haresfur

I believe those toasters with the triangular depressions are an offshoot of the jaffle irons I recently finally saw in action camping with friends. Basically put the metal triangular bits on hinged metal rods. Assemble your jaffle in the irons, close them and cook over a wood fire or your gas camp stove. I learned a little about the creativity as to what you put into the jaffle, depending on your mood and whether you are cooking for children.

My originally American parents used to do grilled cheese on a waffle iron that I think they got as a wedding present in the 1950s. The waffle part flipped over to give you flat plates for grilling. The sandwiches would end up very squished. Also used for grilled PB and jam. Grape jelly would end up like napalm in your mouth if you weren't careful.

Yeah, grilled cheese is the most basic of the toasties that are very popular here. Often made on a panini press but with basic bread. A coworker would have the same cheese toastie every day and had a carefully calibrated system using a beer glass to hold the lid up so it wouldn't squish the sandwich too much (later replaced by a stand with a threaded rod and plastic prop that our techo made for even more precise adjustments. A friend ran a toastie shop for a long time before he turned it into a pseudo diner. I miss the toasties. I have seen Caesar salad here (not exactly authentic) and am pretty sure tuna melts.

I would probably cut the shoulder in half and freeze in two bags, but that should work

I have used reusable silicone bags but frankly they are a pain to clean. I have often used ziplock freezer bags that can be reused. I also don't mind using chamber sealer bags that my meat often comes in. I have even resealed these but it can be a bit dodgy with a small vacuum sealer. I like your sentiment, but figure it is a small thing in my overall plastic use. We have a scheme to collect soft plastic but in actuality there is no recycle path for this waste stream. We still collect it on principle.

Not only was it sleazy Aldi chicken schnitzel, it was leftover sleazy Aldy schnitty. Someone wanted hers as a sandwich, but I turned a pouch of chicken gravy into a pepper sauce using Tasmanian Mountain Pepper. I had been buying some ground from one company and never found it terribly hot. A while ago I bought some whole berries and when I ground them, they were extremely hot. So this time I proceeded cautiously and am now very confused because it generally wasn't very hot, except for some larger chunks. The flavour is not at all like black pepper. Interesting, it did have a bit of a numbing effect like Sichuan pepper. And it turned the sauce a nice pink. More research is needed.

Colour me sceptical. The whole idea of a properly set up PID controller like used in sous vide is to ramp up the temperature quickly when it is far from the set temperature and then reduce the rate of increase so the temperature is approached without overshooting. For some things it doesn't matter if the outside overshoots the temperature, but the whole idea is to cook very close to the ideal final cook temperature. I'm not sure how the instrument would control for the initial internal temperature of what you are cooking. It probably would have to guess but then would you want to ramp the temperature faster to warm up a cold piece of meat or slower so the outside doesn't overcook as the inside is coming up to temperature? Personally, I'd just set and forget.

My try at low and slow in the oven was a failure. For some reason the meat temperature stalled out and I had to bump the temperature up to get it to cook. And that was fan forced with a probe in the meat and another to monitor the oven, which stayed within a degree of the set point. I'm not sure I see the advantage over sous vide.

In line with other responses, I don't usually pay attention to video opinions because I find them an inefficient way to convey information and because I don't appreciate being treated as a click. This forum would be better served by posting salient points that we can discuss here. That would also serve the eG goal of being a resource for cooking related information. With regards to the one point you posted, there are plenty of other techniques that have long periods with little involvement in the cooking. I don't cook for the smells - they are a side bonus. And I have no problem doing a quick stir fry rather than feeling I have to have a stew pot going all day to make the kitchen smell nice. You get that quick smell hit when you brown meat after sous vide. In fact, I often sous vide beef and add it to a stir fry at the end to get the combination of med-rare meat and charred veg. In that way I suppose you could just consider the sous vide to be part of your prep. To me sous vide is primarily about precision and flexibility. I don't doubt that a top steak house can produce a better steak with their equipment but I can produce a much better steak with sous vide than any other way I have found. I like a roast chook but sous vide chicken is convenient and delicious for preparing ahead.

Silverbeet (chard), white bean, and chicken soup with Turkish roll garlic bread. Someone wasn't enthusiastic about the stems so those are fermenting as an experiment. The silverbeet is really taking off in the garden now that the soil is warming up. I was hoping it would be a winter crop. And don't get me started on the nursery selling me plain silverbeet as rainbow.

I have done green tomato chutney, but I too, was underwhelmed so no good recipe.

This discussion is very interesting because I am realising that most of what I know about Indian festivals and food, for that matter, is heavily slanted to northern India. I just watched a video of a race between incredibly long canoes for this festival, which links several of my interests. The whole context for the food is fascinating imo.

Great idea on making the dressing in the bottle. My problem with the container on the left is that soft plastic isn't really recycled here. But I suppose there isn't much of it compared to the squeeze bottle. I may go back to glass.

Looks like you are set for Canadian Thanksgiving!

When drying apple slices I would dip them in orange juice to keep from browning

Maybe fish cakes, too

Be sure to let us know if you die (I would risk it, too)

Part of my failure as a gardener is difficulty murdering thinnings. Right now I have some spinach doing pretty well even though there are more than one plant in a clump and some rather sad thinnings that I teased apart and planted separately. My tendency would be to keep them together since you are doing hydroponics. You can always train the plants to grow farther apart for light. And they should help each other pollinate

One of my baristas grows plants in pots of pure coffee grounds. Surprised me. Not sure how much magnesium is in egg shells, since they are calcium carbonate. I use dolomite rather than calcium carbonate for my citrus on the advice of a garden shop owner. That's calcium-magnesium carbonate and dissolves much slower. He said you can't really add too much.

Oooh! I just bought some rib strips from my beef dude (actually my beef dude's grandson) with no idea what I was going to do with them. Now that's sorted, thanks.

It will be a while before our soil outside is room temperature and in the past my seed has just sat there until much later in the spring. Then again it will be a while before my house is room temperature and then there will be a short period before it is blazing hot. Older houses here are poorly constructed, not well insulated, and have single pane glass. Doesn't make sense to heat a lot, only to pour it outside. I had my first unsuccessful batch of sauerkraut this year because the house was too cool.

It is weird that avocado oil is a specialty item here, only sold in small bottles and cost prohibitive for deep frying. We grow a lot of avocados and a lot are dumped in good years. Seems like a natural to produce more oil. I mainly fry in rice bran oil or grapeseed oil

Planted some supposedly heirloom jalapenos and a bunch of pots of sweet basil in my cold frame. Hope that helps the basil germinate because I think it needs warm soil. Also some dill, jalapenos, and basil outside to hedge my bets. Seeded an area with Italian parsley a while back and I might have to thin it. The stuff self seeds like crazy and I decided to pull a couple of huge plants out of my wallaby grass lawn area (which seems to be getting taken over by other grasses, unfortunately). My best looking cauliflower seems to have suffered a setback, maybe because of the hail a couple of weeks ago. All this reminds me I need to make a spinach salad for tea.

Any chance of doing it over a wood fire?

I have wanted some 2 liter mason jars for fermentation for a while but getting them has been problematic due to shipping costs. So I tagged along on a trip down to Melbourne on Sunday and made it to Kitchen Warehouse, which actually has a fancy storefront for the foodies, but apparently is well set up to get things to restaurants quickly. Not without some issues because they don't know that their jars take wide mouth Ball lids (why would you make anything different?). Pretty ridiculous because the replacement lids they sell are only in a set of a band and a lid for about $7.00. Anyway I took a lid down with me, found a single jar on a clearance shelf where I could test it and decide it should work. Had to send someone into the back for Barkeepers Friend and picked up off-brand microplanes and kitchen shears. So a bit of a weird operation but a successful trip.