Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Christmas isn't Christmas
Without a Swiss Colony Beef Log
Without those cheeses and meats
I don't think I can get along

Dammit, now I'm gonna have that in my head all day.

Blue Diamond makes a honey roasted almond that is pretty damn addictive. I am also a huge fan of See's dark chocolate almond clusters. They taste much better than your typical panned dark chocolate coated almonds with the shiny (wax) coating.

The Counter in Palo Alto also suffers from similar issues -- I see that they have managed to duplicate their methods 3,000 miles away! (It's the same form factor of beef on the same damn grill...how come half the time it's bloody raw and the other half it's hockey puck?)

Trufax: When The Counter first opened, their fries were oddly familiar. It was because they were using the same distributor who provides fries to McDonald's. They've since changed to a skinnier fry, but actually, I preferred the McDonald's version better...

They have a couple of other locations in SF and Redwood City. Unfortunately I have still never managed to go to any of them, let alone this one (at my alma mater so I have no excuse).

Do you have a recommended brand of shoyu? Whenever I try to make teriyaki sauce the stuff always comes out too damn salty, and I think it's that there are too many kinds of soy sauce and I keep picking the salty ones.

If super-crunchy baked tenders are the object, the Cooks Illustrated method of pretoasting the panko in a skillet with a little olive oil works amazingly well. Same amount of oil (or perhaps less, depending on how heavy your drizzling hand is), but uniformly crisp results.

The CI recipe would have you spray the toasted-crumb-coated tenders with nonstick spray before putting them in the oven, but I never bother with that.

Props for an article about In-n-Out that goes beyond "OMG did you know there are animal style fries!"

I always get a Double-Single plain, fries well done. Two cheeses is too much cheese for me and anyway I'd rather blow the calories on fries.

I adore potstickers but have yet to find a potsticker of record around here, so I think it is only fair that you come to Silicon Valley and repeat the experiment.

Those fries look like my fries of record at Amuse in Ashland. Interest piqued!

Fluffy using ricer! But, aligot on other occasions.

With regular mash, one thing that I think helps (but may be placebo effect) is boiling the potatoes, then leaving them in the pot in chunks for awhile because you're still running around finishing up everything else. The chunks retain heat for a pretty long time, and by the time you get back to the pot the surface moisture has all retreated inside the potato leaving you with nice starchy goodness.

I thought the fruit depicted might be a calamansi, but not sure.

Interesting on the pasta thing (guess that's why those silly infomercial pasta cooking canisters work).

I feel like you need keep pasta at a reasonable boil to keep 'em from sticking into a big clump, though. Can you get away with stirring long enough to soften up the outer starch all over and then leaving it alone? I hate staring at pots of pasta water waiting for it to boil again, but I extra hate coming back to a big clump of elbow mac at the bottom of a pot.