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Restaurants and pubs have no interest in serving larger quantities. They'd much rather you took multiple glasses or an entire bottle, and that way they don't have to stock large, expensive glasses which often require unusual cleaning setups (since they're just too large to fit in normal washing systems). For home use, though, you'll find a lot of glasses like this with capacities well above 300ml (this one's around 900ml filled to the brim, so something like 450ml half filled is reasonable).

Of course, those glasses are also expected to be filled to a much lower degree. The goal is to have a really large surface area for the wine to mix its aromas with the surrounding air while ensuring that it remains contained within the glass thanks to a taller glass with a narrower opening.

There are a couple of solutions available. Sous Vide Supreme offers an all-in-one waterbath with a PID temperature controller, but no active circulation (relies on convection), for $400 or $300 depending on size. The Fresh Meals Magic is an immersible PID-controlled heater and air bubbler (to provide circulation) for $300 (up to 18 L capacity), or you can get a PID controller for $160 to use with an analog rice cooker or a slow cooker. The PID controller basically acts like a smart dimmer switch to control the amount of heat the cooker puts out. For $800 you can get a Polyscience immersion circulator.

And cooking is the geekiest of hobbies, if you do it right. My wife and I collect tools. The geekiest? An immersion circulator. This device maintains a water bath at a precise temperature (+/- .1 Celsius). You vacuum seal your food, and cook it in this water bath. It's fascinating, because you have such precise control of temperature. For example: food safety standards were developed to be idiot proof. You cook pork to 160 F because nothing will survive 160 for more than a second or two. However, you can achieve the same effect by taking food to 130 F and leaving it there for two hours. It will still kill everything, and it is still safe to eat, but you haven't affected the proteins in the same way. If you have never had truly medium rare pork, you are really missing out. Plus, it has the added bonus of being impossible to overcook something. Your food will be 130 F now, and hour from now, 10 hours from now. I played with cooking eggs at different temperatures - you get creamy whites, and liquid yolks, then bump the temp two degrees, and the yolks go solid. Much fun.
We also invested in a propane wok burner. Commercial ranges don't put out the BTUs you need to do real Chinese cooking, and this thing is 10 times as powerful as our stove. We also have a Zoku Quick Pop - a device that makes popsicles in 10 minutes, on your kitchen table. Why is that important? Because the faster you freeze something, the smaller the ice crystal, and the smoother the texture. This is why those Dipping Dots ice creams are so creamy.
I could go on for a while - I am a geek after all. :)

Toaster Of Doom

It's the fat in foods that make us feel full and keep us full longer.

Ain't that the truth. Here's a neat trick: try some home made pasta. Beats the pants off the boxed stuff as far as flavor goes, and it takes about a third as much to make you full.

For a good 4-6 servings, mix up three eggs, two cups of semolina flour (or other pasta flour), and one cup of plain old white bread flour. You might need more or less flour depending on the size of the eggs. Knead it until it's nice and smooth. Run it through the pasta machine (what, you don't have a pasta machine? They're worth every penny!) and throw it in boiling water for about three minutes. Drain it, toss it in the sauce, and you're ready to go...

1. alltea.com - They sent email confirmation when the order was placed, and another at the time of shipping, which included the UPS tracking number.

2. bananarepublic.com - Shipment confirmation email containing FedEx tracking number, but they sent it as an HTML MIME part. Bah.

3. sees.com - Shipment confirmation email. This was the first to arrive (via priority mail).

4. rei.com - No email, but arrived on time.

I immediately went to the brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma store about a mile from my house, and bought the item I sought, after hearing that it was one of twelve they had in stock. This raised a question in my mind: would it have been so difficult for the W-S order steering logic to have discovered the availability of that item within walking distance of my shipping address? Why not prompt the customer service rep with this information, or maybe even notify the store to ship it locally? It would seem that, especially for fancy-ass businesses, this simple service (which has to be trivial to implement) would really add to the purchasing experience.

My next question was, how can an online company not assume that gift-like items (excluding things like industrial power generators or tanks) purchased in, say, the month before December 4/24/whatever have the potential to be related to the chanukka/xmas/random holiday? Given that, wouldn't it make sense to actively notify customers if there's even the slightest possibility that an order couldn't be filled in time? I think I recall See's giving a nod to this by automatically upgrading the shipping method to next-day or something a few days before xmas eve. I really would have appreciated this kind of notification from W-S, however, as soon as they discovered the January 4 shipping date.

The best part of the whole thing is, however, that the day after I picked up the item from the meatspace W-S store, another one arrived via FedEx, which will have to be reclaimed by FedEx next week. =)

-jd

• I could definitely do with some new knives.
• and I've added a bunch of music to my wish list at CDNow
• my Spanish classes are going well, and I wouldn't mind a trip to Guadalajara
• but what I really want this year is a Ural motorcycle...with a sidecar!