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Sorry about the slightly out of focus picture. I was so excited after eating my first piece. We finally made it back to Padova in Italy yesterday. For our first bite to eat The Husband chose one of his favourite bars. I was less impressed and was planning to say "I told you so" after we chomped our way through some sub standard polpette. And then the mini pizza that we had ordered arrived. The bar tender had recommended it. Wow. Wonderful, hot pizza base topped with cold stracciatella and crudo. Sooooo happy to be back.

Cooked up a few chicken wings this arvo, served with Carolina BBQ sauce and a blue cheese dip. I definitely need to do wings more, my daughter absolutely loved them too! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Wingman505, as Tony's questions imply, it depends on what you need. I also think that "high end" and "commercial" may be mutually exclusive. We had a fancy pants scale for many years that irritated me by conking out periodically and not measuring above 5kg. This year The Husband bought us a new, very simple and cheap scale from a commercial supplier in the UK. It's advantages are that it measures more accurately, can switch between units easily and gets up to much higher weights. I use that alongside my "drug dealer" scales which measure small weights very accurately and help with things like yeast and salt for bread making etc.

Be careful what you wish for. We are super happy to see our friends and to be enjoying a relaxed time in this lovely town. However, with that enjoyment comes a concern that we could be vectors for disease, picked up on the plane here or as we wander round our old haunts. We are taking precautions but I certainly feel the weight of responsibility. Having said that, I don't think I will ever forget the sheer happiness of standing outdoors eating that pizza off a window ledge with drops of cold cheese that I missed dropping on the ground by my feet.

@alimac23 it seems like no time at all since we were congratulating you on the birth of your daughter and here she is, eating chicken wings already! How time flies. Appears she has great taste. Welcome to the house of yum!

Put together the dripping from two KK cooks to make this gravy, yummy. Chicken sandwich on whole wheat sourdough bread and poutine for dinner today.

Understand that completely. I started out brewing beer before the "craft beer" wave, when the selection of "good beers" was very limited, especially where I live. And, what was available was very expensive. But, even now when I can buy all sorts of amazing beers, both at the store and at local breweries, I still brew my own, just not as much as I used to. Now, it's more about experimentation than trying to clone a commercial beer. New hops and yeasts coming out all the time. I have a new, small brewing system coming that will be more tailored to experimenting with than my current system, which is geared toward making "standard size" batches of 5 gallons. I've enjoyed exploring ciders and meads, as well. Sourcing different ingredients and seeing what I can come up with? A few "winners" and a lot of so-so batches. Similar to concocting your own BBQ rubs. Lots of good commercial ones out there, but nice to tailor your own sometimes. YMMV

I don't know which is more beautiful, your daughter or the wings. LOL Actually I do know, how do you beat that smile.

Absolutely!

School holidays tomorrow so we had a pizza night. Best crust yet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@tony bTo be fair, I agree, a big reason for not making cider again is that I live in Somerset, UK, where I am surrounded by small volume cider makers who make brilliant ciders.

It's like many things - beer making, bread making - it's not about saving money so much as it is about control of the ingredients and the satisfaction of making it yourself.

Haha thanks Mack, I’m definitely biased, but she is pretty damn cute Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi @Karolina Komodo. I use my smoke pot without a drip pan. For me it acts as a shield for indirect cooking and drippings from the meat just collect on top of the pot. I wash the lid periodically and all is good. However, if you do need the drip pan in place it would be good to see a picture of your configuration to better understand the problem.

I have trimmed my last brisket with a beater knife. I fought with the last one and got fed up. Introducing the Super Gou! We bought a Kiritsuke and boning knife, and will complete our set over time. 161 layer Damascus clad SG2 steel, scalpel sharp out of the box. I am researching wet stones now and have been practicing honing other knives with good success. We bought a ESO SG2 boning knife, but sent it back in favor of these. 😊. Cutlery and More has a 20% off Labor Day sale so we got these for a relative steal... Definitely not a steal, but a deal nonetheless!

I made some 10 years ago, bought a press and what is called a scratter (a hand driven machine to chip the cider apples as a mush cannot extract the juice) and a day’s effort later produced 5 gallons of cider - so after all the effort I could bought this for £10 - do have all the kit and never did it again Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Basher I’m somewhat familiar with the Australia market. I know some of the SolarEdge guys down there and one of my friends quit SolarEdge and moved his family from SF to Melbourne to take a job at Enphase so he keeps me abreast when we chat. if you ever have any questions just reach out

I think the first sign is because of you buy a KK then you know you look into the details and small points on things....then if your on the forum talking about it you’re definitely OCD to some degree.

@tekobo yes you are right I’m so into gardening. I’ve picked up a yellow passion fruit tree and black mission fig tree since the last update.... we finally got my roof and solar done. This is what I do for a living so I geek out on this stuff. We got a new roof, 15kW of solar, 3 Tesla Powerwalls for battery storage and I got 2 Tesla EV chargers on back order. Got everything installed by my friends company who did it super clean. Here’s the end result

That's a good winery. Look for Ridge Zins. They are top shelf.

I have struggled to find ribs with a decent amount of meat on them around here so I called my main butcher today- they are a bulk business with about 12 butchers on hand from 4am till 6 pm- and asked for some beef ribs, whole with some belly beef left on. He pulled 2 of these out of the cold room. About 4.5kg each rack of 7- 8ribs. That about 10lbs Started herbing them up tonight to cook tomorrow. All it took was a phone call to find these. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wait every summer for fresh corn and cucumber sandwiches, lots of pepper on both. Made some sandwich bread today just for this sandwich. Add a little Zanzibar Black Pepper. Finally.