[Mike Nolan]

My mother was a pretty good cook, she worked in a restaurant for a while so she was adept at all the 'short order cook' stuff. We ate a lot of hash and chop suey, because it was easy to make enough to feed 6 kids. She worked full-time from the time I was in 5th grade, but she could throw together a pretty good meal in a half hour.

My grandmother was even better, I can still smell her pressure-cooked ham. I don't know what she put in it, the closest I've come is to marinate the ham in Dr. Pepper. In a small town we did a lot of pot lucks, and my grandmother would bring a variety of casseroles, though I honestly don't know what they were any more.

Her rice pudding was creamy and my grandfather ate a bowl of it nearly every day. She didn't use a recipe, and I've never duplicated that taste and texture, a combination of rice and tapioca comes pretty close, but I'm fairly sure she didn't use tapioca.

I helped can a lot of pickles and tomatoes growing up, and a fair amount of apple jelly too. I don't do much canning these days, I'm more likely to freeze stuff, like tomato sauce.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got a lot more pictures to post, including several closeups of the buffet table. I brought one of the skulls (the smaller white one) home, along with one of the pumpkin candy dishes. My wife has them as her Halloween decorations at her office, everybody says, "Oh, what a nice plastic candy dish!", then they realize it's made of dark chocolate, spray painted with orange cocoa butter.

I think what you're thinking of as owls are bats. Here's a high-res photo of them:
(Right click on it to get the high-res version.)

I brought one of the bats home, but sadly the wings broke off in transit. I'm going to see if I can repair it next week when I've got some tempered chocolate to work with. The repairs won't be spray-painted black, though.

[Mike Nolan]

Sounds like the kitchen would be an interesting place to work, or just watch and listen. (Might help to be able to speak Italian, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

There won't be much about baking, this was a class about making chocolate candies, not baking with chocolate. I do have a few pictures of some of the fancy desserts we had at lunch that I'll post in part 3. I'm also going to talk a bit about spending a week eating in Chicago. (It's never been much of a 'fancy restaurant' town but it's well-know for 'good food'.)

I think nearly everyone who works at the Chocolate Academy has attended cooking school, most had a pretty solid work history in food service, too. So there's probably more cooking talent there than in several high-caliber restaurants combined. Since their primary mission is to develop recipes and convince restaurants, bakeries and chocolatiers to use their products, being able to speak to a chef on a professional level is highly desirable.

[Mike Nolan]

All flours will compact as they sit, and it is always a good idea to loosen it up before measuring flour. Weighing flour is always more accurate than dry measuring, but if a recipe doesn't give weights or doesn't say what it assumes a cup of flour weighs, you're going to have to figure it out by trial and error. That's why I take careful notes on any new recipes I try.

Things like sugar and salt that have a more defined crystal shape will not compact very much, so powdered sugar will compact more than granulated sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

It was an interesting 4 days, and I'm completely worn out. I'm going to drive out to visit my brother in NW Illinois tomorrow and will get home on Saturday, so the first report will probably not be until next week. I took a lot of pictures, most of which show details of specific techniques, but I have some good pictures of the various goodies we helped make and some of the pieces our instructor made while we watched or worked on other tasks.

The Chocolate Academy lab is incredible; they have a machine that cuts things like cake and chocolate with high pressure water. It costs over $100,000, but a large production bakery can probably make it back in cost savings (faster cutting and less waste) in a couple of years. We didn't get to use it, but we saw it in action several times by the other chefs on staff.

[Mike Nolan]

We know someone who lives in the outer banks, I suspect they've headed inland already.

[Mike Nolan]

As flour sits in the container, it tends to compact. The dip, scoop and level method can also compact flour.

To make matters worse, many measuring cups are not very accurate.

So when you scoop out a cup of flour, you could get anywhere from under 4 to over 5 ounces of flour.

Sifting the flour, stirring it before measuring and shaking the container all uncompact flour, so there's less flour by weight in a cup.

I tend to weigh any amount of flour over a quarter cup. If a recipe doesn't say what it considers the proper weight of a cup of flour, I assume 4.25 ounces. Interestingly enough, the USDA database assumes 125 grams in a cup, which is about 4.4 ounces.

[Mike Nolan]

We have several cabinets full of Tupperware (my wife is a former dealer) and Ikea containers, and that's what I freeze stuff in. Last week I froze 18 small containers of beef stock, ranging from 2-4 ounces. That should keep me in beef stock until after Christmas.

[Mike Nolan]

They make rings and simmer plates for gas burners that can help you control the temperature. I use one when making stock, because I want it to simmer for 12 hours, not get up to a full boil.

[Mike Nolan]

One of the web site I visit periodically is the London Guardian, just to get the British perspective on things. (I used to use the Times, but they've installed a paywall with no freebies.)

Anyway, the Guardian has several stories running about the announced move of GBBO to Channel 4, apparently this is somewhat controversial. At least one critic has said it will kill the show. I tend to agree that losing Mary, Mel and Sue will be a problem, Paul Hollywood may be a great baker and a fair but not great cookbook author (I have one of his books, I'm not in a hurry to get others), but he has most of the personality and warmth of a lump of bread dough.

[Mike Nolan]

You've hit on the main reason I haven't made cinnamon rolls in about two years, we'd wind up eating them all ourselves!

However, I did print this recipe out and it's in my 'to try' folder for the next time I want to send something in to my wife's office.

[Mike Nolan]

Frozen commercial cookie doughs are likely to have all sorts of things that won't be in home-made cookie doughs.

[Mike Nolan]

Another thing you need to be absolutely clear on is what expenses you'll be charged for. Ads, tables, staff, photography (where applicable), handbills, sound equipment all get priced in--usually at premium rates, too.

When my wife's step-mother died, the auction company that handled the auction billed the estate for something like $50K in expenses, plus their sales commission.

[Mike Nolan]

I know there are several companies in my town that do tag/estate sales, I suspect most communities have similar companies. Perhaps the best way to find one is to drive around on weekends looking for tag sales, then go talk to the people running them.

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