I usually just make mint tea, since it's one of the few herbs that I managed to grow enough to use for that purpose.

I would suggest not using the oven or a high heat dehydrator, and you need to be careful when hanging some herbs up in bunches because sometimes they mold if it's too humid or if you put too many in a bunch. Also, keep any drying herbs out of the sun. The best thing that I've used is the Alton Brown Makeshift Dehydrator http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc.... It works great with herbs, won't burn or give them a cooked flavor, plus you don't have to worry about mold or with dried up leaves falling on your floor.

You can also dry small pieces of fruit with this in order to make fruit teas (I recommend cherry and blueberry). Citrus zests (lemon and orange work best) should also be dried before storing because they do have moisture and will mold or dampen other tea if you put them in a closed container without doing so. I usually roll the zest up in a paper towel or put it in a thin cotton bag before putting it in the dehydrator so it stays together.

Another thing that's good for tea is honeysuckle. It's an invasive species in most areas so harvesting as many flowers as you can is not going to be damaging. Do not attempt to grow honeysuckle just for this purpose (since it is invasive), but it should be rather easy to find it growing. Just make sure you harvest flowers from a plant that you know has not been sprayed by herbicides or pesticides.

I would stay away from the Pfaltzgraff stoneware. It's cute and very light for it's thickness, but that shiny glaze has chipped rather easily on mine.

To be honest my most durable dishes have came from thrift stores. The salvation army in my area usually sells dish sets, so I can usually find matching plates/bowls/mugs. Gibson sets are usually rather common and have lasted me well with everyday use, although they are mostly simple looking (white with colored stripes).

Sets older than 40 years have the potential of containing lead (although new sets imported from china have that problem as well). You can apparently test old table ware with lead strips. I have recently purchased a beautiful vintage set of dishes (missing the bowls) of preimere colorama in country air, but because it is (1) hand painted, (2) brightly colored, and (3) is crazed on some pieces I have put off using it until it can be tested. But it is high quality, very durable, and oven to table safe so if it tests fine then I will have some wonderful dishes at a discount price, and if it doesn't then I have some beautiful vintage tableware to display.

It's odd, but I get really good fried eggs with my cast iron. A well seasoned pan, that is preheated, and slightly oiled (less than I would use in a nonstick) would give me perfect fried eggs with no sticking (I usually only move it to flip it once for over easy). Fried eggs was something I was never able to do right with non-stick. Of course my non-stick pans were older hand-me-downs that have probably been put in the dishwasher, but I have no intention of getting an egg pan that I would have to dispose of in a few years now that I know my cast iron can do it so well.

I cook lots of bacon in mine. To clean I just wipe it out if it was something that didn't stick (such as the egg), or I use a wet washcloth, or if it's really grimy I wipe out with a mild non-detergent soap (such as dr. bronners) and warm water before wiping the inside with oil and putting it back on the stove to dry. Preheating the pan before putting food in, and always using a light coating of oil or clarified butter (regular butter is more likely to burn at the higher heat I use for cast iron cooking), and not moving around the food too much does really help getting the cast iron to not stick.

In the end I find it to be a lot less maintenance than a non-stick pan I have to soak in the sink and wash by hand.

Just one thing that I don't think anyone here has mentioned: some amazon reviews are faked.

It doesn't happen a lot, but since a lot of cookware seems to have a lower number of ratings than things like electronics it is something to watch out for. You can usually tell if someone is a shill for a company by looking at their other reviews. If they review nothing but products of a certain brand and do so with across the board five star well written raving reviews then they are probably being paid. Also, if one person has bought a large number of one item (such as multiple high end espresso machines) then that should also warn you that this person might be getting paid.

I do think that amazon reviews can be useful in some instances, but be careful of putting too much stock into one persons review.

Thanks!
I'm definitely going to try frying some vegetables like eggplant and zucchini on it. Hopefully it will be something that I use rather than just another impulse buy. I would hate to lug a 7 pound pan to my new apartment if I'm not going to use it.

I like just using generic cayenne for drying. They are thin walled and dry fast, and more importantly they are available at my local nursery so I don't have to worry about finding window space to start them from seed. When it comes to dried hot peppers I've never really been able to tell much difference in taste anyway.

Yes, I think so. I am quite familiar with flat cast iron. So does cooking away from oil and water make much of a difference?

I was rummaging through the cookware at my local thrift store and found a 10' Calphalon square grill pan. I've never used a grill pan or ever thought much of them, but it was there, it was cheap, and it was cast iron so I got it.

I've cleaned it up (It was filthy!), and seasoned it so now I'm kinda at a loss of what to do with it. Is there anything special that these pans do? Does it just make pretty marks on meat? Will it help the fat drain away from foods?

I think it depends on what you watch. I'm thinking I've seen Paula Deen use cast iron skillets all the time, but then again she has her own line. I think I've seen them used on Iron Chef as well, but I can't remember if they are usually used by the iron chefs themselves or the challengers.

I've never made quark but I know it's a lactic acid made cheese, but it uses a different bacteria (mesophilo lactococcus) than yogurt, so I'm not sure where you would get a starter unless you can buy quark that still is a viable culture. As for what sort of dairy product you use (milk, cream, ect) this depends on the fat content you want your quark to be. Since I'm pretty sure quark is a name for a number of similar but regional dishes I have no idea what you think quark should be so it would be hard to recommend something.

As for the creme fraiche. I think it's usually about 1 tbs. of buttermilk for every cup of heavy creme. If you use sour cream I believe the amount is higher, but I don't remember the exact quantities since I don't use it except in a pinch.

When it comes to using starter it's never absolutely to get measurements super exact. The amount of bacteria in buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream is extremely variable. I usually just eye the measurements myself.

Just make sure when using buttermilk as a starter you don't use "acified buttermilk" which is just made from acid and milk rather than being a culture for lactococcus lacti (or streptococcus lactis). Adding this will just give you a slightly soured milk that will probably spoil.

Creme fraiche and sour cream can both be made using buttermilk culture because they also are soured by the lactic acid of l. lactis. However, creme fraiche has a much higher fat content so you should start with heavy cream instead of milk, and for sour cream you should use a regular creme.

Yogurts use different bacteria and this differs between manufacturers such as l. bulgaris and l. thermofilus (you can usually look on the labels to see what bacteria they use). Choose a plain yogurt you like in order to use as the culture.

Or pick one that has "beneficial" bacteria (such as l. acidphilius or b. regularis), just keep in mind while there may be some possibility for the claims that these bacterial can help certain health problems (such as preventing yeast infections or regulating your digestive system) there is not any good solid evidence so far. But they will taste just fine and at least if you make your own you don't have to continually pay the high prices for it. ;)

You know I forgot to mention this before but if you have extra bed space (even after you figure out what to do with your compost), maybe you should at least plant a nitrogen fixing cover crop on it. Leaving the bed's empty would make them prone to soil erosion, and weeds. You may want to ask what to plant when you call the extension office as junescook recommends.

Well it's not that they feed on the scraps. They just stay in vegetable matter to keep from freezing in the winter. If you don't till your plants under then you'll have the same problem anyway.

I throw out my scraps straight onto the garden between the rows (after the seeds have come up, before that I throw it in the fields nearby). This can be a problem if you have these beds very close to your house, if you throw out enough waste to buildup in your beds, or if you have problems with pests. The only thing I do is to boil the eggshells before I throw them (and the calcium rich water) out near growing vegetables just to be safe against samonella (but I'm not sure if it's necessary, just being safe).

Now I only do this because I garden on a large scale and therefore have no problems with the buildup of vegetable matter, or pests. It's just less time consuming for me and I probably do lose some vegetable matter to birds, mice, and insects by doing it this way. One thing that you do have to be careful about when throwing out vegetable matter into a bed is that it can harbor flea beetles overwinter (those are the small black jumping bugs that eat mustards, eggplants, and such into lace). You may have a problem with this even if you bury your compost if you do not break it down manually (tilling for example) before winter comes. You might also have a problem with grubs eating the vegetable matter and overwintering in it to attack your vegetables in the bed next year if you do not agitate if before and after winter.
Personally, I think digging a hole or trench in the unused bed might be best and either covering it with dry matter (leaves, grass clippings, straw, animal bedding, ect) rather than covering it up so that it will continue to compost. Also, even if you do not want to throw any other vegetable waste in the garden you may want to think about applying tea leaves, coffee grounds, and egg shells to the garden directly. These give your plants an almost immediate nitrogen or calcium boost and they decompose quickly.

As someone who went through college living in the dorms I know that what sort of kitchen you want is not always going to happen. Usually there was a dorm-wide kitchen complete with one ancient stove, a new microwave coated with popcorn grease, and a communal fridge that stuff vanished from all the time. My senior year all I had was the microwave. My suggestion for new students who don't know what they will get (or who know they living in a dorm period) would be to just have some bare minimums:

1) A bucket, a container of soap, a dishcloth, a dishtowel and a mesh scrubbier (sponges in dorm situations are grosser than usual).
These enable you to clean everything, and to keep it contained and easy to carry what is likely to be several flights of stairs to the kitchenette sink.

2) Aluminum foil- it stores food, cooks food, and can serve as a makeshift lid for a pan.

3) A kitchen multi-purpose tool (a.k.a. pocketknife for food uses). It has a small knife that works well enough for hot dogs and opening packets. An opener to open cans of juice, bottle caps, and home-canned goods. And a corkscrew. Depending on the size and quality of the knife you may want to get a steak knife to make some cutting easier.

4) A large wide soup mug that can be microwaved. Make sure it has a handle. Carrying a bowl full of hot liquid up or down stairs and into a room that you have to open with a keycard is about impossible without burning yourself.

5) A bowl, a spoon, and a set of chopsticks. You can eat just about anything with these.

What can you make with these? Various ready to eat once heated canned goods (soup, ravioli), things using boiling water from microwaving the mug (ramen, tea, instant soup mixes), and my personal favorite vegetables baked in butter by using the aluminum foil. I also made sandwiches by toasting rye bread in the oven (on aluminum foil) then filling it with cheese, sauerkraut, and slices of smoked sausages.

Is it gourmet? no And believe me my kitchen at home is nothing but the best. But this allows you to be able to cook enough to make your own food with almost no storage worries, and without having to spend more than $20.

Thanks for your help!
It's good to know that it's probably not teflon. I cook a lot of asian noodle dishes that are hard to pull off in my skillets so I'm probably going to use this a lot. At least now I probably don't have to worry about heating it up too high, or having to baby the surface every time I wash or store it.

I tried the oil. The surface does go from bright and shiny to dull (and so smooth that dragging my finger across it lightly makes a squeaky sound). But my pan is almost completely black without any of the shade variations seen in the picture. Also, I noticed near on of the handles there is a lot of little silver spots showing through. So it looks like the black stuff was sprayed on in a fine mist. Does this mean it was a pre-seasoned pan?

Here's a pic:

Thanks, I can't believe I didn't think about a magnet! It is steel then, so that means that it is seasoned rather than non-stick?

I recently came into a possession of a used wok. I've been wanting one for some time and on my poor college budget I haven't purchased one for myself. A friend recently gave me a used one, but I don't have any idea what it is it made of. I would like to know if it is non-stick so I'll know better than to use it for deep frying or for high temperature cooking. Is there any way I can tell what it is made of, and if the coating is non-stick?

Here's the description:
+it has to markings except for "taiwan" on the inside of the lid
+the lid is a lightweight aluminum with a wooden top handle
+The wok itself is black with two small stainless steel handles on each side
+This wok has a flat bottom
+The outside of the wok seems to be a shiner darker black than the inside
+Underneath the black coating is a silver metal
+The black coating on the inside is very smooth, especially compared to the non-stick coatings I am familiar with
+The inside coating is a lot darker near the top than it is as the bottom, it appears as if the bottom has been worn down with a pattern that looks like brush-strokes
+Despite the bottom being lighter, the top of the inside of the wok is the only place where the silver shows through and the "scratches" look like they were drawn on by crayons rather than being from a sharp object

So is it non-stick, seasoned carbon steel, or anodized aluminum?
Thanks in advance for any help! :)