Martin Fisher

I'm not ashamed to say that back when I was farming full time and single, and rarely had extra time to devote to "proper" meal preparation, I regularly bought a few products from Schwan's (very rarely ice cream.) The quality was reasonable relative to other "convenient" alternatives. But that was several years ago so I can't speak as to the level of quality now.

Sure!

I posted this previously but there's a problem with the images in the original post. A different design with essentially the same results. "I came up with this idea a [few] years ago. Less than $20 invested. The following is how I cold smoke inside...... A stainless steel colander flipped over the target helps concentrate the smoke if needed. My vent hood doesn't vent to the outside, I open the window and use a box fan. From my old blog....... "Small Batch Indoor Cold smoking." "I spent several weeks looking for a reliable and inexpensive way to do indoor cold smoking. I settled on rolled cigarettes (LOL) heated with a soldering iron because it’s possible to smoke with pure tea leaves, herbs, sawdust, etc. without the fuel burning up too rapidly. I invested about $20 in the cigarette roller, papers, soldering iron, spring and clamp." "Below is some rosemary being rolled." "Applewood smoked butter, rosemary smoked foccacia, tea smoked hard-boiled eggs….the possibilities are endless." "The cigarette must be able to slide freely inside the spring. The soldering iron raises the temperature inside the cold oven only about 10 degrees above room temperature. Each cigarette smokes for about 30-40 minutes. A vent hood is recommended. My vent hood doesn’t vent to the outside, but that wasn’t a problem with a window open and the ceiling fan running. It's habit forming!!!!!""

Yep!!! Exactly!

Lots of great looking food! I must try to stay away from this topic and the like...I'm supposed to be dieting!!!

We average about a bag a day. In our case, 1000 bags makes sense because they're a much better deal. ~2000 bags in ~6 years. We're ~1/3 of the way through them.

Yeah, I bought 1000 (best "deal") of each mentioned above. Recently broke down and packed 45 chickens. Larger bags would definitely have worked much better for the 15 chickens I split in half. In terms of packing parts, a larger bag divided in half would have worked MUCH better than than the small narrow bags I bought. A wider, shallower bag affords speedier loading and much less chance of mess....no special precautions or fuss necessary to keep the edges of the bag clean. We'll get through them eventually.

+1 I agree. If reasonable safety precautions are respected, re-freezing and re-thawing is much more an issue of quality.

Baggage regrets! If I knew then what I know now! Go big or go home! Love, love the VP-215 but I made a BIG mistake in not buying larger pouches!!!! Don't do that, don't ever do that!!! I bought WAY too many 10"x13" and 8"x10" pouches shortly after I acquired the VP-215. I should have bought one size...at least 10"x15" (halving that size for smaller needs) instead of 2 sizes!!! Attempting to seal anything of serious girth in a 10"x13" pouch often leads to mass frustration!!!!

@nathanm summed it up brilliantly... "Food safety is a statistical phenomenon - if food is very contaminated you can get sick even if you follow the guidelines; if it is not contaminated with pathogens then you can get away with a lot. That is, until you find some contamination."

Yes. Yes, you'd likely be killing the pathogens but not necessarily rendering the possible disease causing toxins - produced by those pathogens - harmless. Some pathogen derived toxins are very resistant to heat.

Yep. Some pathogens reproduce at fridge temperatures. That's potentially very dangerous if pathogen loads are initially high.

FWIW..... "The presence of pathogens [disease causing organisms] in food usually cannot be detected by sight or smell..." Source: " FOOD SAFETY HAZARDS AND CONTROLS FOR THE HOME FOOD PREPARER" http://www.hi-tm.com/homeprep/Home-2006-2col-forpdf.pdf There's lots of great food safety information on Dr. O. Peter "Pete" Snyder's website: http://www.hi-tm.com/

It's impossible to know the handling history of said raw chicken and since the pathogen load and possible toxin content of said raw chicken are unknown, I don't think it's wise to refrigerator it more than one day unless it's heavily iced (crushed ice preferred.)

Quoting Simon...."this [fish & chips] is probably what I'll have to be my last meal in the whole world" I've said essentially the same thing for many years.

Same here. I keep the hard copies in a safe place. I've recently started digitizing the irreplaceable stuff and archiving it on M-Discs (1000 year archival discs.) I'll store those in a very safe place as well as distribute copies to family.

FWIW, I also remember a technique featured on a cooking show some years ago where they dusted the chicken with seasoned flour prior to pre-cooking it in a pressure cooker. That resulted in a tacky coating suitable for accepting an additional thicker coating of seasoned flour and such prior to frying.

I know some Mennonite folks who make it that way....it's pretty good.

Not in January! Around here anyway! Yeah, I grew up in dairying and the like.

The insert is easy to clean. It requires about as much cleaning time as the entire stove-top pressure cooker. Then there's the lid. The four piece lid. Then the pressure cooker body, the cord and the counter-top. Something else that I found irritating. When it came time to pour the PC'd chiles and some of the other ingredients into the blender, it required fiddling with pot-holders to handle the insert, where the stove-up PC requires simply grabbing the handles and pouring. The clean-up and fiddling around as well as other differences required an additional ~20 minutes compared to using the stove-top PC. Anyway, just my honest assessment at this point.

I made dark chili for lunch today. The chili turned out great but the electric pressure cooker is MUCH more of a hassle to use compared to the stove-top type, especially in terms of clean-up. I'm sure it'll see lots of use but not for stuff requiring browning and a short cook time.

FWIW, It sure seems to hold heat well. The temperature of the water is 88° F ~14 hours after I turned it off. And this is a relatively cool kitchen, ~65 ° F.

The refurbished Cuisinart CPC-600FR 6-Quart pressure cooker arrived today lookin' brand-spankin' new! Initial testing: 16 cups (one gallon) of 66° F tap water, heat-up time to full pressure. Cuisinart CPC-600FR 6-Quart vs. Hawkins SS 6.0 liter (~15psi) on a GE standard gas range set on high. Heat-up time: Cuisinart CPC-600FR 6-Quart, ~30 minutes. Hawkins SS 6.0 liter (~15psi), ~29 minutes. That's in line with what I expected. So far, so good!

New Year's Eve: Cheerful libations and o̶r̶d̶e̶u̶r̶v̶e̶s̶, h̶o̶̶̶r̶̶̶d̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶e̶r̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶s̶̶̶ , h̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶v̶e̶s̶, h̶o̶̶̶r̶̶̶’̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶d̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶o̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶r̶̶̶s̶̶̶, ...ummm...appetizers..yeah..appetizers!!!

New Year's Day, traditionally something porky..because, you know, a pig roots forward...while poultry scratch backwards and cattle stand still! The electric pressure cooker is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I've gathered the ingredients for a pressure cooked pork and cabbage stew.