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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 stuff with slice 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.

The link does not give the recipe, unless I'm missing something.

Yes, I paid $329 Cdn plus some sales tax. Delivery is free. No spares for me. It was all i could do to justify buying this one given that I also have an APO. My current CSO doesn't work as well as it once did. Edited to add: @rotuts We'll have to see how much space the box takes up. On the floor in the LR we already have 1 largeish box, a tunnel, a round toy with a ball in it that he chases from time to time, a toy that has a mouse running around in circles underneath a round piece of cloth and what I call a igloo.

Duck breast with arugula salad with pearl couscous. I'm really in love with pearl couscous. Years ago I tried it (back then it was more commonly called Israeli couscous). I had mixed results as it was cooked like rice, measuring water so it would be absorbed. Now I boil in a lot of water (unmeasured), wait for it to get tender, then drain. Lots of chefs now doing the same with rice.

@ElsieD We're all quite excited about your purchase 😁

@ElsieD did you get it @ 329 CDollars ? that seems like quite a deal. how many spares are you getting ? Im sure Zeus will enjoy the new box.

It has a steam clean function.

I will, I'll post both inner and outer dimensions.

https://cuisinart.com.au/sites/cuisinart/media/products/cso-500nxa/cso500nxa-ib-23_169-august-2023.pdf User manual from the Australian Cuisinart site. It has a steam cleaning function and a dual cook function.

@ElsieD Id be interested in its inner dimensions , as 20 L isnt that helpful. and does it have a steam clean cycle as the original CSO did ? unlike the Anova Oven. thank you.

Can you let us know the actual dimensions? It looks like we have four different sets of numbers now, all slightly different! 🙂

Moe's breakfast yesterday was grilled sausage in a homemade "ball park" style bun and for today's breakfast, I made him a breakfast sandwich on one of the buttermilk biscuits I baked this morning topped with a fried ham and chive omelette and filled with cheddar cheese.

Bagel, Scottish smoked salmon, pickled herring, crudité. (Special plating for @rotuts and @gfweb).

OMG!!! I didn't realize that they made a new 500 model. Thanks to everyone here, I have three of the 300N1 ovens. I bought the second one as a back up as recommended here. But after two years in the box, I opened the second one to use just for bread. Had a stone cut so that i could bake up to 13" to 14" baguettes and I basically just use the first one as a toaster. Then I found one for sale on the local facebook market place for $50 and bought one for work.

Yes. I hope it fits.

From Costco?

When ground cover becomes Shisho Leafs!!

I will say that it recently seems more widely available. I have purchased pork belly from Costco and our local international foods store for years, but just recently I have noted it being sold at Food Lion, a very mid-road grocer, not noted for carrying anything unusual.

Saturday was a pretty mellow day. We just spent the day swimming at Francis beach, and then went back to the villa to grill burgers and veggie burgers that I brought from home. I remembered to take a picture of the beach this time. Sunday was another fairly lazy day. My husband lost his snorkel mask on our boat day (the strap snapped when he jumped off the boat. The water was 60’ deep so there was no swimming after it) and we have not gone in to town to replace it yet, so we have just been swimming. Sundays in the summer are the worst day to get parking at the beach because that’s the day many locals have off from work, and the water is actually warm enough that they will swim in it. We ended up driving all the way to the east end to a rocky but calm beach called Haulover. Even here, at the farthest point of the island, there were about 15 other people on the beach. This is one of those spots you would typically have to yourself. After swimming my nephew lobbied very hard for an early dinner at Johnny Lime, which is barbecue. The setting The menu Drinks. Husband’s lita mezcalita, a special passionfruit gin fizz that my sister chose, and my nephew’s danger. Niece and I just had water. Husband got brisket with mac and cheese and a salad with local greens I had a blackened catfish sandwich with slaw and yucca fries. I am not sure when they switched from mahi to catfish on the menu, or why, but it ended up being very tasty. nephew had brisket with rice and beans and yuca fries Niece had a pulled pork sandwich that I did not get a picture of, and sister was sulky because she didn’t want anything on the menu. She didn’t end up ordering anything but a side of the chickpea fritters. After linner we went to Trunk Bay for a late swim And then back to the villa to shower. I had a visitor in my outdoor shower though, so my husband and I ended up going for a pool swim instead and called it getting cleaned up 😂

I’m waiting for them to make an oven that will do everything above, plus clean up after cooking.

further info from the above : note: its been around for almost a year ! BTW: does anyone see the internal dimensions ? oven capacity is listed as 20 L .

@ElsieD Congratulations ! pics please ? and we all will enjoy your take on putting it through its paces. odd on available in USA . also , very different price points.