Tri2Cook

That's a shame. Even for someone not interested in doing the type of food he does, there's a whole lot of good cooking information in that book. I like the book more for it's how and why information more than for it's recipes.

One day, all will cast aside the vain search for theory and rules of man regarding chocolate work and pay heed unto my words that the Chocolate Gods either smile on you that day or they don't... and on that day, my church will be born. Of course, there are basic procedures, commandments if you prefer, that must be followed to appease the Chocolate Gods and increase the odds of them smiling upon your work. But in the end, you can do everything right and they can still say "not this time" and leave you frustrated, confused and second-guessing everything you did. I never claimed the Chocolate Gods can't be jerks sometimes.

I told the kid a while back that she was going to be my designated Oompa Loompa. That she doesn't even have to help with the chocolate as long as she sings the song any time anybody stops by. She was less than impressed with the idea.

I'll trade post chocolate session messes with you any time you'd like. I've pretty much decided that the only way I'm going to improve is by melting a ridiculous amount of chocolate for the job at hand so that I don't have to try to dump any of it back into the melting container when I empty and scrape the molds. That seems to be where it all goes bad.

I have no idea how it's done, not even a guess, but I'd sure like to find out. While everybody else is pushing forward gathering the unique and complicated techniques, I'm plodding along a couple days behind picking up the easier stuff that was tossed aside for something more fancy. It'd be kinda nice to pick up something that looks like it was tossed in the easy pile by mistake.

And they look amazing to me in those pictures.

I can't be helpful on that one. While I haven't done anything anywhere near that amazing with decorating, getting good, or even decent, pictures of what I do seems to be an impossibility for me. I have one of those commercial fry warmers, basically an adjustable-height aluminum frame with two fixtures for heat bulbs, that a friend from a local restaurant asked me if I wanted because he was getting rid of it. My first instinct was to say no, don't need more clutter. But then it occurred to me that maybe I could use regular bulbs in it instead of heat bulbs and use it for lighting for pictures. So we'll see if that helps when I get around to trying it. With heat bulbs, it could also function as a warming station if I ever found myself doing any kind of sugar work... not that that's in the plans. Worst case, I can just find it a new home if it doesn't prove useful. Even if that home is the dump. Edit: and it just occurred to me that sitting under the lights might be a handy place for bowls of chocolate to stay a little warmer during the winter as well.

Probably my fault for that confusion... I thought that was the Premier site.

I see the small drum is now available on the Premier site. I think I'm going to end up grabbing it sooner rather than later. Information on formulations is hard to find and I haven't yet developed a knack for tasting a nib and knowing where I want to go with it. Large batches of experimenting with percentages is a bit costly so I'm starting to think a way to make really small amounts is more mandatory than optional.

Gotta have a tour rider... makes sure they don't try to stick you on the small couch in the little private grief room near the ICU with a pillow and a blanket.

I thought Moon Pies were basically two cookies (more like graham cracker) with marshmallow sandwiched between dipped in flavored coating. Chocolate, vanilla and banana are the flavors I remember but I haven't had them in a whole lot of years so I wouldn't be surprised if there are others. There's a similar product in Canada called Wagon Wheels.

I prefer baby back for exactly the same reason, with me being on the other end of the rib as far as fat content preference goes.

It is time well spent making my own chocolate. I enjoy the process and I enjoy seeing how different a chocolate made exactly the same way each time using beans from different locales can be. But I agree it's not everybody's time well spent making their own. If I didn't have an interest in doing the bean to bar thing and was only doing bonbons, etc., it wouldn't be worth it to me either. I don't think I'd enjoy making chocolate by just mixing together cocoa powder, cocoa butter and sugar and I certainly don't think it would be a good idea to make that the mandatory method for pastry and chocolate schools and classes. But if, as Jamal12 has intimated is his situation, that was my only way of getting chocolate to work with... sometimes you do what you gotta do.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing. I honestly can't remember if the ones she used were smoked or not. I just remember eating green beans, cottage ham and potatoes until I could barely move any time she made it.

For some reason, it's never occurred to me to research it. It was just something grandma cooked with the beans from her garden and potatoes. But a quick google trip reveals that it's a brine cured and smoked boneless pork shoulder butt. So making my own is now on the agenda.

So that's the problem... I have to learn to stop picking small, middle-of-nowhere places to call home.

My grandmother used to do exactly that other than she didn't peel a strip of skin from the potatoes and in the pot with the beans and potatoes was a hunk of meat sold as "cottage ham". I have no idea what that actually was other than tasty. She lived in a heavily German populated area, not sure if that has anything to do with that particular piece of meat or not. I've never found it in a store anywhere I've lived and when I've mentioned it to people in the meat department at any stores I've lived near over the years, they've just looked at me like I had a horn growing out of the middle of my forehead.

if the marshmallows you're eating have no real flavor of their own, then you're eating the wrong marshmallows.

I've found references to replacing all or part of the sugar with isomalt to reduce sweetness. It's on my list of things to get around to trying but that's becoming a pretty long list so who knows when I'll do it.

That's pretty much my system too.

I'll have what she's having!

That's not a favorite for me either if it's too prominent in the mix. When it showed up on the LCBO site years ago, I got the local store to order two bottles for me and I haven't even made a decent dent in the first bottle. I got a little carried away in the early part of my booze collecting and would overstock stuff I was afraid I'd never see again locally. Then I discovered I'm not the drinker I aspired to be and don't really go through a whole lot of it. So I guess I've set things up for the family and friends to have one hell of a party to see me off if something happens to me.

Then their stance on the sharing doesn't make sense regardless of how they do with booth sales. Do they give a reason why they have a problem with sharing a double wide?

That would bug me. Unless they're usually stuck with a lot of unsold booths... then it would still bug me but at least I'd understand why they were doing it.

I'm the scourge of proper list people everywhere. I wait until the one and only local grocery store posts it's flyer for the week on it's facebook page, look through it to see if anything I need is on sale (which is a bit silly really since it's the only store and I'll have to buy it there regardless), and make an unorganized list on a text file on my laptop. Shopping day usually leads to things being crossed off and things being added and my mind being changed about things I want to make at the last second (frequently brought on by a sudden bout of laziness telling me I really don't want to do whatever it is I wanted to do). Then I write it on whatever scrap of paper is handy and head to the store where invariably, they'll be out of some key item on my list for whatever I decided to make or I'll forget something despite it being on the list. Happened this very weekend. Went to make the jerk seasoning paste for the chicken and pork I wanted to do in the smoker and realized I forgot to grab the onions... which was the first thing on the list I took with me.