Where is Plllog?
8 years ago
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Comments (16)I don't mind at all! Ask away... And I agree with you about the controls on the right--any time you're ignore at least 10% of the population you're missing a goodly market segment, so it's economically foolish as well as discriminatory. There really are three ovens, or, as I like to say, one and two halves. The one over the warming drawer is a Monogram Pro Advantium. The model was chosen for looks (no black panel), and because there were fewer 240V models back then. Advantium is a speed oven that uses microwaves, halogen energy and regular convection heating, and can be used as an all microwave or all convection oven. Some speed ovens are more oven oriented. The Advantium is more microwave oriented, and most days it serves as my microwave (even though that makes it wear out faster, that's what it's for). I also use it for a quick oven, the way most would a toaster oven. It's really not different from the other ovens for that purpose, but it's convenient. The important thing though is that when I have dozens of people to sit down dinner, I can heat a lot of stuff in it on oven mode. My biggest baking dish (17") fits on the wire rack that fits in the middle (but not during microwaving). The drawer between the Advantium and the warming drawer is for the trays (glass for MW, metal for oven, plus the wire rack). It's really quite large inside and holds more than I expected. It's terrific! (It's also a jolly good microwave.) The other ovens are Gaggenau. The lower one is a standard multifunction 30" oven. It has convection, lower heat, upper heat and broil, and you can choose different combinations, including partials. Plus self clean, of course, rotisserie, and a pizza stone with an electric element that plug into the oven. It's my workhorse. Braises, sure, but also lamb chops and roast turkeys, and several trays of puffs or borekes or cookies or kale chips all at once. It will hold a gigantabird. It will bake all layers of a multipart extravaganza. Etc., etc. Above that is the combi-steam oven. There is adjustable steam and adjustable convection only heat (that is, it blows hot air). It will fit my big baking dish, but barely. The convection means it needs less air space than a conventional oven, so I do have things that nearly fill it. It has four levels to hold pans or wire racks. The pans are 2/3 (two thirds) of a sheet pan size, though my baking dish, obviously, goes on a rack. It's really ease to wash up some veg, throw it into a perforated pan and steam it. Or some chicken into a solid pan and mix steam and heat for perfect, moist chicken, even without skin. I buy things like matchstick asparagus and green beans all the time and blanch them right away so that they're available in the fridge for snacking and throwing into salads. Squash steamed in the combi-steam is amazingly delicious, I think because it doesn't actually get wet. I recently tried turkey parts, and they made a bit of a mess of the oven, but came out absolutely succulent. When I have the family over, I have all three ovens, plus the warming drawer and the cooktops all going. I could (and have) make do with a lot less, but with what I have the decisions are which dish to put where, not which dishes can I actually make given the limitations of the equipment. My general oven advice is get the best performing oven(s) you can find in your price range. Many of the ovens available nowadays are designed more for energy savings and price point than actually cooking and baking well. 30" ovens are the current standard. They make 27" still, but there is far less selection, and in the future (by the time you eventually may need a replacement) it may disappear entirely....See MorePlllog, about your lighting...
Comments (3)Hi Eleena, Amazing about the shout-outs. I never thought there were that many! I hope I didn't miss any. My lighting started with a big hate or three. Before this house I had almost always had fluorescent lighting in kitchens. The exception was a tiny kitchen in a college apartment which hardly had any lighting at all, but I was hardly ever home to notice. :) The old kitchen in the current house had 6" cans, and not nearly enough to light the whole kitchen. Edit: I had meant to say that I was also hamstrung by California law which limits how much incandescent lighting one can use. I had to have a lot of fluorescent and LED to justify just the halogens and my one incandescent hanging fixture that takes a very low watt bulb. Hate #1: Shadows and bright spots. Such things are find for "drama" but I don't want a dramatic house, especially not in a workspace. All the dark spots were depressing and I hated being in the old kitchen at night. Hate #2: Fluorescent light. Fluorescent is washy light that chases away shadows, and is certainly better than the too few cans, but the old style flickers, and because it's washy, things look a little blurry. I hate blurry worse than flickering. I go to great lengths to get glasses that correct my vision to very sharp, and I hate having it dulled by the light. Hate #3: The color of fluorescent lights. My eyes have always been sensitive to light and color (I used to consult on color design), and as a grown up who cooks, I just couldn't bear the 3000K light color temperature. Hate #4: Pocked ceilings. This is an aesthetic consideration. I have recessed cans all over my house because that's the way it came. The rooms are pretty large and don't lend themselves to lamps very well (tripping hazards), so they're useful. But I hate seeing the gaps in the ceilings. I kept putting off lighting. My contractor knows vast quantities of things, but other than making Swiss cheese of my ceiling and putting in a bazillion cans, he had no suggestions. I asked the Lighting Forum, where I was referred to the fairly new design studio that a local electrical supply company had. Where they also have lighting designers. I could see the products in installed settings, including kitchens. The rate for lighting design was very reasonable. And I lucked out big time, that the designer I hired there, Brian Brzycki, had just been through almost the same demands with his wife, so I got to piggyback on the research he did for her. What Brian designed for me was a combination of lighting layers. There are fluorescent lights to fill the room, but they're the new style very thin tubes, and there are a lot of them. They don't flicker much, and have the color temperature reduced to a sunshiny yellow (2700K). MUCH easier on the eyes. The downlighting over the island is too strong for me, and does flicker a bit, so I keep it dimmed, and only turn it on when I'm actually working on the island at night. The up lighting in that fixture fills the room. It's bounced off the pale orange ceiling, which mutes any flicker, and is very easy on the eyes. Most of the time it's all I use. Plenty of unshadowed light even underneath it on the island. That is, it's less light underneath the fixture with the downlights off, but because of the nature of fluorescent light, there's no shadow line, and it's just less light underneath, not dark. Certainly enough to measure to feed my sourdough starter, though I'd turn on the down light if I were actually making bread. Add to that, perimeter cans with glass diffusers, which defuse both hot spots and pock marks, undercabinet, color corrected LED's, dual cans over the clean-up sink, four halogens in the hood, plus several cans and LED's in the butler's pantry, and there aren't any unlit spots, no buzzing, very little flickering, nothing too bright for my eyes, but full light rather than anything dim. Brian more than earned his fee. So that's the how's and the whys of it. :) The only piece I chose all by myself was the little tulip pendant in the peak under the stairs, but it's just there for seeing into the understairs broom closet or using as a nightlight or decor. Hope this helps. This post was edited by plllog on Sun, Jun 15, 14 at 15:46...See MorePhotobucket Photos - Plllog - Annie
Comments (23)PM, thanks for pointing that out. Yes, people have been talking about that since we got here but it's important to repeat. Doing that makes the pages load a lot faster. Bigger files take an appreciable time to download, and calling them from a third party server gets all up in the security software and slows things down too. So long as Houzz doesn't mind giving up the server space for it, I don't see the harm. If a picture is online, even in a supposedly secure site, it can be made into a greeting card in Scotland (happened to a KF member some years back). I've often Googled images and landed in someone's "private" photo account. Your best guards against that is to take crappy pictures and give them unspecific names. Last night I didn't bother to resize the screen shots, and you can see how the Houzz utility resized and blurred them. The top image is just a little smaller. The middle one is a lot smaller because I have CF zoomed a lot. The last one is much *bigger* than it was. The bread doesn't look as blurry but that might be because it's bread. I had reduced it to 800 pixels wide, and then Houzz did its 500 thing. One thing to remember with JPEGs is that they're also lossy, so each time they're saved they degrade a little. I usually resize camera photos, like of the bread, so that all those extra pixels don't slow downloads, but with the Houzz system that's not necessary. If you right click on your image you can choose view image and it should give the URL and size of the image, which will show you that it's on Houzz and the size info. You may also have a choice of View Image Info on the image's right click context menu. The crackup is that you can see there that they add their standard keywords so people looking for architect might be slapped with a shot of the file upload window. :) Cathy, thanks for the compliment --- Sol, I too am mesmerized by Thumper's picture. :)...See Moreplllog...
Comments (13)Plllog, I'm back! I'll try to keep this short. I signed in from GW to Houzz with my GW name, zone number, etc. and had the Harley pic there. When the avatars became iffy and I tried to comment I got a big white message that said "Sign in to Comment." Not wanting to give up on the KT, I signed in and tried to make a new page. I emailed Houzz several questions and each time they emailed my replies with itsuz being my user name. Actually itsuz is part of my email address. I finally decided to let itsuz be my user name if that is what it would take to get to the KT, and added a flower pic. By clicking on itsuz, the Sue_va page came up as it was originally, and the itsuz page is also there with Sue-va. I tried to delete the itsuz one, but it didn't delete, but it changed to Sue_va so they are both there. When I comment I don't know which one is "working." Doesn't matter to me as long as I can read and post. Again, I so appreciate your concern and help. That is the good old KT spirit. Just remembered something. I'm getting emails re who has commented on My Page. It says I have one now from charleemo on the Testing thread. It does not show there, and leads to a page with a picture like the one on my itsuz (Sue_va) page. ??...See More- 8 years ago
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoRusty thanked dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o m
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