EdS

That's cool. I had a mental short-circuit. I hate that when that happens.

Do try the alpaca. It reminded me of lamb yet it was different. I enjoyed it. Also try the puy (guinea pig)! I understand it's sort of a traditional special occasion (and perhaps tourist) dish. Visit the large main cathedral and go inside. You'll see how the Spanish adapted their art to the natives. The painting of the Last Supper has a GUINEA PIG on the table! I sent some postcards home depicting this painting and they were thoroughly enjoyed. Cuzco is pretty touristy yet it has authentic charm and lots of history. Be careful that you don't get ripped off. My favorite bar is Los Perros Couch Bar. I had my first coca tea there... For non-food knowledge and wisdom about the area, be sure to check out Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree South America Forum. I found it quite helpful.

I spent over a week hanging out in Cuzco a few years ago. The altitude does make some people sick. I saw this with my own eyes. The coca tea seems to help by temporarily speeding up your heart rate. It's hard to describe but I'd say drinking coca tea is like drinking coffee but without the dehydrating effect that comes from caffeine. I don't know the science behind it but I bet this increased heart and breathing rate helps you bring in more oxygen to make up for the lack of oxygen in the thin air. I found myself getting out of breath walking quickly up and down hills around town. I do several hours of intense cardio work a week so this humbled me. I'd suggest taking the altitude reasonably seriously. I had a mild headache and some nausea throughout much of my second day staying in town and I rarely get headaches. I don't think it was a coincidence. I used this as an excuse to drink more coca tea. I like it better than coffee and black tea. Too bad it's not available here. Cuzco is a party town. There are plenty of young visitors especially European and Australian backpackers. Many drink like fish on their day of arrival and then get up the following morning to begin their Machu Picchu trek. Combine the probable hangover with the altitude effects and the physical activity and I can only guess what their personal hell must be like that day.

Opened my fridge this morning to find a moat of black cherry vanilla Coke at the bottom. I didn't fully tighten the screw cap the night before yet placed the bottle on its side. Of course, it leaked.

I think someone at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Center is missing a few shrimp off their barbie.

I can't say that I've seen this custom in Japanese restaurants in the SF Bay Area and I've been going to them frequently since the mid-80's. Since sushi is essentially fancy bar/entertainment food and not a more formal meal, it seems odd to me that if the custom exists that it would be at a sushi bar but I don't know. You might want to post this question in the Japan forum to see if the custom exists in Japan.

Since there are already lots of good ideas here, all I'll say is that shallots are my favorite ingredient.

At this point, I would have laughed out loud and then, assuming I knew the hostess pretty well, I would have asked, "I wouldn't want this pie to go to waste...would you mind if I got some sugar to sprinkle on this?" The guest is a moron.

There's a typo in the link above. Here's a working version: Vinegarman

My advice would be to come up with a minimal menu...and then cut from there. Fish burgers, etc. just muddle the focus and reduce your chances of success. In-N-Out has done quite well out here on this concept. They have a cult following. I won't say they have the best burger and fries but everything is fresh and done without the typical compromises. They sometimes open right across the street from a McDonald's. I saw this happen near my old place. It was like squashing a bug. Their philosophy is similar to the old McDonald's. Great burgers, fries, shakes, and soda. That's it. No microwaves. No heat lamps. No freezers. No B.S. Everything made fresh. It really works. They are privately-held and do not franchise. They have over 180 locations. Same-store sales are greater than McDonald's. This is supposedly healthy California. They have no problems selling burgers here. People will eat their burgers if they are good. Menu History Freshness If I were opening a burger place, I'd basically copy their business model since I haven't seen a better one in today's environment. I think the meat in the burger could be tweaked. They're using good fresh ground beef and making the patties well, in my opinion, but I've had a better mixture elsewhere. They are also notorious for undercooking the fries. I don't know why they do that. That's the most common complaint. It's a conscious choice on their part. Ask for "well-done" fries and they know what to do. There are only three types of burgers on the menu but there are other items on their Secret Menu. Two well-known In-N-Out fans: Julia Child and Thomas Keller LA Magazine article It's certainly not my favorite restaurant nor do I even eat there frequently but it's the only example of quality chain fast-food on a pretty large scale that I can think of so I'm a fan.

If you are having trouble cooking brown rice in your fuzzy-logic rice cooker and have already tried varying the ratio of water to rice and still aren't getting good results, I have a suggestion. Try leaving the rice to soak for a half hour or so first before beginning the brown rice cycle. My rational is that they may not be allowing enough time for the water to penetrate the rice grains before they begin to cook. That'd leave you with rice that might be too "al dente" for your taste. I think soaking brown rice, due to that exterior rice bran "barrier", helps more than with white rice. By the way, I've run into stale brown rice at the store more than once. If your brown rice doesn't taste nutty but rather has a funky taste, it's probably stale. Brown rice oxydizes much more quickly than white rice. I find it's best to store it in the fridge or even the freezer, neither of which seem to cause any harm. I now buy my brown rice from bulk bins with high turnover (i.e. Whole Paycheck) and don't encounter stale rice.

I have a Sanyo 5.5-cup (Japanese 180ml cup ~= 6 U.S. oz.) fuzzy-logic non-IH rice cooker and it does one cup just as well as five. I'm single and if I'm cooking just for myself I'll sometimes make one cup and sometimes two if I'm pretty hungry. I've cooked five cups for four people and that was more than enough. If you're planning on using your rice cooker a lot, especially if you're going to use it for anything other than white rice, definitely pay the extra for fuzzy logic. I think the greatest feature is the timer. I add my washed rice in the morning before work. I fill the bowl with water up to the indicated line. I set the timer for the time I expect to be home. The rice soaks during the day. The rice cooker will then begin cooking the rice just in time for it to be completed when the time set on the timer is reached. I get the best results this way. It'll hold the cooked rice for several hours on low heat with little difference in quality. Rice made for lunch is still fine for dinner but I don't go longer than that. If you don't allow time for the rice to soak and/or you choose the Quick feature to make the rice cooker rush through the cooking process, the results aren't as good, in my opinion. That might be a case where the IH cookers have an advantage. There's a speed/quality trade-off but if you remember to use the timer, the rice cooker will take its sweet time soaking and slowly cooking the rice without attention from you. You can vary the texture of the rice by adding more or less water at the beginning. Mine doesn't have the feature to make the rice more or less firm at the press of a button but I can't say I've needed that. It sounds cool though! The bowl never goes past the boiling point so even if you are concerned about Teflon, I don't see it being a problem in this application. It sure makes clean-up easier, especially when you make oatmeal. I usually eat steel-cut oatmeal (set the timer the night before with the porridge setting) in the morning and have rice (short-grain white, long-grain basmati, brown jasmine, brown short-grain, etc.) probably 5-6 evenings a week. There nearly always is food in my rice cooker!

I've tried to like brown rice but it just doesn't work for me. Animal fodder is right. I don't view white rice as being a problem as long as you keep the portion size reasonable and eat a variety of other food. However, if you're looking to try another type of rice that might be better for you nutritonally and don't want that nasty brown rice flavor, I'd suggest a short-grain haiga rice like Tamaki Haiga. It's a semi-polished rice. The bran is removed but the germ is retained. The germ seems to contribute a different flavor than the bran. I'd say it tastes more "ricey" than rice without the germ. I rather like it and alternate between California koshihikari (like Tamaki Gold) and haiga. It cooks about the same as regular short-grain rice. If you use short-grain, you might want to try it. It sells for about $1/lb. in 15lb. bags at my Japanese market.

Toaster Ovens in the Japan forum

Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola on Amazon If you click the Look inside this book link, you can view the entire table of contents. There are quite a few ideas, perhap the makings of an entire cuisine there.

Here's a lovely mug of coca tea that I had a year ago in Peru. Yes, that mug is full of coca leaves. All you do is add some hot water and a little sugar. You can find coca tea served at many bars and cafes. It became part of my routine on my trip. Coca tea bags are available at the supermarket. It's all perfectly legal. Indeed, I liked the flavor better than coffee or tea. Even forgetting about the stimulant effect, I can see why someone would want to use the flavor in a soft drink. Drinking a mug that size gave me a buzz about the same as a strong cup of coffee. The unusual thing was that it also made my lips a bit numb. That's no surprise given that coca leaves are used to make codeine and cocaine. My understanding is that it takes a whole lot of coca leaves to make a useful amount of cocaine. I've been told that Coca-Cola still uses coca leaf extract but that the active ingredient is removed. By the way, you can get Mexican-market Coca-Cola made with sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup at Latin grocery stores and some restaurants. I don't know if the formula is the same as that before New Coke but I like it better than the U.S. version. If I were going to cook something with Coke, I'd probably use the import version. If I wanted to simulate the effect of cooking with the 1902 version, maybe I'd throw some No-Doze into the pot along with some Sichuan pepper.

You should do what you want to do and worry more about what is fair to you than worry about what is "fair" to someone else. If you want a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, you should have one. It would be kind of silly to sit at that table and be miserable for several hours and if you don't want to be there, it most likely will show. I flat out don't like turkey and most of those other dishes that go with it and couldn't care less about the holiday but the idea is the same. I can see these folks another time. I used to tapdance around these things but I don't anymore. Oh, the audacity! Well, tough titt... eh... turkey! I'm much happier and have no regrets.

San Jose has the largest Vietnamese immigrant population of any city in the U.S. I can't imagine a Vietnamese restaurant here, especially a pho shop, that doesn't have a bottle of Huy Fong sriracha on the table. I think one could think of Huy Fong sriracha as Vietnamese-American sriracha. On the other hand, I can't recall ever seeing Huy Fong sriracha in any Thai restaurant. Perhaps it's unfortunate that Huy Fong gave their sauce the name they did rather than choosing another name. In any case, I read this thread for the first time several weeks ago and got myself my first bottle of Huy Fong sriracha. Is there a 12-step program for sriracha addicts?

Good taste? I don't know. Beauty? Perhaps! Maybe there's an underlying mathematical logic to good food that has yet to be identified.

A 19-month-old who knows "shallot" and "larb"! I didn't know both those words till my early 30's. I blame this deficiency on bad parents and California schools. You must be a proud parent.

I've never heard of such a thing. The wild speculation on my part is that the knife was left for some time in high-strength or highly-heated chlorine solution, assuming the problem really is corrosion. Stainless Steel Corrosion Stress Corrosion Cracking I'm pretty much clueless on the subject, so please forgive me if I'm way off base, but maybe you'll find something in those links that'll be interesting.

$75K a year isn't exactly great living in the Napa Valley. I'd say it's just getting by. A 1,250 sq/ft. 3-bedroom starter home in Yountville on a small lot goes for around $800,000 and anything nice is a lot more.

Since you are willing to go through extreme measures to obtain fresh masa, might I suggest making your own? This is described in Diana Kennedy's latest book and on various web sites including this entry on My Little Kitchen.

If you don't mind sending your knives to Philadelphia, I've heard nothing but good things about D & R Sharpening. Dave can properly sharpen Japanese knives too and even grind new blade profiles to your specifications. There are several threads with his work on Knifeforums.

Try Bar Keeper's Friend. I had an old matte black Le Creuset oval roasting pan and have a few matte black Staub pieces now. I've found that Bar Keeper's Friend will remove the residue and does not damage the finish over extended use. I don't use it every time I wash but rather only when detergent and scrubbing with a brush isn't enough. I've cooked some oily fish dishes that left me with a problem of "stinky pot" and the Bar Keeper's Friend erased those memories.