Lisa Shock

I like oatmeal, and prefer the old fashioned type or the commercial steam table type. Steel cut oats are good but, I am rarely organized enough to make them in a timely fashion. I do not add salt when making oatmeal. I do like to mix in diced apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and honey then right before eating, I add a tablespoon of heavy cream on top. I like to make cream of wheat savory, with butter, a little fresh chives if I have them, and a light grating of Parmesan cheese.

Ok. I have had hibiscus in sweet drinks and baked goods. The closest savory application was a sweet syrup used to build a pan sauce for meat, a little like a gastrique.

You added many, many thing to your dish. The flavor that resulted could be an interaction between any number of them. (and, just a tiny bit of burnt anything will create a strongly bad flavor) Plus, a lot of the flavors used could have completely overpowered the hibiscus. I'd say try again but with fewer ingredients. Also, I am curious why you chose the method you did with the eggs, I don't often see fried eggs started and then liquid poured around them.

I don't know. I only ate at one Taiwanese place (It's Vegetable) while I was in Japan and it was a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that makes all sorts of carefully crafted imitation meat dishes. We must have been served rice, but I have no recollection of it, so it must have been Japanese. We did not order fried rice. I was interested in the mechanics of how they made the more complex items like turning yuba (soy skins) into a mock whole fish on a platter. So we ordered all of the most expensive, whole piece type items rather than chopped mystery stuff.

I was glad to see Grayson knocked out of LCK, I am tired of her whining. Overall, for me, this episode of TC was the one that finally cleared out all the dead wood. Now we'll get down to real competition.

I tend to load up on candy and pastries that I haven't seen before, and snack on those often. My room eventually develops the look of a convenience store if the country has a lot of candy that doesn't get exported much. As a vegetarian, sometimes food is limited, but I try to eat every meal in a different place. I don't tend to eat breakfast much, so, if it's included with my room, I will rarely go eat it elsewhere. I often just want fruit and some tea for breakfast, so I also try to go to a grocery store or market to buy fruit. I try to eat local food, but, am open to whatever happens. Thus, I ate Sri Lankan food in Yokohama, and had really excellent Italian food in Gotanda -including the best pizza I have ever had, made by a chef who apprenticed in Naples at Il Pizzaiolo Del Presidente for three years. As much as I enjoy good meals, I also enjoy seeing cultural differences, so, I'll stop in a 7-11 or Dominos just to check out what's different. I may not actually eat anything, but, I like looking at the different options. I also like to see places where food is made, like street venders who put on shows, of places where people cook in a window. Here's baumkuchen being made in Ginza:

That's a pretty good beginner's guide. I think the thing that surprised me most about curry in Tokyo was the rice being served. No matter where I went, the rice was standard Japanese short grain rice. Some places cooked it with saffron, most left it plain, but, no place I found had anything like basmati or jasmine rice. To me, the Japanese rice is fine with a sweet curry, like Golden Curry, but, I prefer the long grain rices with more traditional Indian foods. I even found an obscure Sri Lankan place in Yokohama, run by a crew of big, burly Sri Lankan nationals who had a recorded cricket match showing on the tv behind the bar. (This was the only place where we ran into people speaking English.) They too had Japanese short grain rice on their buffet. I asked why they didn't have basmati and they said they tried to serve it initially, and no one would eat it. We assured them that their food looked great anyway, and it was.

BTW, just before the 'lemonade incident' videos like THIS were making news online. I remember thinking about sanitation as well as cheapness at the time. So, it might be tasty, but, those lemon slices/wedges may have been handled with bare hands by several people who practice questionable hygiene.

She said a friend had emailed the 'trick' to her and she wanted to try it out. This was around 2007, when 'hacking Starbucks' was popular.

I haven't seen the soup trick, but it was mentioned in an episode of Dragnet. I have heard of people making various cheaper drinks at coffee houses by ordering a small coffee in an extra large cup then filling the cup up with milk or cream from the complimentary condiment area. I did witness the lemonade once, much to my chagrin. My now-ex husband and I took his parents out to dinner at PF Chang's and despite us assuring them that they could order whatever they wanted, we were paying, my MIL asked for an ice water and a plate of lemon wedges and proceeded to make lemonade...*facepalm*...

I can see where allowing the water for free could lead to 'ghetto lemonade' (where people use a free glass of water, complimentary lemons and sugar to make a lemonade) and other concoctions like 'depression soup' (ketchup and hot water with free crackers). But, that said, I think better overall to just give people the water (hot/cold) and lemon for free. I would just think of it as goodwill advertising. The non-eating guest keeps a positive image of the place and at the very least won't spread nasty gossip about you, and might return to actually eat. I would say be mindful of why we refer to them as guests, not just customers or consumers. -Just as we like to be referred to as restaurateurs rather than vendors or manufacturers. Our transactions and interactions are far more complex than retail vending. The industry itself is continually changing, and growing. When I was a kid, there were a lot fewer restaurants per capita. More and more, people eat out because it's easier for them to do so than cooking. (sorry, sad but true) These non-foodies have incorporated restaurants into more of their lives than any previous generations. So, now, instead of people getting dressed up to experience what the restaurateur is showcasing, they expect the restaurant to accommodate their life circumstances. Maybe a group has a going-away dinner for a friend moving to another country, but one friend is having a medical procedure in the morning and isn't allowed to eat. I think is normal now for that person to expect to attend the gathering and not have to hide at home as yesterday's etiquette would have demanded. In addition to being mindful that many businesses owe their very existence to a societal shift of more people eating out, IMO, we should all remember of the lessons of the recent economic downturn that started in 2007. Guests have choices about where to eat and, IMO, if we don't keep thinking of their needs first, they can easily just grab a bite at another place down the street.

Congrats!

I agree with some of the statements at the Fresh Loaf. If you let an entire batch go too long, you have a lesser outcome in terms of lift and, you can get a very sour flavor which might be undesirable in certain breads. You also get the starch really, fully wet which affects texture. And, the fact that you have no way to make adjustments makes it riskier. I suspect the main reason, though, is that making a preferment like a biga or poolish is space-saving. A small preferment is easier to handle and move around, and takes up less precious space in a refrigerator. The real estate in a walk-in is very valuable, and if you can make one thing smaller, maybe you add an additional item to your menu or just have a smaller cheaper walk-in. Reliable commercial refrigeration is less than a century old, and was more costly in earlier times. Before that, bakeries (mostly in cities) relied on iceboxes and ice-cooled rooms, if they had cooling at all. I think there was a lot more juggling and finessing done at the last minute than nowadays in our very precisely controlled kitchens and equipment in terms of humidity and temperature.

Some of my group members have chickens, so I get eggs there. I also get homemade soaps and lotions. The group keeps a community seed box, and, some members also offer plant 'starts' -babies from seed. And, of course, anyone with indoor herbs and other plants brings those year round.

Look around on social media. I belong to a local FaceBook group of backyard gardeners who meet twice a month or so and trade produce to each other. Basically, it's free, everyone just brings some stuff and takes some stuff.

I would like to point out that you should be careful with room temperature rice, and to a lesser extent other moist carbs. Bacillus cereus doesn't get a lot of press, and most cases of it are not in the US, but it can be serious. A mother and young child died in Japan a couple of years ago from eating cooked rice left out on the counter overnight. I'd pack a thermometer or two, just in case. I'd also go in and clean the counters and sink with an antiseptic cleaner before I started, too. I have seen too many TV shows about dirty hotel rooms...

I mostly try to bring a cooler so I can buy some fruit for breakfast and snacks. I sometimes bring a cheap electric kettle to make tea, as the in-room systems have invariably had coffee made in them so many times that plain hot water is essentially weak coffee. Never been as ambitious as you, but, I like to venture out and try local restaurants.

I'd say a clear epoxy, it's strong. Since it won't really be in contact with food (much) should be ok to use, just let it cure for a few days. I worked as an assistant to a multi-media artist, and that's what we'd use to stick unlike things together, especially where some strength was needed.

Avoid silicone, it's terrible for cakes, etc. they will stick to it and, since it's an efficient insulator, the tops will cook before the sides. The plain steel or aluminum pans are fine.

I wish I could figure out a way to buy it! I can afford a little over half, if someone wants to partner up on a project...

Synonym for dried lime. Thought it might help you to search for recipes.

I have seen the whole dried limes used in stews. The ground ones, I occasionally grind a bit finer in a mortar and pestle and then use in a basic under-the-skin rub for roast chicken. (butter, salt, pepper, paprika, chopped parsley, crushed garlic, dried limes - black lemon)

I guess this is one of those 'you had to be there' moments. Maybe the shrimp was just a little bit overdone. Maybe not everyone's portion was rubbery. Up until they told Grayson to go, I really thought Angelina was toast. That said, Grayson has seemed whiny during every challenge and she never admits personal responsibility, she was always blaming something/someone else. Maybe it's editing. But, I never got the sense, this season, that Grayson was trying to work in the spirit of the challenges. I am still struck by her comments in the last challenge about how she couldn't really make a vegan dish, like her 'style' was so great she would never have to accommodate a vegan guest. (I like to think of the challenges, sometimes, as requests a restaurant guest would make.) I was sick of her eye-rolling attitude, maybe the judges and staff were as well. She complained louder, longer, and harder than anyone there -that seemed to be the main difference between her and the newer chefs. She certainly wasn't cranking out stellar food. It's fine, and she won LCK, but, she didn't make anything like that time a chef (sorry, forgot who) made the best soup Padma had ever tasted in a blindfold challenge where he got sausage casings as his main ingredient. I have taken several classes with Albert Adrià. And, he talked about both of the issues I see with Grayson: only serving good ingredients, casting aside the bad, and, doing whatever it takes to make the guest happy. BTW, they are casting for next season right now.

I love the sweet tamales! Call me old fashioned, but the ones with raisins really put me in a holiday mood.

My cats think the bathroom with a tub is theirs, and, one of my cats is a Bengal. (The indelicate issue here is that Bengals like to swim, they do this because they like to defecate in water, so, we don't fill the tub often. If I take a bubble bath, I get to hear loud cat wailing outside the locked door...) I have a big plastic tub that I use to clean big things. One day, I hope to install a commercial 3-compartment sink in my kitchen. Until then, I use the plastic tub.