My grandmother--w/o doubt the best Southern cook who ever lived--always put about a tsp.-per-egg of mayo in her scrambled eggs; told us it was an old caterer's trick to keep eggs held on a steam table from drying out (or looking so). I always scramble mine with a little mayo or full-fat sour cream, (Which has always necessitated using a whisk because it's the only way to get the mayo or sour cream smoothly incorporated.) And I agree w/whoever pours their eggs over sliced fresh mushrooms sauteed in a little butter. With a rasher of Nueske's applewood-smoked bacon and a sliced homegrown tomato, one of my favorite meals any hour of the day.

Same thing happened to me today with Seville oranges! It had happened once before, several years ago, with limes, but I've made at least three later batches of marmalade--Meyer Lemon, navel orange, blood orange--with no problem. I cooked it w/o sugar till perfectly tender, then added the sugar for the second stage and it began turning hard almost immediately after the sugar was added. So it certainly was not caused by over-cooking. I scraped all six jars into the trash. I am SO BUMMED. I'll keep looking for a possible reason for this. Could it be the age of the fruit?

Then DON"T DO BRUNCH!!! It's not compulsory.

Giggle. Me too. It was too trendy from the get-go.

Well AMEN, Will Owen! This is about as close to scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-for-Topics as it comes. Who can "not like" a lovely weekend/sleep-in hybrid of breakfast for those who want breakfast, lunch for those who want lunch? Early enough to save one the trouble of making a full-fledged breakfast, late enough for the digestive juices to have kicked in; early enough to feel fresh & rested, late enough to feel convivial and conversational; early enough to have a great fast-breaking appetite, late enough to respectably have a Mimosa, Bloody Mary, Salty Dog ? Some of the most deliciously inventive dishes I've ever had were brunch foods, and as you say, WHO (except the occasional born contrarian) doesn't love eggs/bacon/ham/ sausage/cheese-things--plain or artful variations on the theme; fruit, waffles, pancakes, french toast, bagels, croissants, crepes, grits, (or cold apple pie & fried chicken, grin) any time of any day?

I never used dried/dehydrated/powdered garlic or onion until a few years ago when I tasted at a friend's house the BEST garlic bread I have ever eaten and asked the cook how it was done. She said she mixed Lawry's garlic powder with soft butter and slathered it on. I bought a jar of Lawry's the next day and use it often and not just for garlic bread. As LRunkle says, "it can be be distributed at the last minute in the dish- say you forgot to put garlic in a soup that was already finished"

Only last fall did I buy my first jar of dehydrated onion flakes, at the suggestion of a visiting from FL (very good cook) daughter. She said I'd find it not just a time-saver but actually tastier in some dishes. I'm still experimenting to see what its highest and best use is, but I've certainly been pleased w/anything I've used it in.

We use dried herbs, dried fruit, dried chiles....Seems rather silly to go all sniffy re: dried garlic & onion.

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We were LSG customers all my childhood. (Average monthly bill about $1.60!) I still have their fudge recipe my mother copied out for me.

Lone Star Gas Co. Fudge

2 1/4 c. sugar
3 T. unsweetened cocoa
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. Karo syrup
3 T. butter
Pinch of salt (two pinches if using unsalted butter)
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. lightly toasted chopped pecans

Combine sugar and cocoa in heavy-bottom 2 quart saucepan. Add milk and Karo and stir over med-lo heat until sugar is dissolved. Cook slowly without stirring (abt. 45 minutes) until a small amt. dropped from a spoon into cold water forms a soft ball. (234 degrees).

Remove from heat; add butter, salt, and vanilla. Let cool briefly (abt. 2 minutes), then beat till creamy. Stir in pecans and pour on wax paper or buttered pan or dish. Cool and cut.

I've not tasted the others you list but I've tasted quite a few Garam Masalas and never found one to compare with Penzey's. I added a dash last night to a pot of asparagus/cheese soup and it was almost magical.

Amy, as I just said in a reply to Indygirl, store Penzey's (perfectly marvelous; best I've ever tasted) Garam Masala in your freezer. Because a little goes a long way I buy it in the small jar and that lasts me for a good year or longer. Kept in the freezer it is as good a year later as it was new.

I added a good dash to a pot of asparagus/cheese soup last night and it transformed it! Penzey's Garam Masala is EXCELLENT. I keep it in the door of my freezer and it keeps its flavor & fragrance indefinitely.

In the summer I do everything in my little Cuisinart "Exact Heat" toaster/broiler/convection oven--and I mean EVERYTHING: roasting/baking/broiling. The "Retained Heat" oven in my '50s Chambers range makes the kitchen too warm and I only use it summers if something is too big for the Cuisinart. I'd never be without one. Mine is now (8? 9?) years old and I've never had the slightest problem with it.

Nor have I ever had the "apple gap" problem (in~60 years of making apple pies), and I wouldn't dream of pre-cooking my apples. Apple pies should be easy so you don't get depressed at the thought of making them. Get an old BH&G cookbook and look up the "Perfect Apple Pie". It is just that, dead-easy, the only recipe I've ever used. Northern Spies are the best pie apple, else a mix of Cortlands/Grannies/Macs (or Crispin/Greening/Pippin/Jonathan/Winesap/Jonagold......3 very different varieties if possible so they fill in each other's gaps). Re: crust. The absolutely best homemade crust I've ever tasted is the Egg & White Vinegar crust, but I always keep a box or two of IGA pie crust sheets in the freezer. They are the very best--no "box" taste, slightly (1 oz.) bigger than Pillsbury, easy to handle, nice and crunchy if you take a few pains w/them and bake them right. The foil under your pie, BTW, might be the reason it was undercooked. Set your pie on a dark baking sheet or stone near the bottom of the oven. If necessary, move it up to brown the top the last few minutes. Get a pie ring to protect the edge from over-browning and lay a small (just big enough to cover the center of the pie) piece of foil on top if necessary, BUT DO NOT TAKE THE PIE OUT OF THE OVEN UNTIL JUICE IS BUBBLING OUT THE SLITS AND THE WHOLE THING IS DEEP GOLDEN BROWN.

Heh. Agree.

Yes Yes Yes to Trish and Sandylc w/a couple of small demurrals. I love nutmeg but yes, a tiny "pinch" or "dash" is enough. And under-baking is the death-knell of apple pies. And some kind of thickening agent is essential. Who wants to have to eat apple pie with a drinking straw?
My small differences w/Trish: paper-thin slices aren't necessary and tend to make an "applesauce" pie. About 3/16" is thin enough, and there are still discernible apple slices in the baked pie. Tapioca is good, but flour is just as good and easier; mixes right in and no waiting time for the tapioca to dissolve. The old BH&G recipe I've used for years has the amts. of everything just right, IMO, though certainly one must know one's apples to make the small adjustments.

6-7 cups of sliced apples (some lemon juice if more tartness needed),
3/4-to-1 cup sugar (depending on sweetness of apples),
2 level T. flour. (Perfect juiciness, perfect thickness of juice)
1/2-to-1 tsp. cinnamon, dash of nutmeg,
Chunks of butter (I use just under 1/2 stick) laid on top of filling,
Baked at 400 the whole time on lower shelf of oven on dark baking sheet or stone.

Pre-cooking apples boggles my mind. Apple pies are--and should be--EASY, not a long complicated process. (Which brings up the matter of crust, about which I've finally formed a strong opinion. But my Monday coffeetime friend just pulled in the driveway. Later.).

Yes, I've tried Jonagold and didn't think them memorable. I will try again. That cross should make a good pie apple. So much depends on how old the apples are, how they've been kept, if they were picked ripe or pre-ripe. An apple that's great in the fall will be mealy & tasteless a few months later.

I agree about Grannies! They seem to be the cooking apple du jour and though one or two might be useful for adding some tartness to sweet apples (lemon juice will do that), as a rule (maybe some are better than others) they have very little flavor. I grew up using Jonathans & Winesaps for pies, but that was in the South and they don't seem to grow them in the NE where I live now.

I've never understood what makes some crusts do that (stay up in a hump above the filling). My crusts always stay right on top of the apples and I never pre-cook the apples. Does it have anything to do w/how the crust is made--what kind of shortening?

I just bought 3 pecks of N.Spies for winter pies. Peeled/sliced/froze half of them in 5-cup bags. (I'll add another two cups of other varieties when I use them.) The other half, which I checked for even tiny bruises, I have in the coldest corner of my basement where they should stay at under 40 degrees. They are famously good "keepers". Nothing compares with them for flavor, IMO.

Visciole, I too use about 7 cups of (raw) apples in a 9" Pyrex dish (I think they're a little deeper than most pie pans?), and it is just right. I agree re: piling apples a mile high; it ruins the balance between crust & apples--there should be both in every bite. And I have never had under-cooked apples in a pie in my ~60 years of baking them. The apples should be sliced ~ 3/16" thick, slices no longer than ~2" so they will pack down nicely. Bake at 400 degrees the entire time and never take it out of the oven until the juice is bubbling thickly from out of the slits. Put a pie ring around the edge, lay a circle of foil over the top the last few minutes if needed, to prevent over-browning. Undercooked apples mean either too-large chunks or an underbaked pie.

Greygarious, Northern Spy are my favorites too, though I usually make about 1/3 of the apples a combo of Granny/Cortland/maybe Crispin. I've used the same recipe since I was married (in 1954). It's from the red & white-checked Better Homes & Gardens cookbook I received as a wedding present. Recipe title is "Perfect Apple Pie" and truer words were never spoken.

And BTW: I prebake the bottom crust at 450 until it is just good & hot (about 5 minutes) take it out and quickly brush the inside bottom lightly w/egg white. This cooks instantly and seals the crust so it doesn't get soggy/doughy, and the edge of the crust is still pliable enough to not crumble when I wrap the top crust around it.

All I'll say is thank God for peanuts and George Washington Carver for bringing their delights to public notice. William F. Buckley was a famous PB devotee. When he traveled he always called the hotel he planned to stay at and asked if they had it; if they didn't he carried a jar in his suitcase. He even wrote an ode to PB:
"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as Skip-py."

I guess the bottom line is that all PBs are different and all PB eaters are different :o)

I always turn my unopened natural PBs upside down; makes the stirring much easier. But I agree w/HillJ that to do this once they're opened & stirred, the PB on top gets dry & it's doubly hard to redistribute the oil.

This discussion roused my curiosity and I started checking my PB jars. Trader Joe's says to refrigerate after opening, which doesn't surprise me since, as I said before, it's too runny until it's chilled. Teddie's label, when I started using it ~15 years ago, said "Refrigerate after opening". Now it doesn't. Maybe they're mixing it differently, or maybe that's why they don't put it in bigger jars.

I mentioned the strange change in Smucker's--that a couple of years ago it became very stiff & dry, hard to stir & almost impossible to spread when chilled. The label had always said, "Refrigerate after opening"; wonder if it still does or if they did something to it so they could drop that notice.

If you eat a jar within 2-3 weeks, if your pantry is cool, if you don't mind stirring every time you open a jar, fine. But now that my kids are gone I don't eat it that fast and I can definitely taste a deterioration in the flavor of any PB--natural or not (though much faster w/naturals)--that's been in the pantry for more than a few weeks, esp. in the summer.

Previous discussion of this very topic: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/424403
Apologies if it's already been mentioned.

Have you tried Trader Joe's ? It's the softest natural I've ever had--really too soft at room temp, lovely cold. The only natural I've tried that's ever been dry & stiff when cold is Smucker's. As I posted early on, it didn't used to be that way. They changed amt. of oil or something about two years ago. I stopped buying it for that reason.

By the time you spread PB on crackers or bread and are ready to eat it it's near enough room temp for my peasant taste buds. Besides the annoyance of having to re-combine the oil every time, the PB stays much fresher-tastiing in the fridge. Naturals get rancid pretty quick in a warm kitchen.

Once you have it stirred well, Zoey, keep it refrigerated and it won't separate again.

BTW, I just bought my first jar of Trader Joe's Natural (creamy, and I hear the chunk is to die for too), and I think it might be my favorite PB ever. It is quite soft and stirs easily, stays softer than most naturals even when it's cold. Very easy to spread, very peanut-y, really really good!!!

By the way, Cheezits now come in a bigger size so we can make our own cheese & PB crackers.

Oh yes! Onion is wonderful w/PB, tomatoes, & cheese. (I've never tried the bologna; seems like gilding the lily.)

I totally believe you. I put jalapenos or Mrs. Renfro's Habanero salsa on half the stuff I eat. I was just saying that putting them on PB toast would be the ultimate wake-up breakfast :o)

Well, that would sure start your day off with a bang.

Thank you for a wonderful new word! Yes it is the very definition of umami. Have you gotten the same revolted reaction I invariably get when I mention it to people who never heard of it? I want to slap them. I invented PB & tomato (occas. w/cheddar) when I was ~8 years old and all my kids & grandkids are devotees.