haresfur

My Sanyo rice cooker has different marks for different types of rice. I mostly make short or medium grain brown rice and find I like to add a bit more water than they call for.

What they said, but don't be afraid to play. One other approach once you have a passing acquaintance with the basics is to buy something new and then try to figure out the best thing to do with it (hopefully the best thing isn't to pour it down the sink and make yourself an old fashioned ). For example, you could buy some Campari to make an Americano and then think "hmm wonder how it would be if I replaced the soda water with gin?". Ok, that's been done, but you get the idea. I have some plum wine just waiting for an idea on what to mix with it. Another approach is to take a recipe that falls short in your opinion and try to figure out what to do to improve it. Maybe that's just adjusting the ratios but maybe it's adding something new. And don't forget that something could be a non-alcohol component. Sometimes we tend to focus too much on the booze IMO. Don't worry, probably nothing you do could be worse than the stuff college students throw down their throats.

I had good luck with bobateadirect.com, not that I'm a matcha expert. grade A matcha

Like Trader Joe's in the US, you have to experiment and figure out what you like, then hope they continue to carry it. I buy low-end tuna for the cat, chocolate as above, some of the chocolate biscuits, some processed food I'm embarrassed to admit. I use the organic coffee. The chicken seems ok and the bacon is leaner than I've seen at the major stores. I've bought some decent cleanskin SA wine at 6 bottles for $10. The liquor was drinkable but I deserve better. The tater tots & hashbrowns are ok but I was disappointed that the hashbrowns were preformed bricks instead of just shredded potatoes that I could use for other things. Oh yeah, the 4 L tins of Australian EVOO are pretty good for everyday use.

What's the deal with 'minimum chips'? Ever since they offered it in a shop, I've been happily ordering fish and 'a dollar's chips'. No one has said, I couldn't do so, although some places you really don't get many chips. I had bream last week and it was very nice. No one around here seems to have flathead.

I hate chopping parsley beyond reason. The curly stuff grabs my fingers in a desperate attempt to escape the knife. Creepy. Italian parsley is better but tries to paste itself to the board so you don't get a clean cut.

What, no Winnipeg cream cheese? There was a time in my life when winnipeg cream cheese on stoned wheat thins was the perfect, untoppable snack. I miss easy perogy (or whatever your choice of spelling is ) access, or even people who know what they are. These days I just make my own. They freeze great, so I make a big batch to have plenty for the freezer. I haven't cooked it yet this week, but we really like it. And because it needs high heat for a short time, it's pretty quick. Gerg loves it in a roo-steak sandwich. Don't delay, give it a try! But be warned, the smell when you take it out of the package is very strong Funnily enough, I have a bottle of Stones in my cupboard. I mostly use it in cooking though - should start thinking about drinking it too! I don't remember Winnipeg cream cheese. But my mother made what she termed "Winnipeg style cheesecake" which is extremely gooey like it was undercooked. What do you cook with the Stones? I can see that it would have possibilities if you can cut the sweetness. I seem to have messed up the url for the Ginger Envelope. Try this

Rock lobster season just opened in Victoria. According to the report I read, prices will be about $80 a kilo. I think I'll pass. eta: Just for comparison to CA.

I have a zester that makes nice thin strips. For that matter, if you cut them over the glass, there's probably no need to twist with your fingers. They do make pretty curls to hang over the edge of the glass, though. Then your customer could have the choice of dropping it into the glass or off the side.

Ooh, Winnipeg! ... Do you miss any particular foods or ways of eating from the prairies? Let's see... I miss fresh pickerel (walleye). And being able to order fried pirogies in the pub. I haven't tried to eat 'roo yet (although I'm sure the Dalmatian has). How did it turn out? I should try it, if only for ethical reasons - kangaroos emit much less greenhouse gas than cattle. For mixed drinks, Australia is a great place to explore ginger with Cascade or Bundaberg ginger beer (gin gin mule), candied ginger to infuse into vodka, and Stone's ginger wine (Whisky Mac; Ginger Envelope. The last one has become one of my favorite drinks.

As a former Winnipegger in Australia, I'm enjoying your insights and looking forward to more.

2 oz Wild Turkey Rye 1/3 oz Ikea elderflower syrup (approx - I adjusted up from 1/4) 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters 2 dashes Regan's orange bitters The Regan's bitters make all the difference in knitting everything together.

Actually the banana slicer was originally aimed at families with small children. Kids can use it where one would not want to turn a child loose with a knife and unlike anything with a blade (even plastic ones) they are acceptable at schools. Really? My one year old just eats them whole. I peel and he chows down. Big giant bites for Mr. Piggy. He eats a whole banana in one sitting. It's one of the few fruit he'll actually eat, and he eats them about one every other day. Very picky in that some days are banana days and some days are not banana days. There's no telling. It's for having sliced bananas in cereal. Consider having to slice bananas for 7 kids who want their breakfast all at once. Having one or more of the kids handle this chore is helpful. You can slice a banana with a spoon, although I think my SO is terminally weird for doing so. It does save a utensil. My vote for the stupidest gadget is an old classic - the flat plastic or wood thing with different size holes in it for measuring spaghetti portions. How hard is it to grab the right amount, and what's wrong with leftovers, anyway?

Joy! The local Dan Murphy's liquor store now has Wild Turkey 101 rye ($50). I'm so enjoying my Sazerac.

In an ideal world. When different substances in solution act completely independently it is called ideal mixing. But alcohol and water don't mix ideally and the aromatic chemicals won't behave ideally in the mixture. Ethanol is more polar than water, if I remember correctly. So polar aroma compounds will have a greater affinity for alcohol. The other thing is that the vapor pressure is an equilibrium effect - it is the measure of air saturated with the compound. With the drink, you are dealing with the kinetic effect of how fast the compound is released to air. That is typically related to the vapor pressure with high vapor pressure compounds volatilizing more rapidly but it isn't necessarily a simple relationship. One thing that struck me about the NY Times article is the reverse cocktails. I can see the point of them for adding complexity to the flavor but maybe the Aperol and vermouth people put the appropriate amount of alcohol in their product and drinking it straight is not a bad idea.

Could be worse - try $82 and our currency is about parity click and shed a tear for me.

Nice post! I'm left handed so I like the seam at 2:00 where my fingers wrap nicely around it while getting all the benefits you state. But I swear the default is usually exactly wrong. Here the standard coffee orders are "flat white" "flat black" "cappuchino" or "mocha". For take away they will ask about the sugar. For drink in cappuchino or mocha always comes with a spoon so you can eat the foam first (yum!). Even in Maccas (McDonalds) where I'm sitting right now.

Made a run down to Melbourne Costco. Highlights were ITOEN green tea bags, a large box of Anzac bisquits, pumpkin pie, way more raw sugar than I can use, tumeric, frozen samosas, a roast chicken for comfort food, Wild Turkey bourbon, and Inner Circle Green rum. The Wild Turkey was only 43% alcohol but it was a liter bottle and the Inner Circle price was much better than Dan Murphy's. Of course I bought a lot of other food & non-food items. The best things I didn't buy: A huge jar of Major Gray's Mango Chutney and an oversize Esky (cooler) with all-terrain wheels. The store seems to be hitting their stride. They should sell the Costco-size tote bags though since they don't have the routine of using the shipping cartons. Glad we brought ours.

Ok, the discussion seems to be calming down and you bring up a sugar issue. I can totally understand bartenders using simple instead of sugar, although I don't mind some crystals in the glass. But how far afield can one go with the sugar and still be true to the spirit of the name? With a few exceptions people here seem to think liqueur is out. How about sugarcane syrup? Demarara? Does today's ultra-refined white sugar taste anything like 1800s loaf sugar? I would think that flavoured simple is getting too far away, although I think it could make for some tasty drinks.

Agreed but we can't throw stones: this is the "Spirits & Cocktails" forum not "Spirits & Mixed Drinks". But really, do we need the old category, given bartenders' capacity to blur lines? Sooner or later someone will throw in a splash of digestif, or amaro, or Dubonnet, or vermouth. But we need Old Fashioned cocktails (or at least, right now, I do).

When I worked in bush camps where all the food had to be flown in by float plane, canned chicken served an important purpose as emergency food in case the plane was delayed. You wanted to have something that no one would eat up unless they really had to!

Just getting my container garden going. We are on water restrictions, and although they have eased, I want something easy to maintain. My new house has a garden area (thigh high in weeds right now) but containers are so practical and nice to look at. Right now I have a terracotta pot with a small bay tree, oregano, mint, French tarragon, and parsley. I'll probably move the mint and maybe the oregano before they take over the world. I also have coriander and Thai basil waiting to find a permanent home. I'd really like to get a dwarf lime going, too. ETA: just getting into spring here so I don't need to worry about what will keep going through winter just yet. Shouldn't be any problem though because we only get mild winter frost and that's the wet season. I started planting last winter without too much concern, although the tarragon died back and is just poking up again.

Disclaimer, I'm not a food scientist, I'm a geochemist, but I'd like to add something to the above. pH is effectively a measure of free acidity or free hydrogen ion. So in an ideal situation the dilutions work as above, however there can be other factors that buffer the pH so it doesn't change the same amount as you would expect by adding an amount of acid or by dilution. The reason this is relevant to the discussion is that you shouldn't assume that, say, adding 1 ml of lemon juice to 99 ml of your food product, for a 100 time dilution, that you will end up with a pH of 4. You can end up with a higher pH because the buffering reactions keep the acid from dropping the pH that far, and for that matter, the amount that you would use for one recipe isn't necessarily the same as you need for another. There are other nuances, but the underlying point it to be aware that it isn't completely straight-forward.

DYB - Do Your Best (as the cub scouts would say) As long as it is clear you are not claiming you invented the Old Fashioned or whatever, and attributing the originator when known, I would personally think you are acting ethically. But I can't say if there is some anal-retentive code writer who would disagree...

Thanks. I think the historical perspective is important, particularly when discussing a drink who's very name implies history. Language is dynamic and I don't have any problem that, but a drink named "Old Fashioned" should evoke an earlier time - historically accurate or mere mythology. So the question is not whether a particular definition is correct but whether it is useful. And I think in this case, an overly-expansive definition is more confusing than helpful. So in my mind, any spirit (American whiskey if something else isn't specified), sugar or simple syrup, bitters. If you want to go wild and add a bit of orange, go ahead. Evocative. Pretty much anything else is not true to style, but if you want, go for it. I'm not sure calling it an Old Fashioned would be clear to anyone else, though, and there are probably names that are as good or better. Of course if you are from Wisconsin, you have your own noble tradition. ... and "improved" old fashioned is an oxymoron to me.