quiet1

Fell out of the habit of photos, but burgers and pierogies (Mrs. T’s) and steamed broccoli and a peach/grape/cherry fruit salad tonight. I’m planning tacos from the grill tomorrow so I went for low effort today. Can’t decide if I’ll do chicken with pesto and pasta and vegetables the day after, or chicken and vegetable risotto. Have to check the forecast, see if I’ll feel like hanging out next to a hot stove stirring risotto. 😄

‘Because of all the fat spitting - can’t think of any common food item quite as likely to spit hit oil at you.

The problem is we don’t eat badly ever, and we like holiday meals to feel at least a bit special? Not like tasting menus and things, but not stuff we have everyday, either. Or at least a special element, like one year I did really good steaks and for once bothered to make bearnaise sauce. On request we had roast potatoes instead of frites, but usually I don’t make bearnaise sauce when we have steaks.

You might get away with cutting the juice with fizzy water to tone down the sweet and add the needed acid, maybe? We’ve made fondue using up odd bits and bobs of cheese and drinks by using mostly cheddar type cheeses and a very good hard apple cider. (Or one time we had Perry which was also super tasty.) Didn’t notice the fizz doing anything untoward to the cheese. You do need cheeses that will stand up to the sweetness though. I run with “would I just eat a piece of this cheese with a piece of apple/pear/grape?” as a starting point.

I have no idea what we’re doing and feel completely behind on baking. My SO’s son goes to his mom for Christmas late afternoon/evening so a traditional dinner seems not on the cards for the whole family. We’re thinking maybe a brunch? Anyone have a good egg casserole recipe? Eggs and some meat and pancakes or waffles and fresh fruit? Doesn’t sound fancy enough though. Christmas Eve is likely to be our larger spread - my mom wants to try her new fondue pot and don’t tell my SO but he’s getting a new Raclette grill and cheese early, so I need to think of accompaniments to all that cheese that will help it be a more balanced meal. My mom is still doing modified FoDmap which means no onions/garlic so much charcuterie is right out.Tiny finely sliced roast to use as a cracker/bread topper? We will have baguette slices for the Raclette. My mom is also deeply suspicious of all salad greens as a result of the recent outbreaks so I want to have some kind of salad but I’m not sure what I will manage. Anyone want to brainstorm with me? I can use onion/shallot/garlic OIL in moderate amounts, the problem sugars are water soluble. Also no shellfish because I’m allergic.

Oh, really? I did some looking but I felt like I was seeing soy in everything, maybe some of the ingredients lists were old. I’ll see if I can find a local place so I can check the ingredients on the actual package I’m buying. My mom is one of those people who is extra sensitive, I know a lot of people are fine with soy lecithin. Thanks!

I want to make some truffles this year but my mom can’t have soy. Does anyone know of any good chocolate that doesn’t have soy lecithin in it? Valhrona seems to.

I’m just thinking what we’ve tried with Raclette, which is definitely quite salty. I like it with some kind of meat, but it has to be a very thin slice or maybe a sprinkle of chopped up bits rather than even a big piece. I think the flavor combinations would be somewhat similar since it’s from the same region. That said, our whole house has a much lower tolerance for salt in general now since my mom’s been on a medical low sodium diet. None of the rest of us are watching sodium particularly but it’s just easier to cook lower sodium and have lower sodium ingredients in the house, so everyone’s diet has shifted.

I think for the Spam, rather than dipping it, I’d treat it as a sort of condiment and cut it into small slices such that after dipping a bread cube you could stack a slice of Spam on top of the cheesy bread before sticking the whole lot in your mouth. We did fondue one year for Christmas dinner and it was pretty successful. I did one cheese and one hot broth (because I was fairly sure we’d end up with horrible burns with hot oil) and I pre-cooked the meat so it was just shy of done, such that by the time it’d been heated to piping hot again in the broth, it was cooked nicely. We’re contemplating doing it again this year, actually, though possibly not for Christmas dinner.

It has just now occurred to me how well my grandma would’ve fit in around here- she stored pots in her oven and did all her cooking in an electric gizmo. (An electric roaster in her case, but I bet she could’ve been persuaded to try other stuff.)

I’m hoping for a meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid.

Mine made it! Dunno what I was thinking with Tiny Pan but it is much lighter than the big ones. The paella pan looks like it will be quite useful.

Does anyone have an excellent mail order source for cheese? I am specifically looking to get Raclette in non-huge amounts. Like, we do not need a quarter of a wheel.

Same. So we will see when they turn up.

‘I totally agree, go for it.

I had a thought - if the idea is for the people to have it as a souviner, printing it on folded up card may not be the best bet as it’s then hard to store since even if you try to flatten it, card tends to want to hang on to folds pretty firmly.

Typically with these things you have to feed them flat through the printer so they don’t have to wrap around anything, for DIY use. And either perforated so you only fully detach after printing, or held in place in the full sheet with tape so you peel the cut out away after printing.

Rather than going with something cut out, what about seeing if you can find some kind of origami arrangement that suits? Or perhaps an origami menu inside a non-printed Chinese take out box? (Not sure exactly the effect you’re going for, so it’s hard to give precise suggestions. I’m just trying to think around the box. )

Just make sure your cleaners get under the cushions of the loveseat. There was a sitting area in a restaurant on Kitchen Nightmares and the hidden ‘gifts’ were revolting. Clearly no one was remembering to clean properly.

‘If you mean multiple layers, it isn’t really designed for it. You’d have to stick all the layers together somehow so they didn’t shift during cutting, and the maximum thickness is 5mm or something so you wouldn’t get many layers of cardstock in anyway. From a custom packaging perspective I think it’d be most useful for prototyping packages (my SO mostly uses it for this for his electronics projects, so he doesn’t have to mess around as much with more expensive or harder to work with materials) or for customizing - you can easily cut whatever shape labels you want, which can produce interesting results, and also you can write/draw with it, which we’ve used to have the family dog, Max, ‘sign’ cards for kiddo in a different handwriting than anyone in the house. Actually, if you’re interested in getting into printing/silk screening at all (or at least willing to do it for the sake of product appearance) then you can also use the cutters like Silhouette to make vinyl stencils, which can then be applied to the silk screen itself and printed through. I haven’t tried that with mine yet but in theory it could make something quite spiffy. I do recall from silk screening holiday cards at school way back when that silk screening itself can be a bit fussy, though. So it really would depend on how much you wanted to put effort into trouble shooting and getting the hang of it. (Once we got it all working we had a pretty good production line going, it’s just having to make sure everything is lined up and getting the ink properties right, right amount of pressure for the design, etc.) Now I’m wondering if you could silk screen something edible. Hm.

I’ll see if my SO remembers, and try to get the brand next time one of us goes to the pharmacy if he doesn’t. It was some highly not memorable name so google is failing me.

‘The stuff I saw in the store made boxes maximum roughly 2x2x2 inches, on letter sized paper. They were quite small. Labels seem like they’d be a safer route, but of course they don’t look as nice often.

The local pharmacies seem to be carrying something in the card/gift wrap section that’s basically perforated flat boxes that you print yourself then punch out and assemble. I can’t remember the brand though. We have a cutter at home (a Silhouette) so we haven’t purchased any to try because we can just print then cut/score ourselves.

Ice cream and sorbet are often a nice foil to baked and fried sweets like waffles, and make it seem more of a dessert item than a street food. Also, once you’ve got a basic mix often you can tweak the flavors a bit to make seasonal specials, which helps with repeat business as people are curious about what’s new.

I haven’t gotten even a shipping notice yet that I can find. I did the pre-sale around the same time as everyone else, I think.