| Best and Worst Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough
Good news for the time-pressed: Chocolate-chip cookies made with store-bought dough can taste almost homemade.Our trained panelists tasted cookies made from seven preformed cookie doughs, frozen or refrigerated, and cookies made from scratch using the Nestl Toll House recipe. The best of the bunch, all from frozen doughs, tasted close to cookies made from scratch. They had a mix of buttery, caramelized, and other cookielike flavors, plus chocolatey chunks or chips that were especially big in dough from Omaha Steaks and Fat Boy. .
Scrap all chocolate-chip recipes; this is a winner
To understand my excitement about holding in my hand the recipe for this beyond-delicious chocolate-chip cookie, you have to know that I've been on a lifelong quest for a particular cookie that Mrs. Orsi used to make for her daughter (my best friend back then) when we were first-graders at St. Theresa's Catholic School in Lake Tahoe, Nev., many Sierra Nevada winters ago. I've been searching for this exact cookie recipe practically my entire life and - hallelujah! - the search is over. As I plant my face in front of a pile of delightfully decadent cookies, I relive a memory of snowy days and the best warm-out-of-the-oven choco chips a 6-year-old could ever dream of! .
Deliciously digital
Before uploading your favorites to a digital recipe box, chew on these considerations ...
A recipe box jammed with handwritten treasures is about as quaint in this digital age as a pen-and-paper diary kept under lock and key.
Still, grandma's recipe box never had a server problem. And she certainly didn't risk having her favorite cookie recipe end up in someone else's cookbook.
As food Web sites grow in popularity and sophistication, more home cooks are taking advantage of online features that allow them to create and share digital recipe boxes. Users and administrators of these sites - among the best known are Allrecipes.com, Epicurious.com and Recipezaar.com - say they offer easy, secure, space-saving ways to store family recipes.
But what happens when the site's server crashes? What happens when you die and take your password with you? And what rights do you give up when you upload your family's favorite recipes?
Here's what you should know before you upload that recipe: User agreements
Many of the Internet's massive databases of free recipes encourage user-generated content, Web-speak for getting you to upload Grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Area school districts adjusting to rise in number of autistic students
It occurs in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups and is four times more likely to occur in boys than girls.Source: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and PreventionWHAT IS AN IEP?An Individualized Education Program is a written plan, good for one year, listing what a special education child will learn and the services the school can provide. The IEP team that writes the plan includes parents, the child, a school district representative, the child's regular education teacher and special education teacher, plus a handful of others. An IEP can be changed during the year if needed.Source: Wisconsin Department of Public InstructionWhat defines an autistic child?The state Department of Public Instruction provides this checklist to schools to diagnose children with autism spectrum disorder.
The bells: One more time
Some neighborhoods began to show new life through a restaurant surge, like Fishtown with Ida Mae's, and even the Northeast, which has an ambitious BYOB with Rylei. It was also a banner year for South Jersey, which acquired worthwhile newcomers in Kitchen 233, Onasis, Blackbird and Fuji, a successful Haddonfield relocation for one of my favorite chefs, Japanese master Matt Ito.Ito's stunning omakase tasting was just one of the many highlights of my eating adventures. There was Liberian fufu soup at Memdee's in Southwest Philly. A garlicky bowl of perfect cockles over spaghetti alla chitarra at the relocated Tre Scalini. A dangerous new addiction in the butter chicken from Tiffin, which has redefined ethnic takeout with its perfectly timed, GPS-guided delivery guys.And then, of course, there was the eight-course autumn feast at Talula's Table in Kennett Square, the splendid new gourmet market from Django founders Aimee Olexy and Bryan Sikora, who cook dinner for just one private party each night.
DAVID LEASK and DOUGLAS FRASER
He knows that Westminster has been cooking the books for decades Every cloud has a silver lining. The London press and media stirring up friction, tension and resentment against the Scottish Labour Mafia and the Union. Gordon Brown's worst nightmare is comming true . The Independence timetable plan is right on schedule. .
Beer Bellys Up to Dinner
If you think that the food that goes best with beer is only relegated to peanuts, nachos and hot dogs, it's time to take a closer look at one of the growing food trends out there: pairing beers with foods instead of serving wine. "Beer is an American classic beverage," said Julia Herz, director of Craft Beer Marketing for the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colo. "Americans love their beer and they're learning how to pair their beer with their food." Helping them are organizations like the Brewers Association, companies like Boston Beer Co., the maker of Samuel Adams, and Anheuser-Busch Inc., which makes Budweiser and Michelob products. The Internet, too, has dozens of helpful Web sites by craft brewers and beer aficionados. There also are lots of beer and food books on the market.
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