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@Nancy in Pátzcuaro I buy Presidente brie from Guadalajara Costco. It is soft, not a great rendition, but edible given no other brand available. I think yours may have dried out in store or in transport.

Jo, I'm sure you've told this already, but what is a chicken pop and how did you do them? @JoNorvelleWalker

As before, the chicken pops were fantastic. This afternoon the weather is a bit cooler and I'm smoking beef ribs. Rubbed just with salt, pepper, and garlic. Wood is oak and temperature is 102C. One can tell the GE was designed for Fahrenheit cuisine because one can't set the temperature dial to 100C. Did I mention the chicken pops were fantastic?

As we speak I'm smoking another batch of chicken pops. Not that the weather is fit for smoking anything. But the drumsticks were past the point of no return. That's what barbecue sauce is for. Last night a dear friend took me to Whole Foods. I looked at turkey breasts but I was dissuaded by the size, weight, and price. I got a couple beef spareribs and a rack of St. Louis ribs on sale. I originally passed on the pork when the butcher said it was too late at night for him to cut me a piece. Eventually I came back for the full rack. I'm evaluating a new marinating container but these ribs are too long to fit. Not to mention the container is too big for my refrigerator. I intend to wait to portion the rack until I'm ready to cook. Half the rack would not be close to fitting in the GE. Also at Whole Foods I got the stuff for smoked bluefish pate. The dairy person told me he was out of whipped cream cheese, so I got two packages of regular.

@JoNorvelleWalker Well , I hope , size , inside and out being , being atractive it would be easy a la CSO to steam clean , then later just wipe down. that simple.

Novelty kind? Mine is Baccarat, pattern Haut Brion. Though I don't usually fill to the brim.

What do you anticipate the new oven can do that cannot be done in an APO?

Hurra (hooray) for leftovers 🥳

Is that bagel toasted?

While swooning over @Ann_T's glorious biscuits, I made the buttery porcini fried eggs from Mezcla by Ixta Belfrage. There’s a generous half ounce of porcini/serving here so it’s rather indulgent. One of those flaky biscuits would have been perfect with this but I made do with sourdough toast.

Seared zucchini and soft-scrambled eggs with red onion, serrano chiles, garlic, coconut milk, and feta cheese, seasoned with epazote, fish sauce, black pepper, and garam masala.

A small peach tart with toasted slivered almonds, we had it with peach gelato.

@TdeV I used to grill , after marinating 24 hrs , on a very hot grill . just to get a quick but decent char on each side , then rest . then slice thinly . the meat was rare , but sliced thinly , was tender and extraordinarily delicious .

@TdeV I concur w @KennethT sometimes the ends of the FS are quite gnarly . consider minimal trim there. when torching , make sure the surface is dry , or flash sear in a hot pan.

@KennethT thank you for taking us along , and sharing so many pics.

Years ago, I used to make flank steak SV pretty regularly. My goto was 131F for 24 hours, then torch before serving.

This Saturday we'll be having a Wine Time. Sous vide flank steak is planned as one of the dishes. The flank steak is 1.6 lbs, about 10" - 14" long (it's currently folded). The plan is to marinate for a few days, then sous vide. In the past we've sautéed after the sous vide has finished. Currently, no outdoor barbecue. Suggestions? Recommended time and temperature? @rotuts @gfweb @btbyrd @Okanagancook @ElsieD

After breakfast, we went back to the room to start getting everything together and pack. Our flight to Singapore left Manado at 5PM which meant that we had to check out and be on the boat back to Manado by 1:45. 2 other groups of guests were leaving at the same time since they we were all on the same flight - there's a limited way to get to/from Manado. Lunch started at 1PM, so we all had a fast lunch on the beach: Tofu, chicken curry with herbs and sambal bakar (top left), sambal matah (between the tofu and chicken) and the last dabu-dabu. I don't know why they called this black forest cake - no cherries were involved it its creation.... Last pineapple for a while.... One of the servers was so sweet - the coffee mousse was late being brought out to the buffet, so as we were eating, he came to us to let us know that it arrived and asked if he could bring us some. Note that all of the mousses (mic(c)e?) had the texture and mouthfeel of whipped cream. Unfortunately, this would be the last time we would eat until the airport in Singapore that night. The airport in Manado was pretty desolate (I don't think they had many flights that day) and had limited food options - besides, we weren't really that hungry yet. Then the 3 hour flight to Singapore was on a budget airline so nothing there either. Once in Singapore, we had to go through immigration (takes 2 seconds using their autogates) and then get our bags, and then check them in for our flight home. I had planned on getting something fast to eat at a food stall in our terminal at a place called Sarawak Gourmet which claimed to make colo mee, a famous noodle dish from Kucing - the main city of Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo), but unfortunately and surprisingly for the Singapore airport, it took forever to get our bags. They claimed that there was some kind of technical problem in getting the bags off the plane but it took at least 45 minutes to get our bags. The airport came around with a cart with snacks, but we weren't in the mood for a pack of Oreo cookies, a bag of Doritos or a Kit Kat bar. By the time we got our bags and rechecked them in, there was no way we'd be able to get something to eat as our flight was due to start boarding in about 30 minutes. We passed a French boulangerie called Paul on the way to our gate, so once we were settled, I ran back to them and grabbed their last palmier as I could grab it fast. No photos - we devoured it in the final minutes before boarding which between that and some cashews I had brought from home (yikes, I wonder what their carbon footprint was!) was enough to tide us over until meal time on the plane which could be found starting here. Getting ready to land in NY around 6AM. So that's it for this trip! Thanks for reading along and see you after the New Year!

In the video description, it says: But it’s behind a paywall for me.

Love, love, love the videos!

Last breakfast: Bacon, chocolate pancake (with rambutan honey) and awesome pastry stuffed with spiced apple. I went back and got seconds of those, to make up for all the diving we had done the last 3 days, of course. Can't get enough of this... my wife and I did our best to clean them out of pineapple at practically every meal. Toast with peanut butter - unsweetened, unsalted plain ground peanuts... the texture was runny and with the house made preserves and some salt was fantastic.

Dinner that night: Cake-bread. Very tasty with: Mild dabu-dabu. The hotel would usually provide a triple dish with dabu-dabu, sambal bakar and some olive oil but we would clean out the sambals in a couple bites so they always brought us more. That night was the night of the buffet sushi, but they also had a seafood barbeque: Grilled shrimp, tuna and squid, with red rice and dabu-dabu which is always great with fish. I can't remember when I've had as many desserts as on this trip. I kept telling myself that it was because of all of the exercise.... hehe....

Lunch that day was held "inside" - the restaurant had a roof but no walls - because was drizzling on and off: Chicken cutlet with garlic and kaffir lime rice, sambal bakar and dabu-dabu. From the side station - mackerel with coconut sauce. I really appreciated the fact that it was cooked to order - it was cooked perfectly, nicely flakey and juicy - not how the fish in the area is typically cooked which is "to death" since the fish at the market isn't refrigerated or on ice. I have to say that I was a little nervous that it wasn't thoroughly cooked knowing how fish is typically stored/treated in that area but there were no problems. One evening, the hotel even had a sushi display in the buffet but we were both too nervous to have any raw fish there. I assume that it would have been safe, but we didn't want to risk anything getting in the way of the diving, which is our whole reason for being there. Studded with slices of fresh coconut.

Breakfast the next morning: Beef sausage with sambal bakar. The sausage was simmered with onion - it kind of tasted like bologna or mortadella. Gotta have my pineapple and dragonfruit fix.... Sweet bread filled with chocolate: The chocolate interior was surprisingly not grainy like I typically see it in a chocolate croissant - pain au chocolat. More dive videos: I'd never seen this live before - a turtle at a cleaning station - several remora fish were stuck on the turtle eating whatever was stuck to its shell. Bigmouth mackerel - we saw a couple of schools of these over the few days we were there.

A couple dive videos from that day: This video shows a couple of turtles... The island of Bunaken is well known for lots of turtles but I was shocked at how many we saw over the 3 days. This is an interesting video - it shows the caretaker of the reef - the parrotfish, in action. In addition to being really colorful, they're interesting because they bite off a chunk of coral reef and then poop out sand... Dinner that night was not buffet, but plated for some reason. Menu Onion bread - like at the other hotel, the bread had a cake-like texture - this one was stuffed with sliced onion. Really tasty with a ton of the sambal dabu-dabu Amuse - a fish croquette Pork dumplings I neglected to take a photo of the main course - I got the chicken massaman curry which didn't really taste like massaman but it was tasty. Mango parfait.