mgaretz

Chicken, wood-fire roasted. Served with baked potato (for me) and baked sweet potato for my wife.

I am going to try my cherry non-dairy ice cream with some pie crust to make cherry pie ice cream. Travelling this week so will likely be next week until I get to it.

That it did!

A few nights ago we were asked to provide dinner for friends of ours son (14 years old). His mom keeps kinda kosher, but he and his dad don't. So when we asked him what he wanted he said, "Shrimp Jambalaya!" I'd never made it before, but found a recipe in Bittman that seemed reasonable, so that's what I made (with modifications of course!). Came out really good and we had leftover rice, but we had eaten all the shrimp out of it. So for leftovers I sauteed up some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, stirred them in and baked it like casserole.

I've used the Costco short ribs many times and they are good.

A few days ago I made dairy-free peanut butter ice cream. Came out very yummy and scoopable with a normal teaspoon after 3 days in the freezer, no thawing necessary. Recipe was: 200 gr Precision Foods Soft Serve Mix (vanilla) 16 ozs Coconut/Almond Milk blend (Silk brand), unflavored and unsweetened 5 tbs peanut butter powder 2 tbs vegetable glycerin Stirred all of the above to combine on the lowest speed of my Blendtec and made with the ice cream bowl attachment of my KitchenAid mixer.

Last night I made ribs two ways: Char siu and smoked style. They were baby backs. The smoked were done using Memphis Dust and the Char Siu were done with NOH mix used as dry rub and some extra hoisin sauce. The latter were run through three marinate cycles on my chamber vacuum sealer before being vacuum sealed and resting for 3 hours. Both were cooked at 225F on my smoker, the Char Siu for three hours, LMRs for five. Served with cauliflower with butter and crushed cashews. Homemade dairy-free peanut butter "ice cream" for dessert.

Yet another tri-tip. This one was rubbed with Montreal Steak Rub before going into the sous vide bath for 3 hours and then seared on the flat side of GrillGrates. Served with baked potato and salad with my raspberry vinaigrette.

At the request of my daughter who just about to head back to grad school after summer break, I made stir fried shrimp with baby bok choy, snow peas, carrots, celery, mushrooms and onion. Due to her medical condition, the sauce was just gluten-free soy sauce with garlic and ginger.

Just me for dinner last night so I cooked a tri-tip steak (rare) with a to small corn on the cob, salad and a glass of 2007 Oppolo Mountain Zinfandel.

Char Siu style Chicken. I marinated the chicken (boneless, skinless thighs and a breast) for about 4 hours by dry rubbing with packaged char siu mix (NOH brand) and then cooked on my smoker at 400F for 30 minutes, basted with honey for the last 10 and then again when they came off the grill. Didn't sear them as we were hungry and I was late getting them on - but they really didn't need it.

Last night I went to grab my phone to take a picture, but it was upstairs charging and we were too hungry to wait, so no pics! I made a stir fry with char siu (made SV with pork tenderloin), bok choy (the full sized stuff, cut up), mushrooms, carrots, celery, onion and snow peas. Sauce was soy, hoisin, cream sherry, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes and cornstarch.

Tonight was char siu vide (pork tenderloin, dry rubbed with char siu marinade mix and the sous vide at 140F for 3 hours, then charred on the grill) stir fried with small bok choy and carrots. Sauce was soy and hoisin sauces with garlic, ginger and a touch of red pepper flakes.

I have been using my VP112S and some accessories for a few weeks now, so here is a mini-review: First, no one seems to have talked about this new version. The S replaced the A. VacMaster says one of the big improvements was a newly designed and better reinforced lid, but there are other differences as well. They are: 1. The analog vacuum gauge has been replaced with a digital display. 2. The accessory port is no more. 3. The old unit vacuumed for a preset time. The new one vacuums to a set vacuum level (up to 29.3) then seals. There are presets and you can also set the vacuum level you want. I also bought three accessories - the filler plates, a bag stand and a prep plate. If memory serves, the original version came with filler plates to supposedly reduce the vacuum time if you didn't have much in the chamber. They stopped including them with the A version because they said the newer unit vacuumed just as fast without them. They are also not included with the S version. They do serve another purpose and that to raise the "floor" of the chamber making it easier to lay bags flat. For this purpose they work great. For grins, I tried vacuuming two identical loads with and without the plates. With the plates it took 59 seconds, without 61 seconds. Not a major difference, but I am glad I have them. The bag stand is designed to hold a bag open with the sealing area out of the way while filling the bag, and also to give you an extra pair of hands. It has three rings supposedly for pint, quart and gallon size bags. That might be true for their non-chamber bag sizes, but for what they call the pint, quart and gallon chamber bags, the rings are too big. The "pint" ring works for the quart bags and so on. I don't have any pint bags, so I am fine with it and it works good. Well made and all metal construction. The last is a prep plate. Here's a link to it: https://www.vacmasterfresh.com/vacuum-sealing-tool-stainless-steel-construction-prep-plate/ The idea is that it holds something fairly flat so you can slip the bag over it. I'm still trying to find a use for it other than the steak in the picture. It's well made, but so far it's been more of a pain to use than it has been help, so the jury's still out.

I put the zucchini noodles posted above into some soup last night. They went in for just the last few minutes. My wife knew that the noodles with green on them were zucchini, but she thought the all white ones were actually noodles!

Last night my wife wanted soup with lots of carrots, despite it being the 80's here (the temp, not the decade). So it was chicken, chicken stock, carrots, celery, onion, Brussels sprouts, peas, barley and zucchini noodles.

I'll be right by there today so I will check it out, thanks!

I didn't get a chance to play with it yesterday, but I did today. Here's what I tried: 1. Potato to make curly fries. It cut the potato fine. I tried to make the fries by tossing them with some olive oil and salt and baking them at 425F with the convection on in my BSO. After about 25 minutes some were a little under done, others burnt and some just right. If anyone has a method for cooking these without actually frying them, I'm all ears! 2. Carrots. Somewhere on the web I saw very nice carrot noodles. This won't make them unless maybe you have a really, really fat carrot. Anybody else made these? 3. Zucchini noodles: These came out great. Picture below. Some in the bowl are cut with the fine blade, some with the thicker blade. 4. Apple, peeled, cored and sliced. Worked like a charm. Overall I like it. Easy to use and not much wasted on the ends. My only complaint is that there's not a huge difference between the two "noodle" blades. It's easy to clean. You can't immerse the base, but it really didn't get that dirty, just a little spritz from the apple near the mixer end and easily wiped off with a damp sponge. The blades are easy to clean, they basically rinse off (drying takes some patience). The exception is the holder end. There is a main metal spike and a black plastic end with small spikes. The metal is easy to clean, the other spikes not so much. First, it's all black and bit hard to see the shmutz, but a dish brush solves the problem. The blades and spikey thing are top dishwasher safe, but I'm not putting mine in there.

Last night I made hash with the leftover tri-tip:

Last night I made tri-tip again - sous vide at 120F then a quick sear on the gas grill using the flat side of grill grates. Usually I season with McCormick's Montreal Steak rub just before going on the grill, but this time I seasoned before going into the bath. Not sure there was a big difference. The highlight of the meal was a new take on peas and carrots. Chunks of steamed carrots with mashed peas. I mashed the peas with butter, cream sherry, honey, salt, pepper and garlic.

I have a worthless spiralizer from Helen Chen, so I've not used it much. Got a WS 20% coupon yesterday so I decided to try the KA version. I have looked at it, seems well built, but haven't tried it yet. I'll play with it today and report back.

Looking forward to it.

Last night I made meatloaf, served with salad and mashed cauliflower. Dessert was applie pie and compressed watermelon and honeydew. Threw this together last minute as we had an unexpected guest for dinner. Forgot to snap pics. Normally in my meatloaf I use oatmeal, but when I went to grab the oatmeal I didn't have enough. So I supplemented it with crushed whole wheat crackers from Trader Joes. It was very yummy.

And lower calorie too (so you can eat three times as much!).

You've all heard of cantaloupe wrapped with prosciutto. This gives you the same kind of flavor, without the prosciutto: I have been playing with my latest toy, a chamber vacuum sealer, and compressing some melon, flash pickling cukes, etc. It can also be used to infuse flavors into the melon, so I decided to give that a try. I cut a 1" slice from a golden honeydew (about 12" across), removed the rind and cut into 1" pieces. Then I mixed up 1/2 cup of cool water, 4 drops of liquid smoke (I used hickory) and a heaping 1/8 tsp of sea salt. Put about half of that (so 1/4 cup) into the bag with the melon and compressed. Came out very tasty!