Dakki

Well, it just didn't work. The cream cheese part was delicious, like a light cheesecake, but the brownie part utterly failed to rise. Tasted fine, but it was hard and crust-like, not like a brownie at all. I served it anyway and just told people I'd accidentally doubled the crust. >_>

Every machinist I know (and a lot of people who aren't machinists) thinks they can sharpen on a bench grinder, and every one of them makes a mess of it. It's just too easy to take off far too much metal. I just wouldn't give my good knives to someone who uses power tools to sharpen, period.

Martin: No objections to your premises if applied to most devices, but you should be aware the iPad does not multitask or support Flash, so no embedded videos, etc. johung: I think your objections are valid, depending on how you use hard-copy cookbooks in the first place, and your personal attitude towards media that's delivered digitally. I for one don't feel much of a difference reading a novel on my PC or on paper. The PC does make it easier to search and skip to the good bits in manuals etc, but the way I use cookbooks this is a positive advantage. (Also, I get inspired to try cooking something new far more often from seeing it in forums etc. than I get when leafing through a cookbook. Something to do with the possibility of popping in and asking questions if necessary, maybe?) So, there's space for both types for the foreseeable future I guess?

T-FAL pressure cooker. I bought this when I was on an extremely tight budget and it nearly broke my heart. It won't go up to the pressures required for canning, which was its intended purpose. Maybe not a total loss, though; I use it for steaming and as a container for transporting soups and stews to potluck-type events. Also, it taught me to research before putting down my money, which has probably saved me quite a bit of money over the years. EDIT: It's a total waste of money because for a few dollars more you can get a pressure canner, which does everything this toy does as well or better and allows you to can things besides.

Let's see... ice (2x) gallons ice cream (chocolate and vanilla) (8x) water-filled juice bottles for the cooler (6x) ground beef (ziplocked in serving-sized portions) (4x) pork chops (ditto) (7x) thin-sliced round (ditto) 2/3 bag pork skin (boneless alternative to trotters, in case anyone wonders) 1 lb chorizo (8x) old french bread (for croutons/stuffing) ~12 lbs of bacon ends and pieces (bought on sale) ~20 lbs of chicken thighs (ditto) ~9 lbs of shelled pecans (ditto) ~2 lb squid ~2 lb tilapia fillets (not sure why I got this) 2/3 lb unsalted butter bag o' leftover beef bones (for stock) leftover roast pork leg from New Years' (for bean soup) You watch me, I'll get my stuff together and beat Chris at this game...

Cream cheese brownies, recipe found on the web. I've never made these before and baking is my weakest point. We'll see how they come out.

Virginia Tech has a nice collection of old cookbooks online (there are others): http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/digital_books/ I see 3931 Food, Wine and Cooking eBooks on Amazon's Kindle store. Too lazy to check other stores (is Apple's open yet? They just introduced their tablet today, and apparently they have deals with just about everyone to publish books in an iTunes-like store).

This problem has been mostly solved by storing data in open, standards-compliant formats like HTML rather than proprietary formats like MS .doc. Things written in "old" HTML will remain readable to any software that can read "new" HTML (such as a web browser) and, being open, anyone can freely write and distribute software that reads HTML without fear of beig hauled off to court (for example, Firefox). Thing is, open standards do not support copy protection schemes, which is naturally going to bother any publisher. Your main problem, then, is going to be keeping the Digital Rights Management-protected books you bought readable after Amazon goes kaput and your Kindle buys the farm. On-topic, I guess I'm in the "room for both" group. I'd say I probably get about half my recipes and much of my techniques online and, as FatGuy said, eReaders are already good and getting better with every generation. I completely understand people who don't feel they'll get the same pleasure reading from an electronic device as from a dead tree book, as I feel the same way about my own little library of classics and literary novels. (Nope, leaving a well-thumbed hardback copy of Gravity's Rainbow where the guests can see it doesn't come into this at all. ) On the other hand the internet has given us access to thousands of books (including cookbooks) that are just not realistically available in hard copy anymore. I challenge you to find a copy of Miss Beecher's Receipt (sic) Book in a used book store for a price you'd pay for a book and not a historical artifact. Electronic media also has a big advantages in that amateurs can share their knowledge with others, and we're not constrained by the economics of traditional publishing. I've posted my frijoles charros recipe on another forum, with dozens of color photos and longwinded clarifications regarding the different kinds of beans, the variety of aromatic vegetables and pork products one can put in and the differences between varieties of chiles. Printing it up in a cookbook would be prohibitively expensive. Finally, I use my cookbooks as reference tools that get opened when cooking and compiling a shopping list, not bedtime reading, but I can see there's a lot of people here who like nothing better than curling up with Julia Child. The publishing industry is going to cater to us all, luddites, food porn readers and kitchen engineers.

Prawncrackers - Love your collection. I feel I'm about 90% there. Awww ! You left out the best bit ? We love that stuff around here - knock yourself out. Extra points for pointless. What can you add to the bible ? Not a whole lot, but I could probably do a short bit on materials from an engineer's viewpoint if someone held a gun to my head. Let me gather my thougts and I'll post something.

Paul and Blether - Thanks for the links. Looking at Itasan18's videos right now. Linda - the Japanese knives I've handled have generally much better than comparable Western knives due to (I started writing a longwinded, highly technical, boring and pointless monologue here - sorry, guys, I make a living making things out of steel so it's important and interesting to me) but I only use the Western-style ones, so if you're thinking about Japanese-style knives I can't help you at all. I will say I think a good gyuto/chef's is the best of all worlds and Western-made santokus would probably be the worst, but that's just my opinion.

Add canned mushrooms, cream of mushroom soup and fideo to mine. Also, hardboiled eggs that are not devilled. :yuck:

"Wonderful," used as follows: (Actual example from some NYT food thing, paraphrased because my memory =! perfect). "You could make a sandwitch out of genoa salami, gruyere cheese, and some WONDERFUL sliced bread..." What if I don't have access to wonderful bread? Should I stop shopping at my local bakery? What if I'm just not that into bread? What if my bread categories are "good," "edible" and "inedible"? Am I not enough of a foodie because I can't even imagine what WONDERFUL bread would be like? If I had some wonderful bread, I'd eat the bread by itself and skip the whole sandwitchmaking thing, actually. No use wasting that wonderful bread on a sandwitch that's just going to be mediocre by comparison, what with adding all those other, non-wonderful ingredients. If they're trying to communicate the quality of their ingredients, brand names, origins, types or something like "strong" or "mild" or "fresh" or "aged" might help. You know, words with concrete, objective meanings. "Wonderful" just makes me think they needed to pad the article a little and they aren't very good writers.

Processed cheese and cheese foods (Velveeta, Cheez Whiz, etc) and dried meat snacks such as Slim Jim. (I enjoy homemade jerky though, and made a big batch this week.)

I've been told that you should use a duller edge mincing basil for pesto, to bring out the essential oils.

Chris - thanks, is there an online tutorial on the Japanese knife techniques you mentioned? Maybe I'm not getting the most out of my Japanese-style knives because I just don't know how to use them right. EDIT: I see what you mean with the straight edge and the strands, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for me with the chef's. I rock it from the tip towards the back, with a spot always in contact with the board, and a small rearwards movement throughout so it cuts as a "slice" as well as a "push cut". I don't know if it's technically correct and it took some practice until I could do it automatically but it gives me clean cuts and it's adequately fast.

Chris - I have the exact same knife, as well as the 10" chef's and a santoku by the same makers. The chef's just seems to get used much more. What do you do with yours that you wouldn't do with the chef's?

So as I understand it, there's two schools regarding kitchen knives: those who say you need the right tool for the job and those who say you can do anything with the chef's, paring and (sometimes) bread knives. I think I belong to the second category, at least when helping others with gentle suggestions ("You're seriously going to buy a Cutco 34 piece set? Were you dropped on your head as an infant?") but there's a couple of extra knives I use in the kitchen. These are the knives I reach for when I don't reach for the aforementioned three: Junky knife from the dollar store: The first kitchen knife I ever bought, back when I moved out from my parents' house well over a decade ago. It's shaped roughly like a chef's but never had nearly enough "belly" and was only 6" long to boot. These days it's nearly unrecognizable in shape, due to my grinding out nicks and chips from the edge over the years. It lost about 1/4" from the tip when I dropped it on the floor once and now sports a cool "tanto-style" profile. I keep it sharp but it won't hold an edge very long, which helps me practice my sharpening skills. This one lives in my knife block, and gets used for cutting cardboard and rope and by clumsy guests who want to help in the kitchen. Swiss Army "Soldier": You know how you can go to someone's house for a BBQ, offer to help with the food prep and the sharpest thing they own is the chisel in the garage? A well-sharpened pocketknife can help! This one lives on my keyring. I like the Soldier model because its not so bulky it's uncomfortable to keep in my pocket all day, and Swiss Army knives are associated with benevolent things like the Boy Scouts and MacGuyver by non-knife people who might feel threatened by one of the more "tactical" folders. Small chef's knife: I suppose this is a bit of a cheat because it's a chef's but still. I find the 10" chef's is just too unwieldy to finely mince small amounts of ingredients (such as garlic) so I use a 6" "Alton's Angles" Shun I got on sale. The angle on the handle makes the knife act as if it had a lot more "belly" than the shape of the blade by itself would, which I think helps a lot in quickly mincing things. I understand mezzalunas are made for this purpose and Messermeister makes a special knife for just this purpose as well. Boning knife: I like to buy large bone-in cuts of meat for stirfries and stews and screwed things up enough times with the 10" chef's that I got a knife just for this purpose. It makes things far easier, with much less meat left on the bones. So what do you guys use when you don't use a chef's, bread or paring knife?

I'm under the impression that soaking in hot water works better for most things but cold seems to work better for stuck on eggs or cheese. Would anyone care to confirm/correct this?

I need one of those, and I already own a scale.

From The Forty-five Guardsmen by Alexandre Dumas, pere. Chapter 20