Kerry Beal

Just before Christmas I finally purchased a Tricor temper meter so I could get some more evidence about the quality of temper that the silk is able to produce. I'm learning about temper curves - apparently a negative slope means over tempered, a positive slope is under tempered. The big question yet to be answered is what sort of distance away from zero means what. I'm dipping an offset in each sample at the same time I add the sample to the temper meter to determine the quality of temper the old fashioned way. I wrote a nice long post about it last night - then my screen shut down and all was lost! What I hope to test is the quality of temper with silk of different textures; comparing adding 0.5% silk to 1% silk; where the temper is at after 1 minute, after around 7 minutes (each temper test takes 5 minutes so can't test too quickly); the differences if I heat the chocolate to 40C or so and cool before seeding,vs just heating above 33.5 and seeding; adding silk to chocolate that is at 33.5 vs 34.5 C - and at lower temperatures as well. I have some organic, fair trade (keep wanting to call it free trade) chocolate that I purchased a few years back. Anna and I were helping the 'organic girls' to make some evil herb filled chocolates to help with 'female troubles'. I don't think that the product ever came to market - but I ended up with a case of milk, dark and cocoa mass of some rather nice swiss chocolate. The milk went the way of all flesh but the dark and the cocoa mass are still fine. I was approached by one of the docs in Dunnville where I work in the ER - he runs a cafe called The Minga which sells politically correct plant based, locally sourced, organic food - asking if I wanted to sell chocolate there. Great opportunity to get this chocolate used up. So my first experiments have involved this chocolate - it does not contain lecithin - just organic cane sugar and some extra cocoa butter for flow. It's not difficult to work with. So 1% silk applied to chocolate that was only heated to 37C and seeded at 33.5C gave me a slope of +0.35 at 1 minute and +1.06 at about 7 minutes. The same chocolate heated to 40C and seeded at 33.4C gave slopes of +0.67 and +1.06. Both manual tests showed good temper. 0.5% silk, chocolate heated to 39C and seeded at 33.4C - slope was +1.28 and +1.71 - manual temper was only fair. Milk chocolate heated to 38, seeded at 33.6 - slope +2.15 and +2.08 - manual tests both looked great.

No - it won't get the consistency of silk. My trials on this failed to prove that it would make good seed either. You can put 6 containers - 3 stacked on 3 - mason jars will fit if your health department allows them. Given that each holds about 150 grams (sufficient to temper between 15 and 30 kg of chocolate) you may find that 6 containers aren't needed.

Don't know if it's any better than Smucker's but it's Dole - http://shop.doleplantation.com/browse.cfm/4,266.html Was trying to find the pineapple and coconut preserves that I purchased at the One of a Kind craft show a bunch of years ago (and promptly came home and cloned) - but it appears that company is no long in existence.

It was still tasty - just not quite what I was expecting. I've got a hankering for a sauerkraut soup now too.

I happen to have one (surplus to the needs of the lab) with stir bars that I have purchased from amazon and some nice old beakers that were never used - and I have been known to use them. Haven't hooked them up to a PID however to keep a steady temperature. K

Any of these work for you?

I might just stick to feeding myself for now!

Good idea - I recall there is a sopa de lima recipe that goes nicely with tortilla strips and uses up leftover turkey.

I was happy with the meals I made yesterday - now starting to plan for my next 24 hour shift on the 2nd. I'm pretty sure I have a couple of small lamb shanks in the downstairs freezer so I think that will make one of my meals. Was thinking just onion, a bit of chicken stock - and cooking for about 60 minutes. Perhaps soup for the other meal - I'll have to dig in the fridge and see what's there. Thought I might pick up an inexpensive immersion blender from a thrift store to cream soups in situ if that's what they call for.

So I dropped the bottle of sauerkraut on the kitchen floor the other day and broke it - so replaced it with another bottle of Bavarian Style - awfully sweet I found. Browned the chops, sautéed the caraway seed in the remaining oil, heated up the sauerkraut, placed chops on top and gave them 18 minutes high pressure.

Sautéed some chorizo. Added some salsa. Eggs. A couple of minutes more. Couple of low carb flour tortillas from Trader Joes with a bit of cheese in nuke.

I was thinking hazelnut oil too - but the coconut oil would allow you to make meltaways with the leftover! Actually the hazelnut oil probably would as well.

Instant pot now at work - with a few odds and ends in the top cupboard that belong to me to cook with.

Apparently chocineta refers to baby pig - though apparently it can be made with just about any pork. I'm rethinking my fibula above after looking more carefully at some pictures online - might actually be tibia with attachment point of the fibula closest to the pen. Can you take a picture of the other side of the bone?

Looks like a fibula - so indeed part of the rear shank.

I do have some issues with some odors - in one ER where I work I've had to speak half a dozen times to someone who slathers patchouli oil on herself. Makes me wheeze and cough so bad I find it hard to work. Can't imagine how the folks with COPD handle it. Anyway - I've not had any complaints about smells of the food I bring to work - quite the opposite actually.

Anna and I saw a perfect one in a thrift store a couple of weeks ago - not one of the huge ones.

For sure the Selmi's are top drawer for their size.

Tomric used to carry that one - tried to sell it off inexpensively as I recall because they had a lot of problems with it - can't recall the details however.

I'm a huge fan of artichokes - I've used my stove top pressure cooker for them most recently.

My suspicion is that mine will be a bastardized version.

Got the Strub's wine sauerkraut - it's non pasteurized - found in the refrigerator case.

Dropped in to the grocery store this morning on my way to work and got some sauerkraut. Will freeze the chops until Friday night and assemble my various ingredients to take along. Thinking for my other meal I might make Huevos rancheros - got to think through how to best do that in the IP.

It is a bit of a mystery - I've seen it before - but never spent a lot of time analyzing it.

I've certainly seen the liquid component get extruded from a filling after it's sealed. It's usually fatty I find if the ganche has split - but syrup sometimes happens. Anything else in the filling besides the cream and chocolate? Any sort of fermented flavour happening?