[Mike Nolan]

I'm making chicken broth/stock today, using a whole chicken. About half of the broth/stock will wind up as chicken soup, probably tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm sure his knife is well-sharpened and he's using the big chef's knife, so it has some bulk which helps cut through bone. I'm still not quite sure what the point to cutting off the tip of the leg is, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making spaghetti with meat sauce and cheese toast for supper tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, after it's been boiled to death, not much else you can do with it. Lightly steamed, to the point where it is softening but still has a little firmness to it, is the way to go. My wife likes hers with lemon, I don't even salt it.

[Mike Nolan]

I think 'Enjoy Life' is one brand of semi-sweet chocolate chips that is certified vegan and prepared in a facility free of contamination from nuts, dairy or gluten.

[Mike Nolan]

There is no botanical definition for a 'vegetable', it's more what they're used for than how they grow. Most of what we eat as vegetables are fruits (like a tomato), leaves (like lettuce), flower buds (like broccoli), stalks (like celery) or a type of root (like ginger or potato).

Tomatoes are legally defined as vegetables in the USA, but that's because of an 1893 Supreme Court ruling involving the taxation of imported vegetables.

[Mike Nolan]

We haven't made tuna noodle casserole in years, mostly because it tends to be high carb and high sodium. I haven't made chicken and rice casserole in a while for pretty much the same reason.

I used to make a tuna fish, minute rice and mushroom soup dish when our younger son was still living at home, my wife would eat something else, she doesn't eat much rice because it causes her blood sugar to skyrocket, even with a stir-fry she'll just take a tiny bit of rice.

Tuna noodle casserole is one of those dishes that the cooking competitions often select as an 'outdated' dish in need of updating. I've yet to see one of these updatings that solves the carb/sodium issues while still sounding edible.

[Mike Nolan]

I saw nothing in that post to convince me the author knows more about food than I do.

[Mike Nolan]

Without knowing the dimensions of your closet, I can't recommend specifics. We had our closets custom built, but I like the modular metal shelves like these:

Shelving

They come in a variety of lengths, depths and height and there are numerous accessories such as baskets and hanging rods.

We have a number of these in the basement to keep things off the floor, which occasionally get a little water when it rains They're the type that restaurants use and they'll hold several hundred pounds per shelf. I've seen kitchen staff climb on them.

[Mike Nolan]

A few years ago I made Ossi Dei Morti cookies for All Souls Day, they're similar to biscotti. They were interesting and are low fat, no oil or butter, just 2 eggs.

[Mike Nolan]

Biscotti always seem too dry to be enjoyable. We don't drink coffee, and tea isn't really a drink you dunk things in.

[Mike Nolan]

We had vegetable beef soup out of the freezer, nice on a cool rainy day.

[Mike Nolan]

I think a pint of oysters cost me over $15 last December, they've definitely gone up in price in the last few years. (But despite what the government says about little or no inflation, what hasn't gone up? My orange juice just went up about 7%, a jar of pickles is up about $1.00 from where it was 18 months ago, etc.)

[Mike Nolan]

I married into a publishing family. My father-in-law was a publisher, his first wife edited the Nebraska Centennial Cookbook. My wife co-authored a book on using the web for teaching, my brother-in-law has published several books on Nebraska history and my sister-in-law published a book on gardening.

Putting a book together is a LOT of work, and my wife's book didn't have the pictures that a cookbook requires these days. (I think Peter Reinhart's new pan pizza book has more pages of pictures than of text.)

For now I'll pass on doing a cookbook. (However, I've been developing character sketches and an outline for a novel for the past year, it stems from a recurring dream I've been having.)

[Mike Nolan]

I may try to do spaghetti and meatballs over the weekend, as it is expected to be cool on Saturday. I already got a container of vegetable beef soup out of the freezer. Tonight we settled for macaroni and cheese.

There may be a last gasp of the 80's on Sunday/Monday but the forecasted high for Wednesday is 59 with rain.

[Author]

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