Progress for the day

[unixronin]

Today we finally got over to Bed Bath & beyond with our welcome-to-the-neighborhood "20% off your entire purchase" coupon.  With this, we obtained curtains and rods for our room, a new 14-cup Cuisinart food processor to replace my old 5-cup unit (which has a cracked driveshaft, held together by a field-expedient repair using safety wire and a Dremel tool), and a 6-quart, 600-watt Kitchenaid bowl-lift stand mixer.  On top of the 20% off the Kitchenaid, we also get a mail-in offer for either a juicer attachment or a meat-grinder attachment, which is another $65 worth.  I'm guessing we'll go with the grinder.

Chopping onions with the new Cuisinart is a breeze.  With my old Cuisinart, you had to trim and peel the onion, cut it in half each way, drop the chunks of one small or half a medium or large onion in at a time, pulse about 20 times until chopped, scoop out, put the other half in, repeat.  With the chopper attachment on my Braun stick blender, you have to trim, peel and pretty much cube the onion into about 3/4" chunks, and you cannot put in more than about half an onion at a time.  With the new 14-cup, trim a large onion, peel, quarter, drop in and pulse 16 times or so and it's done, and it's easily got room to do probably three onions at once.  (Not that I have a recipe that calls for three large onions in the quantities we'd ever cook it in.)

We're not sure about the color of the curtains ... they end up covering almost the entire wall, and may be too dark.  They're a deep midnight blue, but it ends up just looking black.  We may exchange them for a lighter color.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm, Kitchenaid.

My (well, S.'s) chicken curry recipe might call for 3 large chopped onions in a quantity I might make food in sometime, but only for a fairly large gathering.

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, for a large gathering we'd use that quantity of onions for any of a large number of my recipes. But we very seldom host large gatherings.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Not here any way. We don't know that many people and there just isn't enough space.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

I think my chicken biryani recipe calls for that many onions. It refrigerates and freezes well. :)

kitchen stuff

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

first off ...

*ENVY* *ENVY* *ENVY*

Okay, got that out of my system.

I think I could probably beat the Cuisinart in an onion chopping test from a standing start to cleanup. I use a lot of onions. ;)

If you get the meat grinder attachment, you'll want to spring for the sausage stuffer tubes - they're an extra $15 or so.

Re: kitchen stuff

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Pearl metallic stand mixer. I'm not sure that's the colour we had in mind though. I was lusting after the cobalt blue. But that's a nice thing about the KitchenAids. You can paint them however you want. :-)

I figured we were getting the meat grinder because we could juice citrus fruit on our own and we really aren't that big on fruit juice. But we have wanted to try making our own sausage. Especially after Seattoria and finding out we could't buy bulk sausage at the local grocery store in Canada.

unixronin see how many eggs we have? I'm thinking Scotch eggs for supper.

Re: kitchen stuff

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I see fourteen eggs. And gad, I'm sick of coughing. :p

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

Oh, Onions! (http://soup.allrecipes.com/az/RichandSimpleFrenchOnionSo.asp)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

99 Resturant has one of the best French Onion soups ever. I've tried making it once on my own and it was horrible. Way too thin. Probably because I didn't use the right beef stock.

I should try again now that we have the new food processor. My cajun-creole cookbook has a recipe for french bread that uses the food processor so I can make the croutons as well. My soup mugs should work.

It sounds like I'm planning a dinner party, doesn't it?

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

Somebody at work gave me what she claims is the best french onion soup recipe ever. I'll try to dig it up.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

That would be lovely. Thank you.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

ewwwww, onions!

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

i can't stand hte smell or taste!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Onions are good. And good for you, too. There's strong medical evidence that eating a lot of onions and garlic significantly reduces your risk of heart disease.

How, that said, I dislike big chunks of onion; I hate the texture. And I can't stand eating it raw. This is why everywhere I use it, I chop it finely.

[bratling.livejournal.com]

welcome-to-the-neighborhood "20% off your entire purchase" coupon

damn, wish i could get one of those! but i am on their mailing list. every month or two they send me a coupon for 20% off one item. they're sufficiently regular that if i need something that costs more than a few bucks, i wait for such a coupon to appear, then go buy it.

but man, really wish we'd had an "entire purchase" coupon. a couple weeks ago, zanne and i placed an online order to pick up some things we didn't get from our wedding registry. we had a one-time 10% discount for registry items we hadn't gotten, which about covered shipping and tax, so i really can't complain ... but it woulda been nice. :-)

(Not that I have a recipe that calls for three large onions in the quantities we'd ever cook it in.)

big batch of chili? (big, big batch... :)

We're not sure about the color of the curtains ... they end up covering almost the entire wall, and may be too dark. They're a deep midnight blue, but it ends up just looking black. We may exchange them for a lighter color.

dark curtains can be dramatic, but they do have to work in the space. one of our living rooms (the house has *two*!) is painted dark red, so we purchased almost-matching dark red brocade curtains. the really block daylight if we don't pull them back, but the room now has a wonderfully sumptuous and yet cozy feeling at night. by contrast, our bedroom is light yellow, and we use gauzy white curtains (that i inherited from my grandma, and never thought i'd use!).

and the curtains came from sears. as a teenager, sears was the home of all things adult and boring. i wonder what this says...