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behind food, the best mentor would have to be Alton Brown.

"We figured out how to tap it in a very unique and proprietary way," Sher said. "We figured out how to mimic nature, using natural salt to extract water and act as a natural decontamination.

"Think of the Dead Sea, where nothing grows around it because the salt dehydrates everything. It's kind of like that."

All the Alton Brown geeks in the house should have perked up their ears when they read that. Salt is hydroscopic; it attracts water. Sugar is also hydroscopic, but salt is much cheaper (especially if you don't need food-grade salt).

There are two ways salt is harvested by humans: evaporation and mining.

I can see using salt to grab the moisture in the air present in the pre-dawn skies, but I don't rightly know how to make the salt give it back up. I assume they just cook the rocks and capture the steam. Salt, being a rock, can be heated lots of times before degrading.

I imagine a process like this would produce fairly clean water.

Give up for Food Science! Hell ya!

To the players, the appeal behind war games isn't because we all secretly yearn for some dictator to come and take over our lives, it's because games are about competition and war is as about as competitive as an activity gets. From the perspective of the publisher, a war game's appeal is similar to the reason that war novels are popular with writers: You get lots of conflict to drive the plot without needing a lot of justification or exposition.

I bet his wife gives away her books for free, too

The comment about cook books was pretty humorous regardless - look at http://www.altonbrown.com/pages/bookit.html. Look at the correction for page 238 (Pizza Dough)

Granted, setup can be a trial (This was my first time setting up a 'media' linux box), but no more than I would expect any setup that would include all the different facets involved. Distribution choice probably affects this too. (Gentoo preaching saved for a later post.) Not to mention, once one thing is working, it's far too tempting to include even more nifty gadgets, so setup seems to be a never-ending process. Caller ID notification is next on my list, and there's discussion of a new MythRecipie on the devel list that looks like it will compliment my ever-expanding Good Eats colletion...

... in fact, a fellow nerd/geek/hacker said I should add a Dremel Tool to our wedding gift registry. Best thing we've got.

But back on topic, the Dremel is certainly an excellent tool to use on firm pumpkin flesh. An electric knife is just too flimsy (but are perfect for carving the turkey, so spend the US$20 and get yourself one already), and santokus have blades that are just a bit too thin (but are wonderful for vegetables and fruits, so get yourself one already). You can use a chef's knife, but given all of the static force required to get through pumpkin flesh, it's just an accident waiting to happen (but they're wonderful for getting through bones and for when you've lent your santoku to someone, so get one already). Go Dremel.

(If you visit my kitchen, you'll see I even have the Black-and-Decker modification to the pepper grinder, inspired by Alton Brown.)

How about stainless steel pan(s), stock pot, good chef's knife, etc before we move on to gadgetry, huh?

Alton Brown has a recipe in his "I'm just here for the food" cookbook that makes use of a couple of ramen bricks.

Basically, you use the ramen to suspend some fish above a soy-sauce/vege-broth mix, so that the fish gets steamed, not poached. As a side-benefit, you get some yummy ramen to slurp down. It's one of his most complex recipies (a ton of chopping), but very worthwhile.

Chip h.

Also very good, and very funny, is Alton Brown and his book "I'm just here for the food". I believe Alton was actually interviewed on slashdot at some point, but I can't find the story. He focuses on the science behind cooking, and how the food cooks, rather than just recipes. He also has a show Good Eats on Food Network. I find that he occasionally contradicts himself, but overall is a very good resource, especially since the humor makes his book very easy to read, and his show very easy to watch.

Here's the summary of these links below:

http://www.cookbook.com/

http://www.allrecipes.com/

http://www.foodnetwork.com/

http://eat.epicurious.com/

http://recipedelights.com/index6271m.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/

http://www.recipesource.com/

http://www.meals.com/Index/Index.aspx?Theme=0

http://www.altonbrown.com/

BTW I did this for me so I can look them up easier! Thanks for the links everyone.

Forget the recipes, enjoy the science behind cooking with Good Eats!

I have yet to introduce one of my geek friends to Alton Brown and they not fall in love with his cooking techniques and lessons.

If you knowing the why, you'll love this guy. And if you understand cooking... you don't need the bloody recipes, right?

AC

Oh, come on now. Recipes were one of the first things I ever saw posted on the Internet even back when it was Arpanet. In fact, one of the reasons Xerox PARC gave for developing the GUI was to allow everyone to interact with a computer, even "kitchen wives" could be able to easily store and retrieve recipes on a computer without having to use "arcane" symbology.

To answer your question though, I think this link should be more than Slashdot worthy. The show is great, sufficiently geeky, and life is simply too short not to eat.....Good Eats.

There are many, many other links to recipes on the Internet. Food Network is one and Epicurious are the other principle resources I use.

This is probably because if there is anything under his eye, it's smaller than the microwave wavelengths. Our favorite TV Chef pointed this out in his popcorn episode when he informs us that staples are too small to get enough of the microwaves to heat up and burn the paper bag they're stapled into.

The guy from Good Eats is Alton Brown.

http://www.altonbrown.com/pages/shop.html

Which unfortunately isn't selling any gadgets right now, but promisses to do so soon.

From his site, he recommends the Spice House

Well, if you can scrounge up $23 for his book, there's a list in the back of essential stuff to get. He particularly recommends a good cast iron skillet I picked up one at Ace Hardware for $15. Also, check his essentials page.

--Steven

I watch exactly two television programs. NFL Football and Good Eats.

I have three questions.

I learned a long time ago that I enjoyed cooking more than anything else. Part of that is that, being a geek, I live in a digital world, and the analog act of cooking is very soothing. While I will complain loudly at standing in a line longer than ten minutes, I've often spent HOURS on my feet in the kitchen cooking for holidays, and went to bed that night blissfully calm.

In the US today, with rampant McCuisine and dual income families, the concept of cooking has been shoved to the back burner, so to speak. Eating is something you do, not something you enjoy. Even worse, good food is, for many, something you go get, not something you do in your own kitchen.

So, riddle me these questions three...

1) What can be done about the dumbing down of american cuisine? Your show is a spectacular start, but there simply arent enough of them. You actually make other shows irrelevant. I'm no longer content to see the "How" without also getting the "why?" Short of "Good Eats 2", what can be done to teach americans what good food is?

2) You're living the life I'd kill for. You were a Video guy who left to go to culinary school. I'm a web guy who would give anything to do the same, if I could figure out how to pay the mortgage and feed the three kids in the interim. I have taken the path of self education. Your book is, quite honestly, a textbook that should be required reading for anyone who wants to cook. I'm waiting for my copy of McGee's On Food And Cooking, what other resources do you recommend for someone who is very serious about culinary education, but doesn't have the resources for an immersive culinary school?

3) Your equipment recommendations, so far, have been dead on. My Magnum pepper mill is a dream, My lodge cast iron has a seasoning my grandmother would have been jealous of, and Spring loaded tongs have been a fixture in my kitchen since before you did your PBS shows. But I have yet to find a source for your Jomac gloves, and I am still patiently waiting for the Plunger and Plunger Junior to go on sale at Your Site. Hook a brother up, to steal a Nicholson line, "Where does he get these wonderful toys."?

Oh, and I'll slide in one more question. What subjects are on tap for next season?

I have been a huge AB fan since my first chance to brine a turkey, never missing an episode. Now, I could have sworn I saw mention of an episode on microbrewing on his website, but it's not there any more, and the episode never aired that I could see. Wazzup with that? Will this "lost classic" ever see air?

Maybe your should look at his website: http://www.altonbrown.com/pages/behindsc.html

He has an area on his website that sort of answers this question. Check this out. It has a list of tools that he likes to have in a kitchen, and why. Many are rather multipurpose items, so you can do lots of different things with relatively few tools.

Hope this helps.

You should check out "Alton's Essential Elements" from his web page, which is his top 25 kitchen tools. It includes a lot of the ever-famous tools from the show, including the Lodge cast iron skillet and the probe thermometer.

Sigh... so many people asking questions that are on his website or on the show website.

If you want to see his list of "essential gear" look here.

Sigh... so many people asking questions that are on his website or on the show website.

If you want to see his list of "essential gear" look here.

Many of the answers to some of the questions asked so far can be found at www.altonbrown.com and also at (especially check the FAQS on this site).

I mention this because I'd like to see slashdot add to the internet's collective pool of Alton Brown knowledge, not repeat stuff that we already known.

A list of Alton's Essentials can be found on his website in a typically quirky format.

Why is it that the recipes from Good Eats belong to the Food Network, and they post so few of them? How much editorial control do you have over your Web Content and would you do things differently if you had the option?

Back in June, Mr. Brown (AB to his friends and fans) went on tour to promote his book. I caught his last stop here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (It's the hometown of Borders, don'cha know...)

Basically, the guy is just as witty and cool in person as he is on the show. He was obviously a little burnt out from the tour, and there were rumors his marriage was on the rocks, but in every other way he was just... himself. Most celebrities, when you meet them in person, are paler and scabbier and much more socially inept than they ever appear on screen. Not AB. Watching him during the Q&A session was just like watching him on his show -- so much so that I actually got a slight sense of dissociation.

He's going back out on tour again soon. Here are the dates. If you can, go see him. It's definitely worth it.

The best Good Eats site is not at the Food Network's main site. They just warehouse AB's recipes. The best Good Eats site is the Good Eats Fan Page. News, transcripts, FAQs, family tree (no, really ;-) and a complete index of the recipes. Enjoy.

www.altonbrown.com is pretty good. Read the rant's and raves section for funny stories from his book tour.

What do you think of Alton Brown?

substance

Two words:

Alton Brown

Why is he geeky? He doesn't do like, say, Emeril (cook something we mortals can't, shout "Bam" a lot), but teaches you how to cook. What are the properties of this ingredient? What equipment do I need? Why do we put buttermilk and baking soda together?

(Answer to the last one: carbon dioxide creates a degree of rising)