I know, I'm a late adopter but I recently got a smartphone and I'm enjoying having it in the kitchen to refer to when cooking. What I've been doing is finding recipes I like on the web then adding them to my home screen in a folder but I'm wondering if there is a better way. I mean, I don't want to make this any more complicated than it has to be but I can see it getting cumbersome as I add recipes in. Any suggestions for what works and what doesn't? Have there been threads on this in the past that I have ignored because they didn't apply to me that I should go back and read? Any input would be much appreciated and happy Easter to those SErs who celebrate, happy Sunday to those who don't.

I decided to make hot sauce and used Bon Appetit's technique - grind the peppers in the food processor, allow to ferment a bit, add vinegar and "cure" for 2-7 days. I'm very happy with the taste of the resulting sauce but not the texture, if you will. It is as thin as the vinegar I used and settles into layers of solids (sort of) and liquid that need to be shaken before the sauce is used.

If this is just the way things are I'm okay with that but I'd like the sauce to be slightly thicker, like Tabasco, and to not separate if possible.

I'm open to other recipes/techniques/ideas - I just started with Bon Appetit because I had turned that page down in the magazine when I read it.

Also, anyone know any good sources for bottles (other than recycled ones)?

I'm now working a project in Woodlawn, MD, just outside Baltimore, and except for Pioneer Pit Beef (astounding!) this is a food wasteland. My work buddies and I were wondering a) why are there no food trucks out here because there are two huge government facilities with lots of hungry people in them, and b) are there food truck pods around Baltimore we could drive to? Any info from our Baltimore Serious Eaters would be much appreciated.

I've been a member of SE for a while but now I have a different e-mail address. I went to my profile but I can't see anything that lets me change the address associated with my profile. I'd rather not start over again so can anyone tell me how to do this? Many thanks in advance.

Okay, I know dogs can't talk but have any of you made homemade dog biscuits that your pets have really liked? I've googled recipes but what I'm missing is how well they went over with their canine recipients. I'm one of those Christmas cookie people and this year, as I started planning, I realized that almost everyone on my list has acquired a dog since last Christmas (myself included). I'm looking for a tried and true recipe that has been a hit so any help would be much appreciated.

The reviews on Yelp are mixed and then there's the Guy Fieri douche factor spillover but I'm in Dallas for a short trip and a friend wants to meet there. Any input would be much appreciated.

I've tried everything that's been suggested (cleared cache, refreshed page) and at least now I can see the pictures that accompany the articles but the top banner is still empty and the drop downs don't work. My Chrome machine works great but IE9 is proving more problematic. Please don't tell me to switch browsers - due to various considerations that isn't possible. Any help, anyone?

p.s. I can't preview this post so I hope it actually posts like it should.

Some background - I work in IT but I bake a lot. One of my geeks did me a serious favor and indicated that sugar cookies might be a nice reward for his services. This guy (like so many of his tribe) drinks Mountain Dew constantly and I thought it might be fun to incorporate his favorite beverage into the cookies. I'm no molecular gastronomist so I don't really know where to start but I do have a dehydrator, if that's the direction I need to go. In fact, I might just put some soda in it now as an experiment but I know there must be someone in SE land who might have some ideas.

My parents were very big on the cocktail hour - usually martinis (but sometimes other cocktails depending on the season, daiquiris or the like) always accompanied by a tray of yummy snacks that we kids would sneak handfuls of. One of their favorites was something called Snappies, which were basically some kind of fried dough rolled in a seasoning which was I'm sure was primarily salt. I'm wondering if there's anyone else who remembers these because I'd like to recreate them since they don't seem to be made any more. Am I howling at the moon here?

I'm doing a trip to Dallas next week and can't take another chain restaurant with my non-foodie coworkers. Would love to try someplace local for dinner and it doesn't really matter the ethnicity. We'll have a car but time may be short so driving to Fort Worth or the like probably isn't going to happen. We're staying in a hotel that is literally at the intersection of 75 and the LBJ.

Help me, Serious Eaters. Save me from the Olive Garden and the Outback. I'll be in your debt forever.

So I'm about halfway through my yearly tomato can-athon. To shorten the cooking time, I pull off the juice as I cook the tomatoes down. Last year I canned this like stock and used it to make risotto and the like all winter, which was good but I ended up with way too much of it ( I can a LOT of tomatoes, believe me). This year I took two huge pots of the tomato stock, reduced it by about 90% and ended up with what I can only call tomato syrup. I made a pepper infused jelly with some of it, which turned out great, especially as a glaze brushed on grilled chicken or pork but I could use some new ideas of how else to use the syrup. I'm open to just about anything that's legal. Any suggestions?

First note - I came up with this recipe for my kids so it is as close to supermarket ketchup as you can get and still be homemade. They eat ketchup on a lot of stuff because it is a great way to get them to eat things they might otherwise shun. The hubs and I eat it occasionally on burgers but not much of anything else so this is a kid friendly recipe. As I mentioned in the other thread, nobody I've ever served it to has realized until I told them that it isn't Heinz. The reason I make it myself is so that I know what goes into it.

Second note, I have on more than one occasion made my own tomato paste but in this version I use commercially canned organic tomato paste. Again, this was developed for my kids and the homemade tomato paste turns a darker color that adults don't mind at all but kids find suspicious.

Also, the recipe doubles, triples, quadruples easily. If I get to Costco and can buy large quantities of agave, I make a big old vat of this and store it in my basement fridge or boiling water bath can it for 20 minutes for shelf storage.

Okay, I have no problem with chefs making some extra money advertising things (my hubs cooks professionally and I know first hand that it is generally a low pay job unless you're Emeril or Mario Batali). So if Thomas Keller wants to appear in ads for Napa Valley tourism, I'm fine with that. Morimoto wants to hawk Fiji Water, good for him. I can even sort of see the connection between a creepily airbrushed Richard Blais and Lincoln (if you buy the concept that a craftsman is a craftsman whether they're making food or cars - like I said, sort of...).

But Homaro Cantu selling Reach dental floss? DENTAL FLOSS?????

Has the world gone completely @#$%^% mad?

I'm a southern girl and I can fry me some chicken but when I saw this recipe on SE I thought I'd give it a try. I didn't let it marinate for the full 24 hours (more like about five) but even with that this chicken kicks @ss and takes names. It is un-freaking-believable. You owe it to yourself to try this even if you are one of those people who is scared to fry chicken lest you set the house on fire. Seriously. Go, right now, and start your chicken marinating for tomorrow. If it is even close to what I made tonight you will be thanking me and Erin and Robyn for sending you to this recipe.

Really.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/05/thai-chicken-karaage-east-side-kings-recipe.html

Oh, and I know there's a way to make the link smaller but I'm too lazy to figure it out right now. I have to eat some chicken.

I'm sure a number of Slicers will show up on my doorstep with pitchforks and flaming torches but here's my dilemma. I'm having a crowd for dinner and would like to do a make your own pizza thing. I'm thinking with prebaked crusts I could limit the in oven time and move things along more quickly. I have Mario Batali's latest book where he describes making the pizza on a griddle sort of thing then finishing in the oven but was wondering if any SEers had any good ideas for me. Thanks in advance.

I cook a lot but have spent the last few years focusing on Asian food or else going back to my Southern roots. I've never had a whole lot of interest in Italian but realize I'm giving short shrift to a major cuisine and I could use a culinary challenge. I've watched a fair amount of Molto Mario (because I just love Mario Batali, bless his little orange shoes) so I know there's way more to it than pasta and red sauce but I'd like some suggestions for books, video, etc. to learn more about real Italian food. What have you got for me, Serious Eaters?

Yes, it is a gloomy Saturday and I'm a little bored...

So if someone who loves food is a foodie (and yes, before the snarkmeisters come out, I am well aware that foodie is a love it or hate it term), is someone who loves bread a breadie? Is a fish lover a fishie? Sweets a sweetie? What do you call the subgroups?

This is meant to be a FUN topic so please, use your verbal prowess for good, not evil.

This is the kind of question no Serious Eater thinks they will ever ask - and then they have children. So... my 11 year old wants a deep fried hotdog on a stick but had a bad corn dog experience (haven't we all?) so I can't make a corn meal batter. What do you guys think? Tempura batter? Pancake batter? Flour/buttermilk/flour like I do with fried chicken? I'm kind of at a loss but am on the hook to deliver this tonight so I don't have time for a lot of experimentation.

Help me, Serious Eaters, you're my only hope.

And if you do, what food traditions do you have? We celebrate but it seems the only constants from year to year are dumplings and red envelopes with chocolate coins. My kids are getting older and I'd really like to start some traditions that they can carry on so I'm very interested in what other people do. If it matters, they are Chinese but we're a multi-culti family so I'm open to suggestions from any culture. Thanks, SEers.

In response to requests for my MIL's cake recipe, here it is. Enjoy and as far as I'm concerned, share it with anyone you like and modify the flavors, presentation or whatever however it suits your fancy.

My mother-in-law was generally a horrible cook but made an incredible milk chocolate pound cake that was justifiably famous in DH's family (hey, even a blind pig gets an acorn once in a while...) She pretty much hated my guts and never forgave me for stealing her baby boy (who was 32 when we got married, by the way) but for some unknown reason, I was the only person with whom she ever shared the cake recipe. I make it mostly the same way she did but I don't add nuts, which makes my husband, well, nuts. He actually won't eat the cake when I make it because I deviate from how his crazy mother made it.

Another example - my SIL's mom was a cigarette smoking career woman who cooked as little as she possibly could but could fry chicken that would make your heart sing. She taught me to fry chicken her way but in the intervening years, my chicken frying technique has evolved a bit. My SIL was here yesterday and when I told her how I planned to fry chicken for dinner, she was horrified that I wasn't doing it EXACTLY the way her mother did.

So am I a heretic for not sticking directly to the written in stone family recipes? Is the problem that I'm messing with someone else's food memories? Maybe because I don't have too many family recipes on my side (growing up Irish American in the DC suburbs ensured that the only food tradition we had was celebrating the day they invented Velveeta) I don't understand the importance of making things just like Mom did.

What do you all think?

I'll be attending a family event in San Francisco in mid-March. In the past when I visited I had money but now, not so much, so I'm looking for some great cheap eats in the city. I'm partial to Asian food of all kinds (and I include Indian in that category) but am open to anything. We're staying on Geary out near Golden Gate Park - are there still fabulous Chinese places on Clement? We're also going to be car-less so much as I would love to travel to Berkeley or Oakland for great food, if I can't get there on the bus or in a cab, it just won't work. Oh, and if there are specific dishes that shine at a restaurant you love, I'd love to know what they are. Thanks in advance, Serious Eaters.

I was putting up a bunch of these today and thought that some of you Serious Eaters might be interested in trying them. I started with five pounds of Mayan Sweet onions, peeled then sliced them thin in the food processor (using a mandoline or hand slicing works just fine too) and put them in the crockpot on low for about 24 hours. Set the heat up to high for an additional four hours until they were nice and brown then cooled and packaged for freezing. From the initial five pounds I got 3-1/2 cups of caramelized onions that I packaged in 1/2 cup portions in snack size zip bags and froze. This takes into account the many, many spoonfuls I had to try during the process just to be sure they were cooking properly (what can I say? I love onions).

Uses for these guys are limited only by your imagination but we spread them on sandwiches, mix them with butter and herbs to melt on steak, add to beef broth for a very quick onion soup, mix them into scrambled eggs, use them for fajitas and quesadillas, well, you get the picture. If you're of a mind, you can also add sliced or chopped peppers into the mix. I've been thinking I might try adding fennel one of these days as well.

These can also be pressure canned but they take up so little room in the freezer, I just find that more convenient.

And if you're working a new year's resolution to lose a few pounds, there's absolutely no fat or salt but a ton of flavor. What's not to like about that?

I just made bourbon caramel truffles and while they're good, they're not as insanely fabulous as I thought they'd be. I'm on the hook to bring truffles to Christmas dinner (along with a few thousand other things but that's a rant for another day...) and I'm feeling completely devoid of inspiration. Any great ideas? I have a LOT of spices/flavorings/booze so anything goes. Thanks in advance.

There are so many food blogs these days - I've probably bookmarked a couple of hundred and often when I go back to read again I wonder what the hell I was thinking. I'm like the rest of the sheep and read Pioneer Woman, Smitten Kitchen, and of course, Serious Eats, but what makes a really good personal food blog? Is it pictures? Recipes? The personality of the blogger? All of the above?

So many bloggers try too hard to be funny and just aren't but then I'll see their recipes or restaurant reviews and think, okay, who needs funny when you have Korean tacos or a five course meal at a chic San Francisco eatery to read about.

What makes YOU read more than once?