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[Eldin00]

So I've decided I want a better source of coffee besides instant.

Should I go for a moka pot, a drip machine, or just mix in the grounds, let it sit, and strain it?

A lot of that depends on personal preference. A drip machine is easy to use, low maintenance, and produces consistent results. I've never used a moka pot, but the coffee others have made me in them seems similar to what comes out of an espresso machine, so if that's the style you prefer, a moka pot may be your best choice. Just mixing the grounds with hot water and letting it seep can produce a variety of results, and takes practice to be able to get consistently good results, but doesn't require any investment in equipment, and can produce results that are hard to produce with either of the devices you mention.

[Sappho]

So I've decided I want a better source of coffee besides instant.

Should I go for a moka pot, a drip machine, or just mix in the grounds, let it sit, and strain it?

A lot of that depends on personal preference. A drip machine is easy to use, low maintenance, and produces consistent results. I've never used a moka pot, but the coffee others have made me in them seems similar to what comes out of an espresso machine, so if that's the style you prefer, a moka pot may be your best choice. Just mixing the grounds with hot water and letting it seep can produce a variety of results, and takes practice to be able to get consistently good results, but doesn't require any investment in equipment, and can produce results that are hard to produce with either of the devices you mention.

Once again, I'd go with a french press. It's basically soaking the grounds in hot water a cup then straining it, except it's way easier to strain them. Just push down the thingie and you've got strained coffee.

[Helgoland]

So I've decided I want a better source of coffee besides instant.

Should I go for a moka pot, a drip machine, or just mix in the grounds, let it sit, and strain it?

Start taking the grounds up your nose - caffeine delivery directly into your blood!

Seriously though, I'd go for a moka pot - they're stylish. Drip machines are unnecessary and merely promote laziness - you could just get a holder for coffee filters and make coffe the normal way: Put filter in holder, put coffee in filter, put water on coffee, and wait til it drains through, occasionally topping off with water.

[scrdest]

Being a person who doesn't care about food, and having the house to myself for 3 weeks, my meals are consisting of some meat, some rice/potatos/pasta and some microwaved frozen vegetables.

Will there be any dietary dramas from just having frozen peas/beans/corn for 3 weeks or should i really vary it up with some other salad?

Not really, I think, although it'd definitely be more pleasant to have more veggies in the mix. Frozen vegetables are surprisingly not-terrible healthwise, as the main issue is that they are blanched before freezing, which removes some water-soluble vitamins, but after that to the freezing it goes.

On the other hand, fresh veggies are in a way *less* fresh - they go through transport, they sit on the shelves, all the time aging and losing some nutritional value compared to freshly picked ones, plus they need to be preserved.

[Sappho]

Yeah, frozen vegetables are generally pretty good. And depending on where you live, "fresh" veggies on the shelf can really be quite old. It's always good to mix it up, but you probably won't get any serious vitamin deficiencies from 3 weeks of eating how you're eating. Actually, I know quite a few people who get far less variety (including several who refuse to eat vegetables of any kind), and they're generally pretty healthy. (Although the long-term consequences of never eating vegetables are surely going to give them trouble later.)

[scrdest]

Matter of fact, I'm currently living on various frozen veggie mixes in various combinations with carbs and spaghetti alla puttanesca without capers (or, in less fancy terms, tomato sauce with olives and garlic plus a ton of herbs and sometimes some olive oil), for like two months now.

[Arx]

So I've decided I want a better source of coffee besides instant.

Should I go for a moka pot, a drip machine, or just mix in the grounds, let it sit, and strain it?

Start taking the grounds up your nose - caffeine delivery directly into your blood!

Seriously though, I'd go for a moka pot - they're stylish. Drip machines are unnecessary and merely promote laziness - you could just get a holder for coffee filters and make coffe the normal way: Put filter in holder, put coffee in filter, put water on coffee, and wait til it drains through, occasionally topping off with water.

When you regularly have seven or more people wanting coffee, it looks a lot less like laziness.

For one, though, french press.

[Ghills]

Being a person who doesn't care about food, and having the house to myself for 3 weeks, my meals are consisting of some meat, some rice/potatos/pasta and some microwaved frozen vegetables.

Will there be any dietary dramas from just having frozen peas/beans/corn for 3 weeks or should i really vary it up with some other salad?

Maybe put some fruit in there as snacks.   Grabbing some apples or oranges from the grocery store while getting frozen stuff is fine.

If you can, head to a local farmer's market to pick up some fresh local fruit + a good meal. Most farmer's markets have people who sell cooked food alongside fresh stuff. Basically a good lunch out + tasty and portable snacks

[Frumple]

Noted to self: Smooshed up new potatoes wrapped in pepperoni is delicious. If a little messy.

[nenjin]

Made Queso Con Carne last night for today's gaming group.

16 Ounces of Velveeta.
8 Ounces Sharp Cheddar.
2 Jalapenos.
1/2 of a White Onion.
1/2 a clove of garlic.
2 Cups milk.
1 Table spoon of flour.
Garlic Powder.
Chilli Powder.
1 pound of Hamburger.

Prep the veggies, separating out the Jalapeno seeds. Saute the greens in olive oil. I toss a handful of seeds in at this point.

Add the hamburger and brown it, set it aside.

Chop the velveeta into squares, shred the cheddar, add in your flour and toss it in a bowl.

I use a double boiler for making cheese sauces. It's really the only way to go unless you are a master of heat control.

Add the milk to the double boiler. Season it with some garlic and chilli powder. I also throw in some more jalapeno seeds at this time.

Drop a chunk or two of the floured cheese into the milk and continually stir it. As it melts, add more chunks. When the cheese is all added and melted, add your greens and hamburger to the pot. Mix well, and let it continue to cook on a lower heat for a while so the flavors blend.

The flavor tends to go better after it's had a chance to sit and combine in the fridge. It's typically spicier and more flavorful the second day after you heat it up.

If you're not satisfied with the level of heat, you can always add more chilli powder when you reheat it. Additionally, you can add Siracha too.

I'm not terribly thrilled with using Velveeta these days. It certainly melts easier but it has that Velveeta flavor, which I think tends to overpower a lot of the other subtle flavors. I think next time I do this I'm going to completely make my own cheese sauce. I like homemade cheese sauces but they are very hard to do right, and they separate once cooled, which I'm not a big fan of. Say what you will about Velveeta, it's consistent.

[Bauglir]

If you add potassium citrate to the milk, it will not curdle when heated and will emulsify cheese quite nicely, without separation later on. This is a large part of how Velveeta actually does its thing anyway, and will enable you to make richer, creamier cheese sauces without stringiness.

[nenjin]

Great tip! Thanks.

[penguinofhonor]

A few recent things I have cooked!

Spoiler: hawaiian garlic butter shrimp (click to show/hide)

recipe

Now that I look at that recipe again it seems like the guy cooks the shrimp in the shell? My shrimp were shelled already. They turned out pretty well. I used a crapton of garlic in this, and most of the shrimp had bits of garlic stuck to the breading. That was great. The breading was a little soggy though, and fell off the shrimp more than I'd like. Maybe cooking them at a higher temperature would make it crispier.

Also cooking with wine! I think I did that $4 chardonnay justice.

Spoiler: pistachio crusted chicken and red quinoa (click to show/hide)

recipe

This shit was awesome. I got a food processor so I figured I'd try some recipes with chopped nuts.

I ground the pistachios up pretty finely, which I feel is better than the roughly chopped pistachios in the recipe's picture. They mixed with the bread crumbs really well that way. I also substituted maple syrup for honey because I don't have liquid honey. I used chopped chicken thighs instead of breasts, about half the amount of chicken the recipe calls for. This let me halve the rest of the recipe except for the mustard/olive oil/maple syrup mix - because the chicken was chopped up I needed the full recipe's amount of that to coat it all.

Anyway, it was great. The chicken and pistachio and sweet mustard flavors complimented each other perfectly. I will probably make this again many times.

Spoiler: pistachio pesto spaghetti (click to show/hide)

recipe

Another food processor recipe. This was very good, though I didn't have quite as much basil as I thought so the cilantro flavor was slightly stronger than I wanted. Still, it was a pretty solid pesto. The pistachio and cilantro make it a little tangier than most pestos, which is cool. It is also good on chicken.

[Sheb]

So some of you might remember Kunin, that cute little lawnmower from the photo thread? Well, Kunin grew up to be large and noisy, and went were bad sheeps go: in a serie of plastic bags in the freezer.

Right now, I've taken about a pound of gigot (A piece of meat from the posterior leg), and I'm doing a french recipe called Gigot de sept heure, or seven hour gigot. You take a nice fat piece of meat, stud it with garlic, cover it in salt and paper and rosemary and thyme, then let it simmer with onions, more garlic and carrots in white wine (I'm using ale, because fuck yeah Belgium) for seven hours (hence the name). The smell is heavenly, and the meat end up so tender you can llitteraly cut it with a spoon.

Right now, I'm learning the main drawback of that recipe: it's fucking to stand the smell for seven hours and not just eat it all too soon.

[nenjin]

So basically, Coc Au Van with mutton instead of chicken, white wine instead of red?