[Mike Nolan]

We've probably drowned more rosemary than we've dried out. We used to try putting them in the kitchen window, but it is north-facing and definitely doesn't get enough light for rosemary, though it seems to be working for orchids.

[Mike Nolan]

Our dining room might work, though my wife would have to give up some of the space for her Christmas cactus plants.

[Mike Nolan]

She's concerned that her garlic allergy could spread to other alliums, but at this point she can still handle onions and leeks. She's not fond of chives, though we have them in the garden, mainly for color.

As for spices and herbs, I tend to use basil, parsley, oregano, thyme and marjoram a lot, and I've been experimenting with winter savory. You have to know when to add them, basil gets really bitter if cooked a long time, so it goes in towards the end.

I've started using rosemary more frequently too--now if I could just get a rosemary plant to survive over a winter. My wife's sister has a huge rosemary plant in her living room, she's had it for decades. But that room has good sunlight, I need to find a better place to put a rosemary plant, if we put it in the guest bedroom (southern exposure) it gets forgotten about.

A beef stew just isn't complete without some bay leaf in the pot. I've been using dill weed more frequently lately with fish. (The other day I made salmon poached in butter with dill weed and powdered mustard.)

I tend to stick to ripe (not green) bell peppers and I don't use the hot ones much, as we're not really into spicy hot foods.

[Mike Nolan]

We're having tacos.

[Mike Nolan]

Thanks for being sensitive to copyright issues. Lists of ingredients are often considered 'facts' and are not copyrightable, though the instructions on how to assemble the dish are clearly copyrightable. I generally stay away from even posting lists of ingredients from another source, though the usual rule of thumb is that if you change two or more ingredients, it's considered a different recipe.

I'm curious about the Romagnoli book, how many of the recipes use garlic? (As I understand it, northern Italian cooking doesn't use much garlic, though southern Italian recipes do.)

[Mike Nolan]

Rye chops are similar to cracked wheat, they're not fine enough to be a meal. I've looked at a lot of rye recipes, I don't recall any that called for rye chops.

Back when I was testing rye recipes, I bought 5 pounds of rye berries and use my impact mill on its coarsest setting. That was pretty similar to the pumpernickel flour I was getting at the Mennonite store in TN. I'd look for pumpernickel flour, it's usually pretty coarse.

[Mike Nolan]

I tend to keep all the ingredients on hand, but we're doing carry-out pizza tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

When I took my pastry course at SFBI, I bought one of their lame holders. It uses an old-fashioned double edge razor blade (which they also sell), with the blade curved somewhat so you get a nice cut, what some bakers call an 'ear'.

I find that works better than any knife or other type of lame I've tried.

[Mike Nolan]

I find pouring a cup of bleach down the drain every few weeks works pretty good, too. But if you have a septic tank, I'm not sure if that's recommended or not.

[Mike Nolan]

Put a sign in your yard that says, "I bake, testers needed", and you'll meet lots of new friends. (This sort of thing works in small towns better than it does in a city.)

[Mike Nolan]

As often as you make Challah, I'm surprised you never have any left over. If there's just a slice or two left, toss it in the freezer, and you'll have enough to do French toast after a few weeks.

It makes excellent French toast, but so does cinnamon raisin bread. I've even made it with cardamom bread, but that wasn't quite as tasty. Even the no-salt Challah I made a couple weeks ago, which tasted pretty dull, made good French toast.

[Mike Nolan]

I made Vienna bread last night, cutting the salt in the Double Crusty bread recipe from 2 tsp to 3/4 tsp. (This post should have been in the Feb 4th thread.)

[Mike Nolan]

I made some buttermilk, too, and let it sit out for 24 hours but it didn't get very thick. (It was in the mid to high 60's in the kitchen.) I stuck it in the fridge and I'll smell it in a day or two and see if it smells like buttermilk.

[Mike Nolan]

By definition a salt is what you get when you combine an acid with a base and the hydrogen in the acid is replaced by the metal (or cation) in the base. (NaCl is a salt, but there are many other salts.) There can be other by-products when you combine an acid and a base. (For example, combine vinegar and baking soda and you will get lots of carbon dioxide.)

According to the cardiology web sites, I'm supposed to count all forms of sodium, including things like sodium bicarbonate and the small amount of sodium present in flour. That's why I just bought some low-sodium baking powder to try out.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder how many of those fruits and vegetables in Florida were grown in-state? Florida orange groves are down about 75% in the last decade, due to a combination of diseases, weather and land being converted to more profitable residential use. I suspect truck farming has declined as well.

So there's a good chance many of the fruits and veggies you were seeing in Florida came from California, Mexico or South America.

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