Kerry Beal

I've been pretty impressed with the Sosa products lately.

You can't? I can - not because I need LS - I've got a bottle - but just to prove I could do it.

I think you'll find that most of the Bernzomatic heads are readily available in the UK. I was recently looking for a TS7000 to replace mine who's piezoelectric starter has gone tits up - all the available ones were closer to you. A quick browse on ebay in the EU shows the TS4000 available.

All gorgeous - but the little marshmallow soldiers call out to me the most!

And perfect for 375 ml bottles! Looks like a very interesting idea. Especially with unsprayed peels such as I have right now!

I'd be interested in seeing that apple peel infused bourbon - can you fix the link?

Went off into the kitchen to pick up the copy of Greweling that I keep here - by the time I got it and remembered to come back - I'd made a batch of almond paste - for this recipe that Food 52 delivered to my email today. By the time I made it back - the sky outside looked like this - Now to open Greweling and see what I can make in the way of a cheese cake filling with freeze dried cream cheese.

Cocktail decided on this evening - Little Italy. Was to have had a flamed orange rind - nil to be found - so a couple of dashes of orange bitters stood in. Duck breast, saba sauce and roasted parsnips.

The fermenting apple juice will be transported home - note to self - need another big lid. It's not showing as much activity as I would like. Will have to check the SG again and see if it's doing it more quietly than expected.

Anything you can hoover off the floor with your lips, avoiding the glass, is fair game. No time limits. It's wine, therefore cleans the patch it's sitting on! Unless of course it's been more than 72 hours at less than 54C.

Before heading out this evening - made a double batch of Teisen Lap for the staff at the nursing home and the Wiki clinic tomorrow. First learned of this from Sheepish in his blog - here.

Yup - almost always better eating at home. Bad year for tomatoes up north here apparently. Lettuce looks better in the picture than real life too!

Back from my CNIB dinner - sadly the food was not as entertaining as the company and the talk. The squid was actually quite tender and good - shared it with the table - should have eaten more of it myself. Fajita's and fixings - 3 tortillas for a great heap of meat, peppers and onions. And by the time anyone brought more - I was not really in the mood to eat them. Glass of malbec - not one of the more stellar examples.

It is indeed. I picked up a Dymo LabelWriter Twin Turbo at a thrift store for $3. Managed to find a cord for it (on a little Kodak printer) at another for $6. Of course labels cost me a small fortune. Let's me print some basic labels in black and white that I can use to cover some parts of the existing label. It's not really critical - what's in the bottle is far more important.

375 ml bottles are perfect for a whole lot of things. Particularly gifting various liquids that I have made. You see lots of small bottles in thrift stores but they want a buck or two for them. These I can 'purchase' for the cost of the deposit (10￠). I like the size, the shape - now if I could just get them to stop putting their branding on them I'd be all set!

The trick is to avoid any clumps or pockets of soda, so stir more than you think you should - a whisk works well. It's the areas with too much soda that get the big bubbles and the burnt taste. The warmed oven really helps with keeping the loft in the candy. I warm the oven to around 200 F, turn it off when I put the hotel pan in. I leave it to cool in there as the oven cools.

Anna has been wanting a Last Word after reading through the thread about it. I have to go out to an educational event put on by the CNIB tonight so will wait to have something until then.

While our guest was here I tempered a bit of dark chocolate. Dipped a couple of things - then put them in the fridge for the 10 minutes I usually do and totally forgot about them. Went to get the milk out - and BANG, down they all came. Scraped them back onto the sheet pan, plunked them on the table in the living room, swept up - when BANG, down they came again! Is there a 10 second rule for two falls?

Before our visitor arrived we managed to make it out to the grocery stores and pick up a few odds and ends that we required - and a few that we hadn't planned on. Baking necessities and ice cream. Saw those little slices of bread cut lengthwise - took me back to the tea sandwiches of my youth. I shall be making rolled up and sliced sandwiches with olives in the middle and cream cheese buttering the bread. Grapes were only $1.29/lb so got some of those along with buns and ham to serve lunch to our guest. Found a relatively inexpensive boneless lamb leg and then had to hit the other store for mint sauce. Found some cheddar cheese and onion chips in the bargain bin and had to bring those home as well. Last stop in the beer store to see if they had managed to save a few 375 ml absolute bottles for us - we'd asked before we left in the summer. They had - 38 of them! More than half had lids.

There were really no bubbles at 190 where there were bubbles at 200.

Yes.

The trick is to get the soda to spread out a bit more in the mass - I have tried sifting it over the top then whisking in well. I'm going to link you to a previous discussion on eG about it - think you'll get some answers there.

Do you mean it comes out of the pan burnt or after you add the soda that the middle part seems darker, has bigger bubbles and a burnt flavour? And welcome llobar20.

I'll try fermenting anything once! Although I've seen way too much pumpkin stuff lately - not a big pumpkin fan.

Have you had a look at the freeze dryer thread here?