KennethT

I'll be eagerly checking back on this to see what you think...

I didn't notice anything glaring. Do you need to peel the bitter melon?

@liuzhou I'm not in Cincinnati, but this looks great! Is there any chance I could persuade you to cut and paste the recipes into RecipeGullet? It would certainly make for easier finding later on, after I've tried to remember but long forgotten the original name of this thread?

Tom kha pla... Rice on the side. I think if I was making this with shrimp or fish cake I would have gone with soup and noodles. But with the flakey fish I agreed with @pastameshugana and went with a brothy sauce. Kaffir lime leaves from my garden. I can't wait until I have some lemongrass to harvest - the store bought stuff near me is like sawdust. I doubled up on it and I could still only barely perceive it. I used the frozen galangal and I was disappointed with that too... Oh well, once we move I'll just have to try to grow some of that too.

Looking for opinions - caveat, I need them in the next hour or so!!! I was planning a striped bass with Thai tom kha flavors - I've been debating making the full tom kha soup and then simmering the fish in it for the last few minutes, or reducing the soup into a kind of brothy sauce - sort of like a curry consistency. Any opinions on which you'd prefer? Also, and I guess this depends on the sauce/soup question, but serve with rice noodles (like as a noodle soup with fish chunks) or with rice on the side that you can spoon some soup/sauce over? What I worry about with the rice noodles is having the fish pieces break up too much when eating the noodles sitting in the bowl below them. Striped bass isn't that firm of a fish....

I've never had Cochon's tasso (other than what may have been used at the restaurant), but I've used Poche's before - both their tasso and andouille, and both are really good.

I think that rather than using a lot of coffee, I would use instant espresso powder - then you could use some kind of stock as the main liquid which would give it a rounder mouthfeel.

I LOVE allen keys! They're so much better than either slotted or phillips screws. You don't get runout (where the screw driver slips out of the slot), the cross of the phillips can get damaged and then you're stuck, you can put a lot more torque on a hex key too. The biggest problem is the key that's usually provided stinks - it's cheap, usually too short, etc. If you have a lot to do, do yourself a favor and get a ball-end hex key - they work on an angle which is great for starting and doing the majority of the 'screwing' even in hard to reach areas.

We went out for Indian in Curry Hill.... Someone with her mouth full of pappadum Crab cakes - these had good flavor but so couldn't find any crab. Shrimp with chili, spices, curry leaves and tomato, served with coconut rice. Dum biryani with goat. This was better than most I've had in NY but still didn't compare with the version in Siingapore...

I posted this a long time ago. In the version we had there was no rice - it was just meat and sauce with banh mi on the side along with some herbs on the side. I don't know if this was traditional but they used osso buco for the meat so there weren't a lot of bones to deal with.

Linguine with seared shrimp, local mini heirlooms, garden basil and pecorino Romano. Yum.

@Anna N was the beef stew called bo kho? When we were in Saigon, our hotel had a choice of 3 or 4 Viet dishes in the breakfast selections (out of like 15 choices) included in our room rate. After trying their pho and bun bo hue, we settled on getting their bo kho every day - but what made it so great was the banh mi they served with it for dipping. After the first couple of days we requested it with only a little meat and lots of the sauce and an extra banh mi!!!

@scamhi Who was the producer of the Burgundy?

I don't know if he was around when I joined, but I definitely remember spending a lot of time reading his posts! His stuff looked amazing.

No, I can't wait!!! I've watched more Patrick Blanc videos on YouTube than I care to admit.... I've also been researching the idea of putting a few orchids in there... but I need to undistract myself.... first focus on getting the renovation done and moving. Then think about vertical garden... damn. That's surprising to hear about Richters... they usually have a good reputation. I did a little more virtual digging into lemongrass in its native habitat. According to nurseries selling lemongrass plants in Singapore, lemongrass likes full sun (even down there) and moist, but not wet soil. So maybe photobleaching is not my problem. I just changed the nutrient solution to provide a bit more nitrogen - hopefully that will help... I should know more in a few days.

Coir is fascinating. It's free draining but like a sponge - the surface of each coir particle dries fast so it promotes good aeration, but holds onto a huge amount of water in its core which roots can access.

My tent is only 5x5 and I'll be moving in a few months (hopefully). Once I move I'll have a lot more space to spread.... And have another type of garden in the works once we're settled!

Nice looking fish and greens. Your baby bok choi looks almost like a yu choi to me - the stalks are so nice and slender... looks tender too. Home grown I assume?

@heidih Actually I have 3 variables I can adjust: nutrient formula/concentration, light intensity and watering frequency (aka how dry do the roots get between waterings). Lately, I've been treating lemongrass like most other plants - when you grow them in coco coir you let the pot get to half the weight between full saturation weight and the wilting point. But, maybe it is like my soon-to-be housemate, morning glory (aka water spinach) which you want to keep wet... obviously not puddles wet, but wet for coco coir - which is already very free draining.

When my wife and I started collecting a little over 10 years ago, we bought a few bottles that could be looked at as "investments"... at the time, I said that even if the value doesn't go up, at least we could enjoy drinking it!

well, I'll have my new curry tree to keep me busy while I see if I can revive the "old" one. BTW - I know you have experience growing lemongrass - mine isn't doing so well. The foliage is kind yellowish, but the stalks are green, and it's not putting out new shoots... I don't know whether the yellowish foliage is being caused by photo bleaching (the light above it is really powerful) or if it's a nutrient (namely nitrogen) deficiency. I'm using a well balanced nutrient formula, but most grasses are strong N feeders, so I just changed my nutrient balance to give it more nitrogen... if that doesn't help, maybe I'll move it so it doesn't get as strong of a light - but from all I've read, it loves full sun (even in the tropics)... although this is contrary to what I saw in Indonesia - one of our hotels had a whole herb garden on their roof and it seemed like they kept their lemongrass in the shade and it looked nice and healthy... so I'm kind of at a loss. Thoughts?

Going to germinate and plant a bunch of this this weekend... Fresh greens in a few weeks! The only problem is that I'm running out of space under the lights!!!

I've decided that I'm going to keep the old curry tree - I'm going to replant in a small cup and prune all of the branches off. Maybe it'll reset itself that way.

I don't know if it's a NYC code or if it varies by building. I know my building allows it for some apartments (those with a window in the kitchen also have an exhaust in the plans - but I've only seen the plans, not the apt) but most apartments in the building (whose kitchen does not have access to a window wall) must have a recirculating fan with carbon filter.

I actually wasn't thinking about making the push motor go faster - The pull motor creates negative pressure so that the push motor is more efficient - the air that it's pushing has less resistance. Loss of CFM isn't necessarily due to a fan's speed changing, it's because of the pressure created in the fan's path by resistance due to turbulence, etc. Like you said, the standard induction motors used don't change speed as the speed is determined by the line frequency - but the amount of air they move per revolution varies depending on the pressure behind it.