jeffshoaf

My folks got one of those bells for each of their 4 children during their travels after my dad retired. It's been over 25 years but I think they got them on one of their week-long drives in the mountains of NC, VA, and TN - maybe Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge in Tennessee. I need to move it to a bit more accessible location - maybe by the steps down to the pool.

I tapped into my inner pyromaniac Saturday for a gathering of extended family. It was 88°F without my fire so I was hot and tired when the chickens were done and didn't get any pics of the finished cook but they were very tasty after an overnight dry brine with salt and garlic powder.

I didn't realize you pitched.... I'm hoping you have a successful surgery and which recovery!

I've frozen bread and was happy with it when I tried it after a few weeks in the freezer but much longer than that it gets hard bits. SinceII don't be finishing the buns within a few weeks I was hoping that vacuum packing it would prevent that. I asked the same question on Avid Armor 's Facebook page before posting here; they responded last week; they apologized for the late reply and explained that Facebook has stopped sending them notifications. Their recommendation was to freeze it for a day or two before vacuum packing and to use just the seal function; since the machine uses vacuum to close the seal bar, it pulls a minimal vacuum when just sealing. I tried the without the pre-freeze and still smooshed the bread but I don't remember if I tried it after freezing for a day. Its a little late note since it's been over a month but I'll try it the next time I'm facing the same situation.

Yeah, the manual for my Avid Armor chamber machine has instructions to do this and specifically says you need to use the textured bags. The kit with hose and adapter to seal jars, etc. for my machine came out after I got mine and I ordered it as soon as it was available butII haven't had occasion to use it. A food saver clamp machine I bought years ago had a hose port and came with the hose and a set of canisters; I have rarely used the canisters but did use the hose to pull as much air as I could for bags of odd shaped food and things that I couldn't manipulate into the food saver rolls I had on hand. While we're on the subject, does anyone have a process to vacuum pack bread without smooshing it? I had some cancellations for my July 4th cookout and I ended up with a bunch of leftover hamburger and hotdog rolls. I tried freezing them for a few days before vacuum packing but they still smooshed. I vacuum packed two hot dog rolls two years ago and they smooshed badly. I have left them sitting on my knife block since then and other than being smooshed, they still look good and feel soft!

You can't use the food saver bags and hold them outside the chamber with the open end of the bag inside the chamber under the seal bar and vacuum and seal it that way? I've done it with my Avid Armor chamber - it's awkward but it works.

I think the issue with frozen cooked food is that you muck the flavor up by cooking it more while reheating. I've not done it with ribs, but I've found using sous vide to reheat chicken, pulled pork, and brisket works well since you can keep the temperature low enough to not overcook the meat and the sealed environment in the bag helps retain moisture - plus you can thaw at the same time, especially if vacuum packed for freezing. Works for grilled hamburgers too. Reheating frozen cooked meat is one of the few things I've done via sous vide that I liked. I have three devices that can do sous vide; I'm glad two of them ( Instant Pot and Vermicular Musui-Kamada) are multinational of they'd never get used!

Tormek T-1.

I recently ordered a new device for sharpening kitchen knives and it was delivered yesterday. It came with a nice little packet of band-aids.

I have 3 sous vide-capable devices (a sous vide stick, an Instant Pot, and a vermicular musui-musui-kamado) and I've tried each of them for cooking meat and searing afterward and I really didn't care for the results; this aggravates me because that was actually what I got the stick for. I now use sous vide primarily to thaw and reheat vacuum packed and frozen smoked meat and to pre-cook sausage for pizza. I actually bought a cheapish electric smoker to do long holds and I'm happy with the result; after testing the smoker's teletherapy stability, I smoked a Boston butt and a brisket. I wrapped the butt in foil and held it about 4 hours and wrapped the brisket in butcher paper with smoked beef tallow and held overnight. I had some of each for dinner each day and then vacuum packed and froze to carry me thru my foot surgery recovery. I was very happy with the result for both; other than the end of the flat that was a bit overcooked (shoulda made burnt ends!), the brisket was the best I've had in my limited brisket experience. I didn't post about it here because I smoked them in my insulated gravity feed smoker instead of my KK and I forgot I posted the post you quoted here. I didn't do a hot and fast cook for these since I was limiting the variables fit the test, but I'm finally fully ambulatory this week after the surgery recovery and hope to try that soon. Got butts in the freezer but no brisket inventory.

An experimental ice cream: molasses! Pretty tasty.

That's my kind of serving size!

Here are some miscellaneous vanilla ice cream servings, some made with full sugar, some with monk fruit - I didn't keep good notes so I'm not sure which are which, but all were tasty! I don't think I have a picture of the best I've made to date; it was just a can of peaches in natural peach juice and a can of eagle brand sweetened condensed milk.

Various sorbets, most made with fruit canned in natural syrups, but the grape was made from welch's Concord grape juice and the watermelon was made from fresh watermelon.

I realized i haven't followed up on this post in a while even though I've been using the Creami often. Here's a simple one - cheap store brand chocolate milk, processed on "ice cream" and then chocolate syrup and chocolate chips added using the "mix-in' function. It was chocolaty. And tasty. And easy.

I guess that shows how long I've had my KK! I'm pretty sure I had to cut mine but now my confidence in that has taken a hit.

If you slit the rubber port plug lengthwise, you can slip the probe cables thru it without having to try to push the actual probes thru the hole. In case it's not clear what I mean by "lengthwise", looking at end of the plug where you can see the hole, you make it look like a "C" instead of an "O".

One of the cats licks me a lot; my brother said the cat is doing a taste test and I better keep an eye on him. I responded that if I die at home and I'm not found for several days, it gives me great comfort to know that the cats won't starve.

Back on topic! I'm not up to @tekobo standards yet, but add of this afternoon I have 9 containers in the freezer - overflowed one shelf and had to put two containers on another shelf. The ones in front are canned peaches and canned apricots, both in fruit juice. Also mixed up two containers of vanilla, one made with real sugar and the other with monk fruit. Had a half container of orange sherbet made with orange juice, half and half, and monk fruit as dessert this evening; no pic of that but it was very tasty!

Yep. I get their food and kitty litter from online vendors so one of my concerns is how I'm going to get the heavy cases of cat food and litter into the house without the cats getting out. I was planning on ordering enough the week to hold them over the whole 6 weeks but the main cat food was out of stock so I've had a mad scramble trying to find a replacement that they both will eat. The younger one claimed the one scooters as soon as I got thru in the house. They both hopped on the rollator walker before I got it out of the garage.

Another result from my misspent youth doing manual labor... Arthritis has pretty much ruined one of the joints in the middle of my foot. The podiatrist says it's considered a non-essential joint so he's gonna fuse it. Metal plate to hold it together and a bone graft from my heel to fill in the space and hopefully grow into both sides so its fuses. The surgery isn't considered particularly serious and should only take an hour or so, but I won't be able to put any weight on it for 6 weeks. I've been trying to get things ready so it's as easy as possible but since I live alone, there's things that are going to be frustrating to deal with. Well, I do live with two cats but they're not really helpful around the house!

Here's something the churning machines can't do - one ingredient pineapple sorbet! Very creamy and refreshing. Also had 6 more containers delivered today; gonna be another expensive trip to the grocery store this week. Not only do i have a list of ingredients for frozen stuff, gonna stock up on non-perishable stuff to make things easier for my 6 weeks of hopping around on one leg while recovering from my pending foot surgery. I guess I'm gonna get even fatter...

Me too. Somehow i always got stuck doing the churning until i bought an electric one. The electric one didn't take the fun out of it for me!

I actually have one of those but haven't used it in years for exactly the reasons you state. Eggs and sugar are the only ingredients I generally have on hand, plus you need rock salt which I don't have on hand. Add in the fact that I live alone, and using it turns into a special event for family gatherings. It always seems to take longer that I expect and requires constant monitoring to add ice. And then I'm left with quarts of ice cream that, even if I'm happy with the initial result, send to develop ice crystals when I put the leftovers in the freezer. The Creami let's me make a variety of flavors a pint or pint and a half at a time and I can stock multiple flavors and experiment without worrying about throwing out quarts of wasted ingredients when I have a failure. Plus the opportunity to make low calorie ice cream, sherbets, Italian ices, etc. Oh, by the way, I can fix anything I cook in my KK in my oven or cook top in doors and not have to mess with charcoal or deal with the weather! And my convection oven and induction cook top cost less combined than my KK!

I ran the rest of the chocolate milk "pint" on the "light ice cream" mode yesterday afternoon and the texture was even better but didn't get a pic. Spun the creamiccino this morning and made a mess but it was tasty. I meant to add cocoa powder to the mix brie freezing but forgot to: