Tropicalsenior

Beautiful, as always. And how appropriate that it is also Father's Day.

I did a double bake today. It wasn't really by choice. I decided to make curry beef buns for my Sunday meat bun recipe and when I made the dough (exactly as I always do) and set it to rise it just felt dead. Sure enough, 20 minutes later when I checked it it hadn't started to rise at all. So I threw it back in the mixer with fresh yeast (don't know what happened with the first yeast because it tested fine) and made another batch of dough. I made eight meat buns and a small loaf of bread with the second batch of dough. I made cinnamon rolls and a loaf of bread with the first batch and just let them take their own sweet time to rise. It did take them a long time but they turned out pretty well. As @Ann_T said, it's pretty hard to screw up bread. You just have to have patience.

I don't think anyone that's ever had a tree ripened Peach can be satisfied with the peach that is ripened artificially whether it's done commercially or in a bag. It just does not compare. Coming from Washington State, I really miss the peaches and the apricots. The ones that we get down here are rock hard with no flavor at all.

That's true, however, I had an Oster that worked just fine. It wasn't as sophisticated as an instant pot and apparently it's safety features weren't quite as good because it blew up and missed decapitating me by about 6 in. I have no fear of the instant pot.

I've never had occasion to ripen peaches but I know that you can stick bananas in a bag with apples and they ripen faster because of the gas that the Apple gives off. So I looked it up and it seems that the peaches manufacture their own gas and will ripen in a paper bag.

Looks like Friday night was freak out.

Today's sourdough bake. I'm getting there.

That's generally true and anything that is quick pickles must be stored under Refrigeration. Diluting the vinegar would make a difference of being able to keep them a few days or a few weeks.

Oh, I definitely agree. Thank you for the information. It clears up a lot for me. I'm glad to know that I can use the rice vinegar for pickling. I usually use the Heinz apple cider or the Heinz distilled white vinegar. I Googled the process for making the synthetic vinegar and it is definitely something to stay away from.

@TdeV I found this article and it is the standard that I have always tried to go by. "you may safely use either white or cider vinegar as long as it is labeled as 5% acidity. Sometimes it is labeled as 50 grain." I have to be very careful about the vinegars that I buy here because so many of them are synthetic vinegar and they don't come up to this standard. @liuzhou I was curious to see that you say that you use rice wine vinegar. The vinegars that I get here just say rice vinegar. I have even been corrected by some 'cooking aficionados' when I said I used rice wine vinegar and been told that there is no such thing. Is there a difference in the taste between rice wine vinegar and rice vinegar? Is it milder? These are the two that I have on hand. I know that the one on the right is Japanese but the one on the left is much more acidic, much sharper.

@hotsaucerman I apologize, reading back through your original post I have to agree that a three-ring binder system would be best for you. The plastic sleeves are good or a laminating machine might work if you're into that kind of thing. But to start with, a big binder with Section dividers or as someone suggested, small individual binders for each category. When I got my first computer in 2002, I copied, printed and put all of my recipes into a three ring binder but I made the mistake of copying off everything that looked good to me on the internet and putting it in the same binder. I soon overwhelmed the whole thing. So my advice is, consider each recipe carefully before you include it, or keep a separate binder just for your treasured recipes.

I use Drive exclusively. I used to copy and paste them into drive and then save them as a PDF. Since I've learned to add links to my documents, I have a new system. I have four separate documents set up exclusively for my recipes. The first one is for meals divided into categories according to protein, ethnic origin or ease of preparation. The second one is for all the other recipes that I use constantly breads, cakes, condiments, Etc. The third one is for recipes that I want to try, but have not. If I try them and like them they are transferred to one of the first two documents. If I don't, they get deleted. The fourth document is for how to information, my favorite websites or food blogs and any other miscellaneous information that I want to bookmark. Everything on these lists has a link either to the PDF document in Drive or to a web page. All four of these documents reside on my homepage on my telephone. With two clicks I can find any recipe in my repertoire. It also has the advantage that when I am sitting there staring at a piece of chicken and don't know what to do with it, I can click on one of these documents and get an idea and the recipe instantly. It may not be the perfect system but it saves me a lot of time and it works for me.

I think that I have posted before about the difficulties of getting reliable appliances in Costa Rica but I could write a book about my travails with toasters. I have bought cheap that I have bought expensive and they all seem to die within a year. Another of my pet peeves is all the adornments and curlicues (grease catchers) the manufactures insist on putting on toasters. You can spend more time trying to clean the suckers than actually toasting bread in them. The last one that I bought died in 2016 and my housemate, Carlos, had a toaster that somebody had given him. He'd had it for about 5 years and never used it but we decided to give it a try. It's the best toaster I've ever had. It's a Sunbeam. The toast always comes out perfect and it is so easy to clean. It has extra wide slots so homemade bread is no problem and I've even toasted Bagels in it. I checked for Sunbeam toasters on the internet and Walmart has them as does Amazon. I love this toaster. I use it almost everyday and it just keeps on keeping on.

I can buy these here. They come in about four different flavors. They're quite crispy and never get soggy with the dressing. These are made in Costa Rica but I'm sure that you can find something similar in most countries. IMO there is nothing better than homemade croutons made with homemade bread. Somehow the thought of using potato chips as a main ingredient or even as a topping on a salad makes me want to gag.

As far as I can tell, this is almost a perfect copy of the instant pot except that it has 15 settings on it instead of the usual nine or 11, (So far I've only used one, I always set it manually). The safety features are excellent and I use it probably two or three times a week. Twice yesterday. The main complaint I have against instant pot (and Apple) is their big push to sell accessories and to convince you that only theirs will work in their product. I bought all of mine in a little Chinese restaurant supply and they work just fine. When I see a product this good at half the price of the original, I can't help but feel I'm being ripped off if I buy the real thing.

Amen!

I'm sure that things like this didn't help their bottom line either. I bought this in August of 2017. It is a perfect Chinese knockoff of the instant pot. It was about half the price. In my defense, I did not set out to buy a counterfeit instant pot. I thought I was just buying a regular Electric pressure cooker. But it was all it was available in Costa Rica. I'm not sorry I bought it because the directions were so obscure that when I went looking for help on the internet I found eGullet. It always happens that when somebody develops something really good, pretty soon the imitations outnumber the original.

You also have to factor in the propensity that the Chinese immigrants had to set up restaurants wherever they settled. As I understand it, they were first set up to feed the other Chinese workers but as the other workers began to eat with them and the people of the towns began to come to the restaurants, they had to dumb down the food to serve the tastes of the non Chinese in the areas where they settled. Costa Rica is the prime example of this. In the smaller, local Chinese restaurants you will never find the crisp vegetables that you will get in a true stir fry. Everything has to be cooked to a mush or the Costa Ricans will not eat it. When you add the adaptation to the available ingredients, it is small wonder that some of it bears no resemblance to true Chinese food.

He/she/them seems to have rejected all common sense advice. The second reference given by @Mjx States specifically the reason for using adequate salt or other preserving additive. Without an adequate brine the food is not fermenting it is rotting.

I think it fell off in the toaster.

Just a footnote to something that I wrote about up thread. When I told my grandson about the bakery in the International District, he told me that he had found one even better. It is the Mee Sum in Pike Place Market. If you ever go to Seattle, the Pike Place Market is definitely a place to visit for good food. Michael was 2 months old the first time that we took him there. It's about 10 blocks from where he works now so he goes there a couple times of week for lunch. Believe it or not, there are vendors there that still remember him as a toddler,

Maybe I can sell it on eBay. I looked at the upper right corner and kind of thought it was Maine. Made me think of @rotuts. Or is he in Massachusetts?

For me, it is a little more than a hobby. The bread here is so bad that if I want any good bread I have to make it myself. I've been toying with the idea of starting a topic about my journey. Even though I'm afraid it will put me up for ridicule. What started me on the whole thing was the plea from @TdeV for bread with a Sourdough taste. I would like to hear more about why she can't keep a starter alive. Some months back I made a sourdough starter that seems to have a great flavor finally but doesn't have enough strength for bread rise. That plus the fact that I don't have enough patience for long fermentation. Add that to the fact that sometimes my kitchen is 90° at 8:00 in the morning. Sourdough doesn't play well in the heat. Yes it is. It's the National Orchid of Costa Rica, La Guardia.

Thank you, that's what I like best about it. If I don't watch myself I could eat the whole loaf.

Thank you. I really did try to imitate the bread that you and @Ann_T make but I found that I just don't have the patience and when I did come up with something close I realized it just wasn't what I wanted. I could write a book about my journey to get the result that I posted but I'm happy with it and the flavor is just what I want.