While I think that the "FAQ" as outlined by swanoir was presented tongue in cheek ('the humus'), many of the subsequent comments and/or links to threads that could/should be included in a FAQ were presented in a more serious tone. And maybe they do make sense as a foundation to a real LD forum FAQ. But I've also sensed something else in these comments that may contribute to the apparent lack of communication between new posters seeking advice and those that regularly frequent this forum and offer it. And that is that the long checklist provided by Miss R must be (or should be) answered in detail before posting. Well, of course not! But it is definitely something worth reviewing and giving some thought to. This checklist, or something very similar, is what most designers utilize when first meeting with a prospective client. It gives them a feeling for what the client wants to do with the property, how they intend to use it, what they hope to get out of it and how much effort (time/$$) are they are intending to put into it. Hopefully, reviewing an outline or checklist such as this could help to refine and focus some of those blank slate questions and even educate those new posters totally unfamiliar with the process the degree of complexity, the number of variables and exactly what is involved in the formulation of a landscape design. Even DIY landscape texts intended for the homeowner with no previous design or landscaping experience offer similar checklists to get one started thinking about the process. Obviously, this is overkill for those questions that are more issue-specific, but I think very appropriate for those that are much broader and far less focused.

My advice would be if they aren't spreading enough then there is a bit too much flour. Try cutting down 1/4 cup and do a test cookie, if it's spreading too much then add a bit more flour until you get it how you like it. Betty Crocker cookbook has this tip in their old cookbook. I think most people are trying to figure it out when it's really just as simple as too much or not enough flour that affects the spread of the cookie. Try not to over-think it so much. EDIT TO ADD: The cookies in the picture look good though...they don't look like they didn't spread enough to me. Here's a thought too, why not use a round cookie scoop to form them and flatten them out a bit with the bottom or a glass or something? This post was edited by arkansas_girl on Thu, Dec 27, 12 at 10:31

About 10% of my dishes are flops in one way or another. Fish course for SWMBO's surprise dinner was kind of floppy. Indifferent cod is not greatly improved with hollandaise sauce. Cooking bacon on the gas grill was a flop. Too much grease and flareups, result was 2 lb of bacon that tasted like a house fire. Come to think of it, much of the stuff I make on the grill is a flop. I just don't ''get'' grilling, and probably lack the patience for a two-level approach. My experiment with sweet sauce on halibut was a flop. Tried making a hazelnut sauce, didn't know how so ended up basically making a custard suitable for hazelnut ice cream. SWMBO said, thoughtfully and gently, ''well, this would have been really good ice cream . . . '' When I first started simmering fish for a Japanese-style dish, I thought that it was like meat - longer simmering at lower temperature would make for the tenderest fish. Silly. Ended up with fish-flavoured rubber. Learned that less is more. Now I simmer fish for at most 3 minutes. So far all of my attempts at xiao long bao (dumplings filled with broth) have been floppy. I don't have ''the touch'' when pleating the dumpling skins, end of pinching them too hard resulting in dense, tough pleats. The broth is tasty but you have to gnaw through the pleats to get at it. I am determined to persevere. Last holiday, I spent untold hours (days, actually) making aspic for a big dinner. I liked it, but some guests looked askance at jiggling cubes of meat jelly. Some of it ended up being recycled into soup broth, which is a disappointing reward for that much work. Along the same lines, there is a soup I've had in Taiwan which is sort of aspic, cubes of jellied meat broth that stand up in little piles on the bowl, but are perfectly calibrated to dissolve into scrumptious soup as soon as it touches your warm tongue. I've not succeeded in making that. I think I can, but will need to get the consistency just right. So far, I end up chewing my soup which is Just Not Right. I went through a phase of bringing home and cooking up various organs and other peculiar animal parts. Hearts, kidneys, tongues, livers, spleens, tendons, necks. Cost me the trust of my children that summer. For months they would interrogate me on the precise nature and source of any meat dish. You'd think I was serving the family cat or something. Oddly, I have a hard time making fluffy rice without a rice cooker. I know, it is supposed to be simple to make on the stovetop, but I get impatient and peek/stir/sample too much, resulting in pasty, mushy rice. The first time I made tomato pesto (pesto a la trapanese) I used a food processor. Results looked like stomach contents after a college drink-fest. I learned you have to hand-chop it, or have a much lighter touch on the button. Broiling is a fertile source of floppery. When 15 seconds makes the difference between perfect and burned, and you have to sit on the floor in front of an open oven door to monitor, well, sometimes I end up dumping a half sheet pan of stuff into the trash and starting over. And on and on. If you're not flopping, you're not trying!

The blue Wolf trays are just called "sheet metal" on their website so most likely some sort of steel. Aluminized steel is much heavier for the same sized pan in aluminum. You can bake with standard bake with more than one rack but it just requires more switching around. Did you use the convection bake on the L? That has been the more useful of the convection modes on my Wolf oven. It has a slower fan which they dropped on the M. If you look at Wolf's own videos, they seem to have problems too. As they are touting how evenly the oven cooks, they are pulling this out of the oven. These are screen shots of the video OT the "whole meal in " video. The cobbler on the bottom row is more away from the strong airflow on the sides and does not have the greater degree of browning along the side. They would have to substantially change the way the fans work to avoid those air currents. They would need to have a slower speed or reverse periodically. To eliminate the hot spots, if you can't position the pans out of the areas of the oven with the strongest air flow and you can't modify the airflow by baffles or slower fan speed, try turning off the convection part of the time and rotate or reposition the pans. If you liked the L, I would try to get them to switch it back or buy the M back. I almost think some high end ovens have more trouble getting things right because they tinker unnecessarily with things trying to have something unique like the corner convection tower or persist, for 10 years with looks, like blue enamel when they don't have it perfected.