We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Just Old Al
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Just Old Al »

We can move a good amount of those to my friends for tourist fodder, but most of that lot's probably better off going to industrial use. I could do with a kilo or two of them myself.

Let's take this offline before we stir up DeBeers....again.

Re: Bront: As long as you don't say it tastes like chicken.
"The Empire was founded on cups of tea, mate, and if you think I am going to war without one you are sadly mistaken."
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by FreeFlier »

Just Old Al wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:36 pm . . .

(every last word of the above is true... industrial diamonds are incredibly useful things.) . . .
Diamonds are also very useful for core-drilling in rock . . . largish ballas stones are especially good, thought they're so tough to cut that they aren't much use for gems. they're also pretty rare.

--FreeFlier
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Opus the Poet
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Opus the Poet »

Just Old Al wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:40 pm Re: Bront: As long as you don't say it tastes like chicken.
Bront is hard to describe, It's a very lean meat as the Orions raise it in the Terran system, with a mild flavor like corn-fed pork, but not exactly like pork, so it does best when moist heat is applied, or low and slow heat like pit barbecue. On board ship I can't use heat from combustion like a pit barbecue, so I'm stuck with a hybrid microwave/radiant heat oven that I can microwave for fast cooking and also use the roast setting to brown the outside while the inside cooks from RF heat. The closest thing I can compare bront to is emu, or kinda halfway between beef and chicken, closer to beef than chicken, but not entirely like either one.

Plus the oven has steam cooking, so I don't need to leave an open pan of water underneath the meat (or pastry/bread) to get moist heat. I don't usually carry breadmaking supplies, but if I did I could bake authentic tasting bagels by starting them with steam and finishing off with radiant heat. There's not much to do during the middle of the trip because I plot my orbit outside of the ecliptic to avoid encountering debris large enough to require a course correction, so I cook, eat, read and sleep.
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Dave
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Dave »

Have you tried sous vide? Put the bront in a heat-proof food-safe plastic bag, add some broth or stock, squeeze out the air and close it up, and stick the bag somewhere in the coolant-duct area where the temperature gets up to 160-180F. Then, forget about it for several hours.

Seems like a good way to use some of the waste heat from the engines, and it won't put any additional strain on your cabin environmental cooling systems the way an oven would. It's a modern version of aluminum-foil-and-engine-block cookery.

I made a slow-cooker version of chicken tikka masala a few days ago. 6 hours on "low" resulted in some of the tenderest chicken we've ever had... Gwen loved it.

Opus the Poet wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:07 pm I just put my wife in a nursing home because I can't take care of her, and I was hoping to see someone besides Tina and the pit boss in here.
Really sorry to hear that, Opus. That must have been a very difficult decision to make, for both of you. I hope it goes as well as is possible.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Opus the Poet »

Actually that sounds like a good way to tenderize flank steak without having to pound the life out of it with a tenderizing hammer. And the oven has that setting on the thermostat, which is goood because the HVAC system on the shuttle doesn't have any ducts that are in that temperature range, they're either way hotter, or way colder, and mix at the outlet for the proper cabin temperature.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Opus the Poet wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 6:38 pm Actually that sounds like a good way to tenderize flank steak without having to pound the life out of it with a tenderizing hammer.
But it's so therapeutic...
And the oven has that setting on the thermostat, which is goood because the HVAC system on the shuttle doesn't have any ducts that are in that temperature range, they're either way hotter, or way colder, and mix at the outlet for the proper cabin temperature.
Sounds like plop in a container of water, plop in the bag with a weight on it to keep it submerged and off to the races you go.

Would it be a bad thing here for me to confess to doing a similar thing with a temperature-controlled water bath setup in my workshop? Honest, the container the food was in was never used for anything poisonous....
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Warrl »

The typical crock pot is NOT very suitable for sous-vide cooking because if you're lucky it has two heat settings, too-hot and who-knows. More likely it only has too-hot.

Sous-vide appliances are absurdly expensive, or they were last time I looked.

A cheap deep-fryer, though... the temperature control probably does go low enough, although the odds of the control being marked that low are near zero. So also get a cheap electronic cooking thermometer. I like 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit for beef.

And then put the food in a good plastic zip-lock, squeeze out as much air as you can, and put it in the deep-fryer (which is filled with water - deep-fryers use oil to achieve temperatures well above boiling, which is not what we're doing here and water is cheaper).
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Just Old Al wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:45 am Would it be a bad thing here for me to confess to doing a similar thing with a temperature-controlled water bath setup in my workshop? Honest, the container the food was in was never used for anything poisonous....
You do need to be careful.

For example, be cautious about using your water bath for slow-cooking anything in which you include an acidic marinade. Be certain that the container is completely leak-proof.

Otherwise, the acidic juices might seep out, contaminate the bath, and spoil the finish on the next batch of CNC-made parts that you steep in that nice tasty hexavalent-chromium broth.
Warrl wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:00 pm The typical crock pot is NOT very suitable for sous-vide cooking because if you're lucky it has two heat settings, too-hot and who-knows. More likely it only has too-hot.
Agreed.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Warrl wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:00 pm The typical crock pot is NOT very suitable for sous-vide cooking because if you're lucky it has two heat settings, too-hot and who-knows. More likely it only has too-hot.
The only thing I use my crock-pot for is slow-cooked beans on the high setting. It doesn't have enough BTUs for anything in the larger cuts of meat even though they fit the pot. Seriously I think one of the heating elements is blown because I have warm which keeps food from getting cold, Low which is impossible to tell from warm, and High which does a slow simmer. The instructions say to start on High until it gets to a boil and then simmer on Low, but all I ever get from High is a slow simmer after about an hour of heating up. It does do a great job of cooking beans on high without scorching them.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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In the machine shop we used to use an old crackpot for melting the Plasti-Coat we coated end mills and special cutters with for storage . . . dip the tooling, pull it out, let it cool and there's a layer of oily plastic on the tool, which protected both the edge on the tool, and protected the fingers . . .

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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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FreeFlier wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 9:02 pm In the machine shop we used to use an old crackpot for melting the Plasti-Coat
--FreeFlier
And what did he melt it in? There's a Freudian slip if ever I saw one.

I used to use an old saucepan on a thermostatically controlled electric hot plate for the exact same purpose. It required less material to get a similar depth of bath for the coating.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Howdy, folks! An update on since I last posted here. I fell a few times and had to get pulled back on my feet by EMS. and helped out of bed because I injured myself in one fall and had to get helped out of bed because I couldn't reach the floor with my foot one time. Long story short I wasn't watching my intake like I should have and my blood sugars got low and I lost my balance, several times. No permanent injury but I did have a muscle get stiff on me which is why I needed help out of bed. Days like that I wish I lived in a shuttle with adjustable artificial gravity.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Sheesh, you guys forget how to type or something? I had a nice Christmas with the family, and got a Hot Wheels car as a substitute for the real thing, a 427 Shelby Cobra replica. Mrs the Poet wanted gloves because they keep the thermostat too low for he comfort in her room at the nursing home so she got several pairs of gloves. Grandson got books from everybody, because we give books for Christmas and he told us what series he was reading and what books he didn't have. Kids got gift cards. How ws your Christmas?
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Tina, Irish breakfast in a big mug, if you don't mind. Pitboss, pulled pork and a huge plate of tater salad. I found out yesterday my wife has COVID again and I need to forget a bunch of stuff. Don't worry, I tested negative, and she has a mild case because she's fully vaxxed and boosted. So far it's just the sniffles, but her last time through her sense of taste was messed up and she stopped eating, which is why she's in skilled nursing care. She just wasted away and got so weak I couldn't care for her.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Opus the Poet wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 5:03 pm Tina, Irish breakfast in a big mug, if you don't mind.
Tina: "Sure, hang on a second while I duck over to the pub next door for some ingredients." (door opens and closes a couple of times) (high-power blender whirs and chews briefly) (glutenous pouring sound) "Here you go... bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, beans, white-bread toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, and black pudding, all nicely premasticated for you in the biggest mug I have in the shop. I really like the way you're carrying on the tradition Alan invented after Jin's injury..."
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

Post by Opus the Poet »

Amusing, but I think Tina knows Irish Breakfast is a tea blend similar in composition to English Breakfast, and is most closely approximated by Lipton's Black in the US and Red Rose in Canada.

And I'm not a tea snob, because when I'm home I drink the store brand black. And except for breakfast I drink it black, but for breakfast I drink it like I got it from Mrs, Tobin in Placentia, enough sugar that it won't stay in solution but forms a sweet sludge on the bottom of my mug, and a splash of milk. I'm a creature of habit, some formed when I was a toddler over 60 years ago. I still miss Mrs. Tobin's codballs in onion cream sauce. :ugeek:
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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I haven't had Red Rose in many years . . . it used to be my late mother's preferred tea.

My taste in Oolong and pu-erh is plebeian . . . I prefer the inexpensive stuff.

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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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I have relatives and inlaws who live in NY and sometimes cross the border to get me a box of Red Rose, but crossing the border nowadays is difficult since you need a passport to get into Canada now.
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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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Odd . . . here, at least four of the chain grocery stores - including WallyWorld - are supposed to have Red Rose . . .

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Re: We have until about Christmas before new material, Where's the portal to the coffeehouse?

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FreeFlier wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 11:49 pm Odd . . . here, at least four of the chain grocery stores - including WallyWorld - are supposed to have Red Rose . . .

--FreeFlier
My understanding is the company that makes Red Rose for Canada is not the same as the one that makes US Red Rose. I haven't read a Canadian Red Rose package since the Bush administration, so I couldn't say if it's true now. May have been the same factories for a while, just sold by different companies. Like Lipton and my store brand tea are made by the same company.
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