If you don’t want to use expensive maple syrup, try the classic Mapleine (https://www.amazon.com/Crescent-Mapleine-Imitation-Flavoring-Bottle/dp/B00BO4XHYC/ It’s imitation, but pretty good (much better than that Aunt Jemima crap), and I use it when cooking (as opposed to just pouring the syrup over something).

I have the Instant Pot, but don’t use it for rice because the bowl isn’t nonstick. I’m actually using an ancient (bought in 1993) Panasonic rice cooker (an early “fuzzy”), but if I needed to replace it I’d go with a Zojirushi.

I have the Instant Pot, but don’t use it for rice because the bowl isn’t nonstick. I’m actually using an ancient…

Any equipment/content source recommendations for setting up a home karaoke “box”? I mean good stuff, not a boombox with a mic plugged in.

Just use both, and get the best of both worlds for a long time to come. Neither is going to break the bank, and your major add-ons (e.g., SmartThings) are going to be compatible with both. My Home arrives today, joining the various Echoes I’ve collected over the past two years.

I like this supplier. The link is for 25 lbs @ $55 (including shipping):  https://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=25caf

My VacMaster VP215 handles pretty big stuff (an intact chicken would easily fit). You wouldn’t want to vac seal a whole bird anyway (too much air space) unless you butterflied it first, and then a small turkey would also fit.

Challenge accepted! I wouldn’t suggest it to the owner of a FoodSaver, though, because it could damage the machine to have powder sucked into it. Ditto for liquids, which are no problem for a chamber vac.

The fact that the empty part of the bag goes “flat” is due to the air pressure outside, not the lack of air inside (and is unrelated to my point anyway). When my chamber vac sucks the air out of a bag (in that machine, the entire bag is within the vacuum, unlike with a FoodSaver), the bag holds whatever random shape…

So, you bought into your wife’s Kool-aid scheme?

Chemistry is your enemy and creates soap scum.

Add some citric acid (the same stuff you should use to clean coffee pots) to the wash to get rid of hard water stains on the shower curtains. I buy it in bulk (50 lb bags) and use it for cleaning throughout the house—vastly cheaper than buying those little packets.

That’s a very interesting take on physics, and my friend Archimedes would like to have some words with you. I suppose you also believe that a feather will far more slowly in a vacuum than a rock will.

Tightly-packed flour is denser than water, and a good vacuum pump (like the chamber vac I use, discussed here previously) will pull out pretty much 𝘢𝘭𝘭 the air (very close to -30 inHg) without sucking out the flour, leaving a solid mass. I’ve tried it, it works. This doesn’t apply to FoodSaver-type machines, which…

Don’t mess with my segue.

You’d use a lot less energy if you put plastic wrap over your Cambro. With reasonable insulation, the main energy cost might be getting the water up to temp rather than maintaining it. But anyway, I’ll grant that hours in the water bath seems pretty ridiculous for a job that the microwave can do equally well in a…

So, Claire, why were you being so AR about the flour temperature? Couldn’t you have just left it in the water bath overnight, on the reasonable assumption that it would spend some time at 160°?

It follows, then, that chicken sashimi is a go.

I buy citric acid in bulk (cheap!) and use it for cleaning throughout my house. It’s especially useful for removing hard water stains, and the packets of cleaner that you can buy for, say, coffeemakers are just citric acid. It’s especially good for soaking yucky, smelly kitchen sponges. The only thing I’m missing is…

For the amount of adjustment I like, I would need hexadecirods.

You don’t need the question mark, or anything following it, to get to the same eBay page. The info after that is just for tracking the user (notice the parameter names like “trksid” and “trkparms”). But that tracking would only affect the OP, not someone else who clicks on the link—for him/her, it could be dangerous…