Beth Wilson

If this was possible! Sign me up! Kerry, I always said you are an enabler :-) I have added this darn appliance to my wish list on Amazon, so half considering it now. Hoping the price drops a wee bit more.

I work with the food department in a hospital so I have the double whammy of lots of handwashing in the kitchen and lots of purell on the floors. As soon as I can I wash the purell off, as it creates a thick coating on my hands from multiple applications. The girls I work with swear by cocoa butter mixed with vitamin E. I found the big tub of this in the shampoo isle of my local drug store. It was fairly inexpensive too! It takes a minute to absorb but it sure has done the trick so far! I am hoping this winter will not be as bad as others with frequent applications of this on my breaks. When I was in the long term care facility they had a big tub of coconut oil on the kitchen table for anyone to use and it was popular, but I was leary of the communal use so I never tried it back then.

Oh Happy Days! Dropped in to the local thrift shop and scored a nice little Bamix with extra blades and a holder for a bargain $3. I have had my eye out for one of these for years so I feel like I won the lottery :-)

I am not up on what the difference is between CSA standards vs the states standards. However, I did find out that if an appliance or piece of equipment malfunctions causing an insurance claim, and it is not CSA approved then your insurance company will not allow the claim. Why? Since we do use the same power wattages and outlets, this makes no sense but insurance companies are always looking for a way not to pay. I have been watching this thread with great interest and now I want one!! I just don't have the counter top space until the toaster oven finally dies :-(

Deryn, Good for you to buy the Thyme now even though you don't need it. I lived on Manitoulin for 14 years and the available variety drastically changed from when I first moved there. Shopping in the local stores is what keeps them going. Manitoulin has the same issue with the "truck" that supplies the Island as most of them deliver to Sudbury one day and drive to the island the next with what remains. The result is many island residents then drive to Sudbury for the better variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. Sometimes a good shop off the Island was necessary, but there has been some improvement....Once in a while I actually did find shallots in the island grocery store :-)

Wow, just wow! That is a closet full of fun! Thanks for sharing your Manitoulin adventure with us again. It just doesn't feel like summer has started until you start posting all your wonderful creations in that tiny little kitchen :-) Have a safe trip home and I look forward to seeing you unpack that closet in the fall!

I go away for 3 days and come back to discover I have 4 pages to catch up on already! Whew! Thank goodness it is Manitoulin time and I can see the old haunts again :-) Looking forward to your shots of the Island and its fair offerings. DH and I were on a road trip this weekend and tried the poutine chips purchased at the gas station, a total impulse purchase. Needless to say, the bag was emptied pretty quickly. It must be a new flavour.

I never thought about how this would speed up the panning process :-) Nice basket! They are pretty lucky Yummy

I had no idea that Costco has such a good return policy. I don't blame you for keeping that as an option, and if you don't think you will use it much then that makes it easy. I googled the Gardenmaster for price comparison and there seems to be a varied price range so price shopping is a must. I have been tempted to try drying since Kerry got her Freeze dryer. I would love to get together sometime to see the great luch spots of Ottawa. I haven't ventured for many meals out there so I would love to try some new places out. Let me know if you do get a dehydrator and try it out.

After reading the freeze dryer threads I have a serious case of wanting one. Luckily since I am in a little one bedroom place, my space budget will not allow me to get one. A dehydrator on the other hand will fit nicely in my hall closet when not in use.

So I contacted Don Mercer regarding dehydrators: Here is a bit of his response with some very good points to consider. "This is an interesting quandary in which you and the folks in your discussion group are finding yourselves. I do not mean to endorse one brand of dryer over any other, so please don't take my comments that way. The Excalibur dryers are definitely top of the line. They have a few minor drawbacks in their design. With the square racks/trays and the airflow from back to front in the model I have, there is a need to turn the trays at regular intervals to even up the drying. I also tend to move the trays from one position to another (i.e., from lower positions to higher positions) at least once during the drying process. These are not really major issues. I think cost may be the real concern for many people. I have also used two of the Nesco / American Harvest round dryers. These are the SnackMaster and the GardenMaster (FD-1040 Digital Pro Food Dehydrator). I would recommend the GardenMaster unit over the Snackmaster one due to its wattage which affects the overall performance. Think of the wattage of a food dehydrator just as you would the wattage of a hair dryer. The higher the wattage, the more heat it produces to do the drying. The GardenMaster unit I have has a 1,000 watt heater (i.e., 1 kilowatt) compared to a lower wattage for the SnackMaster. If you run the GardenMaster dryer for 1 hour, it will use 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity and you can calculate the cost of drying on that basis. While the lower wattage dryers (e.g., 500 watts) use half the electricity on an hourly basis, they take longer to dry things. While you may be able get the temperatures that you want, the volumetric airflow through the unit may not be all that high, which affects the rate of water removal from the products you are drying. I would definitely go for a higher wattage compared to a lower wattage. To me, the heater in a 300 watt dryer is a bit too small (or under-powered). The round Nesco GardenMaster dryers work extremely well. The heating is uniform due to the way the hot air is distributed through the unit. It goes across the top and bottom surfaces of the stuff in the dryer (just like in the Excalibur dryers). I like the top-mounted heating and fan unit which is easy to lift off and allow you to get to the trays; plus the digital temperature display and timer (this is a guy thing). The round trays are easy to clean and wash in the sink. You can even wash the bottom portion which collects drips sometimes. With the Excalibur, you can wash the trays easily, but you need to wash out the bottom of the cabinet - which is not really a big deal. The GardenMaster (and other similar Nesco dryers) are easily expanded by adding more trays. Depending on what you are drying, you can actually expand these to quite a number of trays. Some people don't like the round trays since they think you can get more on a square rack in the Excalibur dryer. This didn't seem to be an issue for the work I was doing. You may also find the Nesco units easier to store since they are not as large." He has used all of the dehydrators so he shared some of his observations with me. Hope this helps you to make a decision. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. He also mentioned his book has recently been revised (earlier this year) but he has not seen the latest revised edition in stores yet. I think I might wait a bit on the book purchase to pick up the latest one.

Wow Kerry! What a cool machine! I wish this was around when I had started in the chocolate industry. Would have saved me a lot of wasted time and product. Can't wait to see it in action!

Great site Deryn! Elsie, I noticed on the site it has the Dehydrator Bible for sale. One of the authors Don Mercer is a professor at U of Guelph and I was lucky to have him as a professor here in Kemptville. He travels the world helping developing countries work on ways to economically dry and store various types of foods to help alliviate starvation. He was very interesting and shared some of his projects with us. I am going to pick up a copy of that book and I am tempted on one of the smaller dryers. One thing I know Don Mercer talked about drying spices and garlic :-) Said his dog still won't go near the drying shed he set up in his backyard a couple of years after drying many batches of garlic. I have looked in thrift stores in and around Ottawa, but all I seem to find is the round ones and their condition never seemed to be great so I haven't been able to pick up a reasonably priced one. Lee Valley has this one http://www.leevalley.com/US/garden/page.aspx?p=66386&cat=2,40733,44734,66386

Doesn't look like the Ottawa St I remember....YUMMM! What did you end up sampling? Any Calamari trucks in the area

I am curious about the Dunkin DOnuts....do they have the usual donut offerings or did they up their game to compete with the local artisans? Love the tour you are offering us...since I can't afford the trip I am drooling over your pictures and putting some items on my bucket list. My list has grown since reading this thread :-)

Darienne, Thanks for posting this topic! I have been interested in cooking good thai food lately so I am following this topic with great interest. Looking forward to seeing the results of your experiments :-)

So I am guessing if you had this seed generator in your bag it is not too big then? Sounds very interesting! Who makes a 110V 18" belt coater? I was just thinking of the nice sales guys that had a really nice, BIG, shiny enrober that they could give me a deal on, of course it had 3 phase power and all....and I left thinking I better google what 3 phase power is before I talk to the next guy As I suspected, my little old house on Manitoulin did not have 3 phase power but don't tell those nice sales guys, had some cool swag !

Love the little E'coli....who knew those nasty germs were so adorable! Oh how I miss the PMCA Conference. You always learned something new about the up and coming trends but they also reminissed about how things were done in the "olden days". I think the last conference I went to they had just approved the sweetener Stevia in the hours before the conference started so all the vendors had stevia sweetener samples and lots of products they were experimenting with. pomegranate was the next "IN" flavour everyone was working with...so it has been a few years since I have been. What was the new flavour for confections that was promoted this year? Any new and innovative equipment or tools that showed up at the vendors show? I know I scored some good deals on some equipment that the sales guys had demonstrated on the Monday's vendor show.. Of course I had to clean the chocolate out of the melter when I got it home

Haven't been to a thrift store for a while so I decided I would stop in today to see what was new. Didn't think there was much new until I almost tripped over a box in the isle 5 minutes before closing. The box said ALL CLAD and had a price of $7 on it. I just bought it. DH gave me a hard time the last time I bought an All Clad frying pan for $1.50 but after using the pan he now understands my excitement. I believe we will be having fodue soon! There was also a package of William Sonoma fondue forks in the box. Why someone would give this pretty little thing up is beyond me.

ML Club sounds good! Perhaps I will suggest it :-)

Well, they use turkey cold cut slices....it is a cafeteria after all....some days when we have an abundance of roast turkey breast we will use the real stuff. I just go by who is working that day but I thought there must be a set standard out there for the sandwich...I personally can not eat that much food on a plate at once so I have always gone for a BLT if I must eat in a diner type of place so making clubs is new to me.

They both put mayo on all three slices. The club is surprisingly very popular.

I cover off lunch breaks in the cafeteria at the hospital I work in, among many other duties. I find the clubhouse sandwich is always popular but when I work with certain people they INSIST this is the way to make the sandwich right....and they both do it differently. One insists the order is toast, turkey, lettuce, toast, bacon, tomato,toast The other insists it is toast, lettuce, tomato , toast, bacon, turkey, toast. It doesn't matter to me either way, I just have to remember what way the sandwich is made depending on who I am working with that day. But it has gotten me wondering, is there a set standard that I should be following? I just find it funny how insistent they are on the placement of the ingredients and yet they are both doing it differently. Anyone have Clubhouse Sandwich advice?

Your panning looks really good! What colouring are you using for the red? I love the brilliance of the red raspberries.

Crunchy? Did you increase liquids or fats to compensate for the freeze dried cheese? I imagine the crunchy cheese would make an awesome topping for a casserole :-)