Cooking Perfect Bacon Every Time - Quickly and Easily

Bacon, second only to Spam as the internets and Google's favorite food can be remarkably difficult to cook. Unlike many other delicious foods, like Scallops for example, Bacon retains it's inherent salty goodness even in the face of truly horrendous preparation. So powerful is this effect that Bacon is often deployed to mask other poorly prepared and overcooked food, the aforementioned Scallop for example. With the addition of a few measly strips of Bacon, even burned hamburgers become mouthwatering morsels (especially when cheese is also deployed on the same patty as a force multiplier). Merely good bacon is a clear indication that you are dealing with a a cook of, at best, haphazard kitchen skills, if not one of outright moral depravity or borderline mental retardation. Perfect Bacon on the other hand, like true love, though far more rare, is sublime and transcendental. Perfect Bacon is flat and evenly cooked, is crunchy but retains some chewy mouth feel and has a bright, salty, smoked pork flavor. Fortunately perfect bacon is easily cooked with a few simple tricks I have picked up along the way. 1. Render the fat first. The easiest, surest and most consistent way is to lay the pieces on a sheet pan and place in a 425 degree oven. Cook the bacon in the oven just until much of the fat and moisture is rendered and the slices have shortened but are not yet cooked. This takes less time than you think, so keep an eye on it. Your oven may vary, but it should not make much difference. Better to take it out prematurely than to let it cook too much. Cook's Illustrated says you can flip the Bacon and cook it completely in the oven, personally, I don't like the results. 2. Fry the Bacon at a low setting This is where most cooks go wrong, Bacon can tolerate high heat initially while the moisture and fat are cooking off, but during the final cooking stage it will quickly burn if left on high. So, after you take it out of the oven, transfer the slices to a thick frying pan on a lower temp than you think is right (from 2-3 out of 10 works for me) 3. Actively cook the bacon While the low heat buys you some time flexibility to cook eggs or toast, best results are obtained by focusing on the Bacon. Use your senses, smell it, does it smell like it's beginning to burn? Do you see smoke? Flip it and rearrange the slices to ensure even cooking. Take it out when it's ready That is all there is to it.

1982-1984 Dodge Rampage 1/2 Ton Trucklet

In the early 1980's, Subaru, VW and eventually Chrysler released El-Camino like variants of their compact cars. In Chrysler's case, that effort yielded the Dodge Rampage and it's cousin the Plymouth Scamp. The answer to a question nobody asked, namely - Q: "Wouldn't an Omni GLH Make a Great Truck? A: "WTF? Did You Fall and Bang Your Head"?

Ace Hotel Staff Uniforms - Maybe it's just me

The Ace Hotel in NYC is apparently trying to inject a little fashion into the otherwise fusty hotel staff uniform (W Hotel Style). In general I am favorably disposed towards efforts to eliminate the polyester tyranny that is the typical corporate uniform (I once worked for Hertz and though theirs were better than most, it was still a bit de-humanizing wearing the uniform on the train). That being said, the primary benefits of an official looking uniform is when it is done correctly, it is easy for the customer to identify the person as an employee and generally to discern their role. If uniform is designed well and worn right, it reflects positively on the organization and the person wearing it, think U.S. Navy officers and hospital lab coats. Personally I don't want a faux hipster hailing me a cab, plus, what taxi driver worth their salt will pay any attention to someone dressed like that. Via Cool Hunting : http://www.coolhunting.com/

Felo E-Pro Screwdriver Set Review

After getting tired of the flimsy Chinese computer screwdriver set I had been using which was slowly stripping itself and every screw in site, I broke down and purchased one of these Felo E-Pro screwdriver sets. While not directly intended for computer work, the set contains a sensible assortment of bits which work well enough on a PC. I have to say, these are hands down the highest quality tools I have ever used and they are worth the small fortune they cost. The tool box alone is a revelation in this day and age of cheap junk. I also end up doing a lot of electrical work around the house, and being insulated, these are perfect for that as well. I can recommend these with no reservations whatsoever. Also, for those of you in the Boston area, I can also recommend You-Do-It Electronics in Needham, MA. You-Do-It has nearly everything you need to fix anything electronic and an extremely knowledgeable staff. http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/ http://www.felo.de/en/index.html

MGB GT - YACFMP (Yet Another Car From My Past)

When I was in college, I had a grey 1969 MG BGT that I had purchased off an acquaintance for somewhere on the order of a few hundred $US that had a bad clutch. In a nutshell, here is what happened; I acquire said imported British sports car at some point in the summer, and get everything apart to replace the clutch and then have to return to college. Meanwhile the garage space occupied by the B and it's transmission is required by my brother (not in school at the time) who needed to perform some similar mechanical transplantation. So, he rolls the B out of the garage and boots the tranny and other assorted pieces parts off to the side to make room for his car, and here is where things begin to go pear shaped (as they say). More...I had put all the bolts, nuts washers, pins etc. into a bowl pilfered from the kitchen. My Brother, upon finding said nuts and bolts, dumps the whole kit and kaboodle into what we referred to as the "Bolt Box". The Bolt Box was wooden box about half as big as an US Army footlocker that was filled with about three generations of nuts and bolts left over from various mechanical endeavours. The total population of nuts and bolts must have numbered in the tens of thousand. The Bolt Box was a priceless source of ass saving spares for the inevitable stripped, lost, broken or tapped out nut or bolt that would otherwise derail any mechanical project. Suffice it to say that after my Father and Brother had spent a winter digging through the Bolt Box for spares, my British nuts and bolts were thoroughly mingled with thousands of similarly sized U.S. bolts and nuts. The problem of course being that British Whitworth and American SAE threads are extremely similar and sometimes interchangeable to a point, but fundamentally different. The US bolt might screw in a 1/2 inch or so and bind ever so slightly, leaving the wretched wrencher to have to decide, is it seated and ready to torque down or about just about to strip. How much this sucked cannot be sufficiently conveyed. To add to the issues, the BMC Corp used a real mish mash of fasteners to fit any single component. While an American transmission might be attached with 1 or possibly two bolt types and sizes, the MG might mix fine and course threads of differing lengths. Needless to say, it took me the better part of the summer to locate all the needed fasteners to put the old B together again. I loved to drive that car, and not because it was a great car, it wasn't, but rather, simply because it was fun in a way that transcended the mundane act of driving. It reminded me of nothing so much as a WWI biplane. Between it's Sopwith Camel like, loping idle (accompanied by the lively motion of the Smiths dash gauges) and it's unique odor of hot oily metal, moldering wool and leather, the whole vehicle was unmistakeably a human "contraption" in the best sense. A contraption in that every moment that it ran was like a minor miracle brought forth by human sweat and toil, both of which the car required more regularly than it did gas or oil. Driving that MG was like discovering that the cable company left HBO on from the previous tenants, you felt lucky and a little giddy knowing that at any moment it might come to an abrupt and possibly unpleasant end. And so it did, all over my future mother in laws pristine suburban driveway.

On Kitchen Knives

Having worked in a number of commercial kitchens, I have had the luxury to try about a million different kitchen knives, and I have a wide variety in my home kitchen. I am not fetishistic WRT knives, all of the knives I own cost well under a hundred dollars and most were bought on a whim. Not counting bread, paring, carving and the rest..just "Chef's Knifes", I have, A Chinese Cleaver, A Japanese Nakiri Veggie Knife, A Sabatier 8" Carbon Steel French Chef's Knife, a 12" Brazilian Stainless Chef's Knife, a 10" Henkel's Stainless Chef's Knife and an Italian Kitchen Knife that is like nothing I have seen elsewhere (it looks like a cleaver with a chef's knife's rocker). Non of these are what you could call high a end knife, but the two I reach for most often are; The Sabatier Carbon Steel, The Nakiri and the cheap Brazilian 12" Chef's Knife. Now mind you, I am NOT an expert in knife sharpening, I have a good (very good) electric sharpener and a steel. So, despite the fact that the Nakiri is only supposed to have a single bevel, it gets sharpened the same as all the others. The Sabatier is the easiest to sharpen and gets absolutely razor sharp with minimal effort, the blade is somewhat soft though and it looses it's edge quickly (Though I must say, a quick steel brings it right back). The Japanese Nakiri gets equally sharp, and is like voodoo on veggies, and while the edge lasts longer than the Sabatier, it is significantly more finicky. The Japanese knife must be sharpened just so, get it right and it's perfect, miss it and it sucks. The Brazilian stainless chef's knife is somewhere in the middle. It is never as sharp as the other two, but it's not bad and it's easier to get an edge on than the German knife. I think it may be my favorite knife. A 12" Chef's knife is big, but it really is very manageable if you have a decent sized cutting board and you choke up on it as you should.

The Maltese Falcon - What? No Sharks With Frikkin' Lazer Beams?

The Maltese Falcon is without question the most audacious sailing yacht in the world, and gets my vote for "Most Likely to Appear as a Villains Superyacht in a James Bond Movie". The last decent Bond superyacht would have been Nabila, Adnan Kashoggi's former boat. The time is right for a "Green" Bond villain, and this should be his ride, hell it's even got it's own submarine (sadly lacking frikkin lazer beams). The most impressive thing about the Falcon though is it's amazing sailing rig. Combining the best elements of the Junk Rig and Traditional Square Rigging, with a hefty dose of technology, the ship can purportedly be "sailed" singlehandedly. The sails on the Falcon automatically furl into the hollow masts, which unfortunately eliminates belaying pins and manly winches. There is effectively no "Rigging" in the traditional sense as the spars/yards are fixed to the masts which have no stays and rotate to trim the sails. Best of all it's for sale for the reasonable sum of 100m Euros, or, you can rent it for 300k Euros per week, give or take (Food and Drink NOT Included)