opqdan

I can also add a recomendation of the Q220 (with cart and cover even). The grill area is more than enough for what I need, and it cooks very well.There are some negatives though. It is relatively low in the power department, and takes a long time to heat up. This is remedied by the grate being very heavy cast iron. It will take a good 10 minutes or longer for the grate to get up to heat, but once it does, it will be great. You can't easily cook with the top open for very long though (but it could be argued that you shouldn't do that anyhow). In addition (and I only found this out this weekend), it doesn't offer a ton of control of the heat output (it does great on high, but it doesn't go low enough). Even on the lowest setting, it is still way hotter than I was looking for. I was actually attempting to smoke some ribs, which involved an interesting fidea of suspending an aluminum pan (the kind you use for a drip tray) full of soaked wood chips below the cooking grate and above the burner using pieces of an old coat hanger. It worked rather well, but unless I cycled the grill on and off, it would get way to hot (and at the end, when I got distracted, it actually burned through the aluminum pan and caught fire to the whole thing ). Overall though, I am extremely happy, and I'll figure out the smoking thing eventually. I just need to figure out a way to close off part of the burner. Will closing the valve from the LP tank make any difference? I suppose it wouldn't since that portion of the system (before the regulator) would have a constant pressure.

If I am in a hurry, I will typewriter, but most of the time I will simply cut the corn from the cob and eat it that way. I find the cutting method to be much cleaner and I don't get stuff stuck between my teeth (which I hate). If I am feeling particulary dorky, I will eat the kernels in a checkerboard pattern (which takes just short of forever), or even spell things out (at which point my wife tells me to stop acting like a child )

1) Potato pancakes (latkes), made by anybody, as long as they are crispy on the ouside rather than mushy. Served with sour cream or applesauce and optional smoked salmon. 2) A good, hot german potato salad. King Ludwig's in Leavenworth, WA makes a delicious one. 3) I suppose any sort of fries. I love it when they are crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle, while my wife likes them limp, so a good 50/50 split between the two.

(emphasis added) Then why did they even bother making this? "Because we can, that's why"? Any reports of this product actually being consumed by anyone? ← They are deisgned as collectibles, sealed in wax, signed and numbered, never meant to be eaten, though they could be. They go all the way up to pure capsaicin crystals at a whopping 16 million scoville heat units, which is the end of the scale. You actually can't get any hotter.The scovilles scale was originally based on how much sugar water it took before the hotness was no longer noticable. This method has been replaced by high performance liquid chromotography. Until recently, the hottest pepper in the world rated around 577,000, though there seems to be a recent upset with a pepper that is over the 1million mark. If you had 1ml of pure capsaicin, it would take almost 4227 gallons of sugar water before the heat was undetectable! That is somewhere greater than 300 bathtubs full (nearest I can figure). I read an article where a guy had actually opened one the the 16 million bottles (no small feat, they cost a pretty penny, so ripping one open tosses a lot of money down the drain and causes collectors everywhere to scream out in pain). He took a single crystal about the size of a grain of salt and added it to a pot of tomato soup. Even as a chilehead, it was too hot and he had to throw it out. If I remember, when I get home I'll post a picture of mine. You could just search for "Blair's 6 am" or "Blair's 16 million reserve" for the general idea.

Not an answer to the OP, but a related question: In January I started working on a cookbook application that my wife (then fiancee) and I could use to keep track of all of our cooking. I'm a programmer, but I only work on the cookbook stuff during my free time which isn't much considering that I have: graduated from college, got married, moved 2500 miles, and started a job all since then. It is still in the alpha stages, but it is slowly coming together. I hope you guys don't mind, but I'd like to use your suggestions for what makes a good recipe storage application, please let me know if you have more. My wife and I are the primary customers for my app, but if I feel it is good enough, I will be releasing it for free (open source to boot). It is designed with a server/multiple client setup in mind, so you could access it from any other computer that had network access, and it would be completely cross-platform (a web application that you would view in your browser, with Ruby On Rails on the server) I've already figured on nutrition information (from the USDA database), and unit conversions/scaling. And I am trying to make the recipe input as intuitive as possible (though I am by no means a UI designer). I would love to be able to parse flat text so that I could copy and paste text from a webpage, but there are so many different styles to writting ingredients, that I don't know if it will happen. If making my own were not so much fun, I would be using Big Oven, which seems to have a lot of nice features, but I don't think that they have a Mac version. Edited to add: Hmm, I think that my program has a very similar goal, to allow recipe access from any other PC through a web browser (just on your home network, or across the whole web if you wanted).

that reminds me of this chinese woman from last week who was digging through every box of strawberries for the "perfect" ones. She took one from each box and put them all together in another box. She was pretty ballsy, I was thinking to myself that I wish I could do that, but I might get yelled at. whats up with asian women and grocery shopping? they certainly know what they are doing ← I'm not asian, nor a woman, but I did that the other day with figs. They are so delicate, that if I just grab a pint of them (they were packaged in little baskets like strawberries), half of them will be mashed or over-ripe. For the price they were charging, I was darn well going to pick out the best ones. I can't have been the first person to do it either, becuase there were half a dozen empty baskets sitting around.I will touch and smell most fruits, and at least touch vegetables. It is really important that the produce I choose is at the perfect stage so that it will be just ripe enough by the time I use it. If anybody objects to my touching the produce, well, they can deal with it. They should wash it anyways. Of course, if the store had a problem with it, I would just shop somewhere else.

I clicked that link and thought to myself, hey, this sounds familiar. Then I realized I had actually posted in that thread on GardenWeb a couple years ago.When I get it on my hands, I try so many different methods that it is hard to tell what works. Mostly, I just end up enuring it. Now, it's gotten to the point that it is almost enjoyable . As long as I avoid touching my eyes, I'm okay. If I do though, I end up dancing around the apartment for a while while my wife laughs at me.

I do something similar with pepperoni or salami sandwiches. They must be made with store-bought wheat brea, and have a thick layer of pepperoni or salami slices. I smash the sandwich between my hands until it is very thin. Then I nibble off the crust, and keep nibbling in a spiral until I only have about half left. Finally, I roll it up, and eat the rest.I've done this for as long as I can remember, but that's not the weirdest part. My wife actually eats salami/pepperoni sandwiches the same exact way! It isn't sort of the same, it is exactly, step for step the same method, and she has also been doing it for her whole life. I tell her that means we were made for each other. What are the chances!? I think that is delicious, though I will only dip the crust (not the toppings part). My wife will dip any part of the pizza in ranch dressing, regardless of the toppings.

I do what your roommate did. I leave chicken stock out all night, heat it up, leave it out, heat it up, so on and so forth. When it starts smell funky, that's when I start to worry. I actually did the chicken broth thing last night and its really freakin hot out, it's gonna be up to 90 today ← There are only 2 things that I am completely crazy about keeping sterile and exposed for as short a time as possible.One is wort/must to make beer/wine, and the other is any form of stock. Both are just about the most perfect environment you could create for all kinds of interesting bacteria. Beef stock can even be used in laboratories as a medium for different bacteria. The relatively neutral pH and abundance of good stuff to eat makes stocks a bacteria heaven. I leave out a lot of foods, and I've done the pizza thing more often than I can remember, but I would never ever chance it with leaving a stock at room temperature for ANY extended time.

I don't know if I have 5 that I will use in regular rotation, but I have somewhere close to 70 right now on my shelf. I collect hot sauces, and my collections ranges from the <5000 scoville units range (most hot sauces, including tobasco), all the way up to 1,000,000 (which is sealed in a case, enrobed in wax, individually numbered, and not to be tasted). In regular use: 1) Limelight made by Chili's Fire Pit, a small shop out of northeast Ohio, where I grew up. Has a great taste of lime and cilantro chilis. My hands down favorite hot sauce. 2) Dark Vader made by the same guy as the previous. This one is made with chocolate habaneros (not chocolate flavored, only colored), and it is delicious. 3) Tabasco - I enjoy the vinegary bite, and I've never found a sauce that tastes even close to this one 4) Tabasco Chipotle - suprisingly smoky mild version made from chipotle chiles. Still has the nice vinegary tang that the original has, but with a great smoky taste. Sometimes I will just cut myself a bunch of cheddar cheese, pour some on, and eat it like that 5) Probably an Asian style, because tabasco just doesn't taste right.

Since I moved 5 months ago, I don't have a gas stove anymore, so no heating over a flame for me. I do have a blowtorch though, but my wife already yelled at me for using it to sear tuna the other day, so it isn't allowed in the kitchen any more. I just wrap a stack in foil and toss it either in the oven, or on the grill for a bit. This works better than the microwave, and has the added advantage that, as long as it isn't too hot, it can keep them warm for a while.

One of my more vivid childhood memories is eating a picnic with 2 or three of my sisters just outside the house in the backyard. I remember no other part of it than that it was quite possibly the first time I had ever had egg salad. At the very least, it was the first time that I can remember, and there must be some reason that this memory has stuck with me for so long. Since the only interesting part of it was the egg salad, I will assume that was it. I don't recall my little brother being there, so I would have been less than 6 years old, and I am not sure whether my littlest sister was there, which if she was would have made me older than 4. Not that it was great egg salad though. My mother was never a bad cook (I love her food), but she has a tendency, as most people do, to over cook everything into oblivion. Egg salad would then consist of rubbery whites, chalky green yolks, a lot of mayonaise, and a little mustard depending on who was pestering her at the time (I would tell her to add more, my sisters would tell her to add less). This thread is putting me in the mood for egg salad tonight. I haven't had it for years, and I suppose it isn't really dinner, but now that I've got my mind set on it... capers and horseradish? Too strong?

← Well that is interesting. I had assumed that part of the application process required them to be soluble in water, but it makes sense that it would need to survive rain.A little more research shows that a petroleum base is normally mixed with sufactants/emulsifiers in order to allow it to mix with water and stick to the plants.

I imagine that most of the pesticides et al. are water soluble, in order to mix and apply them with ease. Though I do not know for sure. Waxed/shellaced fruits and vegetables are covered after they are picked right? So in order to clean off any chemical residue, you would first need to get rid of that coating. Since this coating is not water soluble, it either needs to be physically removed via scrubbing which could potentially damage fruits, or chemically through using some sort of wash. I just use water, and I don't even really scrub most of the time ( ). I would be interested in using a veggie wash, but only if we could find real data that they are effective, and not just a waste of money.

After using my mother's basic wooden rolling pin for years, I bought a tapered "french" rolling pin as one of my first baking items.I've been very happy with it. The taper helps with pushing dough out from the center. I don't think a marble rolling pin would be very usefull. I suppose that it would have 2 advantages over wood, the heavy weight, and that you can cool it in the freezer or fridge before rolling dough out. For the first part, I'm a a yound and virile male, so I've got no problem. As far as the "cold" advantage, I always throw a sheet pan in the freezer, and when the dough (puff pastry, pie dough whatever) begins to get too warm, I take the pan out, and set it on top of the dough for a while to chill it in place. Plus, with such a price tag, you could buy a couple wooden ones.

I always start with 3:1, but then I keep adding acid until it tastes right to me. I would suspect that I end up pretty close to 1:1 in the end. I don't use extremely high quality olive oil, so that might be part of it. While I enjoy the flavor of EVOO, I tend to find it too bland and oil for salads. I want something sharp and tangy. I've been know to just use straight balsamic, or lemon juice with no oil at all sometimes.

I'm very sorry for the loss of loved ones due to obesity and diabetes related illnesses. While I am not overweight, my wife is, so I do struggle with this every day. Not from a personal standpoint, but from that of a loved one who worries that the person they care most about in this world could very well develop complications at anytime. Over the years we've been together (dated 6 years, married 5.5 months), she has gained a significant amount of weight, and until we sat down and talked about it, we were never really able to focus on what we could do to fix this. It took me telling her that I was afraid that she wouldn't see our grandchildren (many, many years down the road, we don't even have children yet) if she kept on her current track, for her to actually decide to work to change it. Not that she was happy with herself. Being overweight is a deadly spiral of feeling sad because of the weight, and overeating to feel better. This is probably one of the hardest things facing overweight people, that others think that they are Ok with weighing what they do, or that they don't care at all. I know now that my wife cared a lot, perhaps too much, and all that did was drive her to eat more. Since we've talked, we've scaled back what we both eat and we now exersize 6 nights a week. It's actually kind of nice, we get to spend some time together that almost seems relaxing compared to the hectic day, even if we are on treadmills. We've kept it up at the 6 nights a week pace for probably 8 weeks now, so I think we could continue to do pretty good. I just started reading Mindless Eating yesterday, and I am already almost done (it is that interesting). It talks a lot about why we eat so much more than we need to (things like plate size and social expectations have a lot to do with it). It isn't a diet book, but it does a good job of explaining why most diets don't work, and what you can do to change things so that instead of mindlessly gaining weight, you can mindlessly lose it. I can already highly recommend the book to everybody, especially those serious about their health.

As the mother of two (now grown) girls. I couldn't agree more with your take on this. Don't we all remember how important it is not to be singled out as the "different" kid when you're that age? There has got to be a better way to get the parents to pay up. ← Unfortunatly, there aren't many other options for the school to take. Singling out the child should be last resort, and that seems to be exactly what they are doing, using it as a last resort. Yes, sometimes parents are a little absent minded and forget where they stand on the lunch balance, but those aren't the people targetted with this. The article says that they have sent letters and even hired collections agencies, not quite an "oversight" or a "mistake" on the parents fault ("What? That letter was from a collection agency! I thought it was a Christmas card from Aunt Lil, you know how she is in her old age"). These parents are deliberatly avoiding having to pay for a school lunch, and the program (for all of the students) will suffer for it. They tried normal tactics, but nothing was working. I can't imagine another strategy that they could have tried. They can't just write it off. I would rather a few kids were horribly and irrevesibly traumatized by being forced to eat a cheese sandwich instead of pizza, than the rest of their education had to suffer because their parents were too proud to register for a free lunch program, and too big of jerks to bother paying.Long time lurker, first time poster