Tri2Cook

I had to look it up, never heard of it. But there are so many different "tarian" categories now that I can't keep up. Everybody's looking for a way to be able to proclaim that they eat special without having to give up anything they don't want to so new categories keep being invented.

I'll expand a bit on my previous, somewhat flippant reply. Mainly, I like that I don't have to cook or clean up the mess. I can cook anything I can get in any restaurant around where I live myself and do a better job of pretty much all of it. That's not boasting, that's just commentary on the local restaurant scene. Good food is important but good service is a make-or-break for me. I'll go back to a place with decent food and good service. I won't go back to a place with amazing food and bad attitude.

I've only played around with luster dust a couple times. I happened to have a couple colors laying around from an old catering cake project so I figured I might as well find some use for it. I just mixed it with melted cocoa butter and painted it in. Possibly better to spray it in but I didn't having spraying equipment at that time. Worked pretty well, the dust was suspended in cocoa butter so there was more shine and depth than if it had just been right on the surface of the mold. I'm wondering if enough will stick to the mold if you just brush in the powder then give the inverted mold a tap to remove the excess. Especially if there's any residual cocoa butter in the mold from previous use.

I have that book. I don't remember that particular bit of information about scaling being in there but, if it is, it's nonsense. You can scale ganache recipes (assuming that's what you're referring to since there is no information in that book that I recall on making your own chocolate) down to a very small amount or up as far as you have a container to accommodate very easily. Edit: ignore this, didn't notice that the discussion had moved on to a second page and Jim had already addressed this.

You'd think that but wait until you start getting deep into the packaging, shipping and climate control issues that come along with online sales of chocolates. Unless you already have that stuff worked out. I did a little peeking into the shallow end of that pool and decided it wouldn't be worth the headache for what I do. But it is an easier way to potentially reach a larger market at a lower initial investment. I'd just replace "easier to start this way" with "cheaper to start this way".

That's the mold I use for 99% of my non-bar stuff but I've never molded solid chocolates in it, they're always filled. But 13 grams per cavity x 32 cavities is pretty easy to calculate if you're doing solids. That's 416 grams, so a little less than a pound per mold. So theoretically, 2 should cover you for your 2 lb. batch size if you're not filling them (with a little left over chocolate so a third mold is probably worth getting even though the 2 lb. batch won't completely fill all 3). But I thought 3 would be sufficient for what I was doing when I first bought them and very quickly learned that, at least up to a point, more is better with the molds you use most often.

Must be doing some maintenance or something, nothing on the site seems to be working right now.

Seriously, check out the Kindred Cocktails link. Even if you don't like the sound of the drink I linked to, it leads to a whole lot of other beer-inclusive cocktail recipes. You should be able to tell if a recipe sounds good to you even if it's not specifically recommended by anybody here. And you can be 100% confident that no cocktail I link you to will contain tomato or clam juice... ever.

The Two Trick Pony is pretty tasty.. Plus that link is to Kindred Cocktails which means there will be a list of other cocktails that include beer at the bottom of the page... which will probably lead to even more. You're almost certain to find something there that sounds good to you. We will never have to fight over who gets the last one of that drink. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I've always wondered who the person was that was looking at their nasty-arsed Bloody Mary one morning and thought "You know what would make this better? Clam juice!". Bleh.

Me too if it was for someone else. But I tend to be less adherent to that idea when it's something for me. Depends on what it is and where it lands.

That's pretty cool. I've never explored the gluten free world. I just assumed vital wheat gluten for gluten free was like holy water for vampires.

I know even less about it because I would have thought using gluten free flour then adding vital wheat gluten would have been kinda like using sugar free syrup and adding high fructose corn syrup.

I'm making tacos for three... me, myself and I. That way there will be lots of tacos for me. Nothing to do with Valentine's Day, just in the mood for tacos.

Except when you live somewhere where they don't. Even English language spellcheck isn't inclined to agree. I always use "chile" when warranted according to the criteria I'm familiar with, which is in agreement with what you said, and spellcheck invariably isn't happy about it.

I seriously doubt I'll ever make it there from where I live but I've been a fan of Don Lee ever since I tried to recreate his Cinema Highball way back in 2010 and he showed up on my blog to comment on it and then gave me the recipe for the infusions and the drink. Turned out I was pretty close with my attempt but not exact and small things can make differences so I did it again with his instructions. Not sure how he found it but I was hugely impressed that he took the time to do that on a small, poorly maintained blog (that I've since let fall by the wayside) by a nobody in the food and drink world.

It's on the short list, I shall give it a try. Thanks!

When you have a teenager in the house who prefers margarine over butter and eats a lot of Kraft Dinner* with about 3x the recommended amount of butter/margarine in it when she makes it and butter is $6/lb vs. $7 for 3 lbs of margarine, you keep margarine in the house... or I do, anyway. *She's old enough to make her own choices on how she wants to eat. I teach, prompt, suggest and sometimes even scold but I don't force. I just hope someday what I've tried to instill in her regarding food will claw it's way to the surface.

I definitely prefer butter. That said, I always have margarine in the house and it never goes to waste so I guess I'm helping keep the devil happy.

This is a post I was waiting for without even realizing it. I gave thought to covering meltaways in chocolate a while back mainly in the interest of making them easier to handle without having to coat them in powdered sugar and decided (without actually trying it... I know, shame on me) that it would probably inhibit the melty effect of the meltaways and never did it. Since I already know you wouldn't do it if the result wasn't good, I'm now giving new thought to it.

I almost included that one as well but I've only tried tripe twice, both times in menudo, so I'm not sure that's enough experience to classify it as a hate. I loved the soup itself, could have eaten it 3 meals a day for a week, but the tripe, not so much. I think it was more a textural thing than a taste thing but it seemed like their was a faint background note of livery in the taste as well. Could have been my imagination, just associating anything unpleasant tasting related to offal with liver, but I don't think that was the case. I certainly didn't do that with the chitlins, they were far more offensive than any liver experience I've ever had.

The only foods I've tried that I can honestly classify as a hate are liver and chitlins. I've made serious attempts to learn to like liver. I've tried different types and different preparations over many years and nothing has helped. Even burying a tiny bit of pate at the bottom of a Wellington doesn't do it. I can taste it, it's that same underlying taste in all variations and I can't learn to like it. So I think it qualifies as a hate at this point even though I don't want it to be. But I'd eat a big, fat liverwurst sandwich once a month for a year to avoid eating one bite of chitlins ever again. "Try them my way", they say. "You just haven't had them done right", they say. Poppycock... the only thing that makes chitlins better is covering them with the lid to the trash can. The most miserable thing I've ever put in my mouth. It was a battle to get them down each time I tried them and then, every time I burped for the rest of the day, I got to experience them all over again. There is no longer anything anybody could say or do to convince me to try them again.

The Quaker oats were from somewhere else... they were trying to get back home. I honestly have no idea what would cause that so I went with the easy facetious response.

Things almost always do... and the bigger potential mess involved, the lower the odds things will land any other way.

Probably... but, at this point in time, I don't put much effort into that area. I'm willing to revisit that policy at some point if I feel like it would be in the best interest of what I do. I don't intentionally make sure chocolate comes in contact with potential allergens but I'm unwilling at this time to guarantee that it has not and don't go to any great effort beyond my normal cleanliness and food safety practices to see that it doesn't.

That, or have your "we are unable to accommodate allergies and make no guarantees regarding potential allergen cross-contamination" disclaimer sign that would be an integral part of any chocolate shop I would open. For truth in advertising, the sign should actually say "we are unwilling to accommodate..." but "unable" sounds much more customer friendly.