I've had a cactus die from lack of water, my wife is the green thumb person and only grows chili plants ;) we only have a balcony, so not that much space. According to Wikipedia, rue is European, so I still have hopes of seeing it at the store.
I don't enjoy it, but I guess I also don't mind it that much. And I only cook once a day. Mornings are usually cold, evenings only my wife eats and that's warned up. So dishes are just those 10 minutes, once a day. That's about 2-4 songs playing on the kitchen speaker ;) if I had to do the dishes middle time a day, I'd probably like it less as well ;)
Recently got a carbon steel pan as part of my de-plastic-ification process. I use those for years frying or something sensitive like eggs, the huge ceramic pan for everything else.
Can't say I feel the need for metal cleaning utensils though, seems like that would be more for stainless steel pans? Just wiping cleans the CS pan, and the ceramic pan can't take metal.
Edit: wanted to add: I agree, carbon steel is great :D
Power cost depends. I use a thin client (J4105 CPU), and it idles at 4W. Idling is what it does 95% of the day. That power usage is lower than my modem, and a drop on the bucket compared to my (relatively low power) desktop PC. And I say that as a German who pays a disgusting 0.4€ per kWh.
Before I stopped fediverse, I was hosting lemmy on the cheapest hetzner ARM instance, with backups it was like 6€, so probably slightly below $7. Nextcloud has an ARM version so that would work.
Of course, only 40gb storage. I run nextcloud on an Intel VPS, it's one of the few SSD + HDD offerings I've ever seen, and I got it on sale, so it's less than 5€ paid yearly for 40GB + 500GB.
I don't play AAA games (except BG3 if that has 3 A’s), but my wife plays The Sims, and between some cheap DLCs and mods, it seems like it's almost free for tons of content?
Also: slow cooker. I gave mine away after I got an instant pot, but as I said, WFH. For people who go to work, a slow cooker is amazing. Throw food in, turn it on, have it done when you are back. Hot early or late doesn't matter.
I'd like to offer a counter point to mise en place. If you are experienced enough, you probably know when the recipe has downtime, and what ingredients are needed when. I prepare what I need until the next time when the cooking becomes passive.
Cleaning as I go would be great, but our two person household electricity usage is already at 4 person household levels, and hot water is electric… so I do that after eating all at once.
I never got this. Maybe it's because we don't have or want children, and are only us two. But dishes take me ten minutes every day. And I have a bunch of higher quality things that can't go into a dishwasher anyway. If I had the space, is probably still get one, but I just don't see how saving 7 minutes a day is a big thing.
There’s also Girlschool who released their first album in 1980, with a great cover of Race With The Devil.
They are the ones I usually find, but for me everything there screams "rock, not metal", but maybe that’s just me (after all I’d also say that about some Black Sabbath stuff, so it’s very clear I have no idea what I’m talking about)
I believe BlackLace
Ohh, nice, I had never heard of them before. That actually sounds kinda cool.
formed around a year or so before Warlock
Yeah, wikipedia agrees. Though there was Snakebite, Doro’s first band which got founded yet another year before BlackLace :D But they never released anything but a demo, so I’d say they don’t count and BlackLace gets the honor indeed :D
Sexism was a pretty big factor in why many female bands never came out from underground.
Boy, do I believe that.
CALL OF THE WIIIIIIIIILD! Damn, now I got that stuck in my ear :D
Interesting, never heard of rue. Translated it to German and never heard of Weinraute either :D I’ll have a look at the store the next time. And I’ll also give sumac a try.
Caraway is very commonly used in Germany, but my South African wife does not like it, so I very rarely use it.
I must say I’m a bit lazy with herbs, and I just buy "italian herb mix".
For other spices, I always have chili (we love hot), pepper, salt, tumeric, all-spice, one hot curry madras mix, and nutmeg.
Depending on the recipe, I also have a lot of different dried chilies, and usually some standard fresh ones (jalapeños and habaneros)
One thing I’d like to recommend you: toasted ground coriander seeds. Toast them carefully over low heat until they release oil, grind in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Use for most meat dishes, but also goes into some salads. Widely used in South Africa, especially in their traditional Boerewors, which is why I stock it.
Great ideas with stock. Alas, I don’t have enough leftovers for it as I tend to use everything (and for meat, I’m weird and don’t like bones or anything, so it’s always ground or filet. Only sometimes when beef shanks are on sale I eat leftovers and cook them for my wife, but that doesn’t leave many bones)
edits:
And finishing a dish with some sesame oil can add a really good flavor
Toasted sesame oil. I use it on pretty much anything somewhat Asian :D
Who were the first? Everything else I’ve ever seen was (in my uneducated opinion) very much not metal.
And somehow, she still manages to belt it out without much issue after nearly four decades.
I haven’t seen her in almost 2 decades, but back then was awesome, small concert hall in Northern Germany, no distance from fans to band, just a slightly raised stage (maybe 0.5m) :D
Add MSG. Another meaning of MSG besides Monosodium glutamate is "Makes Stuff Good", because besides normal salt and fat, it’s another great flavor enhancer for anything savory. And no, it almost certainly doesn’t give you headaches, that was racist bullshit and has long since been disproven.
Baking soda and the Maillard reaction are friends. You know how they tell you, you can’t caramelize onions in 5 minutes? With baking soda, you can. Add a knife’s tip and bam. Just be careful, it also makes them burn far more easily. This also works with meat, where the meat keeps water better and browns more beautifully. One of my favorite uses is for roasting cauliflower, which gets a deeper brown and tastes so much better in cauli mash.
Sodium Citrate for cheese sauce. You want creamy cheese sauce? Like for Nachos? Add a teaspoon of sodium citrate to your cheese when melting, and it will all combine without any of the fat separating. It’s best for dips, but it can be used for something like mac & cheese in a pinch, but you’ll get better results there if you make a proper roux.
Do you have another example? Because