blue_dolphin

There were 2 big, ripe peaches in the house this morning and I decided to make peach & jalapeño pops from the people's pops cookbook. I put the peaches in the Cuisi steam oven to roast and made the jalapeño-infused simple syrup but when I took the roasted peaches out of the oven, they began calling out for bourbon. Loudly and distinctly. Bourbon! And it wasn't even 9 AM! So I turned the page in the cookbook and made these roasted peach & bourbon pops: Like the roasted plum pops above, these have a dense, almost creamy texture. I ate one already and plan to have another this evening with a little glass of Elijah Craig to sip. The jalapeño-infused simple syrup will wait in the fridge for another fruit to come along.

No, it's just a lazy person's tool! One of the functions of the yogurt setting on the Instant Pot is to bring the milk up to temp, then it beeps so the lazy person can go waste time reading 10-year old threads on eG instead of standing over the stove with a thermometer. Once it beeps, the lazy person just removes the insert from the pot so it doesn't continue to cook, adds the acid, stirs gently and strains the finished product just as one would do if the milk was warmed in a regular pot.

I'm guilty of spamming the breakfast thread with my random ricotta-on-toast pictures . I use the same method that @Tere mentioned above and make it in the Instant Pot. I throw in some heavy cream or half & half if there's some in need of using up. I've been using lime juice, just because I have a tree that usually has lots of them but I've used lemon juice or vinegar as well. I've been meaning to try citric acid but haven't done it yet.

Kinda wish I had some leftover potato salad for breakfast. There's just one potato in the cabinet. I guess I could make a small serving !

I was just searching for local dates and found this 2016 location listing from Melissa's - they're all over the damn place!

I figure any appliance labeled "smart" has the useful life of a cell phone. Perhaps that's the expected life span of "durable goods" these days but it's not what I want, and I keep cell phones way longer than average.

I noticed that one of the colors on offer for the GIR Ultimate is "Bacon"

I think it was last week when @Shelby was making some marinated eggplant which got me thinking of caponata. I was shortly sucked into this great thread on the Cooking and Cuisine of Sicily. Gotta go back and finish re-reading that one before I get sucked into something else ! Edited to add: If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, do a search for "Cooking and Cuisine of" and you will find a wealth of Italian regional cookery threads started by @Kevin72. So good! A Year of Italian Cooking thread index

Amazon has the Instant Pot silicone sealing ring on sale today for $6.99

I find most value judgements to be very individual and subjective but if one wishes to pay to read the Cooks Illustrated article on these jar spatulas, one can see they tested a bunch of similar offerings and found some too long, too short, too rigid, too flimsy, with handles that separated or were too slippery, some were good for jar corners but not sides and the reverse and some were permanently discolored by red sauce - one reason to buy red ones ! Sadly, they didn't test the brand that you mentioned but I think it pretty much covers what factors differentiate the many similar offerings. I'll also note that when the article was published (March 2015), the top rated jar spatula that @lindag mentioned was $12.95. A $5.95 OXO model and the iSi Basics model ($11.20) were also highly recommended.

Also available from Amazon:link

I bought this one when @Smithy recommended it and it is indeed a keeper. A new-to-me gadget is the wide-mouth canning funnel. I never thought I did enough preserving to warrant the purchase of specialized gear but after another round of painfully cleaning jar tops before sealing, I picked one up at Target. I use that danged thing all the time for transferring dry goods of all sorts from one container to another, etc. I'm sure any sort of wide-mouth funnel would be equally useful. I've only had skinnier ones for liquids.

I misread it the same way last night and had a good laugh!

If you want a hit of fresh jalapeño flavor, you could infuse the vinegar or lemon juice with fresh chopped chilies and strain it before using. I'd be inclined to make a regular mayo and then flavor it as I think that would give you more control of flavor and color. Roast up some fresh jalapeños, peel them to remove the blackened skins, puree then strain or sieve to the smoothness you need and blend that into the finished mayo to get the flavor and color you want.

Yes, this is dessert for breakfast: A small wedge of fig torte, blue cheese, spicy walnuts and black coffee. For dessert, I'd add a little glass of port but that might be a bit much for breakfast, even for me ! Edited to add that the torte was still warm from the oven but I put the plate with torte and cheese in the Cuisi oven on "warm" @ 125F while the coffee brewed - just perfect to take the fridge chill off the cheese.

On a much more homely note... the ubiquitous Marian Burros Torte recipe with little fresh figs instead of plums and a sprinkle of toast dope.

Another recipe from the people's pops cookbook. I used Dapple Dandy pluots from the farmer's market to make the roasted red plum pops. Roasting the fruit makes for a concentrated flavor that is incredibly intense and a texture that is more soft and creamy rather than hard and icy.

Perhaps a few cucumber popsicles ??? Cucumber lime paletas Watermelon & cucumber pops Lemonade cucumber spa pops Cucumber, agave & mint pops Cucumber ice pops with lime and chile Cucumber lime pops with gin Cucumber gin & tonic pops Cucumber coconut lime pops

This morning I halved some Honey Punch pluots from the farmers market, brushed them with honey and lemon juice and broiled them. Toasted ciabatta topped with homemade whole milk ricotta and slices of those still-warm broiled pluots: Summer on toast!

Popsicles are fun and enjoying one or two of them have gotten me through several hot afternoons without turning on the AC but I don't believe they are in any way guilt-worthy ! Today's pops - watermelon & parsley: These are very refreshing. The super sweet yellow watermelon was from the farmers market. The parsley was just chopped and stirred in right before freezing so I was surprised how clearly it came through and the fresh green and slightly bitter flavor was a nice counterpoint to the very sweet watermelon. I've been cutting these recipes in half to make five of these ~2.5oz pops instead of 10. I had almost enough mixture for 6, so I chopped up a bit more watermelon and dropped a few cubes into each mold to bring up the volume.

I understand that corn can be classified as a fruit and would therefore be appropriate to this cook-off so I give you some blackberry & sweet corn popsicles: Sweet silver corn and blackberries from the farmer's market. The recipe is from the people's pops cookbook that I reviewed over in the popsicle thread. Nice contrast between the intense sweet-tart blackberry top layer and the sweet, creamy, more subtle corn flavor in the bottom layer. I will be interested whether or not someone would identify it as corn without knowing in advance. They are cosmetically impared because I got distracted while I had the molds sitting in warm water prior to unfolding so they got sort of melty.

There are still some recipes in Fany Gerson’s Paletas that I haven’t tried and I’ve got lots of other ideas and yet, I bought another popsicle cookbook: people’s pops: 55 recipes for ice pops, shave ice and boozy pops from Brooklyn’s coolest pop shop. A quick search didn’t turn up another mention of this book, so this seems like as good a place as any for my review. Bottom line: It’s a great book for someone looking to explore new, fresh flavors of frozen pops. The subtitle indicates 55 recipes but the book actually includes ideas for many, many more options. I think it’s a book I’ll turn to as much for ideas as for actual recipes. It begins with a bit of background on the people’s pops business, based on using the best fresh, seasonal fruit from local farmer’s markets. They’re in New York City, so there won’t be any recipes for tropical lime-coconut-avocado-pineapple pops. That also means no real overlap with the Mexican flavors in Paletas. Next up are a few pages of "fundamentals” - basics, tips, suggestions for flavor combinations and guidelines for including alcoholic ingredients. I’m not 100% on board with their classification of fruits and other ingredients as “cool” or “warm” and the recommendation to combine cool with cool and warm with warm. I don’t think of ginger as a “cool” ingredient and often find contrasting flavors to be more interesting than similar ones but I like that the authors actively encourage readers to experiment beyond the recipes given. Chapters are organized by season according to the main ingredient and each chapter begins with an intro section that includes a few paragraphs on each fruit with recommendations for choosing and handling that item and suggestions for other ingredients that would work well with it. Likewise, the header text for each recipe often suggests other substitutions or pairings. Every recipe emphasizes the variability of fresh fruit and encourages the cook to taste mixtures for sweetness before freezing. Obviously, the first time through with any recipe, you don’t really know what you are tasting for since the final frozen product usually tastes less sweet than the same ingredients at room temperature but I like the emphasis on tasting rather than just relying on a recipe. Personally, I find it helpful to chill the mixtures down as much as possible before tasting to get a better sense of how the frozen product will taste. While most of the recipes are for frozen pops, there’s also a short section at the end with recipes for shaved ices and syrups. I like the way flavors are combined, infusing herbs or spices into simple syrup or roasting stone fruits to intensify flavor. Some of the recipes that I’d like to try are blueberry & buttermilk, blackberry & lemon verbena, peach & jalapeño, watermelon & parsley, pear, cream & ginger and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Here’s the result of the first recipe I tried, corn & blackberry pops: They are cosmetically impared because I got distracted while I had the molds sitting in warm water prior to unmolding. Nice contrast between the intense sweet-tart blackberries in the top layer and the sweet, creamy, more subtle corn flavor in the bottom layer. I will be interested whether or not someone would identify it as corn without knowing in advance.

Ahhh, figs and blue cheese - a match made in heaven!

You are correct, the chemical reaction between chlorine and sodium hydroxide produces sodium hypochlorite, sodium chloride and water: Cl2 + 2 NaOH → NaCl + NaClO + H2O Is the presence of NaCl in household bleach a concern for you? From a scientific perspective, I think it's sloppily written. For example, the paragraph that you quoted from has the header, "There is no free chlorine in household bleach." Writing as a scientist, I would never write, "there is no X in Y," when all I really know is that the level of X in Y is below the detection limits of whatever method was used to measure it. That said, I wouldn't automatically conclude dishonesty either. They chose simple language that illustrated their main point that household bleach is not actually "chlorine" bleach - the active ingredient is sodium hypochlorite and while chlorine is used in the manufacturing process, it's not present in the final product. I suppose they could have been more complete by saying, "During this process, all of the chlorine is converted to a sodium hypochlorite solution that also includes water and sodium chloride but it's still going to be a simplification of a single step in the manufacturing process.

Poached eggs on whole wheat English muffins: I don't know why I keep trying whole wheat English muffins. I'm glad there is only one more left.