eric135

Hamilton Beach 33956 Slow Cooker

My previous slow cooker has served me well for more than 10 years. The only downside was that it didn't have a removable serving dish. It was a pain to wash out because I had to be careful not to immerse the base. But slow cookers were the usual way I prepared stewed meats. It was great setting it up, go to bed for the rest of the day after working a 12-hour night shift, and having something really good to eat that evening.

This Hamilton Beach cooker not only has a removable serving dish, but the unit is programmable, either by time/cooking temperature or by internal temperature via a meat thermometer. 

This one is also a lot bigger than my old one, and it is much wider to accommodate the usual size and shape of the meats we tend to slow cook (chuck roasts). Our old one didn't handle these bigger cuts of meat unless we cut them up.

I've used it once since Christmas, and we cheated, trying it out on a frozen Marie Callender's Crock Pot Meal (which, by the way, was not very good), and the cooking functions -- programming it for low heat and then having it automatically switch to warm -- worked well (although the room mate has turned his nose up to it, and since I made two big bags, that leaves a lot to go around, even giving some of it to the kitties). My next day off, I plan to give it a real test run making pot roast.

MOTORAZR V3xx Cell Phone

My old cell phone was dying a long slow painful death, but now I have a new shiny one: the Motorazr V3xx. I've actually had it for a couple of weeks now, because when my room mate went to the AT&T store, they had to set it up with my current phone number and so my old phone wouldn't have had service. So I got it the same day it was purchased.

I am very pleased with the performance. The battery life is a true luxury. With my old phone, the battery had gotten so bad it would barely keep a charge for 24 hours even though it rarely received or made calls. Even when I opened it to retrieve a number or just to check the time, it would eat up battery life. The Razr's battery life seems to be at least 3 or 4 days even with frequent use, and I frequently open it to make/receive calls, use the camera, and generally fiddling with it.

I also like the way the address book works. It is able to save more than one number per contact, including email address, fax number, and comments.

The Razr has a much nicer camera, I'm sure because it's a higher number of megapixels. But the phone can send the photos to flickr faster and much more dependably than my old phone.

Reception has been great. Not only has AT&T (previously Cingular) set up more towers all over town (I usually have 5 bars all over the apartment), even in the hospital, I have the same great reception because the hospitalist group uses the same provider and they've installed repeaters throughout the building. The only place I have poor signal is in the Radiology area due to the shielding.

My default ringtone is an ABBA tune, but I won't tell you which one...

Presto 01362 6-Quart Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

It seems to me that filipinos tend to love stewed meats. Many filipino dishes are some version of a stew. Chicken works well as a stewed meat (and I think every filipino has taught all of their friends to love Chicken Adobo), but stewing beef has always been a hassle to me because the best stewed meat tends to be the cheaper cuts that require a lot of time to cook.

I got the idea to ask for a pressure cooker for Christmas after a trip home this past summer. Mom made one of my favorite dishes (boiled ox tail stew -- I am not kidding) and used a pressure cooker.

What intrigued me was the fact that my mother is probably the most nervous nellie I've ever known (I have fond memories of my mother reading the newspaper to me as a child, covering all of the murders and rapes and drug overdoses that could have easily happened to me had I not changed my underwear and socks and made my bed that morning). I figure if my mother didn't fear the popular urban myth of the exploding pressure cooker, then I could probably safely use one.

I've used it for one meal (stewed beef with bok choy) and I was amazed at how fast it cooked. This statement will make it clear to any asian/pacific islander out there:

START MAKING RICE BEFORE YOU START THE PRESSURE COOKER.

Yes, my almond-eyed friends, it cooks that fast. You have to remember to start up that rice cooker BEFORE you start cooking the main dish cuz it is done in 10-12 minutes flat.

This particular model is stainless steel, and depite the fact that it is pretty inexpensive, it is very solidly made. The safety features include the interlocking lid, a locking mechanism that forces a metal pin through the handle until all pressure has been released, a pressure regulator (in the picture, it looks like the lid handle), and a back-up valve designed to blow out if the pressure can not be released from the regulator.

I have to admit that, during the first use, when the steam started building up and the regulator started to rock back and forth, I was hunkered down behind the stove. If I had remembered where my bike helmet was, I'd have put it on. But once I got it going, I turned the heat down to 6 (on a 1-10 scale) and it pleasantly ticked away for 12 minutes. After this, I took the cooker off the hot stove, sat the cooker in the sink and ran cold tap water over it. After a few seconds, the regulator sank down against the lid, the locking pin dropped down, and it made a bit of a hissing sound as the pressure was released. It opened very easily, and the beef (2 pounds of pre-cut stew meat) was soft.

I was amazed. In the near future, I intend to try it on some beef ribs, a chuck roast, and oh yes, some ox tail.

Christmas, Curtis iP220, podcasts...

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I worked Christmas Eve, had Christmas Night off, and then worked another three days but Christmas was still great. It was another decadent orgy of gift giving and receiving. I think I'll post a review of the items as I actually use them (which makes it more searchable anyway).

CURTIS ALARM CLOCK RADIO WITH DOCKING STATION FOR IPOD

I love my iPod Mini, but over the past year, I've lost both of those ear pads and had wanted a way to listen to my iPod without using earpieces. This alarm clock radio recharges my iPod, has two alarms, 10 pre-set radio stations and the remote control is easy to use (well it did take some practice). The speakers are impressive considering it's not that big a unit.

It's been one of those gifts that has gotten me to widen my use of the iPod. I've downloaded lots of tunes and I've added all of my favorite tracks from my CDs, but I've now gotten into podcasts. I didn't really get the idea of why podcasting is taking off so much, but now I listen to podcasts through my ipod clock/radio (for whatever reason, I couldn't get into them when limited to earpieces that were hurting my ears).

I've been subscribing to podcasts via iTunes, but just found out it is just as easy to subscribe to them from their individual web site, which I didn't know I could do. Some of my favorites:

Calmcast: Very relaxing music and nature tracks. About 20 podcasts, about 20-35 minutes long. A nice way to wind down when I hit the sack. Unfortunately, no new episodes have been produced since February 2007.

Chillcast with Anji Bee: Another podcast based on relaxation and de-stressing. Still in production. The host's voice is absolutely hypnotizing.

Idyllic Music: Another podcast with really cool music.

Magnatune: A wide variety of great music, including classical, piano, folk, electronica... oh and Hammered Dulcimer. New podcasts monthly. And actually, the hammered dulcimer podcasts are quite beautiful.

WGBH Classical (Classical to Go)

LSAT Logic in Everyday Life: Not at all musical. This is a weekly 5-10 minute discussion of current events and news, and the common flaws in logic used by the media, politicians, speakers, etc. Admittedly a bit dry.

Discover Magazine's "Vital Signs": OK another weird one. These are podcasts of medical mysteries.

To add a podcast manually (not through the iTunes store), click to Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast and enter the xml feed from the podcast website. Useful since many podcasts that I listen to I find through digg, not iTunes.

If you play podcasts through iTunes, they play one at a time, most recent first. I like to listen to them in the order they were published, and I like my iPod to play them all one after another. To do this, I make a playlist of the podcasts I wish to hear and put them in the order I wish to hear them. To do this automatically, I make a Smart Playlist. The directions to do so are found on the Apple iTunes podcast tips page.

I'm on the look out for interesting podcasts.