blue_dolphin

Interesting - so many cocktail weenies! And what's up with the Irish Stew in Iowa? Buffalo Chicken Dip was the most Googled recipe from California and I had to Google to find out what it was - a dip FOR chicken or a dip made with chicken? It's the latter, in case you were wondering. And while that was the top recipe for the whole state, Tortilla Pinwheels were on top in Los Angeles and 7-Layer Dip in San Francisco. Must be a lot of it going on in San Diego! Edited to add that I made guacamole and margaritas, both from the recipes in Nopalito.

Debating what to have for breakfast while sipping a mug of café de olla I've been testing and tweaking recipes since I went to a restaurant in Burbank called Café de Olla and enjoyed their signature beverage. I think I've nailed the spice mixture and coffee strength. I also like using a separate piloncillo syrup so I can add just a touch of it in a hot mug to complement the spices and a little more in a tall glass of iced café.

I buy eggs at the farmers market from a couple who pasture their hens in an organic orange orchard. They are $7.00/dozen for large eggs and that's rather a splurge for me but I'm lucky that I can afford to make that choice to support a local, small business whose practices I value. Blindfolded, I 'm not certain I could taste a difference, but the beautiful deep orange yolks certainly add visual value to my plate! A couple of stands away at the market, I could buy eggs from Apricot Lane Farms, aka 'The Biggest Little Farm.' They price their chicken eggs at $14/dozen. I have not tried them so my personal "magic number" must lie somewhere between seven and fourteen 🙃

Sounds like what we might call cocktail sausages, which I would never put into a cocktail!

Long time, no popsicles 🙃 We had a high temp in the mid '80s today, no doubt brought on by my investment of a king's ransom in a new furnace which was installed yesterday. I had some very ripe, end of the season persimmons from the farmers market so... Persimmon & cream on the left, persimmon & yogurt in the bottom row and basic persimmon pops. All are sweetened with honey and tarted up with a bit of lime juice.

Sounds like everything came out just fine! My personal preference is to serve the meaty red beans over rice rather than cooking everything together so I would have reheated the bean mixture in the oven, CSO or stove top, giving things an occasional stir while I cooked the rice in the Instant Pot.

If you never visited the Los Angeles Farmers Market that @heidih linked to, you did miss out on a gem. Depending on when you lived Azusa, you may or may not have missed out on others. There were always lots of farmstands around but the California Certified Farmers' Markets that are now widespread weren't established until 1978, when the Direct Marketing Act enabled farmers to sell their own produce directly to consumers. The first Los Angeles County farmers market under the CCFM umbrella consisted of four farmers in the parking lot of a church in Gardena in 1979. I was living in Santa Monica in 1981 when that city started its Wednesday market in the downtown area and there was quite a bit of resistance on the part of local merchants who were concerned about access to their shops being blocked. Very different today, of course. Dates above from the City of Santa Monica website

Bean Club shipping update from Steve via Facebook; Me? I’ll be happy with my beans whenever!

I'm not interested in a straight steam oven. It's the ability to add steam to high heat cooking that does the magic for me.

Sounds like a really flavorful bread! I'd go with a simple tomato sauce with enough bright acidity to contrast with the richness of the bread. If I had any of Vivian Howard's stewed tomatoes from Deep Run Roots on hand, I'd just blitz a jar in the blender, warm it up and serve. Marcella Hazan's iconic sauce would be an easy option. Or is that too predictable?

I got that email also but haven't gotten an actual shipping notification yet. Over on the Facebook bean club group, Steve said that they started shipping last Friday and expected that it would take them a full week to get everything shipped. He said to hang tight until after 1/31 before contacting them if you haven't received your shipping notice.

@Anna N, do consider applying a few drops of that precious artisanal balsamic vinegar to a small scoop of the very best vanilla ice cream. Even more excellent if some perfect strawberries can be involved. But only the very best! I brought a bottle of that extra vecchio stuff back from Italy and am still hoarding a bit of it.

Since they supposedly get better the next day, I want to take them to the library tomorrow. I've put them in a tin and placed it on a top shelf that I need a step ladder to reach. We'll see how that works!

I think you will like them. That touch of salt from the potato chips makes them addictive...I've already eaten most of the uneven ones and need to put the rest of them far away!

Potato Chip Chip Shortbread from Midwest Made. The recipe is available online here at NYT Cooking For this recipe, you take a bunch of potato chip crumbs, mix half into a shortbread dough with chocolate chips then press the dough out onto a layer of potato chip crumbs, then top it with the rest of the crumbs. There was supposed to be an egg wash on top before the chips went on but I forgot. The idea took me back to those days as a kid when our after school snack tin was down to the crumbs. I actually loved getting a few salty potato chip or pretzel crumbs along with a fragment of a chocolate chip cookie or Oreo. These are reportedly better the second day but they taste pretty fine right now.

I put them in the fridge for an hour or two before slicing as the recipe suggested. They were firm enough to need a sharp knife but not gooey or messy to slice. I trimmed off the very outer edges because I thought they looked dry but they are actually just pleasantly chewy. If I'd measured and marked, I could have done a better job but here they are in their box, ready to go to the library:

These are Chocolate-Espresso Revel Bars from Shauna Sever's Midwest Made Chocolate Revel Bars are apparently something of a classic Better Homes & Gardens recipe though I had never heard of them. Basically 2/3 of an oatmeal cookie-type dough is pressed into a 9 x 13" pan, topped with a chocolate layer of melted semi-sweet chips + sweetened condensed milk (which must be cloyingly sweet) followed by the rest of the dough to partly cover the chocolate. This version adds some chocolate chips to the bottom dough, uses a bittersweet chocolate ganache for the chocolate layer and adds espresso powder to both the dough and ganache. I had no chocolate chips so I chopped up a bar of the Valrhona 85% cacao dark bitter chocolate that I also used for the ganache. I gotta get these out of the house and soon!

Marie Callender's is still around. They charge an 80 cent deposit on each pie pan and you get it back when you return the empty tin.

Those treats do look alike but they also look very appealing! I agree bars are an excellent choice both for ease of prep and ease of transport. I used to make them often for meeting snacks. You did not ask for suggestions and surely don't need any but I'm going to pass along an easy bar cookie with a different, non-brownie/blondie look. It's from an '80s era book, The Joy of Cookies by Sharon Tyler Herbst that I relied on quite often. The recipe is for Orange Marmalade Cream Cheese Bars and I found it online here. They do require 2 bakes - one for the crust and a second for the cream cheese topping - and should go into the fridge a while before slicing to firm up that topping but are otherwise quite easy. You can use other nuts instead of pecans and other preserves in place of the orange marmalade though the book cautions against using inexpensive brands that "deliver little flavor, little fruit and too much sweetness."

I noticed big "Two Buck Chuck is Back" signs at my TJ's recently. I don't buy it. I don't find it vile as others do, it's just uninteresting and I was thinking that it must have been out of stock. Thanks for explaining that it's the "Two Buck" part that's back!

Not @ElsieD, but I did a little test run with her idea. With my first batch, I followed the recipe that @FauxPas linked to: https://www.spendwithpennies.com/jalapeno-poppers/ except that I used some red chili pepper brie instead of the cream cheese/cheddar mix specified. In that recipe the panko gets mixed with some melted butter but not pre-browned. They did nicely brown up in the oven: For that reason, I thought that pre-browned crumbs might get too dark in the oven so when I tried using the bacon grease, I made one as above and browned the crumbs for the other one. Both were fine. Sorry, I forgot to take an "after" photo. I pulled out the one with the pre-browned crumbs after 15 minutes and let the other one go for closer to 20 min. The pre-toasted crumbs were a bit more uniformly crunchy but not a big difference. WRT to the bacon grease, it added a little flavor, but with the red chili cheese and jalapeños, it wasn't striking. Either way, this was certainly an easy to make some quick snacks. I'll try this next!

I'm not sure if this stuff is in the same category, but I use the More Than Gourmet products Glace De Poulet Gold (Roasted Chicken Stock) and Glace De Viande Gold (Reduced Brown Stock) which have been recommended in various eG threads over the years. Since they are 20X concentrates, you can either dilute fully for a stock or less so (or even use directly) when making sauces. I usually make my own chicken stock starting with uncooked chicken so it's pretty neutral and unsalted. If a recipe warrants a roasted stock, then I add some of the roasted chicken flavor. I rarely have homemade beef stock on hand so I'll use some of my homemade chicken stock and some of the brown stock. They make a mushroom flavor that I'd like to try.

I put my Paragon by the window in hopes of illustrating this. Without the mat, the surface is perfectly smooth: The mat is flexible and hopefully, you can see that the sensor in the middle does actually sit just slightly proud of the surface when there is no pan to press it down: My 1 qt All Clad saucier, which has a fairly heavy handle can be a little tippy on this surface when empty. As I've used it more, this seems to be less of an issue. Maybe the mat has gotten less stiff than when brand new? I dunno. Edited to add: @CanadianHomeChef, thanks for all your contributions to this thread and the table of temps you linked to in the first post. I can't afford a Control Freak but am just delving into this topic for tips I can use with my bargain Paragon and appreciate your input!

Generally, I'll use the sauté function to continue cooking at normal pressure. Rarely. I might if the food seemed seriously underdone. If it's close to done, then I'm afraid of overcooking. I do not. With beans or anything that can foam up, I never use quick pressure release.

Slow scrambled eggs with grilled, bacon-wrapped jalapeños Set the Paragon @ 180°F/82°C still not a super slow scramble but much closer than yesterday's 95°C setting. I found the recipe for the jalapeños here, following a recommendation from @FauxPas. I stuffed them with red chili pepper brie instead of the cream cheese/cheddar mix specified and grilled them on the Phillips indoor grill.