I count 55 “candles” : )
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Brag. Away. That is waaaaay better than cakes I make.
…
But you know what would be awesome? Baking it at 375f for half an hour 
It would be like a melted chocolate bar you find in a car that you just have to eat.
Happy Birthday!!! (or is that an older photo? if so well, happy regular day to you…)
That is a pretty cake, but in my house there would be fights over who gets which slice with which toppings. Heck even a stupid frosting flower that tastes like paste can turn my two best friend daughters into immediate arch nemesis.
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Actually I went with sparklers instead of candles.
Old photo. My birthday is in September.
You monster!
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Rockin’ the monsterin’ since nineteen diggity eight!
(I love the sparklers!)
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It snowed last night, so I’m making it a crock-pot day. Smoked habanero black bean chili, made with Taddy Porter.
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That sounds really delicious! Enjoy the warm inside chili day!
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A couple years ago I got onto a kick of making unleavened, herb crackers. The intensely crisp kind that just shatter. I came up with some recipes that I really liked, but they weren’t quite crisp enough. I tried bakers ammonia and a ton of other things. Just wasn’t quite satisfied.
Fast forward four years.
I had an idea, don’t use water. Use ethanol! (Vodka)
Holy hell they are crisp. This test batch isn’t pretty, but its the closest I’ve come to my vision
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Looks great!
And now you have me craving papadum.
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Fast forward four years from a couple of years ago?
Are you messing with space-time? Who wins the election this year?
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I love pompadoms, but I’ve yet to make them other than buying the raw sheets and frying them. I’m a little afraid to bring Indian food into the office, as we are 95% Indian engineers :D. I need to earn their culinary trust first, cause they have strooong opinions.
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Doesn’t Japh have a habit of messing with space-time? Wait, is this not the questions thread?
What the hell is this site doing to my brain?
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Vodka is also good for pastry, for the same reason.
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I’ve heard mentioned, but never put two and two together. It makes so much sense I feel embarrassed.
Next cracker experiment is a beta amalyze unleavened cracker. I wonder if ethanol denatures beta amalyze… Where is Harold McGee or herve this when you need them.
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Wait…you don’t know EVERYTHING there is to know about cooking and baking?
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Hey, @redesigned you mentioned you were something of a forager, right? Well, are there any good apps or groups? Basically I want to find public fruit trees near me that I can raid. I know they exist, but are a pain to find.
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I made papadums for an Indian friend as part of a huge indian meal i made, including naan, tandori shrimp, lentil battered fish, curried potatoes, saag, etc. Yep I did it all wrong, the food i made was from the south and he was from the north, so basically i insulted him with the wrong kind of indian food. oops. so much for it is the thought that counts…they don’t eat papadums or naan where he lives!!! they eat roti with fish curry! which to me is pretty much just a whole wheat naan without the yumminess. lol. oh well.
Most of the foraging groups are about what wild plants you can eat, which is good of course but a bit different then the question posed.
Here we have two groups…Harvest Rescue, and Bear Safe, that home owners call who have fruit or nut trees they don’t plan on harvesting. The group then goes and harvests all the fruit or nuts and splits the harvest. Sometimes donating the overflow to the local food banks. Home owners don’t like all that fruit rotting in their yards so it is a win win for everyone. Pro-tip for prune plums, spread tarps all over the ground and shake the tree, oh and don’t look up! 
each tree will give you several 5 gallon buckets full of plums.
IF you find anything better then those resources please let me know. Best of luck!!
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You’ve mentioned your distaste for olives, so pointing out that Campbell uses the trees decoratively is probably not too helpful. I haven’t been in the area in over 15 years, but that town also did the same with plum and cherry trees.
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i was talking to one of our machine learning guys and he had an idea. for his phd he constructed image recognition machine learning algorithms–kinda like the ones used by google to search for, say, cats. he is confident that if i could get a training set from google earth, we could train a classifier to automagically find fruit trees without human interaction.
kinda creepy, init? 
he also offered to help. if i could figure out a way of masking foraging opportunities on private property, there could really be something there.
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