Porthos

Question for members. Do you consider Karl Strauss to be a craft brewery, albiet one with brewery operations all over southern California?

Serious question. City? County? Greater Southern California Area?

I find the center burner on my stove to be worthless. When I am cooking there is no room for a fifth pan in the middle.

For my birthday my DW bought me (I did all the actual legwork) Thermoworks' new TimeStack 4 channel timer. I specifically wanted it for my ren faire kitchens, where I may have mutilple things steaming, stuff in the oven, and some task that has to be started at a specific time . I have overall been very happy with my other Thermoworks products (not happy that the audible alarm quit sounding in my ChefTimer) and have looked forward to my birthday to get my mits on this new timer. It's operation is pretty straight forward. All you need for instructions are printed on a heavyweight plastic card. The audible alarm has a selectable volume. Each channel has a different beep pattern and a choice of 3 selectable frequencies. I am, however, dissapointed in one feature. Instead of a beep pattern you can record your voice or whatever for each channel. I was looking forward to using, among other things, my favorite submarine dive horn sound; it's distinctive. The volume on playback is pitifully weak compared to the audible beeper. With their Big and Loud timer I usually set the volume to 3 (4 being the loudest) and my partially deaf ears can hear it from many feet away. I can similarly hear the audible beeper of the TimeStack from many feet away. The recorded sounds, however, not so much. FYI: If you turn up the volume of what you want to record it just gets very distorted on playback. I am getting the service features I want, except for the recordable sounds, and am glad to have it.

@weinoo I found this article from Fatguy interesting.

Best Foods is the only store-bought mayo that you will find in our home. I found the WIkipedia information very interesting.

I bought a regular sink strainer/stopper at a dollar store and I put that in the garbage disposer when not plugging up that side of the sink. No more flatware slipping into the disposer, but water still drains out of the sink.

@Toliver Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc was too good to pass up.I have already started reading it.

As someone who has a long-standing secret love affair with the NSF logo, I would discount claims of being NSF approved but no NSF logo.

I was looking forward to trying this but the market I was going to get the Romas from hasn't had good prices lately and I going into my fall ren faire season. Not a lot of spare time for the next 7 weeks.

My dear MIL, who passed away 15 years ago, had this set in slightly different colors with a wheat motif. They are still in my FIL's kitchen.

I have taken to only buying the boards with some kind of anti-slip feature built into them. My particular brand of dishwasher, Bosch, has not heating coil, it heats the rinse water to enhance the drying of the dishes. Whenever I can, I open up the dishwasher as soon as the cycle is complete which really helps speed up the evaporation drying. Added benefit to no drying coil, no worries about "top rack only." This is why I only own poly boards. Wooden boards don't fare well in a dishwasher.

I couldn't read past the first couple of paragraphs of the cleanmeat home page. It made me feel nauseous just looking at the picture.

The original, as pictured above, is my "pantry staple" brat. I would not part a lot of money for them, but in my area they are the best flavor-versus-cost brats for everyday dinner fare.** They work very well in this recipe from Michael Symon. **When I want something special I go to a German Delicatessen near where my FIL lives.

I did a poor job of expressing myself by mixing faire kitchen and home kitchen items. Truly my bad. At home if I choose bleach solution instead of using Clorox Anywhere once I am done with the sanitizing I dump the bleach water and use Clorox Anywhere for spot sanitizing as I go while cooking. I would have to ask my wife about how long it lasts them in the commercial kitchen operation that I mentioned above. In my faire kitchen we use bleach water for sanitizing at the dish-washing station and disposable cleaning/sanitizing wipes from Costco for counters and such. I do a bleach water wipe down of all the counters when I first open the kitchen on Friday evenings but dump the solution when I am done. Next month I will try monitoring the sanitizing solution while my DW is working. I normally steer clear of that operation. Rotten answers, I know. Best I can do at the moment.

@gfweb Agreed. Over the past several years I have asked various small kitchen operators here in California what they use for their sanitizer. Every last one has used bleach. Bleach is cheap, can be purchased just about anywhere and requires less contact time than other sanitizers save water that has been raised to a sanitizing temperature and I've only seen that in machines. I keep a supply of chlorine test strips (retail operations that use bleach are required to have them) and test my sanitizer when made up and after that as circumstances warrant. I don't keep a perfect kitchen at home but I do take care with food contact surfaces. My DW has a weakened immune system and I don't care to cause her harm. Each one of us has to choose what they deem the best. Bleach water sanitizer is my personal choice.

" "Keep the cleaning cloths in the sanitizer bucket." This practice does not prevent the microbial population from increasing, because after an hour or so, the organic material obtained from cleaning neutralizes the sanitizer and the microorganisms begin to multiply. " I am having a problem with this statement since it runs counter to California's standard practice of keeping "sanitizing solution with a rag in it" for santizing surfaces. When the health inspectors come to the facility that my wife works in seasonly, the inspectors check to make sure the sanitizer solution in the bucket with a cloth are prepared and ready for use. I can't find any entry in CURFFL stating that it has to be dumped and prepared fresh again every hour. Edited for clarity.

I'll probably buy one after I convince myself that I need a Rachel Ray $20.00 garbage bowl. I have several Thermoworks products that I really do like. Don't need a "celebrity" gadget.

Not exactly a Food Funny but it struck me as humorous. I am sitting here re-watching the Massimo Bottura episode of Chef's Table while eating my bowl of Cheerios.

Something I failed to mention in my original comment up-thread is that with 2 specific exceptions all dishes and utensils go through the dishwasher. I have 2 knives that I hand-wash and that is done with paper towels. The sponge never gets near them.

I'm going to give this a try with two substitutions. Cherry tomatoes are hard to come by at a good price but I can get Romas at a good price most of the time so Romas will be the tomato. I'm going to sub out rosemary from my plant for basil since my DW doesn't care for basil.

@Toliver $2.99 was the price for the Ken Forkish book even without Prime. ... and you are such an enabler!

Down the Rabbit hole I go ... The Spice Companion ... bought it ... what is next? (in my head I'm hearing," Darth: No, I am your father." Luke: "Noooooo ..."

@Toliver having watched the Nancy Silverton episode of Chef's Table twice in the last week, buying The Food of Campanile was a no-brainer.

100 ppm bleach in water in contact with the cleaned surface sanitizes the surface in 30 seconds also. With today's more concentrated bleaches that's a scant cap-full into a gallon of water.