HungryChris

A piece of rye toast, half with ramp compound butter and half with homemade bomba calabrese, scrapple with the requisite fresh salsa, garlic butter mushrooms and some roasted asparagus, both left over from dinner. HC

It is not for the faint of heart, but once you get the moves down, it is pretty simple. This is the industrial version of a soda stream, that I bought on Amazon for about $169. Instead of the cartridges you have a five pound CO2 tank, that, once you get filled, should last a year or more of everyday use and costs about $20 to fill. This is what it looks like. The gauge on the left, tells you the pressure in the tank and the gauge on top is adjusted by the red knob. I have read that just below 40 PSI is about perfect for this application, so that is where I have it set. I bought stopper top glass bottles to store the product in, but the stoppers let too much of the fizz out, so I have come to use 1 liter, screw top soda bottles for both CO2 injection and storage. I add the juice of half a lime to each bottle. And add 3 packets of sucralose (from Aldi) to each as well. You need a little "head space" in each bottle to allow for CO2 absorption, so they are not filled with tap water all the way to the top. Then the carbonator cap is screwed on just enough to allow you to squeeze out the air, then tightened down. The whole thing is assembled by connecting it all up. Then you open the valves to turn on the CO2, turn the bottle upside down, and shake the heck out of it, noticing that every time you do, more CO2 flows in. Keep doing that until the CO2 flow slows way down telling you that the solution is just about saturated with carbonation. Having the liquid as cold as possible allows for more CO2 absorption, so chill it down first. HC

Too hot today to do much of anything. Found a whole chicken in the freezer and thawed it out in a big pot of cool water. Made up a marinade of Dijon mustard, minced garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and tajin and brushed it all over the spatchcocked bird halves and let them commiserate in the fridge for most of the day. Deb had a hair appointment after work, so I had plenty of time to pull it all together for a 7:30 dinner. Garlic butter shrooms and roasted asparagus rounded things out. HC

Homemade corned pork tongue, grilled Reuben sandwich and a new favorite, homemade, lightly sweetened lime acqua frizzante. HC

Chicken soup with leftover salads and Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Because this soup was made from Korean BBQ chicken, the normal chicken soup format doesn't work, as the broth is too dark, this has to be a more robust soup, which I achieve with a bit of tomato base and stronger spices. HC

I got this one on Sep 30. A FEW DAYS TO BEGIN WITH THE DELIVERIES !!! The reason for this email is to update you on the production and delivery of the orders that were made in the first days of May of this year. Today we are in full production and we hope to start delivering at October 1st and end up delivering at the end of November, one month before the estimate. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your trust and your expectations. Thanks to your participation in this pre-sale we were able to develop and manufacture new matrixs and new models. Improve errors and details in our products that we wanted to achieve. DARTO is a company composed of two people. What limits us when it comes to organizing and dispatching all the orders that were made. So we clarified that we will deliver orders between the months of October and November. We will communicate with each one by mail or telephone one day before the delivery to coordinate that the next day your order will be sent. WE ADD A BIG IMPROVEMENT Since we started to make pans in one piece, we tried everything to give a better finish to the edges of our products. Proud of many features of a DARTO, such as its durability, function and price, we could not come up with a finish to the edges as we wanted. That is why even these new models redesigned, the edges were softened by hand with a band sanding, lengthening the production times, without the possibility of achieving the same quality in all products and even less, achieving a rounded edge like today we could do it. A few months ago, the first tests of the paellas nr. 27, one of them suffered an unforeseen in the process of pressing and finishing with the deformed handles. Where you see a small part of the edge perfectly rounded and polished. Without looking for it and by mistake, that failed piece gave us an indication of how to manufacture a fast, repetitive, efficient and economic productive system to achieve a great finish not only on the external edges of the product that is where it is handled, but also on the edges internal holes of both the pan and the paellas of all sizes. With a few months until October, when we had to start delivering the orders, we had to decide if this improvement in the final product would be added for this production or for another Pre-sale the following year. We decided to add it to this delivery, a great improvement that we were looking for years that can not wait and what better to add it to all the improvements we name in May, and what better than adding it to the orders of the people who trusted. It was risky and we had no margin for error but we do achieve in time and form. Thank you again for trusting DARTO and we hope you enjoy our new products as we do. Best regards, DARTO Copyright © 2018 DARTO, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Pinto beans and hot Italian chicken sausage from Aldi. I loaded this pot up with fresh sage, thyme and rosemary. The beans were quite excellent, but the sausage was not a fave. I served this with small salads (that were never touched and were covered up and put right back in the fridge) and cheddar bay biscuits. As a little side note, that pot with the beans and sausage fit nicely into the Ipot, something I will not soon forget. This one was done with canned pinto beans, but once I get the flavors zeroed in, I will start with dried beans. Here is the dish from a recent trip to Italy, hat I was shooting for: This dish was so memorable, with crusty Tuscan bread, that I will try to recreate it quite a few more times, although aside from the sausage, I was pretty happy with this effort. HC

Today I had my new CO2 tank filled and tried my hand at home carbonation. It took me a bit to figure out the directions that were so peppered with warnings and notes, that it was difficult to understand. As a precaution I conducted my first few tests out on the deck. First up: carbonating some cold Chablis. (while on a recent trip to Italy, we both developed a fondness for aperol spritzes, which call for a small amount of Prosecco, cheap in Italy, but not here). Overall, I am pretty happy with this setup. I bought a few stopper top bottles and transferring to them is a snap, we'll see how well the fizz lasts in them. I celebrated with a mortadella sandwich and a tall glass of homemade acqua frizzante! HC

I would just use a hand sanding block with 100 grit sand paper. It should go pretty quickly. HC

Marble and limestone are slowly eaten away by acid rain, so too, I bet, with acid bug poop. They can both be sanded smooth again. When I worked in construction, I used to collect the scraps of marble left over from marble door thresholds to make little chess pieces, so I know that it can be easily sanded smooth. HC

The forecast for today was 80 F and sunny, when we went to bed, but had turned to overcast with a light rain when we awoke. Our plans for a picnic lunch at the beach went in the same direction as the old forecast. Corned pork tongue with Dijon mustard on Aldi saltines that must have had a rough trip to the store, as finding a single whole one is cause for celebration. HC

My version of the locally famed Hughie's 'Love salad', with the requisite garlic bread. We both had our hands full today, Deb with her grandson, and me with firewood, for the winter. It was good to unwind over dinner, but we both have tomorrow to ourselves, and that just might include a walk on the beach. HC

My grandfather on a Friday in lent, at a small restaurant in NY: "I'll have an order of shark eyebrows. Oh, they are not on your menu, well the lord knows I asked for fish, I'll have a steak, rare, just run him around the yard to warm him up, first." HC

Salami grinders made it to the table last night. We were going to go to the casino for the buffet, but jut didn't have the energy. HC

We had meatloaf last night, along with some late season beans from the garden, a bit of gravy with mushrooms, mashed potatoes and a nice plate of farm stand tomatoes. HC

Old habits die hard. Breakfast this morning reminded me why that is a good thing! HC

Fried shrimp po'boys and a small caprese salad. HC

I could not agree more! I think it is a splendid idea. HC

I used to work with a guy who, with his wife, had a beautiful home on the water, but were 'house poor'. They had the same things on each day of the week, i. e. kielbasa every Monday, spaghetti with leftover kielbasa every Tuesday, burgers every Wed..... As someone who enjoys cooking (and eating), I found the prospect of living like that more than depressing and it affected me profoundly. When I first moved out to where I now live, it was so rural, that there were not many markets in the area and I was kind of forced to plan out my meals or travel quite bit more than I wanted to. As many more options moved into my area, I developed the habit of stopping in on the way home from work and making up the menu, based on what I saw. Today, I am more organized in a way, as I separate out the various flyers from the paper during the week, subscribe online to several more and go through them all to figure out what we are having on any given day. Today, for example, I saw frozen raw gulf shrimp on sale at a place that has killer rolls, and decided that we are having fried shrimp po'boys tonight. HC

For some reason, I bought 2, 2 pound packages of P.E.I. mussels, but when it came time to cook them, I realized that was just too much and I only cooked half of them for dinner. I still had a 2 pound surplus, that needed to be dealt with, and decided to steam the second batch open and make a garlicky and hot tomato pan sauce to serve them with, over pasta. A small portion of garden tomato sauce, plenty of home grown garlic, plus a generous portion of homemade bomba Calabrese and a big splash of dry sherry brought it together nicely, and we had mussels two nights in a row. I listened carefully, but did not hear a single complaint. HC

I took Deb out to lunch for Chinese yesterday. I spent the rest of the day processing firewood, while she took a nap. I am so sore from my efforts, yesterday, that I'm not much use around the house today. Having a beer with lunch helped, though. Now it's my turn to take a nap. HC

P.E.I. farm raised mussels in garlic and herbed wine sauce with hot bread for dippage. I bought 2, 2 lb. bags but only cooked 1 bag and it was the perfect amount for us. Now I have to figure out what to do with the second bag. HC

Pepperoni pizza with sauce, Cubanelle peppers and garlic, all from the garden. HC

Tuscan toast, one with porcini spread and melted brie and one spread with some bomba Calabrese I whipped up yesterday using every red cherry pepper in the garden, a few habaneros, eggplant, mushrooms fennel seed salt and olive oil. HC

I think if a can of anchovies came into plain sight, things would have gone differently. HC