DMC has gone into bankruptcy

deal with the big box

Could it be that WalMart doing away with the needlework supplies has caused a ripple over at DMC? If you consider how many stores are in the US, the amount Wally's used to buy must have been enormous. I'm starting to feel justified and/or relieved for having multiple complete sets of floss!! Moni ---- Posted via Pronews.com - Premium Corporate Usenet News Provider ----

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My father-in-law whips up eclairs and cream puffs all the time from scratch - recipe seems simple enough. Cook it in a sauce pan and mix it thoroughly and then he just pipes out the shapes he wants and bakes and lets them dry a bit. Don't have details but yum - fill them with whipped heavy cream and sprinkle with powdered sugar or top with chocolate....yum.

MelissaD

SPLORT!!!!

I'll have you know that Darling Little Diego spent last night in my bed (safely in his plastic tank, tucked between the pillows) in order to prevent him freezing to death in the sudden cold snap we're having. The girls are OK. There's enough of them to huddle together and keep warm. No, I'm not about to let Diego room in with them! If I did that, I'd have approximately a hundred and fifty Blessed Events within a month!

Poor little Diego is on his own since dear little Ottorino passed away and hot water bottles run out of hot around three in the morning. DH is going to try and rig up a light bulb for Diego today. ROTFL! I bet this is one job he gets done in a hurry! DH was good about it, but I could tell he was utterly aghast at the notion of a chilly little mouse coming between us in The Biggest Bed in the Whole Wide World.

THANK you! That sounds easy enough. Now, how d'you get the crab in? With a syringe? And... ah... s'pose I wanted to insert a drop of chocolate for example. How would I do that? Just stick it in the middle of the slit or pipe it along the top or...?

Yeah, I'm a groan-up now. I do much better cooking than in the olden days of perpetual frying things! LOL! Once, I made a chocolate cake that never rose and had the texture of vulcanised rubber. We took it out the paddock and played frisbee with it until one of the horses got hold of it in his teeth and took off with it. Another time, I made crumpets and put too much bicarb in them so that they foamed up and and up and up and were more like sponge rubber than crumpets. We played cricket with those...

At least I wasn't afraid to experiment AND I was only a kid. It's amazing what you can achieve with a pictorial cookbook and a family to feed.

Fair dink, you are a caution, Elizabeth! I've written all this down and have repeated it several times in the hope it sticks. I never heard of 'choute'! I think I'll stay away from Bruxelles, even in jest. It's safer that way. ;->

And speakin' of those blasted sprouts (sounds like 'blast-ended skrewts' for those of the Harry Potter persuasion), my DD *loves* them! I can't believe this! DH and DS and I find they taste like undiluted sewage but DD had them at a friend's place and reckons they're great. I keep a little bag of frozen ones just for her and she cooks them herself (I can't stand the stench). Bleargh! Kid's not *normal*!

I love veggies and will eat just about anything, but not brussels sprouts (gonna call 'em blast-ended skrewts from now on)!

French I can handle. Don't know about Austrailian. Will someone tell me if this is a compliment? LOL!

Elizabeth

One word: EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Or is that a sentiment?

J

Hi Trish

I just cut a slit in the puff or even cut them right in half You can pull out some of the interior pastry to make more room for the filling. I've used ham salad to fill them for a brunch buffet. That's the nice thing about choux paste, you can use it for sweet or savoury fillings.

Giggle - I just noticed the typo in my original message - 'cram' puffs indeed.

I'd love to have your recipe for crab filling. (Did I tell you we were in Maryland last weekend, and had lump crab cakes? Yummmmmy)

One of these days I'll post my recipe for butter tarts(very similar to pecan tarts).

MargW

I find the problem with brussel sprouts is that most people over cook them. The trick to get them to cook quickly and not go to gray mush is to cut an X in the base, so the hard end cooks as quickly as the rest of the sprout. Serve with a little butter and lemon juice - superb. Hmmm

- roast beef, garlic mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts - I may just have figured out what I want to cook for Sunday dinner.

margW

Not Trish, but I lived in Maryland for 15 years. I made the "puffs", and when cool split them in 2/3rds. The big hole was filled with a mixture of crabmeat ( the real thing of couse), a very little finely chopped celery, some mayo to hold it together, and the true Marylanders secret ingredient...Old Bay Seasoning. After stuffing the big bits, I sat the small piece on top as a hat. (DD's MIL puts Old bay in everything, including {otato salad..another story).

When we left Maryland in 1993, the price of crab, though not cheap, was affordable. Now...well it is totally outrageous. In 1985 or so, we would pay $30 a bushel of males, and had a Cootie Crabfeast at the VFW. Last time I was there $30 would buy very few crabs!

Gillian

I used to make little minis to serve as hors d'ouerves (how is that spelled?) and fill them with shrimp salad.

Just chopped shrimp, mayo, a little onion and lemon juice. My guests gobbled them up.

Lucille

Crabs are not really affordable these days, and they're talking about limiting the harvests in order to protect the critters, so I expect the price will go even higher this year. Sadly, it also means the watermen will be badly hurt economically. We're not big crab-eaters, and last I heard it was near the $100/bushel mark. I wait for it to go 1/2 price at the supermarket and then stock up. The pasteurized crabmeat has a looooong shelf life in the frige. (Half price makes it $12-15 for 12-16 oz., depending on the brand and time of year.)

Our local gourmet supermarket has crab soup every Friday, and last Friday I succumbed - it was a perfect soup day, and I enjoyed every last drop!

(One year a big container of homemade crab soup was the Christmas gift for each of the SILs. They loved it!)

And, hey, here they even put Old Bay on potato chips!

Sue in Baltimore

*I* find the problem with brussels sprouts is the bl**dy awful flavour! I don't care how y'cook 'em: they taste like something out of the primaeval slime! Plerk!

Since DH and DD will be away for a Scouting weekend, DS and I will probably be having baked beans on toast for Sunday dinner. Yum!

You just haven't seen his dear little teddy-bear face! He's just the cutest little sausage you ever did see and he *whiffles* at people when he's happy! Irresistable!

"Dr. Brat" wrote

I am just imagining Trish saying "sproooot" in her best Austra-Francais. Dawne

It'd be more like 'spraout', I think. Imagine Eliza Doolittle in the beginning of 'My Fair Lady' and then flatten the vowels even further and add a distinct nasal overtone. Or undertone.

LOL! Our first French teacher was a *fearsome* little nun who lined us up in ranks and made us go 'Tu! Tu! Tu!' for five minutes at the beginning of each lesson. This went on for four years and I don't think a single one of us ever learned not to say 'Tew!' instead of 'Tu!'

This fearsome little nun was the most *beeootiful* embroiderer and tatter: she made a stunningly lovely ivory silk trousseau for her niece and then, a few years later, made an equally stunning carved wooden cradle for the same niece's first baby!

Remember the Manhattan Transfer song, 'Chanson d'Amour'? That was 'Chong Songer Moo'. The Beatles, song 'Michelle' went 'Michelle, ma belle song laymow key vong tray beng ongsong, tray beng ongong'. LOLOLOL! Oz doesn't go very well with Frongsay, I'm afraid.

Good thing about it all, though, was that we were introduced to the works of the *amazing* Moroccan singer, Frida Boccara and she remains a favourite of mine to this day. Sadly, she died very young, but her daughter keeps her memory alive and her albums are still hot sellers.

One last memory of French classes. When we sat for matric. our teacher was a Belgian lady called 'Madame 'ocking'. She was an older lady, in her sixties while the rest of our teachers were mostly in their twenties and thirties. The interesting thing about her was that she wore her hair every single day in a sort of tumour on top of her head. Around the tumour was tied a black velvet ribbon bow with a real diamond in it! Whenever Madame went anywhere, you would see the black velvet bow bobbing along cheerfully and the light glinting merrily off the diamond.

Of course, we came up with a zillion plans for the removal of the tumour and the abduction of the diamond, but AFAIK, Madame was buried with her tumour and her diamond intact. No-one ever saw her without them and we all wondered what M. 'ocking thought of the whole situation. Perhaps the tumour was, in fact, a cache of illicit diamonds being carefully husbanded by Madame against their retirement? Perhaps M. 'ocking

*forced* Madame into the diamond trade against her will? Perhaps the tumour was a radio tracking device so that he would know where Madame was at all times? Who can say? But it sure gave us a lot to suppose about back when we were girls...