Deryn

My father, who was Welsh and grew up on them, adored kippers. My mother and the rest of our family, not so much. I liked the taste (and the smell) but hated the tiny bones. At any rate, about twice a year, my mother would prepare kippers for Dad's breakfast by simmering them in a bit of milk with butter. Can't recall how long she simmered them for but I don't think it was very long (not hours anyway - I think they would have fallen apart). Thanks for the reminder, Naguere. That is a swarm of very nice looking kippers you have there. How will you prepare them - grilled? or poached?

page showing Griswold logos etc. 1897- 1957 GRISWOLD within a cross. The logo most often associated with the antique collectible world is this logo, the cross with the word Griswold inside it. But it changed over the years, and the medium and small sized emblems of this type are the least favored among collectors. After 1940, much of the “good metal” was gone and the production of diminished quality cast iron was underway. The oldest of the “good metal” was the slant ERIE logo. The word GRISWOLD slanted slightly to the right. It is also known as the italic ERIE logo. The word ERIE underneath the double circle and cross is Block style, meaning the letters are straight up and down, rather than Slanted to the right like the word GRISWOLD.

Thank you (once again), Lisa. This is a wonderful find that I am sure I will take advantage of this technique for many different things over time. I am wondering though if I could perhaps even use a lower temperature (over a longer time of course) so I could utilize my Excalibur dehydrator rather than keep the oven on for hours and hours. The dehydrator might even help with drying out the sugar a bit so it doesn't clump as much in later stages - any thoughts?

Thanks, Kerry.

Thank you all for reporting about the fun you have been having this weekend - and often with such glorious pictures! So sorry I missed it all again this year. I am sure Kerry will respond about where to get the power flowers in Canada. She told me the name of a place in Toronto over a year ago and I thought I still had the info in a PM she sent me but alas it seems to have disappeared (did we lose some PMs when the software change happened?). They are generally wholesalers but I called them way back then and they said they could sell to me as well. I never did order them - was waiting for my 'I NEED to make chocolate' addiction to kick in but sadly it hasn't as yet - but oh I so wanted some of those (and will probably get some down the line).

I am not a particularly big Rachael Ray fan, but, I really 'need' a truffle shaver now (that she has used it umpteen times to slice garlic paper thin in a hurry) - and I have no truffles, nor do I expect to ever have any fresh ones.

That bread looks great, Barney. Thanks for the pictures. I am sincerely glad you have it all figured out now. I do have to say though that you were not as clear about stating your problem as you think you were at first, sir. You were a brand new poster and I don't even see a 'Hello, Glad to be here' post or introduction from you yet people jumped in to try to help you anyway. A number of us have found a lot of that very frustrating - and this is a very bright, friendly and experienced crowd. Apparently you thought that only ONE person who started to do an experiment FOR you was really worthy of listening to. The rest of us have felt (or at least I did and I know I am not alone) that we might be banging our heads against a brick wall. And you did talk about prepping and Bedouins - and not wanting to use anything but commercial yeast, and definitely not wanting to go the 'sourdough' route. Anyway, you might want to cut us a little slack, as we did with you. Welcome to the forum. Let's start again.

Oh dear. I am sorry - I should have read the whole site before I put that link up, Okanagancook. I got that site from a very short search .. wondering if I can find a YVR or at least BC based one if I keep looking. Will let you know if I do find one.

I just found this website (by searching: where to order halal lamb online in Canada). online store that sells halal meats by 'mail order' Not cheap to be sure, but, maybe if the situation vis a vis buying halal meats locally doesn't improve for a while, your group of supporters might chip in together to order a bit of lamb as a 'surprise gift' for the family once in a while.

I KNOW 'you' made it all happen, Rob! They can't and won't take it away from you now. It would not have happened without your dream and hard work. Congratulations once again! And thanks so much for taking us all along on this journey with you. Can't tell you how much I am looking forward to acquiring a copy when it is finally completely ready for sale in the fall.

Bulrushes and cattails grow in water and almost all parts of these plants are edible. http://honest-food.net/2011/04/03/bulrushes-and-flyway-fried-rice/

Thank you, Robert (and Kerry) for the pictures (and report). Robert, for some reason though I am only able to see some of your pictures. Any idea why? The ones I cannot see are represented by a circle with a diagonal line through it but I see the can of caviar for instance quite clearly (but not a dessert unless you only posted one picture and the 'dessert' is in the can under the caviar? At any rate, I am thankful for whatever news we get from the Chocolate Gang this weekend - and hope you are all having a wonderful time!

Shain - thanks .. sorry to hear that, though I know that for the first time in places like the poorer parts of India, people are getting fat from eating things like KFC. Commercial globalism has some distinct drawbacks. Many of the poorer people in countries at least used to eat quite healthily - by our standards. Okanagancook would probably know better than I do in this particular case, but I am fairly sure that if this family is muslim, they won't consider eating kosher meats. On the other hand, today I found out that most, if not all, Campbell's soup products (and probably more that Campbell's makes in Canada) are 'halal' (though many of them don't contain meat, there are some which do). I don't know how important a non-meat halal product is to muslims - or whether they strictly want all foods to be blessed - but apparently there are more products out there that I didn't realize were 'certified' (frozen dinners by certain companies for instance) so the times they are a-changing.

Thanks for the update, Okanagancook. Glad to hear you have found a good way to communicate via modern technology so an interpreter isn't always needed. Seems that Syria and Lebanon (or where was it they spent the majority of their time in the past few years?) must have been far more 'westernized' than I thought - if Oreo cookies and potato chips were so common as to become 'comfort foods' and veggie intake is low (I thought those were really the backbone of Middle Eastern diet judging by all the cookbooks purporting to pass on authentic recipes, etc. from that region) and that making pita bread making and hummus preparation were not common either in the home (I gather since she doesn't seem familiar with making them?) - yet she knows how to make labneh. I am not surprised they haven't eaten celery before though since I don't think that is a particularly common vegetable in those parts, is it? As for juicing lemons - I use my hands or a spoon - I would imagine they have those in their kitchen? A simple plastic or wood reamer works fine too. Life may be a bit easier with a zester/rasp if zest is also needed. In the Maritimes, specifically Nova Scotia, (according to an article I read recently on the cbc news site - I can't find it right now or I would link it) I gather a lot of the refugees, even in the larger communities, are really upset that they are having trouble getting halal meats (and when they get them they are very expensive). Apparently there are very few certified sources for halal meats right now. And yet, in some places (like Ottawa) for example, the last time I went grocery shopping there, I had trouble avoiding it and they seemed priced similarly to conventional meats. As that pertains to your proposed Syrian dinner ... will the family be attending? And if so, will foods that are meat based (i.e. the kabobs, etc.) be all halal?

According the KA article I linked (or was it the one that keychris linked? sorry .. it was one of those about yeast etc. under BarneyDorfman's Starter Yeast and My Bread Machine thread) supposedly yeast has been 'improved' in recent years so that the power of the contents in the new smaller packages is the same as it was in the older, slightly larger ones. I find that interesting when it also comes at a time that manufacturers are, almost across the board, reducing content amounts in packages of just about everything (while keeping the package size the same) in order to achieve savings on their side while not increasing the package price to the consumer. It is a shill game - but perhaps in this case, they are telling the truth - who knows. Or perhaps, as noted above, the baker IS just slightly increasing rise times without realizing it to achieve the same results as they used to. Anyway, your rye bread also looks wonderful, Anna. What adjustments did you make for the TMX method? I brought my TMX with me down south this time so I (thanks to you and Norm) may just try my hand at it too. I can almost smell it from here.

Interesting, Melissa. Thanks for finding/posting that article. Seems a bit early for Mark Bittman to leave that nest.

Raspberries are my very favorite 'fruit', though wild blueberries are a close second. I have been known to eat several pints by myself just plain. But, I also have freeze dried them when I had excess, frozen them whole and made coulis to store in the freezer for saucing up various mid-winter treats, made raspberry vinegar and raspberry jam. I have dehydrated them to either be somewhat reconstituted later or just to eat in their dried form. I toss them into sparkling drinks in summer - muddled or unmuddled - often with mint leaves, because I love the look and the sweet/tart surprise at the bottom of the glass. I have thrown them on roast chickens near the end of cooking. They go well in muffins and coffee cakes and cheesecakes. I am not a big pie or cobbler maker but if I had an abundance and someone to feed the results to, I would definitely use them in those baked goods as well. I am sure there are many other ways I have used them as well - both savoury and sweet - but offhand, those are a few.

Something that occurred to me while reading the above and Porthos's original question was ... is it possible that stores (or perhaps just this particular store or its supplier) is/are slightly pre-brining the better cuts of steak? Not sure why - except if wet brine perhaps to increase the weight and therefore their return on 'investment' when the customer has to pay slightly more or perhaps if dry brined, just to ensure the customer thinks the cut is 'special' because it inherently has more 'flavour' no matter whether they salt it properly or not when cooking? We've been getting rooked for years with pre-brined poultry .. so is this idea so far fetched?

That auto-keep warm function is a lifesaver. Glad to hear your DH's stew was not ruined at all, Beth - and welcome to our wacky world of IP fun.

I really don't want to be harsh, Barney, but your dependency on electricity and a mechanical machine while spouting stuff about prepping and Bedouins is what is 'confusing' (to try to put it politely). Frankly, it is verging on the nonsensical. I am more than a bit of a prepper myself. I suggest you go visit www.survivalistboards.com and perhaps you will begin to understand the concept. There are also discussions there about making bread with wild yeast. There is a lot of knowledge (and many practical skills) involved in 'preparing' to live in a world without electricity, water, grocery stores, and the like - just in case someday, due to a catastrophic event (large or small, local, national or global - people 'prep' for different things, for different reasons), some or most will have to live without those, for a short or long time. I will warn you though that while you will find a LOT of knowledge, insight, experience and good people on the survivalistboards, they can also be rather straightforward at times about calling people on outlandish assumptions or laziness (failure to read the boards thoroughly first and at least open your questioning with an obvious understanding of the greater picture). Anna is also right about fat storage - that is one of the biggest issues that 'preppers' talk about constantly (especially since most people are not in a cow keeping position and/or don't grow their own grains and have an expeller). If you were really interested in 'prepping', you would want to learn to make simple bread by hand and without fat. In fact, you would probably want to grind your own wheat - since most don't store flour (it contains fats and goes rancid relatively quickly). So .. as I said before .. 'let's begin at the very beginning'. Not in the middle. Not at the end. Let's go back to the basics. Learn to make simple breads by hand. Then you can up your game and 'experiment' with a better basic understanding of theory. We'd like to help but right now you are pretty much out in the weeds, my friend. If all you really want to do is keep making this particular bread, this particular way, for your wife, that is fine too but it doesn't fit with the rest of what you keep talking about - and you should realize that.

I just meant (by 'crumb') if you are getting a 'fine' texture result as opposed to more 'coarse' ones (larger), not how many dropped to the board when being cut. No large holes either? I presume that with all that fat, the resulting loaf must be quite tender and will store quite well. At any rate, I gather you are satisfied with that aspect of your bread so I have no really useful further comment there, other than to say that if you do have 'denseness' issues again, you may want to try adjusting the kneading time and/or rising times (upwards) if you can. That said though, that doesn't really address the yeast reduction problem, at least to any great extent, because I am not sure that machines are infinitely adjustable, even nowadays. You may find, at least parts of, the following interesting reading if you have not found it already: KA article about bread machine bread making. That first KA article suggestion posted by keychris is also really useful and relevant here I think if your objective is still just to reduce the amount of yeast you have to use in each loaf so I hope you read that as well. The knowledge that you can reduce the amount of yeast in any given loaf by a substantial amount (perhaps down to as little as 1/8th of a teaspoon) is valuable. However, in order to do that, and also get more flavour as a side benefit, you will need to increase the rise time substantially. Is your particular bread machine capable of being set to let its contents sit overnight after the initial mix before going on with its job? If not, would you consider turning it off overnight perhaps or removing the contents to a bowl and then returning it in the morning? It would I think best also be done in a cooler environment (i.e. the fridge as others have suggested) but perhaps you can make this work on the counter if it is not extremely hot in your kitchen. I think this part is much more easily accomplished without using a machine at all frankly, but, perhaps you can figure out a way that works for you with the machine if you experiment a bit with 'timing' of the rises, etc. as opposed to just letting the machine automatically just go through its programmed cycles. So that may be one way of attacking the problem you initially seemed to have. The other is, of course, to consider keeping a starter, either in the fridge or on the counter and once it is working well, perhaps reducing the amount of yeast required per loaf even more. Which direction do you feel is most feasible for you?

I agree 100% with you, GlorifiedRice. I won't touch the stuff personally nor would I even/especially if I was diabetic. I was just asking a question. I realize adrianvm is trying to solve a specific problem - but it wasn't clear why or what he would not accept as an alternative. I was just trying to help but I am certainly no expert in either ice cream making or chemical sweeteners. I avoid both as much as possible. I feel for anyone who cannot or should not have any kind of sweetener ... (and I know this does not help the OP .. my apologies) ... the only real solution I can offer in that case is that perhaps one needs to just get used to a non-sweet world. I try to avoid sugar, and try to go lightly on maple syrup (my one weakness when it comes to sweet things since I am not a honey aficionado either) but I definitely always avoid all sugar-substitutes. I rarely even eat fruit any more - and while I occasionally find myself eating conventionally or 'naturally' sweetened stuff (it can creep up on you if you inadvertently eat a bit without thinking - till you find yourself 'binging' on things that are sweet), I know (because I have done it umpteen times before) that it just takes about 4 days to wean myself off that kind of thing and then I no longer even crave sweetness. For that reason, I don't touch ice cream much either - maybe once a year I will have a cup or so on a very hot day (even though I have a great ice cream maker and make it for others). For me it is much harder to eliminate all starchy foods than sugars - though of course the body treats them the same way. Anyway .. that is not helping with the original question. I am sorry that I do not have a good solution or the technical answers you need, adrianvm. I will watch the thread and hope others can answer.

When you say 'sugar free' does that mean that you cannot use agave and/or less refined 'sweeteners'? Or just fruit as the sweetener? What is the purpose for these ice creams being 'sugar-free' (for someone who cannot have ANY sugar at all, in any form? or for those who can have sweeteners but want to stay away from refined sugars, etc.?) David Lebowitz's recipe for a sugar-free chocolate ice cream (with agave)

The water you use and the flour you use will all influence how well the yeast 'grows'. Tap water containing chlorine may not be ideal. The more processed the flour the less growth you may get. Less processed flours often contain some naturally occurring yeasts. If you have a few minutes, please try to read this wiki article: wiki article about Sourdough. I think it may explain quite a bit for you. I just don't think that leaving your 'starter' out on the counter will produce anything BUT a sourdough-like result though it may be subtle. You will cause fermentation to some degree - and more on the counter than if refrigerated. However, not ALL sourdoughs are really tangy/sour. I have tasted a lot lately which were purchased from grocery stores, labelled as sourdough, but with so little tang I might not have known but for the label. They are probably Type II sourdoughs - use commercial yeast and have a lower pH than a San Francisco Type 1 'sourdough'. Sourdough bread by the way is better for you than unfermented breads. Please though tell us about your recipe. There seems to be a lot of flour for a bread-making machine for one batch. How large is your machine? Is there any way you can post a picture of a finished loaf (perhaps cut and uncut) for us to see? What kind of texture/crumb does it produce with all that butter in it? Is it somewhat sweet with that much sugar?

Anna, I agree completely. Their marketing department deserves kudos. And the menu ideas are good and appealing for the most part. But, it seems their quality assurance issues have and will cause them problems - and customers who could really benefit from a service like this may not get value for money or will be disappointed. I wish you and JoNorvelleWalker could order from these companies with confidence. That is why I keep urging people to send feedback, good and bad. If you are once bitten and twice shy, no one benefits. I know they are in business to make money so they will take shortcuts or make financial decisions that you or I may not take/make if we were planning, shopping, prepping and cooking for ourselves entirely - but if they have a product to deliver, it should be true to the expectations they created for that product, as close to 100% of the time as they can make it. For some, like you and JoNorvelle perhaps, this is a 'semi-convenience' product that allows you to keep your independence and still retain some joy in cooking with bit a less effort/work on your part. I applaud the concept. I just hate to see you not get what you thought you had paid for, for this product to lure anyone in and not deliver exactly what the words and pictures purported was going to be delivered.