50% of the world's beers are brewed by six conglomerates. It just keeps getting more and more homologous ( Read more... )

Croissants, proof that God really did love the French after all...

I've struggled a little with croissants, and by struggle I mean this is only the third time I've made them, but the first time I'd call them an unqualified success.


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The very talented and astute Liz Feltam wrote a very nice essay yesterday on the dreadful thing that has happened to the word 'Foodie'. While I really hadn't given it a lot of thought, I do heartily agree with her point ( Read more... )

Like 99% of all home deals, there's always a fly in the ointment somewhere ( Read more... )

This week for something different I decided to try this Braided Easter Bread from Foodnetwork Canada. It came up on their FB page on Friday as the 'Recipe of the Day' and I love a nice eggy bread. So we decided to try it on ( Read more... )

It seems a bit odd - with all my recent success with baking yeast breads to post about a 'plain old boring loaf of white bread', but ya know the successes I've been having have been for the most part with nice easy rustic loaves. That's not a bad thing. A nice crusty crackly flour dusted round of rustic bread is a beautiful thing. However, it doesn ( Read more... )

For years I struggled to make a decent loaf of bread, all were heavy, unrisen, nasty failures.

I bought a bread machine, and life was better.
I started buying BREAD FLOUR

Then I bought a big bloody Kitchen Aid mixer. I started making pizza dough (courtesy of Fleismann's Pizza Yeast).

Then I tripped over Chef Michael Smith's No Knead Breads - ( Read more... )

Yes. It's true. Everything is better with bacon. And now thanks to what Julia Child started on PBS decades ago, and is now continued on by networks like The Foodnetwork and the cooking channel and still by PBS and even the likes of the Travel channel, and the History network people are now vicariously being exposed to more and more 'secrets' of ( Read more... )

One of the things that has been wandering around loose in my brain for the past year (see ... not all the rats in my head are BAD... is this idea that once we've moved and James is hard at work building up his business, I really am going to need a way to keep myself gainfully occupied. These leads to a lot of loose ideas, all of which I like, but ( Read more... )

Oh my.. oh my ohmyohmyohmy....


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