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Potatoes and an omelet with ham and Beehive cheddar

It it - and it is meant to create a mutual „connectednes“ (if that’s the correct word). I have been to two places like that in Japan - both tiny (lile this one - 8 seats only, maybe two seatings oer night, omakase only) - both very memorable dinners. You don’t. You have to know a former patron (likely a regular) who introduces you via an invite (to dine together).

It’s surely concerning to read about these recalls and we surely want to see the causes addressed but, as with any sort of public safety monitoring, it would be a far greater concern if they completely ceased or dropped dramatically. I share @chromedome’s concern.

@patti Thanks, it's a bit of production but we get to enjoy the results for the coming year. I ordered the correct size horn for the sheep casing that I have on hand so I'll be ready for the next batch.

Last night was one of the coldest nights of the year thus far (perhaps the coldest), with our deck thermometer showing -20 (about 0F) and the various forecasts projecting wind chill in the -25 to -28 range. So of course, that's when the breaker for the outdoor outlet on the south side of our house chose to randomly trip (we keep a couple of "garage ready" freezers on our deck, and once in a blue moon their cycles will overlap and trip the breaker). Which, in turn, meant that our heated chicken watering bucket became an unheated bucket, and was frozen almost solid by morning. Not a Really Big Deal in the scheme of things, but it meant some extra running around for me on a morning I'd hoped to be done with the critters quickly because I have work-related deadlines coming up. Anyway, the breaker is reset, the solid block of ice melted out of the waterer under the bathtub tap, and "normal service has resumed." Kind of a minor thing, but I could have done without it. Especially given that with it being so cold, I had to manually empty and refill all of the waterers in the quail cage as well. Usually only the three in the bottom row are frozen, so it goes much faster. I always bring out moderately hot tap water when I feed/water the critters on these cold mornings. If there's just a thin skin of ice in the rabbits' bowls, I can just pour the warm water right in and it'll melt the ice. With the birds' waterers (I have a regular gravity waterer in with the chickens, as well as the heated bucket) I'll plop them right into the bucket of water for a few moments, and that loosens them up enough that I can twist them apart and knock out the ice. We'd planned to have a heated gravity-watering system in place for the quail by winter, but fell a bit short due to a late-year cash crunch. The quail shed has a shelf, sized and positioned to hold a 5 gallon bucket, up near the peak of the roof. We'll have a spigot on the bucket, and a flexible tubing running from cage to cage, where a tee-connector will run the water into a small drinker attachment for the birds. A low-voltage wrap-around heating wire (the kind people use to keep their pipes from freezing, in cold climes) keeps the water running in the tubing. We have all the bits except for the tubing and the heating wire to wrap around it, because the bloody tees are an unusual size and the tubing needs to be special-ordered. Maybe by February? We hope to have a similar system in place for the rabbits by next winter, as well. On another note, the young man who bought a breeding trio of rabbits from us last week wants to come over when we harvest the next batch. He'll trade his assistance with the process for a bit of education, which is perfectly reasonable.

I fear for our friends Stateside, as the regulatory regime there is actively dismantled (I'll leave it at that, because it's a topic that's inherently political, and I can't get into it any further without violating board rules).

Sounds fine to me.

Some snacks in the lounge... you can't have tea without snacks... Chocolate muffin, vanilla cream puff, mango mousse cake

I’m sorry you struggled, but all of the pictured sausage looks wonderful!

In the SilverKris lounge in SIN (we got gold status from our points!), tons of food options - too bad we're still stuffed from dinner - but it's got some nice seating to while away the time, plus they have TWG Tea!!!!! Which is great since we need to stay up for at least another 4 hours... A beautiful, delicate Ti Kuan yin. Also on offer is a dedicated Laksa station, various dim sum, savory dishes, serve yourself cocktails like G&T, plus a bar, various wines, etc...

We had some pretty cold weather forecast for the Florida Panhandle so I decided to devote NYE and NY to sausage production. I prepared my spice formulations on NYE and mixed them with the requisite ratios of pork shoulder, belly and fat. I prepared two different formulation for a total of 12 kg of sausage. On NY day I ground and linked up the sausages. I prepared the Salsiccia di cipolla (sausage with onion) in hog casing with no problems. The second batch of Nürnberger Bratwurst in sheep casing was beset with technical problems. My sausage horn was sized for larger sheep casing and I ordered a smaller casing. It was struggle to get the casing on the horn and more of a struggle to have it feed smoothly. I also had air pockets in the stuffer which further complicated matters. I finally called it quits and bulked out the last three pounds. I grilled a few of the culls and the taste and textures are very good.

Not yet... I usually start writing it a few days after I get home and can go through all the photos (mine and my wife's). I'm currently in the Singapore airport waiting for our last flight, so I should be home around 20 hours from now, and will then sleep all day and get ready for work on Monday. Trip report should start around then. Keep an eye out in the SE Asian Dining section.

Did you write a blog of your trip?

Cheeseburger salad. Could’ve been improved with a little iceberg for more crunch.

Bought as well as a self Christmas gift. It’s a neat book. I think the real sweet spot audience wise is folks cooking for one, who can handle the calories of ramen, who are learning to feed themselves. I really like it and will cook from it. But it will probably be more popular with my kids/ college kids of friends I plan on gifting copies to.

Also, not shown was lunch in the Bali airport around 1PM....

Oddly enough, within a couple of days of delivering the CFM, I’m already anticipating what I will make next. Yesterday, I couldn’t think about it; today, I am considering my options. The weather next week is expected to be mild, so maybe chicken salad on a croissant, paired with some kind of salad that includes apples? Too summery? I’d love to try Lebanese vermicelli rice with baked chicken shawarma, salad, pita. I’ve made baked shawarma numerous times, but never made Lebanese rice. Not sure about doing it in a large batch, though. Baked chicken, cornbread dressing, something green. I have a bunch of broccoli stems in the freezer, leftover from the recent broccoli salad, so some kind of broccoli cheddar soup is in the future, but what would go with it? Gumbo is probably expected at some point, and I’ve made many, many pots of gumbo, but rarely larger than one 8 quart pot. Why does scaling up gumbo worry me, when I’ve made plenty of other CFM going in sort of blindly? I’d need to make potato salad, rice, and include some kind of bread. Figuring out the packaging would be a challenge.

Next up, Garuda Airlines (Indonesia's national airline), Bali to SIN, 2.5 hour flight departing around 3PM: Trio of melon, some kind of mousse cake which was super light and airy. Choice of chicken with rice or seafood noodle. Stewed chicken (tasted like 5 spice). I didn't eat much of it since we were going to have dinner in one of the hundreds of restaurants in Singapore's airport (including the Jewel which is outside the transit area). This is fine since we needed to collect our luggage and check in with Singapore Airlines so we had to go through immigration anyway (takes 5 seconds with their autogates).

The endlessness of it all sure gives one pause to think...

I recently bought 3kg of Seville Oranges for marmalade and I fell in love with the fragrance as I was preparing them. I was thinking buying more and using just the zest to make a syrup. Has anyone ever tried this? The smell is much stronger than the standard oranges I can buy here in Japan. If a syrup can capture that fragrance and flavor, there's a whole I can do with it. If you have done this, does any of the bitterness transfer to the syrup?

Marmalade with Seville Oranges, 30:70. Very nice flavor. That took four. I made a syrup with just the zests of all but one that was left, and made candied bergamot peel with that for garnish. The juice didn't have a particular flavor, just sourness. It's in a bottle in the fridge. I'll maybe use it as the acid next time I make jam. :)

First up on our 35+ hour journey home.... Same budget airline, same 1 hour flight, same sweet roll stuffed with chocolate paste.

Yeah, I've long since stopped posting those. But hey, for the first time in a while, we have a change of pace. Si Ji Mei brand Wuhan Egg Sheets with Glutinous Rice (that's a mouthful) are being recalled in BC and Alberta for salmonella. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/si-ji-mei-brand-wuhan-egg-sheets-glutinous-rice-recalled-due-salmonella

Whitetail deer backstrap, mushrooms, butternut squash, potatoes and gravy.

Mais, bien sur!