Thanks all for your sweet comments. To answer your questions: Slinky the pattern on the plates is Johnson Brothers Asiatic Pheasant. The other pieces are JB Old British Castles. Mo, CCD=Catholic religious education. My hubby is teaching 6th grade. Thanks again. Off to look at some pics here. I adore this site!

Posted by mike9 : " How large of a cooler do you recommend? " How big a cooler will depend on how much food you try to sous vide. Since the components of my system are portable, I have several container sizes, from a small one to cook a few eggs to a good size cooler for large roasts. "How much power do i need? " The pump is less than 10 watts, the rest depends on the electric heater. Remember the heater use not much power to keep the water at the set temperature. "If i had to raise that the temperature of the cooler 30-40 degrees above hot tap water then its going to take a long time with 300w. I'd have to pull out the pans boil water on the stove etc. Could say a 1500w heater be too much and have problems with overshooting? I plan on using a PID and solid state relay. " I always use boiling water to get the water bath temperature high enough. 1,500 W heater will not overshoot if you have a good enough circulator. PID controller with a solid state relay, I believe, but not sure, throttles the heater from low to high. PID will, using self-tuning, self-adjusting to compensate overall equipment overshooting. "How much power does it take to sustain the equilibrium temp after everything has been cooking for many hours? " Depends on the insulating property of your container and the size of the container. "How much power does it take to maintain the set water temperature after a bunch of frozen food has been dropped into the bath? That could be important if i have an item already cooking and then later throw something frozen in there, if the temp of the water dropped for a long time it could mess up the cooking time of the first item. " Just keep an eye on the temperature reading, add more boiling water if needed. "I was looking at these heaters. http://www.amazon.com/NORPRO-559-Immersion-Warming-Liquids/dp/B000I8VE68/ http://www.amazon.com/Bush-CH-101-Energy-Saving-Immersion-Heater/dp/B003DLB5KW/ http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-9000129-045-Electric-Heater-Element/dp/B000H5W1TQ/ " The first two not too good: 1. they are not long lasting. 2. They are not completely submersible. The third one is very long lasting, but requires you to build something around the exposed terminals to waterproof and shock-proof. ------------------------------------------- I would like to say this to those of you who may be reading this thread, do not worry about any of these tech stuff. They are not what sous vide cooking is all about. A ready-made sous vide cooker is not that expensive anymore, plug it in, set the temperature and enjoy the superior food. That is all. All these annoying tech stuff are for crazy folks like me, who hasn�t quite outgrown his toy playing delinquencies yet. dcarch

jojoco, that is a very good article to read about the concept of resting meat. Thanks for posting the link to it. One thing I like about this forum is the exchange of ideas, and knowledge. Otherwise, this might as well be another "Recipe Exchange". I will repeat, that I enjoy preparing steak thinner is a personal preference, in no way I am disputing other ways are no good. Furthermore, I am not recommending not to rest the steak if you are to prepare steak the normal way. You should absolutely rest the steak. As the article points out after resting the steak, the temperature will drop from 210 degrees F to only 125 Degrees F. A 125 degree steak is enjoyable, but my personal preference is to have my steak served at close to 210 degrees. My personal preference is to have more crusted steak while still have the center rare or medium rare. I achieve that by having the steak prepared thin. My personal preference is to have more surface area to pick up seasoning, and that is also accomplished by having more surface area. I have business lunches almost everyday, and I think I have been to every single steak house in the entire NYC area more than once; I am in total agreement with LindaC, if a restaurant were to serve steak my way, it would shut its doors in one week. ThatÂs not what most people expect how a steak is to be done. Regarding the article, interesting and thorough it may be, I do have questions regarding a few issues. I am not sure the fact that a steak drips some juice out will change its flavor. As the steak drips, the volume gets smaller, the concentration of flavor remain the same. In any case the relative volume of juice exuded is so small it will make no difference to the taste buds. Not that it matters, juice dripping is a fact, but the presumption as to what cause it had ignore a few possible liquid behaviors. Viscosity changes under different temperature and protein in blood can coagulate after longer cooking resting time. I also find it very curious that the author did not measure the interior temperature rising during the resting period. The so called "carry-over cooking temperature" rise during resting is a basic thermal dynamic behavior. If the outside temperature is at 210 degrees, the higher temperature will migrate inwards (Entropy), that is what I have been taught, and that has been documented by other studies regarding resting. dcarch

lydia, my sister used to grill extra on purpose, wrap and freeze, then in bad weather she would pull out the saved portions and microwave them till hot. Outdoor flavor in indoor weather. I say used to because her family is grown now + plus she has two german shepherds with big brown eyes who luv table leftovers :), I don't mean to imply she's no longer with me.