therealdoctorlew's Profile
VERY Annoyed by Flash Targeted Ads -- PLEASE GET RID OF THEM
If the monetary considerations damage the site, why use it?
VERY Annoyed by Flash Targeted Ads -- PLEASE GET RID OF THEM
The free version is limited. It only blocks a certain number of ads. The pai version is not.
VERY Annoyed by Flash Targeted Ads -- PLEASE GET RID OF THEM
There are ads and then there are ads. If a site has to make itself annoying in order to stay free and if it costs $30 for an ad blocker to get it to be comfortable, how does that benefit anyone except the adblocker company? Channeling ads that are so annoying that they will be blocked cannot in the end benefit this site, as blocked ads are worthless and lost site users are worse than useless. And, the site removed the restaurant module to save money, making the site less useful. Will the site be destroyed in order to save it?
VERY Annoyed by Flash Targeted Ads -- PLEASE GET RID OF THEM
Trying to load a thread is now very slow. It seems that the ads are now flash movies and they are clearly related to sites I have been on recently. For example, I looked at a hotel on Booking.com yesterday, and now all your ads are showing shifting, scrolling, and otherwise moving Booking.com ads for hotels near my previous searching. Visually annoying, and loading them slows down every page on this site that has an ad.
Should I stop coming to Chowhound? Or should the site shut down this stuff?
Worst meal in years (locals schmocals)
Will be going to Rome for the first time in 40+ years. This post is the most valuable food-related advice I have found!
Thanks, mbfant!
Looking For A Slow Cooker That Does (Really) Low And Slow
The cooker I have has timed "low" and "high", but both reset to "keep warm" after the time is up. This suggests that the tactic would be setting for a shortish time at high , time depending on the amount of food in the cooker and its temperature, long enough to bring to cooking temperature, then let it sit on warm to low and slow it. Worth a try?
persimmons with marks
Rats eat anything. Including apples. Nothing that humans can eat is safe unless it is inaccessible in an unenterable ungnawable container (metal). Your only solutions are an exterminator or do-it-yourself. Since the rat has nibbled the persimmons, they are now ready to be bait. I am not an expert in all the ways to kill vermin, so I suggest you look up or get instructed in the gentle art of rodenticide. My choice in the past has been the poison food (blue pellets) available in most supermarkets and hardware stores and placing it next to the approved bait (your persimmons, my winter squash, same idea).
persimmons with marks
Those are rat nibbles. Rats will observe a new food, later take a nibble, and then, if not made sick, a few days later will eat. This is a survival instinct that protects them from poisonous foods. Your persimmons are on the line for conversion from novelty (nibbles) to food (disappearance). On the other hand, you could use the nibbled ones as bait.
Top Chef Really Important Things To Do Before You Start the Show
IIRC there was one cooking competition show where the scallops that were available were the commercial pyrophosphate and water enhanced "scallop product" that can't be seared. The chef that chose them was hosed by the booby trap scallop product.
Top Chef Really Important Things To Do Before You Start the Show
#12 Don't be surprised when you lose. Everybody save one will. Have your exit speech ready. Choose one: Dignified thanks, disbelief, weepy regret, profanity, sour grapes.
Best varietal of red wine to poach pears?
Assuming all are drinkable, any one you choose will do. After the spicing, sugaring, and poaching, they all will taste about the same, with or without the reduction step. If you want to empasize the pear-ness of the dish, go with the lowest intensity flavor: Pinot Noir or Merlot. For winey-ness: Shiraz/syrah or Zin. Middle of the road: Cab.
Holiday Gift Baskets -- It Must Be the Thought That Counts, 'Cause It Sure Ain't the Food
Every year I receive a couple of business gift holiday food gift baskets, always from reputable name purveyors. They look great, big towers profusely loaded with 'gourmet' items, in a basket wrapped and bowed to a faretheewell.
Yet the contents somehow don't live up to the initial impression of excessive luxury. There are only minuscule portions , three truffle chocolates, four caramels, one chocolate dipped pretzel, two slices of nova, and so on. The cookies are borderline stale and may always have been, to insure storage and shipment stability. Chocolates may be bloomed, though edible. And so on.
What really comes in the package of packages is packaging. Shipping box, basket, overwrap, underpack of shredded colored stuff, cardboard backing and stiffener, sealed wrapping for each item, with internal wrap for each piece, and the paper or foil cups to hold the wrapped things in the item wrap, and then all the little packs are taped together so the whole tower holds up in shipping and for display. Just for kicks, I added up the net weights of the dozen little chocolate specialties in one impressive basket: 15.75 ounces. Tasty way to collect a garbage bag of packing.
It's the thought that counts!
Le Creuset Cast Iron Skillets?
In my opinion, enamel coated cast iron skillets combine all the defects of enamel (cleaning problems and potential for chips) with the poor conductivity of cast iron. Their purpose is decorative.rather than culinary. Sell them and buy a nice cast iron pan for stove +/- oven and/or a stainless clad high conductivity pan for use with acidic foods. Or buy the useful pans and hang the enameled ones up for decor.
Giving Ground Turkey Another Chance - What Brand?
Empire Kosher makes decent turkey burgers if extended and moisturized with chopped onions and coated in breadcrumbs before frying.
European measurements - by weight not volume?
From my high school chemistry teacher: "A pint's a pound the world around except in England where a pint of water is a pound and a quarter." After that, everything was metric.
European measurements - by weight not volume?
But the point to doing flour by weight is that the actual amount of flour (by weight) is not a constant volume, unlike water at a constant temperature.
any good bluefish recipes aside from mayo and onions?
Aluminum foil version of fish en papillote is good with very fresh (or frozen when very fresh) bluefish. Bluefish fillet, juice of half lemon, topped with thin slices of the other half lemon, cut up tomato, onion, green pepper, pitted olives (not canned), capers, salt pepper thyme at will. Seal in foil, bake on a pan in 400 degree oven 20 minutes.
European measurements - by weight not volume?
Does anyone recognize as ironic that there are volume measuring tools marked in grams?
Which Heirloom Tomatoes did you prefer this Summer
Had a terrible tomato year, first wetness, then heat damage, then wet and a hurricane. The few pink Brandywines that survived weather, birds, and racoons were delicious. Copia, a hybrid of two heirloom varieties was late but very good. The only real success was a large yellow cherry: Margaret Best Tommy Toe, abundant and very tasty. Amish paste also did ok. A dozen other heirlooms didn't make it. Bummer.
Please Suggest Restaurants Where Each table out of Ear Dropping Distance
Cnsider Toqueville. Good spacing, mostly, very good food, but I cannot say whether or not it will be within your budget.
poaching a whole salmon - method suggestions
I use the liquid temperature, not the meat temp. I am sure that the cooking is not complete when the external liquid is at temp, but the cooling period allows the interior of the fish to cook. The heating time is known but the cooking time is not measured. By the way, I use a meat thermometer to measure the liquid's temp.
Great lunch/brunch near Woodbury Commons?
Not food heaven near there. We like a decent Italian reataurant and pizza place a little north of the mall on the right. Name escapes me as it has been a few years.
poaching a whole salmon - method suggestions
The method I have used is to fill the cavity with herbs, wrap the fish in cheesecloth and suspend in room temp poaching liquid, bring the liquid slowly to 140 degrees at 1-2 degrees per minute by regulating the heat, cool in liquid. The benefit of this admittedly tine-consuming and fiddly method is that the flesh is solid after cooking and does not flake, making for nice slices. I do not debone, but do remove the fins and fin base bones. The fish is skinned and cleaned of the dark lateral line, then decorated and covered in aspic.
Iridescent meat
I have also seen it in fresh tuna at the fish counter, but this was before all their tuna was carbon monixided for color and then frozen.
Iridescent meat
If the muscle fibers are of the correct size and spacing, about the order of the wavelength of visible light or a multiple,and the spacing is regular, then the repeating pattern can act as a diffreaction grating, reflecting white light into one or more spectral colors. The surface cannot be smooth, as it would be if wet, but the partial drying of the surface allowed the repeating pattern of the muscle fibrils to reflect light as a diffraction grating. Mystery solved.
