jsolomon

There's no light for it. There is a vacuum pump and, in my lab, something like calcium carbonate to help dry the air left in the desiccator. We store things in it... but we are not allowed to cook in the lab. Damned OSHA.

How timely. God bless The Onion.

Unfortunately, I do not know.

Jibjab vs Budweiser

Last night, I drank Old Style. I was between my bike ride and my run. It was hot. I was thirsty. That beer went down really well.

This is a fascinating thread, but I'm a little disappointed in the people who work in labs, and some of their advice for one niggling little point. When we're purchasing something like a Lauda bath (I'm partial to the lauda brand), we usually call our Fisher Scientific or VWR Scientific Products International sales rep and set them to work for us. If you have the money to purchase a new laboratory water bath to do your sous vide cooking, I would highly suggest that. Another thing I would suggest is to get one that is intended to have the temperature controlled water pumped outside of the beast through to cool/heat something external. That will give you more flexibility to increase the size of your sous vide pot later with less expense. Make sure the one you are looking at has a large reservoir for obvious reasons. Make sure the one you are looking at has a large "thermal mass" It shouldn't be terribly difficult to get in touch with one of the reps from one of those companies. Simply call a local University's science or engineering departments and ask if someone can get you the rep's contact number. The reason I do it this way, is a good 70% of the time, we find that these reps get us a better deal than purchasing the item directly from the manufacturer. Also, if you have a metal shop fab you some jacketed cookers that are too large for one (heaven forfend such an embarassment of riches), you can attach several of these water baths to one large cooker. This is one of the threads that makes eGullet great. I don't know how I missed it in January.

If you're interested in using a silversmith, but not changing the actual shaker, you could get ask about having a grate like the one under the unusable cap built into a sleeve that would go over the large hole in the top, have a shoulder, and then accept the cap again. It would add one more piece to lose, but then you would not actually be changing the shaker. Just another option.

There's way too much alliteration in this thread. Four-buck Fred. Brad Ballinger. Ted Task. This is turning into something from Who's Line Is It, Anyway?

Had? Eep! What did you do to her? I have a 4 year old niece who is very similar. My opinion is that ungracious guests ought not be invited back as often as gracious guests. But, I'm a rather abrasive, callous person when it comes to those who do not want to expand their horizons as a rule.

Yes, but didn't Pepsi start having success only after they caught Michael Jackson's hair on fire? Has anyone notified Coke of this? My list of current pop stars who could be set aflame to increase sales is rather long...

Most soldiers I know there (the number is in the hundreds right now) will brave the chance of food poisoning for the chance at homemade cookies.

I dunno, looks mighty tasty to me!

Have you tried pouring with the spout more to the side than the bottom?

You have a justifiable reason to ask that question. In my area, when someone purchases a bar or cafe, they typically purchase themselves a job. It's not uncommon for them to put on a decent spread (usually prime rib special) once a week, but the rest of the time, it's pretty honest, but pedestrian fare. Burgers, ham slices, mashed potatoes, broasted chicken, green beans, iceberg lettuce. On the other side of the coin, would the usual customers of these joints be in this area/their situation if they were interested in expanding themselves by trying new foods/new things/new ideas? Granted, there are some, and they are a measurable percentage. But, they are still a small percentage.

I still hold that there is a sufficient amount of bad home cooks in the small town/rural areas to produce a sufficient number of bad professional cooks in the small town/rural areas to be noticed and brought up in this thread. Actually, this has gone significantly tangential from my post that competition in a "one-horse town" is a trivial argument.

Feh. The natives are resilient and adaptive. They will and do adjust their travel times and routes to suit the conditions and their needs. That's how they live there.

You're right, to a certain extent, abadoozy, but you miss one thing: in small towns, EVERYONE has access to a vehicle. It may not be a car, it may only be a lawn tractor, but it will get them down the road. My hometown in central Nebraska (population 390) is a very good example. We had one bar/cafe. The service was mediocre during lunch, and the food matched. At night, the service in the bar was atrocious, and the prices were not that great, either. So, everyone went 10 miles up the road to Anselmo, or 10 miles down the road to Broken Bow, and within 8 months of opening under new management (following a retirement/sale) the cafe/bar was closed. None of us are that stuck in a small town, remember, when we go 10 miles, it's definitely at or above the posted speed limit which is most certainly not 35 miles per hour. We have wide open spaces to go our 10 miles in.

I don't think any college town qualifies as rural... small, maybe, but there's enough pretension there (Chadron, Nebraska, and certain small Wyoming college towns may differ) to pretty much rule out the vast majority of rurality. At least in the US...

I believe the term is "careworn". It adds coze and dignity to a site.

I believe this is the kershaw.

Not to pick a nit, but dextrose is 100% sugar, is it just slightly less sweet than some other sugars. Fructose, Dextrose (d-glucose or invert sugar), glucose (l-glucose), and sucrose all have different sweetnesses, but are all 100% sugar. An equal weight of each will add an equal tang to the dry-cured product.

Ahh, I answered my own question here. Many congratulations!

Chufi, you may want to add some cracker or breadcrumb to the same cheese mixture next time to help keep some of the body. But flavor-wise, I think it sounds like a very tasty combination.

I'll out myself as a hopeless hayseed and rube, but how is the WSET different from WKRP?

Not since I started participating on eGullet. My monitor now keeps me too bronzed for the fridge light to have an effect