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Ok Challenger guy I need the recipe for your Meringue on that pie :D . My son who is 12 loves to make lemon meringue pie to bring to family gatherings at thanksgiving and Christmas but the meringue always pulls away from the edge of the pie no matter how far over the edge we coat it.

SO, give up that recipe cause yours looks great!!

Ventura Alfa

Lynne, those are huge lemons. A big crop of fruit that big must really be tough on the tree. Do you have crutches under the biggest limbs? My apple tree did a huge crop like that in the fall a few years ago and died the following summer. My neighbor told me that if I cut the biggest limbs or made crutches for the big limbs, I might have saved it.

Around here, lemon curd and lime curd is hard to come by outside of the mass market junk from the grocery store. I still use it in cooking once in a while.

It looks like a very young tree in comparison to most in the yard. The apple and mulberry are both about 100 years old, but this lemon tree is still fairly fine. I've propped where possible, but I think I'll give it a bit of a trim up when this fruit crop is done.

I've been handing little pots of lemon butter to family and friends and will have to make some more next week. Several who had never tried other than the bought rubbish have been pleading daily for more. The owner of the furniture store that His Lordship occasionally does deliveries for sat and ate hers with a spoon. :)

This is part of the range I finished up with over the last few weeks.

Ember those all look fantastic! When can I come by?

Sheesh, she cooks, cans, does photography, builds dioramas and plays with toy cars :banana-dance:
Does "His Lordship" know how lucky he is????

Lynne, those all look wonderful, wish you could ship internationally!

The chili oil comes with a blast warning. But I'm sure it'd be right up the alley for some you chili-heads.

Soooo..... A question for all of you smoker fans. What are your favourite cure recipes for ham and bacon?

Well.... I've had a couple of runs with the smoker cabinet now. And, so far, I'm pretty happy with the results. Chicken for a practice run before tackling smoking my Christmas ham (middle shelf) and 2 slabs of bacon on Christmas Eve.

The ham wasn't bad. And the bacon?

Well.... it looks like bacon.


It smells and sounds like bacon.


And it tastes....

.......................................

It's impossible to explain just how much better bacon tastes when you've made it yourself. This one I flavoured with rosemary and thyme.

Haha... There's only 3kg of it left, Dave. You might have to hurry.

Got half a dozen Australian salmon (no, they're not actual salmon) in the cabinet at the moment just ticking over.

I knew you would hit the ground running with that thing! (flat out like a lizard drinking?)

So... Since then I've done another chicken and a couple of different flavours of jerky.

I'm about to smoke some lemons before I salt and preserve another jar full. And some rocksalt for table use.

I figured the next thing to try would be some ribs. I fancy beef ribs for a change. Only in planning stage at the moment, but I figure I'd get some friends around for a story telling session when His Lordship gets back from his current tour of duty at the South Australian fire front. I figure a decent rack of ribs will take some eating.

Anyway, while I'm in planning stage have you lads got any favourite treatments to share? I'd prefer natural ingredients rather than a bottle of this and a packet of that just for the simple reason that I'm unlikely to be able to get a lot of your favourite prepackaged goodies.

I was going to write you tonight about HL and the current fires. The son and daughter in law of a friend live 20 minutes from where the front was two days ago. They have been packed and waiting for the order to leave for some time. They are in a suburb of Adelaide. We haven't heard from them for a few days now.

And about beef ribs...
The main thing is temperature. If you let it get above 250F for any time at all, they will toughen. The idea is to melt the connective tissue, and let the meat take care of itself. You test for doneness by twisting a bone. If it rotates within the meat, that's perfect. A vinegar based marinade helps a lot, too. Some rub is a good idea, too.
3 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
1 tablespoon onion powder
2 teaspoons mustard powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons chili or ancho powder
1 teaspoon chipotle or cayenne powder
Just pat it on to get a good coating on the meat side, and place the ribs meat side up in the smoker.

By the way, don't use this rub on pork, it won't come out well.

I knew I bought a couple of dried chipotle chillies for a reason. Hmmmm... Ancho are sweet ones, aren't they? I think I can get fresh ones, but not seen dried.

I just planted some habenero but it's a long way from fruit. ;)

HL spent Friday and Saturday up in the air spotting, but the plane had to be sent for some maintenance. So when the call came for SA duty he went. Left Sunday morning and were put straight out to work on arrival. I think they are due back Thursday.

The SA Fire Service have a completely different way of dealing with things than the Victorian Fire Authority. HL figures the SA mob could do with some training in logistics from the Vic hierarchy. I guess with a bigger population and greener area to cover the Vics are a lot more practiced at staging and incident management.

I hope your family are safe and well and all is peaceful. Which outer 'burb are they in?

Anchos are the dried form of Poblanos, my favorite pepper. Poblanos aren't very hot, but they are universal as a richer, less coarse pepper seasoning. My favorite thing to do with them is a cream of poblano soup. If you do it right, it will warm a cold winter night for a whole houseful of folks. I serve it with what you may call buttered rusks. The dried form can be simply crushed and ground and used as is. The fresh poblanos need to be sweated in an oven to get the good flavor, otherwise they taste like grass.

Oh, and I don't know the suburb they are, or were, in. My assumption is that it is fairly distant from the city, but I just don't know.