jongchen

While not very scientific I'll detail my experience with lodge logic and normal. I bought a skillet non seasoned. I followed the directions to season the skillet. I made corn bread in it. The corn bread stuck like crazy. Took me forever to get all the stuck corn bread out. After several months of use the skillet developed the nice black seasoning that everyone refers to. I made corn bread again. Perfect release. No sticking at all. After a while I decided to get a skillet dedicated to corn bread. The reason was some times the corn bread would faintly taste like the last dish made before the corn bread. To avoid the whole seasoning problem I decided to get a lodge logic. The first day I had the pan I used it to make corn bread. Perfect release. The logic is definatly worth the extra money.

I'm probably going to get killed here for say this but for most people the best "wok" for home use is a standard 12" cast iron skillet. The reason being chinese resturants have VERY high BTU burners. 68,000 BTU+, they all have multiple flame rings. If you look at one it's kinda like looking at the bottom of a rocket engine. Woks are purposly very thin to allow the best transmission of that energy from the burner to the food. When you add food to the wok the high btu burner allowes for very fast recover of heat in the wok. This provides the nice "smoky" flavor called wok hay. Even if you have a pro style stove at home they generally top out at 30,000 BTU so it dosen't really provide the fast recovery for best flavor development. The way to work around this problem at home is the use a heavy cast iron pan. The pan is heavy and tends to retain heat. If you preheat the pan until it is smoking hot and drop a small amount of food in it the temperature dosen't drop significantly and you can get the nice wok hay flavor. But to keep the temerature in the cast iron pan hot enough you have to cook in small batches and preheat between batchs. I've made fried rice at home (both gas and electric stoves) with a wok, 12" aluminum skillet and 12" cast iron skillet. The cast iron skillet provided the best flavor. I've also made "orange flavor beef", "sesame chicken", "beef with oyster sauce" at home in the 12" cast iron skillet and it tasted much better than the vast majority of chinese resturants out there. Had the nice smoky flavor expected in dishes like that. Also growing up my parents used a wok on your standard gas range at home. The food never had that nice wok hay. My parents also owned chinese resturants. When we were in the resturant with the high btu stoves and made the same exact receipe. It tasted much better. If you don't believe me give it a try. Cast iron pans are cheap ~$20. Woks are cheap. Buy both. But I'll bet that your wok like mine will be gathering dust in the closet somewhere.

I used their Akurum cabinets in medium brown. That apparently is a very popular color. I was told that it being popular was responsible for some of my delays. The countertop that I used was cambrian black quartz from http://www.cambriausa.com/ but I also considered Silestone which is avaliable from Home Depot, or Lowes. The price difference for the various contertops were minimal so I chose the people I liked the most.

I just finished my project using Ikea cabinets which I'll eventually get around to documenting. Be sure to order your cabinets MUCH earlier than you need them. I ordered my cabinets 6 weeks before I needed them (Late October) for a December 1 delivery. They delivered the vast majority of my order but I waited a long time for some items. Some side panels and doors weren't delivered until the Monday of this week Janurary 10 and I finally got my toe kicks tonight Janurary 12. But other than the delay the people at Ikea were great to deal with. They were all friendly and knowledgable. And for the items that were backordered and was shippiable via UPS they sent to me for free. Unfortunatly only a single item that I had backordered was UPS able but they tried.

I have Ikea cabinets and Quartz countertops. The Quartz is approximatly 1" thick all the way around and very dense. In other words it's really heavy. The cabinets supports the weight just fine. The Ikea cabinets may be inexpensive but they are very well constructed (especially for the price). My contractor has done many kitchens with Ikea cabinets and natural stone contertops and he hasn't had any problems.

I just had some cork floors installed in my kitchen and I love them. They feel great underfoot (soft but not squishy) and since I don't like wearing shoes in the house are "warm" which makes it a lot more comfterable to stand on. The ones I have are also surprisingly durable. The floor was put in very early on in the construction process and with installing the new cabinets, appliances especially the fridge (two different ones, don't ask) I thought that they were going to get scratched and scuffed up and they did not. I used the floors from these guys http://www.globuscork.com/ they were very good to deal with. Jong

A serrated knife is good for more than just bread. It is useful for cutting things that are soft on the inside but hard on the outside. The serrations help you get through the "skin." I have probably use my Wustdorf 8" serrated knife on more pineapples then bread. I use the serrated knife to cut the top, bottom and "shave" the skin off the sides. Once the skin is off I use a normal chef's knife to cut the pinapple flesh into the desired final format. I would definatly reccomend getting at least a 10" serrated knife with an offset handle. The 8" is just to short for many things and I hate having my knuckle bang into the bottom of the cuttting board. Straight blade is better than curved as mentioned before because you don't want to have to rock the knife to cut all the way though the bread.

Not sure I'd bother with the double drawer dish washer. The one I saw were VERY expensive. Expensive enough to buy two standard size Miele dishwashers. IMHO two dishwashers are better than one. If you are cleaning up from a dinner party you can load both of them up at the same time and that should probably cover most if not all the dishes. If energy savings is the name of the game and you run lots of small loads some of the Miele's have a "wash half" load. The other half will still get wet though.

There is a pretty good local chain in the Northern Virginia (Five Guys) area that makes good burgers. Not to the lofty standards that you've laid out. But they are good. I don't eat fast food burgers often (one of my friends ruined me, he makes burgers that puts everything I've had in resturants to shame) but if I want one I go to five guys. I don't remember the last time I went into McDonalds other than to use their restrooms. Five Guys only sells burgers, fries and hotdogs. All burgers are are made to order and it appears that they don't put it on the grill till you order it. The fries are all hand cut. Depending on what you mean by that. It looks like they have a big machine on the wall that you put a potato in and pull a lever resulting in fries coming out the bottom. It appears that the fries are twice fried. Well at least I seem them move the fries from one deep fryer to another. I'm assuming that the fryers are at different temperatures. If not what's the point? Five guys is always busy. And there is always a lengthy wait for food. Probably looking at around 10-15 minutes minimum between ordering and getting your food. They do provide free peanuts (in shells) by the case in the waiting area for you to munch on while you wait. They appear to be doing well as they are opening new locations. Other than the lengthy wait one of my compaints is that their french fries vary greatly in quality. They don't have one of those fancy totally automated deep fryers that some McDonalds has. So depending on the skill of the person working the deep fryer you get either under cooked fries, over cooked fries or something in between but not ideal. But when they get the fries right it's some of the best I've had.

Layalina definatly gets a thumbs up from me. The food at Lebanase taverna is okay but service is lacking. Why does it take 45 minutes before someone takes my order? Someone just gave me a $40 gift certificate to the place. Not sure if it will ever get used.

Would you opt for a restaurant with half-sized portions if it was offered? I wouldn't go to the resturant simply because it has half sized portions. But if would be nice if the resturant that I went to had half sized portions. I simply am not able to eat all the food provided at normal places. I generally eat .5 of the appetizer, .5 of the entree and the whole dessert. So having a small discount would be nice. Are you satisfied with the options as they are now presented? No. Alot of resturants serve a ridiculous amount of food. Cheesecake factory being the worst offender out of the resturants that I've been to. Given the cost of a meal in a restaurant, is it going to be worth the money to have a smaller meal? For me it would definatly be worth it. At the moment half the food is thrown out any way. It would be nice that less food is wasted. And heck given the obesity epidimic in this country and how much people pay to lose weight it would probably be worth it to pay for the privilage.

Cooks illustrated did a test for chef's knifes a while ago (sorry don't remember the issue, if you ask I'll look it up). Included in the test were the usual suspects global, wustdorf, Henikels etc. The winner was the Victorinox I believe for $30. Cooks isn't the last word on gear (they're kinda like consumer reports, kills the joy of shopping for the latest and greates because they usually hate it) but I've usually been happy for their reccomendations.

I have one of those Ikea boards. When I first got it over the course of several days I probably went through a whole bottle of mineral oil trying to "season" it. Eventually I realized that the oil was just coming out the other side of the cutting board. I think you should stop when the entire board looks a few shades darker than when you bought it. I've had the board for years and I haven't seasoned it again. It's not cracking or anything so I'm guessing it's fine. But then again those boards are so cheap that I would be too concerned if something happned to mine.

I would reccomend that you consider the Magnum pepper mill by Unicorn instead (http://www.peppergun.com/index.html). There is no difference in output between the magnum and the magnum plus. The magnum plus hold more pepper. The magnum is in the same price range as the two mills you mentioned. I have the magnum plus. It is hands down the BEST pepper mill I've used in my entire life. The output is fanstatic. I'm not exagerating when I say that I generate the same amount of pepper in 1/4 turn of the knob as three full turns on a normal pepper mill. It is also really easy to adjust the finess of the grind. There is a little knob to turn at the bottom. I bought the pepper mill because of a cooks illustrated review. They loved it. I have to agree.