pounce

Propylene Glycol as a medium is also an option. It's food safe and has a boiling point of 188.2 °C. A gallon is about $20.

I think you can get away with not having a vacuum sealer. At the same time they are so handy it's a nice thing to have. You never have to worry about leaks.

http://www.greatolives.com/FreshOlives.htm

I second Sultans Market. Smoke Daddy's on Division has good BBQ and the beans are amazing. Peoples tapas on Milwaukee is fun. I go there and sit at the bar for a few sangria's and watch a movie that is projected over the bar. The calamari is really good. Le Bouchon on Daman and Armitage is one of my hangouts. Tuesdays is prix fixe for anything on the menu. See at the bar there on tuesdays Don't miss Red Hen breads on Milwaukee/Damon. Some of the best in town. My favorite cheap no-brainer place is Nick's Pit Stop on Damon and Armitage. Slow grilled chicken at it's finest. Get some chicken with coleslaw and put some salsa verde on it and eat it with the warm pita slices. This place has at least 5 cops in it at all times. You know a place has good cheap large portions when all the cops in town are there.

If you work with powdered milk only you can avoid the heat step and go right into the incubation step. In many cases the results are just as good as with liquid milk. I add powdered milk to liguid milk to add more body to the results. It adds more nutrients as well. It can be handy to have a big costco box of powdered milk esp if you are not a milk drinker. It doesn't go bad on you, take up fridge space and you can make as little or as much as you need. I'd go with fresh milk most of the time maybe try adding powdered milk to see if you like it.

May I recommend mail ordering from Penzey's? Figure out all the spices you need and do a big order, it's more cost effective that way. ← Trader Joes has two kinds (cheap too). I eat a bag a week. Totally addicting.

It's ok if it's not your orb of tea.

I'd try adding some citrate to the maple mixture to act as a sequestrant for the calcium in the *real* maple syrup. Your Vermont stuff has as much calcium as whole milk. OR I would try with some fake syrup OR maybe try with some maple flavoring? I haven't done it yet. It may be that your high sugar content is causing issues. Try hydrating the alginate for a few hours in water than adding the maple.

Check out www.realmilk.com and also do searches for cowshare. Some states do not allow for the sale of raw milk. If anyone is in one of these states and wants raw milk they can be part of a "cowshare" and still get raw milk. My question is that if I get a cowshare can I take her for walks for 2 weeks each year?

I have the stuff from Chef Rubber. In my research I have found that there are man many different grades and forms of Alginate. One company can sell 15 different formulations. There are deliberate differences in viscosity factors etc etc. Alginate is used in the sciences, medical and pharma industries and they have many tight controls. In general we don't know what we are getting when any of the consumer Alginate sellers are giving us a bag of "Sodium Alginate". As an example go to www.ticgums.com and search on "Alginate". I wish I could get my hands on a bag of each of the items they sell, but I don't think I qualify as one of their customers. God knows what we are getting for Alginate from some of these companies. You can get Alginate for the printing industry by the bucket. I hope people aren't selling this industrial Alginate as food grade

Quote from a Meat Loaf song... Try this link: The Seduction of Simplistic Raw Vegan Dogma

Hmm. Real Maple syrup contains calcium. This may explain why it solidified on you. What brand were you using? Maybe the folks from WD-50 can share their maple caviar strategy without giving away the details. I haven't tried it.

I suppose you can always try it out. I would think that this wouldn't work out too well. You need the CaCl2 to be at a lower concentration and disolved. I fear you would have too much Ca Cl2 absorbed in your item if it is being set in pure CaCl2. I think any mold that could absorb some Ca Cl2 would work. Maybe make our own Ca Cl2 ladden playdoh or something similar? Paper? Nope. Citrate is a sequestrant. You need a calcium salt. You might be able to use calcium D-gluconate. I've seen it at vitamin stores, but haven't tried it.

The mold idea is a good one. I've been seeing how people use molds for the alginate/CaCl2 approach to form shapes. All you need is a mold material that is calcium ion permeable. If you can make a mold that is smooth but can absorb some calci then you can pour in the alginate mix and then spray the top with some more calci. I think freezing anything and then dipping into a alginate mix and then into calci would be cool. It might work for things that are hard to mix with alginate like acids and things with high calcium.

You can't really stop the cross linking once it's started. You can play with mixing a sequestrant with the alginate, but you destablize the gel by doing so. In other words if you mix in something like calcium citrate (or a phosphate) with the alginate you slow the cross linking so your spheres or blobs might be more delicate. An alternative to mix calium chloride in your slurry and drop into alginate. OR I have seen at least one place make the caviar and then immediately freeze it in liquid nitrogen. At the same time keeping the spheres or blobs hot interupts the gelation because the chains are in thermal motion. That's the theory. In practice in my kitchen I don't seem to keep them around long enough to think shelf life. Also, it's my understanding that there are many types of sodium alginates. Some react more and some react less with calci. It's apparently a matter of proportions of g-blocks in the alginate. I've seen various grades and viscosities for sale. If I was a big fast food company I am sure I could get as much of it as I wanted, but it's not easy to find as a normal consumer. Something I have been thinking about is combining alginate with another gel that sets at a low temp. Make gel blobs and then throw these into the calci. In theory this would put a skin on them that was thermal stable. Then serve them hot to liquify the centers. This might work well for soups or hot drinks. Go down the craft supply store and see if they have any small plastic squeeze bottles. These work fine and are pretty cheap. They also sometimes have syringes. Look around the house for eye droppers. Nothing fancy required. Some general tips for mixing the alginate. I found if I mixed the alginate with a powder like sugar before mixing in the liquid I ended up with less clumping. Also, mixing the alginate with a little alcohol and then pouring it into the stiring liquid helped.

I have to confess I went to "U Lucky Dawg" yesterday after reading this thread. 2 char dogs and some fries. Good stuff. I do have to wonder if the name change effected their business. The place was not busy at 6:30pm. I did see Larry Estes there for a moment checking out the Cubs game on the TV.

Do a quick search for "Azuki Ice Cream recipe" in your favorite search engine. I found a lot. I may just try one of these. I love red beans and shaved ice mmmmm.

Page 8 of the July 6-13 issue of Time Out Chicago has a column titled "What's up with that?" with the question "There used to be a Fluky's hot-dog stand at 6821 Noth Western Avenue, but now the sign reads U Lucky Dog. Did Fluky's go under or something?". There is a long answer, but I don't know if I can repost so here is bit...

I read a blurb in one of the recent Chicago Time Out magazine that said that U Lucky Dawg is the same place the same owners etc etc. They dropped the Fluky's name because they were not happy with some of the other franchisees and wanted to distance themselves. Some of the other stores were using dogs made in WISCONSIN! I mean really....

It could also be that the onion rings they use for photography are either fake or are chosen for their uniformity. ← Possible, but I don't think so. Here's a picture of 3 BK onion rings on someone's blog, and they appear to be similarly uniform. ← They are extruded. In the fast food industry, or the food service, alot of the processed foods like BK onion is extruded. They may also use some binding agents (gums or stabilizers) in the onion paste. -NhumiSD ← BK onion rings contain: http://www.burgerking.co.uk/pdfs/ingredients.pdf

Another good discussion started by BryanZ here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=87239

I've seen many patents on encapsulating liquids in alginate/calcium, but I don't see one for this company. I seriously doubt there will be any lawsuits against restaurant owners. The technique is used in other industries as well and is certainly not new. The patent system is terrible. If this company tried to take someone to court they are likely to pop up on the radar of the other patent holders for the same process and start a huge battle. There are a LOT of patents around the process. Here are some examples: 6,770,311 5,942,266 4,822,534 4,375,481 4,362,748 4,202,908 US Patent Search * edited to include patent numbers instead of application numbers I'm not afraid of the Danish alginate caviar overlords.

Sure. Just trying to offer more options and interesting alternatives. In an empty all white fridge with a lot of light I doubt you get any shadows with all the refected light. If you use the lights for the calculated amount of time every so often you get a lot of life out of them. You'd have to figure out the strength of your bulbs, distance and the types of bugs you want to kill at 254nm to establish an exposure time (example: With 12 watts of UVC you can kill e. coli in ~3 seconds at 2" distance) . True, the lights could discolor the food with long exposures. I haven't tried and I have no idea what the results would be except you wouln't get any mold on them A little exposure might be useful. I guess a person would just have to experiment. I don't want to debate the reality of UVC. It's a well proven method of sterilization. Like I said it's possibly an alternative or complimentary method for getting things clean. I think you have a lot more experience and knowledge on the food safety topic than I so I'll go back to lurking.

How about making the caviar then making a ravioli with a spoon of the caviar and another liquid? A ravioli with little spheres floating inside would be fun.

Okay, and how does that make UVC different from a harsh chemical? ← No fumes. No toxic waste to get rid of safely. No risks of geting anything on you. No contorsion like scrubbing. Put the light in and flick the switch with the door closed. No safety issues using UVC in a closed space if you aren't in it. If you need to peek to see if the light is on many good quality sunglasses filter 99.9% of UVC. $5 will get you a pair of UVC safety glasses. It would not make sense to treat a basement or kitchen space with UVC, but a closed space like a fridge would be easy. UVC is just a suggestion as an alternate/complimentary method of cleaning.