JoantheThird's Profile

The difference between genetic tinkering in the past and GMO's now is that Monsanto and others are able to put things out in the environment that previously weren't possible by "natural" means, meaning nature didn't allow for these things to exist- there was no way to cross-pollinate or graft them into being.

Here there is no fail-safe- creations that could be extremely damaging to other species of plants and animals are being introduced to the environment with no way of containing their spread or impact. We have no way of knowing what the consequences these things will bring over time, either to humans by eating them, or to the earth in general, and the scale they are being put out there could mean catastrophic effects to our ecosystem before we even recognized the problem.

GMOs are outside the ecosystem, in that nature could never produce them- we are inserting these things into a system that's so interconnected and balanced it's mostly beyond our ability to even understand or track. Look to the bees for just the smallest possible thing that could go wrong, and you can begin to see how beyond our ability to control any ill effects it already is.

Le Creuset and Staub are both made in France instead of China- that matters to some people for many reasons, from labor practices in China to recent revelations of ingredients like lead showing up where it shouldn't be.

Staub and Le Creuset pieces are manufactured individually- each is unique -one pot per mold cast, so there is no wearing down of the molds leading to unevenness in the pieces cast. Each piece is evenly weighted- there are no thick or thin spots, which means your food cooks evenly, without hot or cold spots to contend with. Which also contributes to the pot's integrity and soundness over the long term.

The ceramic glaze is applied in four layers with LC and Staub, as opposed to the one or two layers that cheaper pots get, and they cover the pots entirely; with the cheaper pots it's not unusual that the top rim where it meets the cover is bare iron, prone to rusting. The application of the glaze isn't always the best or most consistent on cheaper pieces, and there aren't people checking it consistently through each step of the making. The quality of the glaze has been worked on over the course of almost a century, by craftsmen living in a country that values good food and the tools they use to prepare it. Those same craftsmen are still engaged in actively seeking to improve the design- the shape and handling of the pot and how it cooks.

I appreciate that not everyone can afford "the best", whatever that may be, but that doesn't mean that LC and Staub don't earn their cost or that there's no difference between one of their pots and a $40 pot from Target. Reverse snobbishness is just as silly as people rushing to pay top dollar when they barely cook.

I bought the Chefmate dutch oven from Target, made in China, $49.00 that got the rave review from Cooks Illustrated back in 2007, excited to finally see what the fuss was about with these enameled cast iron pots. I had to go to five different stores to find one pot that didn't have some kind of damage to it, where the cover matched the pot (!), and didn't have some flaw in the glaze. But I found one (and had my husband out looking for a second one which he eventually found), and read carefully how to care for them, how to cook with them, and they were great. For about a year. After a year the glaze on both pots chipped and disintegrated off the inside bottom very badly, to the point where we weren't comfortable using them- who knows what would leech into the food from the broken glaze? We had been so very careful with these pots; no metal utensils, no dry heating, never going higher than a burner's medium setting, etc, and they still died on us.

So we were out $100 after only a year. Replacing them with equally cheap pots would be another $100, putting us at a $200 investment with no guarantee we'd have any different results. "Cheap" certainly wasn't working out to be very "cheap" after all.

We didn't have $$$ sitting around to run out and pick up a pot of either LC or Staub, so we waited and saved up, and when we came across a great kitchenware sale on Amazon, combined with gift certificates, we bought a 6-1/2 quart Staub and have been completely happy with it. It looks the same as the day we bought it and it cooks perfectly. To us the difference is like night to day.

We looked at the IKEA enameled cast iron when that came out, and the Sur La Table store brand when that came out, and it all looked exactly like the Chefmate pots did- the same pebbled glaze surface, the unevenness of the application of the glaze -all made in China and we are not even tempted to try them.

We also have a SS set of four small to medium saucepans we bought for $9.99 at IKEA seven years ago, and they're still working like champs. I have no desire to replace them with All-Clad just because I have to have "the best".

I have three Victorinox knives, and they keep a sharp edge and are amazing value at $25-29 each, but the handles are awkward for my smaller hands, and between that and their balance, I have to do a lot more work than if I had the Wusthof Ikon versions of them that I love. However the difference between the performance of the Wursthof knives to that of those gorgeous hand-forged Japanese work of art knives will always be too slight to justify the huge price jump there for my purposes. A professional chef would feel differently I'm sure. I would never say those knives aren't worth their cost, but I would say that they're not worth the money to *me*, which is a different matter entirely.

Great tools won't make you a great chef, but it's a lot easier to cook well and get consistent results when you have good tools that perform exactly as they're suppose to.

IKEA sells grabby-rubber or plastic bar mats or drawer liners- not sure which one they are, but easy to cut to fit bottom of drawers so nothing slips around.

Annoyances: all counters are covered with tiles that go all the way to the edge, where there are rounded edge tiles that rise up higher than the rest of the counter before rounding down the front - wtf? To roll out a pie crust I have to take everything outside to the one kitchen-table-ish table we have. You have to put everything on them at least two inches in from the edge so they're not sitting at an angle on the sloped edges.

Other peeve is that the cupboards, although tall & go all the way to the ceiling, are also hung high and as a short person, I can only reach the first the first shelf and very front of second shelf, so yeah, there's a good amount of dish storage, but everything is effectively out of my reach. And there's nowhere to store one of those step stools you can kick around or a stepladder, so it's always a PITA to get anything I need out of them.

I'd love to get them back if they didn't want to keep them and use them themselves, but I don't expect it. It's a gift, and the jar's part of it. I usually say I'm happy to take the jar back when it done, if you don't want it when I give a jar of jam, and some folks are very prompt getting them back (in hopes of my refilling them) and others I don't hear from or about it again.

I must say though, if you give me back an empty jar, you are definitely going to get another batch much sooner than someone who never mentions it again.

Funny to think growing up we kept tomatoes in the fridge as a matter of course, but then they were supermarket tomatoes, and didn't have enough flavor to begin with that you'd notice the difference between refrigerated or not.

Now we'd never put a tomato in the fridge - it makes it taste metallic and awful. First off is preventative: I try to buy sandwich-sized tomatoes if they're going to be for slicing, and just load them up on the sandwich if we end up with an extra slice or three. Otherwise, cut-side down on a plate to be used next morning for breakfast.

Lord, I am tired of articles where the author makes these huge sweeping statements about media formats being "dead" or pointless.

Great for you that you don't care about the quality of what you're watching or listening to over the convenience of streaming or digital copies, but for those of us who DO care- who think that if we are going to invest time watching and/or listening to something, we'd like it to be the very best quality possible, there will always be a place for Blu-ray (discs in general) and CDs/records.

Might as well say there's no point in owning a letterpress printed, beautifully designed and laid-out book, since you can read it on any e-reader. Or ask what's the point of all these micro-breweries when Bud's available at any convenience store.