Anna N

what a welcome change this was! Today @Kerry Beal brought lunch over to my house and we had a very pleasant and very long visit, always observing social distancing! The meal came from a place in Hamilton called The Arch Noodle House chosen because they offered scallion pancakes and Kerry was hankering after some. vegetarian spring rolls. Scallion pancake. Despite its name there was not a scallion to be found! Up in that right hand corner cucumber salad. pan fried dumplings. sesame noodles. My plate. Kerry’s plate looked almost identical.

No kidding they are addicting. I ate so many I feel quite ill and I should know better! Hopefully somebody will take them off my hands soon. These are homemade. I have not tried the Costco brand.

I couldn’t resist but I should have! Yes, truly addictive. I sort of used this recipe. I only had black cocoa powder so that is what I used and I thought I had some Skor bits in my baking cupboard but I could not find them. So I sacrificed my last bar and crushed it up. One batch got some Skor bits and some chocolate chips and the other batch got Skor bits, chocolate chips and some butter scotch chips. I baked them on two quarter sheet pans in the Breville smart oven at 350° for only 30 minutes and they are plenty crispy. This Is only half of the batch. According to the recipe writer these will last 10 days in an air tight container. In who’s house I wonder?

I am not a fan of brownies although I did bake them often for others. However, the idea of a crispy brownie calls out to me. I have never heard of these. Will be following with interest.

Had to look up lumaconi! Cheese and onion toasties. I suspect the photograph may be somewhat blurry and it may be time for me to give up on photography.

I think if I were in the market for a toaster, which I am not, I would have to seriously look at this one. Thanks for sharing your experience.g

My best instruction recently was “2 tablespoons of diced, fresh cilantro”. That requires more knife skills than I ever ever expect to acquire.

Having only tried a single brand I’m afraid I can’t even begin to answer your question.

It is overkill for the amount of cooking I can do these days. Yes the new Breville smart oven does a fine job on toast. By the way it’s not a steam oven! i’ve always been impressed with this oven and the fact that my first one died after nine years was a shock. I tried to live without it but for the few things that I choose to cook these days it is a perfect fit for me.

@blue_dolphin I must say that your tater tots look much more like the ones I recall and certainly your preparation beats mine by much more than a country mile. It was your mention of the tots that persuaded me to throw them onto my shopping list so thank you.

A plate of tater tots although they’re called something else by this company. They were plenty hot enough but next time I might try for a little more color.

Sous-vide striploin with buttered spinach.

Was finally able to do a little excavating in my freezer drawer and uneartged a AAA strip loin steak. It is pathetically thin but will still make a tasty bite I’m sure. 54.5°C for one hour.

@blue_dolphin couldn’t do tuna at anytime of the day! Scrambled duck eggs with toast. The toast was done in the Breville smart oven. I didn’t think I would ever say this but I think the newer model makes better toast than the Cuisinart steam oven.

Eggs poached in salsa with toast soldiers.

Bakery sausage roll and some Maille honey mustard. The mustard was an unexpected food gift. The sausage roll hardly passes muster. Apparently the bakery is fearful of anything approaching seasoning. The sausage roll broke my fast but did very little to assuage my hunger.

Much as I would like to blame something other than myself for my poached egg fail, I’m afraid it is just old age - - mine, and the eggs. both the eggs in line

Poached egg fail! These once farm-fresh eggs have been hanging about too long. By the time I strained off the whites I found myself with little more than yolks. But I was impressed with the toast done in the Breville smart oven!

two slices of toast – – one with nothing but caramelized onions and the other with smoked duck breast.

Not a lot of cooking happening at chez Nielsen at the moment. Daughter has been doing my grocery shopping and visited a local bakery where she found some savoury pastries. This one is filled with pepperonata. They reheat very nicely from frozen in the Cuisinart steam oven. The pen is for scale. One of these makes a fine breakfast.

Sorry I missed your question. When you posted it we were all still in drop off mode but since then we have had a couple of visits while respecting social distancing. Still have not left the house since mid March!

Yes I downloaded the recipe book and I see that one recipe calls for an eight hour or longer cook.

Oh yes. Not something that I am particularly anxious to own.

What is an FB? Well apparently my math is even worse than I thought because 2011 to 2020 is not 11 years, it is only 9. And with that two extra years lopped off I do recall receiving a broiler tray and a pizza pan with my first oven. I do not, however, recall ever using these. But this new BSO is not a straight replacement for the old one but has that one feature that I was so missing on the old one – – an oven light, it also has two extra functions – – bagel which does not interest me since I don’t like bagels and slow cook which I probably won’t use either but it’s an interesting addition.

Well apparently from the date on this post my Breville smart oven survived for almost 11 years of very frequent use. But it has been failing for months now and eventually became non-operative. I debated if I could live with just the CSO but much as I love that oven it just doesn’t match the BSO for capacity and it surely doesn’t re-heat pizza worth a damn. So today @Kerry Bealwas kind enough to pick me up a new one and deliver it, sans box, to my house. I just can’t deal with big cardboard boxes at the moment. I am sharing this even before I have taken a look at it in situ. I did notice that it seem to come with many accoutrements. I don’t recall there being anything with the first version. After I’ve had a chance to do some investigating I will post more.