haresfur

Well my question/confusion is about the ones you and others have been saying are for home cooks like this one: vs this one which has a basically flat blade profile I inherited one like the second from my father who used it to whack apart all sorts of things (the spine is covered with hammer marks). I took the chips out of the blade but am not sure whether to put a curve back in or not.

What is the practical difference in use between the cleavers with a very flat blade and those with a curved blade? I would think the former would be better for chop-cutting vegetables and the latter maybe better for slicing or rocking but I don't really know anything about Chinese cutting technique.

That looks fantastic! Of course there are the heathens on the US west coast who like Dungeness crab 🙂. I'm a bit surprised about the mayo but have never actually made crab cakes. I had some great ones out in suburban Maryland visiting DC last June. The manager of the restaurant harangued the kitchen to make them for us, even though it was lunch and they were a dinner special. Partner used to board her horse at a very nice property north of DC. A woman who lived nearby would come around and sell home made crab cakes that seemed to be basically all lump crab. Partner was out of town and I managed to wrangle a weekday dinner invite for crab cakes and champagne. One of those all time meal highlights. I wonder if panko would make good crumbs. That's what we use in meatballs.

White cockatoos in the Top End develop taste for durians, the world's stinkiest fruit Mr Siah said durians had a hard, spiky exterior, and the cockatoos with their "steel beaks" had found a way to crack into the fruit and access the creamy, yellow flesh inside. "It's just a recent thing," he said. "We used to have a farm down the road that grew melons and the cockatoos and corellas stayed down there at this time of the year, so we didn't have much of a bird problem. "But that [land] is now becoming a croc farm and cockatoos don't like crocodiles, so they've immigrated down to neighbouring farms and some have started liking a taste of durian." Mr Siah said the first durians of the season were fetching more than $30 a kilogram wholesale, meaning the cockatoos "were picking the most expensive fruit in town". He said despite the pressure from birds, as well as extreme temperatures, he expected a reasonable harvest this year of up to 15 tonnes. In 2014-2015 Mr Siah travelled the world through a Nuffield scholarship to study alternative and cost-effective methods of deterring birds and bats from destroying crops.

Gentrification Complete As Bahn Mi Place Now Accepts Card

I confess that I can't be bothered with rim salt. I just put a little grind of Murray River Pink Salt on the top after pouring and garnishing ... ok, after pouring since I often can't be bothered garnishing, either 🙂

Drink it the way you like it. I think it is kind of funny that some people who are aghast at putting ice in whisky are more than happy to add a bit of water to "open it up"

Lufthansa economy from Singapore to Frankfurt was spectacularly bad. First meal was a wad of stuck together tepid ravioli. Breakfast was a barely thawed breakfast burrito.

My Ikea one turns on the fan after a while, but I don't find it too loud. It was a good price here. It seems to do less cycling of the power than my previous one did. My main complaint is that it has a safety interlock when you first plug it in and I have to hit random buttons for random amounts of time until it releases. Maybe someday I'll figure out the magic combination.

Huîtres fumées were a lunch staple when I was doing geology in northern Canada. Usually eaten by stabbing with your sheath knife along with a sandwich of some sort. Quite inexpensive when the company was paying to fly them in.

This sent me down a rabbit hole wondering about the composition of early Chinese bronze, since I know that the first Greek bronze used arsenic instead of tin. Seems like it would not be optimal for cooking pots, although if I recall correctly the main problem was poisoning the metallurgists. Turns out that recent research suggests the two "ingredients" cited in texts were probably a mixture of copper and lead, and a mixture of copper, lead, and tin. So maybe not the best for cooking vessels, either.

I don't think this is true at all. It is common to find ones with feet in camping stores. I have seen them in both the US and Australia. btw, I was being flippant with my earlier comment as to if cooking in a Dutch oven was roasting or baking. I see people using them for both and for braising. I was on a very cold geology field trip in uni where one of the other students rummaged in the supplied for a huge can of peaches and the pancake mix to bake up a Dutch oven cobbler over the coals of our fire. Yes, he was a boy scout. eta: I have also seen aluminium ones for people who want to travel light. Horse packing maybe.

Too soon, here. We recently had a number of deaths and a severe illness in my state where a woman served mushrooms. She and her children didn't get sick and she claimed she got the mushrooms from an Asian grocery, although there have been no other reported incidences. Investigations are continuing.

Fair enough, but does a pot roast have to be done over coals?

Today I learned that some people line the pie shell when pre-baking rather than just pouring the beans in and out

I use a small oxo angled measuring cup sometimes but it is far from the most accurate way to do it. Basically impossible to account for the meniscus - for that you need to hold the measuring line up to eye level. I have a measuring cup that does the reverse - it has graduations for grams of various things like sugar and flour. It is spectacularly useless.

Converting to pounds sterling? 😁

I didn't know about the Willow Pattern. Thanks. The way Chinese porcelain moved around the world along with its stories and how it inspired spin-offs like the Delft and Staffordshire tin-glazed earthenware is fascinating to me. I'm not a huge fan of the really busy, multi-colour stuff but the skill is certainly impressive. Then again, to my mind, Chinese pottery peaked in the Song Dynasty, which inspired my username.

I'm pretty disappointed in most savory biscuits here. Rice crackers are ok as are some of the Shapes varieties in modest dosages but my favourite for putting stuff on and eating are Vita Wheats, especially the cracked pepper variety. For North American crackers, I was glad to get to eat Triscuits on my last trip.

My tree is getting really sparse (an apprentice knocked the top off with his ladder a few years ago so I'm letting the suckers grow up below. The whole thing is looking a bit sad right now because it has been under cover for frost protection but I hope it will perk up.

That naan looks dubious. How is it? Aldi in Australia actually has some pretty good frozen roti that is our go-to, since I can never get my act together to make it.

I just learned another drink order in Singapore, termed yuanyang by the SG people posting on line, which is a mixture of kopi and teh, so coffee, tea, condensed milk and sugar. I'm sceptical but I'd try it. It apparently originated in Hong Kong (according to Wikipedia - yeah, I know, it's the best information I could find), who have an entry for Yuenyeung, 鴛鴦. The person online was complaining that it cost 10-20 cents more.

Looks like kayaking paradise. Will you have a chance to get out on the water? Do people fish for themselves/pleasure there or is it all commercial? The food looks wonderful. How was the mellon-looking eggplant?

So you melt the cheese on the schnitzel then pull it out and put the sauce on top? That should help it stay crisp but is far from traditional where I live.

Raised a Last Word to Murray Stenson, Seattle bartender extraordinaire who rediscovered and popularised the drink and who recently passed away. Being served drinks by him at Zig Zag Cafe was an amazing experience. Such a kind man.