Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

What makes unaged whisky ANY different from vodka?

Yes, almond extract comes from bitter almonds, and many recipes say to add a few drops of that instead for the necessary telltale bitter almond/amaretto-ish/almond paste-y flavor.

Also, adding an ounce of vodka should keep the syrup a lot longer than 1 month, no?

Think Indian. When I was a student and intern in London (read: makes NYC look like a bargain) I would cook a lot of rice or make chapatis out of whole wheat flour (much like making tortillas), cook some vegetable, and make dal out of lentils, mung beans (moong dal), chana, etc. Extremely cheap and very filling. If you live in a place with any ethnic stores, get spices and other things there, they'll be quite cheap. You can also take a mexican approach - beans, corn tortillas, eggs, etc. All quite cheap.

I almost never bought red meat, but chicken thighs/legs are the cheapest part of the chicken, and if you cook smart, a little can go a long way. Also, I don't know if you have an H Mart near you, but the one near me consistently has frozen mackerel fillets for $1.79 each - that's a hell of a bargain!

mortal?

Just to make it easier, if searching for it in a Turkish grocery store, this is actually called "isot" in Turkish and will likely be labelled as such. Urfa biber is just a geographical description.

A few comments: kibbeh (or kubba to non-Levantine Arabs) of the football shaped sort are meant to have a burghul shell and a meat, onion, and pine-nut filling, it shouldn't all be mixed. They're really very different from meatballs. Come to think of it, of the various kinds of kubba, all have a shell made primarily of burghul, with some other filling, whether they're round or baked flat in a tray. Also, for cucumbers, I strongly recommend using what Trader Joe's calls Persian cucumbers, the difference is extreme.

the noodle bowls are tiny...too tiny

Being a descendent of Ottoman subjects and an ardent Turkophile, I actually said "hell yeah!" out loud when spotting this feature. Sadly, most coffee in Turkish is not "Turkish coffee" but nescafe, or, increasingly so with the rise of Starbucks and Gloria Jean's, espresso. Turkish coffee is still easy to find, but it's rather expensive and not many drink it frequently. Tea is where it's at in Turkey.

Well I soaked it in vinegar to get the rust off (as mentioned on a cast iron blog), and it came right off when scrubbed. I then put it in the oven to dry, and when I took it out it had even more rust than before! How quickly does cast iron rust? Could it just be from the water in the vinegar in the space of a few minutes?

Luzzo's in NYC, probably the best I've had, then locally (DC area), a toss-up between Pete's on a good day, Orso, and Pupatella

So I've been using these for the last 5 years, and I ALWAYS get white stuff seemingly growing all over the water chamber. It's not mold. Is it calcium or limescale or whatever? It's lots of little spots all over the inside, that rinse out without too much effort. I also don't get that kind of stuff on my tea kettles and other coffee equipment, so what gives?

Best hangover food ever. I can't believe it's only $4.80, here in the vietnamese suburbs of DC, it's $7 for a small

I'm not sure what mold smells like, but it smells a lot like mate. I got the gourd in Lebanon, actually, where the drink is fairly popular thanks to Lebanese return from periods abroad in South America. However, it's made in Argentina