Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I second the cooking recommendation. Cooked beans freeze nicely. I usually soak a whole pound of beans and go ahead and cook them all up, most of the time I am making re-fried beans. Once you have seasoned them up you can freeze them easily in the portions sizes that you will be using.

Remember, the flatter you freeze something the easier it will thaw.

Back when the PETA/Ben & Jerry's kerfuffle went through I had a big discussion with my Play Group mom's about this issue, and the general consensus was that it is ludicrous. I can see no feasible way that this would work.

There are many, many arguments but I believe the best one is that I doubt the women that would be the "producers" would consent to being treated as livestock. And what I mean by that is they would be willing to have all of their input (food, medicine and drinks) completely controlled and recorded. In this day and age of allergies, organic demand and what have you, the "producers" would have to be on incredibly restricted and managed diets.

Anything that a woman consumes ends up in her breast milk. Anything that is considered an allergen would have to be removed from their diets. So I am guessing no nuts, shellfish, alcohol, strawberries, citrus ... etc ...
unless you know exactly what the "producer" has been eating (and drinking and taking as medicine) you cannot evaluate the product for safety.

I checked the two recipes referenced, and none of them call for any additional salt or pepper. Can this be right? When you prepared it did you seriously not add any salt or pepper? Were you using full salt Chicken Stock? I am just curious, my hubby thinks this looks awesome and I am going to give it a try.

I used to work at a Rest. that served a Chocolate Bread Pudding with Brandy Soaked Dried Peaches in a Jack Daniel's Creme Anglaise. It was made with chocolate bread and had tons of chocolate in it.

Man was it tasty.

Gives a new meaning to "Death by Chocolate".

I was baking a birthday cake for a friend and she said her favorite flavor was lemon. So I decided to start from scratch. My first attempt started well, creaming together butter and sugar, until I noticed the recipe called for Cake flour. I scraped the butter sugar mixture into a zip top bag and put it in the freezer.

After a trip to the store, and knowledge I had all of the correct ingredients I proceeded to bake two of the most beautiful white cake rounds that you had ever seen. Until I attempted to de-pan them and realized that non-stick bakewear doesn't mean that you don't have to grease the bejeezus out of the pans. Scrape, scrape, scrape into the garbage.

The third attempt at the cake was not quite the picture perfect in the pan effort of the second time, but they depanned nicely and seemed fine. While they were cooling I made a batch of Lemon Curd for a filling and decided to try a recipe for Lemon Frosting that I found in my grandmothers' files. It was a cooked frosting that turned out very tasty, but not terribly stiff.

I placed the first round on my stand and put the lemon curd on top of it. I then placed the second round on top and turned around to get the frosting. I turned back just in time to see the top round sliding off to one side. I managed to slide it the rest of the way off onto a spatula and set it on the counter with only a small chunk breaking off - I figured I could spackel it back together with frosting. I then used the frosting to make a ring around the lemon curd, hoping it would support the top layer.

Again I placed the top layer and went for the frosting, only to see the top layer split in half down the middle and slide off both side of the bottom. At this point I gave up. I got out a 9 x 13 cake pan and broke both layers up into chunks, wedging them into the layer pan. I then took the lemon curd and smeared it all over, filling the cracks and finally frosted the top of the whole thing so it looked like a sheet cake.

When my friend (and other party goers) arrived I asked her if she had ever heard of an upside-down cake, when she said yes I told her that I had made her an "Inside Out" cake. She thought the whole story was funny and the cake was mighty tasty, if not particularly beautiful

Here is a better source for an almond milk based gruel:
Gode Cookery
But keep in mind that gruel was for invalids, the old and the young. These individuals had weak enough constitution that they need to be fed bland food. And Oliver wanted more because anything is better than starving to death.

Avoglemano Soup.

I would much rather hear what Batali has to say - if he could get a word in edgewise.

That chicken does not look appetizing to me at all. It looks waaaay overcooked - to the point of being burnt. Crispy is all well and good, but that is crazy.

Bone In Rib Eye. I'll take taste over tenderness any day.

I used to be on the Flay Hate bandwagon, but recently my attitude towards him has softened for various reasons. But I know why it started and it was long before his cutting board jump.

His first program, "Grillin and Chillin" seemed to be nothing but him being a New York jerkwad condescending to the poor misguided Southern boy in his overalls. It infuriated me especially because the other guy cooked food that I would love to eat and want to cook. Whereas Bobby cooked a lot of stuff that I wouldn't put in my mouth.

Then came the whole Iron Chef incident and it only exacerbated my perception that he utterly lacked respect for other chefs. Then I saw his "Chefography" and it talked about how it was FN that wanted to play up the North vs South thing and how he really respected the other chef, it went a long way to changing my mind.

Then I read about the Throwdown thing and how the whole thing was his idea and how he wanted to use his position on FN to provide these little known but talented chefs with exposure. I had always thought Throwdown was a cruel joke - but understanding it more really changed my mind. Now I do not have so much hate. I still would not eat the vast majority of his food and think he is pretty much a one trick pony, but no longer think he is the Anti-Mario.