I've used kiddie pools, also. I specifically bought one of those cheap round plastic patio tables because it fit the pool perfectly. The pool/table combo holds about 5 large salad bowls with no worry of them getting warm.

Thank you all. You are very kind. Lou, I enjoy sake both hot and chilled, depending of the meal and my mood. You should try it cold also. Very nice. John, the salt blocks can be very useful. For sushi it can keep the food chilled for hours. I also use the blocks to cook. You can heat up the blocks in an oven to very hot and then cook food on it. Here is a great use for the blocks; After sous vided beef medium rare at 135 F, I would heat the blocks to about 135 F using an infrared thermometer. The beef is then served on the 135 F salt blocks, which will keep the beef hot for the entire meal without overcooking the meat. When was the last time you enjoy an expensive cut of meat hot the entire meal? Supposedly the Himalayan salt will give you all sorts of minerals, but that is not the main reason for me to use the blocks. FOAS, that fish is skate. It is a very mild and tender fish for sushi. Lee, yes, I made that chrome rack for the blocks. Because the blocks some times go into the oven therefore it has to be made of metal. And yes, I used the Abstracta components to make it. [You are good! :-) ] dcarch

Too many danged events in a row, so I've been slow in reporting back. :( Apologies! You all were so very helpful! Thanks to you, I have a much bigger variety of options in my arsenal! Even though there is cheese in it, I went with Mtnrdredux's beet-endive spears. It's mostly not cheese. :) I had both red and white endive, and there was a bag of something at Trader Joe's called "heirloom red spinach" which I'd never seen before. The leaves are colored much like a begonia, with bright red on the bottom and reddish green on top. To complete the picture, I should have done both red and gold beets, but I had leftover beets just using the red. So I alternated endive colors, and added an alternating red/red-green spinach leaf to each one, and they looked really pretty. This is the best picture of a plateful that I could get: The chevre was thinned a little with some vermouth and some white balsamic vinegar, and seasoned with Penzey's Greek seasoning blend along with a salt free garlic pepper blend (this was after midnight before the event I was working and the party, so I just went with what was already mixed and sounded tasty rather than trying to invent a flavor for the occasion. I also added a little chipotle powder and a bunch of dried thyme from a friend's garden. There was a little leftover filling and it was delicious on whole wheat bread. :) I only got a little tester, but I think it must have been good because it all went fast. :) Thanks again to everyone and Happy Holidays!

Electricity is not generally a good way to generate heat either from an efficiency or from an economic standpoint, although I'm sure some of you can find ways to make me wrong here. What Davidrol is saying is that once the thermal mass of an object is heated, the item will radiate heat into the room if the room is cooler. Put another way, once you introduce a mass that is hard to heat up, it also takes time to cool off. This is the principle in my solar porch, in which dark colored tile absorbs sun in winter and exhales heat into the room after sundown. It is also true that the room is almost insufferably hot on a sunny February day after the point where the air temp has no more cold mass to pass off the heat into. We usually turn on the ceiling fan and the furnace blower to dissipate the air heat until it's at a moderate temp. When there's no sun, we shut the curtains and wear shoes in there to keep the feet warm. If I recall the physics correctly, it's more comfortable to keep the ambient air and the objects in the room generally at same temp as much as possible; when there is a rise and fall, it throws the greater system out of whack, at least for a while and the room will feel cold even if the air is at "normal air temp" for the season. Although I am unfamiliar with countertop heating, I would guess that the stone will feel cold until it approaches the temp of the fingers and arms, which I would guess are give or take about 90 degrees Fahrenheit--not as hot as the body core. So let's say that you have a 5 foot by 3 foot by 2.5 inches granite island to heat. Will you heat it continuously or only the hours before you plan to sit at the counter? what temp will you keep it at? At what point will it begin to exhale heat into your room? And what will it be like when the warmth of the stone is sufficient to affect the ambient air in the room? Like the tile at the community pool? If the heater remained in the on position for days, do you strip down to shirtsleeves or even less in February as I do when I'm in the solar room? Do you allow the kitchen to disconnect from the whole-house heating system so the distant rooms continue to receive heat or do you let the rest of the house cool down when the countertop is in heat mode? Or is the heat of the stone mass of that island not that big a deal, meaning that it really doesn't affect the room heating and house heating very much. In which case, we're back to the question of whether you're using the counter for heating or for comfort and putting those hydrocarbons into the atmosphere whenever you flip the on switch. If the granite really performs well as a heat radiator, it belongs at the floor level, not halfway to the ceiling and it should be heated with the most efficient and planet-friendly method as possible. I recently wrote about spending a morning next to the window in a local restaurant that has granite topped cafe tables. I had to put on my jacket even though the room was warm. I definitely won't go back there again. Laminates, some stones, and wood are more comfortable. And what do you do about granite in a sitting area in the air conditioning season? Leave the auxiliary heat turned off?