Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Thumbs up! As someone who is maintaining a significant weight loss and still watches calories, I appreciate every effort to make calorie and nutrition information available to the public.

I would also like to add that while this requirement only applies to chain restaurants, I would like to see independent restaurants comply volunarily as well. I actually do this with my own recipes, using Sparkrecipes to crunch the numbers. This is not particularly onerous; it takes me less than 10 minutes to input a recipe and come up with an estimate that includes a complete nutritional breakdown per serving. I do this even with recipes that come with nutrition info, such as those from Cooking Light, as my tweaks tend to change the numbers quite a bit.

Granted, for home cooks and independent cooks, any nutrition info would be a mere estimate as there will be greater variation. For myself, I know that sometimes I'll throw in more onion, or the package of chicken breast will be a bit smaller. But even a caveated estimate is better than no info at all.

Oh, I wish you'd written this a couple of weeks ago! I made my first venison tenderloin, and I timed it assuming that I would cook it like beef tenderloin. Definitely came out on the medium-well to well-done side, when we prefer our meat medium rare! The saving grace was that I'd wrapped it in bacon, which probably helped preserve a bit of moisture and prevented outright venison disaster. So ... you just taught me what I learned for myself the hard way!

But thanks for the venison lesson!

Maple syrup and bacon salt!

I had two Thanksgiving meals. Meal #1 was hosted by my MIL. She did the turkey, brining it using Alton Brown's method, and it was her best ever. She also did her dressing, which is always one of the highlights for me as I grew up on Stove Top. I contributed green bean casserole (the old-fashioned cream-o-soup kind, because it's tradition), roasted kabocha (first time—YUM!), two kinds of cranberry sauce (one in wine, one with orange juice and spices, both perfect), and the double-layer pumpkin pie that is also tradition—but at least I've started doing a gingersnap crust (with ginger Newman O's this year) instead of buying the premade graham cracker crust.

I hosted Meal #2. My father doesn't like turkey, so I made beef tenderloin, for the first time ever—wrapped in bacon to boot. On the side: Baked potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts (with more bacon), cauliflower gratin. For dessert: Brownies and pumpkin blondies, both with cream cheese frosting, and assorted homemade ice creams. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell meal, but everything was received with rave reviews.

I also tried to make homemade rolls for the first time, but they were an epic fail—the dough didn't rise properly, and the bottoms scorched before the tops could finish cooking. My father and husband picked at the tops and said that the recipe has potential. I need to try the rolls again when I'm not also juggling two desserts and a big piece of meat. I figure if I'm going to botch something new, better it be a bit of flour, sugar, and butter, rather than a $65 piece of meat!

I am not a purist, and I'm fine with some pumpkin and/or pumpkin spice flavor in my coffee. My problem is that the holiday drinks sound much better than they actually taste to me; I find most of them too cloyingly sweet. Not to mention that most of them exact a high price in calories, saturated fat, and sugar.

That said, I've done my own DIY pumpkin pie spice latte (really, pumpkin spice cafe au lait) with strong coffee, 1% milk, a healthy pinch of pumpkin pie spice, and about 1/2 T no-sugar-added pumpkin butter. I heat the milk and then whip it with my immersion blender. I get the flavor, but it's not nearly as sweet.

But that's a weekend treat. For daily drinking, I'll just add some pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and/or nutmeg to my coffee. The latter two are almost always available at Starbucks, and most places at least have cinnamon.

My homemade cranberry sauce is made with red wine and brown sugar. My ILs are insane for it. My husband ... insists on the canned stuff, with the can indentations.

When I was in college, I would snack on canned cranberry sauce, thinking it was healthy because it was fruit! And fat-free! As in, half a can in a sitting, when a "serving" is a mere quarter of a cup. Ugh.

OMG, I make this all the time. I've gotten to where I no longer follow the recipe per se, and I just eyeball the olive oil and honey (and omit the lemon juice), but this is definitely a family favorite.

When I started cooking more for my father after my mother's death, this is the first one of "my" recipes that he expressed a special liking for.

From "Wait, Wait ... Don't Blog Me!"—

Sandwich Monday: The McRib

"In the Garden of Eden, God made Eve out of Adam's rib. Then he made Grimace out of a McRib."

I got mine for my birthday last month, and I love it! Making ice cream with it is so easy. Making the custard and chilling it is the time-consuming part; in my experiences, the KA ice cream maker will freeze most custards in 20 to 25 minutes. And if you have any experience with the old fashioned crank ice cream makers (the stuff of my husband's childhood), you won't believe how ridiculously easy it is to just pour in the custard and wait for ice cream to happen.

I also second the recommendation of David Lebovitz's A Perfect Scoop. I've made his vanilla bean ice cream, Mexican chocolate, coffee (with almond and fudge ripple add-ins), cinnamon, and peanut butter, plus his strawberry sorbet, and the only one that didn't come out perfectly was the peanut butter -- it was a bit soft. I may have taken it out too soon, though.

As for cost, I find that heavy cream is the single most expensive ingredient. I'd estimate that per pint, depending on the quality of the ingredients you use, homemade ice cream will be more expensive than non-gourmet store-bought, comparable to slightly more expensive than gourmet store bought (e.g., Haagen-Daz), and cheaper than going out for ice cream -- even Baskin Robbins.

And when you consider that you have complete control over the quality and the flavors, you can't really compare it to store-bought at all. For example, I used to love the Haagen Daz Mayan Chocolate, but that's no longer available in the U.S. But now I can make my own Mexican chocolate.

Homemade ice cream is also a fun way to treat friends and family. My father loves strawberry ice cream, so I made a quart for his birthday. And for a recent neighborhood barbecue, I made ice cream sandwiches using homemade ice cream -- peanut butter cookies with peanut butter ice cream, oatmeal cookies with cinnamon ice cream, and chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream. They were a hit!

Funny you should mention this—I've just discovered the sriracha + peanut butter combo! I stir a bit or sriracha into 2 T natural peanut butter and use it as a dip for celery and carrot sticks. It's turning into one of my very favorite snacks!

I'm also addicted to the Tabasco Chipotle Pepper sauce. One of our family staples is "Sloppy Joe Rotini," a pasta dish with ground beef, corn, onion, bell pepper, squash ... and, yes, (store-brand) Manwich sauce. Classy, I know. But very tasty with a hit of Tabasco Chipotle Pepper sauce.

Fish! As a kid, I liked only tuna salad and battered, fried fish. Discovering sushi (in my early 30s!) proved to be my gateway into liking more kinds of fish, both raw and cooked. Now, grilled fish will usually be my first choice in a restaurant. And interestingly, I'm pickier about those childhood fish favorites—I go for albacore tuna now (yes, yes, the mercury), and I can't handle the fried stuff at all.

Also, yogurt, especially plain yogurt. Until the last few years, I ate yogurt only because I thought I "should." Now I want it and even crave it. My standard summer breakfast is plain yogurt with Kashi GoLean and fruit.

Regular oatmeal. As a kid, I would only eat the instant, flavored stuff. I've totally flip-flopped on that. The smell of the flavored, instant stuff makes me a little ill.

Still warming up to radishes and raw cauliflower. I wouldn't say that I dislike them, but I wouldn't choose them. I also wish I liked beets more. Roasted beets are high on my to-try list.

Seconding salpico. I got the KA ice cream maker attachment as a birthday gift earlier this month. So far I've made five batches of ice cream and one of strawberry sorbet, and every single one has turned out perfectly. And it's $60 through Amazon.com.

And for my money, David Lebovitz is the ice cream guru. Get yourself a copy of The Perfect Scoop. (You can also find a number of his recipes online, on his own site and elsewhere.) My favorite so far: His Mexican spiced chocolate, which very closely replicates the Mayan Chocolate that Haagan Daz so cruelly ripped away from the American market.