gfweb

Mac and cheese never impresses me, even my own. I make it when it's presence is needed by guests who like salads with jello and marshmallows. But Kraft is vile, made with powdered cheese product, and seems like what one would find in an MRE eaten during a lull in combat.

I have an anova and a sous vide supreme. The SVS does a great job with long cooks of big stuff. It's probably not as precise as a circulator, but I'm not doing PCR , I'm making corned beef. To me the big downside is the footprint as @Anna N noted, but I have a big basement. If it works and you have space , $40 is a bargain. Probably more reliable than a circulator as there are no moving parts.

I'd recommend cavatapi rigati instead of traditional macaroni. A little bigger...more forkable...still looks like macaroni. I make it with a cheese bechamel, a shot of sriracha, and diced canned tomatoes that have had the water squeezed out. Still not fine dining, but way better than the Kraft/mondelez stuff.

On the other hand, cultivated mushrooms are all hand harvested, so whatever is on the piscador's (for that is what they are called in mushroom country) hand goes in your mouth. Certainly low risk, but not zero risk. And they taste way better cooked.

The Athletic is a newish sports paid subscription. Not crazy expensive and they promise in depth stuff rather than the 500 words you'd get at a newspaper.com. They hired the best sports writers in major cities and are doing well with it. Perhaps a similar deal could be done with food...fair price...serious content...no recipes for grilled cheese. Maybe cobble together CI , serious eats, and eater

And E. coli kills more than angry mooses, but I shall still avoid contact with mooses whether angry or chill.

Foraging scares the crap out of me. Too much room for bad mistakes. I need to know the forager. I'm convinced that much mushroom poisoning goes undetected. You won't remember the mushrooms next to your steak, when you show up at your doc's office with hepatitis a week or 2 later. And there's the whole fiddlehead fern thing. There is a reason that even voracious deer don't touch ferns....

What make a cheesecake Basque-y?

I have Chicago metallic from amazon and volrath and Lincoln sheetpans from the local restaurant warehouse store. Equivalent products, but the latter is way cheaper. In fact everything there is unbelievably inexpensive and often better made. Heres their website. https://g.co/kgs/3iPbFQ. PS their in person prices are better than the web prices which aren't bad.

Water loss in sous vide is mainly from protein contraction as it cooks. So pretty much the same in all three conditions Forgetting the cooking aspect, a piece of meat would lose salt if soaked in water and give up water if soaked in a strong brine. If the soaking liquid was roughly 0.9% salt there would be no net gain or loss.

You can use the app recipes or ones from egullet or from the internet. Zillions out there. Re zip-loc bags. I frequently use them with the air pushed out by water pressure and then pushed closed. The bags that actually have a zipper will leak...beware. You can also leave t hem un-zipped and clipped to the side with a binder clip. You'll love it

You can get a lot of technology for $1300. As much as I lust after this thing, I could get an induction plate, a couple SV machines, an instant pot, a steam oven, a breville air fryer and have money left over. Having said that , I want one.

Look at all that empty space that could be filled with brisket.

You need steel. Or hand cleaning of aluminum. I don't find using a Brillo pad much work. But a nice bunch of steel pans would be interesting and pretty.

https://www.chowhound.com/post/gray-residue-aluminum-sheet-pans-pots-saute-pans-garlic-680009. Addresses the issue