VaporDaddy- Foodies are weird! =p

Haha I thought you'd appreciate this...

Okay, here's the kitchen. When I bought my house, I tore out an ugly but perfectly serviceable TRADITIONAL kitchen... you know, with cupboards and shit... and replaced it with this hodgepodge!

I'm REALLY bad around flea markets, tag sales, and the like... as you can see. All that 1940s and 50s shit works great. And the copper pots, I don't think I paid more than about $10 for any of them except that giant sautoir, which was outrageous but I HAD to have it. That thing gets a lot of use... It needs retinning already!

The floor-to-ceiling spice collection has pretty much anything your could imagine, including asafaetida (Um I think it translates to 'fetid ass' lol --- nerd points for anyone who knows what it is, let alone would actually use it in their food--- it is the worst smell I have ever smelled).

Anyway it's kinda funny, people come over and just sort of go around poking at things. Meals are frequently eaten standing around the island because it is virtually impossible to get guests away from all the gadgets and whatnot.
M
y mother is HORRIFIED. You can only imagine.

That last pic was dinner a few nights back. Mmmm garlic. Gotta love long-distance relationships.... gives one quite a bit of freedom... haha Oh those little pucks are grilled polenta.

I told you in chat my dream is to open a little place of my own someday... the dining room is basically EXACLTY how I want the decor to be... except I need some bullfight posters fo sho.

The last pics... I TOLD you I had the Larousse, and one of Escoffier's tomes, lol!!!

i love the colour of your walls...

and....your kitchen has EVERYTHING....awesome...

Awesome kitchen, Stinky! I'm going to follow your lead and start looking for copper pots at tag sales, estate sales and flea markets.

I win the nerd points! Asafoetida is an Indian (originally Persian, I think) spice that's really the dried, ground resin from a plant. I have some in my kitchen, too. A pinch of it goes into my Indian lemon-lentil rice I make. It's a digestive, at least according to my former manager, a wonderful Indian cook who told me I needed to have asatoetida on hand to properly prepare that rice recipe. I'm a spice aficionada, too.

Ding ding! You are the geek!
I love the ideas behind Indian spicing... when one cooks a bean, one must also add asafaetida, turmeric, ginger, or a combination, otherwise one will get the airs, lol... it's like South Asian beano! :D

I never cook beans and rice together though, as I feel the texture of both suffer, but do them separately and combine them right before serving, and this includes black beans and yellow rice- also, I find that the dusky color of the black beans can really ruin the visual aesthetic of a dish if it is allowed to spread beyond the bens themselves. And chili... beans get served on the side!!! lol

stinky you never cease to amaze me! Check out my stash;

Nice! So is your kitchen at the top of a staircase there?
And I notice you have a French-style spatula- I approve. I've got one of those too; it's like the simplest cooking implement but gets SO much use, everything from lifting the edges of crepes to frosting cakes to flipping burgers. Those big heavy unwieldy ones, you know, the ones that short order cooks use to scramble eggs, those are just WAY too much and when I was line cooking I pretty mcuh brought my own tools.

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Originally Posted by stinkyattic

Nice! So is your kitchen at the top of a staircase there?
And I notice you have a French-style spatula- I approve. I've got one of those too; it's like the simplest cooking implement but gets SO much use, everything from lifting the edges of crepes to frosting cakes to flipping burgers. Those big heavy unwieldy ones, you know, the ones that short order cooks use to scramble eggs, those are just WAY too much and when I was line cooking I pretty mcuh brought my own tools.

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I did too but it was like bringing a case of beer to an AA meeting. If you take your eyes off it its gone. I used to nearly decapitate dishwashers if they touched my shit. They all were really scared of me, they thought I was truly crazy. hehehehe:D

Haha they were scared of me too at the Mexican health-food place, the last place I cooked... You know how it is, anyone else who is doing a job slowly that I need to have done to start my closing work would pretty much get run the fuck over by Stinky the Bulldozer... MOVE IT OR LOSE IT PEEPLES... If you can't do you job, I'll do it for you... why aren't the tables cleared when the doors are already locked? I can load and unload a Hobart faster than any dishwasher I've ever seen... even the steak house that I ran the bar at for 9 years, I was likely to just have the owner stand behind the bar near closing, go out back, and kick the dishwasher out to do trash, and finish his shit... they hired the SLOWEST kids... ugh. It was a bad sign to see me come storming through the swinging doors, like in a Western... hahaha... like Clint Eastwood walking in on a bunch of cattle rustlers in the middle of a poker game...

LOL wow we coulda made a good team. We would have the place closed and spotless 32.5 minuits after closing, then we could pour a frosty one and spark a coner:jointsmile: while we count our $. :)

Oh hell, I never waited until the place was broken down, tequila shots were in effect the moment the front door got locked. lol I'm glad they waited until after I left to tighten the purse strings and switch from Sauza to *gasp* DURANGO GOLD... blech.

Tequill-ya?! No thanks, I'll just sip my Guiness and vibe on the herb thank you.
I only use hard liquor when I wanna date rape my wife. J/K.;)

Is that a cast iron wok I see Stinky? I've been wanting to get one of those for so long but haven't found one I like yet. We've got a bunch of woks, wife is Chinese and we eat Chinese food about 5 nights a week (usually I'm the one cooking though), but I've wanted a cast iron one for so long. I should have gotten one the last time I was in China but was an idiot and didn't want the extra weight in my suitcase. Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

Fetid Ass huh? I wonder what the customs guys would think of that? I always have a hell of a time coming back into the country with my stash of ingredients as those fuckers want to check out everything. I can just imagine though.. "What's this sir?" "Oh, just a jar of fetid ass" LOL

Nice cookbook collection too. We have a number of them in common. Cookbooks have always been my thing. I collect them like some people collect glass pipes. Drives my wife crazy.

Yeah I hear ya, I'm off that shizzle myself these days. Back then I was working 7am to 1130pm and needed to do everything, including get my drank on, very efficiently... If I wasn't lit by the time I got home, my schedule needed adjustment.

It's better now that I finally got a raise at my 'real' [read= benefitted] job and don't have to cook for anyone but myself these days, but someday..... ahhhh....

wow that brings back memories for me too. Getting up at 6am still smelling like grease and smoke, jumping in the shower, off to school wondering what assignments I absolutely needed to do the night before and how I was going to copy them from someone else before class. Sleeping through the soft classes, warm oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or Fries for lunch, a little hacky sack, race home get changed for work and head out. Work till close slam a few beers at the bar, home to bed. Start all over.

Itwas still a lot easier than having kids. :)

Haha OMG I just realized I never responded to this... long time but here's a bump! :D

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Originally Posted by Fengzi

Is that a cast iron wok I see Stinky?

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Yup, the thing weighs over 10 pounds. I paid $9 at Ocean State Job Lot for it. Wouldn't you know. But I still keep my thin traditional steel one for vegetables. Teh cast iron I feel is more suited to searing meat and making the masala for Indian stews. Lodge makes them, so does Le Creuset, if you have a couple hundred smackers kicking around for the pretty enamel...

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Originally Posted by Fengzi

Fetid Ass huh? I wonder what the customs guys would think of that?

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lol I brought back 2 pounds of unground garam masala spices when I went to visit the Yeag in KC this spring. That combined with the fact that I store my luggage in the room that my grow exhausts to... lol how much you wanna bet my luggage got tossed at the airport?

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Originally Posted by Fengzi

Nice cookbook collection too. We have a number of them in common. Cookbooks have always been my thing. I collect them like some people collect glass pipes. Drives my wife crazy.

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Used to drive my ex crazy too.. "another one? don't you ALREADY have enough?"
Never. :D

Stinkyattic even has plants in her kitchen sink. I bet there are plants everywhere at her house! It looks like cornbread in the skillet on the stove and I owe you one for that. I gotta make chili for the 4th of July party tomorrow and that reminded me to make some cornbread, if that is cornbread. Either way thanks!

Yup, actually I can not currently use my kitchen, as I inherited 7 large mother plants from a friend and until I finish converting a crawlspace, they are living on the kitchen island and counter. I seem to have a slight biomass problem.... There are vegging plants in my dining room closet, flowering moms in the walk-in closet, 6 clone domes in the spare bedroom, tubs of soil on the porch, rooted clones on the back of the toilet, and homeless girlies in the kitchen. I think there's one in the shower atm too that got flushed this morning and never got taken out... hahahaha I'm a disaster. I need a bigger house dammit. Apparently 2000 square feet is not enough for a single woman and her dog...

The cornbread has cheddar, jalapenos, and extra corn in it. Yummy. Gotta have cornbread with chili!!

asafoetida. (Ass-a-foot-eat-a) AKA 'hing'.
It's used as garlic, since garlic is not found in Vedic recipes.
Do you also have Galanga?
I'll be using both tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by psteve

asafoetida. (Ass-a-foot-eat-a) AKA 'hing'.
It's used as garlic, since garlic is not found in Vedic recipes.
Do you also have Galanga?
I'll be using both tomorrow.

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Yes, and find that it smells less unpleasant.
Asafoetida is also added as a digestive agent to foods that tend to um give one 'the airs'... :D
I find it interesting how strict some Indian cuisines are in their extreme vegetarianism, avoiding root vegetables (including garlic) for risk of killing soil creatures during their harvest.
So what do you make that includes those ingredients? I find them PERFECT to add complexity to a nice dal, and I have a recipe for green beans and mustard seed that definitely takes a bit of fetid ass to be just right!

Weird request stinky, post a pic of what's inside your fridge! lol I'm allways curious what people put in there fridge, cause even after grocery shoping my fridge is allways soo bare lol

Haha! That's AWESOME. I haven't been grocery shopping in a bit but I'll take pics tonight, you'll laugh. There's a box of odd ends of cheese in there... when I say I'm making a 3 cheese omlette, it's a WEIRD mix, lol!

Sweet! lol

Sorry Gnome, I keep forgetting to post fridge pics, but this is what my kitchen looks like on Thanksgiving morning when I am trying to cook totally stoned!!!

I really like your kitchen. It has alot of character. If you ever decide to downsize Ill be happy to take those copper pots off your hands. They cook great and are real hard to find anymore. Very expensive too. Nice.

wow thats a lot of stuff in the kitchen... i couldnt imagine having all that but then again... I cant cook at all... I even failed at making mac and cheese once LOL. I poured it all in the water in the pot at once and turned the stovetop on. My GF at the time came over and was like "umm... what are you doing." To which I gave a dumb reply of "I'm making mac and cheese duh" :D But to my credit I was a little drunk and VERY stoned at the time.

I am so jealous. Stinky, your kitchen kicks ass on so many levels. :( Damn it, I wanna be your kitchen bitch. The only thing I do quicker than clearing a table and washing the dishes is roll a joint. Am I hired? LOL!

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Originally Posted by Narf!

I really like your kitchen. It has alot of character. If you ever decide to downsize Ill be happy to take those copper pots off your hands. They cook great and are real hard to find anymore. Very expensive too. Nice.

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Please excuse this dumbass, probably ignorant question, but I really don't understand why copper pots are so good or so expensive, especially from the healthful standpoint. Copper is deemed really bad for you to use in smoking stuff, like pipes, etc., yet is prized in cooking where it would seem logical to me that any harmful chemicals would be ingested just as readily, if not even more, by using copper in cooking.

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Originally Posted by qdavid

Please excuse this dumbass, probably ignorant question, but I really don't understand why copper pots are so good or so expensive, especially from the healthful standpoint. Copper is deemed really bad for you to use in smoking stuff, like pipes, etc., yet is prized in cooking where it would seem logical to me that any harmful chemicals would be ingested just as readily, if not even more, by using copper in cooking.

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copper is one of the best conductors of heat which makes it ideal for cooking but it is also very reactive. This is why most copper is used on the outside of a pot or pan, so you get the benefit of the conductivity without any reactions with foods.
Some copper pots and pans are still used in situations where foods that don't react to copper are used exclusively.:jointsmile:

Copper pots and kettles are always lined with tin or stainless steel. Copper bowls meant for whipping egg whites into peaks for merengue aren't lined, and if you keep them VERY clean on the inside, the copper helps make the eggs whip up faster. Virtually all that copper, with the exception of the large sautoir and the pate mold, came from flea markets and junk shops- that's where to look to get it on the cheap.

Stinkyattic, I want you. Will you marry me? That's the most intelligent thing I've heard in years. Because it's true. Your post really did make my day! Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Narf!

Will you marry me?

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Hm. Can you get me Canadian residency? Or do you have a farm in Vermont where I can grow enough basil to keep every yuppie in New England supplied with pesto for a year? :D HAHAHAHA!!!!

I FINALLY got a pic of the inside of my fridge for potsmokinggnome.... Here ya go.

Yes, the packet of brownies IS in fact chocolate-cinnamon Trainwreck/MTF space nuggets from Demeter. Mmmm.... stoney!

When you open that little place of your own, are you going to call it Chez Stinky?

Somehow I doubt that would be good for business, unless I made it clear that it was one of those crazy garlic-oriented restaurants... which isn't outside the realm or possibility, since I ADORE garlic!

There is a garlic-themed restaurant nearby called The Stinking Rose. I always thought that if you didn't know what it meant, you might be a little reluctant to try the place. I used to work near the place, and sometimes a group of us would go there for lunch and then spend the rest of the day dodging eachother's garlic breath.

No. But i have friends in Vermont. And basil is easy to clone. All we need is greenhouse. Got any pine nuts?

YIKES, Stinky, too many knives hanging on the wall. I couldn't do that. It is really cool looking, but it would be too easy for my honey to pick one up a chunk it at me, LOL...

Just kidding, I think the kitchen looks GREAT. Very interesting, and definitely a better conversation starter than a coffee table book!

Hey stinky, don't commit to mariage just yet. I'm still working my wife over to let you move in here. Love ya beautiful!