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I am checking with my friendly neighborhood metallurgist, but I think, from a practical matter, almost all 304 stainless sheet goods are of the 18/10 variety these days. I am also asking what the current specs allow for in the range of Cr content. A few years ago, I was involved in an ASTM round robin for testing of austenitic stainless for chloride cracking. We had a hard time getting the lower quality sheet goods for a positive control. Well, we couldn't get it. We will see. I just don't want folks to fall for a lot of hype and spend money unnecessarily. I have been intimately aquainted with cheaper and outrageously expensive stainless sinks and I can't tell the difference due to metallurgy. The main difference has been the surface finish that has nothing to do with the metallurgy. Dave... want to weigh in on this issue?

By clearance problems, I am assuming that you mean the clearance required for mounting a disposal under a deep sink. I am wondering that also. I now have, in my hot little hand, the name of THE plumbing supplier in my area and I intend to go visit in the next couple of weeks to spec out my plumbing fixtures. I intend to ask that question. I will post the answer here but I am betting that someone has already been there, done that and we will know sooner. I am like you with the "DUH" syndrome. I hadn't thought about the offset drain issue.

Interesting that they state that the sinks are "Type 304 18/10 chromium/nickel stainless steel"... like that is something special. Type 304 stainless is just garden variety stainless. To even mention "chromium/nickel" is redundant. That is what makes stainless steel, um... stainless steel. Nice sink, though. I just hope nobody thinks they have to pay a premium price for "Type 304 18/10 chromium/nickel stainless steel". I would bet that just about every sink on the market is 304 stainless, that is defined by ASTM by the way.

Thank you Rachel. It was the Blanco catalog that I was looking at. They are pretty pricey. Nick, if you find a more economical alternative, let us know. The Blanco was 18 gauge. editted to add: Damn. Who knew that there was so much to think about when considering a sink. I thought that I had fully considered the subject when I started this thread. Well, you guys sure put me in my place. Several things have come up that I hadn't thought about... undermounting, offset drain. Just goes to show the value of this most excellent site.

I have heard similar complaints about New Braunfels. I think they make some that are cheaper and not as heavy gauge. I paid about $200 for mine about 7 years ago. It works fine. It looks a lot like klink's set-up if you have seen those pictures. I just got the Weber Smokey Mountain bullet style to use on my apartment balconey for now. I intend to take it out for its maiden voyage this weekend. I would never get rid of the water pan. That is what helps to keep temperature swings at a minimum and adds moisture to the smoking chamber. In the New Braunfels, I put two big aluminum pans of water on the bottom shelf of the smoking chamber.

Huh??? I'm not sure what you mean by hot smoking but I could routinely smoke at about 225 chamber temperature with my New Braunfels. That is about optimum for brisket or pork butt. You leave the exit stack wide open and regulate the temperature with the air vent on the fire box. Sorry, I was not clear. I meant to offer the caveat that it's designed to cook in the temperature range you described, around 225 degrees, rather than cold smoking, which would be much lower, for things like bacon and cured fish. Oh... Now I get it. However, I have been known to have the temp drift into that range when I drink too much beer and don't pay attention to the fire box. Did you know that at 160-180 it will take days to do a brisket?

Huh??? I'm not sure what you mean by hot smoking but I could routinely smoke at about 225 chamber temperature with my New Braunfels. That is about optimum for brisket or pork butt. You leave the exit stack wide open and regulate the temperature with the air vent on the fire box.

I was looking through a plumbing supply catalog and there was this supplier of 18 gauge stainless sinks and I found my sink. The problem is that I can't for the life of me remember the supplier's name. They had the single sinks with the offset drains. BTW, I had never thought of that and you make a very good point. I searched the threads where we talked about that and I can't find my post to save me so I can't find the name of the supplier. I think if you go to a plumbing supply place they will know. Point is... You can get that offset drain.

Can someone tell me what variety of green bean is grown for those skinny, puny, absolutely delicious "haricot vert" thingies? I had some at lunch. I have to grow some. I looked at several of the seed sites I go to and got conflicting or non-specific information.

Recently took some lump blue crab meat, seasoned with salt, white pepper, cayenne and nutmeg. I drizzled it with heavy cream and ran it under the broiler. Very simple and one of the most delicious things I have done in a long time. edit: I made it up. It wasn't a "recipe" but my current fascination with gratin in my LeCreuset with heavy cream.

Reading through this thread, I think I might have to rethink my position on dessert. It seems to be a way to work more fruit into my diet, which I find difficult. I know that recently I have eaten the blueberry cobbler (er... calfloutis) for breakfast. That has to be more healthy than a McD's sausage and biscuit picked up in the drive through lane.

The secret to zucchini and yellow squash is to scorch it. My kids call it Mom's Scorched Squash. You just put it in a cast iron frying pan with some butter and cook it down letting it concentrate and "scorch", well... caramelize. No water added at any point. What I want to try is a butter cream made with fresh lard. Lard rules.

AMEN! I can see that you are a person of outstanding perception and intelligence.

I don't usually do desert at home. For some reason, most of my friends and family are not really into sweets. In fact, I rarely order dessert in a restaurant. When the Texas blueberries are in, I will do a couple of cobblers. Same goes for dewberries. (OOPS, The cobbler thread tells me that my recipe is a clafoutis.) I do an occasional bread pudding. My sister is the pie maker for holiday meals. I make the occasional batch of cookies or brownies to ship to my son's sweet tooth friends. Desserts on a regular basis? naaaaah

Our dewberries have a lot of thorns. They usually ripen about sometime in May to June though that is variable depending upon weather.

Dewberries are a wild berry that grows here on the Gulf Coast. I am not sure of the actual range. They look like blackberries and have a sort of similar flavor, maybe a little more tart, maybe not as aromatic. You scout them out on roadsides and ditches and abandoned farmland when they are blooming then come back later to pick them. First you arm yourself with a snake stick. They make a great cobbler, jam or jelly. Generally speaking, raspberries, blackberries (some varieties) and such do not grow well in our hot humid climate. So... We got dewberries.

A few weeks ago I came down with a nasty stomach virus. My nephew brought me a bottle of Fernet Branca. It saved me. After sipping a bit of that wonderful elixir, I could actually keep water down. I intend to keep a bottle in my liquor cabinet, for medicinal purposes, of course.

It's just like the way the Italians leave the vongole, etc. in their shells in pasta dishes. It is a sign to the customers that they are fresh and don't come from a can. Uuuuuhh... I don't have exact numbers but I will bet a lot of shrimp that most of you get aren't really "fresh" but have been flash frozen. (Actually, that makes for better shrimp, especially if you live far from the coast. It is certainly true for the Gulf shrimp since the big shrimpers stay out a long time.) I don't really think anyone would be fooled by a canned shrimp! I think it is just some dumb presentation idea that caught on and has become standard practice.

I just got back from a great lunch. I had a pasta dish with a great sauce and some wonderful grilled jumbo shrimp on top. What I don't get is leaving the tail shells on shrimp. I KNOW everyone does it. I just don't get it. Either you try to maneuver it off with your knife and fork, which never works. Or, at some point you have to actually pick it up, a messy proposition when a sauce is present. An even more annoying result is when you just can't get that little bit of meat out. What idiot ever thought this was a good idea?! They must be shot!

First let me tell you about my animosity due to an extreme case of jealousy. The Cliff House in Bellingham WA serves a fabulous crab meat cocktail. They usually use dungeoness but it would probably work with king. In a tall ice cream sundae glass they put a light tomato based cocktail sauce with chopped celery and sweet onion in the bottom of the glass then heap the crab meat on top. You have a lot of fun digging around to get your preferred ratio of meat to sauce. The glass, sauce and crab is all served cold. I recently made a simple gratin with crab meat that was very simple. In my Le Creuset gratin pan I drizzled a little heavy cream over crab meat that had been tossed with a little salt, white pepper, cayenne and nutmeg. Then I ran it under the broiler for a few minutes. The cream broke into butter and a nice crusty residue. YUM.

If you are ever in the bay area, you have to go to Tookies. It is in Seabrook on Hwy 146, just south of the NASA 1 intersection. It is an institution. They have the most creative burgers and have had for over 25 years. My current (for the past 25 years) fave is the bean burger... refried beans, salsa, cheese and Fritos. Yes, Fritos.

Since I usually have some form of leftover pork butt or chicken in the freezer, I pull that out, start chunking veggies out of the fridge. Then I either boil some pasta and make whatever kind of sauce from what I pulled out or wrap some combo of the ingredients in a tortilla. I go through periods when I do the same sort of thing with a can of coconut milk and some flavor of Thai curry paste that I always have on hand. I don't think about it, I just let what the fridge disgorged guide me. It is usually pretty good. When my son lived with me, if he came home and found me staring into space, he would say... "I see it is clean out the fridge night."

OK... That just about tops anything I have ever read here. Now I have to go clear the merlot out of my nose.

This thread and the older one reminds me of something that my dad tried years ago. He was always up for trying anything slightly weird and intriguing. First he had the butcher cut him this really thick sirloin, like 2 1/2 or three inches thick. Then you coated it with s&p, LIBERALLY. Now the fun part... you start packing on sugar, extracting some juices as you go until you have a sugar crust about 1/2 inch thick. Hum that puppy into the oven as hot as you can get it. I forget the timing but you end up with this almost carbonized crust that you knock off and a fabulous rare to medium rare piece of meat. For obvious reasons, we would do this at the country house. It didn't have smoke detectors and we could open all of the windows for the breezes to sweep the smoke out. Then he got smarter and just revved up the 55 gallon drum grill/smoker to do this outside. I am sure that my mother's opinion of this operation had nothing to do with his move outside.

First you shoot the clown... Remember when they blew up the Jack-in-the-Box? But then he came back, as an executive. Some of those ads were funny. But I do miss the chihuahua. Why not play into the current paranoia and make it healthy and advertise it. This is a golden opportunity. Just imagine the guilt of over-scheduled soccer mom's you could feed on. There are a few things out there that aren't too bad. Does JinB still make the chicken fajita pita? I remember when they came out a few years ago they actually bragged about the calories (not too bad) and fat content (not too bad either) and I believe it was a good seller. A Taco Bell Chicken Baja gordita is 320 calories. They have a pretty good nutrition calculator on their web site. Looking at it, a really smart food engineer could probably tweak it and make it better using some of the same tricks we all use to lower fat and sodium but adding flavor. Oh yeah... And keep it simple. Don't get too cute.