pbear

I've disagreed with Nathan & Co. before, and probably will again. I'm curious whether you've had any problems. I had an upright auto-defrost for years and did not. No longer having the room, I get by now with a small manual defrost and it's a PITA.

What dcarch and mgaretz said! For anyone interested, here's a Wiki article on the subject.

IMHO, one gadget you would find nicely complementary is a countertop convection oven. That's been mentioned a few times already, so consider this a bump. Not the halogen. That's a pain to use and limited in versatility. Not a micro-convect-steam oven. If those things can be combined, no one's done it well yet. Just a well-built, reasonably-sized countertop convection oven. Some like the Breville. I happen to like the controls on the Cuisinart models better. That's something you can research and make up your own mind. What the oven adds to the mix is a different form of cooking, yet very easy to use. One of the best ways to cook fish, chicken and other quick proteins. Brilliant for roasting veggies. Can bake a small tray of cookies or brownies. And great for reheating leftovers.

The first step in trouble shooting is to understand what you're doing. What's the recipe? What dispenser are you using for the batter? How many donuts are you doing in a batch? What's the oil temp? Have you tested it after product is in the vat?

Umm, where does it say that? As I read it, Figure 1 on p.2 of the pdf suggests a deactivation time at that temp of at least an hour, with the first no-death sample at 85 minutes (or so) and the projected best fit line at 100 minutes. Notice that all these samples were at pH 6.8.

Macaroni & Cheese

Don't know whether this will suit your needs, but here's a basic Mexican adobo. It's intended as a simmer sauce for 2 lb meat or equivalent, and so may be thinner than you have in mind. Makes about 3 c. Can be divided into portions and frozen. Chop 1 med onion; mince 6 cl garlic; seed 6 med dried ancho chiles and cut with kitchen shears or tear into small pieces (or use 9 tbsp pulverized). Saute onion in 2 tbsp lard (or oil) until tender, about 10 minutes; add garlic and chiles; saute until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Deglaze with 1 c vegetable stock; bring to a boil; let stand off heat 1 hour covered. Puree in blender with 14 oz crushed tomatoes, 2 tbsp red wine (or cider) vinegar, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp each black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cumin and oregano, and 1/4 tsp ground clove. (Make sure chiles are smooth; if not, strain sauce through a medium-coarse sieve.) Rinse blender with 1/2 c water and add to puree.

You just said the magic word: http://www.google.com/patents/US6209784

If this were my party, I'd start by cooking the lobster tails until just done, then plan on reheating to serve. I'd do stage one by putting all the tails in a large pot and bring it to about 170F. Drain, rinse and hold chilled for Step 2. Which would be to drop into a warming bath of say 140F and plate out as convenient to coordinate with the steaks.

My solution to the latter issue - and I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of this - is to cook the garlic, etc. before bagging. This works with seafood and poultry, as well as meat. For a marinade like that, I'd use a light saute, deglaze with a couple tbsp water and steam covered for several minutes. For something with onions, I'll generally simmer half an hour or so, not so much to eliminate off flavors as to create the texture I prefer in an onion-based sauce. Anyhoo, once done, I let the marinade or sauce cool before bagging. If convenient, it can be prepared a day or more in advance.

I imagine it also would make them easier to vacuum pack without crumbling.

The simple solution to this problem is to treat the cake and fruit separately. Indeed, in my understanding, that's the usual method with angel food cake. So, make the cake plain and prepare a coulis to spoon over each slice.

A quick Google search on the phrase suggests this is mistaken. Whether the "safe" side is right is disputed by some, but no one (AFAICT) says all that matters is whether the container survives.

Mike, expounding on cdh's comment, here's what the U.S. Copyright office says about recipes: The page then goes on to link an article on Copyright Basics which you might find interesting.

Different temps produce different textures. Especially for long cooks - what conventionally would be braises - preferences vary widely. Personally, I'm mostly using 60C/140F for those these days. In the past, I've used 65.5C/150F to good effect,, so 62C/144F doesn't seem unreasonable to me. OTOH, 50C/122F seems low for a holding temp, as it leaves lots of room for thermophilic spoilage but non-pathogenic bacteria. I'd use 55C/131F (not bullet-proof, but better). That's also the temp I generally use for short cooks, lower for seafood (albeit only product I'm confident doesn't need pasteurization and is parasite safe).

BTW, I should have mentioned that, while Nopa has the same owners, the menu is completely different, what I call American Bistro. In fact, it came first. Nopalito was an offshoot, inspired (the owners have explained) by meals the cooks would prepare for staff dinners.

The stuff already mentioned would take you much more than a week, so I'll just mention a few in the spirit of "if you're in the neighborhood." If you're on Clement in the Inner Richmond (where Kamei is located), don't miss Green Apple Books (mentioned above). Also,nearby is the New May Wah Market (the original, in Chinatown, has long since closed). To my mind it's the best all-around Asian market in the city. BTW, that area of Clement is also where you'll find Burma Superstar. If you go to BiRite (Mission district), Tartine Bakery is just a couple blocks away, so that's a twofer. Then, a few more blocks away is Rainbow, a really cool vegetarian health food store (employee owned). If you're at the Ferry Building (recommend highly), there are several interesting shops in addition to those already mentioned. Two standouts are Boccalone (Chris Cosentino's salume shop) and Delica (Japanese-style prepared foods). If you're at Cookin' (on Divisidero, near the Panhandle), another two interesting spots nearby are Falletti Foods and Nopalito (both a block away, on Broderick). Falletti's is a market, Nopalio is perhaps our best Mexican restaurant (good ones being surprisingly hard to find in this town). Another good restaurant nearby (same owners) is Nopa, on Divisidero (at Hayes). Finally, racking my brain for one gem not already on the list, what I've come up with is Polarica. As you can see from the website, their business is supplying unusual items (mostly meats) to restaurants. As someone in the trade, I bet you could score a walk though of the warehouse. (Ordinary customers just get the counter.) It's the one place I can think of which might give you a relationship, not just a bag of goodies, to take home.

As it happens, one of my favorite Korean markets is half-a-block from Japantown. It's called Woo Ri, on Fillmore just below Geary. No idea whether they have acorn liquor. It's a medium-to-small store and liquor is a special license. Worth dropping in on regardless, if you're in the neighborhood. Will give thought to other suggestions. In the meantime, please, SF ("Ess Eff"), not San Fran. ETA to correct spelling.

Also have never had this problem. Let's eliminate another issue. You're using the dough "blade," right, not the knife blade? I ask, in part, because I don't know whether the original Cuisinart even had that tool (got my first in the mid-80s).

An alternate solution would be to get a stand alone electric hot plate, e.g., this Waring unit. (You can find better ones, for more money, at restaurant supply stores.) Be sure to get one with a solid plate, not just a coil. Also handy, by the way, for deep frying outside, etc.

As discussed in slkinsey's excellent article (linked by heidih in Post #2), the main difference among saucepans of the same volume will be surface area vs. depth. That is, most will be somewhat wide and shallow, though less so than saute pans, while others will be comparatively narrow and deep. This can have a significant effect on evaporation. Which is better depends on the application (and often it doesn't matter). Further, a narrow saucepan can be easier to use if one plans to employ an immersion blender, e.g., when making purees or the Modernist Cuisine at Home cheese sauce. This comes up often enough for me (maybe not so much for others) that I went to the trouble of tracking down a narrow 1-1/2 qt saucepan specifically for the purpose. Also, similar to Lisa Shock, I find a narrow saucepan (in my case, a 4 qt stainless) best for deep-frying. Ditto for blanching veggies.

That's it, in a nutshell. The basic idea is that consumers may have confidence in the safety of food products so manufactured. To go deeper will require a lot of reading. Wiki gives a good summary of HACCP generally.. For a more detailed and technical discussion, see this FDA webpage. As applied to the spice products mentioned in the OP, the Canadian regulators have two webpages: HACCP Generic Model for Spices and Food Safety Practices Guidance for Spice Manufacturers. Notice these pages don't tell us exactly what the manufacturers are doing. Rather, they describe principles and procedures to be used in developing HACCP plans. For implementation, we're dependent on the manufacturers themselves (who hire food scientists for the purpose) and oversight by the regulators.

I'm pretty sure we're using the same assumptions regarding the science. Where we differ, I think, is over expectation. So, yes, R-value will tell us how effective the insulation. It's a gradient. Say the inside temp of whatever is being insulated - whether a sous vide bath or a house - is X and the ambient temp is Y. How fast Y will "wick" heat from the box is a function of the heat coefficient of air. How fast X will pump heat into the insulation is a function of the heat coefficient of the medium inside the box. The important difference between a sous vide bath and a house is that water is much more efficient at transferring heat than air. That's why we're using it. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Just as a sous vide bath efficiently heats the pouches, so too does it efficiently heat the insulation. Which is why I say I'm not surprised the insulated box gets warm on the outside. Relating back to the OP, what I think this means is that it's not realistic to expect a UPS to maintain a sous vide bath for long. For a flicker, sure. Even for several minutes. More than this, though, not so much.

Can't speak to the rest, but this isn't surprising. Insulation isn't magic and it's never 100% efficient. Eventually, heat from the water bath will saturate the insulation (figuratively, not literally) and warm the outside surface, where it then dissipates into the air. But the rate of transmission through an insulated container will be much less than that of an uninsulated one, which is what you're after. The easiest way to measure this would be to put a watt meter (available from any hardware store) on the input, i.e., the circulator.

I work in a service business (not restaurant) where tips are an important part of my income. I accept this cultural difference as part of the territory. To expect otherwise isn't realistic, IMHO. If you're any good, it all evens out in the end.