Tropicalsenior

You are absolutely right. I can't think of a better illustration of this than something that happened recently in our neighborhood. It was discovered that an elderly neighbor had beehives in three outside walls of her house. She had to have lived with them for years without any problems, and there is a busy restaurant next door with outdoor seating, that also had never complained of problems. She, supposedly, had no idea that they were there until a visitor pointed out bees coming from the side of the house and poked a stick in the hole. The bees attacked her ferociously, but not the owner of the house (which really causes one to wonder about the intelligence of bees). The firefighters were called and they removed all the siding and took out the honey. The exterminators were then called and they killed all the bees, which I think is a shame. I had to wonder how many fruit trees in our neighborhood would not be pollinated this year.

Yes, I remember that one now. Thank you, Norm. The one that I remember came with a set of three dishes, probably CorningWare copycats. In order to put the handle on you had to angle it down and snap it up. The first time I used it, I burned my hand on the oven rack and I pitched it in the trash. Pot holders worked just fine. The dishes themselves didn't last much longer. One exploded in the oven and one broke in the dishwasher. I never had a problem like that with CorningWare.

So true. One in four of the fruits that we eat is pollinated by bees. Bees and bats are essential to life on Earth.

I remember these well but wasn't there another one that had a one piece handle? As I remember, it was rather poorly designed as you had to angle it downward to attach it and risked hitting your knuckles on the oven rack.

Welcome, so glad you joined us. I hope that you find lots of recipes and the help that you need to become an experienced cook. You're going to find that cooking by Metric measurements and by cooking by volume measurements, as we do is a bit confusing. If there's anything that we can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask. In fact, maybe our Australian friends and we can start a new topic so that you can help us with our metric and we can help you interpret some of our recipes. And you can explain to us some of those quaint expressions you have and we can explain some of our more confusing idioms. Although we, supposedly, speak the same language we have a lot to learn from each other.

This sounds like such a good idea, I can't wait to go to Barrio Chino and see if I can find some of this tea. Thank you.

We each seem to have our own personal reason for clinging on to a particular cookbook. I have one old favorite that I'm sure no one here would even give shelf space to. It is called Better than Store Bought and when I moved here it became my Bible. It had recipes and instructions for all those things that we have become accustomed to just grabbing off the shelf. I made things in large batches because I was never able to be sure that I would find the ingredients again the next time that I went to the store. That's probably the Genesis of my hoarding problems, which was difficult to do in our first apartment because my kitchen was 6 by 6. I wound up turning half of my 9 foot clothes closet into a pantry. Then there was also the language difference. Not being totally fluent in the language I made some very disastrous and hilarious mistakes. Like the time that I tried to make pudding with laundry starch instead of cornstarch. Another time I thought that I had found some great flaky kosher salt. I set about to make a large crock of dill pickles only to find out two days later that I had tried to make them with epsom salts. I can't even describe the smell or the texture of that mess. Sometimes hoarding has its advantages and sometimes not. My little book is tattered and it splattered and it wasn't in very good of shape when I bought it second-hand, but I know that that's one book I'll never part with.

Do you have a restaurant supply business in your area? I can't buy things from Amazon here, so I went to a Chinese restaurant supply house. I bought so many great accessories that will fit in my instant pot that I probably will never use them all. They are of excellent quality and will outlast me. Just be sure to measure the inside dimensions of your instant pot to make sure that they will fit. Don't forget to measure the height of the rack that they will sit on like I did. I now have a nice stainless steel pot that I am trying to figure out what to do with. Maybe I'll plant basil in it.

If you think this sounds great, go to her website and check out her method of using the tea to cook sausage. In fact, just go to her website. You will love it. She has so many more good ideas.

Probably the understatement of the year.

I had one like that and I like this one so much better. The way the handle is, and those Tyrannosaurus jaws give this one unbelievable leverage.

Ouch! I'll bet every man reading this cringed at that.

For whom. The extractor or the extractee?

You might be onto something there. I think I'll buy another one when I go to the Chinese store just to keep in the car. The last time that I went to the Bridgestone tire shop to get a squished valve repaired, they didn't have a socket that fit the lug nuts on my car. I had to drive five miles to my mechanic, borrow his, take it to the shop, and then drive five miles back to return it, then ten miles home. The clincher was that, unbeknownst to me, there was one laying right on the spare tire in the bottom of the trunk. I'm sure that little gadget would have chewed them right off.Oh well, everything in Costa Rica is an adventure.

It has a tremendous grip. I would say this is a case of extreme over engineering for its purpose.

No, I bought it in my favorite Chinese restaurant supply store. On the package, it was called a microwave grabber. I wish that I had saved the package with the directions. It was hilarious. It is supposedly used to take hot dishes out of the microwave. I use it to take inner pans out of my instant pot. it's got a grip like a bulldog and won't let go of even the heaviest pan.

Nope.

Nope, ouch!

Nope, but it sure would do.

This is one of my favorite gadgets. Does anyone know what it is?

Here are some photos of a bacon press that I was given some time ago as a gift. I only use it now as a panini press when I am making only one sandwich. It rusts like crazy and I can't figure out how to temper it as it has a wooden handle. It's quite small and only weighs 26 ounces. Several restaurants that I worked in had them and they were used only for bacon. Anyone caught using them to mash the juice out of a hamburger would have been promptly shown to the door.

Thank you so much. This will be a big help. I like being able to get the authentic ingredients but it can be frustrating.

Host's note: this post and the ensuing discussion were split from Hoarding Ingredients - suffering from Allgoneophobia? Does anyone else hoard cookbooks? I have over 200 cookbooks that I never use and can't bear to part with. I have spent so many hours reading them and dreaming about things that I would like to cook that they have become like old friends. Most of them called for ingredients that I would never find here. For the most part, I used them to find innovative ways to prepare the things that I could find. I rarely followed a recipe exactly, but I spent hours surrounded by books looking for the perfect one. Now with all the knowledge and pseudo knowledge on the web and recipes from every corner of the world, available for the asking, my cookbooks have become nothing but dust catchers.

This product intrigues me. I would like to have it to try your method of cooking sausage. We have a small, very slowly growing Barrio Chino and I may be able to find it there. Would you, perhaps, be able to send me a picture of your package? My problem in buying things there is that the personnel in these stores do not speak English and barely speak Spanish. A picture would be worth a thousand words to me.

Very interesting. But how big is it and how does it work?