Tri2Cook

That would require some pretty extreme measures. Mom's beef vegetable soup was to die for... but I'm not in any hurry to be literal with that.

I'm thinking that ginger butter would probably be pretty amazing spread all over this piece of banana bread I'm eating right now.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad idea, at least they're trying to think differently. It's just an idea that invites a lot of major hurdles into a situation that's already a crap-shoot to begin with. Opening a restaurant and successfully maintaining it's existence is difficult enough using proven methods. Opening a restaurant that allows each and every customer to control the menu and purchasing borders on the insane. At a $30/person price point, they're going to have to sell a lot of meals just to cover the overhead. So lets say, just for fun, that you can seat 50 people and you're able to successfully fill them each and every evening. That's 50 different meals. Not 50 plates off of a set menu (that's easy) but 50 separately dictated meals requiring 50 separate sets of ingredients and the requisite space to cook those 50 different meals. You also need the staff to prep and cook those 50 meals. And tomorrow it's going to be a different 50 meals with all of the above mentioned requirements. Even if you get 10 of those people ordering meatloaf, they may have 10 different ideas as to what constitutes a good meatloaf. So now you have to make 10 different meatloafs to feed 10 people. And that would be for one sitting, which isn't going to be enough. So you turn all of those tables and now you double everything I just said... daily. I think you're going to need to have Tylenol and Rolaids dispensers strategically placed throughout the kitchen and office areas and a large stack of applications on file.

I'm not sure that's exactly what he was saying. It's not so much that it shouldn't be important as it's that a sadly large percentage of people don't particularly care (up to a point, anyway). If they can get what they want, when they want it, at a price they're willing to pay, they will come. And come back. Even if the quality isn't where it should be. But they'll have higher expectations for a place like you're suggesting than they would even for other places that are at the same price point... because you've added 24 hrs. of anticipation to the mix.

I like the idea of this topic but I don't think I'll ever get the smoke thing with scotch. I've tried but I just don't get it. I'm not sure how they manage to infuse the essence of hospital emergency room into the booze but it doesn't remind me of anything I associate with the word smoke... unless maybe a hospital was on fire.

Didn't realize it was better for you if I went the other route or I would have. If your price includes shipping, it's not a huge difference even with the exchange. It comes to something like $56 Canadian via your site and amazon.ca is charging $50 (which is pretty much on par with amazon.com's $35 at the current exchange rate). I may just cancel and go with your site... I like the sound of those perks you mentioned.

Yeah, I saw that and hit the pre-order. I held out on pre-ordering through the site Rob linked to in hopes it would hit amazon.ca at some point. The main site is in US dollars and the exchange right now is really bad at our end. But I would have ordered it regardless, this one will be in my collection.

I've used the Boiron pear puree for the chocolate/pear mousse from the Duby's Wild Sweets: Chocolate book and the pear stood up to the chocolate very well. But I have no idea if it would have done as well scaled down to bonbon size.

Currently munching on pizza with mushroom, red bell pepper, onion, sliced fresh garlic (nothing says romance like good ol' garlic breath) and roasted unsalted cashews. And of course, a generous dose of crushed dried red chiles.

Being the exciting people we are, we're going to make pizza and watch the mid-season premier of The Walking Dead. Ain't life grand!

I haven't done enough with it to know the answer to that but I would think the runoff can always be salvaged. A little white in with a red glaze, for example, isn't going to make a lot of difference when added back to the main mass. And if it does alter it too much, you could just toss in some more red color. There would be some color combos that would prevent it being returned to the main batch (any color over a white base, for example) but if you were using, say, a green color over a white glaze, you'd just get a really pale green when the runoff was mixed. That could be used as a pale green glaze or you could add green coloring gel to get whatever shade of green you want. I can't picture too many situations where actual waste would be generated though, it just may take a little planning and creativity to make use of everything.

That'll be convenient but honestly it wasn't too difficult to figure out just by spending a few minutes watching his youtube videos. I've puttered around with it a bit on a very small scale without problems. I don't really want to make large quantities of cold use neutral glaze myself though, so I'm digging around for a Canadian online source for it before I do any serious playing.

I apparently can't eat up to my expectations. I soaked the inside of an onion bun with au jus from the roast, piled on the beef and horseradish and it disappeared in no time. It was so tasty, I was sure I'd want another by halftime. Nope, was still feeling stuffed from the earlier sandwich and potatoes. Kinda disappointing that I couldn't stuff down more. The game was pretty good. I like defensive games and Denver's defense is a monster. Peyton didn't do much but he didn't have to because Cam couldn't do anything. They got in his head early. Even when he had opportunity, he couldn't take advantage of it most of the time. I really hope Peyton uses this as his exit. A great way to end it and he's just too banged up to keep doing it. Shouldn't be a problem now anyway... Eli can no longer taunt him at the family gatherings with his 2 rings.

Food's done, ready for game time. I'm not gonna bother with pictures. It looks like what it is. A plate of very thinly sliced medium-rare beef, a plate full of onion buns and a frying pan full of potatoes with some other stuff. No wine for me. Maybe a beer or two but no more than that... work comes early tomorrow.

The roast went into the tank at 55 C last night. I called a game-day audible on the pretzel buns and decided to do onion buns instead. I like pretzel buns but you have to eat them all or make a choice: leave them in a paper bag and they start getting hard by the next day or seal them in a container where they stay fresh but the pretzel salt dissolves. It's the Super Bowl so healthy isn't really a consideration, the sandwiches are going to be accompanied by potatoes fried with kielbasa and onions.

Looks like I'm definitely doing the beef sandwiches. Still no idea if I'm gonna do anything else with it. Shelby, I almost want to pull for your Broncos just because I think this will be Peyton's last, win or lose. I'm not particularly a Denver fan but I'm not a hater either. But the same applies to Carolina and, though he obviously has some maturing to do, Cam's pure enthusiasm and joy for the game is refreshing. It's nice to see someone at the pro level purely happy to be on the field playing. So I'm having a tough time deciding who to pull for... maybe I'll just sit back and enjoy it whichever way it goes. As a lifelong Bama fan, both of those QB's were thorns in our side so it feels kinda weird cheering for either. But there's no denying their talent.

That's awesome. That's a lot of f'ing cakes for a day in the home kitchen (unless you have one serious home kitchen). Best of luck with the business.

I like white chocolate. I like milk chocolate. I don't care if adults are supposed to be too sophisticated for them. I fully respect people's right to their own opinion but honestly, just in my personal opinion, I've grown a little bored with the whole "it's sweet" complaint. It's dessert. It's candy. It's supposed to be sweet. I went through the dainty and savory dessert thing for a while and I've returned to a point where I just don't really care about that anymore. I want my sweets to be sweet and decadent and leaving people feeling slightly guilty about eating them. But off the soapbox and back to the subject at hand... I'm not sure I understand the difficulty in getting good flavor in white chocolate. I find that to be the easiest chocolate medium to get flavors to stand out in. Unless we're only talking about the sweetness level. In which case, I've got nothing. It doesn't bother me.

I'm in the far north-west part and it's been hovering in the -20 to -30 range for the past few weeks. It's warmed a bit this week but still staying mostly in the -10 to -20 range. Not complaining though, the serious cold hit way later than normal this year.

I'd much rather do something in the smoker than indoors but that's a non-option here this time of year. Unless something unusual happens with the weather, my smoker won't see the outside of the shed for another couple months or so. Still not 100% convinced that I'm going to stick with the original plan though.

I wouldn't at all mind sharing... but I don't have a special recipe. I just use a standard run-of-the-mill white bread recipe, give them a water and baking soda boil, egg wash, pretzel salt and bake.

The plan right now is to toss a beef roast in the sous vide tank, bake a batch of pretzel buns, buy some good horseradish and make sandwiches. Not sure what, if anything, will accompany the sandwiches and the plan could change entirely before the weekend depending on whether I'm in the mood to muck around with pretzel buns or not. I always want to do a pile of finger foods and snacks but I've come to accept that all I do is attack the snacks early in the game, fill up and the rest sits there untouched. So I've switched in the last couple years to just making a simple meal that doesn't require any game-interference work.

Just out of curiosity, this recipe is identical to the recipe in one of Gerald Sattler's videos other than it contains ~50% more gelatin (40 g here, 26 g in his video), is that just a personal preference thing or are there situational reasons to vary the amount?

I'll give that a shot. I have homemade falernum and allspice dram in the cabinet right now. Both are more on the high proof side than standard, I don't use them often and wanted them to last on the shelf, but they taste good.

Not sure how I missed that one. I could have tried this a long time ago. Your sub is a no-go for me though. No Plantation and no batavia arrack. My rum selection isn't at all great, just good for where I live. Other than the two I already mentioned above, I have Appleton Extra, Barbancourt 3-Star, Coruba, Cruzan Black Strap, Doorly's XO, El Dorado 12 year, Flor de Cana 7 year, Goslings Black Seal, Lemon Hart 151, Lemon Hart 80, Mount Gay Extra Old, Smith & Cross and Kracken. Seven of those (plus the Wray & Nephew mentioned above) aren't available here, they required the help of others or, in the case of the Lemon Hart 151, some creative finagling to obtain. So that's what I have to work with.