slkinsey

Not to me. My mother certainly made very little accomodation to my tastes when she was doing the cooking. Her rule was always "I am cooking something I like for dinner. If you don't like it, then you can either have nothing or you can cook dinner for the entire family." I adhere to the same rule when cooking for my parents. NB. Both my parents are only children and the grandparents have all gone to their great reward, so I don't have a lot of this kind of thing to deal with.

No right or wrong there, as far as I can tell. But thanks for the pithy comment.

Hmmm... interesting. I did a little digging, and from what I can gather there is no particularly clear botanical definition of "vegetable." I did find, this, however, which said: The definition I have always used was something like this: fruit = the ripened seed-bearing part of a plant when fleshy and edible; vegetable = herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part, as roots, stems, leaves or flowers. Your point about eggs and cheese coming from animals is well made, of course, although the whole notion of "vegetarian" seems a bit nebulous to me as it has so many permutations and the exact meaning of "vegetable" is not entirely clear. Perhaps it would be more accurate if more clumsy to say something like "voluntary herbivore."

Well, if you really want to get technical, neither would anything with tomato... since a tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable. With pizza, I think it is usual to suppose "lacto-ovo vegetarian." Of course, my idea of vegetarian is greens cooked with smoked ham hocks... but that is for another day.

Yes. I forgot to mention that one. It's very un-traditional, but I do like a pizza with fig preserves, gorgonzola, ruccola and sea salt (the greens added off the heat). No pom/mozz on this one, of course.

Interesting/relevant passages from this article, in my opinion, include: and This article was apparently originally published not in a peer reviewed journal, but in a magazine called Current Drug Discovery which is a publication of Current Drugs, Ltd. which is, in turn, part of Thomson Scientific, a division of The Thomson Corporation.

I thought it had to be vegetarian toppings? Well yeah, you're right. But bacon is a food category all by itself, necessary to long life, wisdom, and incredible physical beauty. Sometimes I plumb forget it's merely meat. I understand and share your enthusiasm No bacon. Guanciale.

Make a regular tomato sauce/mozzarella pizza (going very light on the cheese), then carefully crack several eggs right on the crust right before you slide it onto the baking stone (you're going for maybe 1/2 of the pizza surface covered by egg). The eggs will "fry" right on the crust. Take it out of the oven when the yolks are still nice and runny. Sprinkle with minced parsley and drizzle with evoo. This recipe only works with a well-heated baking stone and a thin crust (otherwise, the heat doesn't come through to fry the eggs). I like to make this one with thinly sliced with home-roasted red peppers sparsely strewn across the top before adding the eggs. Some other interesting vegetarian pizze: Make a regular tomato/mozzarella pizza (easy on the toppings as always) and then top the pizza out of the oven with a salad of mixed wild/bitter greens and thinly sliced red onion dressed with the very best evoo (I usually add a covering of prosciutto, but that isn't exactly vegetarian); fresh (not canned!) slices of artichoke sauteed in evoo until brown and crispy are delicious on a pizza with a little red onion; make a pizza crust with no tomato or mozzarella -- instead top the pizza liberally with greens you have blanched and sauteed in evoo with garlic and crushed red pepper... at the last minute, throw on some dollops of strachino cheese (tangy mild soft cheese from "tired cows"); and, there is always fresh (or even frozen) porcini mushrooms drizzled with the very best evoo and sprinkled with an interesting sea salt at the table.

I also do a big reduction in order to save space in the freezer. One thing I find, however, is that this practice inevitably results in a fairly dark stock (due to maillard reactions, caramelization of sugars, etc.) even after it is diluted back to normal strength. As chance would have it, I helped a friend with a huge backyard cook-out in Queens on Saturday. Among other things, he gave me 8 large chickens on Friday which I completely deboned and marinated in chimichurri to be grilled at the party. As a result, I now have a huge bag of raw chicken bones in my freezer waiting to be made into stock next weekend. Man... Big Apple Meats is such a cool place for this kind of thing. We got an obscene amount of meat for something like a hundred bucks.

You can ge them at IKEA for less than 20 bucks... real end grain.

I imagine Michael and perhaps others will weigh in on this, but I thought I'd add my own 2 cents as well... Pigs that are cooked in a closed environment such as the "barrel roasters" you describe strike me as more "smoked" than "roasted." As a result, open pit roasting such as Michael describes tends to produce meat that is less smoky but has more "roasted" flavor. This is probably a result of several things: A) there is less smoke around the pig; B) the pig is roasted over direct heat as opposed to indirect heat; C) because the pit is open, the cooking environment is not as moist; D) due to B and C, there are more crispy bits and roasted-tasting compounds produced by a combination of direct heat and slight dehydration at the surface.

Well, I would imagine that one health concern would be the heart-attack when someone unsuspecting walks into the bathroom and sees a sow soaking in the tub! I do have some pretty damn funny pictures of a pig defrosting inside someone's bathtub...

FWIW, I don't think you need to add a whole lot of cheese to the bechamel sauce. Add some, sure... but the rest of it can just be grated and tossed with the other ingredients to melt in the oven. This will eliminate a possible source of problems and simplify the whole procedure. IMO, another important element is to cook the pasta well below the threshhold of "al dente" as it will finish softening in the oven. This probably works better with things like penne and ziti than it does with elbow macceroni. As for the orange color... maybe a little tomato paste in with the roux?

Thanks for the links, Trillium. Interesting reading. I thought two pargraphs in Olsen's response were of particular interest/relevance: and

According to their web site, Berndes uses Autograph as its non-stick coating for its SignoCast and Tradition lines. Autograph is Dupont's premier PTFE coating... Thanks Dave. Good catch! That is certainly good news to potential buyers. That said, my understanding is that a major factor in the durability of a nonstick surface is the number of coats applied (I think this is the difference between Calphalon's "Commercial" and "Professional" nonstick lines, for example) and we do not have any data on that AFAIK, although a closer look through their site may reveal some.

I don't see any commentary. Where did you find it? I'd like to check it out.

Hee! This is what is so cool about you, FG. You went and ordered two different kinds of ribs and four sides after having had lunch!

No personal experience, but we can learn something from their web site. The cast aluminum like this line, this line, this line and this line appear to be 6 mm thick at the base, which is encouraging. The spun aluminum products appear to be 3 mm to 5 mm thick, which is bad to OK for unclad aluminum. I would definitely expect the thinner pans to warp. The main thing to consider with these pans, really, is the nonstick coating. If you get a cast aluminum pan that is 6 mm thick on the bottom, it will have pretty good thermal properties. However, nonstick coated pans are only as good as the nonstick coating. Once that coating wears away, the pan is junk. Plus, nonstick coatings have only limited usefulness in my opinion (I only have one large nonstick fry pan and don't see the point of nonstick saucepans, etc.). I honestly don't know anything about the nonstick coating and how well it holds up, or whether they have different coatings on the different lines. The other thing to consider about these pans is the cost. They are not all that cheap, especially when compared to, say, a similar pan in Calphalon Commercial Nonstick which we know from user reports has an almost indestructible nonstick coating. In the example I just showed, I'd spend the extra 4 bucks on the Calphalon fry pan every time based on the information I have. That said, I would never spend $114 on a 12 inch nonstick fry pan. I'd wait until Fat Guy told me about another big sale on Amazon and I'd pick up the Calphalon fry pan for 25 bucks.

Man... It's been a long time, but I really used to love that stuff too. lysergic acid diethylamide

Totally cool catch, McDowell! I also wonder whether some of the reported effects of absinthe from the end of the 19th century might be due to methods of distillation which produced significant quantities of alcohols other then ethyl.

Great article! The few times I have roasted a whole hog (usually "luau style") it has been frozen when I picked it up. This makes things a lot easier, as the pig can defrost overnight in the bathtub or another suitable large container without any health concerns. How long did you have to burn the initial fire before you got started?

I didn't... but the ferrets gave me a lot of pressure to underreport the amount of food they ate, as they didn't want to appear too gluttonous. These days they're on a raw meat thing, rather than cooked. And they have been subtly suggesting that I buy them some frozen baby chicks to eat.

Man... It's been a long time, but I really used to love that stuff too.

Welll... really I only wear blaze orange when I'm trying to blend in with the Cheeseheads at Lambeau Field and suck up to Saint Vince. Of course, a blaze orange camouflage coverall is de rigeur when the thermometer drops below negative 50F with the wind chill. Here I am in the very latest in Green Bay Packers home game apparel. Note the way my jaw is craftily tucked into my neck to create the perfect Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing" look that is so popular in Northern Wisconsin. Seriously, though... have you decided where you want to go for dinner and do you have reservations? I'm sure some of us could help in that regard.

Totally hard to differentiate, and very complicated. Basically you would have to separate out all the various constituent compounds and determine if any of them are consciousness-altering. Then you would have to determine the threshhold of perceptible consciousness-altering for each substance. Then you would have to factor in all the possible potentiation effects in the various combinations. Very, very complicated. I think one also has to differentiate between 1. substances that have little physiological effect but can produce consciousness-altering effects by psychological association (e.g., mom's apple pie), 2. substances which act directly on the brain's chemistry to alter consciousness (e.g., THC) and 3. substances which do have a physiological effect that is not consciousness-altering but where the physiological effect alters consciousness by psychological association (sulfites, perhaps?). My strong suspicion is that alcoholic beverages are chock full of 1, have some 3 and very little of 2. Oh, no... I'm buying no matter what. Having "e-known" you for all these years, if I ever meet you in the flesh you're not getting away without at least one drink from me.