[Mike Nolan]

Nothing fancy at this point, just pouring tempered chocolate into silicone molds. Last night's batch also bloomed, I'm not sure why, but I'm re-melting the pieces and will try again this afternoon.

I need to get the tempering process down before I go further. We made 10-15 pound batches in a half sized hotel pan in school, at home I make smaller batches, more like 2-3 pounds at a time.

I've got several molds to make filled chocolates with, and that's mostly what we did at Chocolate School, but that's a 3 step process: Make the shells by filling the molds then dumping out the excess chocolate, filling the shells with some kind of filling (ganache, opera cream, etc) after they set, and then putting a little more chocolate in to form the bottom.

[Mike Nolan]

We had fish for supper (orange roughy for my wife, salmon for me) with broccoli.

I've been making Christmas chocolates the last two days, I made some dark chocolate ones last night but the chocolate wasn't tempered right and 2/3 of them bloomed too much to use. I made a batch of milk chocolate ones this morning that came out nice and reprocessed the dark chocolate this evening, hopefully I got the tempering right this time.

Just some simple molded pieces: trees, santas, ornaments, teddy bears, snowflakes, stars, etc. We made up an Advent calendar for our granddaughter filled with some of them, and my wife is taking some to her office tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I made stuffed red peppers, this time I added a half can of black beans to the filling, we both thought that was an improvement.

[Mike Nolan]

I think the growers have been resisting origin labeling as too expensive, but the FDA played hardball ordering all romaine off shelves nationwide just ahead of Thanksgiving, and it appears the industry decided the cost was better than no sales at all.

IBM has been promoting block chain technology for tracking perishables, expect them to make a big push with large scale producers.

[Mike Nolan]

According to a post on the WSJ's website, the E. Coli outbreak in romaine has apparently been narrowed down to a region in California. The FDA may be publishing this information as early as today, but since lettuce packaging doesn't currently indicate where or when it was picked, that may not help restaurants and grocers much.

A new labeling standard may be announced soon that would cover romaine and possibly other types of green leafy vegetables, like spinach.

[Mike Nolan]

I never paid any attention to that, and always used IDY.

[Mike Nolan]

Wolf is owned by SubZero these days, FWIW.

[Mike Nolan]

Aside from the fact that I still think many Wolf stoves are ugly, that or Viking would be my first choice if I ever had to replace our 21 year old DCS range. (When we bought it, DCS was just ending its manufacturing relationship with Viking.)

DCS is owned by Fisher & Paykel these days, parts are available but sometimes have to come from New Zealand. My son has a F&P dual wall oven, aside from the fact that it's got several modes I don't understand, it works well. I don't think the 'cold oven start' bread recipes would work in it, though, because it seems to use the upper element during the preheat cycle no matter what mode you use.

SubZero has done a good job keeping parts in stock for our freezer and refrigerator, which is good because the newer models are about 11 inches taller and that'd mean losing the cabinet space above them.

[Mike Nolan]

I tend to buy house brand corn syrup because it's usually half the cost of Karo, I've never noticed any difference when using it.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, I started the two thighs in skin down and when I turned them over in 20 minutes I added the turkey tenders. The thighs got done a little before the breast meat, but they needed to rest more anyway. There was enough juice off the turkey in the bottom of the pan to kick the gravy (made with a roux and turkey stock) up a notch.

I think I was the only one who ate any of the dark meat, but that didn't surprise me.

For a change, I got the potatoes cooked enough that they weren't any lumps after I whipped them in the mixer. But I started them about 20 minutes earlier than in past years.

My son in Pittsburgh did duck legs using a sous vide circulator for 18 hours. He said they were incredible.

[Mike Nolan]

I looked in both of the supermarkets I usually shop in, but didn't see the Nabisco chocolate wafers in either one of them. In both cases, it seemed like at least half of the cookie section was variants on either Oreos or Chips Ahoy.

There are a couple of threads on other forums from people looking for these cookies as well, one place to check if there's one near you would be a Wegmans.

[Mike Nolan]

So this morning I baked my pie and a 10x10 Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, and then I made popovers as the appetizer for dinner. One of our guests brought a cherry pie her daughter made, so we had 3 desserts on the table. Plenty to give thanks for.

I'm going to wait a day or two to see if the first batch of pie dough can be rescued, not sure what I'll make with it anyway, since we've already had some cherry pie this weekend.

[Mike Nolan]

Pizza's been on my to-do list for a while, I even bought a 5 pound bag of whole milk mozzarella at Sams that I haven't opened yet. Probably not the next few days, we'll be munching on leftovers from Thanksgiving, even though I'm not making a whole turkey. (I could eat the whole bowl of DGBC in a single sitting.)

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up making another batch of pie dough for this pie, and it needs to chill for an hour or two, so I might wind up making the pie tomorrow morning. If I can rescue the first batch I'll make some other kind of pie with it over the weekend, possibly a cherry pie, I think I still have some pie cherries in the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm just not a fan of pumpkin pie, but my wife likes the custard filling in it, so a few times either she or I have made a batch of the filling and baked it in ramekins--pumpkin pie without the pie crust. She often makes it with Splenda instead of sugar.

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