ysabella's Profile

I like 'em in leftover soup, or over leftover pasta.

I have a small Tribest "personal blender," and it came with an additional milling blade which does a pretty good job. I use the milling blade pretty often to grind up small batches of stuff - spices, nuts, grains, stale bread into crumbs, etc. So for people who aren't looking to mill large quantities, I would suggest it.

Way out west, there's Grocery Outlet.

I do this, although not every night. I heat up a little bit of water in my electric kettle, pour it onto the plate, and let it sit. I stack up a couple of plates. You have to dry it off, but it warms up fast this way.

Another vote for oatmeal cookies - although I like a mix of chocolate and butterscotch chips in them.

Love that movie. Jeremy Northam is my favorite actor, and he's incredible as Ivor Novello.
And I really enjoyed the kitchen details, too! The knives, the politics among the staff, etc.

I like to add almond and vanilla to most baked items. The full amount of vanilla called for plus a very small amount (less than 1/4 tsp) of almond to boost it. I find that almond is very strong and can overpower, but a little bit of it is just so tasty and interesting.

Maybe this is too easy for them, but what about Buckeyes? Instead of peanut butter they could try some exotic nut-butters, like hazelnut or macadamia. Sometimes a small amount of paraffin - seriously - is called for to be melted in with the chocolate to be used to coat Buckeyes. This is to make the melting point higher. There are chocolate bars shipped to American troops in the Middle East that have a high melting point - probably pretty waxy!

I was thinking the other day how fun it could be to make a sort of smores-bonbon. A base of graham cracker, with marshmallow stuck to it, coated in chocolate, maybe? Or something like rocky road, with pieces of graham crackers instead of nuts?

Also, cake-pops are trendy, and offer a lot of room for creativity. The online recipes and how-tos seem to call for canned frosting and "candy melts" but if your kids prefer to cook from scratch (the candies they've made so far sound so impressive!), they can come up with something grand.

Oh, one more - Rice Krispy Treats are a perennial favorite and have a lot of variations. After reading this entry at Cakespy.com I had to try making the Trix ones, they look so cool! And they were fun to eat. I'll bet they'd be hot sellers at a county fair just because they look so neato.

You know, I got a VitaMix, and it's not that thrilling. Honestly, it's not. I got tired of cleaning out the giant pitcher when I just made myself a protein shake. And later on I bought myself a "personal" blender (in my case, a TriBest) and I use that all the time - to grind flour out of oats (it came with a "milling blade"), to make shakes and smoothies, etc. There are cheaper ones, but you can order replacement parts for the TriBest.

I have a KitchenAid and I do like it, but you only really need that kind of horsepower for some applications, like making meringues or marshmallows, bread dough as people said, etc. For a batter or whipping cream it's kind of overkill. So it depends on what you really like to cook.

cscamp20, possibly the floors are heated? Eichler homes, at least some of them, were originally built with heating in the floors. I grew up in the Bay Area and know a guy in Cupertino whose original heating system still works. So heated floors would be in keeping with the whole Eichler thing even if they couldn't restore the old system and did the new kind instead.