g.johnson

From the site I linked: I think you're right that 'stainless' is a misnomer. Rust-proof would be more accurate.

This site confirms vengroff's explanation.

Doesn't rust. Except when it does.

That was Altnaharrie. Though it was on a peninsula across the loch from Ullapool the only land route was via a dirt road. Also it's cooler to take the boat. Not the best food I've ever had (though still very good) but certainly the nicest restaurant experience.

We had baby beef at the Altnaharrie Inn of fond memory. Very good as I recall.

I had to look it up. In my yout' I had the anal habit of writing where and when I bought a book inside the front cover. So the runner up is... French Provincial Cooking, Elizabeth David, bought October 1977. And your winner ladies and gentlemen... The Pauper's Cookbook, Jocasta Innes, bought August 1977. These are working cookbooks. Their condition is now on the vile side of disgusting.

Stainless steel contains chromium and some nickel. Chromium and nickel salts can be green. Something in the eggs might react with the metals, though it doesn't sound altogether likely. Stainless steel is called stainless for a reason.

All fried products are as nothing in he face of the mighty Edinburgh Deep Fried Pizza. Think Frozen McCain's, dipped in batter and deep fried (batter keeps the topping on). Andy thanks. I thought "Cheap" and "Fucks" may be involved. Do Edinburgh chippers do macaroni cheese pie* or is that an Aberdeen speciality? *Mac and cheese in a pie case, deep fried. No batter: this is a delicate dish.

The first time Yvonne came down to Suffolk to stay with me I took her to a series of what I thought were great pubs, which I’d described as being much better than anything in Aberdeen. That was true but I hadn’t realized that being an effete city girl, Yvonne expected indoor toilets. The worst was The Ship in Levington which was a delightful old pub where the parlour bar was, quite literally, the landlord’s parlour, complete with family photos, sofas and antimacassars. He only let locals in there. But the toilets were in a field. The gents was a sheet of corrugated iron over a ditch. I don’t know what the ladies was like and Yvonne didn’t stay to find out. Not a creepy dive bar, but somewhere with character.

While there's not a one to one correspondance between popularity and restaurant quality, the two are at least correlated, no? In the absence of personal experience, I will assume that a busy restaurant is probably better than one with 30 tables and 2 diners.

Not as stupid as if first appears, though even the scientist involved, N V Dhurandhar, is cautious. From an editorial he recently wrote for J. Obesity (6, 745-746, 2002):

Stop all this politics. We were talking about why all Americans are greedy fat bastards.

The form that caloric consumption takes also has something to do with obesity. The body does not handle 100 calories of kale in the same way it handles 100 calories of bacon. Yes. (Though my body has had more practice absorbing bacon than kale.) None of this is fixed either. Eating carbs increases insulin which makes you hungry after the carbs have been processed. So you eat more. This is an oversimplification, but the point is that there are feedback loops, not all of which are negative.

I don't agree, if anyone cares. I don't know how strong the general correlation between those factors and obesity is, but the innumerable individual exceptions point to genetic factors. Metabolism, for example. If we change Charlene's statement to ‘people get fat when they absorb more calories than they use’ then it’s unarguable. Even for a philosopher. I would agree that there is likely to be a genetic component to how many calories an individual absorbs and/or uses.

Correlation is not causation. It strikes me to be just as likely that Americans expect big portions in restaurants because they eat big portions at home, as vice versa.

My state's better than yours.

OK, scratch my previous post. I was assuming rapid heat loss from the inner surface of the pan which would give a large temperature gradient. With slow heat loss, the situation will be rather different. I’m sure they’ve got it right. The precise answer will depend on the spacing of the hot spots of the burner but they’ve probably made a sensible approximation. I’m not sure, either, that the answers are ‘optimum’. I think thicker will always be better from this point of view. Edit: Chastened Scientific Bastard

100x150 = 15,000 15,000 x 7 = 105,100 105,500 x 4 = 422,000

Oh, all right then. Americans are obese vulgarians with no culture.

Strictly speaking, not at all since ‘conductivity’ is an inherent property of the material. You're really talking about 'conduction'. You might say that unless you’re really comfortable with three dimensional second order differential equations. In practice, you’d have to solve the equations numerically. The result will also depend on what’s in the pan. Nonetheless, I’d say, as a rule of thumb, that the thickness of the pan base should be at least of the order of half the distance between the hot spots on your burner. I don’t think the pan base could ever be too thick from the point of smoothing hot spots. Smug Getting the Chance to Show Off Twice in Two Days Bastard.

Just because you didn't understand Dancer in the Dark there's no need to get petty I think I understood that executing the innocent was wrong before seeing Mr. Von Trier's hysteriafest.

Smug Classicist Bastard.

Previous threads here and here.

You've got it.

I had to look up reactive power since it’s an electrical engineering term, but it’s not difficult. In electrical circuits you calculate the ‘apparent power’ by multiplying the current by the voltage. That would accurately represent the power you can get from an oven, for example. But in electrical circuits that contain capacitors and/or inductors some of the apparent power is stored in the circuit and is not available to do any work. That’s the reactive power. The power available for work, the ‘true power’, is equal the apparent power minus the reactive power. I guess it’s relevant for fans because they’re big inductors, so it’s important to consider true power.