kayb

Sounds like a great evening. I love a silent auction. Years ago, I had taken my then-13-year-old daughter to a conference with me; one night, there was a reception with a silent auction. She fell in love with a "piggy bank" made from a small (gas-grill-sized) propane bottle, painted red, with a snout and eyes and ears glued on one end, a curly tail on the other, and four "feet" made of pipe -- an Arkansas Razorback. I bid on it until it got out of my price range, and told her I just couldn't do any more. A friend overheard us, bought it, and gave it to her. Now, it's in her son's bedroom. Like your salad spoons -- a new family heirloom!

Instant Pot, low pressure, two minutes, natural release, ice bath. I knew they'd get a little more heat when I processed them in the canner, so I decided to err on the side of maybe undercooking. Didn't split one open to check.

@Shelby, I drove an hour and 15 minutes, one-way, to get to the Asian market in Memphis, as the local Asian market didn't have any. Bought all they had in the cooler -- five dozen. They looked at me funny. The bacon jam rocks, if it IS my own recipe. This will be nice in gift baskets, and will be a good supply for me for a while.

I have been pickling things and canning things that will go in Christmas gift baskets. First, the aptly-named "firecracker pickles," a recipe my daughter got from a friend who makes them; she swears they're wonderful, though they're certainly the oddest pickle I ever made. One takes a gallon of el cheap-o hamburger dill slices from the grocery, dumps them in a colander, and drains off the brine. Then one packs them back in the jar, layering them with sugar and a Whole Bottle of hot sauce. It only looks like someone bled in it. The sugar dissolves into a brine. I let it sit a couple of days, then transferred pickles with a set of tongs to smaller jars, poured brine over, and processed in a water bath to get a seal. I tried one before I canned them and I think it singed a hole in my tongue. Then I decided to combine two childhood standbys into a single jar, and pickled quail eggs and chunks of Boar's Head ring bologna, sliced about 2/3 of an inch thick and cut in quarters. Each jar had a half a serrano pepper, half a red jalapeno, a clove of garlic and two tbsp. of salt, with a brine of 4:1 white vinegar and water. They look pretty, and there's certainly a novelty factor. Finally, I made a double batch of bacon jam, simplified greatly by cooking the bacon (two three-pound packages of Wright's ends and trimmings) in the package from the store, sous vide at 147 degrees for about 18 hours. Drained the fat, dumped bacon in Dutch oven, added the caramelized onions, brown sugar, maple syrup, brandy, a couple of cups of strong black coffee, Aleppo pepper and allspice and simmered for two hours. Processed it in batches to semi-smooth consistency, and canned in half-pint jars. Marvelous on biscuits, grilled cheese sandwiches, and grilled burgers!

I have saved bacon fat for as long as I've been able to stand up at a stove and cook. Can't bear to be without it. Got nearly a quart in the fridge, and a pint in the freezer as a just-in-case. Oddly, I have never saved beef or chicken fat.

Same general process as the loss-of-copyright for words that go into the general usage. I won't swear this is correct -- there may still be copyright protection on these, but things like "kleenex" for facial tissue, and "coke" for any sort of soft drink (OK, maybe that's just in the south). If I recall my Journalism 1011 class correctly (and that would have been, ahem, some 40-ish years ago), things like "foil" used to be copyrighted. Memory fails me on some of the others.

I am in shouting distance of StL. When you open, know that I'll be there one weekend fairly soon. Especially if it's during baseball season, as I have a buddy with season tix at Busch.

Off the cuff guess, but shouldn't it behave about like a cast iron muffin tin? If so, preheat it, film with oil, add batter, and probably drop two or three minutes off the baking time. I'd up the oven temp and then watch carefully. (i.e., if I do muffins in my corn muffin cast-iron pan, I grease the wells, stick it in the oven while the oven pre-heats, add the batter, and bake at about 425).

Since I just got around to downloading it, here's the pic of this morning's bacon-cheese bread and SV bacon seared off in a hot skillet. I would've scrambled eggs, but there was no room. Three pieces of bread because it was the last of the loaf. I took that one for the team. As the bacon-cheese bread is gone, I tried another iteration of this Buttermilk Quick Bread ( @Anna N, I will forever be indebted to you for posting the link to that recipe!), this one with chopped roasted-and-frozen cherry tomatoes from this summer's garden. Baked it up in small foil loaf pans for potential gift-giving, if the sample taste tomorrow morning is a good one! Stand by for report.

I finished off my loaf of bacon-and-cheese quickbread, with a couple of pieces of bacon on the side. Thought about eggs, but couldn't be bothered.

Another boiled egg question: I have 60 quail eggs to boil tomorrow, and I think I'll do them in the IP for, hopefully, ease in peeling. Due to the size differential, I find putting them in cold water stovetop, bringing to a boil, turning off, and letting them sit about six minutes yields a very nice hardboiled egg. Any thoughts on how I'd adjust that for the IP? I'm thinking if it's five for regular eggs, then perhaps three for quail eggs?

I thought of you today at the Asian market, where I'd gone to get quail eggs. They had oysters 2 for a dollar. I thought about getting some, but I've never been able to bring myself to buy any kind of seafood there because it smells so awful.

Thanks! (Have just finished the second eight dozen meringue cookies. Future egg whites to be frozen!)

Oh,my. That looks marvelous! I have been catching Wright's bacon on sale at Kroger of late, and buying 3 or 4 24-oz packages at a time. I've accumulated a fair amount of bacon (but at $4.99 a pound instead of $8.99, I'll spare that freezer room!). I am going to take a page from Kenji's Serious Eats sometime this week, and SV several packages as-is (why waste a perfectly good vacuum seal?) for a minimum of 12 hours at 145F. Allegedly this method yields cooked bacon that, after searing for a couple of minutes on one side and a few seconds on t'other, surpasses all bacon-y expectations. I will report.

Sister Schubert's are good. They make a Parker House style, as well as a flat, square-ish one that makes an excellent slider bun as well.

They didn't have that, either. It was not a good sausage day.

Bless you! Why didn't I find this when I searched? (Obviously too much MR for ME tonight!)

Dropped by Aldi this morning to pick up milk and cream to make eggnog, and ran into one of the problems I occasionally experience with Aldi. I get used to being able to get something, go in there to get it, and it's not there. I had been picking up, periodically, one-pound packages of knockwurst, essentially four quarter-pound sticks about as long as a standard frankfurter but bigger around. I wanted four packages of them today for a project I'm eyeing. Of course there were none to be found. Trying to decide whether I want to road trip later in the week to scope out other Aldis in the region, or say hell with it and get bologna cut an inch thick and just cube it.

Hijacking this thread because I have a question: Can one freeze and later use egg whites, with no degradation in quality? Is there a specific technique for doing so? Have just made a triple batch of eggnog, using 18 egg yolks, which, nature being what it is, yielded a commensurate number of whites. I have made 16 dozen meringue cookies, in Christmas-y colors with sanding sugar, yet, and I am damned if I see myself using another egg white in the near future. I do plan to make more eggnog (it figures in gift baskets this year). However, I don't know that my dear late sainted mother's spirit would let me rest if I let the next 18 egg whites go to waste. HELP! Please!

I guess least favorite would be hard-boiled. Favorite, over easy. Then ranking downward, poached, scrambled (yes, hard and dry, please!), soft-boiled. Baked ranks up high, as well.

Killing me, too. I will happily deliver zucchini to you in exchange for oysters.

As noted on the Dinner thread, I made the Buttermilk Quick Bread mentioned upthread by, I believe, @Anna N. I tried my own savory version with chopped bacon bits and cheddar cheese. Very good, but for the next time I'm doing a savory version, I'll decrease the sugar to 1/4 cup. Likewise, making it in my 9 x 5 pan yielded a pretty flat loaf; I might do it in my 8 x 4 next time. Awfully good texture, and it's quite excellent toasted with butter. I'm going to make some ricotta to go with it tomorrow morning.

Looks like a fun, fun day -- the pictures make my feet hurt!

It was a busy Saturday -- finally got the Christmas tree and wreaths up! -- so what I managed for dinner was this: A couple of slices of the Buttermilk Quick Bread, with an addition of cheese and bacon, posted by @Anna N recently, with a couple of leftover deviled egg halves. The bread was good, but I wish I'd cut back on the sugar for the savory version.

The pear over yogurt looks like a brilliant idea. Was the pear warm?