Whenever I see a gentleman like Mr. Rollins I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few drops of testosterone. That reminds me, I'm almost out of moisturizer and hair product.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Just to be clear- I don't imagine actually taking the skin off of women - Really, I love the ladies. Especially ones with creamy, supple, well-moisturized skin.

WTF?! Do you work for a marketing company??

"Pro.Age - is specifically FOR aged skin, not to prevent aging or looking perfect"

Are you f-ing kidding me? (a) they are trying to spread the beauty poison to older women, like they haven't seen enough in their lifetime (b) THIS CRAP DOES NOTHING.

Most of these pseudo-science beauty products only work in that you pay lots of $$$ so of course it works. It's all placebo and parting rich fools from their money is their only goal. You think this is anything more that fancy packaged moisturizer!? Jebus.

I have some high mileage oil and fuel additives to sell you!

Let's see... Choggie's stock question is definitely worth an entire article. The pros and cons of homemade stock, what to look for and what to avoid pre-made stock, and a discussion of the necessity or not of stocks in the home. Bottom line for me is that I hate canned stock, and I make homemade stocks very rarely.


Karaidl
Microwaving Turkey is a pretty dubious idea to say the least. It is certainly possible, but it is not as simple as just time*weight.

According to my McGee, the dynamics for oven roasting are weight to the 2/3rds power per time, or thickness squared per time.

There are a few things you have to appreciate about microwaving- cooking things properly in the microwave is a complicated and subtle process, and misunderstood by most chefs. Firstly, microwaving is neither moist heat nor dry heat cooking. The microwaves directly excite the all the molecules in the food that are approximately the size of water molecules. This is why the microwave is so efficient at reheating already cooked food.

For cooking things from raw, on the other hand, there are a number of reasons why a microwave oven is less than ideal. Because the energy is able to penetrate a few centimetres into the flesh, it is impossible to get a nice crispy skin. By the time the skin is at a correct temperature to render the fat properly, the meat beneath it has already lost so much moisture that it is impossible to remain crispy.

If your heart is really set on trying it, I wish you luck, and my best advice is to buy a meat thermometre and check the internal temperature every few minutes. And watch out for flaming turkey. You'll want around 175 degrees fahrenheit for your turkey.

Dag
The first thing you need for pro-chef like knife skillz is a sharp chef's knife. I prefer an 8 inch Henkel for most of my chopping, but the santoku knives seem to be gaining quite a lot of popularity in the kitchens where I've worked.

There was a terrible, terrible video about sharpening knives on the sift a while back- one of my first downvotes, actually, but in my rant about how much I hated it, I linked to this article about how to sharpen knives properly.

Knife Maintenance and Sharpening By Chad Ward is an absolutely fantastic resource, and actually is the place where I learned how to sharpen my knives.

Here's a big secret though- good quality knives aren't all that expensive! You can pick up a yellow handled Henkel at a kitchen supply store for less than $20. Your knife will be wicked sharp.

I think there was a video on the cooking channel that showed how to properly cut up an onion. Ah yes- Knife Skills 101 My feelings on that video are mixed, which is why I haven't upvoted it yet, but it's handy to know the right steps. For one thing, I think I remember disagreeing with him on what exactly constitutes a "small dice", but I'll have to watch it again to remember precisely.

After that, it's just like getting to carnegie hall- Practice, baby. Practice.

maatc
ooh, I got a bunch of tips like that. that is a fun article, which I definitely have some comments on.

OK! Good first round, I'll be posting my article about Stocks in the next day or so. Keep the questions coming!

It was closer than it looks. From where those people in the first photo were standing to the actual flames was probably 200-300 yards, but still enough to make you ponder packing up.

Oh yeah, for I think all of last week there was just constant ash-fall seemingly everywhere in Orange County. The air has been constantly unbreathable until the last couple of days and now the bad air comes and goes and is restricted to the area around my home.

I wonder what a marsh fire might smell like. The terminology sounds like it could be a nice "mallow" scent. Are there many fires in swampland dotdude? Seems from all the moisture it wouldn't be easy tinder.

Thanks for the link, MG, but I was thinking of something less destructive. On MythBusters the other day I saw them detonate high explosives next to a very large flame to successfully put it out. Food for thought.

*save

tags alone

......."on dry land, that couldn't happen, even for the most, moisture loving of creatures.... an individual slug, carries both male and female organs, but even then, that was of no help......each had to both give, and receive......

I'm confused. I checked out all the comments before watching this and was expecting to gush. I'm embarrassingly sensitive and tear up even when the Simpsons cue up a minor chord for a dramatic moment. This clip didn't even squeeze a drop of moisture from the bottomless emotional wells I call my eyes. Is it because I don't have children? Is it because I don't understand why the War in Iraq would ever be a reason for a man to leave his child in the first place? Is it because the presence of the camera implies that the scene is contrived? I'm not getting it. Different strokes move different blokes, I guess.

Wanna impress yer friends without killin' yerself:
1. Get a lamp cord, bare the wires at the end.

2. Make a break about midway, on one half of the cord, and connect a light bulb, or some other form of resistance, in that mid-break.
3. Plug the thing into 110, careful not to touch yer jury-rig to anything conductive or flammable.

4. Complete the circuit, by gripping the bare ends loosely at first(you will feel a small amount of current, kinda tickles); the harder you grip, the more current you feel, the light will light up and brighten as you sqeeze, and the muscles in your arms will contract, and the life-giving current, will have you feeling like a quack doctor's penile disfunction device from the 20's, without the Hard-on!

Of course, also don't try choggie's fun at home either. 110 current across yer heart is a good way to die. Even with a 60 ohm lightbulb in series...

Hazardous Voltage

Contact for only 1 to 3 sec with currents of only 6 to 200 mA can cause electrocution by disrupting the normal rhythm of heart muscles, resulting in fibrillation and leading to death. An example of how little voltage or current it takes to electrocute a person is the 120V/15W nightlight. Drawing 125 mA, this seemingly innocuous everyday object has enough voltage and current to put it well within the danger zone.

Now the human body resistance changes based on moisture, voltage and frequency. Less than 42-48 volts is considered safe for DC voltage, because your skin / body resistance is just too high. Your body is basically somewhere from 10k to 100k resistor at 100V and 60Hz (maybe even as low as 1k depending on humidity, perspiration, etc). So grabbing choggies lamp cord sounds fun, but does a 100 ohm bulb in series even impact the lethal current you can get? Nope, just drops the current around 10%.

So even if you follow choggie's Darwin-Award-winning instructions to the letter, you still may get a permanent hard-on... rigamortis. Here is some more reading so choggie can brush up on his killing people skills.

Yes, sucrose is di-saccharide, but is chemically bonded glucose and fructose. HFCS is a chemical product of a vat of some corn byproduct and enzymes to either convert glucose, or strip apart natural sucrose. But HFCS just means high fructose content and it is a liquid, so we're comparing dry sugar by weight (and it absorbs moisture) to liquid HFCS..

Wikipedia:

Common commercial grades of high fructose corn syrup include fructose contents of 42%, 55%, or 90%. The 55% grade is most commonly used in soft drinks and equivalent to caster sugar.

Unlike sucrose, HFCS consists of a mixture of glucose and fructose, which doesn't require an enzymatic step to break it down before absorption in the intestine.

So in this case sucrose is 50% fructose, HFCS is 55% fructose. Pretty close.