[Mike Nolan]

I find a birds-beak paring knife works very well for hulling strawberries.

[Mike Nolan]

I make my own chicken stock all the time, and parsnips are a must for it!

[Mike Nolan]

You could try substituting currants for the raisins, they're smaller.

[Mike Nolan]

Burgers on the outdoor grill tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Interesting article, and the pictures of the Challah tied in a Winston Knot look interesting, too.

[Mike Nolan]

I think the cabinets were the most expensive part of our kitchen, and that's considering we had 3 Subzero appliances and a 48" dual fuel range.

[Mike Nolan]

I made 9 hot dog and 3 burger buns today using the 'Chicago Hot Dog bun' recipe on the KAF site. I left the salt out of the dough but sprinkled a little salt on the top along with the seeds. (There's so much salt in a hot dog and most toppings that I didn't figure the bun needed a lot of salt.)

I glued the seeds down with a combination of egg white, water and honey. Seemed to work pretty good.

[Mike Nolan]

I am planning to some burger/brat buns on Wednesday if I don't get sucked into an IT project.

[Mike Nolan]

Warm weather has finally arrived in Nebraska, but since most lunch meats have way too much salt in them, I'm still working on a summertime menu plan.

[Mike Nolan]

I've looked at a number of recipes for vegetable stock. Onions, carrots, celery, bay leaf, peppercorns and garlic are common ingredients. (Personally, I'd leave out the garlic, of course.)

There seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether or not a vegetable stock should include tomatoes. When I was researching recipes for Minestrone, some of which called for vegetable stock and others for chicken stock, if the stock didn't have tomatoes in it, the recipe often called for adding them.

The CIA's textbook for cooks says to use NON-STARCHY vegetables for stock. Mushrooms, leeks, parsnips, parsley and turnips can all be added to the list given earlier.

Older editions of the Joy of Cooking recommended using the tops and peels from non-starchy vegetables to make stock, and also suggested saving the water from boiling vegetables as well as cereals.

Escoffier doesn't give a recipe for vegetable stock, he does give one for court bouillon, which is used for poaching fish. His recipe for court bouillon includes vinegar or wine that has been boiled.

Potato water is sometimes used as a thickening agent.

[Mike Nolan]

My favorite whisk is a Zyllis Easy Clean, but ATK absolutely hated it when they tested whisks some years back.

[Mike Nolan]

There are several online sources for the miracle berry, you can even buy a plant from fast-growing-trees.com. (While it is a zone 9-11 plant, they claim it can be grown indoors.) I recently bought a new Meyer Lemon tree from them.

[Mike Nolan]

We had macaroni and cheese for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making pizza tonight, using the Roman dough recipe in Peter Reinhart's "American Pie" book. (This is an ultra-thin dough recipe.)

BTW, Peter has a note on his pizzaquest blog, he's working on a pan pizza book.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got a Zojirushi rice maker that I probably paid $50 for, but that was many years ago. It has a simple on/off switch. I've used it to make pudding a few times, but for the most part it just gets used for rice. The rice sticks a bit, but it soaks clean fairly easily.

We have a slow cooker that a griddle surface that you set the 5-6 quart pan on. We've never used the griddle separately.

Speaking of complex gadgets, our 48" dual fuel range has 4 gas burners plus a grill and a griddle, though we seldom use either of them. Both ovens get used frequently though. We also have as separate 4 burner electric cooktop and an induction cooker. (There's also a 2 burner electric cooktop in the downstairs kitchenette, but I don't recall the last time we used it.)

Both the kitchen and the kitchenette have warming drawers, which we've probably used less than a dozen times combined in 20 years.

There are 2 microwave ovens in the kitchen and another one downstairs, all 3 get used regularly.

And the instant hot water taps (one in the kitchen and another downatairs) both get used a lot.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Mike Nolan.

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