Tri2Cook

Yup. Always a good thing... well, maybe not as good as free Bombay Sapphire. Beefeater is my go-to gin but free is free.

Just beating the LCBO price on the Beefeater?

The 7 is nice. I think my favorite (of those available where I live) is the anejo blanco... but that could be due to the fact that there is no other really good white available where I live.

Yeah, Manitoba has the 80 proof Lemon Hart too. I was hoping a bottle of the Cruzan Black Strap was coming home with a coworker that was in N.S. a few weeks ago but she said the stores around where the friend she was visiting lives didn't have it. I'm not too worried about that one right now though, I still have enough on my LCBO list to keep me broke and hungry for a while.

A small spark of hope for Canadian tiki? Lemon Hart 151 is apparently now available in Alberta. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will eventually spread it's way across Canada now that it's in the door. I'm not too hopeful at this point but it's a start.

The Ideas in Food folks did this a while back.

I have the tiki bitters but the LCBO doesn't carry Smith & Cross... which I'm assuming would be a much more noticeable difference than the missing bitters. Too bad, it does sound tasty.

I made a big pot of split pea soup with the bone and remaining ham from easter. A few bags went in the freezer. After an early warm spell that got rid of the snow, the temps returned to the chilly side here. This seemed like a perfect evening to break one of those bags out and bake a loaf of bread to go with it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if there are many things better than a good bowl of soup or stew (in all of their worldwide variations) with a good piece of bread...

That sounds tasty. Something to rotate with my occasional farmhouse cheddar and gooseberry jam bagle.

Great. I've grown quite attached to the bitter family... and here's yet another that will probably never make it to the LCBO. grumble grumble grumble

Considering the amount of microscopic sand particles we probably unknowingly inhale on a daily basis, I think a few pieces in the rice is going to have pretty low odds of increasing the risk by much. Not that I'm an expert on the matter.

Don't be. It's just cooking. Most of it requires a little more precision measurement-wise than some more common ingredients but otherwise it's just ingredients and cooking. Everybody using these ingredients has had failures. At least, everybody using them outside of established recipes has... and most if not all of us have had some duds even with established recipes. Just like in any other type of cooking. I've had many successes that I'm happy about that were my own ideas but I've tossed even more in the bin in the middle of the night when nobody was around to see. It's part of the process. Sometimes it's funny when I realize how ridiculous an idea actually was, sometimes it's frustrating when I really need an idea to come through. It's always fun though. Keep in mind, if worried about waste, that the amount of most of these ingredients used in an average recipe is extremely small. 50 grams of some items is going to go a very long way for casual home use. Jump on in, the water's fine!

Sounds tasty and looks good to me. PB&J is a theme that, in my opinion anyway, needs to have the components in close proximity. A PB&J sandwich wouldn't be the same with a bite of peanut butter here, a bite of jelly there. It needs to be all smashed together in the bread to do it's magic. Your dessert can be eaten in similar manner, some of everything in each bite... just like a good PB&J. Since that's what was requested, it's perfect. I don't think everything requires fussy arrangements.

Not really. It includes 20g each of soy lecithin, agar, sodium alginate, calcium lactate and xanthan plus a few tools that you won't really need (you probably have all or most of them around the house somewhere and none of them are strictly required). You can get 50g each of those same ingredients for not much more than half that price from Modernist Pantry. The DVD may or may not make it worth it for you depending on whether doing a little research/question asking is an inconvenience. There are plenty of places to get information and recipes on using any of the ingredients of that type on the internet (and lots of people here, myself included, will be more than happy to help you find them) and there are quite a few videos on youtube that demonstrate some of the techniques. It's not that there's anything actually wrong with the kit, it's just a lot of extra money for colorful packaging.

Thanks! I wasn't aware of an ideal moisture level in the dried product so that's definitely helpful information. The rest is pretty much what I do anyway but if over-drying can reduce the success rate I'll have to be a little more watchful during the dehydrating process from now on.

Rice will usually puff just by tossing it in hot oil. I've just found I get a bigger puff and more consistent results with the cook/dehydrate method. It seems to store well so I just do larger amounts and have it on hand when I need it. Also, in my first post, that should have said "I don't see any reason it wouldn't work with other grains". Apparently it was too early for proofreading before I posted.

I cook rice in an excess of water until what would normally be considered overcooked. I then drain it, spread it on trays and dehydrate it until completely dry. I store it in airtight containers until needed, a quick flash in hot oil puffs it nicely. It works equally well with barley. I don't see any reason it would work with other grains as well but I haven't played around with them yet. It also works, with a different textural result, with pasta.

And, when it's 2am and you're not paying the attention you should be while trying to get prep work done for an unexpected catering job for the next day, it can also help you discover that the face doesn't necessarily acquire that heat-resistance the hands build up over time. Not that I would know anything about that...

Sounds good to me. I have a text file I've been collecting drink recipes in for a couple years now. It never occurred to me to save sources as well. Looking back, that would have been a good idea. I'm pretty sure the recipe from whatever source I collected it from said dubonnet rouge (I'm not arguing that that's correct, just guessing that's what the person listed wherever I got it). The reason I'm assuming that is, when I change something in a recipe to accommodate what I have/can get, I always put it in parentheses beside the original ingredient. So thanks for the correction, I'm going to add that into my file (although lillet rouge is not available through the LCBO so I'll have to stick with the dubonnet).

I like the Penicillin, I'll have to try the Bee's Knees.

No problem. It's a tasty one. I've got to get over my fernet obsession or really stock up next time. Those 500ml bottles the LCBO carries go fast and the closest store that carries it is almost 5 hours away.

I'm not a collector of much of anything so I'd definitely be leaning towards giving it a try. If you're concerned about whether you'd be destroying the value of something valuable by opening it, do a little research. Shouldn't be too hard to find out what it's worth unless it's not worth anything. Information on valuable things people want is usually pretty easy to find. I like the bottle. If I found it for sale, what I'd be willing to pay wouldn't change much based on if it had that particular booze still in it or not... but I'm not an expert.

Pretty much the same way I felt about it. I enjoyed the 20th well enough and the offshoot 19th (bourbon, dubonnet rouge, creme de cacao, lemon juice) even more (I think, it's been a while) but something about the 21st didn't work as well for me. My lack of experience left me unable to figure out exactly what that something was but it didn't feel like it continued the chain started by the other two and didn't completely agree with me even as a standalone outside of the "century" theme.

I really should list sources when I post but I didn't think to keep them with the recipes as I collected so it always requires a search. Anyway, it was here.

Capsaicin extract or an extract-based sauce from any place stocking super-hot hot sauces would add a serious heat kick as long as it had a flavor profile you were okay with (many of the non-sauce extracts are in an oil base but there would be so little necessary that oil leaching out may not be an issue). If you wanted to keep it simple, you could puree some habaneros (or bhut jolokia if you can find them) in water, strain and use that liquid as your water base in the candy. I've had habanero lollipops that were plenty hot enough for the average chile head but if you're really trying to melt someone's face, they may not be enough on their own. The ghost chiles might be. The right extract or extract sauce definitely would.