Okanagancook

Oh, another fantastic looking naan. You're killing me. However, I think you deserve it considering your weather. I can't get naan like that here but my lettuce is poking up out of the soil here in the Okanagan. :-))

Never, ever, ceases to amaze me!! Just stunning everything. An inspiration. cheers

Dark Horse is fantastic for making Manhattans!

Some high quality canned or jarred baby clams is another possibility.

We don't have a ban on plastic bags here but more and more shoppers are bringing their own bags. I've been doing that for the past 9 years and it is easy for me because I always shop with the SUV. The problem I have is with still having to use the light weight plastic bags provided by the store to bag vegetables like beets, peppers, etc., etc. Our local vegetable store has nylon mesh bags for sale but they keep going out of stock. I try to use as few bags as possible and after I have transferred the veggies to my green storage bags at home, I put the store plastic bags in the recycle. What do others do about inshore plastic bags? Do the places that outlaw plastic bags provide paper bags for veggies?

Yeah, I hear what you are saying about Egullet inspired purchases: vac sealer, sous vide rig, vitamix, meat grinder, sausage stuffer, on the counter convection oven, numerous cookbooks!, and counting. BUT I am not getting one, I am not getting one, I am not.........not!

Tonight it's Hook and Ladder Chardonnay 2012 from Sonoma County, Russia River Valley. The wine was fermented in a combo of small French oak barrels and stainless steel then aged on its lees for nine months for added complexity. Delicious! Not much in the way of a nose. It has been oaked but not overly so and it is doing it's job. Complex flavours with mineral notes and a nice long finish. The acid is lime. Only one left :-( Purchased through the Opimian Society.

Did not know that Zin will hold that long! Love Zin so I will have to check my cellar to see what we have. Opened a Seven Stones 2011 Syrah last night. The winery is over in the Similkameen valley with ten year old vines. We thought the wine was quite mature already. Not much in the way of tannins left with some nice fruity notes. We have two more so I think we'll drink those soon.

I like to store my bread wrapped two layers of aluminium foil and in the fridge to prevent mould growing. The two of us don't ate a lot of bread so I usually cut the loaves in half and freeze them wrapped in the foil.

We can't get Brancott Estate wines here in Western Canada. There are only a handful of wineries that export to Canada. When we visited New Zealand in 2011 the wineries we visited said there is just too much paperwork involved mainly because each province has it's own set of rules and regulations regarding importation. We did visit Wither Hills which is just down the road from Brancott Estate. Not sure if their wines are available in your area but if you like the Brancott sauv blanc you'll probably enjoy the Wither Hills sauv blanc. What we really enjoyed at Wither Hills was their rows of grape varieties which you were encouraged to taste. As you can see there were a lot grapes to taste.

Let's hope for the best. People are pruning here.

SylviaLovegren: How are the vines in Niagara after the terribly cold winter they just had? If wine country got -25 degrees C there will be some major losses.

Today it's Orfino Riesling 2011. Orfino Winery is in the Similkameen Valley which is one valley west of the valley where most of the south Okanagan wineries are located. The Similkameen Valley gets the most 'heat units' of the whole Okanagan. Here is their website: http://www.orofinovineyards.com/orofino-wines.php We found this wine to have the fruit flavours as described on their website except we found the acidity a bit too much at this point in time. We think it needs more time in the bottle to smooth out the acid and develop a bit more complexity. Unfortunately we only bought one. So much wine and so little time.

We are lucky enough to live on the Naramata Bench in the Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada. It is becoming a destination for wine lovers. There are numerous wineries/vineyards up and down the valley with varying soil types and climates. Many grape varieties do well here especially Merlot. Here is an informative website: http://www.winebc.com/discover-bc/okanagan-valley/wineries?page=1 We buy local wines on our winery trips and are becoming very impressed with the development of the wine industry in our backyard. We are also members of the Opimian Society which is Canada's largest wine buying co-op. We've been getting wine through this organization for over 30 years. We did this mainly because in the early days the provincial liquor control boards didn't bring in very good wine. Nowadays that has changed but we still enjoy the wines that are offered. So, our cellar has a mix of local wines and these Opimian sourced wines from all over the world. The local wines tend to be very fruit forward and that's what sells but there are wineries that are producing some very nice Burgundian/Bordeaux style wines with great aging potential. As an example a friend, who is also one of the first wine makers here, brought a 1995 Cab-Franc for a sous vide short rib dinner I was making. The wine was amazing. Still had fruit. Anyways, I ramble. I didn't see a thread on daily wine consumption and thought that might be a good idea. I'll kick it off with Poplar Grove's Pinot Gris from 2012: http://www.poplargrove.ca/index.cfm?method=products.productDrilldown&productid=F97D8CBA-AE23-68B5-93B0-4A99A5B482E5&pageID=5d44c13d-0740-b62f-57aa-53c49126d253&sortBy=DisplayOrder&maxRows=12& A nice mineral bouquet with distinct apricot and pear notes as promised. It gets a little more interesting as it warms up with a few more mineral notes coming through. We are going to have the rest of the bottle with seared scallops, a couple of cubes of crispened sous vide pork belly, fried polenta and lightly grilled summer zucchini. I think the wine has enough body to stand up to the pork. What are you drinking today?

I wonder how easily the container is cleaned after having dough proofed in it. Might be easier to make the dough by hand? Certainly not as much clean up.

If you visit the Vitamix website they have an extensive listing of recipes. It appears to be the on-line version of the Recipe Book that came with my machine. There are recipes for things like brown rice pie crust; apricot breakfast bread, etc. I would be comfortable using their tested recipes for doughs.

Forgot to mention the new method I used to make the chapati dough. My brother lived in India for a year and he learned that to make chapatis that stay soft you use boiling water to make the dough. I used 2 parts all purpose flour 1 part atta flour. They were wonderfully soft and pillow-like.

We made a feast last night. From this cookbook we made: Page 74 Lamb Slow-cooked in onions and yoghurt. Really a nice deep rich flavour. Mild in the heat category. It is quite involved but worth the bother. We marinated the lamb in the yogurt coriander sauce over night. Page 111 Goa Pork Vindaloo. Excellent heat if you like it on the spicy side which we do. Again we marinated the meat overnight. The recipe calls for 4 cups of water to be added before simmering. This is way too much in our minds. You might want to add enough to cover the meat by a little and then add more if you like. A very good vindaloo...we didn't have the kind of vinegar called for so we used rice vinegar. Page 163 Cauliflower with Shredded Ginger. A very mild dish which paired well with the rest of the meal. Other recipes we made were spicy fried okra; saffron rice; Coconut dahl; cucumber raita; chapati and shrimp. There were five of us eating and we figured it took 21 man-hours to make everything. On the night of the dinner our two friends came early and we all cooked for three hours before it was ready. Yikes, that's a lot of time in the kitchen but so worth it for such excellent curries. Sorry no pictures. Our friends were just in Italy with other friends who insisted on photographing everything anyone was about to eat so we thought we should just eat it.

Not really pork belly but this was done before the start of this topic......pork leg wrapped in pork skin and roasted very slowly. Skin taken off the roast and baked at 450 F until the skin puffed, crispy! Turned out very puffed so this could apply to belly roasted, then crispened.

After reading this thread we made that amazing tomato chutney. Oh, my lord that stuff is the bomb!!!

Beer, apples, onions roasted with pork.

Never done two in the oven, just two in the BGE and do them for 18 to 24 hours at 225 degrees. If you want to play it safe and allow a longer cooking time you can always wrap up the cooked pork in a foil tray covered with foil, etc and a towel and put in a cooler. I have done this a few times and the pork can sit in there for three or four hours without a problem. A bag of hot water in the cooler is another thing I have done to ensure it stays warm. Choose a cooler that gives a nice tight fit.

Depends on the thickness of the steak as well as time/temp. I just used D. Baldwin's recipe for chuck/round steak: 31 mm thick chuck steaks cooked at 133F for 24 hours. They were medium rare but not super, super tender. They had a nice chew to them but in a good way. They could have stayed in the bath for another 24 hours for fork tender meat but we don't like that kind of tenderness.

I've lost around 35 lbs with my 1400 calorie low fat, low glycemic index and moderate protein diet.

Sorry, forgot to comment on alcohol... At 7 calories per gram it adds up in a hurry...a 4 oz. glass is 100 calories.