[Mike Nolan]

If that's the one in the Mission District in San Francisco, I've been there once, some years ago.

BTW, their prices for a braided Challah (Fridays only) are pretty reasonable, under $8.

[Mike Nolan]

I like to roast chicken breasts on a bed of mirepoix (onions, celery and carrots), which covers providing both vegetables and a light sauce.

I made this recently using some white wine vinegar because I didn't have an open bottle of white wine, the extra acidity was an improvement. I also dusted the breasts with dill weed and celery seed. And since they were skinned, I covered them with a slice of Swiss cheese so that the breasts didn't get tough on the outside.

[Mike Nolan]

About the time that we moved to Nebraska (1977) there was a rumor floating that McD's was going to build a drive-through-only location on Lower Wacker Drive, but I don't think they ever did.

Lower Wacker Drive, for you non-Chicagoans, is under the surface streets in the Loop area and is commonly used by delivery vehicles and by locals who know how to make it a much faster way to get through downtown. (But if you don't know your way through, it was easy to get lost, too.)

It shows up in a few car-chase movie scenes.

[Mike Nolan]

The photo doesn't really do the Rock-N-Roll McDonald's justice, though, it is better at night.

[Mike Nolan]

I thought there was also be a Rock and Roll McDonald's in Las Vegas, though I'm not finding anything on Google about it, but the one on Clark in Chicago is definitely not your typical MickeyD's.

Rock N Roll McDonalds

McDonald's has locations in some of the oases over the Interstate in the Chicago area, too. So you literally get to drive under the golden arches.

The one on Times Square in New York City may have the highest stateside prices. I remember a Big Mac, fries and a Coke costing nearly $10, and that was back in the late 1990's.

When we were in Maine a few years ago, several fast-food places like Arby's had lobster rolls, but McD's did not.

[Mike Nolan]

I know McDonald's was looking into pizzas back in the mid 70's when the company I worked for was doing work on Basic Four Computers, who at the time had an office in the McDonald's HQ building in Oak Brook. (That's how I met Ray Kroc.)

The pizza experiment from the early 80's was not one I ever got to.

However, Lincoln NE was the test site for another McDonald's project, the 3-in-1 restaurant. It was a greatly expanded menu with table service. You'd order using phones at each table and they'd bring the food to your table. They had a pretty good pastrami sandwich. It lasted about a year, closing in 2004. (The building they built for the project was then remodeled into a more traditional McD's.)

Although the 3-in-1 menu was a failure, I think they also were testing some of the production methods they use in most McD's now.

[Mike Nolan]

I've just watched that segment another 8-10 times, and I think I've almost got the braiding pattern figured out.

Basically it works from the far side in, alternating sides, top right, then top left, then top right. There's a twist that I'm not sure how to do yet, I think it has to do with picking up the next strand cross-handed.

Complicating things is that it is a composite scene, almost certainly from shaping multiple loaves, first it shows the process from the other side of the table, facing the baker, so the strands being grabbed are towards the bottom of the image, then about half way through it switches to looking over the baker's shoulder, so that the strands being grabbed are towards the top of the screen.

I'm going to try it a few times with my macrame practice strands, if I can pick up the pattern then I may have to make Challah this week.

Secrets of a Jewish Baker came today, the 6 strand braid in that book is definitely not the one in Deli Man.

[Mike Nolan]

I agree that Golden Delicious is a good pie apple (far superior to Granny Smith, which IMHO has gone downhill over the last few years), and it just nudged out Braeburn in Kenji Lopez-Alt's Apple PIe Test, but it is not as good as the elusive Winesap.

[Mike Nolan]

Depends on how much of a hurry I'm in, I usually let the cake set for 4-5 minutes at most. If the cake is still hot/warm when the frosting goes on, the cake compresses a bit, which changes the texture.

I do things to my recipe that most printed recipes don't do.

I grease the pan with butter then 'flour' it with cocoa powder instead of flour. (For a white cake I often use powdered sugar -- baker's superfine sugar if I have it -- instead of flour.)

I use 4 tablespoons of cocoa in a batch of frosting rather than 3. For a 13x17 cake I always at least double the frosting recipe, I've been know to triple it.

I always make sure the butter/cocoa/buttermilk for the frosting gets to a good boil before I start adding in the powdered sugar, that way the frosting is more like old fashioned fudge. Then I keep it on low/simmer heat for a while so that it's fairly warm when I pour it on.

How can you make a 'cornbread' cake without corn meal??

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake on Saturday.

[Mike Nolan]

I use funnels for tasks like pouring into your ice cream maker.

I've got one of those ice cream makers where the outside of the container is a gel-filled freezer pack, I've gotten some good ices and sherbets from it, but I don't think it's got enough freezing power for a cream-based mix, even though our big freezer is set for 10 below, so the cold pack gets plenty cold.

I don't think my wife will let me spend money on a real ice cream machine, though. S'OK, the farmers market season starts later this month, and the gelato stand there is better than anything I could make anyway. And Freddy's has pretty good frozen custard, in addition to the best french fries in town.

[Mike Nolan]

The thing is ten inches tall, I'm not sure it'd fit in most ovens.

[Mike Nolan]

Cass, then you'd really hate Chef Joel Robuchon's puree de pomme, because it's really heavy on the butter, about 2 parts potato to one part butter.

I don't like either olive oil or garlic in mashed potatoes, and garlic mashed potatoes has become a restaurant staple. But these days too many restaurants will put garlic in anything, even oatmeal!

I've tried making buttermilk mashed potatoes a few times, somehow it always comes out weird.

[Mike Nolan]

I suspect that there are many minor variations on the 6 strand pattern and each baker might have his own signature look. The loaves might all look similar to us, but the bakery staff can probably glance at a loaf and know who shaped it.

[Mike Nolan]

Commercial farming is a volume business. It takes a lot less effort per plant when you've got many thousands of plants.

A farmer with 1000 acres of corn (a pretty big farm) might get 140 bushels of corn per acre, or 140,000 bushels from his fields. At $3.00 a bushel that's $420,000. Now, of course that's not profit, you have to subtract out the cost of seed, fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, fuel, vehicle costs, any hired labor, property taxes and so forth.

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