Archive for December, 2009

Mercury Ball water test

December 22, 2009 at 9:50 am · Filed under Food ·Tagged

I enjoy cooking. I cook all the time. I get hungry, I need to eat, and it’s fun. I get a sense of accomplishment from it because I’ve made something. I’m not a patient man; I’ve never had time to make plastic model airplanes or anything like that. But cooking? It’s quick and easy and results are obvious and edible.

Last night was pretty cool because apparently for all my cooking life I’ve been adding oil to the pan too soon.  But, I found this video online and I tried it out. It’s the “mercury ball water test”.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/12/video-how-to-preheat-your-pan-leidenfrost-effect.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+seriouseatsfeaturesvideos+(Serious+Eats)

It works. And it works well. Extremely well. Last night I made chicken chow mein after making sure the pan was hot enough. Not only did my meal taste awesome, but nothing stuck. I mean nothing. Usually when I make stir fry, the soy sauce that I add at the end gets stuck to the pan and it’s a pain to clean and annoying.  But last night? Even the soy sauce balled up. It flavoured the food and didn’t dirty the pan. I must be a simple kind a guy with simple thrills, but I thought this was really cool.

So if you’ve read this far you’re probably thinking, “Tom, seriously. You’re talking about a hot pan here!!” Well, it was awesome!!!!

How does this relate to recycling? Well, I thought of that. For Christmas, consider making your friends, family or loved ones a nice yummy meal!!!!

See? Easy. The “mercury ball water test” is good for the environment!

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How much we give this year will end up as Garbage?

December 3, 2009 at 3:18 pm · Filed under Community, Environment, rogers, Vancouver ·Tagged , , , , ,

It’s a question Metro Vancouver is asking this year as part of their Zero Waste campaign and the answer is……  ALL OF IT!

http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/zerowaste/Pages/holidaycampaign.aspx

That’s right ladies and gentlemen. All of it.  Unless you’re planning on giving away an original Picasso or something like that. Eventually the screen will get scratched, the controller will break, it a tire will pop, you’ll hate Rogers, whatever. It’s all destined to be toast!

But, while I can’t stop the inevitable – wouldn’t even dare try. What I can do is suggest something semi helpful.

If you go to Craigslist Vancouver and click on For Sale, you can search based on price.  From here you can select if you need an image or not and then you can browse.  Scroll away people, scroll away…

Selling or buying used things is awesome. Why? Because everything we (Fresh Start) haul away has “negative value”. It cost $X new, and now you’re willing to pay $Y to have it removed.  It’s now worth a negative $ amount.  Everything we own moves along this price continuum but we can delay the inevitable and put a little extra cash in our pockets by selling it on Craigslist (I personally HIGHLY recommend 🙂 you do this with your evil hide-a-beds).

Some person needs money. You need a gift. You’d like to try and be a little less impactful on the environment. Well, I’m shopping on Craigslist this year.  It’s going to fun! Come and join me!!!!!  Tell me if you got anything cool for your friends and family AND your $$$ will go farther. You’ll probably get them something really cool! Plus there’s a section called “Barter“. Maybe you could even trade something you don’t want for some neato gift.  Aren’t the holidays cool?

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