Kerry Beal

True - peppermint is the devil! I do it a lot with fruit oils like orange, lemon and grapefruit. I'm pretty careful with peppermint because even in a chocolate box it's as invasive as in a garden.

At home I'm more collector than indulger. Here I don't have to lug a 75 lb child around after I've had a cocktail - much easier. Amazing how weak I get with a bit of ETOH on board. Got a little lazy tonight and just tempered up some chocolate for tomorrow's offerings. Sour Watermelon Peeps - they are pink under their florescent green sugar. Freeze dried coffee, coconut (Hippie Snacks) and freeze dried ganache. Coconut, freeze dried meyer lemon, freeze dried lime.

Methode Rotuts - look at those tiny little bubbles. Anna's so pissed she can barely stand.

Stainless weighs a ton - I started out with stainless bars then went over to the aluminum when I realized how much more I could get for less money and how much less they weighed. Couldn't open one of my drawers due to the weigh of the stainless bars.

Rib roast repurposed as steak - who could eat this as a roast - it's too thin for a roast - but perfect for a sous vide steak. Green bean casserole - real green beans, can of cream of mushroom soup, French's onion bits - nothing wrong with that in our opinion. Notice the little sprig of parsley - trying to convince you that we eat green stuff on occasion.

Got distracted posting pictures - left the lid up on the BGE which was a little low on charcoal to start - hence I decided to add more charcoal. Needed to wait until the VOCs burned off - so decided we NEEDED another cocktail. Eeyore's Requiem. I'm not as drunk as theople pink I am.

Decided today was the day to cook the freeze dried chuck eye. This had been previously sous vided at 54.5 for about 12 hours - then freeze dried along with it's boiled and strained osmosome. I added back the amount of water that I calculated it had lost. It didn't absorb all the water - but it did become moist. With the addition of about 300cc of water. Vacuum marinated in an attempt to draw the water into the meat. After a quick browning on the BGE. Looks kind of funny in the middle but doesn't really have a taste or texture too different than fresh.

I tend to find the steamed eggs peel better too - but the last batch I steamed in the Thermomix just shredded to bits! Ones I did this morning were fine - albeit overcooked I think.

As Matthew says - I tend to keep my airbrushes on a hot plate turned down a little with an Ikea dimmer switch so it's not too hot. You can indeed add essential oils to the chocolate itself for different flavour effects.

If you don't have someone at home to buff the ends for you to remove the sharp edges - pay a little extra and get the Metal Supermarket guys to do that for you. I highly recommend taking chocolate for the fellows there - it has resulted in a 'chocolate discount' the many times I've had them cut things for me. There is a primer on dipping somewhere here on eG - it was done by Alanamoana - I shall see if I can find it for you and link to it if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Tonight's cocktail - called My Black and Bitter Heart.

Apparently it grows near fresh flowing water - so we put it close to the sink.

Plugging away at making Ivan Ramen Ramen. I brought up already made chashu. Making about 1/2 a batch of each ingredient. Chicken stock - a nice big (and very inexpensive) chicken pressure cooked for an hour or so. Dashi under construction. Dashi completed. Shio Tare - made with sofrito that had about 5 hours in the oven. Katsuobushi Salt Toasted rye noodle dough. Used about 1 tsp of lye water in half a batch - made for very chewy noodles. After running through the pasta maker. The sofrito and the eggs (I think overcooked) soaking in the chashu cooking liquid. Anna was not a big fan of the noodles - I thought they were fine.

We ran out this morning to do some errands. The condo owner had brought us some more plums. Of course we hit the liquor store to get a bottle of wine - with plans to make methode Rotuts. Plants had arrived from Richter's - included were a few things I needed to make Chartreuse - unfortunately they didn't have dried herbs so had to buy live plants. But see the little waterlily like plant on the right? - wasabi! Think I can keep it alive? A few odds and ends from the grocery store. Notice the cream of mushroom soup and french's crispy onions.

Little behind on posting pictures - bear with me while I catch up. For my breakfast this morning - a nice piece of toast with Anna's bread and damson plum jam I made with the remaining plums.

But not really for baking! Chocolate I'd be happy to help out. Welcome richichi! I was a lab tech in a previous life as well - ART micro, bacti and haem.

Aluminum bars can be cut for you by the Metal Supermarket if you happen to be in north america. Slabbed ganache recipes - I'd consult Greweling and use his proportions for the basic slab but up the flavours. How's your dipping?

Welcome Tanya - sounds like you are learning a whole lot very quickly. I'd use a different airbrush for water based stuff than cocoa butter based stuff. I'd be concerned if you did both with the same brush that you might get moisture in your cocoa butter and cause it to seize making it very hard to clean later. That being said I've taken airbrushes that were used for liquid food safe colours and repurposed them for cocoa butter after I made good and sure that all moisture was out of them - but wouldn't use for both. Colours for spraying in molds are fat based - generally colours for icing are water based. You can also dilute chocolate in more cocoa butter and spray that in a mold along with the cocoa butter based colours. Cocoa butter based colours are not that difficult to make yourself - though I've never managed to mix a green I'm happy with. When trying to make an intensely flavoured filling I often try to get 3 sources of the flavour in there - so I'll use fruit puree, with the addition of freeze dried fruit powder and perhaps a bit of compound flavouring (a commercial product of intense flavour) to try and get something that can overwhelm the chocolate and cream components in the ganache. Powdered stuff needs to be ground quite finely so it doesn't add a grainy feel. Although ganaches can become grainy through poor mixing techniques as well.

Lovely collection Pat. Now if I could just get rid of the ear worm - "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK - I sleep all night and I work all day"

I've got a triple scale hygrometer here.

Their texture was not too far off a regular muffin - perhaps a tiny bit denser. 1 cup oats1 cup buttermilk or yogurt1 cup flour1 tsp baking powder½ tsp baking soda½ tsp salt¾ cup brown sugar1 egg beaten¼ cup melted butter1 cup frozen blueberries Combine oats with yogurt and let stand. Add egg and melted butter. Stir in dry ingredients just until moist. Add berries. Bake at 400 F for 15-22 minutes.

Failed to mention - when I was at work the other day - a few phone calls found someone who has a grinder and a couple of presses and lives about 15 minutes down the road. I will take my apples over there on the weekend and get them run through. Think I have a couple of containers of sufficient size to bring the cider back for fermentation. Next issue will be the Uhaul to get all that fermenting juice back home!

Lunch - bacon, cheese and tomato - non vegetarian version.

Took these out of the oven this morning - thought to myself - they don't smell quite right. Smell like they have no sugar! Yup - no sugar. To make silk purse out of sow's ear - Bread pudding in the oven now.

Only one other thought - if you make your own rice crackers here you could make them bowl shaped. That of course presumes that they retain the crispiness that the commercial ones do. Far as I can see online there is no such thing as bowl shaped rice crackers.