I’m familiar with Walton’s and have bought some of their products (most recently to make weisswurst) but none of the “snack sticks” I’ve ever made or had are anything like a Slim Jim. Most have been better in their own way. But I want to make Slim Jims.
It’s like Mitch Hedberg said, “They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home. There’s more to it than that.”
I do have a stuffer.
dennis_-When I was in grad school one of my students in the food processing labs I taught went on to Seibel Beer school, then to some major brewers and recently retired. He’s created some pretty well know beers in the market…
Just yesterday I was thinking I’d contact him about doing a talk. Also have a Food Sci, friend who is still head brewer for local large brewpub chain.
Maybe can get permission to do a demo and then folks can take home their mixture home to finish so we don’t let DMS become a beer joint. Can we make neon lights in the glass shop?
Sounds cool. Lectures could definitely work. Cooking can get weird. While folks can microwave their lunch, there’s some wonkiness about cooking in our lease.
I know that they did cook a wort and distribute it for home fermentation way back – maybe 2015? Our first Fire Marshall was a little crazy on the subject, and suggested that we remove the book or two that we had around. He thought it made it look like we were going to be doing actual fermentation on-site. (Just a smidge nuts.)
There was something about UL appliances and something else that is currently slipping my mind
Depends on the “cooking.” Knife skills class - ok, bringing in an oven for cookie making class - not so much.
Just be reasonable. We have made fried turkeys out back for a pot luck, pulled in a smoker and made BBQ, I have made Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream and coated a few kids in chocolate with a Jet Cream Rig. OK, never mind about being reasonable.
In doubt ask anyone that is a director or officer. I’m sure they will help you out any way they can.
TLDR: If the fire marshall (or whoever) says it needs to have a UL stamp, clarify if it specifically needs to be UL or if any NRTL will do.
Just as a note here (not that I know anything about this specific situation), but if an inspector says that something needs to be a UL [appliance, equipment, etc.] they usually mean it needs to be certified by an Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). There are several competitors to UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory), such as CSA and ETL whose certifications are just as valid in the US. It will be marked with one of their stamps. Chances are any piece of electronic equipment you find will be marked with one of their stamps.
Basically what these NRTLs do is test the equipment to a specific set of safety standards that apply to the equipment type. Having a safety mark doesn’t mean that there’s no way it can hurt you (under normal use), but it does mean that the safety issues foreseen by the standards body have been assessed as acceptably reduced or eliminated.
Now, I worked at CSA for a few years so I have some bias about which labs do better work, etc. and I learned a lot about forged marks, but in general if it has a stamp its considered safe. There are some very very specific situations in some areas where an inspector will only accept a mark from a specific NRTL for valid reasons, but most of the time its because UL used to be essentially a monopoly in the US and its what most inspectors are familiar with.
It was a lease thing.
That hot chocolate does not meet city code. 
So we can’t have a toaster oven but we can have a kiln??!
I assume we can have a toaster oven, we just can’t make cookies in it.
This is interesting discussion about Cooking @ DMS given all the potentially much more dangerous stuff heat, flames, airborne particles , toxic chemicals. Look out! Somebody’s going to put an eye out.
If we need to we’ll design the classes so the actually cooking is done at home or we do the whole thing from our respective kitchens via zoom if that if viable.
I also have a friend and colleague with a very nice commercial kitchen and classroom set up less than a mile from DMS that we can most likely use. We can even livestream from there.
As my late Dad always said, “Where there is a will, There is a way!”
Thanks for the suggestions on possible classes. Sounds like there are some really good knowledge and interest there. It could be fun. I have a large list of ideas. I need to pare them down and put some meat on the bone.
My plan is to try to get some of my friends and colleagues who are experts in certain topics to give the intros on whatever topics we choose – to give some of the “Why’s” as well as the How. Not just offer up recipes to make something edible.
Still need a week or so before I propose some classes to offer some things after the new year probably.
Good to know. About the stuffer. We’ll take a poll of all the equipment folks have that we can share.
I’m sure Sprite is pretty challenging to match. Citrus flavors are very diverse.
We can figure it out. I thought the same If need to, we do it out back or offsite. There are options.
I just wanted to accentuate the possible x-over between these threads and this one…
https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/t/august-culinary-appreciation-thread/73697
A couple of us were actually discussing this since we can’t have a real kitchen at DMS. We wanted to find out how much renting a commercial kitchen would be and then splitting that cost as a class fee. I would love to do classes in an actual commercial kitchen (after the pandemic is over of course).
This sounds very interesting, I would love a class like this.
I stopped posting them because life got too busy and it slipped my mind. Is there a way to automate those?
Not to my knowledge, but maybe I should look into that… Might be nice for the S&T threads, too…
I was wondering why they stopped! 