I meant to add my dried pears problem from last week. I went to wal-mart for dried pears, and nothing. Went to the local natural food store, and nothing. Farmers market, and nothing. So I decide to dry my own with my food dehydrator. Result: They turn a gross brown, and I taste them. They taste like gross potatoes.
Disaster. (This was typoed as “distaster,” which I almost kept in, but edited. )
Before I started making bread by hand and gave away my bread machine, I had a string of bread recipes that turned out too wet. Then my wife discovered that she had left the 1 cup measure in the biscuit mix canister. What I thought was the biggest measure in the set was really 3/4 cup, so I didn’t have enough flour.
Tonight was my third try at Broiled Free Form White Bread. It looks better than the last one, which was a little burnt on top, but I haven’t cut into it yet.
My mom taught my brother and me how to cook by telling us we would only get cookies if we made our own. Once we managed to leave the flour out of butterscotch oatmeal cookies. The result was not quite cookies, but it was pretty good. When they’re done right, I think butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies are my favorite cookie.
Please, me too, or share it here?
Or the time we made our first turkey and didn’t know to take the plastic bag with the giblets 'n crap out.
I’m showing my cookie ignorance here - if they’re no-bake cookies, why do they have to cool? 
I got a great (and now my signature) recipe from the newspaper - Bourbon Pecans (which I have since tweaked to be a bit more savory). But it takes a long time to make, and there’s more bourbon in me than in the nuts by the time I’m done!
'Cause they’re made with hot melted ingredients like melted chocolate, melted marshmallows, etc. They’re supposed to cool and firm up before you cut them into squares, but they never last around my house either.
I’m just glad there aren’t cameras around when I make spaghetti sauce. We make a vat of it and eat it all week; spaghetti, cacciatore, sausages, etc. I cook too much noodles every night because the dog is nuts for noodles. Then I feed the last of the sauce to the cat who is crazy about mushrooms. (I’m glad *Animal Planet * isn’t around too.)
Who would have thought this would turn into a recipe thread? I will go ahead and post the recipe in the thread because more than one person wants it, which means there are probably tens of people who also want it but didn’t post.
They are called Double Chocolate Cherry Cookies. I substituted the dried cranberries and it still came out very well. The caption says: “Keren Neiger, a 17-year-old senior at Oakwood High School, offered her ‘elaborate version of chocolate chip cookies.’” Here it is:
Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
2 cups dried tart cherries
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups dark or semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds. Add sugars, soda and salt. Beat until combined. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla until the mixture is smooth. Beat in the flour. Stir in the cherries, chocolate, nuts, and white chocolate chips. Drop from rounded teaspoons two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes until golden. Cool a few minutes on the pan and then move to a wire rack.
Makes 6 1/2 dozen cookies.
If it were me, I would not soften the butter first. I would use cold butter and use the initial beat to soften it. I also use cranberries instead of cherries, and sometimes I just use straight chocolate chips instead of the white chocolate.
I have a very simple no-bake cookie recipe. First, I melt a stick of butter in a large pot. Then I toss in half a cup of cocoa, a dash of salt and a cup of sugar. I let the mixture come to a good boil. Then I remove from heat and add a little vanilla. Then I open my Quaker Oats container and mix in enough oats that not all of the oats are covered in chocolate. I want to see a few oats that don’t hardly have any chocolate on them at all.
Then I butter a couple of spoons and drop the mixture on waxed paper. Here they are supposed to cool, but they hardly ever make it. One gallon of milk and a lot of burnt fingers later, my friends are scattered all over the house groaning about their full tummies.
Some people add peanut butter to no-bake cookies, but I don’t.
Thanks for posting the recipe, Elysian. I’m going to try making those next time we have a bunch of friends over, since I don’t think I really need to eat 6 1/2 dozen cookies by myself. Not that I couldn’t, but I probably should restrain myself.
Thanks, Elysian! Can’t wait to try making these.
6 1/2 dozen normal cookies. 2 dozen Elysian cookies 
Glad no cameras were around last night. I had planned to make some pork pot stickers (really more like wantons, sicne that was the wrapper, an Alton Brown recipe.) I had made them before with ground turkey, and it was good. But there was no ground pork at the store, so I got soem tofu, because he also made some tofu dumplings on that ep. Well, I didn’t have all the stuff I needed for those, but I had enoguh stuff for another tofu dish he made on a different episode.
Well, between the tofu falling apart when I cut and handle it (extra firm my ass,) the stove’s un-levelness maknig a pool of oil on one side of the pan and none on the other, resulting in oil drenched tofu and other stuck to the pan, adn the final ersult being a burnt on the outsidwe, raw on the inside (also nasty tasting) piece of crap, also with lots of smoke…well, let’s just say that wass probably my last foray into the world of bean curd.
Next time press it first. Get a dozen paper napkins (or two folded clean dishtowels.) But half the napkins on a plate, the drained tofu on top, then the rest of the napkins, another plate and a large can o’ something for a weight. Leave it for half an hour. The napkins will absorb much of the water which is making the tofu not-so-firm.
You can also freeze and then defrost the tofu before cooking it for an entirely different texture - almost like eggs.
The first few times you work with tofu, you should find a recipe to follow. It’s got zero flavor on it’s own, and a strange texture. Once you learn it, it’s easy to experiment with, but at first a recipe is good.
Actually, Flay has cut himself twice on the American show, and Sakai cut himself once on the Japanese show. Those are the only ones I remember. I’m just saying, if Nigella Lawson ever lacerates herself with a skewer or crushes her thumb in a garlic press, it doesn’t make the final cut (heh).
But that makes me think: Based on the Emeril story mentioned by Cherry2000, I wonder if there wouldn’t be an audience for a cooking show where the formula for each episode has the chef trying a new recipe or a new technique, then getting something about it wrong (“accidentally on purpose,” if you know what I mean) to demonstrate what happens if you cut corners or whatever, after which it’s correctly. Like my episode with the hollandaise. “Okay, now we know why we should never do that…”
Good Eats will sometimes show you what to do when something goes wrong. I remember that they showed several things that can go wrong when making mayonnaise, and how to correct them.
I <3 Alton Brown!
It’s always best to first marinate the newspaper, then put it in the food processor for a few minutes before using.
That’s a great idea. I would have had no idea how to fix a broken hollandaise, even though I make it quite often. I would have tossed it and made a new batch.
Most newspapers already come marinated in liberal propaganda, so you may be able to skip that step.
Superglue and ductape, bay-bee. 
I did. I was folowing AB’s recipe almost exactly (OK, I didn’t have sherry vinegar and used a combo of apple cider and rice wine, but that’s it.) it still fell apart and didn’t cook up right at all.
What you got there is oxidation. To avoid the problem just give your freshly cut fruit a bath in ascorbic acid and water. There’s a commercial brand called Fruit Fresh I get at the grocery. It’s usually somewhere around the canning supplies. Apples and peaches have to pretreated too to avoid the browns. You could also use lemon juice in a pinch but then all your fruit would taste kind of lemony. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)