Anything that bonds to the surface would work—cling film is just a little more malleable and probably easier to use to work around voids and lumps. I'd think with stiffer wax paper you would still create pockets of air that would create opportunities for crystalization unless you smoothed out the surface before…

This is the triumph of marketing over commonsense—we're talking about slow cookers, not precision instruments. The recipes I've seen generally provide settings for "high" or "low," so if "high" is going to cook it too fast, use "low." And I've yet to run into such a time sensitive slow cooker recipe that an extra…

So many slow cooker recipes—stews, chilis, soups, and the like—are amenable to being frozen... I use my 6 qt all the time and usually end up with a couple dinners in the freezer. Really convenient.

I'm not sure I understand what you need beyond off, low and high. I don't think I've seen any recipes for slow cookers that called for anything else. And I'm not sure I see what needs to be programmed—it isn't like I'm going to put a bunch of meat and stock in a slow cooker and tell it to turn on four hours from…

When I'm doing metalwork, I tend to wear safety glasses for long periods of time. I found that the typical cheapo ones start giving me headaches, and ultimately invested in a pair of Smith Optics Elite Aegis Arc Compact glasses (http://www.amazon.com/Smith-Optics-E…). Not cheap ($60ish), but definitely more…

I use cast iron for most things. That said, I use a small deBuyer nonstick pan for eggs, since my wife likes them over easy. A wrist flip with that pan is a no brainer—I wouldn't even try it with cast iron. I bought that deBuyer ten years ago and it is just as nonstick today as it was when I bought it. So this…

Jesus. No wonder I don't eat anyone else's chili.

I'm just going to go ahead and say that the nonstick difference between a properly seasoned 1 year old pan and a properly seasoned 25 year old pan is relevant to basically no one. If you want perfectly nonstick, go buy a teflon pan. See Myth #3 in the same article I linked to before.

It may be the case that store bought chili powder has additional additives in it, but it shouldn't unless it is marketed as chili powder blend. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pow…. I'm pretty serious about my chili and while I have a standby recipe, I have cooked dozens of different chili recipes—I have…

I'm not sure I believe that it takes 25 years to properly season a cast iron pan. Frankly, I don't think the quality of the seasoning on mine has changed a lot over time. What you may be noticing with older cast iron is that the quality of the cast iron is better for older pans—they started off flatter and will…

Store bought "chili powder" is typically pretty awful—they tend to grind up stems and seeds as well as the fruit. I'm totally with Kenji on this one, except in very rare cases (I will buy Chimayo Chile Powder from local growers). The tip on the ice trays is good—I actually use that to freeze chipotle chile in adobo…

Hey... I have that cookie jar... Only the colors on yours look better than the colors on mine.

Or maybe its just that the calculator, which is probably based on statistical curves, is fucked at the extremes.

Assets are the plus side of the balance sheet. Assets minus liabilities is generally net worth, so comparing assets to net worth is not apples to apples. According to WP, there were 7,135,000 millionaires (by net worth) in the US in 2013—with a total U.S. population of 316M for 2013, that is 2.25% of individuals…

This calculator is telling me that at age 50, one out of every one hundred people has a net worth of $8M. I find that very, very hard to believe.

Cordless tools are a convenience. In the case of a drill or driver, I see the use case clearly. They have enough torque to drive anything I want and the freedom they offer is pretty self-evident. By the same token, I'm saying that I don't see the benefit—for what I do—in freeing myself from a cord when it comes to…

But if you are investing in a bigger battery, what's the point of the "system" approach?

Call me a Luddite, but I haven't had much success with cordless tools beyond drills and impact drivers. I think my 18V LiON Makita drill and driver came packaged with some other stuff, but I'm pretty sure I sold it off since I didn't see the use case. Cords don't really bother me for stuff like circular saws and…

Interesting—just made French Onion soup recently based on the Serious Eats' recipe here: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/01/how-to…. Might have to combine the techniques.

I recently did this, but in a bit more techie way—using a laser cutter. I used EVA foam, which can be bought as 2'x2' gym mats from Amazon in 1/2" and 5/8" thickness sizes—I actually found they were about 1/8" shy of the stated thickness. They are safe to cut in a laser cutter, as long as you keep an eye on it…