Tri2Cook

That sounds pretty tasty to me.

If that includes Rob's (gfron1) peanut butter pie, I don't know what to suggest. That's peanut butter pie perfection as far as I'm concerned. Maybe toss a little ginger and hot pepper in and do a sweet play on the African soup?

Interesting. Something to keep in mind for down the road for doing flavor and idea testing. Might be nice for small "what you need right now" batches of nut and praline pastes too.

That remains to be seen... it still has to be tempered and molded. Molding the 50% milk this weekend so I'll know soon if I got that one right.

I just found out it existed about 10 seconds ago when I saw you post.

Not a good picture with the glare but the Venezuela Sur del Lago 70% dark chocolate is out of the machine. In the interest of not wanting the machine to be bored, I immediately got a batch of 40% milk chocolate going using the same beans.

It's Canada Day, the day to celebrate all things Canadian... and being the brilliant person I am, that completely slipped my mind and I got everything I needed yesterday to make Cajun bbq shrimp today. Think I could claim the Acadian tie-in and get away with it?

I'm looking at those pastries and remembering pictures of the pastries I've seen that he made (assuming that's alleguede) and thinking "if they only knew, they wouldn't have sent that to him".

Take away the paper packaging and the tray and dump it on a plate and it doesn't look much different than what I had for dinner tonight. Except I had to make my own... so you win.

Next up, Sur del Lago from Venezuela. This is only a few minutes in so it's still really coarse and the sugar hasn't been added yet. Intense aroma and taste at this point, as would be expected. End goal is 70%.

They actually sell Schweddy Balls! The SNL skit with Alec Baldwin as Pete Schweddy was funny. They did another one with Betty White as Florence Dusty and her Dusty Muffin that was awesome.

That may be the best reason of all to give it a shot... no ingrained "you can't" or "that won't". Just an idea, an end goal and an open canvas. I was by no means suggesting it can't be done or that compromise is the only option. I just don't have the answer myself, it doesn't fall within the scope of anything I've done. What I think will be the biggest hurdle, you've already recognized. Your chocolate of choice not being overwhelmed into obscurity by the other ingredients.

The thing is, some of your requests come with very specific parameters that make the likelihood of anybody having something that fits pretty small. That's not a criticism at all, it's great. I'm all for knowing what you want and going after it, I just think this is going to be one of those situations where a bit (or a lot) of experimenting is going to be involved. As I'm sure you know, sometimes what you want doesn't exist and you have to figure out how to make it exist. I don't think I've ever experienced a more traditional style cake where I could tell you which chocolate was used in it if I wasn't the one who put it in there.

I tend to agree with paulraphael on this subject even though eating in this manner worked very well for me with no bad effects that I'm aware of. The main reason being, unless it's going to be a permanent change in how you eat or you have a plan in place to replace the diet with something else once you get the weight off, it's not a great solution. When you stop doing it, unless you do something else to compensate, weight comes back on amazingly fast. Personally, I'd pick the exercise and change in eating habits over the diet every time now just because it's a preferable situation for me, not because I think the diet is necessarily bad. Boring, I just plain ol' got sick of eating that way, but not particularly bad and a large part of the boring was my own fault. Be prepared for one thing though, people who have decided this type of diet is bad will take every opportunity to point that out to you. If you sneeze in public or your feet smell that day, it will be the fault of the diet. At least, that was my experience. I had to have an emergency appendectomy (only emergency because my stubborn arse wouldn't see a doctor despite all of the pain and suffering I was experiencing until I reached a point where my wife told me I was either going or she was calling them to come get me) about 5 or 6 months into the diet and I don't know how many people told me after that "I knew that diet was dangerous".

I tried this type of diet once many years ago when I got into cycling as a form of recreation and relaxation and wanted to shed a bunch of pounds fast to make the cycling easier. A co-worker told me about their success with it so I gave it a shot. I didn't do any of the math or science that you're supposed to do to make it as healthy as possible. I just ate meat, cheese and eggs for about 3 weeks then started eating a "salad" of whatever greens were handy, flax seed meal and some form of low-carb dressing once a day in addition to my meat, cheese and eggs. Not at all the proper or healthy way to do this type of diet but that was when I was doing double duty working in a restaurant and co-owning a catering business and I didn't have (or, more accurately, want to take) the time for precision. It worked, I dropped a lot of weight fairly fast and after a short initial adjustment period, didn't have any lack of energy or focus as a result. One thing I did learn (the hard way), no matter how tired of it you get, drink A LOT of water and consider some type of low carb fiber source (which is why I started adding the flax seed meal to things). This type of eating, at least the way I was doing it, can plug the pipes like nothing else I've ever experienced if you fall behind on staying hydrated.

I don't know about arthritis but they certainly can cause or, at least, exacerbate my use of foul language at times.

Since last night's not quite holy basil chicken already had me crossing the boundaries of authenticity, I decided to go ahead and cross them some more today. I had some non-creamy slaw in the fridge left from last week's rib meal (this stuff seems to be indestructible, it's still tasty and crisp after a week soaking in the dressing). Shredded cabbage, carrot, celery, onion and apple in a vinegar dressing (just vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper and dry mustard heated and poured over the veggies while hot). I had a few Thai chiles left from last night so I chopped up those, some garlic and some basil and mint and tossed it all in the slaw along with a little fish sauce and sweet dark soy sauce before work this morning. So dinner tonight is rice, leftover not quite holy basil chicken and the modified slaw layered in lettuce leaves lined with more fresh mint and basil. Authenticity can take a leap tonight, this stuff is good.

I was pretty excited about those until I found they were incredibly difficult to find a source for that would ship to where I live and then, having finally found that, found out how expensive they are. The excitement was quickly diminished. I still like the idea of them though.

Almost Thai holy basil chicken... no holy basil to be found so plain ol' basil had to do. Still pretty tasty..

During the really long winters here, keeping my work area at 20 C would require additional heating beyond what I normally do, not cooling. There's usually only maybe 3 months out of the year that I have to sometimes resort to cooling the room. So I've become used to having my heat gun plugged in and warmed up whenever I'm working. But the gravity feed brushes were right there in my face when I bought the others, don't know why it didn't occur me to ask around about which would be better.

Of course I hear this about the gravity feed after I' already have 2 siphon feed airbrushes...

Sometimes one boasts just a little more than one probably should have and attracts the attention of the chocolate gods. Apparently attracting the attention of the chocolate gods via boasting is unwise and viewed as a challenge. It's been unusually hot this week for this early in the summer where I live and then today it clouded up and started raining. So now the humidity gauges in my house are reading somewhere around 73% and nothing is helping bring it down any significant amount. So I'm going to edit my answer to say: sometimes I turn on the air conditioner and, if needed, the dehumidifier, and do chocolate work... if the chocolate gods find it within their hearts to allow me to do so.

Managed to get a few minutes at the farmer's market yesterday. Pretty disappointing if you wanted vegetables but that's not unusual here this early in the season. Two of my favorite vendors were there though, the lady from the elk farm and the guy from the beef and pork farm. So I grabbed a few things from each of them plus the lady from the elk farm always brings a selection from the semi-local cheese maker so I grabbed some of that too. The bread lady was there so I grabbed a couple things from her as well. So meat, cheese and bread... at least the important stuff was covered. The wood fired oven pizza guy was there too but the line was longer than I had time for so I had to skip that. I bought a small package of beef and cranberry summer sausage at the beef and pork guy's booth, didn't want to invest too heavily because I was a bit skeptical. That was a mistake, I'll buy a larger amount of that next time I get the chance.

Nobody... not even me. I don't make myself a cake, I don't buy myself a cake and I'm fine with nobody making me a cake. I'm not a birthday humbug. If somebody does something, I'm a good sport about it and it's appreciated. It's just not something that's all that important to me.

That is, has always been and will probably always be, my biggest weakness. It was tempered to a degree by it being one of Ann's biggest strengths... now it just runs free and causes me no end of trouble.