Canopyflyer

Mensa membership is directly correlated to taking online IQ tests.

Truly intelligent people don’t.

I’m a cook as a hobby, so typically the cost of making vs buying does not figure into my decision, except when things at the store get absurdly expensive.

A case in point: Toasted Sliced Salted Salad Almonds from Fresh Gourmet

My wife and I love these on our dinner salads so we go through a lot of them. The cost of a package of these salad almonds has risen to $7 for a 3.5oz (99g)package.

I can buy a 16oz (454g) package of raw almonds for almost the same amount of money, as the 3.5oz (99g) Fresh Gourmet package. I have an electric oven that consumes around 5kwh that runs for roughly 30 minutes during preparation and my daytime electric rate is around $0.13/kwh (I think).

Out of that I get a full pound (16oz, 454g) of salted almonds for ~$7.07 and 30 minutes of my time. I also use about $0.02 worth of salt, bringing the total cost to ~$7.09 for 4.5 times more almonds.

I also can adjust the amount of salt on them as well, as typically my wife and I like less salt that most people.

It’s also fun to do.

Learning how to type.

You either had to take typing, or some other class that I can’t remember during my junior year. The other class didn’t appeal to me at all, obviously as I cannot even remember it now, so I took typing. By happenstance my best friend was in the same class.

The class taught me a skill that I use till this day, some 38 years later.

The full story there is that we were at an Orthopedic urgent care. My wife has danced Ballet since she was 4. A bad jump resulted in a 5th metatarsal fracture, commonly referred to as a “dancer’s break” and a severely sprained ankle. She was in a boot and crutches for 5 weeks. Her ankle literally had all the colors of a sunset. The Orthopedist took her shoe an sock off and actually gasped.

My wife: Getting old sucks.

Me: It beats the alternative:

My wife after a few moment of reflection: Not by much.

The polymerized coating on cast iron is stripped almost immediately with anything acidic. It’s basic chemistry.

Put some fat in the pan… You mean exactly what I do with my stainless steel?

Also cooking the way you describe builds up carbon, which is carcinogenic.

What needs to die is the emotional attachment people have to a technology that has its place, just not for every day cooking.

My grill Pan and Dutch ovens are cast iron. But they are Enameled making them a lot more useful. ,

I have a carbon steel wok and even have a wok grate for my stove. While I do some Chinese cooking, I’ve found that on an American stove it doesn’t really have any advantages.

I’m sure if I cooked more Chinese cuisine it would be a different story.

Cooking has been a hobby of mine for decades now. I have gone through a lot of phases in cooking, especially early on.

I have used cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and a dubious flirtation with all aluminum.

16 years on now and this is what I reach for 100% of the time:

Skillet/sautee: cladded stainless. Both standard side and high sided.

Dutch Oven: Enameled cast iron.

Pots Pans: Cladded stainless steel. For smaller 1qt to 2qt I like All Clads D5 for its heat retention. Larger than that I like the D3 for its lighter weight

Grill Pan: cast iron. Hate the excessive weight though

Non-stick: Ceramic coated aluminum. What ever Americas Test Kitchen recommends that year. I consider these disposable items. I stopped using TEFLON a long time ago.

I used cast iron skillets for several years. I found them to be finicky. Heat retention was stupidly high and that’s not always a good thing. Excessively heavy and god forbid you attempt any sort of tomato based sauce or anything acidic for that matter. Circumstances forced me to use stainless steel and I just found it matches my needs in a kitchen much better than cast iron. It gets used, it gets cleaned and I put it away. No having to have the vaginal juices of a thousand virgins on hand to make sure it doesn’t destroy the next egg I try to cook.

I consider cast iron skillets like safety razors. They had their day, but continue on because of a dedicated set of die hard users. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing.

The above goes for carbon steel as well, although it usually isn’t nearly as heavy.

Not a horror film per se, but definitely leaning that way:

The original ‘ALIEN’.

The building of tension throughout the entire movie is brilliant.

I’ve seen that exact scene in Atlanta trying to get to Alpharetta from 75 S by 675.