The minors have decided they are going to cook lunch today. Alone.

Hamburgers and oven fries from scratch.

I am not allowed in the kitchen. Except for "where is ingredient X" cases.

@Stephie great! Now you can relax and enjoy lunch made by others for a change.

Am a bit weary...

Just a tiny bit.

aw, come on! Enthusiasm is more important than perfect hamburgers.

One of the first recipes I created included ground meat flavored with vanilla.

I don't mind burned edges, but I do mind burned kitchens. Oh well, they made pudding / flan yesterday.

And it worked. Plus no fuss with loading / unloading the dishwasher for a change.

:)

Well, so I can finally select and order my new washer. Mine died a honourable death after a good decade of hard work. And it's a bit tedious to carry all laundry to my mom & back.

nice. I heard the Mieles have a "Wollwippe", I've always wanted to try one. Although I suppose it's only worth it if you have a lot of natural fibers.

Wool is scarce here. With two kids, it's mostly cotton, "Buntwäsche" and at least a quick turn in the drier to get the wrinkles out before hanging it up. (I don't have the patience for ironing.)

I made a birthday cake for my dad when I was little. I forgot sugar.

@Jolenealaska Awwww, cute! And it's the thought that counts.

Besides, too much sugar is bad for his health!

That's what he said!

Have to walk over to switch loads, see you later!

Little did I know I was embarking on a hobby that would serve me well for decades :) So, how was lunch?

How was lunch??

No lunch yet - it's 11:30 am here. I expect lunch around 2?

Will keep you posted.

:)

I made paella on Sunday for my friend who has now started on Weight Watchers.

It turned out great.

no socarrat :(

Darn!

Did she know it was supposed to be there?

@Stephie I read your freezer answer, but I don't find it convincing

at some point, the other side is cool enough too, it just happens later

so it still doesn't explain why the other side does not get condensation and ice crystals

Fewer. Not none. And I'm talking about the time before it's all frozen.

Anyway, that's just my layman's explanation.

> almost none on the other

also, I suppose the OP keeps the bread in the freezer for long enough to be all frozen.

I suspect that the freezer being colder on one side is indeed what causes it, but I don't know the mechanism - neither before, nor after reading the answer.

That's why I considered migrating to Physics - cooks don't have the expertise to answer this because they are cooks

Do the folks at Physics know about freezers?

but technically, I shouldn't be migrating, because we have never declared such questions out of scope - in fact, the community enjoys them, even though they don't have that good a chance for a correct answer being posted and voted up as it would be elsewhere.

The folks at Physics know about condensation on a body which is being cooled from one direction only

or mostly

and about peltier elements and freezers too, I suppose

But here we don't have a solid body, but a "sponge" with water inside?

There will be some "internal flow" as well. And within the bag.

if you need to model the sponge, it's an interface of physics and mathematics, but I would rather ask a physicist than a mathematician, because you need both types of knowledge, that of penetration porous media and that of thermodynamics. But I suspect that the porous medium here might be vernachlaessigbar.

I miss Tall :(

@Jolenealaska any news yet?

@Stephie No, but that's on me. He sent me an email weeks ago to which I have not responded.

maybe he's on vacation? He never tells us before he leaves, only after he comes back

@rumtscho a porous media can't be neglected, the "Taupunkt" wandering along with the temperature gradient. If it matters in "Bauphysik", it matters here. But that's way ot now.

@rumtscho It has been too long. Unfortunately, I suspect that timing plays a role here.

@Stephie sure, it wanders at a different speed through the porous media than through a solid one, but do you think this has an effect on what happens in the end? I truly don't know.

@Jolenealaska timing?

My not responding to his email has nothing to do with being elected moderator. However, the timing was unfortuitous.

@Jolenealaska so you suspect a misunderstanding?

Yes

Probably time to clear that up?

With a bit of of groveling...

<searches for that mail address>

Yes, but I have never been good at that. Overdue letters or emails are so much harder than timely ones.

I wish I didn't know.

:)

It seems @ElendilTheTall has been to the Trossachs, Scotland, if his latest photos are an indication of his whereabouts.

Family visit, perhaps?

Perhaps!

And Monday, May 2nd was a holiday in GB. That fits with an upload date of 05/03.

Oh, well, he won't like us snooping. Our Mr. Very Private.

Wait, he hasn't been away since you got elected, right? I think I've seen him sooner.

@Stephie OH that reminds me! Happy Star Wars day!!

Later you mean?

Was this ungrammatical?

@Jolenealaska gosh, right! Happy Star Wars Day to you, too.

I mean that from the two events, p =Jolene getting elected, and q =my last sighting of Elendil in chat, I think that q happened after p

@rumtscho He was here a few times after I became a mod. He sent me an email on 4/14.

@Jolenealaska I know it's hard, but it's worth doing it

@rumtscho Certainly, this is not a friendship I care to lose.

@rumtscho Agreed. So that would be I've seen him later, not sooner? Jojo, help us foreigners out here!

I have an old friend (with some parallels in the you and Elendil case) with whom I didn't have contact in months. He wrote to me once in December and wished me happy birthday in January. I didn't answer in December and then not even in January.

@Stephie Yes, later is a better choice of words.

Then he suddenly called last Thursday. It was a tiny bit awkward at first, but I had to go through it because he was there on the phone.

after that, I realized it took a weight off my mind I hadn't realized had been there, and it was quite large for something that had managed to go unnoticed for such a long time.

Doesn't "friend" also mean "tolerates our quirks and foibles"?

@Jolenealaska, just write that mail. Doesn't have to win you the Pulitzer price.

It is a lesson I tend to forget often: writing the overdue email feels so terrible I prefer to avoid it endlessly, but having written it and cleared up the misunderstanding is so empowering, I afterwards can never understand why I procrastinated for so long.

I have one very overdue one myself - shall we agree to just get it done within the next 24 hours? Deadline noon tomorrow UTC?

I'll write it now.

There is a bright side to him not being here.

?

He shows up about midnight my time.

You get more sleep?

My apartment has big windows, the light thing is a problem here.

So yes, I get more sleep when he is gone.

Story of my fucking life

Heh, I think that "less social interactions -> more sleep" is true for most people in modern society

See you later, laundry is calling again.

me too, sort of :)

ah, the side effects of a large family. I do laundry once every two weeks or so. Have fun with your laundry visit to your mom!

@Jolenealaska & @rumtscho, I promised you a report on today's lunch:

The hamburger patties were excellent, tender and cooked right on point (no idea how they pulled that off?).

The extras (salad, tomatoes, cucumber) arranged nicely on a plate.

The fries were a failure with a lesson: If the recipe says "parboil for two minutes", it means two minutes, not dumping the potato sticks into the water whenever you are done with peeling and cutting one, as most will be very cooked by the end.

Tempers were flying high, yet no bodily harm done, neither from sibling rivalry nor from handling sharp tools and a stove.

Mom's sanitizing the kitchen atm, as I found traces of raw meat in too many places.

Oh, well, you should do that once in a while anyway, right?

Net result: about the same amount of work as cooking myself, but a great boost of confidence for the minors.

Final conclusion: Success!

OK, if someone wants a giggle, read the tag edit suggestions on the Meta review queue... limited time offer.

I don't see any

Awww, That's too bad. Someone tried to edit the "Questions" tag wiki excerpt and the two edits were: "What are the best seasons fat free to put on the white rice that's fat free" and "Cooking white rice in rice cooker!"... It looks like they somehow ended up on meta and ended up in the tag edit form... not sure what happened.

meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/36

meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/35

That's not as weird as it seems

this person ended up on a site for Questions and Answers which was entitled Seasoned advice (they couldn't know it is a meta)

I'm mostly not sure how they ended up there... Half the time I can't find where the tag wiki edit pages are at all, let alone accidentally end up editing them.

then when clicking around, they found a page with something looking like a button which said "questions"

But... there's a big button in the corner that says "ask question"... isn't that easier to find?

there is a link saying "learn more..." on that page

and with one more click (on the single button prominently displayed in the middle) you are in the tag edit form

@Catija only if you are looking in the corner

especially on Meta, it is grey and out of the way

Yeah... but it doesn't say "ask a question"... it says "edit". The only explanation would be if this person wasn't a native English speaker...

by the time of clicking through these weird pages, the person was probably not reading the button text any more

I have seen users going through weirder paths through applications

it is not very likely to take this one, but it is not completely impossible either, and once found, it is logical for a first-time user