dcarch

Beef will not get tender no matter how you cut it. Cross grain cutting, pounding, ---- make it chewable, but not tender. Buy prime grade beef, marinate it with papaya extract , you will have real tender beef. dcarch

To get a frozen turkey to room temperature takes a very long time, long enough for part of the bird to get into food safety danger zone. A warmer bird helps, but not that much. Thermal conductivity is a physical constant, you can't make heat travel faster, you can only make travel distance shorter, which is what I was doing. dcarch

Yes, I have done that, but that takes longer. Two ways I have tried: a. A heated thermal gel packs inside a food safe SV bag. b. Electric 50 watt heater with PID control inside a SV bag. The bird was whole, not trussed. Because I don't like soggy skin which you will get if trussed. I can't think of another way to have the chicken (turkey) cooked uniformly to about 140F - 145F very quickly and at the end with very crispy skin. If the bird is cooked, say in an 375F oven, there is no way that part of the meat will not be cooked at 212F. There is a big difference in juiciness between meat cooked at 212F and 140F. Why is placing a heater inside the cavity takes a lot of work? Seems less work than deboning, spachcocking, trussing ----. dcarch

To me, roasting chicken and roasting turkey represents a great challenge. There are so many parts in a very thick and very cold bird, each requires a different way of cooking it. Here is a method I am trying out, with a chicken first, then I will be doing it with a Thanksgiving turkey. 1. Chicken is dry brined all over, under the skin and inside the cavity. This is very easy to do. Refrigerate chicken overnight. 2. Take the cold chicken out of the refrigerator into the convection oven set at 170F, and at the same time cook the chicken from inside out with a heater inside the chicken's cavity. This solves the universal problem of quickly and evenly cooking a big cold bird with thick meat. using very low temperature. The convection oven dries up the skin, which is required for the skin to be crispy. 3. Once the internal temperature reaches 140F, The bird is taken out and into the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, get the oven's broiler fired up at high. 4. Take the bird out from the refrigerator after 20 minutes and put it into the broiler. To help better making the skin evenly crispy, use aluminum foil as reflectors, shiny side facing the bird at 45 degree angle. Broiler cooks by infrared and aluminum reflect IR. This setup minimizes soggy skin. Sounds a very complicated way to roast a chicken or turkey. I don't think so, especially not with what the end result I can get. dcarch

I like dark meat. Ducks, 100% dark meat. I like duck eggs, they are larger and the yolks are also much larger than chicken eggs. You can find in NYC stores duck tongues. Interesting, one day I will buy some. You can find smoked ducks. I also like duck liver sausage. Another interesting thing in NYC stores, deboned duck feet. How do they do that?! dcarch

I think there is Kosher butter. No? dcarch

I don't think there is lead based black pigment. Flat black paint is always used in solar ovens for food. In any case flat black will soon be glossy from greasy fingers. dcarch

One of the factors, how salty is it? dcarch

Nothing you do can kill off ants. Vast areas in Texas and in Florida were under very deep water for a long time. Do you think there will be no more ants in those areas? dcarch

Some of them eat caterpillars. dcarch

Massive aerial insect spraying is being done to prevent mosquitoes in all the states effected by Irma. Guess how healthy that is to all the bees and to all the other beneficial insects. Guess how that will impact the delicate enviro/eco balance. dcarch

Beekeeping, just like urban chicken, is a code violation in most communities. dcarch

There are so many kinds of eggplants. I don't think you can generalize. dcarch

Chef designed? I don't think chefs can design any machine. Good sales pitch. Have you noticed that all quality cordless power tools are now powered by brushless motors? I believe very soon blenders will follow. I want a blender with a small but powerful motor that runs super fast and very quiet, also long lasting. That would be a brushless motor powered blender. I want a blender with better blade steel that can stay sharp. I want a blender that can have supercapacitors built in to give incredible burst of instant power beyond the power limit of 1800 watts of your typical outlet. I want a blender with a variable speed control from 0 to max RPM. (40,000 RPM would be nice, reversible would be nice, ) I do not want an "Intelligent" machine! Not until I get some strange brain deceased that causes most of my brain cells to die off. dcarch

In NYC, apartment buildings will not allow access to roof tops due to insurance and liability issues. Office building roof tops are expensive real estates for cooling towers, elevator machine rooms, window cleaning rigs, exhaust fans, generators, etc. dcarch

Malabar spinach is a wonderful vegetable. It is also a very beautiful decorative plant in your garden. dcarch

Kind of like my goji berry plant. dcarch

what is it? dcarch

Bees forage 2 to 6 miles from hives. Bees can also make honey from sugar water. They will not operate for too long. They will be sued for $$$ if someone is allergic to bee stings. Liability lawyers love situations like this. dcarch

Difficult to say what's behind this ridiculous action: "---------------However it seems possible that cheese ban is itself a tit-for-tat response to an earlier move by the UK. On April 30, the day before British cheese exports to China were blocked, the UK adopted an EU law that bans the sale of unlicensed herbal products, in particular those used for Chinese herbal medicine.------" dcarch

May have nothing to do with bacteria and science. perhaps international economic politics? trade negotiations/deals? Like "If you buy my cooked chickens, I will buy your beef"? dcarch

Happened today. Working in my garden, I get all kinds of bug bites. Two days ago I found a rash near my ankle. It is a ring like rash. I googled and the rash kind of looks like Lyme tick bite manifestation. I immediately made an appointment to see a lyme disease specialist. Doctor, " Yeah, interesting rash, but it does not look like a lyme tick bite. But have you other unusual symptoms, headache? fever? fatigue?---" Me, trying to be funny, "No doctor; but I suddenly have this craving for Key Lyme pie." Doctor, "That can be worrisome. I will have to give you a Key Lyme blood test to make sure." dcarch

Based on the law of Newtonian physics, it is impossible to pull noodles successfully. Unless you can achieve 100 % purity, 100% uniformity of dough diameter, which is not possible, the weakest link in the thread of noodles will always fail much quicker and break immediately. However, it is interesting that the Chinese pulled noodles technique has created a non-newtonian condition with dough/water mixture and the dough can behave in a very strange way. Check out youtube about other non-Newtonian videos. That is the key, I believe, to the whole puzzlement why you fail to pull noodles successfully after a hundred experiments. dcarch

Artichokes and tomatoes can be perennials in LA, but not in NY. I think all edible weeds in NY are perennials. You can never get rid of them. :-( dcarch

In LA? Everything is perennial. Amaranth is semi-perennial. It comes back every year from self-seeding. dcarch