Dcarch, I loved the way your 'prawns' looked,
but your picture of your short ribs looked like
they were held together with plastic wrap.
And your string beans, (or were they asparagus),
must have taken hours to arrange end-to-end, like that.
I'm just wondering how eddible was your food, after you
got done arranging it, (and don't tell me it was only
'seconds', because I used to be a professional photographer. I'm not trying to be 'picky', but only
trying to understand, so I can do something similar.
Thanks.

I'll have some of everything!

You don't grill all year around? I couldn't make it through the winter without grilling. Even when we lived in the frozen north, I grilled year around.

~Ann

Haha, I must need more coffee cause I was wondering why you would post about your last barbie (doll).

We grill year around, too. Even when we have to shovel a path to the grill! LOL

Interesting presentation nonetheless!

Linda

I grill outside year round also - depending on the snow pack. The winter of 2010-2011 I had a hard time keeping up with the driveway. The heck with the path to the grill on the deck!

I thought the same thing Petra did when I first read the subject line! :-)

Dc - if you were a Barbie doll you would be Nerdy Scientific Creative Barbie!

I think I could grill in the snow, but I know I don't grill in the rain . . .

My rule is when I need more than flipflops to keep my tootsies warm - no grilling!

/t

Thank you all for your nice comments.

Lbpod, I assure you that most of my dishes do not take more than a few seconds to plate. I don't have a lot of patience to "arrange" food. I have many short cuts to get things done. Take photographing for instance, every dish is the same boring shots; one from the top and one from the side. Same lighting every time. Same auto setting on the camera. A few seconds and it's chow time.

Petra, Barbie is slang for the Aussies. Many traditional delicious recipes for "Throw some shrimps on the Barbie".

Teresa, it will take some doing (and undoing) to turn me, the ugly Ken, into Barbie :-).

Come to think of it, why not grill in the winter? No bugs! The most annoying thing about grilling in the summer, bugs bugs and more bugs.

dcarch

dc, I do know that, but as I was caffeine deprived, my tired brain was thinking barbie doll. :o)

I definitely grill all year, but in the winter I grill mostly on week-ends, even though we have enough light on the patio to grill at night. We grill more in the summer in order not to heat up the kitchen, and of course we have occasional rain in the winter. We only just got our smoker this summer, but I'm sure we'll use that throughout the winter as well, as that part of the patio is even better lit. I would like to get lights for the pergola so that we could eat outside in the winter.

Lars

Lars, this may work for you.

Get a 12vDC 20 watt LED lamp (about $15.00 to $30.00) and run the light with a small car battery, or a used car battery.

The light is very bright and the battery can power the light for a few days.

Here is one I just made for my outdoor use, using a 20 Watt LED chip.
{{!gwi}}

dcarch

Elery uses the smoker all winter out in the garage with the doors open, it makes the Jeep smell really good, like bacon, LOL.

He also grills all winter. I have a very useful overhang on the garage roof, he pulls the grill up near the door, stands in the garage doorway and grills away, so no snow to shovel to get to it, although he usually has to shovel the snow OFF the darned thing.

I like the orderly rows of prawns but the ribs look disconcertingly snake-like. I think I could get over it, I love ribs but not enough to overcome my hatred of the grilling process.

Annie

Very nicely done and pretty too. We grill all year long here in my part of California. As long as it isn't a major monsoon downpour, we have even grilled in the rain. A few times we have done the Thanksgiving turkey on the rotisserie.

And by your title I thought it might be a Barbie doll on the barbie (grill). LOL
Clare

I was getting quite excited as I never liked Barbie dolls.........

I prefer grilling in the winter, no mosquitoes and I can take the cold. This past summer we had weeks of 100 degree weather and I did not grill then!

This plating is not my favorite of yours but it is still as always, nicely done.

LOL, islay.

Annie

Thank you again everyone.

Regarding Barbie Doll, I am passionately against Mattel for promoting eating disorder.

Regarding cooking, (for me), cooking without experimentation is like traveling without sightseeing.

The shrimp dish preparation and plating �

I found very fresh large head-on shrimps in the store. I know shrimps with head are not treated with chemicals. The heads had a lot of roe in them. The problem of cooking large shrimps with the head on the normal way would make the head fall off and all the delicious roe would be lost. The way the shrimps were shaped and grilled prevented that. You just pick up the head and suck all the luscious goodies out.

Not everyone has eaten yard-long string beans. The way the beans were plated was to make people appreciate the interesting length of the beans.

The pork ribs dish preparation and plating �

Sous vide ribs is unbelievable. Imagine Medium done ribs. However, the shape of a slab of pork ribs is difficult to fit in the sous vide cooker. Basically I froze the ribs, wrapped it in plastic bag and using my table saw and sliced it into three two-inch wide strips. That took about 30 seconds. The strips were coiled into a circle, which fitted nicely into the sous vide cooker. With seasoning (Mad Hunky Rub) in the cooker for 24 hours at low temperature, the ribs were truly tender, juicy and flavorful. After the ribs were cooled, they were quickly grilled on very hot charcoal. I did not make the curved shape for the purpose of plating, they came out of the sous vide cooker that way.

dcarch

While 3% or less Americans are underweight, close to 70% are overweight, roughly half of which are obese. Which poses an overall greater health risk? Give Mattel a break, if anything they should be donating Barbies to McDonalds for Happy Meal toys.

If you want to complain about vanity, that's another topic altogether.

(Stats from cdc.gov, among others.)

"---One of the most common criticisms of Barbie is that she promotes an unrealistic idea of body image for a young woman, leading to a risk that girls who attempt to emulate her will become anorexic. A standard Barbie doll is 11.5 inches tall, giving a height of 5 feet 9 inches at 1/6 scale. Barbie's vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). At 5'9" tall and weighing 110 lbs, Barbie would have a BMI of 16.24 and fit the weight criteria for anorexia.----"

dcarch

Beyond a wiki quote, can you cite any studies that give significant relevance to that "common criticism?" Could we similarly suggest that my generation of Americans is so fat because of the immense popularity of Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone, Roseanne Barr and the like? I'm sure someone could start some bandwagon along those lines if they wanted to that could lead to a similar "common criticism." Perhaps they could even extrapolate that overweight idols are 2000% more influential/harmful than their underweight counterparts, based on what we're observing in our nation.

Look at just about any toy, doll, cartoon, etc. They all have exaggerated proportions. Barbie catches heat because she promotes sexy. Any arguments beyond that are just an excuse to cover up the real objection, IMO.

Interestingly, I view them as separate issues. Ralph Kramden is not promoting himself as a handsome sex symbol, nor Ms. Bar.

IMHO.

dcarch

But these figures are..being promotes as figures to be emulated by little boys.
I wonder what their measurements might be if they were extrapolated to 6 times their size?

Here is a link that might be useful: Action figures