JoNorvelleWalker

Whether in "sous vide" mode or not, the APO will put out steam without using the rear heating element. However with steam the fan speed will be locked on high. I share your concern about fan speed but in practice I have not seen a problem. Anything specific that you are trying to cook? Does anyone have both an FBO and an APO that they could make comparisons?

@Lieuwe what brands are your appliances?

One problem with the Vesta is it does not recover from a power failure. Ask me how I know. At least it makes it easy to decide what's for dinner. Our power last night was only out for about five minutes. The UPS's held up the computers and the network equipment. But a Diesel generator for the blast freezer is impractical in a one bedroom apartment. Anyone use alarms on their freezers? Possibly the most practical solution would be a sticky note on my night table.

Add a bit of beet. Seriously, I have made Nigel Slater's chocolate beet cake, the flavors go well together.

I have a Blendtec Stealth. The sound really isn't bad at all.

I believe whether the oven continues to cook after the timer dings depends upon your program.

No. That sounds too much like work. I did cut off any gnarly looking bits.

My first blender soup! Inspired by a recipe I found on the Vita-mix website: https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/recipes/beetroot-tomato-macadamia-nut-soup I used chicken stock instead of water, and I added a red onion and a garlic clove. Having no macadamia nuts I substituted red walnuts. Vita-mix calls for cutting the beets in half but I am lazy and I have a good blender. I simply threw the stuff in whole and pushed the soup button. Possibly the best soup I have made.

But you can do that if you have a blast freezer.

Any friends with a spare vaccine freezer? When I was in grad school we had a -80 freezer but I never thought to put my fish in there. I used lab freezers only for ice cream. So much I didn't know back then. Wonder if they still require asbestos gloves?

Enameled cast iron should clean pretty easily.

Note: Norwegian waffle batter is better repurposed as pancakes.

I shall never again neglect to add orgeat to my mai tai. The orgeatless mai tai didn't taste half bad, but I went back and stirred in a bit of orgeat anyhow.

I wanted to try a new waffle recipe.

I received my Whole Foods order this morning. Now they have duck. Now.

Nice spoons.

As you may read earlier in the thread I am fond of the Marion Cunningham recipe. The exercise was to test out the new blender.

Blast freezer is full at the moment and I have other things in line to freeze, namely nice organic blackberries before they rot. Another reason, these waffles I did not like well enough. The cakey batter should be better as pancakes. I hope. Plus, I'd have no place to put the frozen waffles. I was able to fit the blender jar in the refrigerator, but that means I am having pickles for my dinner.

I just finished three cups of hot chocolate made with milk and Rancho Gordo Xoxoc chocolate (70%). Rancho Gordo chocolate comes in cakes that are hard as rocks. No appliance in my kitchen had been able to make a dent in them. Nor would they melt. But I have a new blender! Will it blend? Following the Rancho Gordo recipe I used two cups of milk to one cake brick of chocolate. The poor machine sustained an overload condition twice, but eventually after two soup cycles I obtained the smoothest, most delicious steaming hot chocolate I have made. Perfect sweetness with no added sugar. And I now feel like an Aztec sacrifice.

Waffles today. My excuse is I wanted to try out my new blender. Since the blender was new, I searched around for a new waffle recipe. I came upon this blog with a Norwegian blender recipe: http://apple-of-my-eye.com/2015/11/06/norwegian-blender-waffles/ (Though the author has a disclaimer about her mother being a Japanese with a thing for tall blonds.) I eventually settled on a similar though more precise recipe from Magnus Nilsson's The Nordic Baking Book (p234). Not following the mixing instructions I loaded the blender and pushed the batter button. In about 34 seconds I had waffle batter. Norwegian waffles are not intended to be crispy (Nilsson calls for five eggs) and indeed these waffles were not. And I found them too sweet for my taste. Still, they were waffles with very little effort. The problem now is I have three and a half cups of waffle batter left. Wish I had made half a recipe. What to do? Probably pancakes. Suggestions welcome.

Vesta has 25% off their blast chillers at the moment.

Yes.

Or Rhulman's How to Braise...or eGullet. https://forums.egullet.org/topic/143759-braising-help-needed/ Edit: I notice How to Braise is $1.99 at the moment on Kindle.

Just to add my vote, in my oven aluminum works better.

There were two bowls of salad. One had been sampled. I brought home the unopened one. In addition to the spinach, pomegranate, and feta there were a few apple slices and cranberries, and seeds of some kind. The salad was undressed although dressing was provided. I dressed mine with the batch of blue cheese ranch I had in the refrigerator. There is still plenty of salad left.