butterisbetter

I just saw them today at Rim Ping Mee Chok from Jo's Bakery. I also bought an excellent stollen at the Citylife event from J.S. Bakery. But I don't know how to contact them.

The problem with just using a spoonful of yogurt as a starter is whether the yogurt has been treated to kill the bacteria. Most commercial yogurts have!

I think that this is an health food industry urban myth, although it might have been true many years ago. All know for sure is that my very knowledgeable Thai doctor told me that most brands here contain live cultures and other people have verified this.

Remarkably enough, Ulysses is correct. Most commercial yogurts do have active cultures. The only exceptions I know of are those yogurts that are sold with the fruit or other flavoring evenly distributed throughout the yogurt. Yogurts with fruit or other stuff on the bottom are, as far as I know, active. There may be other exceptions to this, but if there are, they are not a significant percentage of the market.

I did see Prague Powder #1 in a chemical & laboratory supItply house in Chiang Mai. That's what is commonly used for wet curing hams. It consists of 6.75% sodium nitrite and 93.75% salt (sodium chloride). It's safer to use than sodium nitrite alone because this chemical can literally stop someone's heart when eaten in even quite small doses. Prague Powder #1 is also called Instacure #1 or pink curing salt. It's dyed pink so users won't confuse it with the various other white powders commonly found in kitchens.

Washing Soda (chemical name: Sodium Carbonate) is available in Chiang Mai. I have purchased it at a chemical supply store located on the road the runs past the chang puak gate. The road inside the gate (to the south of the gate). It's located about 200 meters past the gate. At the chemical supply store it's not cheap (I've forgotten the price) because it is highly purified.

You might also try a pool & spa supply store. Sodium Carbonate should be on sale there. It's used to raise the PH of the water. Should cost a lot less there.

Does anybody know where to get beef suet in Chiang Mai? I'm referring to the fat that surrounds the kidneys and the loins

Please add me to the list. Thank you.

II

I checked out Butterball turkey and Norbet turkey prices at Makro on the Super Highway. Norbet is 145 baht a kilo and Butterball is 155 baht. I was also told that one could order turkey breasts (3 days in advance) at the meat counter. The male clerk there speaks good English and will take your order, and the cost is 220 baht a kilo for breast. I then went over to Northern Farms and asked the price of Butterball turkey breast, and it was 700 baht a kilo.

Regardless of price WHAT are these 'solutions' that Butterball Turkey's are injected with?????

Come on Mr B is B, you made the statement.

Sorry for the delay. Sometimes I suffer from the delusion that I have a life - rather that I exist -outside of these pages. At any rate, what Butterball (and Norbest) does is inject the turkeys with a brine solution. I think they throw some kind of phosphate into it for good luck. And god knows what else. The last time I saw one I glanced at the percentage of solution per the total weight of the bird and I believe it was 12%. Which seems awfully high.Maybe I got that wrong. For some reason I didn't linger to confirm. I believe that Norbest is 9%.

You can pick up your orders either at Mee Chok or Chang Klan. I'll contact Meals on Wheels 4U and see if they can deliver as well.

Butter is Better will be making Apple Pies, Pumpkin Pies, and Cranberry Sauce for Thanksgiving. You can also order Rhubarb, Cherry, or Blueberry pie. Our pies are made with real old fashioned butter crusts. No margarine

Our cranberry sauce will be made from real cranberries. (I know, what else would it be made from?) It will definitely be cheaper than the stuff in cans, and I like to think it will taste better too. It's the kind with whole cranberries, not just jelly. We're going to keep the cranberry sauce basic. That way, people can customize it to their tastes if they want to. I prefer mine plain and simple.

I don't even think it is real butter. Hydrogenated Vegetable protein or something like that. I will look into it.

They do have an interesting website: www.butterball.com

I went to school in Rockingham County, Virginia, number 1 in the World in Turkey production on some years. I prefer Shadybrook.

Can you direct me where to find Shadybrook turkeys? All I see in Chiangmai are Butterballs and Norbest, both of which are injected with solutions.

I think 158 baht is a really good price. You should grab it before the Thanksgiving rush.

it could be meltique beef, artificially marbled aussie beef.

Have you tried meltique? I just googled it and it looks interesting but I'm skeptical. Would appreciate any firsthand accounts.

It's being sold at Rim Ping Mee Chok branch. I saw a piece of it there today in the freezer section.

Like lots of people on Thaivisa.com, I prefer my opinions to be innnocent of any real knowledge. But I finally broke down and asked Khun Gai, themanager of Rim Ping Nim City, where the snow beef steaks come from. It turns out they come not from Japan and notfrom Korea… but from Thailand.

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why is there no butter in your brownies? I am a brownie ninja and it taste like you are using cooking oil or margarine as a replacement along with coco powder instead of real chocolate.

if butter is better you should use it.

What a way to phrase a question! Perhaps you are a graduate of the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife school of inquiry? At least the earlier hostile remark about freezing had the merit of being based on the fact the we do freeze lots our bread. Your assertion is flat our false. We do in fact use butter, and only butter, and lots of it, as the shortening in our brownies.

As for cocoa, perhaps in the course of your career as a brownie ninja, the shocks you've taken to your tongue have affected your higher centers. Otherwise you would know that high quality cocoa alone can sustain a great brownie. In fact there is a chef who has earned himself or herself a well deserved reputation as a chocolate genius who makes a brownie just with cocoa. She might well be described as a chocolate ninja. ( And, unlike your case, that title wouldn't be self bestowed.) I'm sure that as a brownie ninja you had to know all about this recipe at one time. As I'm sure you had to know that cocoa is , in fact, the essence of chocolate. Maybe you're confusing cocoa with Nestle's Quik or Ovaltine?

Your decline is a sad thing to contemplate. The only reason I am not revealing this chocolate chef's name is that his or her recipe turns out to be shockingly close to my wife's recipe. However, if you care to bet say, $5000, I will reveal the person's name and the book the recipe appears in. If it turns out that this person is not as I describe him or her, you will be $5000 richer. I advise you not to take the bet. And while you're at it, maybe you should consider hanging up your spurs or bib or whatever paraphernalia it is that encumbers a brownie ninja. It's clear your best days are behind you, grasshopper.

A few months ago, I bought an unidentified cut of snow beef from Rim Ping. It was quite tough and the taste was nothing special. But the cut was definitely not strip loin. Are you sure that snow beef comes from Japan? I thought it was Korean but I'm not sure about that.

I am sure there was a sign on the freezer saying Japanese....but disapointed with your review of the meat you had bought....I will find out this weekend.

I intend to rub with Garlic and use my cast iron plate on a very high gas flame,with just enough sesame oil to prevent it sticking....a few minutes each side should do it.

I'm sure you're right. My orginal impression was based on a cursory glance at the label. I thought the characters looked Korean.

But my mastery of Korean and Japanese corresponds exactly to the linguistic expertise of a certain person on the NY city subway; who, when she saw me with a bag of Thai potato

chips, asked me how I liked Israel.

A few months ago, I bought an unidentified cut of snow beef from Rim Ping. It was quite tough and the taste was nothing special. But the cut was definitely not strip loin. Are you sure that snow beef comes from Japan? I thought it was Korean but I'm not sure about that.

Clearly when you freeze bread the crust never comes back to being crunchy, unless perhaps if you do work on it after taking it out of the freezer? It'll be cold and dead coming out of there.

Well, the only bread we make that should have a crunchy crust is the Italian Bread which we bake fresh every day. That said, I'm not sure if the crunchiness of the crust would survive freezing or not. What kills crunchiness is moisture. If a bread is frozen once it's cooled down to room temperature, and then allowed to defrost at its own natural pace, it might still be crunchy. I'll try to remember to sacrifice a loaf on the altar of science and let you know the results.

I think you would have to a long way to find a gourmet that will tell you fresh is not best.

Well, let's take the case of seafood, where freshness is reckoned to be crucial. And not just any seafood, but sushi.

"But Shin Tsujimura, the sushi chef at Nobu, closer to Wall Street, said he

froze his own tuna.'Even I cannot tell the difference between fresh and frozen in a blind test,' he said."

The above appeared in an April 8, 2004 article in the New York Times.

But let's concede, for the sake of argument, that fresh is better. Does that mean it's the sine qua non? Apparently, based on your first comment and last comment, for you it is.

But those of us who actually work with food, know the issue is much more complicated. For one thing it depends on the food. Fresh fruits really can't be frozen and taste fresh when eaten raw. But on the other hand for making pies, frozen cherries and blueberries perform brilliantly. I don't intend to rehearse here the idyll that wasn't my childhood, but I used to harvest huge amounts of sour cherries for my mother, and help her pit them and freeze them. All winter long she baked pies that to me at, least, and others who had the good fortune to eat them, tasted scarcely distinguishable from fresh cherries. Of course, she made pies with a real buttercrust.

Actually, if you freeze the pie before baking, the pie crust becomes even flakier when baked. Most pie eaters believe that for pie crusts, flakier is better. According to you absolutists of freshness, apparently not.

Or let's return to the question of bread. Bread has the most flavor just after it has cooled to room temperature. So which is better? A loaf of bread that was frozen at the peak of its flavor or one you eat 2 hours after it was baked? How about 4 hours after it was baked? 6hours? I truly don't know the answer. Since you seem so definite on the issue, perhaps you could share the data you have rigorously accumulated with us? I'm sure you wouldn't be the kind of person to voice disparaging opinions of someone else's products based just on an ill-considered prejudice. I await your data with interest.

I went there will not bother again as my bread maker will arrive soon and I can bake fresh bread rather than there frozen offerings.

First off, we do fresh bake Italian bread and Italian buns,and croissants made with butter every day. Also, lots of fresh pastries. As for the rest…

On the one hand, we have garyh who by his own admission isnot a baker.

On the other hand, we have Peter Reinhart one of the top bakers and baking teachers inthe world. Reinhart gives quite specific instructions on how to properlyfreeze bread. Anyone interested ininstructions can go to page 99 of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice forfurther details. I doubt Reinhart wouldbother to go to such lengths if he felt the freezing was doing bread a seriousinjury.

In fact, bread is at the height of its flavor just after itcools down to room temperature. If youproperly freeze the bread at this stage, you can capture 99% of its flavor.

People who actually bake bread and think about it, asopposed to those who simply nurse their sullen prejudices, know that the mostimportant factors for bread are the quality of the ingredients used and thetechniques used to prepare it.

Take our focaccia as an example. We use unbleachedAustralian hard wheat, salt, water, and virgin olive oil and just a little bitof yeast. After making the dough we putit in the refrigerator and let it rise slowly for 36 hours. This slow rise is crucial to developing theflavor. Before putting it in the oven, we may top it with fresh rosemary, orsesame seeds, or nothing at all. Onceout of the oven we let it cool down, wrap it snugly and put it in thefreezer. We’ve had Italians from Romewho tell me it tastes just like what they get at home, except ours is a littlebit less salty.

We have a customer from Austria who was making how own darksourdough rye at home (made from a 150 year old family starter) because hecouldn’t find real sourdough dark rye here. He raves about ours. And withreason. We make our own sourdough starter, grind the traditional spicesourselves, and use 65% dark rye flour and 35% whole wheat flour to make thisbread. Germans who try it consistentlytell us it tastes like what their now sadly defunct grandmothers used tomake. (This bread isn’t for everybody.It’s so heavy that I suspect the old Reichstag was built with it instead ofbricks. )

Actually, the odds are good the many people here been eating frozen bread and just don’t knowit. Certain well known farang stylebakeries here actually do freeze and refreeze their bread. If you get to themearly enough in the morning, you may find that their bread is oddly chilly. At least, I hope they’re freezing thebread. Because, for some reason,refrigerating bread does dry it out, no matter how well you wrap it.

Another baker, locally famous for its artisan breads,actually makes them from mixes. Thesemixes consist of various doughs, such assourdough that are freeze-dried and ground back into a kind of flour. Now the mixes they use are the best Europeanmixes money can buy, but they just don’t taste the same as bread made fromscratch.

Of course, you canget fresh plenty of fresh bread in Chiang Mai. There are local Thai bakeries that do make fresh bread every day. They use bleached low gluten flower, lots of yeast, and let it rise in a hotroom. It tastes pretty insipid to me,but there’s no accounting for tastes. Thereis also, the fresh packaged Farmhouse bread which I quite like for some things. For instance, their hot dog rolls where we want the bread just to get out of the wayof the flavor of our all beef hot dogs.

There’s a researcher named Linda Bartoshuk who has conductedextensive tests on humans and found that roughly one third of the populationare what she calls non-tasters, people who have relatively few taste buds andnot much sense of taste. Now some people are very open about their lackof interest in food and wonder what all the fuss is about. They probably suffer from this deficiency. But others, more insecure, may, cling toexternal criteria such as, oh, say, freezing to establish their bonae fidesas gourmets. I name no names here.

I would highly recommend the elephant conservation center in Lampang. I did the "mahout" course, a few times. I am under no illusion about me being anything close to a mahout, but you do get to stay in the camp overnight and spend lots of time with the elephants.. this is the place where they have an elephant hospital. Supat, who lives at the camp and coordinates one of the programs lives for elephants and has established a very well managed program

another camp i recomment is the Mae Tang elephant camp. Right now they are raising money to build a second elephant hospital in Northern Thailand. At night they let the elephants loose to go up the mountain, forage and dow whatever else it is that elephants do. the elephants come back in the morning because the camp has a guaranteed supply of food for them and when you need up to 300 pounds of forage in a day, that's apparently an irresistible temptation.

There is, or at least was, a camera repair shop along the main drag in Chiang Mai Land. I've forgotten the name. They repaired my cheap digital for a very low price. I don't know if that would be the same for your camera. I wish I could remember the name of the shop. Maybe this posting will jog somebody else's memory.

Try the "Blue Diamond Cafe" just off of Moon Muang Soi 9 in the old city near the northeast corner of the moat. They have a small selection of Gluten free baked good including muffins, brownies, cookies, etc...

this is a tricky question considering . any fried stuff maybe drip in flour mixture with egg , or some kinda four mixture .

so is best you cook your own food , or start with fresh and fruit like stuff , but to consider your friends have this disease , he or she might know how to handle this much much better then you . so why not ask his or her advice . cos i am sure he or she would be bale to deal with this better then you trying and mess up .

We currently offer a few items like 100% buckwheat pancakes (despite the name, buckwheat is completely unrelated to wheat. unlike wheat, it's not even in the grass family) that are gluten free. Also a french cake called a dacquoise that is made with a nut meringue that tastes like cake. The meringue has no grain in it of any kind. It also has coffee flavored butter cream and whipped cream.. Any day now we will also be making a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that is gluten free too.

Its not about giving away anything for free but we have to remember the country we live in.

The average and also mini-mi sallery is 220 bath a day so the earnings is about 6000 Bath a month.

with this price it should be 50000 and how many people have that at the end of the month,

or its not the Thais that are in consideration because the Farrang he can pay.

thats the wrong way to set the price because we can afford to pay.

Thais have created one of the world's most varied and brilliant cuisines. It offers a huge variety of foods including desserts. i don't think that most Thai people are pining for cheese danishes or all beef hot dogs or chicken pot pie. Thais are way too polite and considerate to say so, but I'm pretty sure they consider their cuisine to be superior to anything that elsewhere has to offer. And not without reason.

I've had very good experience at Backstreet Books. The nearby competitor I have found much less pleasant to deal with and now stick to BB.

I've been using Gecko since I came here over 5 years ago and have never had any difficulty there at all. not only that, they have cats!!! friendly cats. well, at least forbearing cats. they allow me to pet them without complaint.

You can get beef lard at NFP (Northern Farm Products) on Huay Gaew road just back a little from the Phucome Hotel. For general "dripping" I render my own pork fat.

Rendered beef fat isn't lard. It's tallow. And this is not just an academic distinction. The flavors and other salient characteristics of the two are very distinct. In most cases, one can't be substuted for the other.