Chris Hennes

Amen. I think it's silly to mourn the loss of cold cereal, as though cereal was some kind of wonderful, beneficial thing. The claim that Millennials are abandoning it due to their laziness is just a reporter drumming up pageviews. Of course Millennials are abandoning cereal! There are about a zillion and a half superior options!

Depends on the city -- Portland? Austin? You can make it as fancy as you want. Oklahoma City? Better add a chicken fried steak to the menu.

I see he also suggests using a brewer's yeast (Safbrew T-58 ale yeast) in his Belgian waffles, which is something I haven't tried. Also, a crap-ton of butter! I'll have to give these a shot, up until now I have been unable to improve upon that Cook's Illustrated Yeasted Waffles I posted about earlier.

I don't find bottom round to be terribly flavorful (compared to my favorite stew cut, chuck, anyway). But texture-wise you can make it work with the right time/temp combination. I wouldn't be inclined to serve bottom round---or chuck for that matter---rare. I think the texture is better at a medium or even medium well. So I'd take your leftovers and put them in at 140F-145F for another 48 hours.

Agreed, @gfweb -- I've got a chuck in right now at 144F, and even that I am running for 72h (it's getting shredded after).

I grew up eating the Malt-O-Meal knock-offs. One of the fun things about trips in the summer was that we often got a couple multi-packs of those little boxes of name brand cereal. Those were the days... I haven't had a bowl of cereal for breakfast in years. For dinner? Much more often

I've been using the Nakiri I posted about over here for many years as my primary vegetable knife. Still love it.

Where in Colombia are you? (and your English is better than my Spanish!)

Turns out there is a 7" model of that cheese knife, too.

Wustoff makes an offset cheese knife, but it's probably too short for you. There is also this monster on eBay.

Well, compare cereal to the plethora of alternatives: things like Nutrigrain bars, yogurt cups, etc. A bowl of cereal probably adds ten minutes to your morning, so I think it's not unreasonable for someone to decide that grabbing something on the way out the door is a better option.

I think @Kerry Beal has (had?) a rotovap -- my recollection is that getting it up and running as well maintenance were significant headaches.

I'm sure we'll manage adequate documentation

I am amused that it is a "waffle iron" -- who's going to take one for the team and order one so we can get a report on how well it works?

For giggles, here's a Google Map of the tour:

Just to add another data point (sorry I missed this earlier), I made RG's Ayocote Amarillo beans last week and cooked, without soaking, for the oh-so-scientific "a few hours" until they were done. No pressure cooker, just a five minute vigorous boil to start and then a slow simmer until they were done.

You can't see the die in that photo, it's an interchangeable roller at the back of the machine. You can actually see it in the video at the end of the post (at a different tortilleria, but basically the same setup). They have a bunch of different die sizes, these are your standard tortilla. And yes, the guy in the purple shirt was working very quickly to both prep a new batch of masa off to the side, and to scoop of any scraps and imperfect tortillas and re-feed them into the roller. I have made most of this at home before, but I was reminded how much I love Mexican food, as well as reassured that the recipes I am using are indeed pretty close to what you actually get on the streets of Mexico City. Their tortillas are better than mine .

Count me in, plus one. Looking forward to it!

San Juan Market Tour Normally when you think of markets in the city you first think of Merced -- alas, due to the pope basically cutting off half of the city, we did San Juan instead. I guess I'll have to go back. It's a tough life... So the San Juan tour is officially eight stops, except that one of those stops in the market itself, which was really a half dozen stops in one. So, lots of food on this one too, but in smaller portions than yesterday, and we also knew to pace ourselves better and shared everything. Hey look, it's the pope! Oh, false alarm... A local coffee roaster: First dish of the day: a hangover cure of shrimp soup: Then quesadillas. Which apparently in Mexico City don't actually necessarily contain cheese: ours were seafood, and were deep-fried. Then on to another sandwich place, this time a turkey leg cooked confit style in pork fat (of course...): here's the pot it cooks in... Now onto the market part of the market tour: mmm, bugs... And produce: We stopped at a fruit stand for about twenty minutes while the owner started slicing stuff up for us to try. I had no idea there were so many varieties of mango. Tons of citrus with no good English translation, and some really interesting looking things (it all tasted great, of course): On to the dried chiles: We got a sample of the chile seller's homemade mole paste: And then it was on to the meat section: Brief interlude for bugs: Then more meat: And seafood, of course: Finally, we got to actually eat some bugs instead of talking about them. Chapulines (crickets) are great, actually, and come in different sizes and varying spice levels: Then a bit unexpectedly a cheese shop, with some fresh cheeses, but also some European-style aged cheeses: And coffee, of course: Then onto a place I would definitely not have set foot into without a tour guide (and even with him it was a bit sketchy!) -- the Pulqueria: Then we went to a place specializing in mole: it was fabulous, much better than any I have ever made. I guess I need more practice... Clearly, we need more food at this point, so now it's on to tlayudas and a style of quesadilla that does actually have cheese in it: I got a couple videos of the tlayuda-making process: Roasted pig snout, anyone? And a tortilleria: We ended with a place where we had Tacos Campechanos, which was fun because that's one of the recipes I've actually made from the book. Theirs were better than mine. Guess I better work on that one, too!

Over in the Cooking with "Eat Mexico" topic I've posted a about things I've made from Lesley Téllez's recently-published book about street food in Mexico City. I finally had time to go down to "CDMX" (as they are now trying to rebrand themselves) this weekend and went on two of the Eat Mexico food tours. On Friday we went on the street food tour, and on Saturday on the San Juan market tour. The pope was also in town this weekend which made the city crazier than usual and drove the tour selections as we tried to not be where he was, with limited success. Street Food Tour I have limited photos of this one because our hands were usually full! There are ten "normal" stops on the tour plus a couple of optional ones. One of the vendors was closed for the day, but we definitely had no shortage of food. I think the tour lasted something like four hours, and we were basically eating the whole time. Most of it was standing and walking, but we did stop into a local coffee shop and sit down for a short time. Our guide, Arturo, was excellent. He is from the city, has attended culinary school, and is very well versed in both the local street food culture as well as Mexican cuisine overall. While the tour was mostly eating, we did walk through one small neighborhood market just to get the feel for the thing, and we stopped at one local tortilleria: The classic tortilla-delivery vehicle: We chatted up a local store owner who was making "antojitos" ("little cravings") for breakfast: Ate some tamales, walked a bit, then had some tlacoyos: here are the condiments... We also had some fresh juices. They really like their pseudo-medicinal juices.. we had the one that was "anti-flu" (and delicious): For the tlacoyos I had a huitlacoche and my wife has the chicken tinga. The huitlacoche was disappointingly non-descript. The remedy, of course, was to douse it in salsa, which fixes everything. A few blocks down we had carnitas tacos: And then some mango and watermelon with chile powder: Arturo tried to ply us with more food at the nearby burreria, but at this point we were on the verge of exploding: So we stopped for some locally-roasted coffee: Then on to a burrito place (of all things!) -- the guy running the burrito place was hilarious, and totally frank about stealing the burrito thing from Texas and then "fixing it." He's had the stand for something like 20 years. We split a squash blossom burrito (squash blossoms, onions, salsa, and cheese are the only ingredients, no rice or beans) which he makes on the griddle and then covers in a cheese blend and fries until the cheese browns and crisps. Definitely an improved burrito! Yeah, no photos there. Second to last was an absolutely terrific octopus tostada: And then a final stop for dessert (which we took back to the hotel rather than eating it there): ETA: A couple more photos. Also, there was a turkey and pork sandwich of some kind that I have no photos of and can't quite remember where it fit into the tour. Just in case you were worried about us starving.

Until this weekend the only insects I had eaten were chocolate-covered ants, which I am not sure really counts. While in Mexico City, though, I got to eat crickets (chapulines) as well as powdered chicatana ants. The chapulines are toasted and seasoned with various combinations of dried chiles, salt, and lime, and come in various sizes. They were actually terrific -- I have no idea how much flavor the actual cricket had because even the biggest of them tasted like the seasoning mixture, without any other readily-identifiable "insect" flavor. The powdered ants are sort of like cheating. In their unpowdered form these are some really big ants, but of course once powdered it's just another spice. They were used in combination with many other flavors, not all of which I was familiar with, so I can't really tell you what they tasted like, except to say that I like both dishes that featured them.

I just returned from a few days in Mexico City -- I ate a bunch of street food for breakfast and lunch, but for dinner I ate at Quintonil, Pujol, and Biko. These restaurants all feature on the 2015 San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants list (at 16-Pujol, 35-Quintonil, and 37-Biko) and while of course we can debate the merits of that list forever, they are all highly-regarded restaurants. Quintonil and Pujol present fare that is recognizably Mexican, while Biko tends to lean a bit closer to a Modernist French but with Mexican ingredients. I ate tasting menus at all three (at Pujol it isn't really a tasting menu, it's a fixed-price meal with several options for the specific courses). Overall I found the Top 50 ordering of the restaurants to match my experience, with Pujol being conspicuously better than the other two, and honestly Biko not really making the grade, in my opinion. Biko was not a bad restaurant by any means, but a World Top 50? Seems a bit farfetched to me. That said, all of these restaurants, and indeed Mexico in general, present an excellent value coming from the US. The dollar is strong against the peso right now, so the meals were very affordable compared to their competition on the Top 50 list, and all three restaurants featured some very nice imported wines that are quite pricey in the US and very reasonable in MX at the moment. Here are just a few specific notes from the meals I ate there, in the order I ate them... of course keep in mind that these menus change dramatically month-to-month, and there are even in some cases significant day-to-day course variations. Quintonil Quintonil started strong and decayed from there, as is often the case with long tasting menus. I found the single best thing to be the amuse bouche that launched the meal, a sort of ceviche "tostada" with a small round of a kale leaf serving as the tortilla. I also enjoyed the smoked crab tostada (slightly closer to what you would normally think of as a tostada than the amuse!). The nopales sorbet they served as the first dessert course was good, though serving it unadorned as a simple quenelle seemed to sell it a bit short. The remainder of the courses were good, but not particularly outstanding. The pacing of the meal was pleasantly leisurely, and the waitstaff were happy to re-explain things in excellent English when my Spanish skills proved inadequate at a few points during the meal. Pujol At Pujol every single course was great, up until dessert. Some things were better than others, but it was all top-notch. Particular standouts were smoked baby corn in a mayonnaise sauce with chicatana powder, a rabbit in red pipian, and a barnacle ceviche (I didn't even realize you could eat barnacles). They also make an absolutely top-notch mole, which was served as a course on its own with hoja santa-laminated tortillas for dipping. They brought out an array of desserts, but none of them managed to equal the excellence shown in the earlier courses. However, bonus points for an excellent Mezcal list. At first the meal seemed a bit rushed, but things settled down after the second course and the pacing was overall fine. Like Quintonil the wait staff were happy to switch to English when my Spanish failed me (say, for "barnacles"). Biko Unlike the other two restaurants, Biko has a bit of a reputation of being less friendly to English-speakers. My guess is that this is mostly due to the lack of an English-language version of their menu. I heard a lot of English in the dining room around us and the wait staff seemed ready enough to explain things in English when necessary. The real problem with Biko was that until dessert, none of the courses really impressed. That's not to say it wasn't good food, or even that it wasn't a good value... but when compared to my previous two nights' meals, it was sort of plain. It did, however, feature the best dessert of the week, a mousse topped with toasted quinoa, peanuts, cocoa nibs, and a small dark chocolate "truffle" filled with cream. The pacing here was good, giving a good amount of time between the larger courses, without letting things drag.

Right, it's Pujol.

I've got an upcoming reservation at a restaurant that features a very large Mezcal list, basically none of which I am familiar with. Obviously I will chat up the staff, but is anyone familiar with any of these? › Cupreata, Agua Fuerte, Guerrero › Sotol, Flor del Desierto, Coyamel del Sotol, Chihuahua › Lechuguilla, Alma Mezcalera, Milpillas, Sonora › Mexicano, El Cortijo, Matatlán, Oaxaca › Bicuixe, El Cortijo, Matatlán, Oaxaca › Salmeana, Alma Mezcalera, Charcas, San Luis Potosí › Sotol Curado con Cascabel, Flor del Desierto, Coyamel del Sotol, Chihuahua › Barril, Real Minero, Ocotlán, Oaxaca › Ensamble, Mezcal Koch, San Baltazar Guelavila, Oaxaca › Sierra Negra, Mezcal Koch, Sola de Vega, Oaxaca › Chino Verde-Mexicano, Mezcal Koch, Sola de Vega, Oaxaca › Ensamble, Alma Mezcalera, San Agustín Amatengo, Oaxaca › Conejo, Alma Mezcalera, Santa Maria Zoyatla, Puebla › Pechuga, Real Minero, Ocotlán, Oaxaca › Tobalá, Yuu Baal, San Juan del Río, Oaxaca › Blend, Secretos de Yegolé, Candelaria Yegolé, Oaxaca › Madrecuixe, El Jolgorio, Santa María Zoquitlán, Oaxaca › 2014, Ensamble, Real Minero, Ocotlán, Oaxaca › 25 años, Tepextate, El Cortijo, Matatlán, Oaxaca

Yes Mostly it's curiosity about all of these newer brands. I've had a few of the Del Magueys before, but actually that's one that my store doesn't have. They did have the Vago, so I will definitely give that one a spin.