Deryn

Quite a number of years ago now I used a printer to print edible ink onto frosting sheets - and it worked fine. I didn't try it on rice paper because that was not what I wanted (for cakes). It was just a normal printer that I already owned (I think it was a Canon - not all would work) BUT once you clean it and print with edible inks, you cannot reverse the process and go back to using regular inks(or you could not back then - technology advances may have changed that). For that reason, and the fact that, at the time, I had limited long term use for a caketop printer, I didn't buy a dedicated printer for edible ink work - I eventually bought a new printer for regular printing on paper purposes. I looked into a number of (expensive) printers that were supposedly designed to only print with edible inks but eventually found a source that said that was extra expense one didn't need to go to (although I would guess that if one was running a commercial establishment, just using an old printer probably would not be allowable when it comes to health authorities). I can't vouch for whether cookies can be frozen well with the icing already on them but why take the chance if you don't have to?

Quite a number of people have talked about defrosting mid-cycle - some have it down to a science using hair dryers or heaters so they can get the load back on within minutes, not hours. Read this entire thread and you will find that is sometimes a good strategy. Some things too just should not be dried with others (or they should be dried in smaller quantities) because they, with a higher water content, can cause a problem drying other lower water content foods within what would normally be their cycle time. All part of the learning curve which we are all still going through.

The only even remotely 'different' ingredient I see in Kewpie (and it isn't identified as such on the site you mentioned) is rice vinegar versus distilled and/or apple cider vinegars in the others - although I guess 'natural flavours' could mean they are including all sorts of other stuff. That said, I have looked high and low for a mayo that didn't say it was made with 'soybean' or 'canola' oils, especially as the first ingredient. I used to like Hellman's since that is what I grew up with and if they changed the oil to all grapeseed or all olive or all 'organic' canola even, I would be on board again. I liked their 'olive oil' product but I think it contained way too much of the carrier oil and too little olive. Recently (as I mentioned on a now-defunct thread the other day) I bought some Sir Kensington's (a non-GMO, mostly organic, WF product I think) and it is made with sunflower oil. It is eggy and lemony (perhaps just a bit too much lemon because it tends to remind me vaguely of Miracle Whip) - a totally different taste than Hellman's which now seems rather bland to me anyway. I like it and even more, I like its ingredient list. I have eaten Dukes and it was ok. It was a while ago so my memory is a bit vague there but it seemed a bit more eggy than Hellman's but still bland. TJs I have not yet tried but I will in a month or so when I go back down south. The Kewpie one I have seen and considered a few times but will probably never buy - it just seemed too 'cutsie' for me somehow.

Between Kerry and Anna 'cutting down the number of dishes' they cooked on the BGE at the festival (from 50 to 49, I think) and you, Shelby, getting a case of 'the lazies' (meaning that in one day you only accomplished what normal people would do in two weeks), I am feeling just a little inadequate right now. Keep up the good work! Thank you so much for adding us to your already hectic schedule for the week!

The only year I took my lunch to school was 6th grade when I had to take several buses and then a trolley to school in Toronto - and it took an hour or so each way, so I could not walk home for lunch as I did in all the other grades from kindergarten to grade 12. PB was not allowed in my house (my father was certain it causes cancer) so I think I must have had a lot of tuna, salmon and cheese sandwiches (not all those together) and the occasional thermos of Campbell's finest. I am a bit vague on those but that was the stuff we ate at home for lunch, day in and day out. I didn't attend a school with any sort of cafeteria till I went to university.

Thanks, Andie. The Instant Pot vent looks very similar. Didn't know what word to use so I used 'stem' but 'ear' would probably have been better - and in this case, a picture IS the solution to the description.

Wow! And that is 'keeping the number of dishes down'! It's a new math thing, right? Everything looks absolutely amazing as always.

No, not at all, rotuts. The first time I released the pressure I used a silicone pad just in case but the vent is plastic and has a stem on it that you touch - and it is somewhat moveable so you can point it well away from your fingers. I don't bother to use a pad now and have had no problem at all - no burns.

My apologies - I didn't give you the Instant Pot answer for the pressures the pot reaches (I just did that off the top of my head and I was wrong!) These are the correct #s: Instant Pot IP-DUO has dual pressure settings: High 10.2 ~ 11.6psi (70 ~ 80kPa); Low 5.8 ~7.2 psi (40 ~ 50kpa) While these lower than stove top pressure cooking pressures may indeed require that one cooks foods a bit longer, I have not found that total cooking time was terrifically long at all. It seems to me that the pot comes to pressure much faster than my stovetop cooker does - probably because it hasn't as far to go - and if that is so, perhaps total time is almost equivalent.

The Instant Pot cooks rice (if you use the rice setting - but you could also just steam it or boil it in the Instant Pot if you prefer) under 'low pressure' - which is in the 7 something range as opposed to high which is over 15.

My tomato harvest today (of which I won't include a picture - but I assure you it was just magnificent!) ... one cherry tomato. I don't expect many more bountiful days like this this summer. (Normally I do better than this but I was too late back here from the south this year to get plants and seeds would not even have produced this much by now.) I am in awe of all you are growing on your farm, Shelby! I am devouring your 'blog' and savouring it. Hope you have a good stock of Tecnu in case you got any poison ivy juice on you when you braved the grape vine wilds.

I want to thank you as well, heidh, for that link. After reading that particular post, I backtracked a bit ... as far as the post about proposals.Since the author of Far and Near had already produced several other books previously, I am not sure if she went back further than that to talk about the initial stages of wanting to write a cookbook, her thought processes then and her preparations for her 'journey', before she began to write. I found myself wondering if a cookbook author does, and has to, approach the writing of a cookbook as a 'business venture' as much as a creative venture, from the very beginning - in fact even before one begins to focus on the title or content in anything other than a general sense. In other words, do most cookbook writers (or any book authors) begin first with a formal business plan, one of the critical elements of which is identify their target market, analyze how they/their particular product (the type and scope of the cookbook they intend to write) will appeal to that market (i.e. identify their niche) and then quantify the niche numbers and forecast sales, projecting today's knowledge about costs, demographics and trends etc. to the time each stage of the project will be completed. Once that academic effort is done (if at all), do (and will) cookbook authors adjust their product to accommodate their intended audience if they do not think that audience contains sufficient numbers who will actually buy the product at a price that would allow for publication (again, all the specific costs of which should essentially be known in advance). Or are most cookbook authors, particularly those writing a first book, more inclined to lean to their enthusiastic creative side at least initially (as I think most 'artists' might do) - and just plunge into the 'writing' part and then feel their way through the process, perhaps with only a general idea of what will be required (an agent, a publisher, a printer, etc.) along the way but sometimes getting to the end and realizing there was a step that perhaps they missed at the beginning - the business plan. Gfron - Did you have a formal business plan before you began writing this book? If so, did you revise it as you went along to adjust for new learning, information, trends, opportunities, costs, etc.? And, if so, how did that business plan specifically influence the end product book you have written?

Fantastic, Tony. Thanks for the additions to my (things to) FD list. I have done fish before (and it came out great) but haven't yet tried canned tuna.

I will be sure to report back to let you know how long my Instant Pot manages to stay useful enough to me that it is allowed to take up counter space as well, Anna. So far, so good - for about 2 months.

I don't think the Smart aspect is 'worthless' at all - it is just not worth it for ME. I rarely exactly repeat a recipe. I tend to just cook things on a whim and even if I had a 1000 recipes programmed (which I wouldn't since that aspect - I worked in high tech for years but I like to actively cook not program - doesn't really fascinate me) the thing I would suddenly decide I wanted to make would not be in the list yet. So even if I had an iPhone, I wouldn't buy that version. I was just glad that they hadn't eliminated all the other models so I too could get what I want. Now, if my husband was still around (he was an engineer too) the Smart model would have been right up his alley - and that would probably have been the model I bought too. And, Anna has an iPhone so it may suit her too, especially if they have fixed their glitch with that one.

I wish that anything these publishers have asked for was a surprise to me ... but it isn't and I have never even tried to publish a book. gfron - You don't have a blog do you? Seems several (Deb from Smittenkitchen for instance) bloggers have managed to get cookbooks published merely because they became 'famous' through blogging - and they don't even have restaurants. That blogging may have given them a lot more pull with potentially thousands of ready made book buyers pumped up and lined up before they even began what was still probably an arduous process to publishing their own books. I wonder how much of the same hassles you have had they had to go through and whether they were asked for so many bucks up front in advance of the first copy going out the door.

That grill looks interesting but does it always buckle like that over the heat? And if it does, does it settle back down when cooled?

Have you seen Michel Roux's show about 'service'? In England, he took high school dropouts from the poorest areas of London (I think they were all from there) and spent many weeks teaching them to try to make them into at least adequate servers for fine dining restaurants. At times it is sad, at times it is hilarious. Their attitudes stunk for the most part. And when attitudes stink, little gets learned. He ultimately did manage to 'improve' upon the raw product somewhat (there was nowhere to go but up, mind you) in the end but I am not sure even the best was really a candidate for a busboy job even then. He had to teach them the basics - showing up on time, being dressed appropriately, hair/makeup, how to carry a plate, how to smile, when it is not ok to have a tantrum in public. These are things most people learn in kindergarten.

Welcome to eGullet, Joe. I look forward to hearing what you have to say when you say it. I am sure you have lots to offer, but, in the meantime, happy reading.

I wouldn't call my mother a horrible cook when I was a young child but she did usually cook from the after-war staples of the times in the style of most women with a newly filled canned food larder and a freezer compartment stuffed with steakettes. She expanded her repertoire considerably when we went to the Yukon - after learning to harvest wild berries and to cook rabbit and moose and grouse. My father never cooked a day in his life I swear till my mother died when they were both 69. He became a very adequate cook at that age - though stews were his specialty and he never got 'fancy'. I have Brownies (for girls younger than Girl Scouts/Girl Guides. I may have been 7 years old.) to blame for my first foray in the kitchen as I recall. In those days, to earn a badge one really had to cook and bake. My assignment for my baking badge was to make a cake from scratch - for 50 people for a St. Patrick's Day party. No one was allowed to help me. I managed to produce the cakes and that part of the task wasn't too inedible but the icing was another story. It was a horrible shade of green, bordering on grey (we only had red, blue and yellow food colouring). It never hardened at all and was very, very runny. So, creative me - I got several 2 x 4s, sawed them (with a handsaw by myself - should have gotten my woodworking badge too!) to lengths that would fit around the outside of the cake (which was composed of 4 single, humpy layers laid in a square) to contain the icing as it slid off the tops of the cakes. I nailed the corners shut. I was embarrassed but there was no time to bake another set of cakes, etc. so I took the cake to the party. They passed me anyway. I have never been an enthusiastic baker but I have improved considerably over the years. Cooking is really more of my thing. And I love it - but the love of it came from giving dinner parties, not from everyday cooking for a family, especially when I was a working mother - though I probably did learn a lot of basic techniques doing those meals daily. But, I broke every rule in the book when I had people over for dinner. I didn't ever serve anything I had made before. I experimented with ethnic cooking without having the appropriate ingredients, learning to substitute by taste and taste memory and taste imagination. I poured over cookbooks (which somehow just happened to arrive regularly via the cookbook of the month club) for ideas and then did my own thing with abandon. It was just pure fun - and usually I produced pretty darned decent spreads if I do say so myself.

Lisa beat me to it. You might want to soak it both inside and out with CLR.

Mine is not a SMART Instant Pot. I have absolutely no need to add the ability to use an iPhone (that I don't own) to control what I can walk over to in 3 seconds so even if there had not been a recall I would not have purchased that model. That said, the recall was a while ago ... not sure if they have yet corrected that particular problem but I think the SMART pot was the only one affected.

I haven't tried meatloaf in my Instant Pot yet but I saw a picture of one done in it and I would agree with you about how it looked. Consequently it has not been first on my list of things to try in the new machine. It looked unappetizing but I am sure it probably tastes just fine. Maybe you could brown it first in the pot before cooking then set it up to cook and add the tomato paste, etc. to the top and finally, once it is done, put some crispy bacon on top?

Yes, he appreciates me and the new pot ... chicken being his favorite aphrodisiac. He said he approved of tonight's repast. I should clarify - it is not difficult to pour out a small amount of liquid if that is all there is - but there is no pour spout or handle so you have to grasp the edges of the pot and lift it out of course - which can be a bit difficult if it is very hot. I guess one could have designed it with a handle like a bucket but that would get hot and greasy too during cooking so I am not sure it would be an advantage. The lid is, by the way, great because it fits upright on one of the outside handles so you don't have to find a place to set it down when you open up the machine. And the lid is very easy to put on and take off.

No, not at all, but then I usually use tongs to remove large pieces of meat or ladles for liquids. I don't pour out the latter. Not really any different from how you would remove your cooked products from a medium stock pot. It is quite large/tall and there is no 'handle' so pouring from a container this size would be difficult I am sure. Would not have occurred to me to try to pour anything out (although I guess if you are strong and careful you could if the contents was completely cooled). ps I don't really get what CI was trying to say there. Perhaps in a commercial kitchen, chefs heft heavy stock pots (which have handles of course) and pour them into some other container to cool in the sink - but, at my age, I am not about to do that. No hurry here and not enough strength to try to be a hero any more. I have over 4 lbs of large chicken legs cooking in the Instant Pot as I write this. Meat/stew setting. Saute'ed them first in the pot, added a bit of water. Will be done in less than 30 minutes. I will have a rich stock as a bonus while dog gets dinner.