KennethT

This looks like it, but the original recipe I saw also had instructions for making it in a pit in the ground in your backyard... hehe.... I forgot about the habanero salsa.. that salsa makes it!

I love achiote pork... I made my own marinade using achiote paste, garlic, sour orange, etc following Rick Bayless recipe on his website. Then after wrapping in banana leaf, I would smoke it on my stovetop smoker for 30 minutes or so before I put it in the SV... I always enjoyed it... but I think I would also squeeze some lime on the tacos as well.

Can you show us a photo zoomed out a bit? I'd love to see the scale of the tomato plant versus the others...

Many of the places I've seen around here typically par-boil some of the tougher veggies or meats, drain, then stir fry for a few seconds...

In NYC, many restaurants do much more delivery orders (many times through one of the many delivery apps we have: Grubhub, Seamless (owned by Grubhub), Caviar, DoorDash, etc.) than dine-in. Seamless/Grubhub usually caters to those ordering from restaurants in their immediate neighborhood (and usually the restaurant provides the delivery people). Others like Caviar have their own fleet of delivery people, and will deliver borough-wide so anyone in Manhattan can order from any restaurant in Manhattan, with delivery fees typically varying based on distance. Caviar typically is used by higher end restaurants whose primary business is not delivery, and whose higher prices are ok with their customers. I have also noticed that sometimes (for the same restaurant) the dine-in prices are cheaper than the Caviar delivery prices. Some restaurants package their food for delivery very well... others, well, not so much...

I had never seen it outside central Vietnam...

You can definitely fry rice paper wrappers. During our trip to central Vietnam, all fried spring rolls were made from rice paper - but it was the super thin rice paper that is flexible when dry, not the thicker, stiff ones.

There are seemingly constant eruptions in the area - but the Indonesian authorities are probably the best in the world about predicting them, and evacuating danger areas. Last year, we were in Bali when Mt. Agung was erupting - luckily, the winds were blowing away from the airport so there were no problems with flights, and it didn't interrupt our schedule at all.

Is that the same as the Lan Larb on 2nd Ave and 34th st? I was there a few times but was never impressed by it...

Haven't had much time for cooking lately, but had some tonight to make a favorite Viet chicken dish, Ga Xa Xao Ot...

Thirded!!!! @Dejah Will you be spending any time in Yogyakarta? My wife and I will be spending about a week in that area in the summer so we'd love to see some specifics about there - but I'd love to see all of it! Malaysia is high up on our list, and there is so much of Indonesia left to see....

I think trying to make a chocolate mold out of most normal items may be problematic because most things are not shaped in the way a mold needs to be. For plastic molding, the design needs to be slightly tapered so that the molded item comes out easily... so trying to vaquform using a standard household item will create problems.... I wonder if you can modify the item (like the tools) with some modeling clay or something to fill in the holes, but also to fill in the area that needs to be tapered?

Yeah, that place is definitely not for the carb conscious!

I'm one of these people who brings basically the same thing for lunch each day - but I think the concept that it represents ANYTHING is ridiculous. I do it because it's convenient - I make my lunches for the week (usually a simiple pasta dish) all at once over the weekend and portion it into 4 portions. I go out for lunch 1 day a week. Usually, I'm so busy during the day that I don't have much time to eat or really enjoy what I'm eating anyway, so my lunches are designed to be eaten quickly and easily with no mess and such that I don't need to use my hands (which are commonly a little dirty)...

First you have to decide which CAD program to get. FYI - many are ridiculously expensive. I learned AutoCAD in college - but I think many 3D printing or CNC milling shops use SolidWorks... Many years ago, I got AutoCAD R14 with an education discount.... then, years later, a friend of mine went to the Phillipines and brought me a CD with about 15 different cracked CAD packages, including AutoCAD2000 which I still use to this day. If you want to send me some designs, I can do the CAD work for you - but depending on how busy I am at work, my turnaround time may not be immediate but I'll do my best...

Some laydown freezers don't defrost at all - mine is a good example - I need to manually defrost it once in a while. In the old days, all fridge/freezers defrosted by reversing the compressor sending warmth through the cooling coils... but that is very inefficient, so with the advent of energy star ratings, et al, as well as microprocessor controls (rather than timers), the industry moved to using heater wires - it's much more energy efficient than reversing the compressor.

@gfweb I don't know. I've had many talks with engineers at many different appliance companies (part of what I do for work) and they seemed to intimate that the heater wires were there (located on the other side of the freezer's walls) to periodically warm up the walls to keep any ice from building up.

@liuzhou I was in my local Korean grocery, saw this and thought of you...

Self defrosting freezers have heater wires embedded in the sides - they periodically turn on (while the compressor is off). While it doesn't raise the temp of the freezer in general, anything located right next to the wall will definitely be affected more than it would be in a non-self defrosting freezer that has a much more stable (and usually lower) temperature. Also, laydown freezers don't warm up nearly as much when the lid is opened than when an upright freezer has its door opened.

I don't know... I've heard people complain about freezer taste (I'm not sure I know what that tastes like, but I think it has to do with oxidation or maybe fats going rancid), or dryness...

I think that if your food is well wrapped so there is little to no air contact, and you have a very cold freezer that is non-defrosting, you can store meat much longer. My parents had a huge laydown freezer that was kept at like -15F and we commonly had meats and roasts that were a couple years old with no issues, and no freezer burn. Standard refrigerator/freezers don't get cold enough, and the constant defrost cycle degrades the quality of long-stored things inside.

This is similar to the dish I had - it was at EMP right after they changed format from bistro to fine dining... they were MUCH less expensive back then! http://blog.chefsteps.com/2014/06/midnight-snack-video-daniel-humm-avocado-prawn-roulade/

I had a great dish in a fine dining restaurant many years ago - it was crabmeat rolled in a tube made from thin slices of haas avocado... I forget the details of it, but I remember that it was insanely good.

@blue_dolphin Thanks for your thoughts. Is Queenstown very loud and raucous? We were looking for something tranquil with great scenery. There seem to be some nice hotels in Queenstown that seem to have lake and mountain views, which is great, just as long as we're not surrounded by a bunch of party-ers or something like that.

One of the Solaire products I linked to above is really small... Like 1 hamburger at a time small. It would be perfect for a small kitchen... I do worry about the smoke though....