ziacd's Profile

we did our entire kitchen floor with Oxi-Clean and peroxide. The peroxide worked best. We put it onto the grout, let it sit, scrubbed with a toothbrush and followed up with a steam cleaner. Good as new!

I agree with starting local...and asking for help at a shop where the people know about beer. Even a locally brewed lager is a good step, not too heavy, but way more flavor than a mass produced beer. I can go ahead and recommend some of the Smuttynose line (New Hampshire brewery) but it won't help most people outside of the northeast. We have a local beer shop that has tastings and allows you to mix a six-pack, that's a great place to start! Also, even a $6 big bottle (maybe to share) is a good investment...good craft brews can be pretty expensive at a bar.

Just be glad your honey mess wasn't a two year old pouring it all over your rugs...oops, sorry still a little bitter over that one...anyway, I would go with the scraping method, like with a metal dough scraper? Have a bowl near the shelf in case it pours over the edge. Then use hot water at the end when it's thinned out to clean up the residue. Good luck!

Yeah, the hunting as cruel argument is pretty ironic. My husband has hunted all his life, and although I'm not ready to participate myself, I am not opposed to people doing it. Aside from the Bambi visions I have, hunting is really helpful to animal populations and conservation. The animals are out living in their natural habitats, eating what they are meant to eat. Cows are separated from their young at birth at CAFO's...hunting laws and seasons prevent those kinds of things from happening. The hunter isn't necessarily always having the upper hand...it's not always easy to find the animals, and not every person hunts with a rifle. My husband has begun bow hunting (bc of my opposition to having guns around), and he missed 2 bucks bc the deer were just out of reach, or behind a tree not giving him a good shot. Hunters use a lot of tools to try and outsmart the animals (it's amazing how hard they try without success!), and after opening day of the season, the chances of bagging one significantly decrease. It's really not as easy as it sounds.

Fried cauliflower fritters!

I was deciding between Gourmet and BA...now I don't have to choose, though it makes me nervous to commit to any magazine subscriptions these days!

Cauliflower should get to be larger than a softball before picking. I found with ours, when it goes too long it starts to turn a bit of purple.

I have 2 favorite ways with cauliflower: Sicilian pasta with cauliflower and cauliflower fritters ( cook cauliflower, mix with flour, some cooking water, baking powder, season, mash it up and fry it!).

My Cutco cheese knife is incredible on tomatoes. It's got really sharp and tiny serrated teeth, and with the big holes in it, the slices don't stick. It's also smaller, so easier to handle if I dice with it too.

You can also frost your cake with softened vanilla ice cream. We used to do that at the ice cream shop I worked at. I have also heard of people using cool whip. I think it will come out just find, it's really not too hard at all! To assemble, I would place the cake in a springform pan (or bake it in one), then add the softened ice cream on top, freeze a bit, then add the other cake layer. Freeze again before frosting. Don't forget to take it out for a bit before serving! Oh, and you can also make one in a bowl if you prefer a different shape...just line the bowl with cake pieces before putting in the softened ice cream. Good luck and enjoy!

This is one of my most favorite summertime recipes, and one of the most memorable dishes I had in Italy. For me, to get the taste closest to what I remember, I like to fry some eggplant and add them in with the tomatoes to cook into the sauce a bit. At the end, I add in reserved fried eggplant pieces. (That also helps with picky kids who aren't so into eggplant chunks.) Of course, the ricotta salata at the end makes a huge difference too. Oh, I cannot wait for our eggplants to ripen!