Category Archives: Information

So we just recently got one of those Instant Pot pressure cookers. It’s pretty great for high temperature/pressure cooking, light canning, and slow cooking.

There are lots of different pressure cookers to choose from – we got the Instant Pot because it has multiple modes and has Bluetooth smartphone connectivity. Pressure cookers don’t have to be as expensive or complicated, and are much more common in European and Aisan homes and commercial kitchens, which is a shame – it’s a great tool for any kitchen.

The Instant Pot works great as a steamer, but the it doesn’t come with a large basket. One cool little hack people are doing is buying this 3 quart mesh basket which fits inside the cooker – except for the handles. It’s common enough that it shows up in the “commonly bought with” section on Amazon.

So, I was asked to remove the handles off one of these today. My first thought was to grab the Dremel tool, but that seemed excessive and I didn’t want to deal with sharp edges. The handles are just spot welded on to the brim, so I figured it should be relatively easy to break the weld point. I don’t have any experience with these, so I did a little research. Everything I see are about using pliers or a shop vice.

But all you need to do is hold the rim near the handle with one hand, and rock the handle back and forth (perpendicular to the rim) with the other hand. You don’t want to bend the rim, so start off gently, but the handle will move. The spot weld is a weak point, and without too much force it will break off.

Sunday April 17th 2016 is the annual Greater Los Angeles Walk MS.

This is the fifth year I’ve done the walk, but this is the first year I’m trying to raise money for the National MS Society.

So far, I have raised over $1100 for the National MS Society. Please consider supporting this cause by donating to my National MS Society fundraising page.

All donations go directly to the National MS Society. They are a national charity that supports those with Multiple Sclerosis and fund research for treatments and a cure. More than 80% of their money goes to non-fundraising programs.

Right now I’m on a ship at sea somewhere between Canada and Alaska. I say somewhere because we’re completely fogged in and I can’t see a thing past the deck rail of the ship.

When I got married just over ten years ago, my wife and I decided to take an Alaska cruise for our honeymoon. Some friends of my wife book specialty cruises and work with all the cruise lines. They suggested Holland America Line because they had a reputation for dealing with the special dietary needs of their passengers. It worked like a charm ten years ago, and things have only improved in the years since.

It makes sense – put thousands of people on a floating city, and try to serve them food from one kitchen, and you’re going to have to deal with allergies, picky eaters, and whatnot.

The good news is, they can accommodate you. The bad news is they aren’t all that good about letting you know this. And you have to do some of the work. But you should be use to that by now.

We’ve been on two more cruises since, both on Holland America. Here’s what I’ve learned about safe eating with a special diet while on a cruise. I’m going to focus on Holland America, but I’m sure the same generally applies to the other large cruise lines. Continue reading →

I got a sous vide immersion heater/circulator just before Thanksgiving, and I’m loving it.

Sous vide is a method of cooking that involves putting food in vacuum sealed bags, and using heated circulated water to cook it, usually at relatively low temperatures for relatively long periods of time. It used to be the sole domain of restaurants, and sous vide cookers are usually large and expensive. But there are now a few home units that are affordable. I picked up a Nomiku when it was a Kickstarter campaign but they can be ordered now for about $300.

That’s a lot of money for a kitchen gadget, but this one is going to get a lot of use in my kitchen, and it’s a bargain compared to the $1000+ commercial units. I was going to build one using an immersion heater, an aquarium pump, a thermocouple, and a PID controller. The parts would have been less than $100, but I was going to have to build an enclosure for it and find a suitable container for the water bath. And I’d have to tune the PID controller to keep it accurate.

The Nomiku was more expensive, but it was more convenient. It clips on to the side of a stock pot, so it packs away nice and easy. It’s easy to use – plug it in and turn the knob to set the temperature. It circulates the water in the pot, heating it up to and keeping it within 0.2 degrees of the target temperature.

So why is this useful? Because it lets you bring the temperature of your food to precisely the temperature you want, which gives you better control over how the food turns out.

Continue reading →

Don’t ever assume you know what’s going on.

Although this blog is primarily about gluten-free living, gluten is only one of my dietary concerns. I have a large, and constantly-changing list of allergies.

Wheat, rye, and barley were all on the first allergy test results, so I did not bother getting tested for celiac disease, as the net result was no different from a dietary perspective – I had to adopt a gluten-free diet.

My wheat allergy was not what I was at the allergist to discover. I had been having problems with seafood that became too obvious to ignore after a visit to Gladstone’s seafood restaurant in Malibu one afternoon following a trip to the Getty Villa (before it closed for remodeling and before the Getty Center construction, which should date this part of the story a bit). I had a shrimp and crab sandwich, and partway through the meal, my throat began to swell up. Gladstone’s has lines painted on the floor leading to the bathroom, which should be somewhat suspicious, but for which I am ever grateful.

My uvula swelled along with my throat and It took me a couple days to recover, but still I didn’t seek medical counsel. That would wait for an unfortunate salmon incident that occurred the first time eating with future in-laws, several years later.

The Gladstone’s culprit turned out to be crab, not the shrimp. But adding salmon, cod, and trout to the list of potentially life-threatening food allergies essentially swore me off all seafood.

The initial test turned up some other foods that I used to eat all the time, as well as foods I have always hated. The big revelation was wheat. I remember walking through the supermarket and reading the ingredients of all the pre-packaged foods I used to buy and seeing all the wheat-derived ingredients.

But the wheat allergy diagnosis was a godsend, as I didn’t realize how horrible I had been feeling for years (decades) because of it. It is one of the most difficult ingredients to avoid (as I have no need to tell you) so it has been the focus of my “special” dietary needs.

Fortunately, avoiding gluten has become considerably easier over the last 10+ years.

Continue reading →