Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I realized I could really bake when I started making Christmas cookies and birthday cakes for friends when I was in college, and I realized how much better they were than the cakes and cookies I grew up with. Cooking came later. On the down side, it was kind of sad to come to the realization that my mom isn't actually that good of a cook. It wasn't until I cooked for myself that I realized how terribly she overcooks vegetables and dries out meats. I do have to give her credit for being willing to try adventurous things though, not many middle class white kids in the early 80's had moms who tried their hand at things like squid or frog legs.

If you're a chef boyardee or franco-american fan and can't get over the shame, or the sodium content, I accidentally stumbled across a food combo that I call chef faux-yardee. When I was making my son's babyfood I would do a variety of foods up in ice cube trays and then mix and match. So, one day I combined a couple of cubes of pureed butternut squash with a cube of pureed san marzano tomatoes and then added some cheese. When I tasted it, I was ready to just eat it myself! It was like spaghetti-o's somehow, but really good and pretty healthy as well!

Anything and everything? But seriously, I had this wonderful El Rey chocolate cake with zinfandel soaked dried cherries at a restaurant once and I still think about how awesome it was!

Hmmm. Ribeye, or ALL of them. I mean really, as long as it is good quality, I'll eat it!

My mom bought me a set of these, and I thought they might be cool mainly a burn preventer, since I'm always brushing my hand against the edge f the rack. They do fulfill that role well enough. I wouldn't want to grab onto them, but they did avert a few burns. However, they have a HUGE downside: you can't SLIDE anything out of your oven anymore. So if you're trying to remove the pizza shown in the picture, you have to pull out the rack, use a metal spatula to lift up the edge of whatever the pizza is sitting on, and get your potholdered hands under it to pick it up. So even if you could grab the silicone edge to pull the rack out, you would still have to employ a potholder to pick up the hot item.

I was super excited to try these...and mine came out NOTHING like the picture. They barely puffed at all, and were very flat. My dough seemed a little loose and they started to spread when I popped them in the oven. Any idea what could have gone wrong here?

I will be spending this Thanksgiving where I have spent my last 8: in the Emergency room. I'll be filling in so that a full time ER social worker can have the day off. I miss the big multi-relative get-together but I still do Thanksgiving the day after or on Saturday with my immediate family. Plus, we always have a massive potluck at work with turkeys and other meats, every pie you can think of, and all the other trimmings. I think this year I'll bring a pumpkin pecan bundt cake covered with a layer of whisky-tinged pecan praline and a side of fresh whipped cream.

Well, I can tell you veggie burgers rot. I know this because one of my co-workers went away for a week and, for some reason, decided to leave a veggie burger that she didn't get around to eating in her desk drawer. For days I couldn't identify the source of the terrible, terrible smell. She noticed it as well when she returned, we kept trying to figure out what it was. At some point, while I was doing something else, it suddenly got much, MUCH worse, and my coworker went running for the kitchen area. When she came back, she was beet red. She had opened her desk to get something and been kicked in the face with the reminder of her uneaten lunch. It's been 3 years and we still don't let her forget it.

You can get the Universal Nonstick Silicone Pot Lids at Amazon.com as well. I LOVE my silicone egg poaching cups as well, I can' poach an egg to save my life without them! I also have silicone muffin/cupcake pans that are truly awesome - regular pans are hard to clean and tend to rust easily. The only silicone cooking gadget I haven't been impressed with so far has been silicone basting brushes. They just suck.
Now that I read this, I'm really wanting one of those knife blocks!

The first time I ate one I thought, "Wow, this is what it would taste like if you could fry butter until it was crunchy." I was in Hawaii about a month after gallbladder surgery. I ate macadamias until I suffered....several times.

I like GOOD cupcakes. I like that they are generally a better portion size than a big layer cake slice, I like their portability and I like that (when serving them) I don't have to stand there and cut up a cake.
Sadly, most cupcakes try to substitute CUTE for GOOD. Also, for me, a cupcake has to have the same things to love about it that lead me to love cake: GOOD frosting, FILLING and good texture. Sadly, most cupcakes out there are overbaked and dry, lack filling and are covered in cheap frosting. And don't even get me started on fondant covered cupcakes, that stuff tastes like sweet play-doh. Gack.
I don't have an official bakery, but I do cakes and cupcakes for family and friends for weddings and whatnot. I used to hate cupcakes, until I figured out that I could use a pastry tip to get filling into them, now I love them, and mine are much in demand. Plus, its fun to coordinate your decor or flavor to all the fancy cupcake papers that are available now.

Wow, with as many "rules" as this waitress has for her customers, no wonder she seems to hate her job. It seems like many in the restaurant industry ARE forgetting that the show isn't about THEM. Forgione was so obsessed with having something "perfect" that he ruined the dining experience for a roomful of customers. I imagine whatever it was he was yelling about was some detail that most of them would barely have noticed or hardly remembered, but they'll remember how uncomfortable the experience of listening him treat his staff like crap was for a long time. Similarly, this waitress needs to get over herself! If I want to stack some dinner debris on top of my plate, I CAN. It might annoy you a little, but you're clearing plates, not performing brain surgery, it will be OK in the end!