Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Status:
"Let's replace the puppet show with actual leadership."
(set 19 hours ago)
Location: Suburban Dallas
52,702 posts, read 47,981,010 times
Reputation: 33875
Advertisements
Well, gang, I won't be sharing my weekly food agendas (or much of anything else on food) for the next two weeks. The reason is, I'm on a doctor-ordered low-iodine diet for about 12 days (many food restrictions during this time), as I'll be undergoing treatment next week in preparation for a body scan. My goal is to be 100% cancer-free. Once that's all done, I'll be back to normal eating patterns.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,047,252 times
Reputation: 28903
Quote:
Originally Posted by case44
Well, gang, I won't be sharing my weekly food agendas (or much of anything else on food) for the next two weeks. The reason is, I'm on a doctor-ordered low-iodine diet for about 12 days (many food restrictions during this time), as I'll be undergoing treatment next week in preparation for a body scan. My goal is to be 100% cancer-free. Once that's all done, I'll be back to normal eating patterns.
Take care for now.
Oh my!
I wish you all the best. It's now MY goal for YOU to be 100% cancer-free, too!
I'm a grateful person. I'm one of those traditional guys who truly believes that it's the thought that counts, not the actual gift. (However, if you receive a gift with no thought put into it, I say go ahead and clobber the nincompoop.)
I live in an apartment complex, so everything is a gift. I don't own the appliances, the carpeting, the poorly placed electrical outlets or even the cottage cheese ceiling. I wouldn't have chosen these models for myself but, nonetheless, I care for them as I would a newborn left in my care. ("I said come down from that ceiling fan right now!")
When the stove recently died, I was disappointed. Yes, for all of two seconds I thought about the inconvenience until another feeling surged through my body. I was downright giddy! I love to cook and now I get a new toy! At least I'd better get a new toy and not have the old one resuscitated like Betty White's career. (It was a good for a long time but the comeback was sad and short-lived.)
So, I called my landlord and explained the situation. After showing proper remorse, I hung up and did what every grown man does when an expensive problem comes along. The Happy Dance because I didn't have to pay for it!
Ten days went by. Ugh! The antici......... waiting. It doesn't even take this long for a woman to carry a child to term! Day 11 brings a knock on my door and I just knew it was my new best friend! I opened the door and heard my tiny maintenance man's voice coming from behind a big cardboard box that had a picture of my new friend on the outside! (At least I think it was the maintenance guy. Who cares when Ginger Lime Chicken is less than an hour away?!)
Not being one for crime scenes, I left the apartment to allow the coroner to carry out the dead body of my old, electric coil-top stove. Goodbye hideous 1960's yellow! Twenty minutes later I came back. I almost thought I should knock to make sure my new friend was decent and had all of his connections fastened tightly. After all, we were about to become fast friends!
And, there it was! Shining in its bright white brilliance, making the rest of the 1950's apartment building look like an old black and white Mickey Rooney film. "Wow. What's a nice stove like you doing in a joint like this? Too late! You can never leave. You belong to meeeee! My PRECIOUS!!!!"
My first instinct was - DO NOT TOUCH IT! It's clean! I want to keep it looking that way! Well, for as long as it took for me to read the manual, anyway! I'm cookin' tonight! I know. I broke the official guy code and read a manual. But it was a ceramic, flat top electric stove. I've never owned a microwave, never mind such an upscale, hoity-toity do-hickey so I thought we should get acquainted properly.
So I read the manual.
There's a reason why guys don't read the manual, folks. They're full of bad news and can't do's. (If you don't read the manual, you're completely free to try anything and everything because nobody told you otherwise.) The bad news is that you can't just wipe it down. There's a list of 394 steps you have to follow first! It's a FLAT TOP! How hard do they need to make it?! It should be the EASIEST stove in the world to clean! But, you have to wait for it to cool, and don't use this but you have to use that and don't even think about doing that other thing because it requires specific this-n-thats.
My new friend is high maintenance. I'm a simple, plain living guy. I begin to have doubts about my new roommate. (What? I never said he was my friend.) This might not work ou......wait a cotton-pickin' minute! I just found the biggest, wrongest "can't do" ever.
Please Note:"Cast Iron cookware is not recommended because it does not conduct heat evenly on your new ceramic top stove. Also, cast iron may chip, scratch or break the stove top."
Who is this stranger that just barged into my house and kicked my old beloved friend out? (There's nothing wrong with 1960's yellow!) No cast iron cookware? Listen, I have a balcony and I'm not afraid to make you take a long walk off of it, pal! NOTHING cooks like cast iron and if you're afraid to get a little scratch then don't cook with the big boys, got it?!
Remembering that I'm a grateful person, I give this joker a trial run. I made my specialty burritos. Oops, I even "accidentally" spilled on it while I was cooking just to let this fancy-pants visitor know who was boss! Oh, yes I did!
Well, to cut the rest of the story short, and leaving out all the French subtitles, ceramic top electric stoves aren't very cooperative with cast iron. And clean up isn't fun! I did everything as instructed, as if my name was Jeeves and my only purpose in life was to cater to the whims of the hoity-toity! And you know what? These things are a devil to clean and they don't clean properly! It smears and leaves rings where the edge of the cookware was! This stranger isn't so hoity-toity after all! More like a slacker just out to have someone else fetch this and that for their lazy butt!
Then I saw the light. The "Hot Cooktop" light was still on. I had an idea and, in a flash, I slapped a flour tortilla on top of that burner and let it heat up on one side, flipped it over and heated up the other side! And I'll tell you what... this little buddy is perfect for heating up tortillas! It did a better job at that than anything else I've seen! And, being that I make a lot of different foods to go into tortillas (I'm very creative, you know), I've decided that my new little Mexican, tortilla-warming friend (who I've name Carlos) can stay.
Since then, my buddy Carlos and I have heated-up a dozen tortillas for some quick suppers after a long, exhausting day at work. Carlos can't cook with cast iron worth a tinker's darn, and he's not as easy to clean as I'd like, but my new $650 tortilla warming friend Carlos is here to stay. After all, it really is the thought that counts.
And I'm thankful.
Last edited by plain and simple; 06-08-2011 at 06:32 PM..
Reason: Because I'm a perfectionist. I have my vices, you deal with yours. Stop judging me!
I hate smooth top ranges. Our house came with nearly all appliances, including a basic coil burner electric range. I hate it, too. I miss cooking with gas.
Aww... thanks Julia. It was only going to be a paragraph about getting the new stove and to ask if anyone else had the same frustrations. I don't know what happened. I started typing and Carlos was born. (At least the cast iron works well in the oven. Thank goodness because I still bake my own bread every other day.)
I love gas stoves the best. My last apartment had the world's smallest kitchen, but it did have a gas stove. It was one of those tiny apartment ones (I called it my Fisher Price Stove), but it cooked everything perfectly.
I do love to cook. If I could stay home and make meals for people all that, that's what I'd do. At work I spend half my day talking about cooking and giving out recipes with our customers. Thankfully the boss doesn't mind because he benefits from the results in two ways. #1) I feed him and, #2) it's brought in a lot more business.
I can't imagine not cooking with my ancient cast iron comal and skillets. I hope my 25-year-old Magic Chef gas range lasts forever.
That's when appliances were made to last. You don't have anything to worry about. (And I'm not jealous at all.)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My $650 Tortilla Warmer.
Thanks for the laugh. You can tell quite a tale.
It was only going to be a paragraph about getting the new stove and to ask if anyone else had the same frustrations. I don't know what happened. I started typing and Carlos was born. (At least the cast iron works well in the oven. Thank goodness because I still bake my own bread every other day.)
(And I'm not jealous at all.)