Okanagancook

Thank you for posting such detailed shots of your shelves. Many familiar titles then others not so much. And my DH thinks I have a lot of books.

Setting them out when it's not warm enough may be my problem. I shall be mindful next year. So far this year only a few tomatoes with blossom end rot.

Eatyourbooks says I have 298 cookbooks. Yikes. I've pretty well stopped buying except when the annual awards come out then I'll have a look at what is there. I bought a lot of books two years ago and am struggling cooking from all of them. I need to pick a book and cook recipes from that book and move on to the next. The books are arranged in some kind of order. By cuisine: East Indian; Spanish; Italian, Southern US, German, Great Britain; Greek......; then a lot of restaurant books are together; light cookery together and I think that is it. The Magazines are kept in date order and most of the recipes I want to make from them are bookmarked using Eatyourbooks. I use this feature quite a bit for marking recipes that I like to make again; not make again; or just plain make it! I have trouble deciding what to make with so much choice but right now it's all about eating fresh from the garden. Tere, it's interesting to see the different books you have over there in Europe. Books we don't see on our shelves but then also familiar ones such as ad hoc at home.

Lamb chops with some lamb jus sauce; green beans in anchovy, garlic, lemon and oil dressing, gooseberry chutney on the side and Happy in the Kitchen Pea/Basil/Potato puree with a hunk of butter melting in the well. We didn't really care for the puree and we tend to like our good free range meat just cooked with salt and pepper so the taste of the meat can be enjoyed so the sauce got a thumbs down.

This could be dangerous as AnnaN points out. Here goes with mine. We have a great room with the kitchen at one end and the dinning room kinda tucked away at the other end. I have bookshelves as part of the kitchen design and then of course I needed more space so we have the tall six shelf book case made by the kitchen cabinet people to match the style/wood/colour. And then, of course, I ran out of space and we had this low six shelf unit built in over the heat/cool registers. I doubles as a side board if needed. The problem with all these shelves is adjusting the heights so the books fit without having to turn them. Compound this with wanting to have them in some kinds of sensical order makes for an impossible situation which is why you see some of my books on end. First up the kitchen books which also include the magazines I subscribe to: BA, Fine Cooking and Food and Wine with some special editions of various others kept with the regular issued magazines. Note the empty shelf in the second picture....trouble brewing. Over to the dining room and the first six shelfer we had made. On the other side of the dining room is the other size shelfer and I have taken close ups of the books. Then finally away in some storage area are some books I don't want to throw out just yet. Some have been taken to the second hand store already.

The first three pictures are of my monsters from the compost, aka the squash plants that were not murdered when they appeared in the compost bin. "Let's just see what happens" I recalled remarking to DH. A friend who has a nasty history with out of control squash plants remarked upon hearing the news of our experiment "Nothing but trouble!". As you can see they are a little water stressed at the moment. It happens every afternoon despite watering full on for 40 minutes a day at this time. They, I think there are three or four plants, have taken over the entire three-bin compost and are growing out the back and off to the side as you can see in the first and second pictures. They are buttercup squash and I'm not sure how many of them are but a guess would be 25 or so Cucumbers: I don't know what is going on this year but three cucumber plants died after being transplanted as usual. And the ones that have survived are small like the one in the picture. Weird. My lemon cucumber plants are ok but on the small size also. Here are a couple pictures of my tomato plants, Early Girl and Cherokee Purple.

I am dealing with a plethora of peaches. Two kinds of peach chutney are done. Searched for a peach-chili based BBQ sauce and found this one online which I just finished making. It is very nice indeed. One recipe makes four 250 ml jars which I processed for 25 minutes so it will keep in the cupboard. I would add some habenaro also. Either 1/2 chopped or one split open and cooked with the sauce for the first half hour and then fished out. This will impart a nice fragrance to the sauce as well as some different kind of heat. I also used canned Romas because I had no fresh ones. It is quite sweet so would best be used as a finishing sauce.

Very nice kitchen! A lot of thought went into the design. We love our Miele dishwasher, often asking: "Is it turned on?". So quiet. Love those handles on the cupboards. They almost need to be that long on the size of cabinet they operate.

yup that looks like it

Some kinda lasagna with the tofu, cheese, leek and mushrooms.salad with carrots.

Have to admit, the roulade would be bit of work.

Welcome to the SV then grill crowd. So simple especially for entertaining IF all your guests like their meat done the same way....otherwise another SV rig is in the offing! Ha, ha.

I put some butter in the ss pot along with the pots and green onion. Sauté for a few minutes. Added the milk and used steam high pressure for 7 minutes. The potatoes were sliced about 1/8th inch as were the green onions. They were only just done after the seven minutes. Then I mashed them in the ss pot and kept warm for about 45 min until my chicken was done. Hope that helps. I found the recipe on line but don't remember where.....this is becoming a common problem

Strange knob, couldn't find it in the manual. It's like a 'black hole' only a 'black knob'. It's the Pino talking

That's weird. Nothing blocking the little holes at the bottom of the seat? Can't think of anything else. Oh wait, I googled the problem and found this: Re: Water leaks from the reservoir straight through the... There is a screw at the back that need to be tightened before use. It is not mentioned anywhere on the manual, learned it the hard way. There is a black knob at the back on the water reserve side, have a look.

Cheers with my glass of Pino Gris. I have had no problems with the reserve tank and I don't use the oven everyday and I don't use steam everyday. You must have not seated it properly or it wasn't tightened enough. Onwards and Upwards!

Wow, that brisket looks lovely and juicy.

We tried to make ramekins of eggs for breakie this morning. Oil a ramekin (I used cappucino cups), add a slice of preferred meat (could be ham, proscuitto, bacon, etc....I used bacon); crack in an egg then a slice of cheese, s and p then cover with foil and steam at low pressure/high temp for 4 min and quick release. After 4 min the egg whites weren't done. In for another 3 min and they are excellent. Next time I would go for 5 minutes, quick release. Maybe leave the foil on until you have everything on the plate. So easy. I'm converted! Last night did mashed potatoes: Steam for 7 minutes with some milk and green onions; mash and put on keep warm. Easy although I thought they were a little 'gummy' but my DH thought they were fine. Either way very little clean up and love the keep warm feature because the chicken was still in the bath.

Roulade of lamb stuffed with pork & fennel sausages/spinach/button mushroom mixture; orzo with tomatoes and a green salad.

Glad the chicken worked out. I now just start checking the meat temperature 15 minutes before the recommended time is up. So much depends on the size of the chicken. Allow the temp to rise during rest and you will a nice succulent chicken. That steam really does magical things. cheers,

Peach Habenaro BBq? I have some extra peaches and was thinking of making some kind of bbq sauce/gaze with it. Do you have a recipe for your?

Beautiful colour on the chicken, and they look moist.

Jack soup, I see a lot of cucumbers. Last year I was in the same situation. I peeled and grated them and later used them to make gaspatcho. Excellent results.

Ha, ha. The one in the pic had already split but my DH's fatter sausage would have worked. This reminds me of when I was working as a Sports Dietitian. I consulted for the training table for our city's professional football team. I designed menus that were nice and healthy and breakfast had to be quite lean because they were heading out on to the practice field soon afterwards. The boyz didn't particularly like that there was no breakfast sausage on the menu (they are 70% fat by the way). I kept being asked 'when are we getting some sausage'. Finally towards the end of camp I submitted and ordered the kitchen to prepare some sausage. To my horror, rather than baking them to render some of the fat out, the staff turned on the deep fat frier, which had not been turned on all of camp, and put the sausage in! Sheesssssssssh. Of course, they loved them.

First cook in the Instapot was boiled eggs with toast from the CSO. Very nice.