All Activity

It is always, always, always drier downwind of a mountain range than upwind, where "downwind" indicates the usual wind patterns. At our latitudes the winds are "prevailing westerlies" so the western sides of mountain ranges are wetter than the eastern sides. The mountains wring moisture out of the atmosphere as the wind blows up and over the mountains. Death Valley is especially dry because it's separated from (and downwind of) the Pacific Ocean by at least 3 large mountain ranges. Eastern Washington and Oregon are much drier than their western sides for the same reason. The drier region downwind of the mountain range is its rain shadow. Since you're coming up this highway, I very much hope you take time to stop and visit Manzanar if you haven't done so before. We've been touring, and I'm learning that I can do at most 2 of these 3 things at once: cook, visit, write. We've been doing a lot of touring and cooking (and eating), but the writing about it will have to wait. I will say, however, that I finally got around to my first attempt at duplicating the Celestial Sauce from Cafe Luna. Pretty good stuff. I'll write more about it later. The ingredients -- well, most of them anyway: And the final sauce: Texture about right. Flavor quite good. We kept wondering what could be done to improve it, and coming up blank while we kept dipping our bread into it. The fireplace burgers afterward were anticlimactic.

First night at home after a week of business travels with restaurant food. Needed to cook something “homey” - and family requested pasta. Soooo … bronze cut spaghetti from Rummo. Sauce made from enough garlic to depopulate the night-active part of Transylvania, white wine, passata, anchovy, squid, clams and shrimp. Parsley. Served with a Valpolicella Ripasso … No complaints 🤗

What is a rain shadow? I'm 6 weeks out from driving up that same highway.

Dark chocolate Milky Way (Forever Yours, Mars Bar, Midnight), Almond Snickers, Original Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (only the original size) and a definite mention goes to York Peppermint Patty.

Years ago, I discovered that when write a list, the contents are ingrained in my memory and don't need the physical list anymore. It has worked with shopping lists and recipes as well as unrelated things to be remembered. Particularly useful when giving hour long lectures. Worked better than some of the lectures I suffered through as an undergraduate where some dozy professor read out the same lecture he'd been reading out every year for the last 40. One rather famous prof managed to fall asleep in the middle of his own lecture. Now I just struggle to remember where I put my jar of black garlic or whatever.

1) Start list. 2) Misplace list. 3) Start new list, carefully attempting to remember as many things as possible from the original list. 4) Remember multiple things that hadn't made it onto the new list over the ensuing 2-3 days. Add them. 5) Find the original list. Add the items that I still hadn't remembered. 6) Go shopping. Remember there was a list as I'm halfway through the store (or realize I've mistakenly brought the original list, which by now contains just a fraction of the items on the current list). Attempt to recreate it again from memory. 7) Repeat. I've started using Google Keep on my phone for the shopping list(s) and to-do lists, which seems to be working reasonably well. I did try an actual shopping-list app several years ago, but it was so maddening to use that I abandoned it after just a couple of weeks.

I’m guessing everyone here knows 김치 even if they don’t read Korean. It is Kimchi in English although the standard Korean transliteration is gimchi (still pronounced with an initial k). You may be wondering what it’s doing here in a Chinese pickle topic and there's the rub as Hamlet said although he never ate the stuff. China and Korea have been arguing about this for a long time. China has stated that they essentially invented it but call it 泡菜 (pào cài). Korea deny this while recognising that pao cai is Chinese. They insist that there are significant differences between the two products; differences which China even acknowledges although claiming it doesn’t change the origin. Since 2012, China has banned the import of Korean kimchi on the grounds that it contains more lactic acid bacteria than permitted under China’s food laws. In 2013, announced 辛奇 (xīn qí) to be a new translation for China to use – a move that China has, sensibly in my view, totally ignored. Countries do not get to decided another’s language vocabulary At the same time, however the rising demand kimchi in Korea has lead to shortages there and these are made up by importing kimchi from elsewhere, especially China! China, in the meantime, continues to make and sell 韩式辣白菜 (hán shì là bái cài), ‘Korean style spicy pickled napa cabbage) within China and here it is. Here is a real Korean kimchi imported before the 2012 ban. It is made from 桔梗本 (jié gěng běn), Korean: 도라지 (doraji). Long gone. By the way (1), most kimchi contains fish products (mainly fish sauce) so is not vegetarian. By the way (2), ethnic Korean are officially considered one of China’s ethnic minorities and have a large presence in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, bordering North Korea.

It is relatively high, yes. For comparison a regular Snickers bar of the same weight is less than $1.

I stuffed them with a fresh Spanish sausage that I have been making for years. http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Longaniza-Spanish-fresh.pdf . The stuffing was bulk sausage leftover from the linking up process. Next time I'll add some bread crumbs to bind the mixture and give it a better mouth feel.

Is that a relatively high price for chocolate in China, or not that high just also not that worth it? In my world, a 50 gram bar from a small/artisan/bean-to-bar maker can easily be $10 or more so I'd have very low expectations for a $2 bar.

I've shopped that TJs many, many times. No longer an option since I moved to AZ.

Teo, 5 years later I've finally had a chance to experiment with this method. It's excellent—the best of the many methods I've tried. It succeeds at getting that fresh herbal flavor, without any of the grassy, woody, or vegetal overtones that come with the more common methods. A friend dropped off bushels of herbs from her garden, so I've been experimenting. The spearmint flavor is perfect, with 18g leaves / 1000g base. I skipped the peppermint because it lacked flavor. Anyway, thanks for the excellent tip. I haven't encountered this method elsewhere.

My absolute, all time favorite. And that one looks perfect.

agreed. I can scramble eggs in my deBuyer and Darto steel pans

Never mind. I just missed the "Cook it" name previously.

Ooh . . . lovely! How did you make the tenderloin? Sauce?

Rebranded a touch?!

To be honest, my favorite "non-sticks" are my well seasoned carbon-steel pans. When properly heated and oiled/buttered, anything and everything just slides around beautifully. I believe I have both Matfer and deBuyer...old school.

I was gifted a Calphalon fry pan. as it's 'non-stick' degraded to 'sorta' stick' to 'sticks' I've used BarKeepersFriend on it multiple times. not much help. I no longer even consider it when needing anything non-stick. I have found the ceramic 'non-sticks' ala Blue Diamond much more durable. they do 'clog up' but a quick cleanup with BKF brings them back to their original "sorta' maybe kinda' non-stick" performance.

Wow - I would order that at a restaurant in a heartbeat!

Same in our stores - they are either huge - like 2 or 3 pounds each or teeny tiny and skinny - barely enough for one person!

Seared tuna with a tomatillo, chipotle, and avocado sauce. Stir-fried mustard greens with garlic and oyster sauce. These were intended as components of two different meals, but sometimes stuff happens. Marinade was roasted tomatillo and garlic salsa with chipotles, sugar, and salt. Diced avocado was mixed in to make the creamy, tangy, spicy, and smoky salsa. Tuna was grilled over charcoal to medium rare (probably closer to medium on the thinner pictured piece).

My problem with lists is not being able to read my own handwriting these days.

I generally buy yams because I find they have more flavor. Right now the ones in my store are huge! Those I got yesterday are more than 2 pounds each.