Mjx

I notice that the specs mention that the scale updates every 200ms, perhaps some muck got in, which is affecting the sensor?

Absolutely: It is particularly important to not anchor it securely, so that when you need to vacuum the shelves, the paper gets sucked up the nozzle and makes horrendous sounds. Seriously, the only thing in that category that sort of makes sense to me is the plasticated (?) contact 'paper', which makes it easy to wipe down the shelves, if you have things on them that tend to drip. It has to be put down very carefully, or it looks depressing. Refinishing/painting shelves with washable paint seems like a more effective strategy, though. Paper, I really don't get.

How old is the scale, and what sort of internal mechanism does it have? If the mechanism includes a spring of any description (rather than sensors only), I suspect it has become fatigued, and I don't know that there is anything that can be done to fix that; I'm fairly certain that a sensor would have a defined life-span, too.

Hm. I've never heard this use, but (in the US), I've seldom been out of NYC. It rings no bell in terms of something seen in a cookbook or culinary publication, either, but again, my experience is bound to be restricted. Perhaps the best way to get a good regional/generational spread on this usage would be to put this out there as a naked topic question, with no background (which tends to suck picky grammarians like myself into tangents)?

As both MaxH and ermintrude point out, the use of 'French fry' to mean 'deep fry' is essentially American, which may make it a source of confusion for those who aren't familiar with US English. Using 'French fry' as a verb is ambiguous, and besides, it's no shorter than 'deep fry', so why use it as a synonym? 'Deep fry' is clear, widely understood, and won't be turned into 'freedom fry' by a bunch of dolts the next time France does something that aggravates.

Oh, I know. About which board this is, I mean But looking at what's already here gives Matutu something to browse while waiting for specific responses to this topic, and, from what I recollect, a quite varied array of recommendations were made in that topic (it was the most recent), some of which are likely to suit his father's tastes, and Matutu's, too.

I confess that this is the sort of thing I sometimes catch myself doing, and that makes me scared that all my OCD stuff is spiralling out of my control. The fact that I find the idea of doing something like this very attractive, is not helping How long did this take, and did you have to fiddle with it a bit, to get it just right?

Yes, or, you know, drive for a couple of hours to the nearest country that wasn't blocking the site.

Quite a few recommendations to get you started, under eG Forums > Regional Cuisine > Europe > United Kingdom & Ireland > United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining (including this recent one).

I'm currently situated in the EU, and cannot access Williams-Sonoma's website, but get this message when I try: Sorry, due to website restrictions we are unable to display the requested page. This has been going on for several months, and I have no idea of what these website restrictions might be (their 'newsletter' still shows up in my inbox, so it doesn't seem as though they're blackballing me personally). Is anyone else in the EU (or any other area outside North America/the US) having this same problem, or have any idea of the reason for this?

Gloves make sense, but I'm curious as to whether the contamination is surface contamination, or found deep in the muscle tissue too. In the book Guess What Came to Dinner', the author describes a protocol for killing superficial pathogens on food (including bacteria), which may be worth looking into, particularly for households that include the very young/elderly. So much for antibiotic use in animal husbandry not being a problem.

Among healthcare professionals, there are those who believe that humans do best when they consume very little in the way of carbohydrates (particularly in the form of starches and processed sugars), and others who believe that significant quantities of carbohydrates are important to health. Put really, really simply, carbohydrates are primarily used by the body for fuel, while the body uses fats and proteins to rebuild existing structures, and, when there is an excess, as fuel. The more active you are, the more nutrients your body requires, both for structural maintenance and fuel (something worth keeping in mind when research done on athletes is cited as evidence for either stance). Both stances are 'up in the air', because the tendency is to claim that one approach or the other is best for all, although from what I've seen, this actually varies from one person to the other, and there isn't any single approach that works best for everyone/all the time (but it's fairly simple to figure out on your own, for yourself). As far as sugar being poisonous goes, it's definitely possible to have a firmly-held, apparently well-supported belief without commercial motivation (consider the people who may be seen holding signs saying 'Sinners repent, the end is nigh!', or, if you've lived in NYC for a while, the shouty woman who was strongly anti-pornography, and could be seen regularly in Union Square); this won't necessarily make you right. As others have pointed out, many innocuous things may become toxic if they're taken in excess, and agreed, that, as a population, we eat too much sugar. However, the suggestion that sugar is a poison is far from new, and many decades of research have yielded no conclusive evidence that it is actually poisonous to humans, although it's reasonable to assume it wouldn't hurt to cut down a goodish bit. What's troubling about this (or any) extreme stance is that it inevitably creates a reflexive backlash, leading to precisely opposite results to those desired (perhaps, then, this guy is actually in the pay of the sugar people ).

Spent a little time looking, but found nothing that really applied. Ask the manufacturer? The exact chemical composition of this stuff really should be clearly identified on the label, the same as if it were being supplied to a lab. Are there any other identifiers on the plain 'Gellan' packet, apart from 'gellan' (e.g. LT)?

I'm sceptical, although it sounds like an idea with potential. I'm not clear on how this app could determine the actual amount of fat, sugar, or various fillers present (e.g. steamed kale versus kale sauteed in bacon fat, a desser made with sugar, or the identical one made with an artificial sweetener, an actual breaded cutlet versus one that is a composite of animal byproduct and TVP), factors which can make a tremendous difference in calorie count.

It could be worse: The default here is 'so-so to grim coffee, and appalling baked goods'. I have a hunch this is a location-contingent thing, since in NYC, I don't have much trouble finding places with both good coffee and good baked goods (although some of the places are not consistent). Same for Berlin, and every single Italian city I've ever been in. Perhaps the tendency is to target what is perceived as a client base that cares more about coffee or baked goods, and cut costs on the other?

If I think of it, I put the plates on the radiator just before I start prepping things. If I think of it. And it's only do-able October through April... and is kind of embarrassing to admit, because one of the settings on our posh oven is 'plate warmer'. Which I'm nervous about trying, ever since one of our plates suddently exploded, when it was suddenly exposed to heat. So... yes. Sort of.

Hard to imagine anything more right, actually.

If you allow for the difference between wholesale and retail costs, I have doubts as to the accuracy of this. Whether or not parents will is another story I'm just wondering whether requiring kids to eat school food is entirely legal.

Except that, to me anyway, following a set of instructions is precisely what Modernist Cuisine is not about. This is nowhere more evident than in their naming of the recipes: the recipes scattered throughout the books are all explicitly called "Example recipes." Each of them is designed to highlight a particular aspect of the chapter, but these books are emphatically not a collection of recipes, they are a collection of techniques. They are designed to enable cooks to imagine a dish and then figure out how to create it. Just because I have to look up the ratios for gelling a particular fruit puree doesn't mean that I've drained the dish I create using that component of its creativity. Modernist Cuisine has enabled creativity, not stomped on it. Definitely agree: The more I understand the chemistry, physiology, and physics of what happens in the kitchen, the less I rely on recipes for anything more than a starting point (sometimes, I'm just inspired to try something suggested their titles): The more I cook, the more what I put produce is 'me' (although frankly, I think a lot of so-called 'individualism'/'self-expression' are not actually unique, though we like to think they are.)

Combis are not uncommon in the EU (at least in Northern Europe; e.g. Siemens and Gaggenau make models), but they do run more than a standard convection oven, so I unless you have a definite, extensive use for the steam feature, I wouldn't recommend that version (here the term is also applied to conventional/microwave combinations, too).

I'm looking forward to seeing more! Have you come across any foods that are considered dead normal there, but that strike you as distinctly alien? 'Biodynamic' is used in roughty the same way as 'organic', in many places. That (supposedly) is to discourage the lazy from leaving the trolleys in the parking lot, after unloading their groceries into their cars, rather than prevent theft (it's a pretty common system in the EU, too), since trolleys in the parking lot get damaged, and can cause accidents.

If you have hard water/the dishwashing detergent is not rinsing away 100%, their residue can create problems.

A bicarb. paste might work... in Cook's Illustrated, they did find it effective fore removing residual odours from cutting boards, and those are even more porous than iron. I've known a few people who had designated cast iron pans for various things, however.

The images are gorgeous, and a lot of them sound delicious, but what's really impressing me here is how integrated and consistent the aesthetic is. Any idea of how that caramelized apricot was made? I keep returning to it to stare at it, and if it tastes a good as you said, the recipe would be worth having (or figuring out).

Sunday may be problem, since things tend to be closed; is there anyone there who might let you use a little of their refrigerator space? It isn't as though you'd be asking to store something bulky and space-consuming, like half a pig's head.