Paul Kierstead

When I using an aluminum pot, it create problems to leave it in there (pitting in the aluminum). With my cooler, I left it in there all the time (until the valve in the cooler started to fail....). I also left it in stainless steel for a few months...

Alas, they offer only UPS Standard to Canada. That is $40 for shipping, plus some rape for brokerage fees on arrival. Brod and Taylor, if you are reading this, offer USPS. Please. I suppose I could do an odgensburg run (1 hr drive each way) if I could time it with another shipment, but with back-order that isn't really practical.

Three cheers to Jane!!! I'm so happy. Went and checked my bookshelf, sure enough, it was there and indexed.

The induction pressure rice cookers are pretty clever. The induction allows them to use a vacuum insulated pot, removing the need for a keep warm cycle and (in theory) improving the quality of held rice, as well as reducing power consumption. The pressure cooking speeds the process. Very clever, and can be for the $400-$600 range, sans platinum. As to why use a rice cooker ... well, it is very very convenient, and a good one makes excellent rice (and a poor one still makes good rice). Sure you can make it with a pot, but that doesn't mean a nice cooker doesn't have valuable function.

Sold!! Like a previous poster, I was going to take a pass (I have lots of home cooking books and enough experience to wing it if necessary) but this definitely sells it. I'm fond of the intro to The French Laundry, where they say it isn't 5 star cooking for the home cook, it is 5 star cooking.

I was disturbed by the 'stirring doesn't matter' yet insistence that, when rinsing, stirring was required. It seems stirring is required, but can be front loaded instead of during cooking. So the stirring thing appears to not be a myth. It was an interesting article, but I questioned the opening assertion that clumping was a monster no-no, and all his shows of outcomes were different then what I was used to. I was also disappointed that he passed on the pressure cooking techniques, or hybrid techniques such as in MC with par cooking more or less straight-forwardly and then finishing more risotto style. But, it was thought provoking and will mean I will cook risotto soon, so it was still a success!

I think you missed the point where he suggested the subject arrange it for themselves; he wasn't suggesting someone do it unprompted. Also, in this context, since we are discussing giving something up to see if it helps with various symtoms (death was not one of the symptoms under discussion), if the consequences of having it were that bad it would have been given up a long time ago or they would be already dead.

Heh, no, actually. If you told me you did double blind trials to test your indigestion to green peppers, I might accept it as true. OTOH, in a way, I would believe you. If you believed that green peppers gave you indigestion, it is quite plausible that if you knowingly eat green peppers you would feel indigestion. That doesn't, of course, mean that it was actually the peppers that did it. We are, generally speaking, horrid at judging such things. Astoundingly bad. People attribute a vast array of causes to effects that have, at best, no evidence and often have been proven to be untrue. I'm not trying to give offense here, and apologize if it was taken, being looking for evidence is not evil, insensitive or a sin; it is good practice. Not everything will be explained, it is true; but I'd like to see some clinical evidence of gluten sensitivity, particularly the effects related to neurological function, etc. I do not have any doubt of celiac disease nor allergies; particularly the latter is relatively easy to test for and has a plausible, established mechanism. Celiac is a tougher to test for, but does have a mechanism that sounds sensible. Many of the explanations for other types of gluten sensitivity lack a plausible mechanism or clinical evidence. This does not mean it doesn't exist, of course, but it does mean that having some doubts doesn't make you an evil bastard. As to popularity; billions of people hold various things as self-evident truths that I think is mythology, and I suspect that is true for everyone on this board (though which ones may vary). A lot of people holding an opinion gives it something to look at, but does not make it a truth.

I'm not sure what you mean by my having to take them at their word. If they eat in my home, I'll honour their wishes and take care to ensure they don't get that food. I'll not prevent them from taking on whatever diet they want. In fact, I point out new GF food sources around town that I trip up over to my GF friends. But I most certainly will not accept it as true simply because they said so, nor will I necessarily 'agree' with them by keeping silent if keeping silent would indicate consent. Self observation is pretty close to hopeless. If people want to try out various things and make their conclusions, that is ok, but you can't expect everyone to roll over an agree just because those people have found comfort.

We have government health care and people are still flocking to GF.

The confusion re:Espresso comes in, I think, because the resultant brew is stronger then drip coffee and they don't really have a term for it ('very strong coffee' would be off putting). Then they go off an ride that horse way too far, but I still see they have the urge to call it Espresso.

Damn, Scoop, you made me late for work since I couldn't stop reading this. Luckily we don't get dermits, we just don't get paid. Most excellent, looking forward to more.

That kind of voting system can result in a winner which no one voted as their #1 favorite. Kind of how the third place guy can win a nomination at a political convention. This would be particularly true if the non-pedestrian entrants are well off the beaten path causing a love/hate dichotomy. Weighting the vote more heavily towards to the #1 favorites can help make the voting less favour the safe, inoffensive choice.

Heh, you need to read closer .. I'm not even entirely sure what that means, other then you'll pay at least $139.80 to keep the thing. Which is still pretty cheap. I guess the $19.95 is all you pay up front? Still a lack of real pics (though it does appear in the video at least), and the misleading language on price rubs me the wrong way.

I will give GF one thing though: Everyone I know who has adopted it has lost significant weight (and all could use that loss). They feel much better now!

The websites need two things: Visitors and advertisers. The visitors come if they find utility in the site. The advertisers come if there are visitors. Any useful content contributes to the success of the site; there is no particular reason why the content has to slant in a certain way, so long as it doesn't drive away advertisers. So I could easily see a site 'managing' bad reviews for an advertiser, or selling some kind of 'monitoring' service to restaurants for their reviews (those this amounts to extortion), but if they over manage things (i.e. the ratings diverge too much from reality) then they will lose the utility, lose the visitors and lose the advertisers. So the site does have incentive to make sure it remains useful, even if that does contribute to your success; honest reviews (in both directions) benefits the site. On Yelp specifically: I've seen many many restaurants with great ratings that did not have a trace of advertising. Hell, half of em are incapable of getting a website together, let alone coordinating with Yelp. I'm surprised they can tie their own shoes. But they do manage to good a pretty decent meal and impress some customers. I've not often been steered horribly wrong by Yelp where there are a good number of reviews that don't all look to be by employees/relatives (I have seen those too, but they are damn obvious). I'm not saying Yelp are boy scouts or anything, I'm just saying the evidence does not support the implication that Yelp only lets advertisers have good ratings.

So, some amount of fraud completely discredits the source and instead I should, what, throw darts to determine my restaurant? If we all had some fabulous source of recommendations, there would be no Yelp.

Well, a heater isn't really on the brink of burning up like a light bulb is. But we digress

Just what is the normal useful life of a immersion heater? In my very casual observation, it is on the order of a decade+ assuming you don't run it dry.

About the only feature I've ever had any desire for is to start the bath at a particular time, so that it was up to temp when I got home. Of course, this means I need an interface to set the time, I need to be check that the time is right, it needs power while it is turned off to keep the time, and I need an interface to set the timer. Probably not worth the small increase in functionality. This is achievable with a conventional timer of course. I don't do chocolate, so don't know about that. I expect my SV device to maintain +-0.1 C or there abouts so that I don't have to monitor it. If it needs monitoring, its not doing its job.

That definitely sounds like a defective roll. I ran a through quite a number of FS rolls and never had a single failure from a side seam..

The primary advantage of the smoking controller made from a wifi router is the availability of wifi. Since the smoker is outdoors, and can have lots of things go wrong, it is good to keep an eye on it. I'd like that myself and have considered some possibilities. Of course, something like an Arduino with wireless could do well also. For sous-vide monitoring is largely a non-issue. If you have a reasonable powered heater and a properly programmer PID, once it comes to temp it stays at temp, period. Power outage is about the only thing you need to know about; in that case, min temp and duration during the outage would be good to know. An insulated container can make that fairly irrelevant as well.

I think usability, especially in the form of simplicity, is worth more then features. My Sous Vide Professional is placed on the side of the container, you hit power, you hit up/down to select the temp. It is very very straightforward, no extra components, no extra cables, no possibility of having a program in play you didn't notice, etc. I also have a PID + Heater (Fresh Meals Solutions), which works well and I use it when 2 set-ups (and used it alone for a year), but I really love the very stream-line experience of the SVP. I have very very rarely came across the need for anything beyond that.

One of the great things in sous-vide is that cooked items keep really well, and re-heat really well. So you put your meat in meal-sized portions in the bath for your 48 hours, what ever. Remove and chill in an ice bath (this is really important). Do *not* open the bags; they are mostly sterile in there, and you don't want to expose them to bugs. Put in the coldest part of your fridge. They will keep for quite some time; peoples opinion will vary, but I'm more then happy with 2 weeks (though the food rarely "lasts" that long . You can also freeze of course, though with some loss of quality. On your meal day, toss the bag in just for a while to re-heat, finish and serve. That way you get 48-hour meat in 30 minutes

Tri2Cook, you sure it wasn't a rotor-stator homegenizer? An interesting short overview, including ultrasonic and mechanical.