Cooking For Engineers®

Recently, I received a wireless thermometer from Thermoworks to try out. Their newest product is called Smoke and is specifically designed to help people barbecue and smoke food at home. Smoke has two parts - a base unit (which takes two of Thermoworks standardized Pro-Series probes) and a wireless receiver unit - which lets the user track the air temperature and the food temperature without going outside to the smoker.
Thermoworks is selling the Smoke at $99 and this would definitely welcome tool for anyone who likes to slow cook food outside.

These days when I reach for a spatula to turn food in a pan, I've been finding myself grabbing the GastroMax Slotted Turner more often than not. Tina bought this spatula for me after months (or maybe years) of listening to me complain about our various spatulas. After buying the GastroMax Turner, my complaining has stopped.

I find that whenever you're discussing a topic with or trying to explain something to others, it's best to have a common vocabulary. This is true in the kitchen as much as it is in the professional world. Here is my kitchen dictionary, compiled from the top of my head, the internet, and various cookbooks.

Whenever I shop for food, I look at the ingredients listing to see what went into it. It started off as just a simple fascination with what factories use to make foods, but now I'm looking to see if partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (an indicator of the presence of trans fatty acids) are in the food (as well as other "unnatural" substances). I have a tendency to shy away from foods that have ingredients that I cannot recognize - but what are these weird ingredients and what do they do? What are they doing in my food (especially since I don't have them in my pantry and don't use them in my home cooked meals)? Here's a list that I've been slowly compiling of food additives.