Nick
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Posts posted by Nick
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There is no danger that the can will explode. Canned goods are processed under much higher temperatures and pressures than you can achieve in a regular pot on your stove.
Sorry to explode your myths.
Sorry, Katherine, but many years ago (many, many years ago) my grandmother put a can of brown bread into a water bath to heat it. She'd always done this, but this time she forgot to punch a hole in the top. End of the can blew off, resulting in brown bread all over the ceiling.
This is a true story, not a myth.
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Tuna fish sandwiches. Wonder bread, Miracle Whip, and canned tuna in oil. Bring some Velveeta to make tuna melts in the toaster ovens.
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In all fairness I have to say that the help at SOB were nice people. It's a case of the owner being too tacky and too greedy. As an example, when we went to buy beer on site there was only Miller or its derivitives. Since I can't stand Miller, I asked the counter person why that was. She said the owner of SOB also owns the Miller distributorship for the area and wouldn't allow any other kind of beer to be sold on site. She was helpful in directing us to the closest off-site store with a wider selection.
But, plastic Pedro was lucky that night.
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It is good you stopped. It is bad luck to drive by South of the Border without stopping and paying your respects to Pedro.
Pedro's lucky he didn't get his balls shot off on our way out.
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A cup of "Miso-Cup", a plum, and an Alessi garlic breadstick.
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But, brother, that's the charm.
Right. We stopped because we'd seen so many cars back here in Maine with the bumper stickers. While we weren't expecting the Hilton....
I guess other people have since discovered its unique charm as I haven't seen a bumper sticker from there in the last couple of years.
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Good to know that sometimes ol' John leaves them nylons at home.
?????
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Drive South
We can go south with a smile on
Ain't going to pack my nylons
Just leave these legs showing
It gets hot down where were going
John Hiatt's got it down.
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You have to add five hours because a trip south from DC ain't a trip unless you hit South of the Border for greasy food...
South of the Border is the worst place I ever stopped at. A friend of mine and I stopped in there coming back from fixing my father's house down in the Keys after hurricane Georges. The room we'd taken for the night stunk of some kind of chemical they used to clean the rooms, the windows wouldn't open, and the restaurant we ate at had a "prime rib" that wasn't much more than a step above shoe leather.
About midnight after having had drunk a significant quantity of beer after all this, unable to get a breath of good air in our room, and pondering our options, I thought about taking my father's old Springfield which we were carrying back to Maine (as well as a case of M2 machine gun ammo that fit it - every fifth round a tracer) and shooting out the lights on that giant sombrero that dominates the whole place.
Common sense overtook us and we bailed out, hit the road around 1 am, and booked it to some motel we found in Virginia. After sleeping all day we got up and from the thing in the motel room went to Wagstaff's restaurant that was advertised. About a six or seven mile drive down a regular two-lane road we came to Wagstaff's. It was one of the best places I've ever eaten at on the road .
A salad bar that I've never seen the equal of and pick your steak to be char-broiled. Server comes by the table with a cart and two loins - one a rib-eye and the other a strip. Asks which you want and how thick you want it. Then he asks what time you'd like to be served.
Dynamite! Sure beat the county jail fare I would have been served if I'd shot out those light bulbs on the sombrero.
Katherine - You ready for a road trip?
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Get one of those rentals on wheels like Varmint's doing for his "Pig Pickin'."
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Varmint- 900 miles in 13 hours is averaging nearly 70 mph! I've gotten a bit more sedate than in the old days.
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I wanna come, and I'm gonna need the break. Nickn, are you coming, and can you pick me up in Saco?
Katherine, Now you're putting me on the spot. I've been kind of hanging back thinking about how far it is from Maine to NC. It's a hard job to get me to go Portland, to say nothing of all the way to Raleigh. It's still aways off before this happens so there's plenty of time to think about it.
Now I've got to get back to smoking some (wild) deer whole tenderloins. Been in the freezer too long and it was finally time to do something. Smoking isn't proceding as smoothly as I'd like. Never buy one of those Brinkmann "bullets". To put it in plain terms, they're a piece of shit.
But, I'm still thinkin" about Varmint's get-together. It's going to be the egullet event of the year down that way.
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If you're the owner of, say, Pearl Oyster Bar, you can try to write a book that demonstrates the uniqueness of the restaurateur. Then you can have your publisher's publicist shop advance copies of the book around to the various editors and journalists who might be able to provide coverage. If you're lucky, someone will find your pitch compelling and you can get a page or two in a high-circulation magazine. ( http://www.elle.com/inthemag/articles/apri...ain/main_01.asp ) Rebecca Charles has always done well with the media: Pearl Oyster Bar was reviewed in Gourmet, and often gets mentioned in New York Magazine et al. What it all boils down to is that she has made a compelling case for her restaurant's uniqueness. Without uniqueness, it's virtually impossible to conduct an effective media marketing campaign. You might be able to get a review and a few notices early on, but unless you offer something to distinguish yourself from the 20,000 other restaurants in New York, and you continually renew that offer over time, you're going to dip under the media's radar and never emerge.
FG - Interesting you mention that. Rebecca Charles was just on NPR's Weekend Edition with Liane Hansen. Audio available after noon today. Here's the link.
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1. Temperature control is largely a matter of small adjustments. It takes 15 to 30 minutes for any adjustment to be fully realized in the smoke chamber's temperature.
2. Flue adjustments are as important as fire box vent adjustments. In fact, the temperature is less sensitive to flue adjustment and therefore is the preferred "tweak" for small temperature changes.
3. You have to watch it like a hawk.
Things I would change about the Smoking Pro if I was in charge of the world:
1. A longer flue pipe.
2. A thermostatically-controlled damper in the flue; I think this would even out the temperature changes a little.
3. A vent control between the fire box and the smoking chamber. This along with a separate flue pipe on the fire box would allow better control over the temperature.
All good observations. I don't do much smoking (Klink has to get in here), but I have been designing and building wood-fired heaters since 1975.
The most interesting change (to me) you propose is, "2. A thermostatically-controlled damper in the flue; I think this would even out the temperature changes a little." Take that and go beyond to electrically connecting that to a servo driven firebox air intake and it could be interesting - though if it worked right it would take all the "fun" out of having to constantly watch things.
Don't know as a vent control between the fire box and smoker would do much.
Have to wait to see what Klink thinks.
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It is of course almost always possible to find a socio-cultural-historical explanation for a given example of etiquette. That doesn't mean it makes sense from any sort of utility perspective beyond assuring predictability (a benefit that dosen't much depend on the content of a rule). In addition, there's a world of difference between table manners and social etiquette. Social etiquette tends to, or should tend to, serve the needs of society by assuring pleasant social interchange. Rudeness in that context is bad because it hurts people's feelings and sometimes worse. Table manners -- if by table manners we mean mechanical things like how clear plates, pour stuff, hold the fork and knife, etc. -- are for the most part status-indicators and little more. Yes, placing the cutlery a certain way to indicate you're done eating makes sense. But it doesn't really matter what that convention is: you could just as easily say the cutlery should be placed in a cup or whatever.
Steven, I think you should give up going to law seminars for awhile.
Could this be translated as - It's okay to do anything within certain bounds and others should not make a big deal out of it?
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Oh dear, why am I so bitter this morning?
Hangover?
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.... and now the K company recommends an initial low temperature firing schedule for the first few uses to cure the tile bonding and drive out any remaining moisture from the castings.
Good info, Alan.
If the castings are now now stable through a range of temperature change (700F), then that could well be the problem - people high-firing right away with no break-in. My experience is with masonry heaters/ovens and they have to be broken-in with several low firings to get rid of moisture.
If I were to get one I'd probably skip the tiles as they could always be a future source of problems, particularly if they're out in the open exposed to the elements.
Edit: Fifi mentions silicone as a bonding material, but I'm not sure there are any that can take the temps these cookers can reach. The soapstone heaters and ovens my customers build use water glass (sodium silicate) as the bonding agent between the stones. I'm not sure if this would work with tiles though.
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Barley miso. Haven't been using miso much lately - like ten years. Back when I was into it I liked the corn miso made by South River. Got some Erewhon miso (barley) in the cupboard that's going on thirty years old. Just dug it out and had a taste - it's getting pretty dried out. Taste is now more salt than flavor. Guess I blew it.
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The Kamado cookers....... I have never owned one but have two friends who do; they were initailly please but not so happy when the exterior tiles started to fall off and/or crack.
Last night I went to the Kamado link given by Jason and noticed this under the history section at the site -
"A major component of the U.S. made Kamado was a ceramic mineral that contracted with heat, allowing for a zero coefficient of expansion. The mineral came from Rhodesia; however, in the early 1970’s the U.S. put an embargo on all imports from Rhodesia. Efforts to find a substitute formula failed, and production of the Kamado was discontinued." Underlining mine.
Perhaps they have still not found another ceramic material with a zero coefficient of expansion. With a significant differential in expansion between the foundation ceramic and the tiles, it would take an amazing joining compound to keep the tiles in place.
Just my .02.
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Time to go clean the 10 inch maple saplings out of my gutters
. What??? Got a pic?
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I suspect that the elbow thing is aimed directly at children. They get bored and slouch all over the table, even when eating. This simple rule prevents that.
Adults can look tidy and attentive with their elbows on the table, children cannot. Especially because of their height.
Since this has come up I've gotten to wondering if it doesn't have something to do with the table cloth. Like skewing it one way or the other. (We always ate with a tablecloth - usually white linen at the more celebratory dinners.)
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But did he use his left hand, or his right?
Right of course. Would have been something if we'd used Euro ways and he'd had to reach all the way across himself with the fork held in left hand.
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Anyone know the reason for "elbows off the table"???
Not really. But, when I was growing up my father sat to my left at the head of the table and if I chanced to have my left elbow on the table I would soon receive the tines of his fork to remind me of proper manners.
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Is there a single eGulleter who (assume formal/fine-dining situations only) does the fork-switching thing?
Add me to this small uncultured group. Somehow eating this way seems more deliberate and thoughtful of whatever it is that you're about to put in your mouth; rather than always having fork and knife at the ready for another shovelful.
I always eat this way, even in the company of those more of the "proper" etiquette set. They can always shrug their shoulders and assume that I'm from some far off Province - which I am.
Favorite Camping Meals and Snacks
in Cooking
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No camping trip is complete without cans of vienna sausages and potato sticks.