticky and drippy inside. Am I just a philistine?

Um - isn't it "macaron" in French? Why would it translate to our coconut-based confection?