As a 9 year old kid in Elk City, OK in 1950, I met Tim Holt, Fuzzy Knight & Randolph Scott who were some of my favorite cowboy movie stars that made personal appearances at a local movie theatre. And, during our town's 50th. anniversary in 1951 I met & shook hands with Jess Willard who had been the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, 1915-1919. He lived in my hometown during the early days & helped lay the bricks that paved Broadway St. and are still there and "in use" now in 2006! Moving ahead several years and after I had moved to PA...my wife & I saw Richard M. Nixon as he arrived by helicopter and dined at the then-famous Bookbinder's Restaurant in Philadelphia one evening while we were eating dinner there also. Then later, during the mid-1970's, we saw "The Duke" John Wayne in New York City getting out of his limousine and greeting the gathering crowd at Rockefeller Center. Guess that's about it... LarryD

Lol Bobby! Keep trying darlin! Eileen, 32 miles is impressive. I wish we had some of your weather right now... Good job Pam! 4.5 pounds that was fast! I think I am only down 6 pounds since the beginning of the year. But I am way healthier and my measurements are showing it. I've lost 2 inches off my waist. My pics from the beginning sickened me, but now my tummy is so much flatter! Great job FOAS (thanks Pam!) keep us informed - hope you get the exercise clearance - what a difference it makes in how you feel. Deanna, how did you survive that day? Sometimes, I think you just have to go with it and do your best. And not beat yourself up over stuff. I read recently that you should eat "clean" 80% of the time at first and the other 20% let yourself eat waht you are craving - so you don't feel deprived. There are so many darn theories out there, it confuses me. "Eat more! If you don't your metabolism slows down in starvation mode..." "The only way to lose weight is with a calorie deficit - you're eating too many calories and not working out enough!" "You're working out TOO hard - you need to lighten up a bit and let your body repair!" "All you need to do is WALK - just move." "You have to have variety in your activities - otherwise your body adapts and plateaus..." "Get all the junk food out of your house - no more junk!" "Allow yourself cheats or you will binge" sheesh. No wonder nobody can lose weight. Who was it that posted the food journal on the Daily Plate? I started using it and am curious to see if I had been eating too many calories ...or if my proportions were off (protein-carbs-fats). It is a cool site and I am enjoying entering things in and keeping track. At least it makes me more aware. I can't eat a handful of almonds 6 times a day - even if they are good for me - lol. Stacy

Its interesting, after re-reading the pertinent comments on this thread, it occurs to me that Scripps has done the same disservice to HGTV. I'm sure you all remember when there were at least a few shown on HGTV that were actually about gardening . Now there is a non-stop littany about which reality show host and landscape company is going to sneak into your yard and bulldoze every square inch, replace everything with EP Henry and plants from a box store that are low maintenance and bring in the decorators with couchs, chairs, tables, lights, etc etc etc to make your new outdoor living space. NOw I would love to have $50k+ to spend on a gardening project (not that I would, but I would like to have it to spend) but it wouldn't be on another room to maintain! I want the shows like Paul James (the Gardener Guy) That realism, plus Paul's somewhat zany style and a commitment to all-natural approaches to gardening, has endeared viewers to his show since it first aired on HGTV in 1996. "If I've got a spot where the soil is awful, or a plant that's been riddled by bugs or plagued by some sort of disease, I don't hide it. I feature it. How else will people know how to deal with their own garden problems?" or the Gardener's Journal which often interviewed someone who is legendary in the development of a particular type of plant (daylilys, hostas, roses, etc) and toured their gardens and talked about what sort of characteristics hybridizers were striving to develop. Unfortunately, there is no other offering on tv - there used to be Victory Garden on PBS but I think that was either cancelled or moved to an impossible time slot so it seems Scripps has ruined HGTV the same way it ruined FoodNetwork.

"I can’t understand why people are so emotional about sous vide. You seem emotional about it, too, no? :) " Possible. I try not to. Because there is no mystery and no excitement to the science of temperature control. It’s not a new invention, and it is just plain cooking with control heating. Very boring stuff. Funny it can get people very upset that I cook meat with electronic temperature control instead of poking with my fingers. Take a look below a PM I got recently in another cooking forum from a chef: [““You sir, are a belittling, know it all, think your better than everybody else, piece of trash. ------- You are ignorant, arrogant, and aren't worth a peas weight in food knowledge. Your a foodie hipster.-------Congratulations on your little home cooking competition wins. Your dishes look atrocious and wouldn't even be found and on a 1M star menu. Your technique and style bogus and outrageous.------- Get lost on your other forum where immersion circulators and SV are all buzz. Hippie. Good day sir.”] “I think any negative emotions are in part a reaction to the seeming fanatacism of some. “ Frankly, I don’t know which side is more fanatic. Each time all I said my dinner was cooked sous vide, a ton of people will immediately blame me for taking over the cooking world. “You're right, meat isn't smart, on the inside it does not know what the external heat source is. BUT, meat reacts differently to heat over time, hence so much discussion about cooking times. So while technically it may be true that you cannot overcook a steak in a SV bath, I'm here to say that in my experience a naturally "good" steak starts to go south with times stretching past what is needed to bring the core to temp.” And you are not wrong in your statement above. But why would anyone cook a steak longer than necessary? SV does not mean long cooking. It means by controlling precise temperature, if the kind of meat requires longer cooking time, you will not be over cooking it in the SV method. “An aside, the notion of saving money because the steak retains more water doesn't fly with me. Water is cheap. I don't think you can value the water loss at $10/lb or $20/lb or whatever. You're not going to be more full because you ingested a tablespoon or two of water. The question really becomes whether the water retention is beneficial to the final cooked product.” I am very confused. I hope you are not saying meat shrinkage is not a bad thing to meat texture. “In the case of our modern day pork chop, I'll say yes. In the case of a prime steak, I'm not sure. “ When you have a nice prime steak, SV will not take any longer than other cooking methods. But tell me do you have a way to cook London Broil into tender steak using any normal method? I am not talking about cutting the meat thinly across grain kind of tender, I am talking about tender as in butter tender. Well, that takes me 48 hours in the SV cooker. Do you have a way to cook brisket medium (cheap select grade, not prime) fork tender ? I just had pulled brisket tonight, fork tender. It took 72 hours. Good luck with you steaks. A billion people have enjoyed a billion steaks cooked the normal way. No doubt another billion for sure will be done the same way and enjoyed the same way. dcarch