dcarch

I am planning to live a very poor life style as much as I can. Doing Craigslist and Freecycle checking, I have not been buying appliances, construction materials, tools, etc. You can repair many things by going to youtube, I now have 5 working lawnmowers to give away. two extra stoves to give away, two very good mitre saws to give away, computers ----- the list is very long. I have free veggies from my garden. Free fertilizers from my kitchen, free water from my rain barrels. Very soon I will have free sunlight indoors from my 1000 watt LED grow lights for year round vegetables. ($10 per 150w COB LEDs. I posted construction of these lights on the Gardening Forum sometime ago.) But what about electricity? Last week on Craigslist someone was selling damaged solar panels. Now I have solar panels which will give me 2080 watts of free electricity everyday for the next 20 years (estimated solar panel life). Typically you pay $1.00 per watt for solar panels. I paid $120 for the 2080 watts. Poor me. :-) dcarch

I like Mac & Cheese. Big Mac double cheese. dcarch

There is really no reliable way to sanitize many kinds of vegetables. If you look at a 3-D scanning microscope of a vegetable's surface, you will see the surface is like the moon surface, full of cracks, craters, hills, valleys. Plenty of nooks and crannies for pathogens to hide. Due to surface tension of water, water cannot get in these nooks & crannies very well, unless you use strong soapy water, which destroy surface tension. But then, it will take a lot of effort to wash out the soapy taste. Ultrasonic power can do a better job of getting into tiny places thru cavitation. Ozone is a power agent for sterilization. They do sell vegetable sterilizer which uses both ultrasonic and ozone generator. dcarch

I take friends to congee places because they are gluten sensitive. I get to eat their youtiao. LOL. dcarch

I have not been to the entire China, Japan, Korea, vietnam, etc. I am sure there are many areas where congee is not served with youtiao, but according to some WEB information,: "Yóu Tiáo (Chinese: 油条), also known as Chinese cruller, oil stick, doughnut, and breadstick, is a trip of fried dough that is typically eaten for breakfast. It usually is served as an accompaniment with rice congee, soy milk, or tofu soup where they are either served whole to be dipped into the liquid or cut into smaller pieces to be sprinkled on top. " dcarch

Mr. Kim is a very wise man. dcarch

There is a restaurant here in downtown NYC where only congee is served. My favorite is the one with a type of dried fish, (not salted fish) and peanuts. Very simple classic oldie recipe, but very satisfying. Must eat with deep fried doughnut sticks (YOUTIAO?). dcarch

Thank you very much. dcarch

"------ Risotto (/rɪˈzɒtoʊ/, Italian: [riˈzɔtto], from riso meaning "rice")[1] is a northern Italian rice dish cooked with broth until it reaches a creamy consistency. The broth can be derived from meat, fish, or vegetables. -----" I an trying to be funny. So often I fail dcarch

You guys don't know anything about what you can do with different pasta shapes. dcarch

It's risotto, except thinner. dcarch

Temperature was going to drop below freezing. I rushed out and picked the renaming ripen tomatoes and made the last 2020 BLT s. dcarch

Thanks! You made my day. I though I was the only one . Fun reading, Great writing. dcarch

I like pasta too, all shapes except one. I can't figure out how to cook bow tie pasta. The center always getting uncooked because it's much thicker there. dcarch

In all these years I have shopped in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese markets, I have never come across those "pasta" except the last one. I have not been to China recently, but those many times I traveled to China, I had never seen those either. I have never seen any restaurant served those either dcarch

When I go to a Chinese market, I enjoy walking thru the noodles isle. Chinese - many many doodles made from different flour, they all taste different, but they all look more or less the same. All noodles. Italian - Many many pasta shapes, but they all more or less taste the same. dcarch

No squashes this year. All squash plants were killed by borers. I found out that squash borer moths fly at night. So I got a UV zapper to kill them. Now it's fall, no more moths, so I had the zappers in the kitchen. Amazingly, the zapper is much more effective in killing off those annoying house flies. In less than an hour, all flies got vaporized. I hereby declare : My house is a no fly zone! Anyway, before that, I found out that flies did not taste like chicken, certainly they tasted even less like raisins. Please, please don't ask how I found out. Thank you. dcarch

dcarch

Not sure what I had done can be useful for you. I had steak SV'ing at 129F, I put the frozen lobster tails in the same bath for about 30 minutes. Then I took the steak out and add boiling water to the bath to raise the bath temperature to 135F instantly. 20 minutes later, I put ice cubes in the bath to instantly lower the temperature back to 129F. put the staek back in, SV for 15 minutes. Then both the lobsters and steak are ready for searing and serving at the same time. dcarch

Get a trail cam, as cheap as $40. You can find out what kind of critters have been messing up your garden day and night, and then work out a way to deal with them. I found out it was my neighbor's dog which dug up my yard at night. My neighbor fixed their fence. dcarch

Inspired by Franci's lobster dinner. I went out and got myself some. Not grilled, just sous vide'd. dcarch

I expect their accuracy rate turns out to be close to 100%. Here is the system I developed: 1. Inexpensive weed control landscape fabric, which allows watering but blocks weeds. 2. "A" is a 1 1/2" metal tube. The tube is heated up using a blow torch. It can cut holes thru the fabric easily and quickly. 3. "B" is another 1 1/2" tube used to core and remove soil thru the same holes, leaving a precise hole in the soil at a depth good for garlic. 4. "C" is a plunger to push the soil inside tube "B" to cover the garlic clove inside the hole. 5. "D" is a ruler to make sure proper social distancing between cloves are maintained. :-) Everything is reusable. Same system is used for growing a few other seedlings, if weed control is needed. dcarch

Planted 165 garlic cloves. Proper social distancing between cloves. dcarch

BLT never. (Better Late Than never) Cold weather is here. Not many tomato days left. dcarch

My uneducated opinion: 1. I have never seen browning vegetables in a Chinese restaurant. Browning food is generally considered unhealthy and to be avoided. 2. Blast furnace hot stove creates appetizing aroma in the air (wok hei?). 3. Blast furnace hot stove for restaurants cooks food faster, and therefore faster customer turnover. 4. In the old China days, pork fat was used frequently for cooking, and fatty meat was preferred. Yes, extreme heat makes lots of aromatic hydrocarbons and Maillard reaction with fat. But high heat does not much to lean chicken white meat cooked in vegetable oil. dcarch