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Are you intent on making your own white chocolate? I'm sticking with needs more solids.

Hi, I'd like to open a discussion to explore & share actions and solutions to the problem us restaurants face in an unexpected power outage, to minimize impact, damage and loss of income and be more prepared. - Background: We had a power outage recently due to a bad wind storm damaging our city's electric lines. It lasted almost a full day. As the temperature in our stand up refrigerators was surely rising, our walk in frig. held better and our freezers as well. Of course we kept the doors shut or opening to a minimum. Yet the clock was ticking and not knowing when the power would be restored. Of course the restaurant couldn't even open. We rushed and moved some food(was an ordeal moving it) to from one Building to another and had an electrician temporarily wire into our circuit breaker in the other building with a 220v gas generator. The generator we had, wouldn't start(we did get it started later), so we also had to rush to Home Depot to purchase another. The old generator was only a 110v so it might not have met our needs for the walk in. The electrician temporarily disconnected the circuit box main breaker(turned off) from the power grid so no power would enter the utilities system and shock the city workers repairing the lines, wherever the faults were in our city. This allowed the building's power and units to come back on and bring the temperature back to normal unit the power came back on a few hours later. Of course we had to shut off non essential items in the building because the generator was a smaller portable unit. - So Well, In hind sight and to prepare for another future event, we need to make a plan of actions. Also depending on the length of outage etc. - Can I get input and knowledge and experiences sharing on this subject? - I mean, can we do better/more/missing options? Like we do have 2 ice makers which always have full bins. We could have moved that ice into refrigerators to help maintain temperature. We also had some frozen "rapid cooling water paddles" in a freezer we could have moved to different units to help maintain their temperature. Also dry ice is available in some of our local grocery stores(if not sold out). Yet these frozen items might make the refrigerator too cold and damage sensitive food... Especially the super cold dry ice I suppose perhaps....although it is commonly used in coolers for recreation. But must be wrapped in newspaper/cardboard I've read, to avoid damage to the cooler bottom surface material. Perhaps we didn't even need a generator for one day of being without power. Although it seems these alternatives I speak of might not last long. Perhaps they should be implemented for a short expected outage. If we had outages more often, I suppose we would want to fill refrigerators and freezers with like Gell bags(gourmet to home food boxes often contain) to absorb the temperature and act as a cold sink to prolong the inside temperature during an outage. I believe the refrigerators need a max of 40 degrees F to maintain food and the freezers shouldn't thaw, yet that can take longer. I'm guessing the health department is just focused on not letting the temperature rise too much and for too long. It seems a waste to have a large gas generator sitting stored, which might not be needed often at all. Yet these new pricey lithium battery generators probably can't power so many cooling units or for long. It seems nothing very affordable could power the restaurant to keep it going/fully open. I mean it would have to power virtually everything. The high electricity users such as the 220v espresso machine, ALL the refrigerators, freezers, ice makers, dishwashers, stereo system, Sandwich grills. Thinking out of the box, allowed us to help a friend who lost power some years ago. To power his residential refrigerator with no available generator. We used a 12v power inverter attached to his car battery with the engine running and an extension cord. We were able to turn it on whenever his frig temp started to rise. He was without power for a week, with no food loss. But the inverter couldn't power much more than that. I know I've read that solar yard lights can be brought in to provide light inside a home at nite, and then brought back outside in the daytime to recharge, which is clever. Just looking for the prudent sweet spot solutions in all this and a deeper look into what I shared and what I've missed. Thank you Jim

I was at a grocery today and checked the price of kefir. In was $6.99 a litre. By way of comparison, a bag of milk which contains 3 litres is $6.09.

What a place Jungle Jim's is! Thank goodness I'm not remotely near there. I can see me coming out of there with at least three grocery carts full of goodies. That butter section looks interesting. Where were the butters imported from?

Dates, figs or sultanas blended in can really tame a wild overfunky kefir. A little goes a long way. I am using up a bag of forgotten sweetened dried cranberries and I like the flavor of that also.

Beef chilli and beans. Easy dinner done with the pressure cooker.

The fans may move air across heat sinks, but they're intended to vent air heated by the glass and hysteresis loss. How hot do you think those diodes get?

And that's without legalized cannabis!!

This is very delayed, but I thought it might make fun reading for some folks, so I’ll go ahead. We left Richmond on April 7th to drive to Ohio/Indiana for the solar eclipse on the 8th. Breakfast was at Kathy’s in Staunton VA. Mr. Kim and I ate there last year on our anniversary trip and loved it. I had the biscuits and gravy with fried eggs and their fantastic fried potatoes: The gravy looks so blah, but it is delicious – loaded with sausage flavor even though it doesn’t seem to have a lot of crumbled sausage in it. Mr. Kim had the country ham breakfast with potatoes, grits, biscuits, and eggs: The ham was SO good, though oddly the fat on the edge wasn’t snipped and it curled into a bowl. Unfortunately, Jessica wasn’t happy with her meal: She got the lemon-blueberry pancakes. I’m not sure why, but she expected that the lemon flavor would be IN the pancakes instead of a drizzle of what seemed to be lemon curd. I thought they were fantastic. Determined to hit as many of our favorite restaurants as possible in the OH/IN area, we stopped for dinner at Big Boy in Ohio south of Cincinnati. Big Boy is less “Big” than I remember: I got the Big Boy burger and crinkle cuts: Jessica got a double cheeseburger and onion rings: Mr. Kim got the pork tenderloin and rings: The burgers, fries, and rings were great. The tenderloin tasted good, but it was a little too thick and not quite crisp enough. Eclipse Day!!! We were so fortunate to find a church that was taking donations for parking at their lot to watch the eclipse. We’d seen up to $50 and they said any amount. We gave them $20. It was far enough out in the country that there wasn’t a lot of noise or buildings or busy-ness. They were selling hot dogs, chips, and drinks – so that was lunch. Sun gazing: They were even selling T-shirts! Dinner that night was White Castle: Cheeseburgers, onion chips, and crinkle cuts. The 9th was the drive home with two important stops before we left Cincinnati. The first was the incredible Jungle Jim’s grocery store. It was amazing when we shopped there in the early 1990s when we lived in Batesville, IN. It is truly mind blowing now. Calling it a grocery store is hardly sufficient. There ARE groceries, of course, but SO much more including a section of housewares and kitchen equipment larger than any Williams-Sonoma I’ve ever seen. They also have an entire room devoted to modern culture kitsch – Funko, lunch boxes, action figures, etc. – on TV shows, movie franchises, Anime, etc. And then there’s the food. The cool thing about Jungle Jim’s is that while you can get an incredible assortment of specialty and “gourmet” foods, you can also find everyday items. Some of the deli/charcuterie area: Cheese selection: c The butter bar – which is actually two sided: Gummy candies: The Pez display – half of it. It’s also two sided: Part of the bakery/pastry case: All kinds of meats: They have an incredible seafood section – especially considering that they are in the Midwest: A small part of their hot sauces: Jerky: Their international food is arranged by country and some of them were amazing to see – Sri Lanka, Iceland, Nepal, Togo. My anglophile self was, of course, drawn to the British section. Cadbury selection: Sauces and canned/bottled things: I can get HP and Branston pickle, but they had Daddies which I can never find in my area. My mother would have been so excited to see the Bisto powder. She always preferred it to the granules: Frozen stuff: The oil aisle: Popcorn stunt eating: Our last restaurant stop in Cincinnati was a late lunch at Skyline Chili. This is how our food was delivered: I got a four way with beans (spaghetti, chili, beans, and cheese) and Mr. Kim got a 5-way (all that plus onions): Jessica opted for a new, to us, item – a “Chilito”: Basically, a flour tortilla stuffed with chili and cheese. Kind of underwhelming. All three of us had Coneys – little hot dogs topped with chili, mustard, cheese and onions: Rode all the way home wishing I could have another one for dinner, so I think that means the meal was good! Just a portion of the culinary goodies we came home with: I’m actually embarrassed at the top picture. We love trying interesting and new foods for videos that Jessica posts to FB, but that is ridiculous. In the bottom photo, the mock turtle soup is something that we discovered when we lived in IN. Folks would get together and make gallons of the stuff – the ones that I had were all made with beef, turkey, and vegetables and everything is ground up. It’s quite a production, so I thought I’d see what the canned stuff was like. The next two cans are probably mistakes – I saw the “famous” names and neglected to read the ingredients. They are both mostly beans – one has NO meat at all. The crock, lid, and weight are probably the most interesting purchases. Mr. Kim has decided that he’d like to try making sauerkraut. I’m looking forward to that! One more Jungle Jim purchase: Really good cheese balls. From the left: olive, beef & onion, and white cheddar. We had a really wonderful time and even got to go back to the little town in Indiana that we used to live in. Mr. Kim and I had been back more recently, but Jessica hadn’t been since she was in grade school and it has changed so much. It was fun watching her see what has changed and what hasn’t. We love road trips and weren’t in a special hurry, so this was a really good one. EDITED TO FIX PICTURE ORDER

Sorry but this is incorrect. The fans exist to vent air to the heat sinks to which the power diodes are attached.

They used to say the same thing about the VMP. Have you charted the temperature settings to gauge their accuracy? Have you measured the wattage drawn to check whether it cycles? This is a distinction without a difference, since everything sits confined within a few inches of the hot Ceran. This is by far the biggest source of heat in the case, although there would be some from hysteresis losses in the coil itself. If your point is that the glass itself needn't be cooled, fine, but the fans exist to vent air heated by the glass.

Disgusting. ETA till they start eating from a communal troft!?

I would be wary of directly comparing your experience with the Mirage Pro and ours with the HPI4 series as they are entirely different. The Vollrath website very clearly states the features of each - the HPI4 series is much more advanced and meant to be used in professional kitchens. In fact, not using it in a professional kitchen will void the warranty. But an example of the differences, your case (3) - my HPI4 unit's fan does not stop when the heat is turned off - it's runtime is governed by the internal temperature. If I cook for a long time at low power, the fan will turn off immediately since the internals are not stressed by doing that and their heat sinks are adequate alone, however, if I am cooking (even for a short time) at high power, the fan will continue to run once powered down. Once the fan stops, it does not restart again. Plus, the fan runtime post power down varies depending on the usage - it's not just on a timer. Note - the fan is not intended to cool the cooktop, it is intended to cool the power semiconductors that provide power to the induction coil. In my unit, the LCD screen displays "HOT" while the cooktop is still hot to moderately warm to the touch, even once the fan turns off. When I use the unit to make stock in a pressure cooker, once finished cooking I turn the power off but leave the pressure cooker on the cooktop for a natural pressure release which takes time. The fan turns off relatively quickly (if not instantly if using only 5% power to maintain pressure), but "HOT" is displayed the entire time - even after 30-40 minutes if I don't get around to removing the stockpot for a while.

Thanks! The building in the photo is actually a detached garage. The pool house is cool looking, but the design is iffy, especially when it’s the middle of summer. The sun sets right in that opening, and it’s miserable. We are looking into some kind of screening maybe. Pardon the mess, still getting it set up.

Thanks for your response! I think I'd find the price of that stuff more annoying than finding an empty bottle and a funnel but it's good to have choices!

I have a Vollrath Mirage Pro. You are right that the 100-step increments work well for as low as you want to go, including yeast rehydration. I'm generally very happy with it HOWEVER, (1) The unit does cycle in both % and temperature modes. I've wasted a lot of time trying to map the cycles using a Kill-A-Watt, and while the wattage output levels (and their swings) vary by setting intensity, they definitely do cycle. (2) I find the temperature settings completely worthless. They're wildly inaccurate in general and they never agree between different pans. (3) The case exhaust fans stop when heat is is turned off. This is a bad feature, considering the Ceran can get nearly as hot as any pan--many commercial countertop units include fans that will run until the case interior is cool.

Man size breakfast. I had intended to grill this steak for two last night and didn't. So I grilled it this morning and made Moe a skillet breakfast with fried eggs, fried potatoes with onions and a grilled tomato. Just to be honest, he didn't eat that whole steak. Just a thick slice. The rest is destined for a steak sandwich.

I have a book about making various pestos and mint is one of the additions used. I think you could throw in a teaspoon's worth and see how well it works. A couple days ago I baked chicken thighs and added a thick smear of fig/date mustard under the skin — it was delicious. So, perhaps some experimenting with under-the-skin pastes. Say green olives and garlic and dried mint?

Char siu with fried rice and Brussels sprouts.

It doesn't look all that different from various seafood boils I've seen dumped onto picnic tables covered with cloth or paper in US southern states. And, as in those boils, I see that @liuzhou's favorite vegetable is also represented in the Chinese versions he shared. Here's a photo from Serious Eats:

I tried a recipe for Flatbreads with Beet Yogurt and Jammy Eggs from Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner. Interesting and I got a veg in my breakfast but not something I need to repeat. Raw beet, jalapeño and lime zest are grated into yogurt and mixed with lime juice, ground coriander, salt & pepper, topped with a boiled egg and fresh mint and scooped up with a flatbread. I added a sprinkle of dukkah.

Simple dinner last night, as we're too busy watching playoff hockey. So I cooked this up between periods (the prep was done earlier): Beef with asparagus, carrots, onions, garlic, ginger, scallions, in oyster sauce Jasmine rice.

It's cool to see you doing a bunch of research. Like minds. If you will, please let me chip in here with a few thoughts. Don't rely on my observations to make your decisions; hopefully this is helpful though. [KennethT also made some good observations.] Based on my wattage measurements, the Vollrath gear does indeed basically output a variable amount of wattage depending on the % output you've specified (when it's in "% output" mode). The Control Freak is almost always operating in "maintain temperature" mode, so you'll see some cycling on/off of energy under certain circumstances. Setting its ramping speed to slow or medium may solve those issues for you, if they're issues. I do remember seeing this at one point, and I either started using deeper pots or a lower intensity level. The default intensity level on the Control Freak is "fast" and often people don't think to turn that intensity down. I've never purchased a medium-wattage (e.g. 1500-1800 watt) Vollrath unit. On my higher-wattage (~3500-3800 watt) unit, the fan is definitely noisier than the Control Freak. And it can turn on sometimes even when one is not cooking. The Vollrath machines are primarily designed for commercial kitchens with hot temperatures and higher decibel levels and use by professional cooks; the Control Freaks are also designed for commercial kitchens but they also do well in a home environment. That said, the fan noise is not zero on the Control Freak. It's not something that bothers me, but if you're someone who does not like white noise (or noise at all) then induction might not be the best choice, generally speaking. The tradeoff for cooling the electronics and keeping the room cooler is noise. As far as size and weight, the new "Control Freak Home" might be a better comparison to the Vollrath 1800W unit. The regular Control Freak units are oversized, somewhat washdown-capable, etc.--built for the abuses of a commercial kitchen. I've never owned a medium-wattage Vollrath; my high-wattage Vollrath is quite big--but the 1800W units are presumably more svelte. The Vollrath units seem to measure pan temperature by measuring the surface temperature of the cooktop surface from underneath the glass. If you're worried about overshoot, the Vollrath units are unlikely to win in this category--especially when the pans are empty or mostly empty. If you're boiling water or cooking something with lots of liquid, the accuracy of the cooktop temperature on the Vollrath will be more suitable for that. I can easily overshoot by a lot in a highly-conductive pan on my Vollrath unit. I think of the Vollrath units as commercial cooktops which are designed primarily for "% output" based cooking but that can also use a temperature probe for maintaining temperature; the pan temperature feature is something that would be useful from time to time if I didn't have a Control Freak, but not something I would be comfortable with for daily cooking. Your results may vary. One nifty thing about the Vollrath is that it can still deliver power to a pan even when it's a little ways from the surface of the cooktop. For cooks who like lifting and flipping things, that might provide a more consistent transition from gas to induction. I have not had any issues with my Control Freaks and Atlantis pans, but as I understand it the Control Freak is a bit more protective about when it will turn on (from a safety perspective) than some induction cooktops. Unfortunately, there is no industry-common specification for how to make an induction-compatible pan or how to guarantee that an induction cooktop will work with all pans marketed as induction-compatible. Some materials such as specific 400-series stainless steel and cast iron are induction-compatible. Others (like some 300-series stainless steel) are not. A few companies may use a thin layer of non-induction-compatible metal as an exterior coating/layer over their induction-compatible pan bottom in order to make the pans easier to clean and more rust-resistant. Sometimes those design decisions were made when induction-compatible pans were only tested against simple induction cooktops that didn't have the opportunity to include some modern computerized safety checks. And yes, those pans will work on most induction cooktops. They may work on your Control Freak as well. They might not. Again, I have personally not had any problems--but it may be that the thickness or material can vary a bit from pan to pan and some people are less "lucky." Some people have pans and are looking for a cooktop that works with them. Some people are buying a cooktop and want to find compatible pans. Other people just want to future-proof things. Future-proofing is one of the reasons I picked up Falk Copper Coeur pans as my primary collection; they're not dishwasher-style pans but I know they'll work just about anywhere. But I also picked up some Demeyere pans to see how they did, knowing that I could return them if they didn't work. And they worked fine on the cooktop while also proving to be useful for certain cooking applications.

It's all the peripheral things associated with oil disposal and frying. Getting a container into which the used oil goes is one, as I just don't have any appropriate containers (don't have milk cartons or jugs, for example). Transferring oil from pot to container just annoys the heck out of me (as does transferring soup and stew to containers). Scheduling a trip to the recycling center is sometimes annoying as the center is off my beaten path and requires a more-or-less special trip. I recognize that these are minor things, but they annoy me.

Gross.