Tropicalsenior

I would love to see a picture. I haven't made in crumpets in ages and now you have me wanting crumpets.

Yesterday I made my usual Sunday stuffed buns. As usual, I had enough dough left over for a small loaf of bread for dinner this week. I just put in a ground beef filling with mushrooms, celery and a thick rich beef gravy. They turned out pretty good if I do have to say so myself.

Here's a little bit from Arm & Hammer about using soda on meat. It doesn't say anything about ground meat but it does give you an idea about how the soda works.

As for the part about making it into Greek yogurt, years ago I devised my own setup for that. it is just two plastic containers, one large one and one small one that fits comfortably inside the other. I cut the handle off a cheap, plastic strainer to fit on the top of the smaller container and I use a coffee filter to strain the yogurt. All you do is pour in the yogurt, snap on the lid, and put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. You have perfect Greek yogurt. I've had it for about 20 years and at the time that I made it it probably cost me $2 to make.

I watched the video above and although I can see that it would work it is a whole lot more work than what I do to make mine. I make yogurt every Monday and today I decided to photograph and time my process. The ingredients. Milk, yogurt, dry whole milk powder. The equipment that I use, not including my microwave. I have a Hamilton Beach convection oven that has a setting low enough to maintain the milk at a temperature of about 110°. Before I begin anything I set the oven to heat. Making one container at a time, I pour the container half full of milk and add four heaping tablespoons of milk powder, mixing well. I fill it with the rest of the container of milk and heated in the microwave for 4 minutes. That brings it to a temperature of about 105°. I then add two tablespoons of yogurt and mix well. I then repeat with the other two containers. Using two loaf pans, I add two cups of water that I have microwaved for 2 minutes to each one. I put the containers of yogurt into the loaf fans and leave in the oven for 8 hours. The whole process from taking the milk out of the refrigerator to putting everything in the oven took me 20 minutes and these days I'm pretty slow at doing things. The best thing was the only clean up that I had was washing the Whisk and the spoon. My cost breakdown is equally satisfying. It cost me about $1.75 per liter compared to the $5 that a liter of yogurt would cost me. I realize that not everyone has an oven with that lower temperature setting, but I have also successfully made yogurt using a heating pad on the lowest setting and a plastic container full of water to hold the yogurt containers. I much prefer using the oven.

Did you make the baked beans?

I've never been much of a cheesecake Baker. They've always turned out hit or miss and usually miss until I develop this cheesecake recipe. You say that you aren't really interested in New York style cheesecake and that is the great thing about this recipe. You can adapt it to your own taste. You can add pumpkin for Thanksgiving, put in some chocolate, a little more lemon. It can be anything you want with just a little addition here and there. One of my favorite ways to serve it is with lemon curd.

Warning, warning, warning! Your fellow EG'ers are really helpful enablers. Since I live in Costa Rica, I couldn't Buy all the expensive stuff from Amazon that was recommended so I went to a Chinese store and found trivets and steamers and everything recommended for about a third of the price. About all you need to make the cheesecake is a six to seven inch springform pan and a trivet about 2 in high. It helps to have some kind of lid that will fit the cheesecake pan but really, all you need is a plate with a paper towel underneath. I've made that cheesecake dozens of times without a failure. It couldn't be easier and it is just the right size for 2 to 4 people without a lot of leftovers. However, if there are leftovers they don't last long.

Thank you. I love cucumber salad and I'm always looking for something new and interesting and this sounds perfect. Just have to pick up some limes at the grocery store today.

Or you could make the cheesecake that was posted by our own @shain. I have made it and it is excellent. I just mixed it up by hand. I like the texture of Cheesecake better if it is mixed by hand because using a food processor or a mixer incorporates too much air and ruins the texture.

Looks different and interesting. Would you care to share the recipe? Thank you.

I have a dip recipe that I have been making for 40 years. It's probably the easiest dip in the world and one of the best. I got it from a chef at a country club in Reno. It was his specialty and he never told anybody what was in it but I did him a favor by working for him through the holidays when he really needed it and as I left he gave me the recipe, making me promise to never divulge it. It is simply 8 oz of cream cheese and one small can of anchovies. Mash the anchovies to paste and combine with the cheese. I've always gotten rave reviews and even some anchovy haters have loved it. I'm always asked for the recipe and especially in the cases of the anchovy haters I just have to smile and tell them I promised never to tell anyone.

Another good reason not to!

Thank you!

Probably a pretty stupid question and I could Google it but, is it better to braise with the lid on or off?

Well, I did it. It turned up to be quite a journey from making both the Japanese curry powder and making up some fresh garam masala to making the Japanese Curry Roux to making the katsu curry today. There are a couple things that I would change like cutting the vegetables bigger and perhaps the next time I won't let the roux get quite as dark as I did before I add the spices. Other than that it was delicious and I would recommend the recipe to anyone. And the really great thing is that I have enough roux for three more meals.

I finally found a cut of beef here that is fairly decent so I decided to make Rou jia mo. I followed the recipe from @liuzhou exactly except for the peppers which I can't use because of the allergy issues. I made the buns which don't look perfect but turned out great. I'm still taking advantage of the asparagus that I have been able to find recently. Added some sliced tomatoes which are excellent down here year round, with watermelon on the side, not shown.

That reminds me of the time years ago when I was first married and we were invited to the home of the parents of friends of ours for Thanksgiving. That was in the days of the first little 8 mm movie cameras and I decided to film the day. I had the camera set up on a tripod in the kitchen and really wasn't paying much attention when his mother carved the turkey. Later when we viewed it, we could see that as she carved it one leg fell off and fell onto the floor. I had also filmed the dinner as we sat down to eat and sure enough there on the platter with all the rest of the turkey, very prominently, were the two legs.

It's a lousy picture but I do have my Curry Cube mixture done and Cooling. Now I just have to take the loin steaks out of the freezer for the curry Katsu tomorrow.

And no doubt with a whole house full of guests to witness the disaster. That reminds me of the time when we first moved to Costa Rica and we had two other couples over for dinner. I wasn't familiar with how bad the beef was in Costa Rica and I decided to serve veal cutlets. Instead of nice tender cutlets, it was like trying to eat shoe leather. I don't think that I have tried to cook veal here since. Fortunately there was plenty of other food and a good dessert but even the neighbor's dog wouldn't eat the cutlets.

I know it well, at least I used to. When we first moved there I lived on the mountain(?) between Bothell and Kirkland. Two of the places that I miss most are Pike Place Market and the International District. Between the two, it is possible to buy spices and ingredients from anywhere in the world.

I think the Costa Rican pizza places read that notice.

Everybody has had one. Moments when you just want to sit down and cry but you can't because that is the time for action. You have a mess to clean up or an alternative meal to be found to feed the family. You can laugh about it later but you know it's going to happen again sooner or later. It's happened to me a hundred times but I want to hear about yours. I guess it's only fair that I start out with probably the worst one that ever happened to me. I had an Oster electric pressure cooker that I had had for a couple years and I was making a pork soup base for borsche. Fortunately I was sitting across the kitchen from it when all of a sudden, boom. The whole thing exploded all over my kitchen. My kitchen is about 16x25 and it didn't miss a surface, anywhere! I couldn't move. I just sat there covered in goo. I had a hanging basket with vegetables beside the pressure cooker and all of the pork went up and came down in that basket but the broth was everywhere. I was still sitting there about half an hour later when my housemate came home from work and bless him, he got buckets and a mop and cleaned the whole kitchen for me. That was 7 years ago and I still occasionally find a spot or two that was missed. I swore that I would never have another pressure cooker but a month later I broke down and bought a Chinese version of the instant pot. The directions were so bad that I hadn't clue of how to use it. I got on the internet and found EG. That explosion was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Most of the tap water in Costa Rica is safe to drink, at least for the residents and people that have been here for a long time. I have heard of some tourists and newcomers to the area that have had problems. The only problem is that we do not have a consistent water supply throughout the whole country. A lot of the smaller areas like ours have their own water supply. I only know of one person that has had serious problems. She only eats organic products and washes everything that comes into the house in a mild bleach solution. She's been in the hospital twice now with E coli. Go figure!

So sorry, I can only imagine. It sounds like my kitchen after my pressure cooker blew up. It's been 6 years that I still find an occasional leopard spot. Edit note: I just checked my profile page and it was in October 2017 that it happened. One month after, I bought an instant pot and joined EG to find out how to use it.