Steve Irby

I was straightening up our freezer the other day and realized I only had one bag of creamer peas left! My mother would be so disappointed that her son was remiss in tending to the essentials. I drove up to the north end of the county today to Steve's Farm (no relation) and picked up a bushel of speckled butterbeans, a bushel of lima beans and a half bushel of pink eye purple hull peas. I had then shell them and I was very happy with the quality. Lots of smaller tender beans and they were very clean. Not a single hull in the batch! The yield was eight pints of peas, fifteen pints of limas and 16 pints of speckled beans. Now I don't have to worry about anyone looking in my freezer.

Shrimp and homemade toulouse sausage over pasta with North African seasoning (or so I imagine!) The proteins were pan fried then sauced up with diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts, oil cured olives, salt cured capers, preserved lemons and harissa paste. A little drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of Aleppo chili flakes to finish.

Careful! That quiche is hot! One for us and one for our 94 year old neighbor who's had a rough week.

I purchased a JVR Vac100 prior to Christmas to replace a Vacmaster VP-112 that I had for about ten years. I had very good service out of the VP-112 until the last two years when I ordered some replacement parts on two separate occasions that were somewhat incompatible. It really pissed me off to spend $200 on mismatched replacement parts from Ary when I could have applied the money to a new unit. I decided to scrap the VP-112 and replace it with an oil sealed rotary unit with a similar form factor. My criteria were rotary pump, fit on a countertop with overhead cabinets, seal bar length to accommodate two 6” x 12” pouches, good interior volume and knowledgeable sales/support. My maximum out of pocket budget was $1,000. First off I discovered my spec’s aren’t what the market is geared toward. There are a lot of units with small chambers, weak pumps and glossy, super amped up promotions (Anova in particular). There are also a bunch of very competent VP-215 & clones with 10-inch seal bars but very few (or none) that had a 12.5” inch seal bar and were countertop friendly. Lack of after sales support seemed to be a common theme across a lot of brands requiring the unit to be returned instead of a small part being replaced. I had never heard of JVR until @liliumdavidii posted a link to the unit on November 8 on this thread. I followed the link to the website and was impressed by the Vac100 specs but also that it was being marketed by a company that had been in business for 40 years selling and servicing commercial packing equipment. At the end of 2021 the units were just being rolled out and reviews were pretty hard to find. I called JVR and spoke with Andrew regarding the technical specs. I believe Andrew is the son of the founders of JVR and is responsible for developing the JVR Vac product line. He was quite knowledgeable and addressed all my concerns. They also have all the spare parts in stock and displayed on the web page plus a full line of accessories including retort canning supplies. I know other companies say there units can seal retort pouches but I think only JVR sells a heavier seal bar tape and heat wire that is up to the task. Here's link to JVR with specs and video's https://jvrinc.com/shop-all-products/vacseries/jvr-vac100/vac100-chamber-vacuum-sealer The unit was delivered by UPS a week or two before Christmas. Upon delivery I noticed that the overpack was banged up and had probably been dropped pretty hard on the freight dock. Dam there goes my Xmas package! After unpacking I discovered that the unit had some cosmetic damage but was functional. I contacted Andrew and he said they would ship out a replacement ASAP and to use the unit in the interim. The replacement unit was delivered within 10 days with double overpack and a RA for UPS pick-up. At work! Very handy bag clips! Usable chamber depth. The bag under the clips is 12" x 12". I've used as large as 12" x 14" for roast. Right out of the box the unit has been a work horse. Fast, quiet and easy to maintain. I was pleasantly surprised that the brushed stainless steel is non-magnetic alloy and of heavier gauge than I expected. The curved glass top is really attractive and makes it easy to monitor the transition to the “boiling” point of different foods. I’m also getting consistent seals at lower vacuums which was always a problem with the VP-112. They ship the pump dry so the first task is to fill the pump. The task is made quite easy since the equipment bay is accessed by removing three screws across the rear of the unit and pivoting the hinged chamber up. The unit is going to be easy to service as the equipment layout is very neat, modularized and easy to access. They have provided a knockout plug in the base of the unit so oil changes will be no muss no fuss. The Vac100 shipped with a very nice canister set, wine bottle seal, bag assortment, spare seal wire, refill of oil, heat strip and operation manual. They also included a quart oil with the second unit. I'm a happy camper six months in with hundreds of bags sealed.

Achari Chicken Curry. I'm not very well versed in Indian food but this recipe is a keeper. I'll fume the mustard oil a little longer next time though as it was a little too prominent.

It was finally cool enough, and dry enough, to fry some fish tonight on my Weber grills side burner. IQF flounder fillets with twice fried red potatoes. The potatoes had enough starch to blister up nicely. Served with sliced tomatoes to add a little acidity.

I only use it for cutting hard material such as bone, drywall, lumber, pvc pipe, etc. In the kitchen the bone is cut after the meat is trimmed back. In the case of the beef ribs you just plunge cut through the silver skin side and finish the meat portion with your knife. There is little chance of cutting yourself as you can press the blade (20 TPI bimetal) against your skin without injury.

If it's going to get messy I use plastic film over the blade holder. If it's going to get real messy I use my meat saw! If I'm sectioning a bone for soup (or dog treat) I don't fool with the film.

Thanks, I stand corrected!

It's not a culinary implement but it certainly lives up to it's multi-tool billing at our house. The tool operates by oscillating the blade through a small arc at up to 20,000 OPM. The material being cut needs to be hard and you use a light pressure to advance the tool. Too much pressure and the oscillating motion is transferred into the work piece or tool. It works beautifully on small meat cuts as the meat doesn't slide on the table and the bone meal is greatly reduced. I have a meat saw and sawzall that I use on larger primas but this has worked well on ham bones, chicken, and pork shoulders

The last of the grilled ribs. Last nights dinner was a beef rib sandwich served southern style. Actually southern style is two or three pork ribs sandwiched between two slices of white bread. I could never figure that one out as as kid but it's the equivalent of a Scotch egg or pastie. Meal in-hand. My meal in-hand included lots of sauce and a Sweetwater 420. And tonight's rib sendoff is serendipity soup prepared with the aid of my oscillating multi-tool. I sectioned the rib with no drama (or splinters) and combined with chicken stock for a Pho'ish type soup. I had some really nice mushrooms that I sweated down and added prior to serving.

Nice summer bbq with grilled chicken, pork ribs, beef ribs and homemade sausage. The beef ribs were removed prior to cooking a standing rib roast at Easter, vacuum bagged and frozen. Dinner was served with cajun potato salad, cucumber salad and a fresh peach crisp with Tillamook ice cream. Everybody had seconds so I guess dinner was a success. The dogs got leftover bones so they too were happy!

ARY recommends 10w non detergent hydraulic oil. There's a lot of brands available to fulfill that requirement. What your looking for is pure mineral oil without additives. The Lubriplate oil is 10W ISO 32 non detergent mineral available from Motion Industries for ~$15.00 if you have a store locally. I have a JVR Industries Vac100 that uses 5W ISO 22 mineral oil. JVR was nice enough to include a quart of oil with the delivery of the machine. They have it available for ~$6/qt or $27/gal. They also carry other brands and ISO numbers for commercial machines at very competitive prices. I've had the JVR Vac100 for 6 months and will do a review in the next few weeks. As a spoiler alert I'm really glad that I bought the JVR unit rather than the VP-215. High performance with a countertop footprint smaller than the VP-112.

Another pretty simple lunch with grilled salmon served on a Panera bagel with a quick coleslaw. I decided to punch it up a little (actually a lot) with a tapenade/aioli/mayo mix of salt cured capers, preserved lemons, garlic, castelvetrano olives, EVOO, and mayo. I cured the lemons for about 10 days after salting and vacuum sealing. The start of the lemons early last week On a compression tangent trying to squeeze a little flavor out of a pretty bland Aldi $1.00 cantaloupe.

Local chanterelles cooked in butter served over garlic mashed potatoes and sausage.

Homemade hot link on a baguette from Craft Bakery served with a heirloom tomato. A really tasty and simple lunch. The sausage was a lot hotter than what I normally make. I think the cayenne that I used must have had a much higher heat unit. I just about burned up my neighbors palate with the links that I gave her!

Oven roasted chicken thighs with Dixie Lilly yellow rice blend. The Perdue thighs came in a family pack from BJ's and were obviously culls from a mechanical processing line. The smallest were two bites with half a bone. They may have been small and mangled but they sure tasted good! They were marinated in a mix of fresh squeezed lemon and orange juice, crushed garlic and a roasted pepper seasoned salt. The pan drippings were reduced along with heavy cream and campari tomatoes then blitzed with a stick blender to create a medium bodied sauce.

It's been a pretty wet week or two on the gulf coast. Less soggy today so dinner came off the grill tonight. Dinner was nice, fatty pork steaks that I trimmed off of a butt that were marinated in olive oil, meyer lemon juice, rosemary, garlic and S&P with grilled potatoes. The potatoes were parboiled then quartered and slipped into the leftover marinade with the addition of butter prior to grilling.

I may have to add a half hour to my nap after finishing off this one. Grilled luganeca sausage topped with aged gouda and mozzarella cheese. Dressed with roasted red peppers, onions and lettuce. Served on overnight white bread.

Whoops! The recipe was from a small dessert collection published by Consumers Guide. It was probably a stocking stuffer from my sister and the recipes that I've tried over the years have been very good. I had a few hiccups with this recipe that I know how to correct (more gelatin for apricot filling, finer grind of nuts for cake) but the chocolate filling has me stumped. The filling went grainy or seized during the assembly phase and would not flow or spread. What I was shooting for Filling direction My ugly but tasty dessert! The silver lining - Creme Brulee from the leftover egg yolks. Silky smooth.

Not exactly sure of the question but the shrimp were prepped last week in conjunction with another meal for company. A trip to the seafood market yielded two pounds of headless Royal Reds and two pounds of large, brown headless shrimp. Twenty four of the brown shrimp were shelled and deveined (leaving tail segment intact) to become grilled shrimp skewers (4x6 shrimp) as an appetizer. Twenty of the cleaned and deveined shrimp were leftover and were vacuumed bagged in my JVR Vac100 and frozen. The mise en place for dinner started on friday with the wife buying some really nice pencil asparagus at Aldi's which were washed, trimmed and prepped for the microwave. Shrimp were defrosted and put on standby. Pasta cooked and put on standby. After trip to prehab for wifes knee replacement (scheduled 7/12) dogs ate half of pasta and remainder into fridge. Saturday dinner service as described above with copious amounts of butter and garlic providing joint lubricant and anti-oxidant protection as per the Ortho's request. It's been awhile since I baked so we had some overnight white with more butter with the meal. The status is happy dogs, happy wife, and happy cook.

Easy peasy supper tonight. Pencil asparagus nuked for 1.25 minutes then tossed with a butter/lemon juice emulsion, some leftover pasta and butterflied shrimp that I prepped the day before. The quick prep was particularly appreciated after struggling for two days with a chocolate apricot torte recipe that I've been eying for about 41 years.

@Duvel very nice photography showing the progression of dinner! That first photo is great with the juxtaposition of the well used cutting boards, an Apple computer and Charlottes Web. It reminds me of the meals with my Mom. Decades later it ain't the meals it's the memories.

@Heidi the Royal Reds are wild caught from the Gulf of Mexico or east coast of Florida. Here's a link you may find interresting. https://eatalabamaseafood.com/articles/story/royal-red-shrimp-alabamas-gulf-coast

@Duvel We usually leave them in the brine for two or three days before eating but sometimes as long as two weeks. Royal reds are $8/lb for 10/12 count headless shrimp so you can stack 'em high on the bun!