IndyRob

Crap. I believe I have one in my basement that is destined for the dump. I'll now be obliged to take it apart. But it kinda' seems like the cooking equivalent of wrestling a grizzly bear.

I read the topic title as "Is $275 Steel Food Safe?" I thought "Yeah, but you're paying too much."

I impulse-bought some Irish Bangers I found at ALDI last week and served them the other night with pierogies and sauteed onions. The bangers had a very light texture - almost souffle-like. I guess that's the bread content.

Oddly enough, I recently had to develop a unique cutting style for my grilled cheese sandwiches. I've been using Texas toast bread (i.e. thick white bread slices) and three slices of American cheese. So I've got a tall grilled sandwich with oozey, slidey, cheese in the middle. I needed to cut it without smashing the height, or pressing the cheese out. What I came up with was to use a simple table knife (the one that portioned the pats of butter for me), held vertically and repeatedly gently stabbed from top to bottom to create a perforated line across the sandwich. Do this once or twice to create a path that can be finished off with a normal slicing action.

I've used a technique from Jacques Pepin that worked out very well for me - but not so much when I tried to add sous vide to the mix.... First, make a cut halfway through the thigh on each side of the bone. This helps the skin to lay flay completely flat. Then place the thighs skin side down on a hot pan and cover. No oil, no seasoning. Nothing. The fat from the skin will render and crisp up the skin perfectly while the steam cooks the rest of the thigh. My first attempt was perfect, but subsequent attempts taught me that the heat management was non-trivial. So I thought sous vide would be the answer. But it altered both the moisture level and shape of the thigh. I think I'm going to go back and try to perfect my use of his technique.

There's only one thing that bugs me about the new show. And that is Bridget appearing to act surprised about some sort novel technique. We all know damn well that she's been poking her head into the test kitchen for weeks. Yes, ditto with CK, but he had stepped back into that role many seasons before. That had become his place. All they had to do was hire someone personable with some experience in TV production. Every local TV news team in the US probably had a viable candidate.

I use a rub before and after. I currently have two racks of ribs in the bath. Both were rubbed before they were cryovac'd. When they come out, they will be glazed and then get another sprinkling of rub. Then they will go into a hot oven whose only job is to crisp up the outside and warm them through. Hot and fast. On the order of 450 degrees for 15 minutes.

The price shown *is* really good. Our local Meijer is trying out this gag, only without heart shaped packaging. They just butterfly an otherwise unsuspecting ribeye so it looks like a heart (well, not a real heart of course, but that B.S. shape that we're all told is heart shaped, even though it bears no resemblance to any internal organ - which, when you really come to think about it, is probably just as well).

I didn't mean to suggest that I had eliminated the possibility of corporate influence from cheese making regulation - just that raw milk sale-ability doesn't seem to correlate with the presence of Big Dairy. An interesting outlier seems to be Georgia where you can buy raw milk cheese, but not raw milk. Random thought: I've read that traditional French cheeses are also under assault by French mass market corporations. Yet, like Italy, they have these..what's it called?.. Protected Designations of Origin? These are also very rigid bureaucratic standards, no? The old ones are good? I don't mean to take a side. Just to get everything on the table to be sorted.

I find myself becoming increasingly cynical about corporate influence in state lawmaking. So I wondered if the nation's largest dairy states would have the most prohibitive laws against raw milk. Looking at the results on this basis, I don't think it's proven (although I probably would've been ecstatic if it proved otherwise). Below is the result of combining two web pages: http://stuffaboutstates.com/agriculture/livestock/dairy.htm http://milk.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005192 I don't claim any degree of accuracy by either of the sites, and even less to the accuracy with which I've quickly combined them. But it doesn't appear that there is a correlation between big dairy states and prohibiting raw milk. I wonder if there may be other state rankings which might correlate. (And, BTW, dcarch, the second link does indicate states where raw milk as animal feed is legal. It doesn't seem like very many - but it could be it was only included if it was readily apparent from the statutes) Rank State Value ($1,000) % of Total U.S. Status 1 California 5365992 19.61% Allowed 2 Wisconsin 3687749 13.47% On-farm 3 New York 1950144 7.13% On-farm 4 Pennsylvania 1768976 6.46% Allowed 5 Idaho 1358400 4.96% Allowed 6 Minnesota 1336334 4.88% On-farm 7 Michigan 1020380 3.73% Cow-share 8 New Mexico 1000224 3.65% Allowed 9 Texas 975718 3.57% On-farm 10 Washington 857010 3.13% Allowed 11 Ohio 751980 2.75% Cow-share 12 Iowa 620052 2.27% Prohibited 13 Arizona 570381 2.08% Allowed 14 Indiana 490646 1.79% Prohibited 15 Vermont 433823 1.59% On-farm 16 Florida 431616 1.58% Prohibited 17 Oregon 359520 1.31% On-farm 18 Colorado 343281 1.25% Cow-share 19 Kansas 339570 1.24% On-farm 20 Illinois 308819 1.13% On-farm 21 Virginia 308417 1.13% Cow-share 22 Missouri 298808 1.09% On-farm 23 Utah 250415 0.91% On-farm 24 Kentucky 236640 0.86% Prohibited 25 Georgia 235536 0.86% Prohibited (Raw Milk Cheese okay) 26 South Dakota 220440 0.81% On-farm 27 Oklahoma 218575 0.80% On-farm 28 Maryland 196010 0.72% Prohibited 29 Tennessee 193368 0.71% Cow-share 30 North Carolina 170796 0.62% Prohibited 31 Nebraska 168480 0.62% On-farm 32 Maine 109260 0.40% Allowed 33 North Dakota 83945 0.31% Cow-share 34 Louisiana 77220 0.28% Prohibited 35 Nevada 74947 0.27% Allowed 36 Connecticut 67124 0.25% Allowed 37 Mississippi 63336 0.23% Prohibited 38 Montana 53165 0.19% Prohibited 39 New Hampshire 52923 0.19% Allowed 40 Arkansas 52080 0.19% On-farm 41 Massachusetts 51275 0.19% On-farm 42 South Carolina 49416 0.18% Allowed 43 Alabama 43497 0.16% Prohibited 44 New Jersey 32308 0.12% Prohibited 45 West Virginia 31515 0.12% Cow-share 46 Delaware 21488 0.08% Prohibited 47 Hawai`i 20175 0.07% Prohibited 48 Wyoming 9828 0.04% On-farm 49 Rhode Island 3434 0.01% Prohibited* 50 Alaska 2822 0.01% Cow-share * Interesting note: Apparently, in Rhode Island you can buy raw goats milk directly from the producer if you have a doctor's prescription.

I don't get it. You want something unnaturally blue without adding unnatural blue?

http://www.foodandwine.com/chefs/usa-wins-gold-medal-in-2017-bocuse-dor I knew it was only a matter of time before the world had to embrace hot dogs and tater tots.

Well, they were during the Larry Bird era, but they've gotten longer since then. I have a rule of thumb that says whenever you call a professional into your house, you are out $200 as soon as they walk in the door. But with appliance repairmen, it won't likely be much more. Because the parts are just that cheap. As you've said you've watched the Youtube vids and haven't fixed it yourself, I'll assume that you're not willing to do that (although it could reduce the bill to like, $10 or something). But you've left out a crucial part of the story. Do you like this particular heater-upper contraption? You're going to be spending around $200 to fix it. Another $200 will get a brand new one (or something similar). I think you have to take five minutes in deep contemplation. Stare at the thing, Ask yourself whether you want to spend the rest of your life with it. Are you committed? If you aren't, the nice delivery people will often take the old one away for free - thus relieving you of the burden of the separation.. [spousal related punchline edited 48 times, and finally discarded entirely]

Huh. Looks like I could beat you to him the day before.

I was at a local Meijer store the other day and noticed a sign over their seasonal section in the back of the store - Mercato Italiano. I had to check it out. It appears that they were still stocking it, but had sections for various regions of Italy and various dry, bottled and canned goods appearing on the shelves (it's on the other side of the store from the grocery). I looked in another Meijer today and the same was happening. I found a short release on their website: I didn't notice anything famously lustworthy, but I wonder of those with more knowledge might point to specific items we should snatch up. I also envy *someone* in the Meijer Corporate office who got to design this project - regardless of how well the may have succeeded (or not).

Well, then I think you've put your finger on it.

Someone please tell me that 'sweetening the beak' is a proper translation. That's awesome.

I think it's because he celebrates the exact sort of excess that may make you envious, but perhaps should, on another day, make you angry. Diner food is not about this excessively ugly display of audaciousness. It's a nice grilled cheese sandwich, or a good burger....Things that will leave room for a nice piece of pie. And sometimes those pies will become locally famous by being just a bit more - a little bit higher - a little bit lighter than the last place. But when it becomes all about the the national spotlight, when they are encouraged to be more spicy, more heavy, more, more, more....they become a caricatures of themselves. And they are no longer diner food.

I happened to be in TJ's today and saw a similar product for $6.49 for 8oz. It looks like the Aldi version is $5.99 for 12oz (at least on Wednesday).

I think spruce was used as a substitute for hops by the early euro-americans.

So, this is the end result of imagining whirled peas?

We just got new upgraded cable boxes sent to us. My wife dreaded the trip to the trip to the Comcast Gulag to return the old ones, but I found out they had cut a deal with the UPS Stores. All I had to do was bring them there and they scanned the bar codes, typed some incantations into their computer and printed me a receipt. That reminded me of reading a story in Tom Friedman's book The World is Flat where Toshiba(?) cut a deal with Fed Ex for their computer repairs. If a customer called Toshiba and it was determined that the computer needed to be send in for repair, he would be given instructions on how to ship it back via Fed Ex. And shipped back it it was - to a Fed Ex hub where Toshiba trained Fed Ex employees would effect the repairs. That sort of thing could work for knife sharpening, I suppose. But then again, I got a knife sharpener for Christmas, so, yeah, whatever.

The French made some bank off that idea.

So, no it isn't really - other than to say it may have been noted,

Awesome. That's exactly what we need. Historical and international. So can you look up the definition for Oriental in Massachusetts in 1909? If it involves cream cheese, maple syrup, cherries, and lightly buttered toast, I think we will have made a major breakthrough.