Serving up a smoked pecan old fashioned today!
About a month ago I was pruning a california lilac I now own. It's mad overgrown and halfway to blocking one of my, I think four, driveways. I felt something ow. I kept trimming and felt something else ow. I realized it was a hornet sting but it didn't hurt that badly. Then I got stung again ow. The next day I decided I could probably finish trimming the lilac ow. Another half hour and ow. The next day we were - ___________________________________________________ Okay, let's have a Rich People Diversion. You know what rules? Toaster ovens. Because you can put bread in them, and put stuff on the bread, and it toasts it all together! This is great for sandwiches. This is great for Cheesy Toast. This is great for pizza - cold pizza in a toaster oven? Almost as good as cold pizza sauteed in olive oil (try it). This is great for many things. But you know what sucks? Toaster ovens. Because they're always cheap, they're always sized to reheat a cheap-ass frozen Totino's Party Pizza, and they take up more than half of your counter. Let's get rich with it At some point, some maker of thunderously expensive appliances, I'ma bet Miele, decided that the way forward was to throw a microwave in a convection oven in the wall and call it a "speed oven." So it's kind of a toaster oven? And it's very much a convection oven? And it's very much a microwave? And it's like five thousand dollars. But you know what? it's not on the goddamn counter. But! Since you've never heard of a speed oven, and neither have your friends, you will not be surprised to find out that information on speed ovens is thin on the ground. Look 'em up on Youtube and you will find delightfully relatable segments like "watch us spatchcock a cornish game hen in a merlot reduction in 20 minutes with the Miele Speed Oven." You will find zero answers to the question "can it make cheesy toast" (you will find a handful of people asking if it will work as a toaster oven back to 2010). It'll pop popcorn! It'll cook frozen pizza! Which from what I gather is what most rich people do with their "speed ovens." And if they want to venture further, it'll give you step by step directions to cook anything but cheesy toast. The way the High End Appliance Gods solve this is by setting up "experience centers." You go to a shady-ass part of town and walk into a too-brightly-lit showroom where a woman in a pencil skirt and heels offers you perrier, or maybe to make you a macchiato out of their seven thousand dollar coffee robot. And they got shit plugged in and if you walk in with a bag of rye bread and some sliced havarti, they will look at you nervously and then try a few different ways to make cheesy toast because no one has ever asked this before, deviant Americans, why can't they just karaoke their way through a lobster thermador like the LCD touchscreen wants them to but you know what? A fuckin' five thousand dollar microwave toaster oven makes some bomb-ass cheesy toast. but will it make gluten-free cheesy toast ....cuz see, wifey doesn't really give a fuck about clutter. Her parents are level 2 hoarders and she, like you, thinks spending five thousand dollars to reclaim four square feet of countertop is maybe kind of silly. So if she's going to be giving up her toaster oven (which she never heard of before she met you, something something petards something something hoisting) it better make gluten-free cheesy toast which, by the way, no one on the Internet has even thought of asking. And you know what? She don't reheat pizza. 'cuz she don't eat pizza. She don't toast sandwiches, unless it's gluten-free bread. So let's go back to the Experience Center, and annoy the shit out of them by asking if "dialogue ovens" will ever make it stateside (like, Miele has made a synthetic aperture radar microwave, apparently so you can parboil a fish in an ice block) but also by making slice after slice after slice of gluten-free cheesy toast without taking a single bite. _______________________________________________ And we're getting pretty successful with the gluten-free cheesy toast when suddenly your hands go numb. So let's chew some benadryl sleep melts, 'cuz we have 'em handy, because peanut allergies and children, and the flop sweat diminishes, and your hands are feeling a little less tingly, and your wife gets pretty mad at you when you sheepishly admit that you might have been stung by bald-faced hornets five times in the past 48 hours. You might even agree that yes, despite the fact that the Internet thinks you should live and let live because bald-faced hornets are a part of a functioning ecosystem, the fact that they're in the driveway means they're disinvited. And you agree that you'll absolutely get some pest control set up as soon as you've got the crawlspace re-insulated, we're working on it, frickin' HVAC has been dragging ass and your parts that were supposed to be here in early August are shipping October 3rd. And in the meantime, you let the bald-faced hornets have the lilac. But you don't let them have the driveway? Because c'mon man I'm like twelve feet from your hive. And it's all fun and games until you're just minding your goddamn business and one of the little fuckers stings you behind the ear and in the ten minutes it takes you to schedule someone to come out and nuke their hive tomorrow your palms get itchy, and you start to feel woozy and you see spots and you rationally decide to drive five miles home and call your wife and tell her to have the benedryl ready and by the time you're doing prophylactic measures like taking your blood pressure and measuring your pulse-ox your face doesn't fit anymore and you have the presence of mind to force your wedding ring off your finger 'cuz it kinda looks like this is going to be a real problem and by the time they actually see you at urgent care you're having a hard time walking but it sure seems like the benedryl is kicking in and they send you home with a five-day supply of prednisone for good measure and not only do you sleep off the next two days but the prednisone lowers your immune system enough to catch something that your last test verifies isn't COVID and so much for that weekend. So now I'm mos def sensitized to bald-faced hornets, the question is whether to start desinsitization therapy now, or give it a few weeks to see if maybe my mast cell response will chill the fuck out on its own in a little bit because let's be honest, there aren't likely to be many hornets between now and say next March but goddamn it used to be badass to have such a high pain tolerance but the older i get the more it sucks.
I have a relatively small panasonic toaster oven (too small for a whole frozen pizza, 13" across) and I like it a lot. What does the microwave part add? Or is it more, now you don't need to take up the space of a microwave since you can use it for either. That sucks about the hornets !! Haven't been stung by one yet and hope it stays that way, it sounds awful
Is it the super-bitchin' FlashExpress guy? I hear those are super-awesome. I looked at 'em long and hard when it was time to upgrade the last toaster oven that died. So... I should have known this but I didn't? You can have metal in a microwave oven if it's grounded. Which opens up some possibilities. And I kinda knew this but I forgot, because we had one? Initial microwaves were dumbly expensive because they used to rotate the magnetron, not the food. Drawer microwaves are still expensive because they do. A "speed oven" is an overhead grilling element, plus a microwave oven, plus a dedicated convection element with blower. Not only that, but it's all linked together in a burn-out schedule like a damn kiln. Not only that, but they've got temperature probes built in. So while you could put a turkey breast in the microwave to cook the inside, then broil it for two minutes to sear the skin, then bake it for ten minutes to get it fully up to temperature then run five minutes of convection to get it crispy, you could also fold out five large, stab it with your temperature probe and pull up "turkey breast" on your phone and have the gadget do all that shit for you, comparing how the interior temperature is rising compared to its burn-out schedule. Is it going to be better than one you just bake? It bloody well better be is all I'm saying. Let's be honest. I'm not putting in a goddamn double oven. I'm not giving up counter space to a microwave. I'm not giving up more counter space to a toaster oven. I'm putting in a thirteen thousand dollar stack of Miele because every appliance vendor I've dealt with in the past twenty years has been shit except LG and Miele, and Miele is hella more awesome than LG. And Miele doesn't sell microwaves. They sell speed ovens. We decided to go induction because it's energy-efficient and cool and we haven't owned anything aluminum or non-stick since Clinton was president. But my wife didn't like the fact that everything lights up red except Samsung, Wolf and Gagganau. And Samsung is Samsung ('nuff said) and Gagganau is Bosch ('nuff said) and Wolf is made in America. And I had to sit with that for a while. But you know what? I turned a tiny amount of money into an obscene amount of money and now that I'm spending it, it's all going to - a crab fisherman - union electricians - union HVAC guys - union plumbers ...in order to restore a pedigreed architectural gem. And if that means I have to cook on boujie appliances... well, wherever the hell you are, _wage, fuck off.
Wasn't trying to say it was extravagant! & Hell yeah, that makes sense. Even without the fancy cooking methods it makes sense as a space saving thing. My parents new place came with something like that, I don't think its a mielei but it has microwave and toaster in one, though of course they also kept their old toaster oven too so it's not really saving that much for them :p Is the no double oven for style reasons? My parents old place had one of those and mom loved it- small one heats up faster, and having both made holiday cooking a lot easier. & yup! Its the flash express. Love it for everything, except there's no built in setting for bagels so I have to run it on the 'toast' option twice to get it a good level
You didn't have to say it was extravagant, my inner monologue says it every other minute. Not gonna lie, I'm having a hard time "arriving" because the inner voice is absolutely calling me a class traitor multiple times a day. It didn't help that my mother (coincidentally) disowned me over email roughly 30 seconds after I found out our offer was accepted. 'cuz it's fuckin' extravagant, dawg. I'm going from this to this without any steps in between. I could buy sixty five of my current microwave for the price of the microwave I'm about to buy. You apply that multiplier to a Honda Civic and you find yourself struggling to even know what cars you can buy for $1.5m. I remember when Veyrons were that much and that was bugshit and we should stop now but I don't think Koenigsegg will sell you anything that cheap. No double oven because we've never had difficulty managing holidays with only one oven ______________________________________________ Okay, let's have a rich people diversion. I've got this weird room that used to be a "cabana" or "porch that faces the pool". It got walled in back in '81, then they added a living room in '82, then they added a trophy room (!) to the living room and an office to the living room. Meanwhile their existing dining room became kind of another trophy room and this weird-ass former porch became this no-man's land with two doors in and five doors out and an indoor barbecue that never worked and is also falling over and there's an electrical closet they built a sauna in (a wet sauna!) and there's a weird little powder room off another door and through there is the garage. Which sucks because it's the geographical and spiritual heart of the house and it deserves better. They put in three ceilings to try and make the room make sense but since there's zero right angles and less symmetry it never worked. Meanwhile I've got this falling-over barbecue with a chimney that's about 12 feet too short to draught and about 15 feet short of code and you can see daylight through one of the cracks so it's got to go? But what to put in its place? I'd just about settled on "a window and enough of the brick to match the brick on the back side plus I'll build a barbecue into it on the outside to stay true to the idea" but two different architects have gone NANAWALL NANAWALL NANAWALL so you go "wtf is a nanawall" and I say "a nanawall is the price of a sliding glass door, plus a window, plus twenty five thousand dollars, all so that you can't keep the mosquitos out" And then you start looking at built-in barbecues (the extravagance!) and discover it's tough to buy one without a rotisserie, and the rotisseries all hold like 40lbs because apparently we're roasting suckling pig now? ________________________________________________________________________ And that's where I went "I'll throw the damn turkey on the rotisserie before I'll buy a double oven and I don't even really want a rotisserie but now I'm intrigued."
What about Siemens? The previous owners graced our kitchen with all-Siemens appliances, including the induction plate. Doesn't light up at all and I have maybe one? gripe with it. You did get me to wonder what my Siemens oven has that I don't know about... it has a pizza mode, and it has a superspeed heat mode, which leads me to wonder if it secretly also has convection in it or sumthin' because it draws a clean 5-6 kW when I put it in said mode.
They aren't sold in the US. American appliances are sized differently. An American oven is typically 30" across, and can be 36." European ovens are 24". Can you buy 24" ovens in the US? Absolutely. They aren't what we're used to over here, though - you need that massive cavity once a year for the turkey because of course you do. American washer/dryers are also sized to do laundry once a week while European/Asian washer/dryers are sized to do laundry more frequently.
You are going to be so pissed when it breaks and you have to wait weeks to get the Miele tech to come in, tell you that the part you know is broken is actually broken and then come back in 2 weeks with the actual part. All because the assholes won’t selll you parts directly,. I wanted their dishwasher but I couldn’t handle not being able to order replacement parts and just do the work myself. Getting someone to do any service related task in Seattle is such a pain in the ass and wallet.
I'm on year 6 with a Miele dishwasher. I had a Bosch burst into flames, I had another Bosch last 13 months, I had four GE water pumps replaced under warranty in nine months and I've had a Miele that ate a whole goddamn cherry pit and just rattled it around for a week before finally cracking it and spitting it out. You will not find a single appliance manufacturer whose entire online presence is defined by anything other than all the people who hate them. Meanwhile the conventional wisdom has come around to "things with lots of parts have more parts to break" as if that shit came down the mountain or something. There are two chaebol appliance manufacturers. One is good, one is terrible. I have four appliances from the former and the one that came with the house from the latter has already failed - Samsung doesn't think that the ability to come back gracefully from a power failure is an essential function for a refrigerator. And there are two family-owned, privately-held appliance manufacturers. One is Miele, the other is Sub Zero-Wolf.
Im actually a Miele fan the dishwasher was fantastic up until it tried to flood out house that happens… What sucks is that they don’t sell parts directly so getting parts is a pain in the ass. Also because of low volume their techs are less available and more expensive.
Wow what a week it's been. Okay so the debate was a lot. Kamala did a great job of getting under Trump's skin and making him ramble incoherently. Moderators did fine. Excellent calling out of the fact that murder is illegal and that there's no evidence of people eating pets. It is going to be a long 2 months. On the job front, I think I'm getting in trouble tomorrow because the division director thought my email came across as "frustrated" which it had no intention of doing, it was simply saying "this has already been signed and approved" but he's insulted and now I might get in trouble. Fortunately I'm in a union and if I walk into the meeting tomorrow and it feels like it's a disciplinary meeting I'll be calling in the union to join. We normally work a bit remote but it's an in-person meeting which is odd. Very nervous about it, but I hate the people there anyway and have been applying so as long as I get to say "this is absurd here's proof" and keep my job I'll be happy. Worried about references and any impact this would have, but not really in my hands at this point. Gotta love a racist, sexist, fragile egotistical division director.
Oh no my picture got deleted! Onto the update: it was definitely a disciplinary meeting, cut it short about 5ish mins in and rescheduled for 2 weeks out with the union present. Not sure what all fallout will be, but at a minimum a reduction in job duties. It's a shame because I've built up wonderful and strong relationships and this could easily undermine that.
Oh yay the saga continues! So today my boss and her boss both dropped out of the meeting with the union in two weeks claiming it's supervisory and the union typically does not attend such meetings. While my boss is out next week, I've got a meeting with her boss and the assistant director of the division. So I'm sending an email to her to ask for clarification on what the meeting will be. Oy vey what a week it's been.
Two weeks on the dot until the wedding and it's all we're thinking about. Is there a life after? Who knows? My mood cycles from excited to nervous to already-grateful to nervous at least half a dozen times per day. I know it'll all be wonderful but there's some yak shaving to do to get there.
Weddings are stressful. Amazing, wonderful experiences, but stressful. Even if you successfully hold it together, chances are somebody in your immediate family will use the opportunity to go off the rails. It's one of those things. Good luck, cobber, and congratulations.
I posted this early summer a year ago: This premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival: I'm not going to see it until it's out on streaming in October.