Stuff That Really 'Grinds My Gears...'

Just about all the adverts in the print version are aimed at the top 2% or so of the population. In the US you get targeted ads so it’s different. I lost patience with the Guardian when in one section it had “global warming we’re all going to die” and in another it had adverts for long haul holidays and month long cruises.

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The Grauniad has gone downhill a lot since Rusbridger left, sadly. It’s still the best of a bad bunch though, even if the Style section runs photoshoots with anorexic models posing in jumpers that cost more than most people’s monthly salaries…

There was a brief interim period where the Independent looked like it was stepping up to the plate but then it descended into a clickbaity travesty of its former self.

Do you have any suggestions that would irritate a lefty slightly less?

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Not really.
Edit - thinking about it, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, though my German isn’t really up it these days. And Libération.

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I am going to have to fire a client for non payment. They are a relative, so there is no contract or anything, and that’s why I haven’t been more forceful. The reason I haven’t done it already is that I’m hoping the $550 in past due invoices actually gets paid.

I 100% WILL NEVER do this, but there is a petty person inside me who wants to replace their websites with notices that they don’t pay their bills.

At some point, though, I’m going to have to decide whether this stress is worth the dollars. If I tell them that they are running their business like preznit turnip, not paying vendors, it will mightily offend them, but that’s where my head is right now.

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Whut?

Were they blind, and therefore unable to see the roiling bubbles and steam?

I mean, I can totally relate to having to deal with young peeps with severely underdeveloped domestic skills; I used to live in a college co-op for some years during which time I held a few positions of authority - president, house manager, kitchen manager, you name it.

Sadly, our particular house had a really high turnover rate; every semester a huge swath of residents would transfer to other houses, and we’d get a whole new crop of housemates, many of whom had never lived away from their parents before… and it showed.

Hell, we used to tease this one guy mercilessly that ‘he’d die’ without a super-dedicated girlfriend, wife or maid, because he literally didn’t know how to cook, or clean, or do pretty much anything useful for himself.

But even the dimmest of those bulbs (and there were several) still knew how to boil freakin’ water… including the aforementioned guy with zero home training.

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The woman in question complained the packaging just said add pasta when the water was boiling, not how to tell when the water is boiling. So I guess she missed that part both and her domestic skills education and in chemistry class.

I remember she demanded, “how the hell should I know when the water’s boiling?” like it was some arcane secret she hasn’t been initiated to.

I’d just love to know what her parents were thinking, sending her out into the world like that.

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Funny thing. I know how to cook some things and can generally follow a cookbook. But I have this problem with determining EXACTLY when water is actually boiling. It seems like there is a sort of continuum between the time bubbles start to form on the bottom, and the time it’s a full rolling boil. With the corn on the cob recipe I use (1960s Betty Crocker), you cover the corn with cold water, then put it on the burner and let it come to a boil. You cook for 2 minutes, then take the pot off the heat and let sit for 10 minutes.

But when do you start timing the 2 minutes??? The uncertainty is a large percentage of the total time. I have to guess, but then I feel uneasy.

Only an OCDish STEM-type person would have this problem I think . . . . but it’s quite different from not knowing what a boil looks like.

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Holy fucksocks…

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Same for me. How boiling should it be? They never say. And there’s a significant difference in how long it takes to go from ‘initiating boil’ to ‘boiling over’ depending on the pot and the temperature. At least it doesn’t really matter with the things that I cook. I mostly just mix a bunch of stuff together and wing it instead of following a recipe.

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No no no.

  1. Heat a pot of salted water to a rolling boil (set the table while you’re waiting and lay out the butter.)

  2. Walk to the yard. Pick as many ears as you need immediately.

  3. Run, do not walk, back to the kitchen. Shuck the corn as you are running.

  4. Place the corn in the water and boil for five minutes.

  5. Enjoy. :grin:

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You missed a step:

We try to get butter & sugar corn, which don’t need no stinking butter.:grin:

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Congratulations on not saying you put your finger in the water to see if it feels hot.

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“Thank Heaven she’s now Someone Else’s Problem?”

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So is the variation in the size and state of ripeness of the corn cobs, so it’s a multivariate problem. I have the problem with blanching green veg before freezing; too much, kills the vitamin C, too littl, ends up chewy.

However, I cite my old chemistry teacher; it isn’t boiling till large bubbles are breaking on the surface (the initial small bubbles are dissolved air coming out).

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I think the difference between water at 99.5deg C (almost boiling) and 100deg C (definitely boiling) is moot for cooking purposes. Otherwise we have start considering altitude, barometric pressure, etc.

I don’t recall all my high school chemistry, but isn’t the long uncertain period a function of the extra energy needed to turn water from liquid to vapour?

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It’s complicated and was a big problem in early steam boilers.
Below 100C some water evaporates as water vapour and the rate of evaporative loss increases as the water gets hotter, but you can’t see it.
It takes a lot of energy to convert water to steam at a given pressure. But consider a small element of water next to the heat source in a boiler. If it starts to boil locally a small bubble of steam is produced. This insulates any water in contact with the hot surface so it heats rapidly and expands the bubble. As the bubble rises, the water around it is just below boiling and so the steam condenses at the margins of the bubble. To begin with, therefore, the bubbles will not reach the surface unless the water is very pure, when the water close to the heat source may become superheated and suddenly create an explosive bubble. This is called “bumping” and can cause damage to laboratory equipment - or early cast iron boilers which might explode due to repetitive shock.
At some point the water is very close to 100 degrees and the bubbles do not collapse before reaching the surface, so you get actual steam.
From a cooking point of view, however, whether the temperature is 95 or 100C makes little odds except that it is slower at low temperatures. The object is not to boil the water inside the food.
If you cook an egg in water at around 70C, I believe it is possible to set the yolk without setting the white, because the yolk has more protein and solidifies (due to protein degradation) at a lower temperature. But I’ve never bothered to try it.

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Define large and small bubbles please (with error bars for your measurements)?

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It depends on the size of the container. The generation of an appropriate formula is left as an exercise for the student.
(Also, I don’t do error bars. I do proper statistics.)

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Fill up a pot 3/4 full of water. Place on stove and heat. Check every 10 minutes. When the water stops changing behaviour/appearance, observe the bubble size.

So as not to waste good water and electricity, drop some pasta in the boiling water, cook for 7 (white) to 10 (whole wheat) minutes, remove from heat, drain, toss with pesto or warmed-up marinara sauce.

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You mean when the water has all boiled away and the pot is glowing red? :thinking:

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