jsolomon

Yes, as you burn the alcohol, there is less left in the dish to inebriate someone. How much so, is an academic question containing many variables.

Your Gran was an intelligent and insightful lady, indeed! When dining informally, my fingers become nearly every tool.

You're on the cusp of something, Bux, but you're not there yet. When you're looking at chemical reactivities, more reactive things are worse for you than less reactive things. But, generally, to make less reactive things like water, table salt, or teflon, you have to start with some pretty amazingly reactive, and therefore poisonous/carcinogenic/mutagenic/teratogenic, things. So, the moral of all of this is PTFE=innocuous, inert, unreactive. PFOA=reactive, dangerous, necessary (given our current level of technology). So, those who use PFOA will have to reduce PFOA releases to the environment by either better controls at their plants that use it, or reducing PFOA usage by re-engineering their processes.

No, but I would argue that they were innocuous. Based on the information in section 10 of this MSDS you really don't have anything to worry about with accidental ingestion of teflon. It really is less dangerous than swallowing bubblegum. I assure you. The pH 1 in your stomach, or the pH 9 in your intestines are not going to do a SINGLE THING to it chemically. The stuff is just too inert under those conditions.

I couldn't scrounge up a page with a link in it, but Nebraska fans all love Der Wiener Schlinger. A giant hotdog-shooting hot dog.

Isn't there some point where we will just throw up our hands and all say "you gotta go at some time and from some thing, so stop giving us more reasons to not enjoy life!" Too much of anything is harmful, whether it be food, caustic chemicals (like PFOA... or perfluoro-anything). But, with each "new" way to have our lifestyle harm us, we jump, just like before. I would still like to point out, that with our current lifestyle, we are living much longer than at any time before. So, I'm going to still make my Kraft Mac-n-Cheese (It's the cheesiest!) in my teflon saucepan, drink my fluoridated water, reuse the same water bottle, grill meat, eat bacon, drink coffee, and abstain from urine. I guarantee you that by doing this, I will live to see my 29th birthday, whether it's the real one, or a repeat.

I've been slumming all week. Schlitz was on sale, so I decided to offend the sensibilities of the fiance. Not a bad quaff for $.50 a can. Certainly better than Bud Light.

There's something annoying about this. Yes, I understand that it is certainly nice to have my cake and eat it, too (or wine, to wit). But, what happened to a time and a place for things to happen? Or, *gasp* planning ahead and decanting the wine into a more travel-appropriate container? I can't blame the companies for preying on the lack of forethought or common sense of a group of consumers, but I can't clap them on the back and say "attadude". Is there something fundamentally American about doing two or more things at once? Something so pervasive that we can't abide taking the time to only do one? The thing that truly irks me about this is packaging what I'm assuming is industro-plonk wine in this manner is going to foster a more laissez faire attitude about wine serving, consumption, and storage. While consumption I could handle a more laissez faire attitude about, abusing wine by stacking it by the pallet is going to spur the wine handlers to handle it like beer cans, which at least have the benefit of being opaque (or mostly, in the case of brown plastic bottles). In this manner, the beer is protected from light. The wine, much less so. On the other side of the coin, does it indicate we've turned a corner, if you can get a microbottle of merlot when you go to the next Oz-Fest? I'm not sure, but I don't want to be the first person to order wine there.

Dewey wins, too! It's not just marketers. There are wine producers who get in and decide its not all its cracked up to be, so they cash out when they are burned out. There are as many justifications as there are consumers. Granted, it's nice to get the fuzzy feeling associated with being a small (i.e. "good) guy. You have the image of the majestic salmon swimming upstream in a triumph over adversity. But, it does boil down to one major reason, IMO. It is much easier to tug at heartstrings in a grocery store, or wine shop, than it is to engage the consumer in the center and left side of the bell curve in a description of the wine. Cute sells to more people than objective descriptions sell to. That's why Budweiser uses attractive people and horseys.

You've got to use a huge amount of paprika IMO for it to get bitter, so I'm not thinking that was the culprit. Is RedGum a brand, or a type of wood? Based on some of my experience, if you form softer wood smoke (or green wood smoke) at a low temperature, you do get a more acrid, bitter flavor, so I would look at that. Have you tried using sawdust instead of wood chips? That would be my suggestion.

Me too, except not sometimes... most times. One of the notable exceptions is when I'm liquoring up the former for the latter (expectations, you know). Hot chocolate and liquor is something that always has tracks in both camps, though. I have some containers that I usually take my lunch in these, actually And I bring in a lot of homecooked soups, stews, and such. Apparently, it is great humor in my break room to try and guess what is sitting behind the red lexan. Usually someone gets close. The first time I brought ghoulash, though, I got questioned in the hall because so many people were unable to figure out what I had brought. Note: I'm also the only person who has ever baked bread in our ovens, and we have 2 wall-mounted ovens in the break room.

There are some topics in current dining trends that garner endless discussion on eG. A lot of these center around the efficacy of certain cooking methods and food trends currently, in the past, and in the future. So, I'm curious what your thoughts are on the use of things like the PacoJet, sous vide cooking, and tasting menus. Are these here to really stay? Will we see these in greasy spoons? Home kitchens? Applebees and the ilk?

So, how much is the correction course being offered for? My fiance could certainly use some help in this arena!

I do have to say, even before I knew that a gimlet was a "classical" cocktail, I was drinking them left and right. They are excellent drinks, and well-known to a good portion of the current college crowd.

Holy cow... I would posit that most of the wine-buyers I know suffer from this. But, in our current world marketplace of a supermarket, where it is more uncommon to find artisanal cheese than it is to find cheese from Ginormoco, Your Neighborhood Transnational, (made in Curdistan), should we really be surprised? When I step back and think about this, I find a lot of analogies between this "family wine" on the label, and all of the farmers and ranchers I know whose blood, sweat, and tears go into the Kellogg's Cornflakes, Old Home Bread, and Certified Angus beef. On one hand, it's very disappointing that we have such a distance between the producer and the marketplace--financially and supply speaking, not necessarily miles. But, if they put food in mouths (or wines past gums) can we condemn them thoroughly? Edit to add: And, where does that put me, who is currently fermenting wine from a kit? That is certainly more faceless than even Franzia (but less than Thunderbird, or MadDog).

project, you bring up an interesting thought. Why don't stoves (and grills) have built-in probes, or built-in probe connections? Microwaves have them (at least some), the autoclave I have at work has them. Why not consumer ovens? Of course, I'd also like a programmable oven so I can tell it do X for Y time, then do Z for A time.

The famed sponge is you take equal amounts of flour and liquid (usu 1 cup each, remember to subtract from your recipe) and add the called for yeast. Then, let this ferment for an hour. The sponge method has a great benefit to homebakers because oftentimes active dry yeast will poop out after the first rise, but if you use the sponge method, it doesn't. You can also use much less yeast than the recipe calls for. Additionally, the added ferment at the beginning lends a nice note to the flavor of the final bread.

I've always melted the chocolate into a bust-mold of my nemesis, then I break it up with a baseball bat. Saves on therapy sessions, too.

I am proud to state that The Bohemian Cafe in Omaha is still open, and one of my favorite haunts when I am in Omaha over the lunch hour. But, as a trend, this is quite sad. There are too few places I know that serve goulash, dumplings, rabbit, and duck.

I have a CDN brand and I'm not particularly satisfied. The buttons don't work half of the time, and it is not very intuitive on how to set the clock. I don't know about the accuracy, but some time I shall check it.

What I would do if I had a bar that was profitable, etc. and I wanted to create a "legitimate" atmosphere like you seem to be is to have a "tragically hip" to "stately and traditional" drink spectrum that you can post in the bar. When someone orders a drink that appears on the "tragically hip" list, hand them a card good for an amount off of its cousin in the "stately and traditional" list containing a tasting profile of it, and a list of 3 historical facts about the drink. You could easily start this with a list of 4 drinks on each and expand periodically. Even the expansion you could promote like some brewpubs promote their cask-conditioned beer nights.

The foot-long was only meant to exist where tex-mex cooking has its grasp. For, what is a foot-long, but a chili delivery device?

I want to see one of them dirty and nasty from working calves chomping on a mountain oyster and drinking warm Busch light. Then I would know they were one of us.

I think we're talking different talks. There is aeration where you have lots of bubbles, and there is aeration where you change the amount of gas dissolved in the liquid. I am not sure which we are talking about between Ian, Sam, and myself. We seem to be muddling the lines between all of them. I can assure you that dissolving gas and creating bubbles do drastically different things to liquids.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee Roasting by Barbara Kafka (although several on eGullet do not agree) The Joy of Cooking by Erma Rombauer and mumble Becker