mgaretz

Cornstarch for sure. I struggled with lumps for years until I found the secret to making the slurry. 1 to 1 ratio of cornstarch to water, stir until liquid. When the stew is done, bring to a boil and stir in the slurry until you get the thickness you want - actually stop a bit before as it will thicken a bit more.

An unusual (for me) stir fry. No noodles and the wife didn't want any onion or garlic or much sauce. So char siu, baby bok choy, carrots, celery, snap peas and mushrooms. Sauce was some cream sherry, a bit of soy and the water from the veggies, thickened with cornstarch.

You might be thinking of More Than Gourmet products (demi-glace), which do appear to be discontinued, at least at retail. They company is here: https://www.ajihealthandnutrition.com/solutions/stock-broth-concentrates/ so you might reach out and see if you can get it at a restaurant supply. Better Than Bullion is good as @weinoo says, but usually I just use some soy sauce and caramel coloring. Since you're in the Bay Area you can get caramel coloring at Smart and Final very cheaply.

Lately I haven’t been too concerned!

Grilled thick pork chop with roasted baby potatoes.

When your wife doesn't like whole cooked turkey (but just deli turkey) and it's just the two of us, you make filets for Thanksgiving. Served with baked sweet potato.

I had the original, larger version of that cooker, but it was unreliable so I gave up using it. Half-way through the cook it would decide there was no pot and stop cooking. In our recent move I recycled it. Same issue with the All-Clad version. I had an old West Bend cooker that also had the lightweight pot and I loved it. Gave it away when I got the Cuisinart.

I don’t think they do.

The meat was tender but dry, as expected with loin cuts. The iPot never got hot enough on low. After 8 hours things were still uncooked. Use Hi if you are going to try it. And use shoulder or butt.

Thick pork loin chops, slow cooked with carrots, potatoes and spinach in my new Ninja Possible Cooker Pro. My review of the cooker is here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/167168-ninja-possible-cooker-pro/

I just got one of these at Costco. It's the Pro model and included a bonus steam rack. They had them for $89.95 while Amazon has them from $130 up without the rack (which sells for $21). I have never been happy with the slow cooker mode on my InstantPot so I decided to give one a try. It has an 8.5 qt capacity with a lightweight (aluminum?) insert that has a nice non-stick coating. Ninja seems to have upped their non-stick game. The pot is oven safe to 500F but can't be used on the stovetop. The appliance has 8 functions: slow cook (hi and low), sear/sauté, steam, keep warm, sous vide, braise, bake and proof. I have only used the slow cook mode on low, braise appears to be virtually identical to slow cook on hi, sear gets hot pretty quick and lets you know when it's ready to add food. I wouldn't trust the sous vide but I don't need to as I have other appliances for that. Probably never bake or proof in it either but might use the steam. Comes with a nylon spoon that fits into a hole in the glass lid's handle, acting as a spoon rest. Looks good in the picture buy once you use the spoon you wouldn't return it to the handle unless you rinsed an dried it first (unless you wanted to drip on the lid). In short, the slow cooker functions virtually the same as a crock pot, which is good and to me the lightweight pot is much better than the heavy crock. Much easier to wash and the non-stick worked well. Plus I used the sauté function to quickly heat the cooking liquid to thicken it with a cornstarch slurry. It heated quickly. As a test, I made a couple of pork loin chops (thick) with onion soup mix, water, carrots and potatoes. Cooked on low for 8 hours and it came out good. Now lets talk about the dubious claim on the box that it replaces 14 cooking utensils. Here's a picture of the label: I am sure you can tell from the list that the marketing department really had to stretch on this one. My favorite is that it replaces an integrated spoon. All-in-all I am happy with it and I just wish it had multi-phase cooking modes where you could start a slow cook on high for a couple of hours then switch to low.

A live edge board is one that still has bark along two edges. Like this:

I'd sub daikon if you can get it vs cucumber. Turnip might also be a possibility. And if your guests would eat it, beets would work too (golden if available, otherwise cut the red beets then soak in multiple changes of cold water to bleed them).

They’ve had turbo mode for some time, it’s even available with the original Joule. It works. When they came out with the turbo model, I couldn’t figure out what it did that the original didn’t do.

She's right about sous vide for chicken - not so great. But she's off-base about steaks. She is embracing inconsistency. She also likes sous vide for fish (at least halibut). I used to do fish sous vide, but now I prefer my Speedi which uses steam and air frying.