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Wow, thanks for sharing this. I've never tried it but it looks delicious.

Centrelink oysters Kilpatrick…Hilarious @CantCookStillTry. They look delicious and I’ll be serving them at a small party I’m having on the 23rd. Salt plus.

Bumping this up because I'm just back from a nearby Julebyen (Christmas market / festival) where I had lefse for the first time in about 33 years. I don't remember being especially impressed with it back then, but either I was clueless or my neighbor's lefse wasn't all that good! This was a revelation! Demonstration photos taken with permission. I don't have exact proportions of the ingredients (potato, flour, cream) and don't have any photos of the initial dough balls. They looked like they were 2" balls, maybe slightly smaller. Each dough ball was flattened slightly on a very heavily floured disk, I think a cloth-covered board (but forgot to ask), and then rolled until it's very, very thin. Delicately thin. This woman is picking up a disk with the special lefse stick, getting it ready to go onto the griddle. Unfortunately it tore and she had to start over. The rolled disk then went onto a special lefse griddle. (We may be looking at one of those pastry disks in the background of this photo, now that I look carefully.) I asked whether the griddle was required equipment, and was told that the very even heat is important -- but one of the women does her lefse at home on a cast iron griddle. Cook the lefse until it's starting to brown on one side, then flip it to finish cooking. They had an assembly line going, so you can see one flipped and one that hasn't been flipped yet. Use the special lefse stick to lift the finished lefse. In this case, each was being put into a cardboard serving tray, but I think at home it would be a platter. Then, brush it liberally with melted butter... ...sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon... ...roll, and serve. I walked away, took a couple of bites, and stopped stock-still. How delicate! What wonderful flavors! This practically melted in my mouth. I went back with my compliments: "This is like tasting the most delicious, beautiful cloud I can imagine!" You should have seen them beam.

My old boilng joong set up. an old turkey deep fryer burner outside died, so I had to boil the joong on my stove: 16 packets at a time! It was easier topping up the pot with hot water tho' instead of running outside. Added lots of humidity and and a couple of facials. 😊 I prepped the leaves 3 days before, and the rest of the ingredients day before. Couldn't find uncooked salted egg yolks this time, so had to use cooked ones. Now, what to do with all the cooked egg whites?

I don't think so because when you make rice, there's a lot of water surrounding the rice and the rice is brought to a boil directly from the heating element. So, under pressure, the water surrounding the rice is at 248F at high pressure (assuming the IP works like my PC). This is different from the idea of putting a bowl of water/rice into the 250F steamy oven because the oven doesn't heat the water by conduction - so I think cooking rice in a PC would be different. When @Shelby makes teh gizzards, they're basically steamed in teh PC on a rack above the liquid, so in that case, it would be the same as in a 250F steam filled oven.

Thanks for reading No....we've never paid. I know there are places around here that we could take it. I am picky lol. I prefer to do it myself. Maybe picky is too light of a word. Maybe control freak is closer? 🤣

Looks fabulous @jedovaty!

We have winter! Still cooking, just lazy in posting 😉 Sweet & Smokey Sheet Pan Chicken. Tried a new Cavendish chips shape taters. Air-fryer, and the crispiness depends on how long they are cooked. Steamed Black Bean Garlic Pickerel with the new shipment from Lake Winnipeg. Spent 2 days making joong - late this year as I didn't have a " joong bee". It was solitary session, but I enjoyed the quiet and easy pace. I surprised myself by turning out 66 joong! Families will have good eats over Xmas. My 12 year old granddaugher will have a dozen to take back with her to Newfoundland. It's her favourite Nana Joong! I'm the only one in our family who makes these now, but my daughter and DIL have made them with me, and my instructions are all documented on a webpage. Tried something new from a Weight Watcher's group" Carne Aasada. When life is busy, one pot meals are great! Yaki Udon Noodles

I tried Chefsteps' apple tarte tatin. It worked! It's really good, apples have a custard-like texture. Flavor is on point, however.. it's missing some complexity. Used filo dough for crust instead of pie/puff dough (i wanted to use it up, been in there for several years now). The dryness/texture of filo was a bit distracting, I would rather use pie dough next time, and maybe mix more spices and walnuts into it as it was missing something.

Yes, thanks for taking us along. Those steaks look wonderful! I'm surprised they were labeled as "choice" given the marbling. And I understand your relief at not having to process a deer! Even if you love the meat! 😄 By the way -- have you ever paid to have a deer processed? My deer hunting buddies used to do that, with a processor they've trusted. I don't remember how much we paid, but split 3 ways it wan't bad. The last time I got a deer (with my car, alas) I processed it myself. It is a LOT of work.

@Shelby thank you for taking us along.

I don't mind leaving the peels on for scalloped potatoes.....buuuuuut....I like mashed potatoes better peeled. I'd eat them, though. My mom loves leaving the skins on.

I've suspected that, too, but.....they've passed on everything so far. I'm proud of them. Maybe they are finally maturing 🤣. Our hunter friend leaves today (supposedly....his flight has already been delayed for some unknown reason) so I don't think anything will be gotten. We have another week of deer season plus there is a doe only season in January. We might just wait until then. It's actually kind of a relief not to have to clean a deer and package it etc. tomorrow. Thank you for keeping me company!! Lucky for me, Ronnie stopped on his way to pick up our friend and picked up some on sale choice steaks. Last night was a much easier evening for Shelby lol. But backing up, the usual Lipton's onion soup mix dip to eat while watching football yesterday afternoon. Then the guys went out (taking a portable tv with them for football watching). I threw another board together--this time using the Georgia shaped one in honor of the Bulldogs. The steaks went swimming in the SV bath. Meantime I baked some potatoes, roasted some asparagus, made some hollandaise sauce for said asparagus and deviled some goose and duck hearts and a few livers. As per usual I got a cast iron screaming hot to sear the steaks and dinner was done! Also, earlier, I pulled the last batch of apple pie filling I made from our apples and made a galette. A little whipped cream and caramel to go on top. So.....I have pork chops in mind for Ronnie and I for dinner tonight....I might thaw out another two just in case our friends flight gets cancelled or something......that's never happened before. Anyway, the guys are out putzing around in the garage. Football starts in a couple hours so that should keep them occupied for a while lol. Thanks for hanging out with me--as always, I enjoy you guys a lot

Sure seems to be an ample amount of Greek feta at the local Trader Joe's. And plenty of Israeli, as well.

Yesterday morning I made my favourite meatballs. Pork, Garlic and basil. Moe had them over linguine for breakfast. And this morning I made him a meatball "sub" on a freshly baked bun. Fed a "scrapings" of the jar to make a starter before leaving for work yesterday morning and used it last night in an enriched sourdough. Left dough out on the counter overnight and baked early this morning. One sandwich loaf and six sandwich buns.

I use Bartenders Friend for stains in mugs. I always have it on hand for stainless steel sinks and my talavera toilet.

Looking at what the guys passed on, I suspect another tough old buck is headed to your freezer. Thought you were promised a doe this year? I remain incredibly jealous. Thanks for letting us tag along in the field and the kitchen.

These are my first fruitcakes of 2025. I used this Jamie Oliver recipe. https://www.jamieoliver.com/inspiration/perfect-christmas-cake-recipe/ It is supposed to be one hour at 325 F, then an hour to 90 minutes at 300 F. My loaves cracked in the first hour, so I decided to bake them at 275 F for the next hour or so, instead. Next time, I will start baking at 300 F, not 325 F, to see if I can avoid the cracking. I realize loaf shaped cakes tend to crack more inherently. The 2 on the right were baked in a Bain Marie, the one on the left was cooked on a cookie sheet. The one on the left reached an internal temp of 205 F sooner. I kept baking the others at 275 F for what seemed like a very long time. I am getting used to baking with a smart oven of sorts . it turned off completely at one point when a pan touched the control panel, then when I reset the thing to keep baking when the cake was around 180 F internal temp, I realized it was at Hold at 275 F for close to an hour, rather than Bake at 275 F. The internal temp was around 185-190 F, after what seemed like an hour, at a Hold at 275 F. I turned it up to 300 F for about 15 minutes (it was now around 2 am! LOL), and the crust was browning. It had been in the oven for over an hour and 15 minutes after pulling the first cake out. I decided to pull it out with an internal temp around 195-200 F, knowing that usually the fruitcake should be baked to 205 to 210 F. I was concerned the bottom of the cakes might be over browned. I cut open one of these 2 cakes baked in a water bath, to see what the crumb was like. The Thermapen wasn't lying. I should have baked them until they reached 205. Just slightly underbaked. LOL I am still sending them out as gifts. The bottom crust on the fruitcake cooked in an aluminum tin on a cookie sheet was slightly over baked. Perfect bottom crust on the Bain Marie cakes,despite being in the oven for over 3 h. I will use the Bain Marie for my future fruitcakes.

You didn’t ask me, but if you scroll down on this page, you’ll find a table with steam oven cooking times for different types of rice.

@KennethT let me see if I understand you correctly. I'm planning on making some arancini and cooking the rice in the IP. The recipe i have calls for 1 cup Arborio rice and 1 1/2 cups water to be cooked at high Pressure for 3 minutes and NPR for 10 minutes. Are you saying that if I put it in my CSO which has been preheated to 250F on the super steam setting, would also take 3 minutes? I would then turn the oven off and leavs the rice in there for 10 minutes? If so, i might never cook arborio rice any other way again.

We had a nor'easter hit us late this past week, and brought a little taste of Real Winter (TM) with it. Temperatures around us hit -16 to -18C, with wind chill (the "feels like") dipping into the -20s (for Americans, the former translates to "almost 0 F," and the latter "0 and below"). So that was a good test for our newly -revamped and -insulated quail shed. I filled some seams around the door frames with expanding foam, put a draft blocker along the top of the doors where there was a relatively wide gap, and some weather stripping along the edges of the doors where they met each other and the door frame. With a local ambient temperature of -14C according to the thermometer on our deck, the temperature inside our quail cage was just -1 at the level of the top row of cages. Upon further investigation, there was about a 4-5 degree gradient from the top row of cages to the bottom, so I'll probably look around for a little USB fan or something similarly low-powered to push the air around and mitigate that. Overall, though, I'll call it a success. Only a couple of waterers on the lower tier froze up, and that was easily fixed by dunking them into a bucket of warm tap water for a few moments. That thaws them enough to twist off the base and knock out the ice, and then I refill them with warm water. The plan going forward is to have a gravity-fed watering system with an insulated bucket, and siphon hoses running to actual clip-on waterers on the front of the cages, which would be protected by the kind of heating wire used to keep plumbing from freezing in cold climates. We have all the fixin's at present except the hose, because the tees that go between the hose and the waterer require a size of flexible tubing that we can't buy locally. Grr. So yeah, it's on order and hopefully will get here in time to be of some use during the winter. The bucket will have an aquarium heater in it, and despite the insulation will probably lend a little bit of heat to the interior. At present the only source of BTUs is the quails' own body heat, and the LED panels we use to provide supplemental lighting. Those don't throw a lot of heat, by design, so it's mostly the quail themselves.

Exactly. Its like snake handling. Even the experts get bitten occasionally.

There are many mushrooms that are safe, in that a) they're easy to identify, and b) there are no toxic lookalikes, at least where a given forager may live (the list varies on that basis, of course). A great many fail on one or another of those tests, and there's a whole tranche of 'em, like some of the false morels (Gyromitra esculenta) or the highly recognizable, fairy-tale toadstool Amanita muscaria (red/orange/yellow cap with white spots, and often a gnome living underneath), which can be eaten if prepared correctly, but it's tedious and most people won't bother. Either way, those are not novice-friendly mushrooms (a friend joked that with A. muscaria, "If it's prepared one way, it makes you see God. Done another way, it introduces you in person"). * Then there are the ones that are absolutely, positively, in the experts-only category. The classic example is Leucoagaricus leucothites. It's an appealing, pure-white mushroom that pops up on lawns, and it's considered to be a very good edible. But few people pick and enjoy them, because... they're a near-ringer for Amanita virosa, the ominously/accurately-named Destroying Angel. You wanna be really, really sure you understand the distinction before you try one, and even confident foragers aren't often willing to take the risk (I sure as hell wouldn't). To answer your question directly, I think a lot of it can be chalked up to overconfidence. Since the pandemic, foraging has been a hot trend, and some people feel pretty comfortable with harvesting wild mushrooms after buying a book, watching a few YouTube/TikTok videos, perhaps going on a supervised foray or two, or (worst of all) relying on a dodgy app or Google Lens. To be clear, nobody with any sense should eat a mushroom based solely on an app or an online search. You could sum it up, I suppose, as "Dunning-Kruger Effect meets The Darwin Awards." * To forestall anyone's "well, actually...," that's an exaggeration. A. muscaria won't normally kill you, but it'll sure make you wish you were dead for a few days.

Why people take the risk?

This story is spreading. It just came up on Chinese news. Yes they grow here, too. Although native to Europe, they have been introduced widely.