How long does it take a microwave oven to warm up?

[angelica...]

But not much less, and with considerably more fiddling about:

Add 1 cup of brown rice and 3 cups of water to a microwave-safe dish and microwave on high for 10 minutes. Reduce power to 50 percent and microwave for 20 minutes. Let the rice stand for 5 minutes, then sprinkle with 1 tablespoon melted butter or olive oil and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and fluff with a fork.

So that's 25 minutes vs. 45 minutes. Of course, nobody's standing around watching rice cook, so the rest of the meal can be prepared while the rice is cooking. The extra 20 minutes doesn't make much difference, and the stovetop doesn't require you to repeatedly mess around with the rice.

Cindy Hamilton

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yes, and they should natural casing too.

[rbowman]

Enough bacon can even make dandelion greens edible. It's sort of like using lutefisk as a delivery method for melted butter.

[angelica...]

I know exactly where to set the gas burner under a pot of rice to keep it at a simmer without boiling over.

Some of us actually cook a new meal every evening.

Looks like a shovel might work better for you.

Just as I do with everything I generate when I really cook.

Cindy Hamilton

[Commander Kinsey]

It's high time they replaced the microwave with something more suitable. Can't they adjust the frequency slightly so it's only partially absorbed by water, hence it would make it's way further in to the deeper water too?

[gfretwell]

We go back and forth on the green beans. I either steam them with salt and some spices or they get that southern "cook for several hours with hog jowls" thing. I still prefer fresh when I can get them. The best were from a lady I gave a kitchen worth of quartz counter tops to. She gave me a huge bag of fresh produce picked that day.

[gfretwell]

The rice is usually going with other stuff I am making so it isn't an issue. My wife will tolerate white rice with Chinese food so I will go with the par boiled for that but usually rice is pretty far down the list as object of the exercise. It is more of a garnish for me and she just picks at it. If there is sweet and sour pork and stir fried vegetables on the plate, who needs to fill up on rice? ;-)

[gfretwell]

Hog Jowl is better than regular bacon if you can get it. They have it at the store here. I cut off the rind and most of the fat, then chop up the rest, brown it, deglaze the pan (bourbon works great) and add whatever you are cooking. If you want to put on a show, flambe' the bourbon. On a gas stove you don't really have a choice. Stand back.

[rbowman]

Already done. The first company I worked for made dielectric heaters, chiefly for the plastics industry. Most thermoset resins like the phenolics respond well. Typically the units would operate around 100 MHz. That's in the middle of the US FM band but since the frequency changed very slowly during the cycle it did not interfere. We kept one of the smaller models in the engineering lab. It did wonders for day old goods from the bakery down the street.

In a classic case of missing the boat, the company did experiment with some large microwaves that were placed in several of the local restaurants. However they never saw them as a consumer product. Our product was similar to Raytheon's RadaRange, a massive beast.

Raytheon bought Amana in '65 and the first consumer microwaves came out in '67 but like the early personal computers they didn't take off for a few years. There was a mythology similar to 5G; either the microwaves would sterilize you or make you incredibly fertile, take your pick.

[rbowman]

She was well before her time.

The US exports about 3.5 metric tons of rice out of a total production of 10.2 million metric tons in 2018. Direct consumption is around 4.2 million metric tons with a lot being used for beer and other products.

The US does import rice, mostly jasmine from Thailand as basmati from India and Pakistan. Unless the ship is really lost those wouldn't go through Suez.

My brother-in-law was a merchant seaman with captains papers although he never sailed as captain. The vast majority of ships today are not US flagged and the US maritime fleet has declined to the point where the MM&P union was only allowing its members to sail 6 months a year in an attempt to spread the work around.

Anyway, even in the early '70d he was sailing on container ships. That sort of put the end to the romantic see the world thing since what you mostly saw was a container port for a few hours in the middle of the night when they swapped your containers and then you were gone again.

[gfretwell]

Mine came from Monkey Wards around 71/72. I think I got it for Christmas 71. It was pretty expensive as I recall. It is still working tho.

[gfretwell]

I dated a girl in the 60s from Chicago who worked for this new company named SeaLand that was going to revolutionize the shipping industry by using containers that came in on ships and dropped on an 18 wheeler trailer to go to the final destination. Within 10 years that seemed to be how all international cargo was moved. I should have put my beer money in that stock.

[Ed Pawlowski]

History Channel has a bunch of Modern Marvels today and one was about rice. They showed the Uncle Ben plant where they process 32,000 pounds an hour. Each kernel of rice is checked by camera and the bad ones ejected by a blast of air.

He was just on the wrong ships. Some will stop for a week in places so you can study the local history, visit the Pyramids and such.

Last I heard over 300 ships backed up. I wonder what the cost is to go around instead.

The toll to go through the canal is calculated on tonnage and varies nort and south, mooring and tugs if required.

Tolls can be a couple hundred thousand.

[Jim Joyce]

The amount of rice eaten during a meal seems entirely normal to me. It's typically about an ice cream scoop.

Actually, they're not. Start with a small rice cooker, then don't max it out. Now you have two small servings.

Cool.

[angelica...]

Last time I checked, I wasn't "f*ck all". Yep. Driver's license says I'm Cindy Hamilton.

I don't live alone, and I don't subsist on curry.

What rice cooker? I use a stainless steel pan on the stove, then it goes in the dishwasher.

Cindy Hamilton

[Pinocchio Psaki]

How come Aunt Jemima was fired but Uncle Ben was not?

[rbowman]

He had one voyage where he got some time in port in India, but in the '70s you took what you could get, including Great Lakes runs. It hasn't improved. In high school I was interested in the merchant marine, the engine, rather than the deck department. Fortunately I took another path.

I believe I mentioned in another post that the northeast is heavily dependent on LNG. The US has plenty -- in Texas. However the 1920 Jones Act requires cargoes being transported between US ports to be carried on US flagged vessels. afaik I know there are no US flagged LNG tankers so the north east buys their LNG from Russia while the US tries to shove its LNG down the German's throats.

The Jones Act is one of those things that sounded good at the time but did nothing to preserve the US maritime industry and had unintended consequences.

[rbowman]

Ben was lucky; they changed the name to Ben's Original or he would be an other elderly black living in the ghetto on a inadequate SS check.

[rbowman]

Except for a brief interlude with an electric range when I was married I've been cooking with gas all my life and have gotten fairly competent. I use a small cast iron pot for my rice and don't have a problem.

The electric range had a little wiring problem. I could lean against the sink, reach over and pat my wife's butt as she was cooking and give her a little trickle charge. I have no idea why she filed for divorce...

[invalid unparseable]

That's mad. It's a lot more than that.

No thanks, microwave is much better on every count.