ElsieD

I sometimes thaw a frozen vac packed hunk of whatever in a bowl with cold water which also works to thaw whatever quicker. Never thought of using sous vide. I'll try it next time. I don't have a divided sink but I'll just use a suitably sized pot.

@Darienne If you feel up to replying, was there any one particular thing that sparked your interest? (Glad to see your post.)

Not sure if this should go here or in the non-culinary one. I will never again sign up to take a day course at Le Cordon Bleu and forget to show up.

We have the Breville "The Smart Grill" and are happy with it. I am a big fan of Breville products, I haven't needed to replace any of them.

We try to get to the Jean Talon market in Montreal a couple of times a year and were there a couple of weeks ago. I always go the Èpices du Cru and pick up whatever spices i might need /want, the last one being Harissa spice blend. Little did I know the real name of the place is Spicetrekkers until today.

As am I. Correction: I WAS fond of Penzey's when my niece lived in the U. S. I'd have the spices shipped to her and she'd bring them up. Then she moved back to Canada and no more Penzey's for us. They will ship to Canada but between the shipping and duty, it's a bit rich for my blood. I'd also process KAF through her. Sigh.

Thank you. I am SO going to make this.

I had read somewhere that if using both baskets, the power gets split between the two. I have no idea if that is true.

Do you still use it?

John drinks the Kirkland decaf and has for years. I have maybe 1 cup a month so can't comment for myself, but John, who has been drinking it for years, is happy with it. I did ask if he has noticed a change in the taste of it lately and he says it seems a bit more bitter than it used to be.

I'll be curious to hear how your toast turns out using that function.

The inside basket dimensions in inches in my TFal is 8.5 x 7.5 x 5.25 versus the Instant which was 9 x 9 x 4 so the size difference is not insignificant. It'll take getting used to. I had the "see through" feature on my Instant and found it useful for monitoring what little I've tried so far. I'll appreciate it on the TFal as well. I tried toast today. If I were TFal, I wouldn't brag too much about this feature. At 2 minutes it had barely started to turn colour. At 6 minutes, it was dark in spots, pale in others. I do believe I'll stick with the toaster. Attached is a picture of the Tfal basket showing the well in which you can put an ounce of water, if desired.

Yesterday I took delivery of my new air fryer, the TFal Infrared. Apparently infrared is new technology in the world of air fryers; I haven't heard of any others. It replaces my Instant Vortex Plus which stopped working. As you can see, it has a smaller footprint and is much lighter than my old one. It also has a smaller basket than my old one. My 1/8 sheet pans, which fit the Instant, do not fit the new one. It has three features which I didn't have with the Instant. First, it has a toast setting and since it is lunch time here, I'm looking forward to see what kind of toast it makes. Secondly, it has a crispy finish feature. Using this, the fryer automatically adds 2 minutes @450F on the broil setting to the cooking time. Finally, there is a depression in the basket that holds 1 ounce of water, which they say might be useful when cooking, say, vegetables where the moisture would be beneficial. Last night I cooked up some plain chicken wings using the broil setting for 15 minutes and crispy finish. They were great. This morning I baked a couple of mini scones, and that worked just fine. Off to make some BLTs and try the toast function.

👍

I just bought the Kindle version of the Dehydrator Cookbook by Luna Francis. It's currently $4.62 CDN. I figured for the price I'd give it a shot. I'm also eyeing The Dehydrator Bible: Includes 400 recipes by Jennifer MacKenzie.