blue_dolphin

Thanks for all the input! I decided to order the cheaper one that doesn't have the cleaning tool but does have the (apparently sticky) stainless grid. The rotisserie is $79.99 (assuming a 20% off coupon) at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I like the idea and the chicken that @lindag made looked wonderful but I think I'll hold off on that for a while.

I'm learning and I may be a slow learner but I'm not complaining of problems. Well, except that the manual really should have indicated that the sensor might need to be charged prior to use. That's a complaint 🙃

My inability to find a convenient place to use the Paragon should put me off purchasing another appliance but seeing all the lovely grilled delicacies here and in the dinner thread is nudging me on. If....IF....I decide to purchase, which one would you recommend? There is this one: Philips Kitchen Appliances HD6371/98 Premium Smokeless Electric Indoor Grill plus Bonus Cleaning Tool, 2.3, Black @ $169. For 20 bucks less, I could go for this: Philips Smoke-Less Infrared Grill Newest Model HD6372/94 Avance Collection with both Nonstick Cast-Aluminum BBQ Grid and Stainless Steel Wire Grids @ $149. What say you experts? Is the cleaning tool worth an extra $20 bucks? Is the stainless steel grid useful?

Thermoworks has holiday special prices on a lot of their items including Thermapens (10-12% off), Thermopops (14% off), Chef Alarm (20% off) and other items, including some of the probes (30% off). See here.

@Anna N, are you turning the Bluetooth sensor off after use? Mine was dead as a doornail when I got it but I've only charged it once, back in October, when I used it to make some ricotta-like cheese and it seems to be holding the charge through some pretty extended periods of non-use. I'm very low on the learning curve but certainly not ready to throw it anywhere. I need to find it a home inside the house as I've been too lazy to go out to the garage and bring it in and I need to figure out the best place to use it so it's not in the way of something else. After reading about your poached egg experiments fairly recently, I tried that last week. Took longer than 4 min to poach the egg @ 183°F , rapid precise, but it was OK. Easier than me trying to maintain a gentle simmer by tweaking a gas burner. This morning, I tried it with the mat for the first time. I used a small Darto pan, set at 350°F, rapid precise to cook some Trader Joe's frozen latkes for breakfast. My IR thermometer showed uneven temps across the surface of the pan, some a good bit lower than the set temp. The pan didn't seem to be sitting quite flat on the mat, I could rock it a bit from side to side. I needed to boost it up to 375°F to get the browning I wanted. I'll try that again with a larger pan. This time, I put it on a large baking sheet on my gas cooktop. Not really handy as it's so big, I couldn't use any of the gas burners without risking melting the Paragon and had to wait until it was done to heat water for my coffee. After reading your post this morning, I poached another egg for a second breakfast that I didn't need. Two quart pan, filled mostly to the top with 70°F degree water took 8 minutes to reach 183°F on rapid precise. I'm afraid I lost track of the poach time while I was trying to move the Paragon far enough away from the CSO to put a slice of toast inside 🙃. Definitely longer than 4 min though. I put a Thermoworks Dot temp probe in the water and it almost always read a 2 degrees higher than the Paragon display, though the Dot temp probe is closer to the center of the pan and the Paragon probe close to the edge. The egg was however, an excellent poached egg. After cooking the egg, I dumped the water, refilled the pot with 70°F water and put it back on the Paragon, again set at 183°F but this time on gentle precise. It's been about 55 min and it's only up to 168°F so I certainly won't be using the gentle precise setting to make a poached egg.

Scrambled eggs with onion, red bell pepper plus a little diced country ham and Unexpected Cheddar Tomato wedges and Trader Joe's latkes in the background

I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed these posts about @KennethT's trip to New Zealand. As I mentioned above, it prompted me to dig out my notes and photos on a trip I took to the South Island at this very time of year. While it's not exactly current, I'd like to share it and encourage anyone who's considering it to visit this beautiful place. I can't say that food was the focus but lots of exercise and time spent outdoors made almost everything taste pretty great! I arrived before the group trip I'd booked so I could adjust to the time change and spent the first day wandering around Christchurch, a very walkable city, with lovely footpaths along the River Avon where you can rent punts or canoes. I spent quite a while at the Arts Center, visiting artist studios and wandering the weekly outdoor market where I picked up fruit, cheese and bread for picnic meal. I also visited the Canterbury Museum and the Christchurch Art Gallery. I spent the next morning walking around the Botanical Gardens and then headed out to tour a few wineries in the Waipara Valley: Canterbury House, Muddy Water Vineyard, Torlesse Wines (my favorite) and Pegasus Bay Winery. We had lunch at the first winery (a generous spread of breads, cheeses, dips, olives, pickled and fresh veggies, fresh fruit, etc) and finished with dessert and coffee at the last one. I booked a 14-day South Island trip with a company called Active New Zealand (now called Active Adventures) and met up with my group of 8 travelers and 2 guides the following morning. On the way to our lodging at Lake Tekapo, we stopped for a short hike in Peel Forest at Te Wanahu Flat and had a picnic lunch that was standard for most of the trip - make-it-yourselves sandwiches chips, juice, fruit, muesli bars, cookies - nothing fancy but good quality. The van was stocked with a big bowl of fresh fruit, muesli bars, gum, mints, a pile of New Zealand bird, plant and animal reference books and plenty of sunscreen and bug spray. Our guide regularly played music from New Zealand artists during our drives - some of which still bring up memories of this trip when I hear them. We took another short hike after lunch, then checked into our hotel. Since the days are long at this time of year, we were often able to head back out after dinner for a short hike or walk along a lakeshore. Here's a view of the Church of the Good Shepherd on the shore of Lake Tekapo The next day, we headed to the vicinity of Aoraki / Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. It was misty and raining steadily so we never saw the mountain but enjoyed hiking the Hooker Valley Loop and appreciated stopping for mugs of hot cocoa afterwards. Almost every trail featured suspension bridges like the one below. All of them were marked with a limit for the number of people allowed and this particular group of brightly garbed hikers were sticking close together as they crossed. That evening, we went out to Pepe’s Pizza for dinner. It was quite a popular spot and offered interesting pizzas like chicken, brie and cranberry, a seafood combo with mussels, shrimp and salmon and a venison and lamb combo. The next day, we had sunnier weather for our drive to Queenstown. We stopped at a fruit stand that had an interesting ice cream gadget I hadn't seen before. You picked your fruit, which went into the hopper along with scoops of regular ice cream: What came out the bottom was a soft-serve-like mix of fruit and ice cream. They also had lots of New Zealand honey available for purchase We continued on, stopping to hike to the top of Queenstown Hill to take in the views and eat our picnic lunch, then had a briefing on what we'd need for the highlight of our trip - guided trips on either the Hollyford Track, which I chose, or the Milford Track. As @KennethT mentioned, the New Zealand Dept of Conservation maintains a network of trails that and can be hiked independently with accomodations in rustic huts where you can reserve a bunk or in your own tents. The "guided walk" option was described by one of our group as "filet of hiking" as instead of tents and sleeping bags, we stayed in lodges with hot showers and comfortable beds so we only needed small packs for the clothes we'd need for 4 days - no need to lug tons of gear. So lazy! That night, some of us went to Roaring Megs in Queenstown. I had delicious lamb and some great pinot - the best dinner of the trip, for sure. The next morning, we drove to Te Anau and spent some time visiting the town and walking around the lake, then headed out of town to hike part of the Kepler Track (one of those "Great Walks") before checking into our lodge on Lake Manapouri. Dinner was cooked outside on the barbecue and afterwards, we learned to do Tim Tam Slams with Tim Tam cookies and mugs of hot Milo around the fire. I guess Tim Tams are more of an Aussie thing and I've since bought them at Target but that was my first! The first day of the Hollyford Track featured a comfortable walk through some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. From mossy green trails... where we were surrounded by plants and trees I've never seen before.. to clearings with views of lakes, streams and snow-capped mountains After 12 miles of this, we arrived at our lodge where we were greeted with freshly baked cookies and mugs of tea and coffee. We had time for showers before a delicious dinner, complete with New Zealand wine and comfy beds. Ahhhh! Here's a photo of Mt. Madeline that I took from outside the lodge before we headed out the next morning. We first took a short walk to Lake Alabaster which was like glass early in the AM More beautiful scenery as we hiked along Lake McKerrow Just off the trail, we found a tent cabin set up with our lunch, complete with a Christmas tree - it was Christmas Eve, after all! After that break, we continued hiking until we first heard and finally were able to see the sea When we arrived at our lodge at Martins Bay, we were greeted with this platter to enjoy with wine Dinner was salmon with chocolate cake for dessert I'd intended to make one short post but I've been enjoying my trip down memory lane so much that I've gone on much longer than I intended! I'll have to finish up in another post later if people are interested in this blast from the past!

Another thanks here. You prompted me to pull up my summary and photos from my own NZ trip, also over Christmas and New Years but some years ago. Great memories of such a beautiful place. @KennethT, I'm wondering if it would be out of line if I added an ancient history post from my old trip to your report here?

No bears, snakes or wolves in New Zealand. They do have spiders and, most unfortunately, earthquakes.

Yes, please!

I'll let the experts weigh in on taste, but @Dante used it not long ago here in the dinner thread as a dipping sauce for pan-fried pork tenderloin and provided a recipe here. Much before that, @andiesenji shared a recipe here. And here's a nice article about María Orosa that appeared on Food52 a couple of months ago: She Invented Banana Ketchup & Saved Thousands of Lives. Why Have We Never Heard of Her?

Dessert? I'd ask for another lobster benny and another glass of bubbles to wash it down!

This morning, I picked up a couple of Kindle version of books I've previously borrowed from the library and liked. Both have been mentioned before in this thread, sometimes priced a little higher. Cathy Barrow's Pie Squared: Irresistibly Easy Sweet & Savory Slab Pies is priced @ 2.99. All these recipes are designed to be made in a quarter sheet pan and the recipes are pretty much evenly split between sweet and savory pies. On Amazon, this is marked as a limited time deal. Not sure what that means. This one is also $2.99 on Amazon.ca. Sadly, the others listed below are not. Melissa Clark's Comfort in an Instant: 75 Comfort Food Recipes for Your Pressure Cooker, Multicooker, and InstantPot®: A Cookbook is currently $2.99. A good Instant Pot cookbook. Some recent chatter here about donabe prompted me to pick up Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking by Naoko Takei Moore and Kyle Connaughton for $2.99. I know nothing about this book but I figured I'm bound to learn something as I know nothing about the subject either. The Kindle version of David Lebovitz's L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home is currently $4.99. Not exactly crazy bargain territory but I've been wanting to read it so I may cave anyway. Eat Your Books shows 27 recipes in this one. I'd buy it mostly to read.

I was going to call this a dog's breakfast but not sure that even a hungry canine would go for this bowl of orecchiette with broccoli & white beans, topped with crunchy bread crumbs, pecorino romano and a Paragon-poached egg The egg was nice.

I bought them last year when I was staying in a hotel w/kitchenette (fridge, microwave, dishwasher) with my cousin who was receiving out-patient treatment at MD Anderson. They were a handy source of protein that I was able to include in her meals - mine, too!

My "like" is for your attitude and friendship rather than the food or service described above 🙃

Good question. The length of boiling here is much shorter than Kenji recommends for maximum sweetness but it could still be playing that role. @gfweb's posted about the Roasted Grapes, Brussels Sprouts and Sausage from Deep Run Roots p 541 a couple of times, here and and tweaked here. I decided to start with the recipe pretty much as written, except that I couldn't nicely slice the raw Italian sausages (a mix of hot & sweet) so I went with pieces that approximated the recipe's slices. Of course, no muscadines, so I used regular red grapes. I cut some in half and left others whole: I could have pulled this out earlier but wanted to get some nice browning on the sausage. This was 25 min @ 425°F on convection. I ate that pan full with some crusty bread, washed down with a glass of red wine for lunch and I'm not complaining about it. The flavors work very well together. Obviously, the grapes were pretty much disintegrated, though it's not really a bad thing that they pretty much turned into a glaze. The sprouts could have had a little more bite left, too, so I"ll give it another try with smaller sausage crumbles and a shorter baking time.

I hesitate to post such trivia after reading @Tri2Cook's thoughtful words above but I went ahead and took a photo earlier so I'm going to share anyway. From the sublime to the ridiculous... Most of these seem to fall into the drink-related category: Two cocktail recipe bar towels, a dark chocolate orange, French cookies in an Eiffel tower tin (I love these!), wine and Santa hat glass markers and in the middle, a gift certificate to an area importer/warehouse shop (link) that I can wait to use.

I absolutely had to charge my sensor before I could get it to do anything. And I did try and really thought I'd gotten a dud. Even if they intended to ship them out fully charged, it would have been prudent to provide clearer guidance in the manual, just in case.

I was just looking for something to distract entertain me while I separated Brussels sprouts leaves for a salad and decided to stream the hour-long PBS documentary The Return of the Artisans, part of a series of specials with Lidia Bastianich called "Lidia Celebrates America." The first story features Allan Benton of Benton’s Country Hams in Tennessee and goes on with segments on a master barrel maker in the Napa Valley, a heritage food incubator in Denver, a small jam company in Michigan and a coppersmith in Wisconsin. In this day and age when everyone seems to think they deserve a promotion every 6 months or can watch a few YouTube videos and declare themselves "experts," I found it refreshing to see the respect given here to craftspeople who took years to develop their skills and are now passing them on to young people to continue. Maybe I'm being sentimental on Christmas Eve, but I found the pride that both the masters and apprentices took in their work was palpable. I recommend.

I tried to get that maple syrup set back when you first posted about it and they were already sold out at my store. They still had some of the honeys from around the world but I've got a lot of honey at the moment so I passed. I asked about the Langres cheese and the fellow I talked to said he didn't think they were getting any more 😢 I did pick up a bottle of that gingerbread stout, though 😋

Mine currently has the sleigh bells tone

Sorry for confusion!

Easy to do. I don't think anyone in that thread ever called it by it's name!

There is some discussion of it over in this topic where we learned that @Shelby has one.