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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 the Jamie Oliver 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 rather than Bake at 275 F. I kept baking and turned it up to 300 F for about 15 minutes, and the crust was browning. The Internal temp was around 195 despite having been in the oven for over an hour after pulling the first one out. I decided to pull it out at around 195-200, knowing that usually the fruitcake should be baked to 205 to 210 F. I cut open 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. 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.

Yummy breakfast, pancakes with smoked salmon and a dollop of whizzed up avocado.

I jumped on board the current viral Aussie trend and made "Centrelink Oysters" Kilpatrick for the boys. It's a Dimmie / Dimsim ( Think they may be a uniquely Aussie Chinese dumpling fast food thing ) with a sauce presented like an oyster 🤷‍♀️. ***Salt by the way .. the flavour is just salt 😅

There's a cleaner called Diversey.

Corned beef or also known as silverside with potatoes, carrots, broccolini and a mustard sauce. Fresh small dinner bread rolls were also on the table.

Detroit-Style Pepperoni Deluxe from Peter Reinhart’s “Perfect Pan Pizza” - white flour dough (bread flour, instant yeast, salt, water, olive oil) refrigerated for 18 hours. Then put into the pans with his “panning and dimpling” method over an hour, added first half of cheese to dough and second raise for four hours. Pizza is topped with crushed tomato sauce (flavored with oregano, basil,garlic and red wine vinegar), pepperoni slices, more cheddar cheese, pickled pepperoncini and a last layer of pepperoni slices. After baking, finished with a little bit of his secret sauce (pureed red bell pepper, pickled pepperoncini (and some of the brine), garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil)

Once again, authorities are warning against foraging for mushrooms unless you really know what you're doing. 21 people in California have been poisoned by Amanita phalloides, death cap mushrooms, leading to one death and the others with severe liver damage possibly requiring liver transplants. These are the same mushrooms used in the recent 'mushroom murders' in Australia. Amanita phalloides, death cap mushrooms. Photograph: Vladyslav Siaber/Alamy How many times do people have to be told? California officials warn foragers after person dies from poison mushroom | California | The Guardian

Twice-baked potato, roasted vegetables, smoked salmon. After I took this picture I topped the potato and vegetables with shredded cheddar. White wine. Christmas dishware!

There's a take out place near my home which only sells what they call 'wraps' in Chinese, but are identical to burritos but with Chinese fillings. They are larger and fat and come with a large variety of filings, of which my favourite is the the Sichuan chicken and vegetables. I don't know how many they must wrap each day. I've eaten dozens of them (usually about one every week or two). Only once had whose wrapper had split. I ended up eating it with chopsticks.

As always, thank you! I enjoy this thread every year.

Thanks for those comments, and believe me -- I take no offense! I'd be offended if I sat down at a restaurant and got a burrito the size of mine. 🙂 I'm trying to come closer to the take-and-eat-on-the-road burritos I've gotten on my travels in New Mexico and southern Arizona, which (last time I was there) cost about $3 and NEVER threatened to come unclosed due to overstuffing. But although not large, they were a bit bigger than what I've made, and still didn't ooze out the sides or fall apart. I just checked my package, with 1 remaining tortilla. It's labeled "burrito" as opposed to "burrito grande" and the tortilla seems to have a 10" diameter. Next time maybe I'll try the "grande" size, which I think are 12" diameter. I'll try another brand, too, unless I decide to try making my own. I certainly had choice of size and ingredients in Yuma, including tortillas made with lard, flour, water, salt and that's all. The pickings seem to be slimmer up here.

Thanks for those ingredients and comments, SLB. Can you shed more light on "gluten flour" please? I thought all wheat flour had some gluten content. Is this supposed to be vital wheat gluten, or a high-gluten flour?

You might want to check some specialty produce suppliers; here in Boston we have Sid Wainer/Chef's Warehouse that is known to stock hard-to-find items (they were the only place I could find baby kiwi aka kiwi berries). They have fresh bergamot, a 10# box is $101. If they only sell to the trade, see if they can suggest a restaurant or caterer they supply and perhaps they'll let you buy from the restaurant. You can see if an online purveyor can ship to you; maybe Goldbelly? I found this place in CA: https://www.pearsonranch.com/collections/buy-bergamot-oranges?srsltid=AfmBOooU6VUZYheRZGqMmNvR8iSdZZye3hsAtd2G3skFQfTlcYb-28gC

Pakistani recipes tonight, from 'Curry Cuisine' Special chicken curry (Desi murgh): Slowly saute sliced onions until dark golden brown, remove, and puree. Saute garlic and ginger paste, crushed tomato, Greek yogurt, cayenne, turmeric, cumin seed, ground coriander seed, cloves, black cardamom, and curry leaves (sub for bay leaves). Add chicken thighs and water and simmer. When the chicken is done, uncover and simmer until the oil separates. Finish with cilantro. Mixed vegetable curry (Subzi curry): Saute onion, garlic, crushed tomato, turmeric, cayenne, and cumin seed. Add cubed potato, cauliflower florets, and water, and simmer until done. Finish with cilantro. Recipe should have had ginger slivers but I used it all up on the chicken. Oh, well, it was popular.

I wonder if it's more of the freshness than thickness. I haven't been to a Chipotle in a while, but I remember their tortillas being quite thin - and certainly tender enough so that when you bite into one that's bigger than your head, all the fillings don't try to squish out the other side. Or maybe it's the fact that they haven't been refrigerated.

Yes, diversol sanitizes as well. @TdeV any brewing supply place will have it. That is where we buy it, sorry, I don't know where else you night find it.

good points next time you are @chipotles you might notice their tortillas are probably larger than the generic or so you get at a supermarket , thus a factor in how they fill them one can heat up a flour tortilla in the microwave , just a few seconds then go from there , w what you have ; or look for the larger ones next trip.