Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with crisp

Best Apple Dessert

yellowbkpk — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:30:34 -0800

The best Apple Crisp/Cake dessert in the Twin Cities? It's my birthday weekend and after dinner I'd like to find the best Apple Crustata/Crisp/Cake a la Mode dessert in the Twin Cities area. Can the Hive Mind make any suggestions?

The best I've had so far is Bravo Cucina's version that they recently took off the menu.

Que pasa calabaza?

oflinkey — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:21:49 -0800

I love ginger snaps. I love pumpkin. How can I make pumpkin snaps? Most pumpkin cookies I have had are big and soft. I like thin and crisp cookies. For reference, my favorite cookies are ginger snaps or thinthinthin sugar cookies that are crisp around the edges.

Perhaps a ginger snap is close enough to the pumpkin-pie flavor, but I seem to have a finely-honed snap sensibility-- I want the rounder and more organic flavor of the pumpkin.

Any recipes or ideas?

I want my home-made microwave foods to be crisp, but how?

vytae — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:50:51 -0800

I want relatively crisp reheated food from the microwave. Can can I buy or make something to do this for me, like that silvery-coated paperboard that comes with frozen foods? Many bread-related frozen foods come with microwave crisping devices - frozen personal pizzas have round trays, hot pockets have wrap-around sleeves, and Lean Cuisine paninis come with the "revolutionary grilling tray". I know I can put together a healthier, cheaper melt sandwich or mini pizza if I make it myself, but the only source of heat in my office kitchen is a microwave. Without the magic crisper thing, I get soggy, unappetizing food.

Using google I've discovered that these coated paperboard things are called "susceptors" and I've found a couple companies that manufacture them for the food industry, but so far nobody seems to sell them directly to the consumer. Do you know where I could buy them? Or, can I make something at home to help crisp up my microwaved foods? I would experiment with aluminum foil, but I'm nervous about setting my kitchen on fire.

I've seen the Waveware Microwave Crisping Dish, but the reviews don't inspire much confidence. If you know anything more about this or similar products, I'd love to hear it.

How many kilos in a peck of apples? Or pecks of apples in a kilo?

mdonley — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 10:02:59 -0800

What is the mass, in kilos, of 1/4 peck of apples? I'm making the apple crisp/crumble recipe on this page soon (not today, though). I can convert all the other measurements over to metric pretty easily, but one is tricky: the recipe calls for "1/4 peck of your favorite apples to bake with, or whatever the lady is selling that day."

I live in Latvia, where everything is measured using the metric system, and while I've got a superfluity of ladies selling apples, I don't know how much to ask for.

The internet isn't helping much, as pecks measure volume and grams measure mass; also, as this is Latvia, our domestic/neighborhood (Lithuania and Poland, basically) apples are rather small, between the size of a tennis ball or a fist, so a definition of "about 20 apples" might not really be helpful. (Apples from Germany, even, are often almost twice the size of what we've got here.)

Also, I'm from Los Angeles originally, which in my case unfortunately means that I've never seen apples anywhere other than in a big pile at a supermarket or farmer's market, so I can't just "eyeball it."

Finally: any tips on what sorts of apple to choose (again, I'm in Europe, so keep that in mind), would be much appreciated!

Thanks! (And extra helpings of crisp/crumble for extra helpful answers!)

Webpage to database for a nonprogrammer?

Mr. Gunn — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:16:19 -0800

How can a nonprogrammer make a database from a set of search query results? I need to search the CRISP database and get the list of funded grants for a set of queries, then follow the link to each grant/search result, and copy some data from the grant details page into a spreadsheet or CSV file. The fields would be stuff like Name, Grant number, Grant title, etc. I don't know any java, perl, or anything that I understand is usually employed to do this kind of thing. I've messed around with some of the online web page scraper tools, but it seems like they're mostly geared towards making RSS feeds from sites that don't offer them or they assume familiarity with Java or Visual Basic. How would you recommend a nonprogrammer do this?