lemniscate

I've been experimenting with making simple cheeses at home for a couple months. I bought some soft cheese cultures from cheesemaking.com. Funnily enough, this year I've been asked to make a cheesecake dessert for a Christmas dinner. I had already made a batch of the Fromagina and think it's suited for the cheesecake (I'm doing it SV in small jars) dessert. So, I have bypassed the Philly Cream Cheese shortage unintentionally. I use standard pasteurized whipping cream and milk. Not ultra-pasteurized, won't work. I've got a batch of sour cream going as we speak. So, some of the current shortages can be worked around with a tiny bit more effort. I've found the soft cheese cultures to be super easy to use and get a nice result. Just a bit more time involved.

I've used beer as the liquid in the melty cheese calculator with great results. I do not cook with hoppy beers though.

Get some black vinegar if you can to try. That makes a dipping or noodle bowl sauce really pop. It's malty/fruity with a umami undertone. And it loves a bit of chili heat too. @shain nailed it with his suggestions.

FYI on the Whole Foods 12 days of Cheese, in previous offerings it was 1 cheese per day (as I recall it), but this time all the 12 cheeses are available at the same time on special through the whole sale time. I just bought 6 or 7 of the types today. Saved a bunch of money.

Still loving mine. I use it for burgers, bacon and hash browns. I don't know why I haven't used it with eggs yet. (slaps forehead).

Ha! My new egg nog toast will be "Let there be Light!" This is true. This is not an egg nog for amateurs. I like the Everclear flavor cleanliness. I do not like rum, years of avoiding egg nog due to the rum flavors kinda made me adverse most offered versions. This stuff ages perfectly, one of my batches is from 2019 and is heavenly.

Year 3 of @ninagluck egg nog and I will only make her version ever after. That stuff ages amazingly. So smooth.

My cheap Oster french door countertop oven has a broil setting on it, but it is a completely useless setting. The thing does not broil. Bakes, yes. Broil, nope.

Costco has a rather insane discount again on those giant pork loins recently. I picked up two. One is dry brining in my usual back-bacon style, Morton's Tenderquick and sugar. Oh, I added a bit of liquid smoke into the dry brining bag this time as an experiment The other was parceled into large chops and is dry brining in a Tenderquick/sugar/juniper berries/bay/coriander/other spices/liquid smoke. This is my attempt at Kasseler-style meat. I will probably sous vide them once they are done curing and added some more spices to the bag for extra oomph. I am way behind on my crock of sauerkraut. I gotta get one going. I did also get some super ripe prickly pears off a neighbors patch and steam juiced them for syrup. Steam juicing is the easiest/safest way to handle these evil fruit. Paid back the neighbor with prickly pear flavored bottle of vodka. They liked it. The backyard pomegranates are in a jelly now.

Agree! I use the canned Mutti brand cherry tomatoes. They are sweeter and to me lack the "tinny" flavor of conventional canned tomatoes. I can't saw for sure they are skinless, I just can't recall noticing skins on the cherry tomatoes when I use it in sauce/cooking.

There are electric coil, infrared and those solid cast burner types. All price ranges and wattage ranges. OP did not say what type of stove they had before the induction upgrade though.

Why not get a high power standalone non-induction hot plate dedicated for the copper pot separately? That way he can use the pot he likes and stow the hot plate in between uses.

I looked up that King Ranch Casserole. SW comfort food on steroids. If pot lucks/hotdish/"bring a dish to pass" ever come back I might throw that together. @Jaymes recipe or Lady Bird's recipe

I was trying to salvage some baking mistakes/excesses by reworking them. First was 2 mini citrus pound cakes, which turned out heavy and shortbread-like for some reason. I cubed them up small and baked them until crunchy. Might be good on yogurt or custard; but I'm eating them as is as I work around the house. Second was a bunch of old fashioned doughnuts leftover from a Halloween party, I chopped them into bite size pieces and dried them a bit in a low oven. Used a can of crushed pineapple and eggs/milk mixture and baked in mini loaf pans. I did not add any additional sugar due to doughnut sweetness. Pineapple bread pudding. Tastes pretty wonderful, if I say so myself.

Make gummies?

We had record trick or treaters turnout here. Not sure what the difference is, but there are quite a few new people in the neighborhood in the last year or so. I love decorating the yard for Halloween and we give out the bigger candy bars, some kids told us they make sure to visit us early due to those. I know I would, I remember the houses that gave out the big bars from my trick or treating days too, many, many years on.

One of my favorite YT channels is an Azerbaijani country life vlog. I really enjoy all the various wood-fired ways of cooking and how they preserve foods. Today was Persimmons. I think Hachiya type, if I learned anything from this thread.

I grind my own ground meats and I save up cuts of fat in the freezer to add to the grind. I'd add that aged stuff to a leaner high quality beef as the fat and (hopefully) get a aged tasting burger. Could make it something special.

Would persimmon be good as a base for a blended salad dressing, like a fruit based French dressing version? BBQ sauce base? Fruit leather? Can they be pickled? Or make a persimmon flavored vinegar? Persimmon curry? Or chutney? I have to admit I haven't come across any persimmons in my edible history, so I'm just winging it here on ideas?

Blendtec EZ 600 $269.99 on Woot! Free shipping for Amazon Prime members. US only. In case you didn't know, Woot! is part of the Amazon eco-system and your Amazon login will work on Woot!. I've been purchasing off Woot! since before the big A swallowed them and have always been happy with the experience.

You can set the time to 0 min on the IP, it will build pressure just enough to close the valve and then switch to keep warm. You can then do a Fast release if desired. I imagine you can hit cancel anytime during the heat up process to see if the warming is sufficient. You will just need to play around with the timing to see what works best for the food inside.

I had a inadvertent audition for "Will it Blend?" this morning. I was making hazelnut horchata and dumped a tiny remaining bit of powdered sugar out of container into the Blendtec without looking. Apparently there was a espresso spoon included in the sugar, I didn't notice. I poured in all the remaining soaked rice and nuts and spices and fired her up. Sounded like a wood chipper. For about 1.5 seconds my brain locked up and I couldn't figure the off button out. Blendtec appears no worse for wear. Here's a unblended spoon next to the Blendtec'd one.

I haven't noticed empty shelves in any of the stores that sell liquor here. We can buy bottle liquor in supermarkets, convenience stores, warehouse stores (etc....) along with the normal liquor stores and distilleries/restaurants. I am hearing about a glass bottle shortage though, which it supposed to be making liquor distribution slower.

The movie Sleeper was presient.