Chocolate sorbet. If made with dairy-free chocolate, your husband can eat it.

I made a mango-ginger-coconut sorbet this weekend for a friend who can't eat gluten or dairy. Well received by all (even those without food issues). Quite easy to make, too.

MGZ, I'd appreciate any tips you'd be able to share with me about smoking lamb shanks. Might try a leg of lamb sometime too!

Until now, I've mostly done pork shoulder, pork loins, turkey, and chickens (so both low-and-slow and high-heat smoking). But it is time for me to move onto something new! After, this is season 3 with my WSM.

May 25 (Saturday of the holiday weekend) is also Weber Smoke Day for The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board folks, so I'll be smoking the lamb shanks I didn't get a chance to braise this winter. Haven't done this before and I'm finding mixed reviews online. But experimenting and trying new things is all part of the fun of cooking! I might smoke for a couple of hours, then foil and add some liquid. On the actual holiday, I'll probably grill something, but I'm not sure what.

Thanks, all. Started with a rounded tsp of tapioca starch, but the filling was still too runny. I'll add more next time ( though runny s far preferable to gummy!)

Flavor was outstanding and the crust was marvelously flaky. Plus, the 5-inch pie is the perfect size for two!

Hi Quinnish--

I have crumbly dough all the time. I make my pie crust with half butter, half lard--butter frozen and then cut into pieces, lard chilled and cut into small pieces, put everything into the food processor until I get the coarse cornmeal look with discrete bits of pea-sized fat in the flour mix. Dump everything into a bowl, add my ice water, starting with three tbsp for a single crust recipe, then adding another tbsp ot two. It generally holds "kind of" together--not a solid mass, but rather a ball that crumbles or cracks, with bits of dough falling off. I, too, am leery of overworking dough or adding too much water, but I typically add an extra tbsp or two, beyond what is called for. Then I wrap it up in plastic wrap, crumbles and all, and chill for a few hours or over night. So, I still have a crumbly-esque dough, but it rolls out okay, I do roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper, lifting off the parchment periodically to ensure that my dough won't stick. Sometimes I do need to add a little flour. When I roll it out, I do see visible, discrete bits of butter in the dough. My crust turns out wonderfully flaky and I am regularly complimented on that. So, maybe your crumbly dough isn't that big of an issue.

And here's a related gem from failblog:

http://cheezburger.com/7466045952

Don't know about the veracity of this, but even if it's been doctored, it's pretty funny.

The other day, I canned some strawberry rhubarb pie filling. It seems a little runny. Should I add some thickener or do you think it will firm up after baking? I was thninking about adding a bit of tapioca starch to the liquidy part (powdered, not pearls, as I dont have the pearls--I don't bake pies often enough to justify buying additional starch). Thoughts?

Also, I'll be baking this in a 5-inch pie tin, so any thoughts on the amount of thickener I'd need (if any)? I didn't grow up in a "pie" household, so I'm less confident than I am with other sorts of baking.

Thanks in advance!

A few weeks ago I made a souffle using a Swiss raclette. It was marvelous!

I, too, have Homemade Winter. I've never made any of the recipes, yet I find it an inspiration. Love curling up with this one on the sofa!

+2 on Raichlen's How to Grill--I used it when I was learning to grill and it covers all your meats, your vegetables, even some desserts. Nice section on different grills and accessories.

And if you ever decide to get a smoker and go low-n-slow, I'll echo grampart's suggestion of Smoke and Spice. It's not a grilling cookbook, though--its focus is BBQ (and, IIRC, it's geared toward charcoal).

I have never watched Kitchen Nightmares. But I stumbled onto this thread and read the replies, the comments on yelp/Phoenix New Times, the Facebook page. Oh my god, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm so enthralled by this. This is as good--or even better--than that story about the Italian place in Buffalo (I think!), with the owner who lied about his background (the name of this one escapes me).

And I thought "ressling" stood for "Riesling" too!

Chem, I'm not feeling criticized at all! On the contrary, I'm delighted to have such wonderful help on this thread.

Right now, I'm still just cooking vegetables and I'll probably stick with that for a couple of weeks. I am finding this seasoning process tobe fascinating.

And no, I haven't named the pan yet--still working on a name for my car, which I bought last June!

Well, 'hounds, the seasoning is getting there. Now I can understand people who proudly show pictures of their kids ;)

These are the best! I grew up near Reading and these are my favorite hard pretzels. Whenever family makes the trip to Indiana to visit me, they'd bring a bag or two of these. But I've recently discovered them in Indiana, so Unique must be expanding their sales footprint. I haven't purchased any here and I hope the quality hasn't suffered.

On a tangential note, my favorite SOFT pretzels are the ones in Germany (Baden, specifically)--split and buttered with unsalted, cultured butter. Heaven! I can eat a couple of those in one sitting.

Like rasputina and pagesinthesun, I, too, have made many recipes from the Ultimate Ice Cream book. Nearly all were winners and the lemon ice cream remains my mom's favorite. I've have excellent reviews of the ginger ice cream (I actually up the amount of ginger that gets steeped in the warm milk, but I really want an upfront, in your face ginger flavor). The coconut ice cream has also been a big hit. The chocolate sorbet that calls for chocolate chips is also a winner.

I'll have to give that a try! Now I'm seriously craving a good grilled cheese sandwich!

I remember my great-aunt buying the little boxes of Chocolate Chip Snaps when I was little--decidedly before the 80s! I loved those things and now I'm feeling that sad, sweet nostalgia. Oh, how I long to sit down to a box of Chocolate Chip Snaps, peanut butter Space Food Sticks, and Morton's Honey Buns.

Gibble's is gone? Nooooooo! I'll never "nibble with Gibble's" again :(

That sounds delightful! We have some wonderful organic asparagus available here.

Interesting--I have the deBuyer 9-in crepe pan, but it's only been used for crepes (and beautifully at that!) I don't make crepes all that often, though. Maybe I'll have to give eggs a try in that pan!

That's what I'm doing now--just using them. As noted upthread, I was probably overthinking this (I'm an academic, so overthinking is a professional hazard).

I'm looking forward to buying a bigger one.

Raspberry Linzer Bars--same ingredients as the Linzer Torte cookies mentioned upthread, but in a bar cookie form. These are my father's favorites and I have to bake a batch to take along for my annual holiday visit. Very easy to put together and they look pretty with a lattice top.

Thanks, all ,for weighing in on this thread. Last night, I pan fried some sugar snap peas in a mixture of oil and a little butter. Wonderful! So wonderful that I made some more for breakfast. The pan is blackening and one of these days I'll have the courage to cook an egg in it (which is why I bought it in the first place--once sixe for a single egg). I think I will be purchasing one in a larger size, too!

You know, I would totally eat something like that :)

Wow--my egg cookery is about to do a 180!
Thanks for the chuckle :)

Tastykake Kandy Kakes/Tandy Takes. Loved these way back when I was still living in Pennsylvania. Then I found them at a local (Indiana) supermarket chain. OMG, I thought I'd found myself in heaven! I bought a pack and ate them. Just not as good as I remember them. Of course, I'm a much more accomplished cook now, but I still like some junk.

If I find the Butterscotch Krimpets, I'll give them a try though.

Yes, and like tim, I love mine! I never made mayo before (I know, there goes my cred), but now I regularly make it. Pureeing is a dream! Used it for a roasted squash soup last week (using up the last of the fall farmer's market kabochas).

I had a Braun previously, which I loved and lasted me 20 years. I also had (have) an immersion blender as an attachment to my Braun Multimix (hand mixer with multiple attachments). I was very pleased with the Braun ones, but apparently they are now difficult to get in the US (based on your username, I'm assuming you're in the States). But this Bamix is an order of magnitude different.

Thanks, chem. I'm going through a few more stovetop passes. And good point about the sugar in the bacon--I was so focused on the fat and completely forgot about the sugar!

Any suggestions on what to cook first?

Thanks, all. I'll probably just cook lots of bacon over the next couple of weeks!

@chem--no self-cleaning oven (well, actually, yes--*I* am the "self"!) Not sticky. Slight "texture" (note to self--enough with the quotes!)

Here is the picture.

Here's the story: I used the boiling water-potato peel method to get rid of the waxy coating prior to seasoning. Did seven passes with flaxseed oil (stovetop method). The pan did discolor, but the bottom wasn't smooth, but rather somewhat "bumpy". I guess I used too much oil. This morning I cooked some bacon in the pan. After pouring off the grease, there was some bacon residue in the pan, which I tried to wash off under hot water (with a Dobie pad). Unfortunately, I wound up removing some of the seasoning. I tried to remove the rest of the seasoning, but thought to contact the Cookware gods before I made a bad outcome worse. So, can I use steel wool to remove the remainder of the seasoning without damaging the pan? I want to start over with the seasoning process. FWIW, I don't have much experience with carbon steel (as anyone who saw my "shiny handle" post can attest to). I do have a de Buyer crepe pan, which seasoned beautifully (3 passes with grape seed oil on the stovetop).
The pan now looks shiny (like the original) in about half of the bottom and that brownish orange around the rest. Will try to send pic after work.