I sometimes make risotto JUST so I'll have leftovers to make arancini. Ramp risotto seems to make particularly nice ones...something about the frying seems to release more rampy goodness, and it's trapped in the golden brown, crunchy shell. I like to make them small and tuck just one or two little mozzarella pearls into them.

You people are bad influences. One of my favorites, and this was just enough suggestion to make me break my dry streak.

My arugula sprouted nicely this week - may have to throw a sheet over the seedlings to get them through the weekend's cold snap. Lettuces and radishes haven't come up yet...I'm hoping they're working on it, but insulated well enough to pop after it warms back up.

<sigh> Tomatoes are still in their peat pots...true leaves are just starting to come out, so they're not even ready for bigger pots yet. I think I'm going to move them back and forth across the apartment to get them more sun. April sucked for seed-starting.

Slow-motion footage of little ones trying things for the first time:

http://www.goodfood.com.au/good-food/...

I think my favorite is the pickled onion. That is a face of utter, bitter defeat.

Wine. Cab sauv on the deck. Gorgeous sunset in my part of the Mitten tonight - cures much of what ails you.

If being approached bothered me, I'd affect a scowl as I walk around. It doesn't...I just feel bad when I don't have the answers people want. :)

I have long accepted that I'm just one of those people that people talk to. I grew up being mortified by my mom talking to strangers at the grocery store...it's karma.

I am cursed by a similar approachability. I am small, somewhat cute, female, and friendly-looking. Apparently there is something intangible about me that suggests I know what's going on. I get asked for directions a LOT...and usually in places where I can't offer anything helpful.

I also get the "what do you do with that?"s in the checkout line. I inspired QUITE a discussion while buying a Buddha's hand citron this winter.

"Gardening is my graffiti."

Loved this TED talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a...

Well, tonight, at the risk of being trite (woo! I rhymed!) it was margaritas. And yesterday it was juleps. What can I say...I'm a slave to my sense of occasion. I blame my father.

I've got my tomatoes going indoors - even they seem to be behind, since we had so little sunshine in April. Today, my radishes, lettuces, and arugula will be going in - I usually do that around this time, and so far that has always worked for me. Of course, all of my stuff is in containers, so I can always rescue them and bring them indoors if a late frost looms. :)

http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/20...

Makes a Dark 'n Stormy to die for.

Right along with ya...one of my absolute faves. Except at dinnertime I was grilling with a Hemingway daiquiri.

"Vodka or grain alcohol would be a more typical choice but I don't personally see the point."

The point is generally "pure essence of <whatever>."

I have several lovely essences of citrus - winter is boring in Michigan - and I love that they aren't corrupted by flavors of other spirits. I look forward to corrupting them at will with various spirits as the mood hits me.

Ditto. Once upon a time as a cashier in college, I remember well having to count out my drawer when I punched in, and count it again when I punched out. Had someone else used my register when I was signed on to it, I would have been blamed had it been off at the end of the day. If I went on break, my register was locked until I could sign back onto it.

What I WISH places like this would do, is put up a "This register closed" or "Next register please" sign so that customers don't stand there waiting for service in the wrong place. It's a minor inconvenience, but it does make the customer feel a bit awkward, and it could easily be remedied with minimal effort by putting out a sign by the unavailable register. Grocery stores do this, but I hate standing around wondering where I'm supposed to be during the slack times at my Rite-Aid, when the one cashier on duty is stocking/straightening shelves until you're ready to check out.

So well stated, ipse. Kind of a girl-next-door thing you've got going on there.

Periragu?

New Orleans is not a food crush. There is nothing remotely innocent or demure about how I feel about that city - New Orleans is a level of full-on, unabashed, and damn near hedonistic food-and-drink lust that is quite unholy.

I do, however, have a serious food crush on Chicago. I flirt with that city often, and have actually thought about getting serious with it. We have drinks...we giggle...sometimes it turns into dinner...but I always give it a goodnight kiss and go home alone. But Chicago always knows I'll be back...sometimes it's Italian beef...sometimes it's pizza...sometimes it's Michelin stars...and sometimes it's Rick Bayless.

Just the sight of the skyline sets my heart a-flutter.

In my high school bake sale days, when Mom was willing to pay for ingredients, but I had to do the work...she suggested doing whole loaves of quickbreads. I thought she was crazy. But they sold like hotcakes on a table full of individually-wrapped cookies and brownies. They can be made in advance and frozen, and you're tapping into a different market than your typical bake sale impulse-buy. Beer bread...pumpkin bread...apple cheese bread...all low effort and you can charge a surprising price for them.

Most of what's being posted strike me more as food epitaphs, rather than obits. We need to be a touch more verbose. I think mine would say:

"She bored her students by always relating chemistry to food and drink. She used more YouTube clips of Good Eats, Mythbusters, Moonshiners, and Top Chef as demonstrations than were probably necessary. Water was her favorite molecule, but by no means her favorite beverage. It should come as no surprise that a chemist should take such joy in fermentation, distillation, and extraction, nor that she would take such joy in the alchemy of cocktailing. She could also probably chill a beer faster than you can. I'm just sayin'."

My 12th grade AP English teacher would be so proud. ;)

This poses an interesting theological problem: Does "roasting" in hell qualify as grillin'? Or BBQ?

The sugars definitely don't evaporate, but is there maybe some fine splatter/spray from the boiling process that could theoretically collect on the walls? I'm thinking something akin to going for a walk on the beach and feeling salt in your hair from the fine sea spray. Although I boil sugar syrups on my stove all the time, and never have to swab down the walls, so I don't know why maple sap would be any different, aside from the sheer amount of time involved.

Yes, but my point was that it does not happen at random. Our oceans are not saturated solutions, and they do not contain NaCl molecules - they contain dissociated ions. In the circumstances to which you are referring, salt precipitates as a result of the evaporation of water. You remove the water...yes, the ions will reconnect with their long-lost loves.

And as much as I have enjoyed this little exchange of chemical innuendo, I'm not sure we're really helping the OP at this point. ;)

Not necessarily...sometimes, as noted above, metallic sodium meets elemental chlorine...one wild reaction later...you've got a bouncing baby salt on your hands.

I'm starting to feel like this conversation should require a permission slip. :)

Not true, Veggo. They lead perfectly happy separate lives, surrounded by younger, sexier water molecules. More Hugh Hefner than Taylor/Burton. If they did hook back up, they would precipitate out of solution and THEN our oceans would no longer be salty.

Chlorinated water contains chloride ions as well as hypochlorite ions. It's the latter that kills wee beasties - bleach contains sodium hypochlorite. But it also contains molecular Cl2, which is volatile and will reach food that is steaming, albeit in rather small amounts. Basically, if you can smell it (either in water or in stock), it'll be in the steam when it's being heated.

I'm not sure what the OP thinks is in his tap water, but if it's volatile, it'll be in the steam. Nonvolatile things such as heavy metal ions won't be.

WAY too vegan for RuBo, methinks. ;)

I'm probably the only one that was expecting that last line to read:

"The hope is that someday he'll be confit."

Canadian Bravo is a completely separate entity from US Bravo - while US Bravo's shows are sometimes syndicated in Canada, they'll show up anywhere BUT Bravo Canada. Your Bravo is much closer to what our Bravo used to be - arts programming, rather than "reality" shows.

Absolutely. I would love it if the Bananas board would hang around, so that we all have a forum in which to snark/self-parodize to our little hearts' content.