JAZ

My icemaker makes pretty decent ice, but my problem is that I don't use all that much. If I turn it off, then the water in the hose to the freezer gets stale and tastes like plastic, so I end up with a lot of ice to deal with. When I make stock I can clean out the old stuff when I chill down the stock, but otherwise I have to either throw it out or melt it and use it for the cats' water dish so that I can make sure the ice in the bin is fresher. Even so, I still prefer to make cubes in a silicone mold for drinks on the rocks -- they just taste fresher.

On the second point, have you considered other vegetable dishes besides salads to start? Or less traditional salads? Since I started Weight Watchers a few months ago, I've been trying to increase my vegetables and eat them first too. I like salads, but don't want a leafy salad every single night, so I sometimes start with -- for instance -- a dish of roasted green beans and garlic chips, or broccoli in a mustard vinaigrette, or (one of my favorites) sugar snap peas and radishes in a horseradish-sour cream dressing.

Actually, one thing Taubes points out in the article is that from a nutritional standpoint, there's virtually no difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

I agree, I certainly am not detained if folks in line use a bunch of coupons. I salute people who stretch their dollars to be able to feed their families. I just do not understand on any level the hatred for coupons and for people who use them. I have no hatred for people who use coupons. I don't mind standing in line behind people who have coupons for the items they're purchasing (anymore than I mind standing in line for anyone else, that is). I completely understand and sympathize with people who want or need to save money. I just think that people who use coupons should know what their coupons are actually for. My experience is probably not typical, because I have abysmal grocery store line karma. But here are three of my recent experiences behind people with coupons. And I swear I am not making this up. #1. I get in line behind a guy who has a big cart of groceries, but almost all of his purchases are already rung up. He hands the clerk a very thick stack of coupons -- I don't know how many, but the stack was easily an inch thick. The clerk starts scanning them. Several of them don't scan -- or, rather, they're for items he hasn't actually purchased. He points out the items the coupons are supposed to be for, but they're the wrong size or brand or whatever. So then he doesn't want the items that the coupons are not for. The clerk has to figure out what those items are for, find them (they've already been bagged) and return them. #2. I get in a line that appears to have one person in it. Oh, except that there's actually a person whose order is halfway done, but who has left to go get more items. She comes back with a cart full of more stuff and gets back in line to finish her transaction. One of her items is baby formula, and she has a coupon. It's not for the size she has. She argues. The clerk calls a manager. The coupon is still not for the size she has. She doesn't really want the larger size, which the coupon is good for, so she takes time to decide. She does decide she wants the coupon size, so the clerk leaves to go get it. Oh, did I mention that this was at 5:30 on a Friday evening, and the store was packed? #3. I get in a line where it appears the woman ahead of me is completely done -- all her bags are in the cart. She pulls out a binder (I am not making this up) and starts pulling out coupons. In stacks. Big stacks. I honestly can't believe that even with a full cart, she's bought enough items for all these coupons to be redeemable. Apparently, they aren't. It's like some kind of coupon lottery for her -- as if she must have something in her stack for the items she's bought. Having learned something from my previous experiences, I wait for a couple of minutes while she pulls out more stacks. I put my items back in my cart, move to another line behind two people and still get done while she is pulling out coupons. I know these people are not typical. I know that most people who use coupons are organized and only use coupons for the items they're buying. But I'm sorry, I see coupons in someone's hand and I make a beeline to another cashier.

In general, we discourage editors from using phrases such as "in this editor's experience," "this writer has noticed" and the like, due to the large number of editors on any given article. If you don't have an authoritative source, either mark with {{citation needed}}, or omit the statement until you can find a citation.

I have to admit that I'm prejudiced against coupons -- I rarely use them unless they're stuck on a product I'm already buying. I don't look for them in papers and flyers, and even when they're included in products I've already bought, they're never for something I actually want to buy -- for instance, I buy cat litter and included is a coupon for a litter box liner, which I have no intent of buying. Or I buy English muffins and get a coupon for Egg Beaters. Mostly, though, I don't like coupons because I really hate being stuck in line at the grocery store behind someone who has a couple dozen coupons for the clerk to process. It's bad enough when they all scan properly, but invariably the customer has gotten the wrong size item for the coupon, or something else happens to make a long process even longer. I wish coupons would just go away. But I know people who collect coupons and use them regularly, and claim they save a lot of money that way. So there must be another side to coupons, and at any rate they seem to be with us for good. So what's the deal? Do you use them, and if so, how? Do you only use them if they're for something you would buy otherwise? Do you try new products? Do you actively scout out coupons, or is it just an opportunistic fluke if you come across one that you think you might use?

I always knew that reduced-fat and fat-free "sour cream" contain various gums and other additives to give them a creamier mouthfeel and firmer texture. But I happened to glance at the ingredients in Publix's regular sour cream and realized that it also has quite a few chemicals added -- modified food starch, carrageenan, guar gum, and locust gum paste among them. Breakstone, on the other hand, contains only milk, cream and enzymes (Breakstone reduced fat has a few more ingredients, but not as many as Publix). It does seem that Breakstone separates a little more, but that's really the only difference I notice. I haven't done a taste test, so I can't say if one or the other has a better texture or flavor. Anyone else notice odd ingredients in sour cream or yogurt? And anyone know why they're there?

So my supermarket started carrying jicama recently -- yay! But while the first one I bought was pretty decent, the second one was dry, pithy and nasty. It occurred to me that I have no idea how to choose a jicama. I've always just bought them and hoped for the best. Any tips?

The factors that Chris listed do make a difference -- I'll wait a lot longer if I have a drink at a bar rather than getting jostled by the door as people come and go, for instance. Another crucial factor for me is getting a realistic wait time from the staff if it's a sit-down restaurant. If they tell me 10 minutes and 15 minutes have gone by I start to get edgy, but if they tell me 20 minutes and I get a table in 15, then I'm happy. The one circumstance where I really hate waiting is if I have reservations. If I don't get seated within five minutes of a reservation time, I expect an apology. If it's 15 minutes, I expect a complimentary drink.

I haven't heard of that diet. It seems too restrictive for me, even with the day to splurge. I'm the kind of person who automatically wants whatever food I'm not supposed to eat. What's the rationale for eating 4-5 times a day? I've been following the Weight Watchers plan for a few months and like the fact that I can eat anything I want -- just not unlimited portions. I've found that most of my recipes are surprisingly "point-friendly" or can be made so with a few tweaks. The ones that aren't I just don't eat as often. (Coincidentally, I'm having a similar "fajita" salad for dinner, but with tortilla strips on top.)

Dejah, I should have mentioned that the recipe did call for marinating in cornstarch, rice wine, egg white and salt before cooking, and I did understand that this was part of the velveting process. At least in this Tropp recipe, though, the marinade didn't call for oil -- is that typical? I'd also only seen veleveting done for shrimp and chicken -- I had no idea it was done for beef and pork too. Is it done all the time, or just for particular dishes? In any case, it's good to know I don't have to use a separate pan -- thanks for the information!

I'm familiar with the procedure of velveting shrimp and chicken, although I don't do it very often. But I recently made a recipe from one of Barbara Tropp's cookbooks for a shrimp dish where she velvets the shrimp in simmering water instead of oil. I'd never heard of that, so I gave it a try. It worked okay, but I'm not sure it really made that much difference. So, I have a few questions. First, is this common - velveting in water? Second, I'm confused about whether the velveting process is only supposed to partially cook the protein, which is what Tropp's recipe called for. It seems to me I've read other recipes where the protein is completely cooked when velveted, and then added to the dish at the last minute. Third, I guess my main question is whether veleveting makes that much of a difference.

I learned a technique for braised chicken with crisp skin from a cookbook I had years ago, which I've used in other recipes like one for chicken braised in sherry vinegar sauce (photo here -- scroll down a bit). You start out with a regular braising technique, but first, make sure the chicken is placed skin side up and not covered with the sauce, and second, halfway through the cooking, turn the heat up and take the cover off. The skin recrisps and the sauce reduces, and you end up with braised chicken with crisp skin. (Here is the full recipe for anyone who's interested.)

I'm not sure if I can even explain this, but I was in the kitchen barefoot (which we always tell our students is a bad thing, but which I do all the time anyway) and moved a couple of plates out of my way, not realizing there was a fork wedged in between them. It fell out and somehow landed so that it pierced the inside of my big toe. I couldn't figure out why my toe hurt so bad, because when I looked at the top of my foot I couldn't see anything. Then I saw the blood from the puncture wound, which was pretty deep for a damned fork. I also now have a giant bruise as well as the puncture. I should probably start wearing shoes in the kitchen.

I used to bring a big plate of cookies and candy at Christmas for my butcher when I lived in San Francisco. I did the same for the guy who ran the cheese shop I went to and a few other merchants. I didn't feel it was expected and I wasn't looking for favors; it just seemed like a nice thing to do. But tip? No.

I haven't been to a salad bar in ages, but when I used to work in San Francisco there was a pretty decent one across from my office. I'd try for mostly lettuce and other leafy (and light) items, with cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots and cucumber slices. I'm not a fan of raw cruciferous vegetables, so no raw broccoli for me. They also had a selection of things like pasta salad, raisin carrot salad and the like. Most of those were pretty awful, but oddly, they made really good chicken salad, so I'd usually get a small scoop of that.

Anyone who likes salads should head over the the WikiGullet project and help out with our topic of the week -- Salad!

Thanks to the hard work of Society members, notably -- Liuzhou FrogPrincesse PedroG Xxchef Iradubinsky Vice Mkayahara Emannths Gfweb Kouign Aman EatNopales Mjx -- the WikiGullet project is growing in depth and breadth. We've compiled nearly 600 articles on topics from cheese and butter to sous vide and nouvelle cuisine. That means we've only got a few hundred thousand left to do, so . . . This week we're announcing the first of our featured WikiGullet topics -- Salads! Any salad aficionados out there want to help? Check out the salad page and add to it, edit it (yes, you're allowed -- that's how a wiki grows and gets stronger), or add pages for your favorite salads, from Caesar to larb. If you're not sure how to get started, here's a suggestion: take a look at the red text on the Salad page -- those are called "redlinks" in wiki parlance, and they point to an entry that doesn't yet exist. Just click on one of them, and you'll get a fresh new page, already titled, ready for you type away. Every week or two we'll feature a different category to work on -- but of course you can add anything at any time. Just dive in wherever your interest and expertise lead you!

John Mariani's Esquire blog post, in which he trashes not only Modernist Cuisine, but all of modernist cooking, all modernist chefs and restaurants, and especially Grant Achatz. I can't even dignify it with the term "review" -- it's a bizarre, spite-filled rant (and not a particularly well-written one, even). The only people Mariani seems to respect are Thomas Keller, Harold McGee and the staff of Cook's Illustrated magazine. After likening Modernist cooking to Lucky Charms and Dan Ackroyd's SNL Bassomatic skit, he concludes: What cave does he live in? I hadn't really formed an opinion about Mariani before this, but he shows himself here to be childish, spiteful, and ignorant. It's unbelievable.

Okay, so I tried to make almond butter in my Blendtec blender, and was horribly disappointed in my effort. I used the technique for nut butters in the booklet that came with the blender -- toasted the nuts, blended with a little oil, and kept blending until I had a fairly smooth puree. I did get a decent puree, but the texture was kind of a weird combination of pasty and dry, and the flavor was bland. I added a little sugar and salt, which did help the flavor a bit, but I couldn't get anything that I wanted to eat. Granted, I had no idea what I was doing, and granted, I'm used to commercial peanut butter. But I'm hoping that I can get a decent product on my own. So I need lots of help, I guess. Anyone have advice?

I also eat a lot of salads for dinner. Unfortunately, I almost never think to take photos of them. Some recent salads: Southwest/Mexican style with romaine, pico de gallo, tortilla strips and skirt steak; shrimp or crab remoulade on greens with tomatoes, celery, hard cooked egg and avocado; "Greek" salad with cucumber, tomato, parsley, mint, olives and feta cheese. One of my favorite first course salads is apples and celery, sliced thin and dressed in an apple cider and walnut oil vinaigrette, topped with candied walnuts and aged cheddar cheese.

Chris, if this is something you plan to do again, sit down the day after and make notes about everything that didn't work with ideas for changing it. If you don't do it right away, you probably won't remember all those great ideas you had. That's something we learned the hard way. Djyee, I worked with Ruta years ago, and I agree that she was an excellent instructor and very well prepared. A couple more points: Have sets of all the recipes for the students to take home, and also have copies at the stove so that they don't have to use their own copies while they're cooking. What we do is put the recipe copies on the sheet pans with the ingredients and equipment. We always give our students the opportunity to ask any questions they have along the way. The students learn more that way, but if you do that, make sure you don't get off track and too far behind your schedule. If our students ask something not quite on topic, we answer those questions at the end of the class or during break, and if they ask something we're going to cover later, we tell them that and move on. We love to answer questions and if we're not careful we can get way off schedule. Buy tons of paper towels. You'll need them not only for all the hand washing that will go on, but also for anchoring cutting boards (depending on what kinds you use).

The best range I've used is a smooth top with one large burner, and three that have two sizes each. You can turn those on as "single" or "double" depending on the size of your pots. Similar to this one.

Because people (myself included) are used to the taste of Diet Coke. Objectively, I can say that Coke Zero is a better product, but it tastes too sweet to me because I'm used to that bitter aftertaste of Diet Coke. (And if you think that's weird, there are people out there who still prefer Tab, because that's what they're used to.)

Josh Ozersky's thoughts on the book from Time.com. He mentions Ruhlman's review and Nahan's reply here and makes the interesting point that in the media, The "latter" being, of course, Modernist Cuisine. It's a shame that has happened, says Ozersky: