Er, why not? I routinely bake pizzas in my oven on parchment at 550F, which is a temperature typical ovens won’t even hit. Granted, they are only in there for less than 10 min., and the parchment gets some browning, but I’m not sure I see a problem. I also routinely roast vegetables on parchment for up to 45 min.…

I love the pre-cut half sheet parchment paper packs from King Arthur. Among other things, I find ‘em useful for pizza—I can build a bunch of pizzas on parchment sheets, then bake them off one after the other. As opposed to constructing on my peel, and then being unable to do another until the first is removed from…

If you don’t want gifts and want to accommodate people who feel like they want to be demonstrative, you can do what my wife & I did—register at a site for charitable contributions. Those who felt like it could donate to one of our causes or one of their own.

I can’t take credit. Think it came from Serious Eats.

There’s enough room for the water when things are spun dry. And if you can’t adapt enough to put a basket in a bowl it was designed for, I think you’re just being silly. Hell, just drop it in the sink. They tend to be sloped to the drain, so it isn’t an issue.

Really? You find it hard to put a basket in a bowl specifically shaped to hold that basket? I do this every time I use the damn thing—put lettuce in basket, rinse, shake, put in spinner. We’re not talking about putting square pegs in round holes here.

You can hold it... Then put it back into the bowl for the spinner-thing, which should have room below the basket for water to drain. That all said, I do have a fine mesh colander I keep in my kitchen and would not do without. But even if there was something like that in my salad spinner, I think I’d still have a…

Try the fine microplanes—better for ginger/garlic and not particularly deadly. I’d be lying if I said I never lost flesh to a box grater or the large microplanes (thankfully never misused a mandoline). There are gloves out there that are cut-safe.

Ever tried using a microplane for garlic? I wouldn’t use anything else, frankly, for ginger (just freeze it beforehand—stores longer, works with the same potency).

You can say the same about any unitasker—while you can probably cook anything with limited equipment and enough time and ingenuity, tasks that are repetitive or you perform a lot may benefit from specialized tools. I’m with you on the fruit thing—never felt a need to switch from my knife and Y peeler—but I have no…

Huh? My salad spinner inside looks like a colander and is removable... Just a standard OXO salad spinner. It isn’t a fine mesh colander, but I don’t think a fine mesh colander would work really well in the spinning application. I use mine to make Kenji’s Cole Slaw recipe all the time, which requires…

Set apple on cutting board fat (top) end down. Make a slice like you are cutting it in half, but just to the near side of the core. Then make another parallel slice on the other side of the core. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Essentially coring out the center of the apple as a square. So fast. So easy. Yeah…

D.C. list seems to have been done by people who don’t really know D.C., considering that both &pizza and Taylor Gourmet are chains (and wildly overrated to boot). And Ray’s is in Arlington (and more fine dining than Outback), A&J’s in Annandale/Bethesda, Mark’s in Falls Church, Mandalay in Bethesda, and Paci’s and…

Wow. Our dog was an essential part of child rearing. She maintained an utterly clean floor for us during that messy childseat-spoon-and-hands-only-mush-and-cheerios-for-meals phase. I personally would have let the dog clean the seat and tray as well, but wife insisted on disinfectants and stuff. Then again, did…

I’m not talking about people who want to stretch their legs.

I’ve always understood that rule number 1 is to look outside—car sickness is typically the product of your rational brain thinking you aren’t moving coupled with sensory data that says you are. If you look outside, you tend to resolve that conflict better—anticipate turns, etc. So corollary to rule number 1 is no…

Having to stop and visit a drug store seems like a PITA. I’ve never had issues getting my toiletry supplies through TSA.

I wasn’t actually talking about the Ard’time—I noted, in fact, that it wasn’t available in the US, so, shockingly, I had read the article. I was actually talking about the references in this thread to soda siphons on Amazon being made of plastic (except for one for $175) and cartridges made of plastic. I’m not seeing…

Where are people seeing plastic? The brand she was using doesn’t seem to be sold in the US (at least not on Amazon US), and the only comparable ones I can see are the iSi ones. I’ve owned two of their whipped cream dispensers and iSi’s soda siphon, and all of them have been metal—as well as the NO2 and CO2…

Having grown up south of the Mason Dixon line (just south, MD), I was stunned at the racist stuff I saw when I went to MI—both passive and active. Things that would have caused heads to roll at U of MD were ignored at U of MI.