All Activity

Variation of Spanish tortilla baked in the oven with diced potatoes, spinach, garlic, eggs, basil, parmesan, pine nuts, milk and nutmeg

Dinner at Gouter. First there was the show and tell - Wasn't very good at taking dinner pics - I'm a little out of practice. Wonderful gelato dessert.

A delightful young man who was baking his product at the Cake Collective kitchen today left us a box of his product to try when he rushed out today. One of the products that Kriss Harvey organized for us - along with Boiron Purees - was vanilla from a company called Prova. They are represented in Canada by AB Embulluxe in Quebec. They sent us samples of nice fat vanilla beans, some paste and a new product - this Fusion Vanilla, Fusion Rhum and Fusion Cafe. These are strong extractions of flavour in a cocoa butter base so they can be added directly to chocolate and other fat based products without adding any water. I put them in the EZtemper to soften up to make them easier to incorporate. I did a small experiment with some milk chocolate leftover from a dipping session - I added the Vanilla Fusion to it, along with some crushed Trader Joes Vanilla cookies. I forgot to take them out of the fridge before I left - so there might be some condensation in the morning.

Some photos from the first day of the workshop. Great to be here, seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Amazing place. How does Jungle Jim's rotate the products enough to keep it fresh? There can't be a lot of turnover on some of that stuff.

If you stick with the original fat-based nature of the spread, emulsifiers won't help the fat layer. The fat floating on top is just what fat does. This happens to even highly refined chocolate left melted for a long time (at least a few days). The solids settle and the fat floats. White chocolate solids are the milk and sugar. If you add water aka simple syrup, you're making ganache which shouldn't be that hard to emulsify.

Want some company? In a grocery store, especially one like that, I'd make a great sidekick!

I can see me moving in and refusing to leave!

Palak paneer, the dish that hooked me on Indian food many years ago. Spinach, cilantro, and fresh fenugreek leaves for the greens. Simple basmati rice pulao to go with.

Yeah i wanna avoid glucose, as I read it's bad for health and also they add preservatives, but definitely might have to be my last resort. Got some liquid soy letcithin, let's see how it goes. Would liquid letcithin act like egg York? Im imagining I'll be like making a mayo but sweet.

Looks like a clivia. I have some growing outdoors. Edited to add they are native to South Africa.

I think the solids that are missing might be the hazelnuts. That looks like a white chocolate version of Nutella or am I reading that label wrong?

My mother had a plant like this that my sister now has. I sent her a note asking about it.

My sister inherited this plant from a relative. She has had it for a few years but it has never blossomed until this year. Any ideas what it is? She is stumped.

They put that in everything!

I am mystified as to what is "disgusting" or "gross". This is not significantly different from taking a dish from a commercial wok with a large wok scoop and plating it. All that is going on is that they plate it in front of you and the scoop is a little bigger. It is also normal for most Asians to eat family style. Food is rarely served as individual meals for each diner. No troughs involved.

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