Barbara Manning

Jon Ashley Mills wrote:Pan fried with gnocchi, cepes and celery leaves.
Stewed with tomatoes, mushrooms and herbs.
Dried, ground and made into fresh pasta with cream and smoked salmon.
Softened in risotto with squash and spinach.
If you have the time and patience to prepare them, and if you have a few trees nearby, sweet chestnuts really are an incredible free bounty to be celebrated each year.

Wow. Who knew?  Well, you and many others, I suspect. They all sound delicious! OK, You've convinced me. There is a small chance that I will step across the street and into the national forest and pluck some of the chestnuts from the tree that voluntarily grew in front of my house.  But, given that a black bear was spotted cheerfully rooting though my yard before it climbed the fence and ambled off in a notherly direction, ah, yeah. . .  The last thing I want is to rangle a black bear for a cluster of chestnuts.

Perhaps I'll buy them.  I will be subbing shitake or brown 'shrooms for cepes. Frankly, I had to look them up figure out if it was a typo or an edible.  

Thanks!

I draw the line at real butter. I won't touch margarine.

True dat. Who knows what the heck is in margarine. From my childhood, all I can remember about it is that it was tasteless, oily, and useless as a cooking oil, as spread on sandwiches or anything else you might actually eat.i can't wrap my head around the fact that it's still being marketed and sold.

You're probably better off buying Crisco and using it as if it was margarine. At the very least, you are avoiding yellow dye #2 or #4 or 27 or whatever it is that they're adding to it these days.

Also, look towards Indian food. I'm sure that there are curries where you could use green beans as the base and then add all the Indian flavors, or at least the ones you like.

Reddit also has a thread on making canned green beans taste awesome:

r/Cooking
5y ago
elliotmariesh

How to turn canned green beans into something awesome?

You have to work with what you have. So you have mushy flavorless green beans. That means that you have to add the texture and the flavor yourself. The easiest way to do that is to use them as an ingredient in pancakes muffins breads Etc. It can also be a good ingredient to thicken soups stews and gravies.

Chef Google makes these suggestions for bringing flavor to the dish.

Classic & Savory: Garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, and a pinch of Italian seasoning.

Smoky & Southwestern: Smoked paprika, ground cumin, and a dash of chili powder.

Mediterranean: Dried oregano, basil, or a French herbes de Provence mix.

Fresh & Bright: Fresh dill or chopped chives stirred in right after heating.

Pro-Tips;
Add a fat: Sauté the drained beans in a splash of olive oil or a pat of butter to carry the spices.

Brighten with acid: Add a tiny splash of lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, or balsamic vinegar at the very end to balance the flavors.

Use aromatics: Users on Facebook agree that fresh or powdered garlic and onion provide the best aromatic depth for canned vegetables.

You can also try to dry them out as much as possible by putting them in a dry frying pan on low heat and steaming away the vast majority of the water in the green beans. It'll be easier to add them to any kind of bread type of you sure making.

I agree with everybody else. It all looks good to me.
I tend to sign in and stay signed in for a week or longer, so I had no problem clicking the email link and coming directly to this thread. Best of luck. Barbara

Riona Abhainn wrote:Lamb sausage on a Mediteranean pizza, sounds odd but tastes better than I ever thought it would.

thinly sliced apples, back when we used to have the apple festival at the local nursery each autumn one year they had this tasty pizza with apple, and it was good, sweet balsamic base and some sort of cheese, I'd love to find that again.

I am most definitely trying lamb and artichokes on a neutral white sauce pizza (or maybe a thicker avogolememo sauce) on the next round of Pizza trials at my house. And I'm not opposed to an Apple Pizza on a theoretical level but I think it's a stretch to use a pizza dough base for a desserty thing that would clearly be better on a sweet dough base, regardless of the cheese used.

But I'm here to complain about pizza people who color outside the lines of good taste. And for me, that's Japan pizza dressed with mayonnaise. Mayonnaise! Which is still debated world-wide by the condiment kings regarding its status as a condiment. And, let's not even get into "Japanese" mayonnaise, which is sweeter and softer than Western mayonnaise. It's just gross -- and just, NO.

To add insult to injury, the so-called condiment is applied liberally to, ah (the squeamish should look away now) squid pizza. Yet another abomination.

Clearly, some cultural culinary issues are simply not translatable.

My go-to frugal meal is a can of beans topped with a can of tuna in oil. I ate this for lunch weekly, from kindergarten until grade 6, when I had to go to a school farther away from my home.  I still eat and enjoy it today. Any baked bean will do, but as a kid, the bean "du jour" was canned navy beans baked in tomato sauce - usually Heinz.  My "Auntie" would heat the beans, plate them and add a teaspoon or less of canned tuna to the middle of each plate. It was and still is a filling, satisfying meal.

Auntie Ann, my neighbor, served as the lunchroom for the neighborhood kids with both parents working. We were a cheerful group of 5 through 11 year old kids that needed a hearty mid-day meal. Auntie Ann supplied the fuel to keep us going through the afternoon. Another AA lunch was pancakes.  Soft, thick cakes slathered in butter (ah, probably margarine) and doused with Argo Dark Corn Syrup. It's still a staple in my larder. If you could buy pancake batter in the early '50's, she wasn't using it. I still recall the tall red can of baking powder sitting out on the counter. One tragic February, she accidently made a heart-shaped pancake and 8 kids clamored for a "heart pancake." I don't think she ever recovered from that frantic 50 minute moment.

On days when she had the time, she'd make risotto. A deliciously creamy rice and italian tomato sauce concoction that had bits of leftover veg in it. Sometime it was broccoli, or mushroom, peas or something else, but always something. On good days, it was chicken, and that was when the fights would break out over who had a the largest piece of chicken. Auntie Ann quickly learned to parcel out the chicken pieces after the plates were set in front of us kids.

Now I make canned beans with canned tuna, heart-shaped pancakes with Argo Dark corn syrup, and tomato sauce risotto as 懐かしい Natsukashī -- nostalgic in English. And they are all delicious, regardless of my age.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Gilbert Fritz wrote:I'm looking into storing large amounts of dried vegetables. How can I do this without breaking the bank for mason jars? Will freezer bags work for a few months?

I have also found at Temu a little gadget that reseals containers. It's great for leftovers in Mason jars (regular and wide mouth)! You just place a lid (No ring!) on your full jar and press the button and it seals. Abracadabra!
Because it uses a vacuum, it's pretty safe. Just don't use them *instead* of canning if the food is to be canned. Many companies are selling them now:
https://www.floreviaboutique.com/product-p-308073.html

I have one of those gadgets and it works well to seal the contents of glass jars.  I've sealed dehydrated meat & veg (carrots, beans, mushrooms, beef jerky, etc.) and been happy with popping the seal, using what I need and resealing. Almost all my dried beans and legumes are saved this way.  I also have a vacuum sealer, which works well too, but I am less enamored with the amount of plastic waste that the process generates. This YT videoer gives a lot good advice.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HElNfFqrgfM&t=412s Enjoy!

I generally use a drip cone to make the single cup of coffee I drink in the morning. I do have a French press, and a perc pot when I need to make coffee for multiple people at one time. When using the French press, I'll add the coffee, then some boiling water and give it a good stir. Then add the rest of the water and add the lid and wait up to 7 minutes before I use the plunger. I like James' idea of pressing just to the water line, but I don't think it would work in my French press (which is the one that R. Ransom has).

For me, the biggest change to my coffee routine was when I started adding chicory to the coffee. I don't measure, and I don't grind the coffee daily. I have espresso beans from Segafredo Zanetti Espresso (an Italian outfit, doing business in Japan). I have a 10.5 oz Chock Full of Nuts coffee can that I use. I grind about 8 oz of coffee into it. Then I add about 2 oz of ground chicory. I stir or shake to mix the coffee and chicory before I pour it into the can (which sits in the 'fridge). The coffee lasts about a month or a bit more, depending on my travel schedule.  I find that the chicory mellows out the coffee. It's still rich and fragrant, but the bitterness and any other "off flavor" is gone.

I'm pretty sure some of you will be horrified at this rather casual approach to a cuppa Joe, but for me, my precise measurements go into other cooking processes. Chicory is pretty easy to get ahold of if you want to buy the ground and prepared product, but evidentially,  it's also a good "second crop" as it's sown in late June or early July.  Growing it and plowing it under seems to be good for the soil as well.