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Food Thread: Extra Halloween Candy: It's A Tough Job, But Somebody Has to Eat It!

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After

Sad, isn't it? But rest assured, this candy will not go to waste! I am frugal, and wouldn't dream of discarding it.

Yeah, not a single trick-or-treater stopped by. We used to get a bunch, but then several years ago the numbers began dropping rapidly. I think it is a combination of more organized events for kids and the changing demographics of my neighborhood.

And the most frustrating part is that I put some thought into the candy choice. Obviously there has to be a nice selection, but if one thing stands out as clearly superior to the rest, then that one will be gobbled up by the early nonexistent kids and the slackers will be left with the crappy stuff.

Everything is good quality stuff, although the sleeper of the selection is the Twix. Damn, those are good Did they change the recipe or something?

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Don't laugh...it's fantastic!
How to cook perfect cullen skink

Cullen skink. Not a promising name for a soup, in all honesty – I think Dickens missed a trick by not borrowing it for one of his villains – but one sniff and you'll be won over. Stuffed full of warming wintery ingredients like smoked fish and starchy potatoes, made rich and comforting with milk or cream, it never fails to cheer, even in the darkest days of January. (Unless, I admit, you're sitting upwind of someone else's helping, in a badly ventilated office, with only a meanly filled, heavily chilled turkey sandwich for company. Then you might feel, with some justification, that cullen skink is as malevolent as it sounds.)

I had this at a pub in Edinburgh a few months ago, and it was a revelation. Smoky and rich with great texture...just the perfect soup for a cold winter evening, or a warm summer night, or anywhere in between.

A lot of recipes call for smoked trout, but I think the classic dish (this recipe included) uses smoked haddock. There are a fair number of you who have smokers, so making smoked haddock is a pretty simple operation.

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Um...duh!
How to Bake Bacon in the Oven
The only time I saute bacon is when I chop it and cook it down for the fat, or when I need lardons. Obviously cooking bacon in the oven is better, and that's why most people do it that way!

This woman has a nice website, and she is excited and energized about food and cooking, but she falls into an all-too-typical pattern of cooking sites; making the obvious some sort of revelation. Of course I probably do it too, so fire away!

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This is repulsive, and a great reason never to eat out...anywhere.
Heathen eats soup directly from supermarket hot bar
I have no idea how I would react to this, but part of me thinks it would be with a tire iron.
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Oh...shut up!
25 Sweet and Savory Maple Syrup Recipes
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By the time the meat is tender and flavorful the vegetables are mush. What to do...what to do? Well, do what I did, and toss the vegetables in half way through the cooking process. But...I am going to make it more complicated, and call for browning the vegetables in the pot after you brown the meat! Yup...an additional step, but I think it is worth it. I remove the meat, then toss in the vegetables and saute them until they are a bit browned but not nearly soft. Then just remove them to whatever container you have handy, and then toss them back into the Dutch Oven (no...not a slow cooker, you heathen!) about 30 minutes before the meat has finished braising in whatever liquid you have chosen. My last pot of stew had red wine, an IPA and some chicken stock.

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Food and cooking tips, Haggis, young wild pigs, Scotch Eggs, thick and fluffy pita and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit.