Pfirsch's Profile

taherold is right; in Eastern NC, at least, we call this "chicken and pastry" and use strips. There is nothing in the dish except the chicken, pastry, the broth from the chicken, salt, and pepper.

Here, only the "drop" ones are called dumplings.

Bojangles does have the best tea, that's for sure. Although I am a Southerner, I can't stand sun tea--it always tastes rancid to me. Bottled tea or the powdered stuff just taste off.

The funny thing is that McDonald's has been serving tea, as have almost ever other fast food joint around here, for years. The fact that they started a national campaign just made me laugh. I'm pretty sure the people at the local Mickey D's make their tea themselves--the general public in these parts don't take too kindly to the artificial stuff.

My brand of choice is Luzianne. If you want a fool proof way to make 1/2 gallon of decent tea, use your coffee maker. Put 4-8 tea bags in the [cleaned] coffee basket and run it twice using the maximum amount of water both times over the same tea bags. If it looks or tastes too weak, run it through again and add it to the rest. If it's only slightly stronger than you like, fill the rest with cold water. I usually add a cup of sugar after the first run.

I know it sounds gross, but it really does work. My parents have been doing it that way for years and it always works out.

Squirrely,

The reasons you give for not liking the Toll House cookies are exactly why I like them! No chewy cookies for The Kid. ;) When we were younger, my sister and I made the oatmeal cookies off the Quaker Oats box and put chocolate chips in them, too! That's all we could find in the kitchen, and I thought we were so original since I had never heard of anybody doing that before.

I saw Tyler Florence make a vegetarian one on Food 911 the other day with peas, string beans, and asparagus. It made me want to try out free-form lasagna, and now, having seen this, I will definitely try to make one for dinner next week. Thanks for giving me that extra push!

erin,

I used a recipe from Recipezaar, and it worked great. I put the oats and water (3:1) into the rice cooker the night before. The next morning, set the cooker to Porridge and let it do it's thing. I'm not sure if it has to be set on the Porridge setting to work.

I've also toasted steel-cut oats and substituted them for the old-fashioned variety in an oatmeal muffin recipe as well as sucranat for brown sugar. The steel-cut oats gave the muffins a chewy texture, which I really liked.

The blueberries will sink to the bottom. I know that it seems odd, but most, if not all, cobbler recipes say to put in the blueberries on top of everything else.

"The Russians call them 'perhaps bags'..."
That's so funny, because my grandfather, from rural Eastern NC, says that you should always have a *might* sack, because "you might get something, you might not."