cbread

Can you say what makes the Viking pan better than AC? Is it the handles or more/other things?Thanks!

Thanks for all the responses and info. I will look again at AC and also at the commercial pots with tubular handles. I find it interesting that no-one has spoken up in vigorous affirmation of Viking cookware. I kind of take that as saying - good as AllClad, but not worth the added cost beyond AllClad. It makes me suspect Viking's cookware sales must be pretty low. I would have thought their customer base would have been big enough to get at least one actual user reporting in. Not that a small customer base impugns the quality, but it may speak to the economics of price vs quality. I definitely am looking at how I handle pots when I lift and pour. Any heavy pot where I can use two hands gets lifted with two hands. Thanks for all the input!!!!

I'm most concerned about sauce pans, where I will be pouring things out and trying to empty water out but keep veggies in etc. In that case, the handle gets important. I have some sort of issue with arm / wrist where major lifting and twisting a fully laden pot one handed can sometimes leave me in some discomfort for weeks. Not agony by any means, but just enough discomfort I cannot and should not ignore it. It's odd, I can push garden stones around that have to be several hundreds of pounds, but handling a five or ten pound pot leaves me with a sore arm... I think I want a handle that doesn't threaten to make things any more problematic. Aside from the odd scalloped out top of the AllClads, they are awfully narrow and seem to provide less leverage for twisting them to dump liquids.But given your urging, I'll take another look.

I'm looking at upgrading my saucepans and a few other items. I'm trying to sort out my possibilities. I'll probably do the upgrade gradually, a pot at a time, especially the first pan, so if I end up unhappy with whatever choice, I'll suffer just one pan. I'd include AllClad in my search, but the handles... I know lots of people like AllClad but the handles seem user unfriendly to my hands. I just can't see myself subjecting myself to those handles. Maybe I'll end up springing for Falk or similar copper. But, before I just go there with no further ado, I find myself wondering about Viking. I never hear anything about Viking, and it does look like solid quality cookware. So, what do people think, other than the obvious fact that it's expensive? Were cost less an issue, what would the verdict be? Is it the peer of AllClad with a surcharge, or better or less good as a cooking implement?

Think ahead? A challenging task. GF has many late lunches at work on unpredictable basis, as her work is somewhat chaotic, so I never know if she'll be hungry when she gets home. But I'm not yet a good menu planner anyway so that is something I can aspire to in future.

Great idea! And I already have my basic info at hand. I'll do it.

Wow. That is one SCARY read. Maybe I don't have it quite as bad as I thought. I can't imagine a whole country with nothing but supermarkets as bad or worse than mine. And I thought Europe was this vast nirvana with wall to wall wonderful food.

During the summer we have a farmer's market here - don't know if such a thing is available in Oz, but local farmers sell direct to the public in the middle of town one day a week. Good veggies. Good people.

So far this year, the newest and best... Pot roast - nothing surprising in recipe, but I'd never made one... Pathetic, huh? It was wonderful, and the leftovers seemed better each day. A chicken panini sandwich made from a foccacia I made that day. The "Three Cheese Baked Egg Puff With Roasted Peppers" from the 2002-2003 "Best American Recipes" books by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens. Somehow I turned it into a two cheese puff with roasted peppers, but it had the lift of a souffle and just a wonderful eggy toasted cheesey concoction. I really like the "Best American Recipes" books.

You think the P+M combo ruins a good thing; I feel it takes a bad idea and makes it immeasurably worse. Somehow I feel we are in some kind of agreement.

That's EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes me crazy! Spending wasted extra time looking for something that has suddenly moved to some incomprehensible mislocation. That's just what I do. Me too, I'd rather pay what it takes to get satisfying decent food, appealing and fresh I go into Concord more and more, mostly to Hannafords, to get good produce and a better selecion of basic meats, and too the new butcher's for tip top meats. So obvious, but I hadn't thought of that. Thanks! I'l have to look at more of their stores to have an answer to that. My suspicion is that it's the central office at the heart of many of the issues, but just a guess. Some do seem to be the kind if issues that stem from policy. I'm sure the veggie buyers work for the whole chain, so that would be centralized. The stinky deli? I hope that's local. Missing prices? Local, I suspect. Fake specials? I suspect that's cetral management. I doubt the local store prints up the signage. I hadn't thought about the osha issues involved with kids balancing on shopping cart handles. I might make a call or two. If I do collar him, I want to not just be venting, I want to speak effectively and stay on point and effect change. Right now, I'm so unhappy I couldn't do very well. I have a couple of employees who I speak to who know I don't feel very good about the store. Nice people, but I have doubts that my feelings get effectively transmitted "uphill". More and more of my money goes elsewhere.

It's about twenty miles to the nearest good market, and maybe 30 to the nearest ethnic stores. Whole foods or the like? A zillion miles. Actually 64 miles - I just mapped it. About my tip top of cooking expertise is a good bread or a souffle (darn I don't know if that's spelled right). I'm still at the "surprised when something new comes out right the first time" stage; thrilled a pot roast came out like beef candy. In truth, the biggest thing keeping my cooking skills back is me, but ... darn it, I'd really like to find some really good food nearby. Hannafords is my salvation. In Concord NH, twenty miles from me. Nice veggies, more of a meat dept. That reminds me, finally there are a couple of real butcher shops in Concord NH. Bless them! Good meat, finally. I've turned into a carnivore now that I don't have to eat tortured aged protein. Hannafords also moved into New London NH recently. They made a couple of PR missteps and alienated a lot of the locals there, but I'd take a Hannafords in a heartbeat.

I use the top from a big old Reverware fry pan and a glass bowl for raising bread dough. I couldn't understand why I was instructed to cover the top of a bowl with a cloth. Cloth just seemed kinda clunky and the metal top will keep moisture in better. It's easier to peek to check for how well risen using the top. When I want to keep the humidity really high in the dough, I spray the top and insides of the bowl with a hardware store hand sprayer filled with water that I keep on the counter. I use one of my bench knives as a cabinet scraper to keep my butcher block counter in good shape. I use a cutlery steel to raise a burr to make the scraper action efficient.

I just need to let off some steam. My supermarket makes me crazy. Since this forum is so positive in demeanor, I don't want to be a bad apple. But I seek the infantile sheer catharsis of yawping about how very frustrated I am. I live in a very small town, in a very small state, and I have to remind myself I'm very lucky to have a supermarket in town at all, but this particular one I'd trade for any other of the same size or larger supermarkets in area towns in a heartbeat. Any. The employeees aren't the problem. They are all nice people and nice to deal with. My guess is that the problem resides with management in the main office. This store is one small link in a big regional chain, big enough to have store brands etc... They do make a real and sucessful effort to keep prices in line, but they seem to think low prices are all there is. I end up so frustrated that I have a fantasy where I run down an aisle screaming about how much I hate them, with my arms sticking straight out to my sides out and knocking hundreds of items down to the floor. I'm wayyy too old to live out this fantasy but, I just want to act like a child and pound my fists on the ground or something. A tantrum would be very very good right about now. You know the image of the small child knocking down the huge tower of neatly stacked items? You can not imagine how attractive that looks to me right now. Once I started writing down all the things that mess with the quality of my "shopping experience" I was surprised what a long list it is. 1. They are running out of stuff all the time. There are times I can't get several items on my list, and I'm not talking about out of season items, just regular things any other market would have. 2. They have virtually no specialty items. The list of what they don't have is, well, gigantic. Haven't they heard of Whole Foods? Don't they know there's a market for good food? 3. They have lousy veggies. Their buyers seem only aware of price tags. 4. They have a barely, no, not really OK, meat dept. with all family sized offerings. I just live with gf and the packs are usually too big for just us. Why can't they pack a variety of sizes? Better quality would be a huge plus. 5. The deli and fish counter stink - literally - it varies day to day - I hate walking anywhere nearby - not even 30 or 40 feet away. I've thought of calling the state health inspector. It's never like that anywhere else I shop. One recent night, it was much nastier than usual. Just plain foul. I'll only buy stuff cut to order in the deli early in the day since I suspect things get nastier as the day wears on. 6. They have no concept of putting like items together. Then they move stuff around so I can't find it in a hurrry. They have weird and constantly changing location of items. I'm sick of wandering around looking for the new hiding place for something I found last week. 7. They drop good products constantly shortly after bringing them in. By the time I happen across something, and I decide I like it, they've decided it is a non seller and discontinued it. 8. They wayyy overstock some items and then short others. Their vast alsle of gallon waters is amazing, all store brand. Zillions of identical store brand gallons of water taking up yard after yard of shelf space. They could fill an olympic swimming pool. How many good items do they not stock just to make room for one brand and size of water? Why water? 9. Their baggers need training; always trying to put five and even six sodas and a couple of other heavy liquids in a single flimsy plastic bag which then rips if I don't ask for extra bags. I know it's not being cheap. It's just a lack of training. Why do I have to watch over them all like a hawk? 10. Their veggies are always near throw by date - do they warehouse the veggies for a few days or weeks before sending to stores in an over heated truck? Sort of a ripening process? 11. Baking items - no cake flour - what's with that? But lots and lots of "add an egg" or "add water" mixes. 12. Their veggie quality is too often from unacceptable to very low - old tough overage overgrown veggies - stuff any good market would throw out, or more likely would never have bought. The better I learn to cook, the more I buy meat and veggies elsewhere. 13. Frequently, items hit the shelves with no pricing for sometimes weeks at a time. I cannot believe someone from the store doesn't notice. 14. Top of the shelving labels are located where you cannot read them - only a very tall person would be able to see. 15. The veggie dept stockers are always slamming food around when stocking the food into bins - as if veggies won't get bruised. 16. They have a sucky selection - most all boring and most all cheap. 17. They don't get it that cheeep is only good if one gets what one wants rather than second rate items. 18. The meat dept is weak as all getout. They don't even have the components of meatloaf - ground beef, ground veal, ground pork - heck I'm not even going to wonder if one could get something ground to order ... I wouldn't trust them enough. 19. Odd placement of items in store - it makes things hard to find. The frozen pizza dough is in the frozen fish case. Huhhh???? Like I want fish scented pizza. Thankfully, now days I just make my own dough, but if I didn't, I'd want to get it from out of town. 20. They seem to get the cheepest possible shopping carts so they rattle and creak throught the store. The wheels are just about falling off carts they brought in new just a couple of years ago. I don't see the economics of buying easily destroyed carts. 21. The employees run those annoying vacuum cleaner things around the store wayyy before closing. You can't think when you are getting chased around the store by a whirring whining machine. 22. They seem to think it's OK to start shutting down the veggie section way before the store is closed for the night. Come in near close some days and the veggies have scampered back to the back rooms - why can't they wait till close? 23. Diffferent sizes and brands of the same product will have unit costing in price per pound, per ounce, per dozen, per sheet and per box, so you cannot sort out unit pricing without calculator. 24. Frequently, they blame a distributor when they are out of one or another item. They say so and so is out. If this supermarket chain is so big, which they are, why don't they have the clout to demand better service of their suppliers? Of course they do have clout. My guess is that they just figure the customers will suck it up and get by with food they don't want rather than the items they came in to buy. 25. They put up bins marked "Special" - loaded to the gills with items at their regular price. It irks me that unwary shoppers will believe there is some sort of special bargain and stock up with no additional savings. 26. Why can't they employ more adults, maybe retirees who need a little extra income. Older folks have more common sense and don't abuse the food like kids sometimes do. A nearby grocery does exactly that, and dealing with the help there is noticably better. 27. I often have to buy double or more of what I want since I can't trust them to have anything in stock when I need it, They are out of regular yeast today unless I want to buy a huge jumbo size jar way more than what I want. I end up warehousing for my supermarket. Any money I save from their low prices is lost by my need to stock up to protect myself from their poor inventory control. I end up essentially their banker and warehouse. 28. I occasionally see store employees standing on the handles of the carts by the front windows to access banners high up on the front windows. I guess they haven't heard of food safety??? Do I really want to have floor and street grime on the handles I touch? It creeps me out that they have the baby seating on the carts, but do I need to have them walk around their bathroom then plant their grimy feet all over the cart handles so that I can bring that home with me? 29. Veggie bins overfilled so you can't take food out without a dozen falling on the floor. Jusy plain lazy management and no training/followup. 30. They keep potatos out too warm and in too much light for so long that the red potato always have some of that toxic green under the skins. I have to peel them all. I no longer feel OK about having their red potatos "skin on" - the way I often like them. Any few of these complaints by themselves would be OK, but they score so low, so across the board, so dependably ... A number of times I have gently tried to get a couple of minor issues improved. The employees try, but management seems uninterested. At a certain point, you have to accept reality. I've given up trying to get improvements made. Now I shop out of town whenever I am near any other supermarket and have the time and energy. I like to shop daily so out of town is less than ideal. It's twenty miles to the nearest real market. Thanks for listening!

Can anyone recommend the best ways to filter oils and fats? Currently I just stockpile the stuff, en mass, in the freezer, in a coffee can, for eventual disposal at the dump. I'd like to separate the nasty from the reusable, and clean up the worthier oils for reuse, but I don't know the best way to do that.

Sorry! That's way too many rules. I'm an artist by day, and rules don't suit me. I just don't want my pizza nasty. Pineapple's nasty. I don't need a rule to know that. No pineapple for me. If you want it, you can have it, but keep my pizza pineapple free.

My first soup of the year started as a gratin - the Swiss potato gratin from Silver Palate Cookbook. OK but not special, possibly I got the parsley wrong - perhaps too much - I think in grams and so few cookbooks lay out quantities in a dependable way - anyway it was a bit strong on the parsley flavor. Part of it happily transmogrified into on one night into a country mashed potato, and the rest was changed the next night into a much more satisfactory rustic potato onion cheese soup. The soup was much the best.

If you don't make your own breads, do you have two possible bakery suppliers so you aren't hostage to just one - who then might go out of business? Bakeries around here haven't fared very well. Hopefully your part of the world is kinder to bakers. C

While I happily read Cooks Illustrated magazine, watching Chris Kimball on TV makes me want to have my mouth surgically removed. I can pass his dippy "editorials" in the mag but the TV is a killer.

I have sort of a theory. It'll take a few words to tease it out so bear with me. Wait. Maybe an introduction is in order as I'm new here: I don't know if I'm a foodie. Probably not. I'll confess a few items I just don't want to eat - most fish, most of the time (an odor thing - yes even really fresh fish), and "variety meats" ever (simply too hard to contemplate - I can't explain better). Whatever. I love most good food and can bake a darn good yeasted sourdough bread so I'm not a total and complete loser. I love to cook most of the time and have gotten pretty good with a few things and quite tolerable with many. I'm still learning from watching the Food Network and gathering interesting cookbooks and sifting out information here and across the internet. I'm an artist, a painter, by day, and show in galleries. I've noticed that there is a kind of parallel universe to the world of bad food. There's a world of people with no or little visual sense. I'm not really addressing the people who want to look only at "happy" pictures of lighthouses and seagulls. They are an easy target and not very interesting. More, I'm interested in some of the professionals in the art world who seem to have come adrift from the moorings of art as a possibly pleasurable visual experience. Much critical writing about art seems devoid of the simple pleasure of taking in a work. They veer into the textual and theoretic, and away from sheer experience. I don't want to be a bore with more than that hint on them. I just note that some people seem immune to the experiential. But, to bring it back to food, and this is where the visual cripples intersect with the awful cooks, the terrifying vegetarian hosts and the food maulers; some people seem to be out of touch with the experiential act of tasting food or looking at art. It seems a similar deficit to me. Maybe these are people who eat merely to live. I suspect the ranks of dieticians and healty food nutjobs, who prescribe deadly dull regimens of celery and low fat milk, are largely comprised of people who eat merely because they need to and have no sense that food and eating are something larger. Could it be their bretheren cook so badly simply because they are so out of touch with sensual experience that they just don't know how awful their food is? That's my bet. What an amazing thread! Hi everyone, C

Good: Mario Batali Alton Brown Anne Burrell Jamie Oliver Kylie Kwong - I could listen to her recite the congressional record Bobby Flay - he's served his penitance Anthony Bourdain - for his writings about some of the food "stars" Bad: Emeril Rachel Ray Paula The awful cake show The semi home made ummm whatever the trend away from cooking shows that help me learn more about cooking.