Tropicalsenior

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.

Well, this is my sourdough bake from yesterday. I know that my method and my recipe would make true sourdough Bakers throw up their hands in horror but it works for me. I am going more for texture and taste and after much trial and error I have finally reached exactly what I want. A sandwich loaf that has a soft interior and baguettes that have a soft interior and a chewy not hard crust. The shaping leaves something to be desired and I still have to work on that but the taste is definitely just what I want.

It's the same in Costa Rica right now. I don't know what's going on.

And I am bulging with jealousy. There are no such things as cherries in Costa Rica.

No, not just no but hell no! Reading through this whole thread I feel like I've been dropped in a whole different dimension. That anyone in this day and age is so ignorant of the dangers of botulism or anything else that might be growing in that ghastly experiment is absolutely incredible to me. My only hope is that you are the only person that has to ingest this mess. If you feed it to anyone else I'm sure the charge would at least be manslaughter.

I looked up on the internet the place that we used to go for these. It was called The Piece of Cake, a little Chinese bakery that was outstanding. My grandson said that he had been there about a year ago. I was hoping to recommend it to anyone that might be in the Seattle area but to my dismay I found out that they closed for good on April 30th citing the increasing cost of doing business and the encroachment of chain bakeries. My grandson is going to be very sad to hear this. He had been going there for over 35 years.

Thank you. It didn't take me long to cut into one and it was delicious. This recipe comes closest to the ones that we used to get in the International District of Seattle. They were always well worth a special trip into Seattle to get. I used up the extra dough that I had but my Kaiser rolls need a little work.

As promised, or threatened in the dinner thread, my Sunday meat bun is Char Siu Bao. I haven't tried one yet but they look pretty good.

Not only that, some mangoes have big seeds and some have little seeds. You need to x-ray the mango to see how big the seed is.

I appreciate your integrity. I've had people say, well, it's really not mine to give but I will change it enough so that it's different. Thank you, no. If it's a completely different recipe it's not the one I want.

Unfortunately, many restaurant kitchens are designed by this guy instead of the ones in the background who really have to use it.

I can't see that it would have much value here because our mangoes very in size from 8 oz to almost a kilo. One would be always looking for a mango to fit the tool.

I checked all the references they had on the internet and they had no photos. I think the one that Michael and I stumbled into must have been the very first one that they had. As I remember it, the contestants had a lot more than two cans of spam and more than 15 minutes to complete their sculptures. I remember one contestant made an almost recognizable bust of Abraham Lincoln and another had a pretty passable pig. The mess I remember had to have been more than two cans of spam.