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I almost always find fresh lasagna noodles at whole foods. They are pre-packaged.

I got fed up with the cheapy Polder/Taylor thermometers that I kept on breaking so I bought a Cole Parmer Digi-Sense Type-T thermocouple reader (new but discontinued model on ebay for $15, awesome deal it was still in the box) and a type T insertion probe from thermoworks. http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=9110010 http://www.thermoworks.com/products/probe/tc_type_t2.html Model: 117-173 There are a number of cheap/expensive, new/used thermocouple readers on e-bay. This combo is more accurate and more reliable then the cheap junk on amazon, although it is more expensive. -Lyle

You need an oven/furnace that you can blow inert gas through (like a tube furnace). You put some wood of your choice in the tube. Heat the tube and pump nitrogen through the tube and bubble the nitrogen through water after it goes through the tube. The water will collect the smokey goodness. There is your liquid smoke. I'm not sure how hot you need to go or how the temperature affects the nature of the product. You could probably rig up a tube furnace with some clay/ceramic pipe and some heating elements along with a nitrogen cylinder if you are handy. Good luck!

Even if you know nothing about thermodynamics you can think about this problem pretty simply. If you were to leave a pan on a hypothetical burner where the temperature does keep increasing would you expect it to just increase forever and melt the pan, then the store itself and your entire house... probably not. So we can surmise that at some point the pan being heated reaches equilibrium with its surroundings.

Are they a Canadian thing? We have them here in Vancouver, and I remember them from my childhood in small-town BC. Every once in awhile I'll get nostalgic for them, but I can only have a few before I hit cheezy overload. according to wikipedia they are made in belleview, ontario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheezies I've never been to the west coast but I didn't see them in the east coast. Never seen them in Chicago (where I live now).

hawkins cheezies are great, taste a lot more like cheese compared to cheetos. Never seen them outside Ontario though. I miss them.

what about some fried matzah, although its simple, its definitely fluffy (when made properly, not a big fried lump like some people do) and salty. good luck the char siu baau sounds like a good choice too, and delicious.

what about some carrot halwa?

I second/third Bruce Cost's book, Asian Ingredients. Got lots of interesting and useful information.

Yeah, my dad was a victim of that ... he needed his hip re-replaced. But the point I was trying to make still stands. The implant issue is about physical wear, and debris becoming a physical irritant. It has nothing to do with chemical toxicity. ← Yes, that's correct, although I would still try and avoid scratching the pan, not so much because its toxic just because it ruins it.

I'd just like to correct an earlier response about teflon (PTFE) being so safe that it is used in implants. Although there are implants that use teflon the majority of load bearing and wear related PTFE parts (hip implants, etc) have been abandoned as the wear debris can cause problems and it wears faster than polyethylene. Just take care not to heat your pan too high or scratch it with metal and you'll be fine. -Lyle PhD. student in materials science

In Toronto where I grew up I knew where to find all of those and have most of them in my kitchen. Now I'm living just north of Chicago and I have a number of those things and I'm sure I could find them all if I wanted too in Chicago. Aleppo pepper is nice, got some from a great little spice store in Toronto.

Unfortunately there is no device that can freeze things instantly. This would be absolutely amazing for analyzing biological samples in a microscope without having ice crystals destroy them. The faster you freeze something the less time ice crystals have to grow and ruin stuff. Currently the two fastest ways to freeze something, albeit very tiny things (0.1mm thick) is by very quickly dunking it in liquid ethane (fast freezing than liquid nitrogen) or freezing it at a higher pressure to prevent the formation of ice crystals which destroy tissue. These are not suitable for foods and it isn't possible to completely prevent ice crystal formation. As of yet there is no magic anti-microwave device. It would have to operate on a fundamentally different principle due to the nature of heat and the universe. From the food/cooking sides of things there is liquid nitrogen, a blast chiller and the anti-griddle. Liquid nitrogen is very cold (-190C) and puting your food in it freezes food quickly, although not instantly. The blast chillar is like a normal freezer but it moves the air around to take heat out of the food faster. This is called forced convection and it works the same way as why you feel colder when its windy outside. The anti-griddle is just a cold surface on which to place food - the surface conducts heat away faster than the still air in a freezer.

The few times i've tried cooking boar have been very disappointing too. Tried shoulder and loin, both were dry and tasteless, haven't bothered since. You're not alone Dr J! Cooking-wise it's been a slow start to the year but managed cook these dishes in the past week. Thai Green Curry Chicken with Chillies & Basil Angus rib with Shallot & Stilton dressing Can you guess which ingredient i have in excess recently? ← is it fresh green pepper corns?

not exactly powder but I find that dry vermouth makes a good substitute for white wine in many dishes and a bottle for cooking in the fridge lasts a long time. Although you could just drink the rest of the wine bottle at dinner. Thats my plan tonight.

I wasn't suggesting that corian was just as inert, just that its a similar inorganic-organic composite. I guess my materials science background makes me assume everyone else thinks like me. I work in a lab now with similar countertops and they do scratch a bit but seem otherwise quite stable. I can't say how they react to concentrated sulfuric acid but I have spilled bleach and various organic solvents on them and they seem fine. Although stable they arn't very attractive for a kitchen.

Depending on how much you want to spend and how important the shipment is you can use a liquid nitrogen dry shipper. It has some material in it which absorbs the liquid nitrogen and keeps everything cold. Lots of medical labs use them to transport specimens. see: http://research.amnh.org/amcc/labfacilities5.html

sounds like corian. corian is just alumina (aluminum oxide) powder in a polymer resin. I think the resin is PMMA.

pangolins are very interesting creatures, they have a plate-like armor made of similar material to hair, nails and horns. The only one I've ever seen was stuffed at the Harvard museum. I've heard that they were eaten in some places but I wouldn't eat them when there are many non-threatended species to eat Very cool animal though, almost looks prehistoric.

the crispy pork looks delicious, how did you make it?

I would have loved to go, if only I had accepted the offer from Harvard instead of Northwestern, alas, I'll have to wait for Adria to come to Chicago.

I like Alton Brown's recipe with a good sharp white cheddar.

You could try a hefty dose of narcotics (fentanyl would probably be best) mixed in some peanut better. A very small dose should kill a mouse quickly, humanely and most importantly before it can run into the wall, die there and stink the place up for months.

I have a Gekko Santoku, see: http://japanesechefsknife.com/SPECIALS.html (scroll down a bit) its a beautiful knife with a hand crafted feel. Great edge too. -Lyle

My first thought was that it would be best if you could involve the class in your demo. I was thinking making chocolate chip cookies and have everyone go into groups and mix the ingredients, make the dough, assemble the cookies, and then with some supervision bake them. There are vegan cookie recipes so I'm sure there is some way to make them egg-less and still good. The size of the groups would depend on the number of supervisory people you have available. I think that the kids would have more fun playing with dough and maybe experiencing the baking process than just eating some cookies which is a relatively commonplace activity.