andiesenji

I too advise filling your bath tub with water. Friends who lived in the area where Hugo hit years ago did not have clean water from the taps because the pumping stations had been damaged. They could not even wash with it. It doesn't take an earthquake to cause damage to water treatment facilities &etc. Water towers can collapse and water tanks can be ruptured by blowing debris.

If you have not yet joined Forum Thermomix, do so at once. Read through the Chit Chat topics and particularly What are you cooking today? and What's for dinner tonight? Then dip into the other specific topic sections about breads, main dishes, vegetarian, etc. The members who post there every day (or several times a day) use theirs more than I use mine. You might also find the topic: What appliances have you ditched since getting your Thermo interesting.

Ah yes, the meat, no beans vs. the meat and beans, possibly other vegetables, and the other regional chili favorites: Cincinnati "firehouse" chili, Detroit chili (with spaghetti), Springfield, IL chili, Memphis chili, Oklahoma chili, Colorado chili (not Chile Colorado), Wyoming sheepherder chili and Cowboy chili of Wyoming. Plus many others. Texas has multiple entries, including some WITH beans in certain towns or counties. Chili cooked in Mexican homes in the Texas border towns was mostly beans with a very small amount of meat for flavor. The Chili Appreciation Society International (CASI) and the International Chili Society (ICS) sometimes have competing events. The wild and wonderful world of chili can take one down a never ending road because there are so many recipes it would take a lifetime to try them all. I have a friend who has been preparing a different chili recipe almost every week for 29 years and at last count has tried over 1400. (Did not cook while on vacations or when laid up with a broken leg and later following knee surgery.) He says he still has over a thousand yet to try and keeps adding more as he finds them.

In years gone by, I have attended a number of chili cook-offs, challenges, championships and chuckwagon cattle calls. I participated in a few, never won anything important but had a lot of fun. The contestants ranged from the truly serious chili junkies, who guard their recipes like the gold that used to be in Ft. Knox, to the casual cook who spends more time drinking and telling jokes than cooking. The contest rules vary so widely that one needs to keep a file if planning to go on "the circuit" because nobody enters just one contest. They are almost as rabid as the barbecue cook-off fanatics, but don't spend as much on equipment or ingredients. I attended one chili even - helping a friend - at a rural fairgrounds which had scheduled BOTH a chili event on one side of the grounds and a barbecue event on the other. Unfortunately, the hastily erected chain-link fences did little to stop the excursion of attendees from straying into the other half of the fairground - figuring they had paid for admittance to the fairground so shouldn't have to pay a second time for the other event. There were some lively arguments. There were a few casualties! The local police had to call in the staties to help with the crowds. A good time was had by almost all.

You win! I give up. As far as I am concerned, this topic has been beaten to death.

I came across this notice today and thought I would post it for any member who might be in the area on Saturday, September 17. Kansas City Caffeine Crawl It sounds like fun. I know these events have been done in Seattle (of course) in Chicago, San Francisco and some other major cities, but this is the first I have heard of in this region. Host Note: Click here for the terms under which this event is listed in eG Forums.

"Tea can have a piece of fruit hanging on the side of the cup. If I have fruit hanging from the side of glass, there should be rum in it." Amy Vansant "Champagne should be cold, dry and, hopefully, free." - Christian Pol Roger

Excellent point!

I change the rice when I refill the salt containers - the big glass salt "box" by the stovetop gets dumped into a wire colander that catches the rice and the salt falls into a bowl. I apply new rice and dump the salt back into the container and add more it needed. You can see the layer of rice in the bottom - I used pearl rice, it is sort of translucent but becomes opaque after it has absorbed some moisture so that's when I change it.

Good point!

I have an extra bowl and blades (actually a back-up in case something goes wrong so haven't used it) and I have two extra measuring cups/caps because they tend to become opaque with cooking some things. I also bought two extra lid gaskets because I just know that I will do something stupid and mess it up and then the machine won't work. I have been told I am just a bit anal about having back-up extras of things, but then I am happy when something does happen and I don't have to wait to use the machine again... That's just me. Possibly it is an OCD thing.

I really don't worry about the technical details of WHY it works, I simply use it and from long experience, I have found it works for me. (And the laws of physics are not altered or suspended in my kitchen, as far as I know.) Obviously other people have been using this solution to a nagging problem for at least a century, probably much longer, but as I have had this discussion with people who had been around that much longer than my 72 years, and I did a basic Google search and found thousands of sites that note this remedy for the problem, I figure it has worked for many others. It isn't always easy to quantify these things because there are so many variables. There are some processes that are easy to demonstrate visually and there are some that occur on the sub atomic level and to us it looks like magic, unless one has equipment costing millions to show it. I personally have had two salt shakers, side-by-side, same type of salt, one with rice and one without. The one without salt developed a hard surface which did not break when the shaker was inverted. The one with the rice poured freely. When did I do this demonstration? 44 years ago when my husband questioned WHY I insisted on putting rice in the salt shaker. It convinced him!

As long as the gasket will seal the top securely to the bottom vessel, it should produce as good a cup of coffee as any brewer. There are several YouTube videos of the Sunbeam CoffeeMaster in action. Here's a good one.

I have several of the brass (one copper) grinders for Turkish coffee but mine can all be adjusted from the bottom - in some it is a bit tricky - for a slightly coarser grind and also so they can be used for grinding some spices, such as grains of paradise. The grinder base plates on mine have tiny teeth around the edge to allow the ground stuff (pepper) to drop into the base container. I think yours is set for "extra-fine" but it may be adjustable from the top. This is a view of the bottoms the part that drops into the base container. The one on the left is set for medium-fine the one on the right for very fine. P.S. Love your bowls, Heidi. I love bowls too but no longer collect them because I have so many I have no place to put them. I have quite a few pictured on my blog page "Utility bowls" but I have at least twice as many in storage. There was a time in the late '80s that I really went overboard when attending estate auctions, buying all the "smalls" in a kitchen. Indiscriminate buying became a problem.

I don't have much of a problem with Diamond Crystal salt clumping, but I use a lot of the "Real Salt" the pinkish stuff that is mined in Utah, and even here in the desert, it clumps like it wants to its rocky structure as it was mined. Sea salts don't clump as much and some are actually wet. I buy the Velvet de Guerande, which is super fine and it doesn't clump at all. It is the salt I use in my homemade butter - when I don't want the crunch of larger crystals. Regular table salt clumps easily, in spite of the additives that are supposed to keep it loose. The coarse salt I use for pickling also clumps or gathers into rough rocky pebbles that require some pounding to break apart. This may require more research!

I agree the Aeropress would be a good thing to have while traveling on short trips. A glass vacuum brewer would be a bit more difficult to carry and operate. However I have several working electric stainless steel vac brewer. If I am going on a long trip, where I will be in a hotel room for a week or more, my Senseo goes with me and so does my travel water purifier. New Mexico motel where I spent ten days in '08. Perhaps I am also a bit of a fanatic. (I also take my hot water boiler and a selection of premium teas!)

I have been told, and others have mentioned in online articles, that Mexican coffee, which is particularly low in acid, is an excellent choice for vacuum brewing. It is best if roasted slightly longer, not actually a "dark" roast but close to it. I got the latter information from the son of one of my neighbors who used to work in the Mexican Consulate in L.A. Apparently his boss was a firm believer in using the vacuum brewer for his coffee, grown in his home state and sent via "bolsa diplomatico" and roasted by him at home. The guy must have been at real coffee fanatic. I picture the Jack Nicholson character in The Bucket List.

No, the rice will not absorb all of the flavor of the spices, nor will it absorb flavor from dried herbs. I have a friend who lives on her boat in a marina and has rice in all of her spice and dried herb containers to absorb the ambient moisture. No problems. If you use open salt containers, an old trick that originated in the south - Charleston I think - was to put a layer of rice in the bottom of the salt box so the salt would not clump. My grandparent's cook, a Gullah woman from the lowcountry, always did this and also put a layer of rice in the bottom of every sugar bowl.

Interesting that you should ask today. I have been working on an additional page on my blog, a "daughter" page to the one on collecting vintage vacuum brewers and your question prompted me to publish the page today. I have not written much about vacuum brewing itself but I have collected several links that might interest you and which have detailed instructions about brewing and the opinions of a number of coffee experts or enthusiasts. The link to my blog page.

Years ago, when I was still catering, I made several batches of "red hots" - candied chile tepin or chiltepin and chile pequin (similar heat and flavor, slightly different shape), for a club of chile-heads for their parties. Most were officers and noncoms at Edwards AFB and were eventually reassigned. The heat of the pepper is slightly tempered by the candying process but they are still very hot. Rocoto and Manzano peppers are fairly hot (they do vary, depending on the climate - if they get more water while growing, they are less hot) but make a great addition to fruit salads - in moderation. These peppers have an apple-like flavor and are the only peppers I know of that have black seeds. They can be grown in pots and in temperate climates do well as a house plant in a sunny window. And here is a link to real recipes for candied peppers.

A couple of years ago I was given a big bag of star fruit and found this site. I made the star fruit chutney, the star fruit mui, the Down Island salsa and a couple of the salads. I dried some, then candied it but used the syrup in which I had candied ginger - nice combination of flavors.

I found this interesting report about the product, It's enough to convince me that I don't need this particular item. Really, too good to be true - actually.

It's possible you have stumbled onto something terrific. I have a 2-liter vacuum bottle with a stainless interior and it rarely needs more than an rinse after containing plain coffee for extended periods. This is quite different from when it contains tea - that requires dosing with diluted bleach and sometimes vigorous application of a bottle brush.

"Cheating?" I originally got my chile verde recipe from my Mexican neighbor and it and every other chile verde, salsa verde etc., recipe includes tomatillos. They make a pickled sauce using just chiles, but it is a flavoring condiment, not the dish itself. I don't think that tomatillos "dilute" the flavor, they enhance it in its many variations throughout Mexico where the seasonings change, from region to region, but the base is always chiles (often poblano with other, hotter peppers), tomatillos and onions. The local produce market has Hatch chiles and they showed up at three different vendors at the farmers' market yesterday.

They are not in the shell. They are cooked in the little floating containers.