MelissaH

Those of you who have Instant Pots but have also used traditional pressure cookers: have you noticed enough of an advantage to the IP that would convince you to shell out for one, especially if you like your traditional stovetop PC? Have you used your IP for anything that would be difficult or impossible to do with anything else?

I think I've fixed that. Sorry!

Soup report: we didn't take a photo, but the soup looked about like you'd expect a smooth butternut squash soup to look. I did the roasting a couple of days ahead of time, enough veg for a double batch of soup, which pretty much filled my oven. I would have been able to spread things out over all three racks if I'd chosen smaller squashes, but the ones I used were too tall. Yesterday morning, we finished the soup. We dialed back on the spiciness, using only 3 canned chipotles in adobo for the double batch, because we were feeding people with an unknown heat tolerance. We wound up with just enough heat to give a warm tingle at the end, and offered extra chiles for those who wanted more zip. The soup went over very well with the group. With the soup, I chose to make a cornmeal roll, using the recipe from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread cookbook. I started the poolish on Thursday night, and finished the rolls on Friday afternoon. They maybe weren't quite as light as they could have been, but given my time constraints they were quite satisfactory. Had we had the time to make our own vegetable stock instead, we would have prepared a vegan meal for 30. As it turned out, we had to use purchased chicken stock for the soup (no vegetarians yesterday), so we didn't.

Here's an updated YouTube link to the video, now that Google Video is no more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CLCUyPzigE

Another of my favorite winter squash recipes is the pan de calabaza (pumpkin challah) recipe from Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread. If we were looking to do an all–winter squash feast, I'd do this to go along with the butternut squash soup, and then pumpkin muffins with added chocolate chips for dessert. However, that's not really my goal this weekend.

Focaccia might work. But I'm leaning more towards something that can be made as rolls and therefore won't need to be cut, both so that we can just pile them onto a platter without any other special service needs and also for portion control purposes. Have you ever made a sort of herbed focaccia dough but shaped it into individual rolls?

We will have plenty of blue corn chips around. (Blue because I like the way they look against the orange soup.) But I feel like I need a traditional bread, since we'd said we'd be serving soup and bread before we decided on any specifics.

This weekend, we'll be doing soup for 30. We may have both a vegetarian and a dairy-allergic on hand, so we're doing a vegan soup. The one we've decided on is going to be based on this one from Rick Bayless. We'll start by roasting the squash ahead of time, probably tomorrow or Thursday. Any suggestions for a dairy-free bread that would pair well with this? I'd prefer something that is supposed to be dairy-free rather than subbing a non-dairy milk into a recipe written to have dairy.

Our screens seem to be identical to the ones Lisa linked to. I like them because they take all the worry out of pizza making. And the size we have fits in our Breville XL, which is really convenient! (Oh, sorry, that's another thread!)

I've been known to use both parchment and screens (but not at the same time). My trick for the parchment is that once the dough is on the parchment, I get out my scissors and trim the parchment to within an inch of the dough. Less loose paper means less to burn.

My husband uses a hand mixer for mashed potatoes. My dad's always used the KitchenAid with the flat beater. I've never had gluey mashed potatoes made by either man. And yes, making mashed potatoes does seem to be a strictly male endeavor in my family!

I haven't tried them, but I wish they'd done the coconut with the chocolate cookies, to get a Mounds bar–like vibe going.

I'd ordered my copy through Amazon the day it was announced. As the release date drew near, I kept checking the shipping information and getting more and more nervous when nothing had happened. The day before release, my copy still had not been shipped, and finally the day of release (AKA the day my book was supposed to arrive at my house) I got an email saying that delivery had been delayed by two more days. At that point I headed to my local indie bookstore, where they had a copy on the shelf. I bought that copy, cancelled my Amazon order, and was very happy I did.

Waaait a minute. No more Wegmans brand Oreos? Or just one specific version? (The "real" Oreos with golden cookies and chocolate creme seems to have vanished, along with those deadly Key Lime ones from this summer.)

Are they Luxury because the cookies came from Whole Paycheck?

One thing I noticed, watching Claudine and Jacques cut food side by side: Jacques uses a "pinch" grip on his knife blade, whereas Claudine prefers to make a fist around the handle of the knife and extend her index finger over the top of the blade.

Yup. With the corn, you need to cut it just barely high enough that you take off a smidge of the lowest kernels. If you do that, it practically squirts out. If you cut it too low, you can squeeze till you make the corn into juice and nothing else happens.

...drool...

Does this mean quitting your day job is on the horizon? (Oh geez, I hope not, because that would mean the end of the Up North threads!)

You're on my calendar!

A disappointment today for me: the Brownie Crisp, which claims to be "a rich, brownie taste with a crisp, cookie crunch." The editor in me insists on stating for the record that I only copied the commas as they appeared on the package! I was expecting this to be more like the Sheila G's Brownie Brittle. Instead, it's thicker squares that are not easy to bite into. The flavor is cloyingly sweet. They stick in your teeth. I won't be buying these again. (But hey, they're vegan and gluten free.)

I'm still here, and it's been a long time since I soaked red kidney beans (or any other kind of bean, for that matter) before cooking and experienced any issues. I'd bring it up to a full boil and let 'er rip, which should take care of both your issues.

Nuts are one of the things we buy almost exclusively from TJ's. They seem fresher, and are usually priced well. And my husband adores the 50% less salt cashews, which he can keep in his desk drawer to snack on for those days when a proper lunch just isn't gonna happen.

Anna, have you tried using a sous-vide setup to make yogurt? I put scalded milk in mason jars, inoculate them when they cool enough to not kill the cultures, cap the jars, and then put them in a nice warm bath for a while. What's the advantage of using an instant pot over a more (or less) traditional setup?

Not to go mixing threads here, but I wonder about using a cold-brewed coffee concentrate such as the one Trader Joe's sells to make the Vietnamese coffee popsicles.