slkinsey

What you have is a japanese-style "chisel" edge with a single bevel. To the best of my knowledge, the he Chef's Choice 100 (which would date to around 1985), sharpens to a double-beveled V-edge. You would not want to put your japanese chisel-edge knife in this machine, as it will completely change the edge. For reference, here is a graphic I produced for Chad's excellent Knife Maintenance and Sharpening eGCI Class:

Tri2Cook: Depending on the fat-solubility of pecan tannins, it's possible that if you wanted to avoid the tannins of pecans and make a "pecan and brown butter-infused bourbon" you could grind up the pecans and infuse them into warm clarified butter. Then you could fat-wash the clarified butter.

As an ode to Fat Albert, you could call it the "Green Hornet."

Now that the Library Bar has closed, your best bet is Lu Brow's Swizzle Stick Bar.

Pecans do infuse into alcohol. But keep in mind that there is also a fair amount of tannin in pecans.

"To suffer" in the sense that it is being used here means to undergo or endure something subjectively negative" such as pain, death, punishment, judgment, grief, etc. If an organism doesn't have consciousness and therefore cannot have a subjective experience, how can it suffer? Simply reacting to stimuli -- even stimuli that we, as conscious organisms, would perceive as intensely negative -- does not equate to consciousness, "suffering" and "pain." Even organisms as rudimentary as simple bacteria react to stimuli. If a flagellate reacts to a high temperature that would be painful to a human being, and is even high enough to eventually kill the flagellate -- does that mean that this single-celled organism is suffering and experiencing pain? These both bring up the same question: How are we to know that one way is any better than another way? Maybe freezing them is best. Maybe it isn't. Maybe splitting the heads is best. Maybe it isn't. Maybe throwing them into boiling water is best. Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's no difference.

The existence (or nonesixtence) of a "soul" is something that is inherrently unexaminable by scientific means, and impossible to attempt to understand in any scientific or rational ay. It's something you have to take on faith. Whether or not an animal with an rudimentary neurological system can experience anything that is comparable to what we understand as "pain" is something that can be examined by science, and something we can attempt to understand to the extent possible by scientific and rational means. If someone would like to take a viewpoint on the subject that is more based on, say, religion or spirituality, there's nothing wrong with that. But one has to acknowledge the basis of taking that viewpoint. To make an extreme example, Ione could just as easily say that I believe rocks have a soul and that we are causing them to suffer when we crush them into gravel. That's fine. A rock-animist is free to believe whatever he wants to believe. But one can still point out that rocks are not living organisms. In my opinion, if you really want to step away from the science on this one you either have to (1) understand that you are taking it on pure faith that your way of killing lobsters (whether that be freezing, slicing, "drowning in wine" or whatever) is "more humane"; or (2) decide that you're just not going to eat them at all (and if you're going to go down that path in life, you're probably going to turn out a vegan).

In what way does an animal that barely has two nerve cells to rub together, and doesn't experience pain in any way that would be meaningful to us, "suffer"? Perhaps more to the point, even if one accepts the premise that tossing a lobster into boiling water causes them to "suffer" -- on what basis can we assert that slapping them in the freezer for a while or slicing their heads in half causes them to "suffer" any less? All we can really say about this is that the person who suffers less in these cases is the human being, whose conscience is somehow eased. Again, you have to have some understanding of the neurophysiology of a lobster to have any understanding of whether these things make any difference. Slicing their heads in half, for example, may destroy one ganglion in the lobster's body (lobsters don't have brains), but there are other ganglia further back. How are we to know that the ganglion in the tail still isn't experiencing "pain" -- and perhaps even more so than if the head hadn't been sliced in half? (Answer: we don't.) Similarly, chilling a lobster may cause a lobster to be sluggish, which means that it will die in the water before it has a chance to move around much. But, again, this has no bearing on whether or to what degree the lobster may "suffer" or experience "pain." How do we know this doesn't cause more "pain and suffering" instead of less? (Answer: we don't.) What about getting the lobster "drunk" in wine? Again, we don't know. All we know is that these things make some humans feel better about it. Personally, I would suggest that if you're going to feel bad about it... just don't eat them. Heck... considering how much incredibly more complex a pig is compared to a lobster -- there's simply no way that the most lovingly, humanely slaughtered pig doesn't suffer more than a lobster that is torn apart and tossed into a pot of boiling water while still alive.

The allegation that one is "cherry picking sources" implies that the cherry-picker has rejected equally compelling data in pursuit of a willful misrepresentation. It's another thing to examine reports and data, see what they're based upon, and then decide how much weight to give them. I would argue that, rather than "cherry picking" data which agrees with my preconceived opinion, I have examined the available quality data and allowed the best data to decide my opinion for me. If the best date and the most scientific studies said that lobsters experiencethe same kind of pain you and I experience, then that would be my position today. I don't care to do an exhaustive internet search on the subject now, because I already did that back in 2005. What I found back in 2005 was that I was unable to find much on the "pro-pain" side that wasn't either conjecture, politically-driven misrepresentation, or inappropriate extension of arguments about vastly different organisms (usually fish) onto lobsters. That said, if you have any claims or articles from your google search that you find particularly compelling and would like to stand behind, I would be happy to review them. Fish have an exponentially more complex neurological and sensory system compared to lobsters.

I have a degree in psychology, which involved a fair amountof "brain and behavior" studies as well as looking at other sensory mechanisms (I was mostly interested in perceptual and cognitive psychology). So, for example, if you want to take a look at why certain musical structures are perceived in a certain way, the first place you have to start out is how hearing works, and that starts with an understanding of the physiology and neurophysiology of the ear. One of the things that becomes clear from the very beginning is that not all nervous and sensory cells are the same. So, for example, the nerve cells of a giant squid are not the same as the nerve cells of a human being. Some animals (sharks come to mind) have sensory mechanisms (including specialized sensory cells, etc.) that allow them to perceive, experience and process things that human beings cannot. And guess what? That road goes both ways. So, if a lobster does not have any of the specialized sensory cells that create the signals that are then processed by our complex brains (which lobsters also don't have) into the subjective experience we call "pain" -- then lobsters can't feel pain. Heck, lobsters don't even particularly exhibit avoidance behavior in the wild then their limbs are being torn off. Most everyone knows the word "crustacean." But this also includes a lot of animals that we're not considering this discussion -- like barnacles, for example. "Malacostracan crustacean" is just the name for the crustaceans we are talking about -- namely lobster, crabs and shrimp. For that, I referenced a dictionary.

Um... those guys you're calling "crackpots that say lobsters don't feel pain" are what most of us would call "scientists" and "experts in their fields." I haven't seen anything written specifically about malacostracan crustaceans by someone who has researched them, has an understanding of their neurophysiology and an understanding of how pain works on both a neurological and psychological level that says that these animals experience anything we could call "pain." Rather, all these people say that they don't. Now, there are people -- and these are the ones I'd call the "crackpots" -- who are not informed as to malacostracan crustacean neurophysiology and how pain works on a neurological and psychological level, and who use various nonscientific ways to argue that lobsters "surely must experience pain." But they simply don't have any basis for making that assertion other than the underlying belief that, "since it would hurt me to be thrown in boiling water or have my arms torn off while still alive, it must be true for lobsters as well." The evidence is that lobsters don't feel pain. Period. If it makes you feel better to kill them in a certain way, that's okay with me. But there is no evidence that killing lobsters by throwing them into a pot of boiling water, or indeed by simply tearing them apart, is any less "humane" than other ways.

I've had raw clams as well, which are alive when we eat them.

Lobsters barely have a nervous system, and certainly not anything approaching complex enough to call "consciousness." Scallops have eyes too.

This question has been fairly extensively discussed in these forums before, most notably in this thread. Scientists who have specifically studied this question, those with an understanding of neurology and those with an understanding of pain psychology tend to agree that lobsters do not experience anything like what we would consider "pain." People who would like to anthropomorphize ignore this evidence and insist that they must.

I think the state cocktail of New York should just be the Cocktail.

Swearing is only unprofessional in contexts where swearing is considered unprofessional. I would consider swearing unprofessional for, say, an elementary school librarian. Whether or not it's unprofessional in the restaurant kitchen depends on the kitchen.

I have to say... if I were in one of these kitchens and Ramsay were yelling in my face like that, I just don't think I could prevent myself from punching him full in the face and choking the arrogant bluster right out of him. . . . . . which, in consideration of the fact that jail time isn't high on my list of priorities, I suppose makes it a good thing I'll never be on a show like that. I am a little surprised, though, that if he's really like that to people, no one has snapped and given him a good ass-kicking for his trouble.

I've worked in a large number of fields because, believe it or not, the performing classical arts aren't exactly a huge moneymaker. What I have observed is that most every field has its own expectations. For example, people working in advertising at a certain salary level expect a large lavishly appointed and "designed" office whereas a banker at he same salary level might be working out of a cubicle. These industry-specific expectations extend to acceptable modes of behavior. For example, in law firms I've seen partners throw temper tantrums, yell at or belittle associates and display any number of behaviors that would have resulted in immediate suspension or termination if they were working at, say, Citibank. It seems that there is a certain culture of profanity in certain professional kitchens, and this is deemed an acceptable mode of behavior in the business so long as the chef allows it. Certain BOH workers clearly relish and even glorify this culture (viz. Tony Bourdain). On the other hand, I've been in any number of professional kitchens, and plenty of them have quiet and polite.

Rack & Soul. My neighborhood local. Interesting. They do a mean beef short rib. I hope that's what they do at the BABBP.

Interesting. Seems from what you're saying that, rather than the "pot still versus continuous still" distinction, which is largely meaningless, it would make more sense to distinguish between "alembic versus fractionating column."

Some assorted pot-versus-column still posts scrounged from elsewhere about these forums:

Doesn't Tito's distill their own? Why someone would want to go to all the trouble of distilling their pre-rectification neutral spirits escapes me.

I'm curious about the crawfish question. Is it that the locals would like to get a higher price for their crawfish and are being undercut by Chinese crawfish, or that they would like to sell more of the stuff? I'm just thinking that, if it weren't for the Chinese imports, might it be the case that locals would be overharvesting?

I wonder if Junipero is really pot-stilled from beginning to end. I suspect that it starts out with pretty pure neutral spirits (of the kind that can only be obtained by column distilling), then infuses those spirits with aromatics and redistills in the pot still.

No idea. But if you look at the pictures of the hardware at most "craft/micro-distilleries" you will see that there is a rectification column on top of the still. From here: