BarbaradG's Profile

The nearest Whole Foods market is exactly 54.8 miles from where I live. The small cities and towns just don't have this kind of produce, and they don't have WF markets! Until last summer I couldn't even buy cilantro except dried and in a jar. If you're going to highlight exotic produce then please give an alternative at the same time. I've lived near Boston, Portland, Oregon, Dallas, and several other major cities, and I've never seen these things, and I'm always on the lookout for something new to try. You seem to only write for people who have access to these exotic things and forget about the 99% of us who don't. It has happened so many times that I just assume no recipe is going to be something that I can try. It is very frustrating.

I keep a jar of chopped onions (yes, I chop them with my immersion blender) in the refrigerator, so a large spoonful of those with an equal amount of red and green peppers are sauteed and before losing their crispness I add a couple of beaten eggs. I always have homemade English muffins in the freezer, so one comes out, gets toasted and coated liberally with sweet orange marmalade. If I choose I will also make home-fried potatoes. Put those in the oven to keep warm, and cook the eggs & veggies in the same pan. Dinner, but only if I am eating alone, and an easy cleanup. The hubs won't touch eggs. Sigh.

Please be advised:
http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/fishshellfish/outreach/advice_index.cfm

Albacore is higher in mercury than canned light, and dark tuna - well, I shudder.

Giving it to children under five? Not good.

The amount of mercury, like the amount of sodium in seafood dependes entirely on what the fish ate - what its environment was. Some shrimp, for instance, are poisonously high in sodium and some are not, like those that are farm-raised. You dont know what's in the tuna you get because it is so individual. They sure can't measure each fish and put a label on it as if it were a cake mix or a can of corn where ingredients can be controlled.

After 50 years of cooking I've bought, in the last 6 months, a whole slew of new appliances - some are single use, and some not. I LOVE my KitchenAid Immersion Blender with all the attachments (where has that little beauty been all my life???!!). I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker - fabulous, love it even though we only use it maybe once a month. Slow cooker, once a week if I remember to. When I need to be out all day, it is the equivalent of having a live-in cook almost. My bread maker mixes and raises my dough every other day, day in and day out. I like to bake it in a traditional loaf pan so it doesn't do that, but I couldn't knead dough by hand if I had to, so yes, it is worth it. Mine's about 20 years old, does a great job. Toaster - who'd try to get by without one? Coffeemaker? Yeah, baby! My microwave counts here because it cooks my veggies every day, and it makes perfect rice every time, so I can't imagine why I'd ever need another machine to do that. It heats the water in my cup for my morning tea every day, and it is 23 years old - still going like a champ. And my electric side-slitting can opener. No one ever mentions those, but I couldn't open a can with a hand-crank model due to arthritis. Indispensable. My big beauty - the KitchenAid mixer - my workhorse for everything bake-able to mashed potatoes. All of my electric friends, new and old, are very welcome in my kitchen, and I don't care how crowded it gets because they allow me to cook - really COOK - which I love to do but couldn't do well otherwise (and in some cases not at all) due to physical restrictions. Bless 'em all! We grandmas need all the help we can get!

In Florida, with MY husband? LOL, LOL, LOL! I bake all our bread all of the time and there's no way he'd keep butter crumb free. Besides, I prefer my butter ice cold.

Snap. I have better things to do than peel it.

Must have: All stainless steel interior. Moveable, foldable rack spaces for extra large pots. Sharp knife holders - so they don't bang into each other. And pick up some CLR, because the new lack of phosphates is going to cause it to collect lots of lime and calcium; the heating coils must be cleaned of it periodically.

Oh, and I have added a new Cuisinart food processor to my wish list at Amazon.....anyone want to give one away?

OMG! I would run screaming from that environment! Hideous!

All these diet fads have me laughing. I think they are all based on one thing only - being overly neurotic about food. Eating a variety of fresh vegetables and fruit and going easy on the meat, REALLY chilling out on the salt (and forgetting about those faddish and pricy sea salts! The NEW 2011 RDA is 1500 mg., so tread lightly with the salt shaker!), preparing food with a light hand and not overcooking it, and cooking at home sensibly is all you need to know or do. Vegan this and voodoo that leaves me cold. No one needs a vegan diet unless they have Celiac Disease or a TRUE allergy (real, documented symptoms proven with medical tests). The rest is hypochondria, IMHO.