Moonrose's Profile

American Test Kitchen recommends the Crock-Pot Touchscreen. It sells around $129.

I personally use a basic 7 qrt crock pot that I purchased under $30. I recommend the larger size cookers. There is only two of us but I cook large portions and freeze half of the recipe for later. I was anti crockpot until I moved to Florida and didn't want the expense of running an oven while running the house air conditioner. I am hooked. I have no problem using a separate pan to brown my meat.

Test Kitchen also recommends that whatever slowcooker you get, you should test to see what temp your actually cooker gets to. Fill your cooker with 4 qrts of water cover turn the temp to high or low for 6 hrs. Take a take a reading of your water temp. It should be between 195 to 205 degrees.

Homemade yurts are very popular at Society of Creative Anachronism camp outs (SCA) You can find a number of free plans on line but here is a popular one that many have used from Instructables http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-yourself-a-portable-home---a-mongolian-yurt/

I love these sandwiches. I lived on them while in college. You couldn't beat $2.00 for an amazing sandwich. Moving to the south, I really missed them. Much to my delight, we recently found a Vietnamese market that makes them. You just need to get there before noon. They sell out fast.

I make this at least once a week. Pasta al Vino with Sausage and Saffron http://underthetuscangun.com/food/pasta/46-pasta-al-vino-with-sausage-and-saffron/

I never thought I would buy a slow cooker until I moved to the hot, humid Florida pan handle. During heavy air condition season, my slow cooker is used almost non stop.

Here is a version that is perfect for a crazy scheduled family looking for yummy goodness
http://saramoulton.com/2010/09/green-posole-with-chicken/

As stated in an earlier post comment, Alton Brown's Good Eats episode is the best step by step tut on how to fry a turkey. You can find it here on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctbj61jrUmE

We looked at using a container system when we moved from Oakland, CA to Florida, but due to our neighborhood, we didn't feel our stuff would be safe waiting overnight to be picked up. We also has some weird time crunches that effected what service we used. One thing though to consider in any long distance move is what kind of tax write off you can get on it. Our move was career related which allowed us to write off a big chunk of the expense.

I have lived in lofts for years and creative storage that doesn't take away from the open space feel is a challenge. In one of our spaces, we created a "room" within the loft that consisted of three soft walls made of out fabric. We hung from the ceiling conduit tubing (in a squared out U shape) to make a support frame. I then sewed three large muslin curtains that hung from the conduit. The soft room became our bedroom consisting of our bed, dresser and clothes racks. What was nice too was on the outward facing side of the room we had three large blank spaces to hang art.