SuperVanilla

Did you know you can supercharge your vanilla for cookies, cakes, whatever? It's great with anything that needs a boost, I do oatmeal cookies with it, it's easy. You need a sharp knife, exacto knife or a razor blade (ow.) You'll need a really nice vanilla bean or two, maybe the bourbon type. Rinse off the bean and pat dry. Slice the vanilla bean(s) all the way down the length of it, and scrape out the little black seeds. Put those little black seeds, and when you're finished, the husk into a store bought bottle of real vanilla. Shake like crazy. Reshake when you use it, and be careful not to pour out the husks. Too Chewy. As long as there's enough vanilla in the bottle, the alcohol seems to keep the beans pretty well for a long time. I'm not kidding, people will flip out over your baking, and they won't know how you did it.

Oven Crunchy Onion Rings

Not soggy frozen ones, from http://www.cookingforengineers.com
Man, this site is great, conversions, retentive attn to detail.
Lots of Pics, step by step. Click this title.

Get Yer Squid On!

I know you'd pick this one first out of the bin, wouldn't you. Get it at Flax! Click the title for the link.

Gimme Fun or Gimme a Restaurant.

Hi, I'm Audrey, and Whatsername is around here someplace, I started this blog without her permission, and just told her she was going to do it. Why the heck not, we spend stupid amounts of time looking up stuff here on the web, and we both love to cook, we have appreciative audiences, and whats a few more people.

We trade recipes back and forth, and some of those recipes are just plain fun, odd, or incredibly good. I didn't say easy, but its a plus. Things that make my 9 year old's eyes bug out is another plus. Hub doesnt have much of a sweet tooth, but I do. I always had the feeling about pastries in Europe, that if it was a dessert, and it didn't rot your teeth, what good was it.

She hates chili, oatmeal and other stuff I like, so we're a good mix. She's a hummus/grapeleaves type of woman, and i've yet to figure out how the heck she got so good at cookies, as she won't mail me any so I can't tell for sure, but I will take her family's word.

She's up North, I'm in Florida, and between us, we burn up more Yahoo Instant Messenger bandwidth than United airline FF miles. I think she just likes looking at my funny typos, really. Phone calls aren't carrier to carrier, so why take 5 mins to do a conversation on the phone, when we can have that same conversation on the IM and it takes an hour, but its free. Thats how it is.