OliverB

that's what I thought first too, but it does not work. If the spoon is flat on the table, the notch is cut into the right side, just a bit below the upper edge. Is it to scrape food off cooking chopsticks? I really can't find any way to use it, but since it adds some extra work in making the thing, I'd guess it has some reason to be there? Even with a wok, I can't figure out how to use that added feature.

too late to edit, but I was also gonna ask: anybody know why there's a little notch cut out on some of these spoons? On the right (or left if you flip it) side, some of my flat edge spoons have a little triangular notch cut out, and so far I have not been able to make sense of that. I'm sure it has some use, otherwise why put it there. Anybody know?

I haven't read the entire thread, but I too love my wooden spoons. No matter what I cook or what utensils I use, there'll always be a wooden spoon or more likely spatula to clean. I like the flat edge since it makes scraping things easier and it stirs just as well I think. Mine are all bamboo, from cost plus and whole foods. I still remember the one my grandmother had, and then gave on to my mom. It shrank and got an angled edge, it was almost black and shiny at the spoon end, the turned tip on the other side eventually broke off, but my guess would be that this spoon was in service for a good 30 to 40 years. It now hangs on the kitchen wall at my parent's house :-) I actually love all retro and oldfashioned kitchen tools :-)

well, we had an exciting Thanksgiving at the inlaws. I did break from the no shopping as I was in charge of a veggie dish and after reading the editorial of a recent saveur wanted to make one of the cranberry relishes mentioned there. The beans recipe turned out very good, was from one of thse $4.99 cook books at B&N. Lots of pine nuts sprinkled with paprica, some onion and garlic, all quite good. The cranberry and fig chutney is really very good, also features pistachios and two whole unpeeled oranges and ginger. The little cubes of orange skin, the nuts, the ginger, all creates little flavor explosions. I highly recommend this one, I made the whole recipe and have plenty left over. You can find it here: http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/1992/01/cranberry_fig_chutney_with_cinnamon_and_pistachios Turkey was a 12 lb bird, my wife's parents brined it for the first time, which IMO really improved the bird tremendously. They used an Alton Brown recipe with salt and honey. Bird was cooked on the rotisserie of their outdoor gas bbq. Also was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny so all the kids could go outside instead of on our neves Unfortunately my 2 year old girl fell against a glass table and got a cut on her cheek, mom and grandmommy went off to the emergency room for 4 stitches. Not to gross anybody out, but there was a lot of blood as face wounds tend to spout. A sight I plan to erase from memory quickly. All went well though and she's up and running as if nothing happened. Only a very small tape over the wound and it looks like she might get a shiner, we'll just have to come up with a good story for preschool on Tuesday Once they were back she was all over the pumpkin pie and ice cream and we realized that with up to 7 kids around at these gatherings, this was the first time we had a trip to the doc in 10 or so years. Not bad! We finished the turkey meat today for lunch, and as all my meat is frozen I had to break with the rules once more and got some thin cut pork cutlets, I'll flatten them out very thin, bread and fry them and we'll finish the beans and have some of the cranberry fig chutney. The later is also excellent on toast or muffins in the morning, which will be breakfast. Maybe with my last 4 eggs and some more of our recently made bacon. And I hope I have what I need to make the Saffron rabbit recipe I found recently, otherwise I'll throw some beef on the bbq I think. I'm gonna keep with this challenge for a while longer, it's fun! I will have to get milk and muffins and as grow season is over here, I'll get some salad to keep things a bit on the healthy side, but looking at all the stuff that piled up over the last year or so, I can probably go until x-mas w/o any major shopping. Timely too, as we just hat to put over 3k into my wife's car, my car needed new tires, and there's a certain gift heavy fest coming up at high speed. I'm also starting to have fun rolling up to the cash register with 2 or 3 items instead of bags and bags of things (that I later found I bought months ago already...). Belated happy Thanksgiving everyone!

if she has access to an Asian market, the new Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking is a nice book, lots of instructions. But you need to get quite some things for your pantry. My first exposure to Asian cooking was Thailand, The Beautiful Cookbook. Most things I found easy to replicate. There's the cheap Thai and South East Asian Cooking by Hermes House that has a ton of recipes and pix, just not much background. Of course, there's Thai Food by David Thompson, a really great book. Or Hot Sour Salty Sweet, following the Mekong river all through Asia. But for a beginner, I'd just go to the local bookstore and look at some of the smaller tomes. Once your friend has some of the basic staples it's easy to come up with your own stir fry dishes etc. Of course, all of the above are great too. Not sure if Chinese would the way to go, a lot of the dishes are a lot of work, Thai is faster. Japanese or Korean are interesting too, but also time consuming. Always great to get a new cook hooked on the foods of the world, good luck!

I just peeked at my Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking and there's no mention of Malt Vinegar at all, just different kinds of rice (and grain) vinegars. But then, if you have several of her books and she uses it very often, I'd just get a bottle, maybe even compare. And you can use it for other things too of course, it's nice vinegar. Can't have fish and chips without it :-) Does she explain her pantry items in the book? Maybe it's a more readily available substitute for something less available. Seems she's from Australia?

to return from the fine art dept I prefer the oxo with the plastic top, as I can use them in my non stick as well as any other pan. I used to have one of each, but when the metal one broke I just got an other plastic (or nylon or what it might be) instead. Often enough one is in the dishwasher anyways. I can't recall ever ruining a food with one, I was surprised to see that Keller says no to them in his new book. I use them quite often. Of course, I don't usually cook from TFL book, in that case I'd not use them anyway, they'd be way unpractical. I kind of like the idea of the pallet knife though, I use them in painting and can totally see where they might come in handy, especially if they are really flexible. I don't like the gravity ones, have one for salad that constantly snaps open in the drawer and blocks the whole thing, it's on it's way to the donation pile next time somebody comes around to collect such things. The oxo have a rubbery ring on the lock pin, (edit) they open by just pushing against anything, hip, counter, etc, and lock by dragging against something, belt loop, counter, etc. Quick and easy That they are forbidden in a restaurant where a single dish might contain extremely expensive and carefully prepared things makes sense, squeeze a tad too much and that foie is a blob. They plate with tweezers after all! With tweezers. While I occasionally like to prepare such fare, I prefer to go out and eat it in a restaurant. A once a year or so treat. That way I also get more than the one course I could prep myself over a day or three

Thick 25 bean soup with some fresh bacon and sourdough bread last night, was very good. Of course, just about anything with bacon fresh from the smoker is good, I bet even Whole Wheat pasta would rock Lots of left over beans, not sure if we'll have them today or tomorrow. Might also make some pasta with egg and bacon tonight, as I still have a good pound or so of bacon unfrozen. Also got my 8 1/2 lb heritage turkey delivered today, but I think I'll cut that up tomorrow and freeze it. It's interesting that we can eat for a whole week with no shopping at all (aside of milk and some salad) and not notice a difference. We probably ate better this week actually, as I had to grab my books and think about what to make, instead of making things up while traversing the aisles at the supermarket or farmer's market. And buying more stuff to make those made up dishes.... Thu and Fri will be off site with family, I'll be making a veg side dish that I have to shop for, a cranberry sauce, and bake some flat bread sticks for which I have all I need. We'll probably continue this experiment for an other week or so.

I have a large one with several blades to julienne etc, but it's a pain to set up and use and clean. I hardly ever use it, maybe once a year. I will get a benriner if I ever see on in the Asian market, they are great. For now I'm very happy with my little OXO handheld unit, it's small, very sharp, super easy to clean and store. For your son, you kind of have to find out if he's even interested in doing crinkle cuts or other such specialties. I love to julienne, slice, dice by hand, easy one of my most favorite parts about cooking. I've never even used the julienne knife inserts on my big one. But people are different and he might appreciate these functions, then I'd go with the nice big one that Williams Sonoma currently offers. It's by De Buyer and costs 199 on their website: http://www.williams-sonoma.com/search/results.html?words=mandouline Overkill for the occasional slicing of a carrot or two, but a great unit if you intend to use it often. On this page you can also see a cheaper version by De Buyer and all the OXOs, including the little hand held one I have, the one for 19.99. I use that one often, though the little pusher/handguard is pretty useless except to protect the blade during storage. I have not yet cut myself, despite the blade being incredibly sharp. There are also links to videos on that page. Edit to add: personally I'd not want a V cutter, there are two blades at sharp angles coming at my fingers, I prefer one to watch out for. Especially since I never use the guard thingies nor those gloves. Just a thought.

I'm not sure where this might fit best here on eGullet, hopefully this is a good spot. I live in the East Bay area east of San Francisco, at the foot of beautiful Mount Diablo. Recently I came across an article about a book written by Edwin Bryant, about his travels west in the years of 1847-48. He came by Mount Diablo, visiting the only ranch that was there, that of a Mr. Marsh. I just received a copy of the book and randomly happened to open it at a place that was quoted in the paper, but not in full. I thought it's interesting enough to share: ========== The house of Dr. Marsh being fully occupied, we made our beds in a shed, a short distance from it. Suspended from one of the poles forming the frame of this shed was a portion of the carcass of a recently slaughtered beef. The meat was very fat, the muscular portions of it presenting that marbled appearance, produced by a mixture of the fat and lean, so agreeable to the sight and palate of the epicure. The horned cattle of California, which I have thus far seen, are the largest and the handsomest in shape which I ever saw. There is certainly no breed in the United States equalling them in size. They, as well as the horses, subsist entirely on the indigenous grasses, at all seasons of the year; and such are the nutritious qualities of the herbage, that the former are always in condition for slaughtering, and the latter have as much flesh upon them as is desirable, unless (which is often the case) they are kept up at hard work and denied the privilege of eating, or are broken down by hard riding. The varieties of grass are very numerous, and nearly all of them are heavily seeded when ripe, and are equal, if not superior, as food for animals, to corn and oats. ======= Not only was I surprised to read about 'epicures' loving the marbled (prime) beef that long ago, but in particular his words about the grazing and nutritious values of all the different grasses struck me as interesting. Too bad mass production and price pressure lead us to the sad excuses of beef we find in the supermarket today. The book appears to be online: http://www.authorama.com/what-i-saw-in-california-2.html Can't wait to read the whole thing, especially the parts about the area I live in now. And it's nice to see that more and more farmers seem to come back to this old wisdom and we find more and more grass fed and free range options to buy. Just received a turkey hen that's been living outside all it's life, roaming an entire farm.

never made it in the oven either, but I agree with what Alcuin said. If there's lots of bubbling, everything gets mixed around, low and slow gets you a clearer broth. And skimming the initial muck. I tend to forget, but an other good trick is to add all the aromatics a bit into the process, after you skimmed off all the gunk. If you want really clear broth, the old eggwhite thing works well.

Better revenue in Europe? It's the beer! You can get a decent beer at a McD in Germany, and no, it's not that bottle back wash bud either. And the crappiest burger tastes better with a beer On the new prime coffee side I have to laugh though, if it's early in the morning and I crave a good strong coffee, the last place I'd ever visit is a place that smells like frying oil and burgers.....

I love the frozen fire roasted corn, but I seem to be alone with that love in my family. Oh well, more for me! We just made those chocolate croissants (thanks for a spell checker!) for the first time this Sunday morning, they really are quite good! I'd probably put slightly sweeter and nuttier chocolate in there myself, but FWIW they are really good. Fun too, as you could not fit a single one of them into the small box that 4 came out of. They also have at least at times a frozen seafood mix that's great for pasta or pizza.

fun old thread popping up! I haven't eaten at BK in probably 10+ years, always thought their flame broiled tasted as advertised, a lame patty that some gas flames flavored with soot. I'm curious about the off the broiler thing though, maybe take the kids some day. It's very rare that I get a craving for this kind of stuff, but if I tend to go to McD or JitB, especially since the later is the only thing open 24 hours in my town. Their fries are an abomination, do they cook them in a steamer >after< frying them? Talk about a limp noodle. But the bacon bacon cheese burger can hit the occasional 2am SPOT. And the jalapeño poppers, though I usually regret those the next day, LOL. McD I maybe go once a year and get a big mac meal plus a cheese burger, sometimes that sloppy floppy thing is just "right" right now. The best fast food nutty burgers I've had in the recent years are at Carl's Jr though, they slop so much stuff on, they probably have their test and develop kitchen somewhere up in the deep Northern California woods, employing currently unemployed pot trimmers to come up with the next "you can't do that" burger, LOL The worst burger I've had in a long time, including terrible service (if that's even possible at a fast food place) was at In'n Out, where they don't even have bacon!?! WTF? It took for ever to get a really bland and boring burger with so so fries. 2nd time I've been there, first time I pulled over just in time before my wife got violently sick of the burger we just had eaten. I felt fine, but I have an iron stomach. Our local foodruckers was also way down in quality last time we went, some two years or so ago. Since then I pretty much just make my own burger if I feel like it. Unless on the road, then it's Carl's Jr if I can find one, or McD, unless my wife is along for the ride, then it's JitB.

Ah, that's the same setup some guy is using at our farmer's market, interesting. Not sure I'll run out and order one, as he's sharpening a chef's knife for around $10 or so, but I'm certainly intrigued by this setup. I like doing stuff myself and the Apex is probably totally find for home use. Hmmm, December gift bounty is just around the corner....

For lunch yesterday I finished my zucchini relish with some bread, was even better than the day before. Wife and kids had peanut butter muffins I think, I was out at that time. Dinner I had defrosted a pack of chicken breasts. Cut them into chunks, s&p and a bit of flour (was on the table as I was also working on my sourdough bread). Fried that on med heat in olive oil until nicely browned. Took the meat from the pan and made a pan sauce with a half a cup or so of chicken stock (water plus the contents of one of the liquid stock bases Trader Joe's sells in a box - quite good actually) and the juice of half a lime. Strained through a sieve, back in the pan with a bit of corn starch to thicken it, add back meat and coat with sauce. Should have added some capers now that I think of it. Sides were rice and salad with tiny tomatoes, still have half a box of those. Was very tasty and quick, as I had to run out to see Kiss in Oakland from row 14 - now THAT was fun Today I'm soaking some beans to make a soup with left over beef from two nights ago, add the remaining potatoes, maybe some of the brussel sprouts (not sure yet) and my bacon is done curing and needs to get smoked, so we'll have some nice warm fresh smoked bacon to eat along with this. Oh, and my first ever sourdough bread, which is currently going through it's last rise. Hopefully it'll be edible, otherwise I'll make a bread salad as side or throw chunks into the soup. I did buy some more milk and muffins for the kids, was gonna pick up extra salad but forgot. Interesting to see how much I tend to overbuy on things. One of the problems might be that I usually shop at Trader Joe's in the late afternoon when my kid has karate. Not a good idea to shop when hungry I guess...

I doubt the fat penetrates much if any at all, fat doesn't like water and meat is made of a lot of water. I'd guess steaming and then rubbing with some fat for flavor might work. I also think that the fat you cook the meat in will acquire some flavor that it won't have if you just rub duck fat on the meat, which most likely adds to the original recipe experience. If it's duck fat you saved from a roast or something, there's probably not gonna be much difference in flavor and moisture level of the meat. Not that it really matters, as "steaming and rubbing with fat" sounds a lot less fun than slow boiled in it's own fat, so even if it works perfectly well, I'd have little interest in doing it. And if I'd do confit, I'd definitely want to age it for a while, which you can't do with the steamed and slathered piece. Anybody want to do a side by side? Would be interesting to read about, though not interesting enough to do it myself

I got my weeks ago ordered pile of beef yesterday and I was too curious about it's quality to not eat some of it. It's probably a gray zone item, since I did order it long ago. I also have other beef in the freezer, so it's just a swap. I skipped lunch running errands, family had some bread and pasta left overs I believe. Decided to make the flank steak on the Weber grill, seasoned just with s&p as I wanted to really taste the beef. To go along I boiled some brussel sprouts (for the first time, I usually roast them) and a sack of tiny potatoes from Trader Joe's. They're barely larger than a marble, cock fast, taste great and the skin stays tight. It pops nicely when you bite on it, releasing nice creamy potato. A little arugula was left over, and made part of the salad. An other part of the gigantic avocado was the base for my salad sauce, added spices red wine and balsamic, and a tad of sweet and spicy mustard. The pit of this avocado is about the size of a lime, to give you an idea. The brussle sprouts were cooked in very salty water, then thrown into ice water to cool. To bring them back up to warm temp for eating I tossed a spoon of bacon drippings from my maple cured bacon. Oh, I also made some kind of chutney from a bunch of zucchini that needed to get used up. Cooked them for a very long slow low time in butter and oil with a shallot and a larger garlic clove, added a bit of curry and nutmeg, s&p, raisins soaked in red wine and balsamico vinegar and a hand full of honey roasted peanuts I had sitting around. I thought it turned out great, but I was alone in that opinion. Oh well, more for me and my sandwich I could have pulled the flank steak a bit earlier, I measured it's temp but my remote therm is busy in my improvised proofing chamber for the sourdough. When sliced into it was perfectly med rare, but cooked a bit further on the cutting board. But wow, was that a tasty piece of beef! Easy one of the best flank steaks I've ever eaten, a wonderful beefy flavor! I can't wait to sink my teeth into more of my share, including a brisket that I'll make on the Big Green Egg. The beef is from these people: http://www.stemplecreek.com/ and I highly recommend it. Lunch today will be sandwich or other left overs, for dinner I took a pack of chicken breasts from the freezer. And finally a couple pictures: The giant avocado: The steak pre-fire And dinner just missing the tiny potatoes that I almost forgot to serve, here in their pot: later tossed with some butter. Everything turned out great. I feel I've hardly made a dent into my food storage though. Aside of fresh veg or salad and fruit I think I could go for a long time w/o shopping. I guess the more storage options you add to your house, extra shelf, extra freezer, (extra book or CD shelf...) the more you tend to hoard in there. An extended power outage sure would have me eat lots of meat or buy a generator...

just a mini update, the culture seems to come along nicely, it's divided into two glasses now and grows into a nice bubbly foamy thing over it's 12 hour time between feedings. I think I'll be baking this week!

So, I finally decided to get back into bread baking, and as I love sourdough bread (and live just a bit west of San Francisco) I decided to start out with a San Francisco Sourdough culture I obrained from sourdo.com, a site run by Ed Wood, who seems to know a whole lot of things about all things sourdough from all over the world. I have a couple other of his cultures too, as well as some from Germany. I shall play with those at a later time. I'll also eventually post a more detailed thing about this adventure on my blog, with lots more photos, but that will develop from what I'm going to chronicle here for the next week or two, until my first loaf hopefully comes out utterly fantastic Just as a note, I am not a baker. I bake up to 10 kinds of Christmas cookies once a year, I make the occasional pizza, sometimes from scrap, and I've baked two or 3 breads as well as the Bavarian pretzels that are currently my avatar. So this might turn into a disaster or into some beginners luck, or maybe the instructions in the pamphlet as well as Ed Wood's book "classic sourdoughs" are good enough to carry me through to a fantastic loaf of bread. We'll see. (disclaimer, I don't know nor am I affiliated with Ed Wood and I found the e-mail conversations about my order and it's status a bit off putting - just putting text form the website in BIG FAT BOLD letters in not the most friendly reply I can imagine, but I ain't there to cuddle, just to shop and hopefully create something tasty, so it's all good) So, as I just signed up for the new round of no shopping for a week or longer I figured I better get this culture reactivated and started, if I want to have some bread in a couple days. Their cultures are dried and dormant, containing some kind of wild yeast and lacto bacteria from some area of the world. Some of them very esoteric, possibly dating back centuries if not thousands of years, others like the SF one just a bit over 100 or so years old. Certainly a very interesting project Mr Wood started there. I won't repeat the entire instructions here for copyright reasons and if you are interested and order cultures from them you'll get them anyway, but the first step in awakening the dormant culture is to put the dry culture in a quart mason jar, mix it with flour and warm water and then put that up for about 24 hours at about 90 degree. The book suggests to buy a cheap Styrofoam cooler and install a 25 W lightbulb with dimmer in the bottom, which will become the top. I don't have room for such a contraptions, so I just used my large plastic cooler, put a pot inside and clipped a small lamp with a dimmer on that. My bbq meat thermometer kept track of the temp, which was surprisingly easy to keep at 90 degree. After 24 hours the mixture had begun to bubble a bit, I turned the lamp off and a while later I added one cup of flour and less than 3/4 of warm water, to maintain the same consistency as before. Of course I forgot to take a photo of the mixture after 24 hours, a friend came by to drop off her little one for playdate with my little one and I got distracted.... The mixture looked like a dough, off white, bubbly. It had separated a bit, there were places that had a layer of brownish liquid in it. At this early stage it is possible that contaminations in the flour create some weird lab experiment and there are instructions on how to "wash" the culture if it should go bad. The main indication for contamination is said to be an "unpleasant odor". Well, one man's stink is an other man's ultra expensive smuggled into the country super ripe French cheese, so I'm just hoping that the not at all unpleasant but pretty sour and yoghurt or buttermilk like smell seemed ok to me. Supposedly the relatively high heat at the beginning helps the lactobacilli grow faster than the yeast, something that then has to be slowed down or they'll just inhibit the yeast from growing. We'll, that's where I'm at right now, I took a couple of pictures which I'll add soon and hopefully I won't forget to take pictures at crucial steps again. I will have to feed my culture again with a cup of flour and water in about 12 hours (which will be more than 14, poor planning on my side and I'm not gonna get up at 3 am to feed a dough) which will repeat for an other couple days. I'll eventually divide the culture into two glasses, feeding both of them and eventually discarding all but about 1 cup in each glass. This appears to help evening out the yeast/lacto ratio. Once the culture grows by about two inches within 2 or 3 hours of feeding it's ready to be used in baking or you can put it in the fridge, where it can live for a long time. They suggest to feed every two months or so, but supposedly it'll be fine for 6 months too, just requires more work to reactivate it fully. This is actually the first surprising thing I learned, I thought you have to feed such a culture constantly, my dad, who's first profession was a miller since he grew up on a very large mill in Bavaria told me stories of women keeping the sourdough culture close to their bosom in their dress to keep it nice and warm. As I neither have the necessary equipment nor would I have the patience to do so, I never thought I could tackle sourdough bread. The fact that I can have this in the fridge for months and just occasionally - with some pre planning - can make a loaf of bread, that's a big reason for me to go on this adventure. I love great breads, but we don't eat all that much, certainly not a loaf a day, more a loaf a week. I'm hoping that I'll be able to scale things so that I bake a small loaf we'll eat the day it was baked and I can make an other one a couple days down the road if needed. Feel free to chime in here if you bake sourdough breads, if you have experience with Ed Wood's book and cultures or if you just started your own by mixing flour with water and letting it sit outside for a couple days. (Something I'll be trying too one of these days) Fun experiment so far, and I did not yet burn the house down with my lamp in a cooler - off to a good start!

I don't eat breakfast, made English muffins with Nutella for the kids and a sandwich for my wife to take to work. Lunch was mac&cheese for the kids, they've been after me for days, and I finished my poultry in aspik Sülze thing with some bread. I did find an other pork tenderloin in the freezer, this one seems just fine, so I'll be making the pork with raisins and pine nuts and balsamico from Marcella Hazan's book tonight. Glad I found that recipe as I have an open package of pine nuts waiting to get eaten in the fridge. Salad will be some more of the gigantic avocado, persimmon from the inlaw's garden, the other pomegranate I have and wild arugula. Might make some rice to go along with the meat. I did buy more milk and English muffins today for the kids, there's just no way around that. And minor cheat (I hope), some extra herb salad. And coffee. Now, I just got word that my 1/6th of a cow will arrive tomorrow and a small turkey on Tue. All this was ordered weeks ago and of course has to show up in my no shopping week. I might use some of the fresh beef instead of thawing what I have, depending on the cuts I'll get. Since I bought this stuff weeks ago, I'm not sure it qualifies as shopping. But since I have assorted poultry and beef in the freezer too, it probably doesn't matter much. I must say that it felt a bit strange to walk out of Safeway with one gal of milk, 3 packs of English Muffins and one box of salad (plus the coffee). I had to keep my eyes from wandering and my brain from wanting.... As for condiments, I could probably feed a small army with pickled things, sauces, powders, dried leaves, curries, etc. That's what I'm actually really looking forward to with this experiment - going shopping at home and discovering hidden treasures! Having fun so far :-) Oh, and my sourdough starter just finished it's first round of re-activating, off to it's next feeding and I can turn the light in my cooler (improvised proofing box) off. Couple more days and I'll be baking some real San Francisco Sourdough. Yes, they make it just down the road from me, but this will be selfmade and not shopped for. Well, aside of the ingredients of course. I also see a sourdough pizza in my near future, I'm just starting a canned tomato tasting project and have 5 or 6 or so different brands to play with. LOL, I'm starting to wonder if I secretly planned to open a small food store here???

not sure I'd spend this much, but it's certainly an interesting thing. I'm mostly thinking that I'd probably not use it very often and eventually forget that I have it How well do these hold up?

LOL, wasn't done quite yet! Started with my wife dropping her travel mug full of coffee (yes, with milk) in the hallway this morning (yes, it is carpeted), followed by a flat tire and finally ended with something burning in my oven. Literally, who-knows-what that must have dropped or dripped down there was on fire when I opened the oven! A sight to behold for sure ) The smoke helped smoke the flatbreads in a not very pleasant way too... The good thing was the salad, wild arugula, persimmon, avocado, pommegranate and a nice dressing with sherry vinegar. Oh well, now I just hope my TV does not implode or the self made proofing chamber (cooler with a little lamp in it) I set up for my sourdough starter does not set the house on fire. One of those days~~~

I found a small insulated container at Target that I use to give my son warm food for lunch. Left over pasta or the occasional microwave mac&cheese, rice, etc. I heat the container with hot water while heating the food to just good warm, not blistering hot. Seems to stay warm enough for him to eat. BTW, I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to post pictures of my diverse food storage areas, Dinner plan for tonight had to be changed, the pork tenderloin I thawed had a distinct rotten smell, even after washing. A bit grainy and sour smelling. Odd, as I froze them a day or two after I brought them home all vac-sealed in the processing plant. I've had this happen before, I think from now on I will unpack any sealed meat and check it, then reseal it myself. At least then I could return it for refund. There are two to a pack (CostCo) and I had to throw both of them out. That strikes my idea for tomorrow also, unless I find an other one in the freezer. Oh well, there's more stuff in there and we'll just have to eat Trader Joe's frozen truffle/mushroom flatbread with some arugula salad. probably add some of the gigantic avocado I obtained from the Asian market :-) And while I'd have rather eaten it, there's already more space in the freezer

Cooking and Professional Cooking come to mind, any of the cooking text books by the CIA are probably a good start.