Firstly........ Non-stick cookware is NOT made for cooking at high temperatures. If you cook at high temperatures, your non-stick will decay and age a lot faster than it normally would. Secondly....... There is a HUGE difference between Teflon COATING and BONDED Teflon. Teflon coating is SPRAYED ON to the metal and will chip, bubble, and peel off eventually, even with correct usage and care. BONDED Teflon is actually bonded to the metal, like what Calphalon and Analon does. Which is why it lasts "forever". I've had some Calphalon pans for almost 20 years now, and I've just recently had to replace one of the pans because the Teflon became too worn down, as this was my favorite pan to use. All of my other pans are still perfectly fine to use. Even the ones I've used at high temperatures. You NEVER want to get anything with SPRAYED on Teflon, you want to get BONDED Teflon, as it will last a long time. The sprayed on stuff can flake off in your food too, which is not something you want. As for Cooks Essentials, I got their double bread maker some years ago, and it's still being used today. I am shocked that I've never had any problems with it, it's been a very good piece of equipment. But recently, I used only one side to make a loaf of bread and I forgot to put the emtpy bread tin in the side not being used, and the heat melted and frosted the clear window on the top of the lid. I looked online and the only replacement parts I could find were the paddles, belts, and bread tins. There weren't any parts for the lids, or even replacement lids themselves. I've contacted QVC to see if they have a parts location for the appliances the don't sell anymore, but I have yet to hear back from them. Apparently QVC uses different third party manufacturers to make their different products. I would like to know who made their bread makers so I can contact them and find out if I can get a replacement window for my machine lid. Does anybody know who made their bread makers?

"While water won't get hotter than 212 (at standard temperature and pressure) I don't believe there's anything preventing steam from getting hotter. Using a similar roasting pan and a cucumber to approximate the chicken, oil in a pan easily got hotter than 212: Even taking it to the extreme and "steaming" the oil, it got hotter than 212" Here's how I believe if works. Sorry if I'm overlapping w/ dcarch's posts, or repeating myself. - Steam can get hotter than 212F if it is under pressure higher than standard sea-level atmospheric (14.7PSI). The link gives the temp-pressure relationship. - Since the pot is not a pressure cooker, the pressure inside is not much above 14.7PSI and the steam in the covered pot is not much above 212F. - The atmosphere in the covered pot is a combination of steam and air. Unlike steam, air can be hotter than 212F even at 14.7PSI. Since the steam and the air are mixing, the atmosphere's temperature will be somewhere between the steam temperature (appx 212F) and the air temp (hotter). - Early in the cooking process, there is lots of steam in the covered pot, so the pot's atmosphere's temperature is close to 212F. During this time, the chicken is being moist-cooked at low temperature. - If you keep cooking and boiling off the liquid in the pot, turning it into steam that escapes through the vent or around the lid, the atmosphere inside the pot will beome drier (less steam) and hotter (closer to the air temperature). Eventually, if you boil the pot dry enough, the atmosphere in the pot can come close enough to the oven's temperature (400F, let's say), and the chicken will start to roast and brown. - But the chicken has lots of internal liquid. If that liquid is dripping and boiling into steam, as is pretty much bound to happen, it has to be dried out too. So if you did want to get a chicken in a covered pot to the same degree of all-over brown as an uncovered chicken, the covered chicken could be a bit more dried out. I'm not sure, have never compared them side-by-side. - Using oil as a comparison doesn't work because oil does not boil at 212F like water, so it can be heated up way past 212F. Vegetable oil starts to smoke around 500F (soybean, safflower, etc - olive is much lower, like 375F). The oil's boiling point is well above that (around 570F for soybean). And above that, somewhere around 600F, is the oil's flash point and around 700F the oil will ignite. Most of us have never seen ''boiling'' oil, and hopefully we never will because it is dangerous. - I believe this is why it took laurie_2008 so long to roast the turkey. The liquid in the turkey and whatever else was in the pot (veg? stuffing?) had to boil off. Until that happened, the turkey was cooking at not much above 212F, which is of course an awfully low temperature. Here is a link that might be useful: Steam Temp-Pressure

Thanks, Ann, for clarifying the confusion. We refuse to eat longline caught fish & quality restaurants here won't serve it either. It's depleting our natural resources. That's probably why I only see yellowfin (ahi) locally...troll-caught with rod & reel. We live close to Montauk & Montauk is considered to be one of the best fishing grounds in the world. There are many fishermen here using just rod & reel to bring in tuna. Private tuna rigged fishing boats here are all equipped with huge fish boxes with proper refrigeration & because of restrictions when a tuna is landed the boat returns immediately to port to offload so rod & reel caught is also much fresher than longline. Quality east coast restaurants changed their menues to stop serving longline caught fish several years ago. Many either have signs in the windows or printed on the menues that no longline caught fish are served. Here's a quote from Wiki & the link to the whole article. "Overfishing Bigeye tuna are amongst the tuna species most threatened by overfishing. Juvenile bigeye tuna associate closely with floating objects such as logs, buoys and other flotsam, which makes them extremely susceptible to purse seine fishing in conjunction with man-made FADs (Fish Aggregation Devices). Bigeye mature at a later age than other commercially important tuna species such as skipjack and yellowfin tuna, and the removal of large numbers of juvenile bigeye before they reach breeding age is a major concern to fisheries managers, scientists and sport fishermen." From this article... http://www.hawaii-seafood.org/bigeye.html "Availability And Seasonality: The availability of bigeye tuna in Hawaii has increased as a result of an expansion of the domestic longline fleet and an extension of the fleet's fishing range to as far as 800 nautical miles from port." IMO, as consumers we need to stop supporting this mass killing type of fishing or our grandkids will never know the pleasure of watching one of these fish in their natural environment. Man...one on one with a rod & reel against the fish...is a fair fight. Longline hooking is not plus many other fish & ocean mammals are killed in the process. I guess because DH & our friends tuna fish we are very sensitive to this longline issue. There is some longlining here as well; but they have to sell to lesser restaurants. I imagine that most, if not all, of the rod & reel caught Bigeye tuna stay in Hawaii. /tricia Here is a link that might be useful: Hawaiian Bigeye Tuna

Made my first batch of stovetop lasagne and it is going to become one of my "go to" recipes. Great for using up spare pasta, which I almost always seem to have around, particularly lasagne sheets. Also great for when you feel like eating lasagne but don't feel like fussing with assembly. This is a combo recipe from Tyler Florence and Pillsbury. Skillet Lasagne Before starting the meat you can make a mirpoix of oil, onions, carrots and celery if you want, or some green pepper and mushrooms, whatever you would like in your pasta sauce, but if you use a jarred or canned sauce you don't have to do this, particularly if your sauce already contains onions, etc. So however much you want to flavor it up or not depends on your taste and time. Add garlic towards the end of this step if you want some. 1-2 tsp. is probably enough. I use the lower end of the garlic spectrum. Brown a pound of some type of protein. Most recipes call for ground beef but I used ground turkey and next time I make it I may use a mix of meat and beans, or perhaps some veggie crumbles, and I'll bet you could use part italian sausage for flavor it you're a big meat eater. Salt the meat to your taste as it is browning. If the meat is fatty, drain before proceeding with the dish. Add 1 large jar canned spaghetti sauce or Italian flavored tomato sauce. You need 26-28 fl. ounces of the sauce, so use whatever you have on hand that will equal that amount. I used a 24 oz. jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce and 2 oz. of my own home canned tomato basil sauce. You could also use canned tomatoes and canned tomato sauce, tomato paste, etc. to get the desired amount. Season to your taste with italian seasoning if you like. I tend to do this because I find store bought sauce bland, and if I am making the sauce from just plain tomato sauce, then I want a lot of seasoning. Add 1 1/2 cups water. When mixture is boiling lightly, add 3 cups pasta (you don't want a hard boil because too much of the water might evaporate if you do that, and then the pasta will stick--ask me how I know!). The pasta I used was broken up lasagne noodles and then some campanelii to supplement to 3 cups. You could also use mafalda ribbons. Cook the pasta for about 15 min. Test for pasta being done. Your water should be absorbed and the sauce thickened. Watch out, since this dish actually might get too thick if you're not careful. You can always add more water to it if it starts to get too thick. While the pasta is cooking, make the ricotta topping. The recipe says to use 16 oz. of ricotta, which is a typical container (although mine was 15). For my taste, this is too much, but your mileage may vary. Mix this with about an equal amount of chopped frozen spinach. I had a 16 oz. bag, which I used about half. If I had a 10 oz. package I would use it all. Mix the ricotta and spinach with 1/3 cup grated parmesean, a healthy pinch of basil or oregano or italian seasoning, and 1 TBSLP dried parsley if you have it. If you hate spinach you don't have to add it, just plain ricotta is fine, and if you have some other type of vegetable you would like ti mix in, like kale or shredded zuchinni or something else, by all means do it. When the pasta is done, mix up the casserole to make sure the meat, sauce and pasta are evenly distributed. Spoon the ricotta mixture on top of the casserole and cook 5-7 min. more until the topping is heated through. Then, top the dish with 1 cup of shredded mozzarella or italian style shredded cheese and broil for about 3-4 min. until cheese melts. Here's two pictures of my dish. I was out of shredded mozzarella so I had to use mostly cheddar in my dish.