What are your jeans doing today?

[ATWM]

We all have our weird tradeoffs.

I had a sinus injury when I was young, so I’m not sure I can taste/smell as well as the average person, but the romance over gas is something I truly cannot comprehend. Induction is faster, more precise, cleaner (air and surface). My brother who is an intrepid cook who does understand the difference in more subtle ways changed about two years ago, motivated at least in part by having a young child with asthma - and wonders why he was hesitant. For our part, we’re just slowly trying to electrify our home over time as we can afford, and this was just one step in that. 

[Hopethisoneisnttaken]

^ as you mentioned briefly in your last sentence, induction stoves that match the quality (of cooking) of gas stoves are much more expensive than their gas counter parts. At least that’s how it is here. I’m not sure it’s romance, I think it’s a much more practical. 

[Cold Summer]

I much prefer electric stoves but it's entirely because they're so easy to keep clean, just wipe down the flat surface and you're done. Cleaning my gas stove is annoying and time consuming that I don't even care if it cooks better or not.

[julian-wolf]

I think my (somewhat strong) preference for gas is rooted in some of my favorite pots & pans not having fully flat bottoms. A small saucier will operate very differently if it’s only heated from the bottom; a wok won’t operate at all. That said, I’m sure that when we inevitably do make the switch to induction, it’ll just take a year or two to forget I ever had any complaints

[ATWM]

43 minutes ago, Hopethisoneisnttaken said:

^ as you mentioned briefly in your last sentence, induction stoves that match the quality (of cooking) of gas stoves are much more expensive than their gas counter parts. At least that’s how it is here. I’m not sure it’s romance, I think it’s a much more practical. 

Yea I totally understand not switching due to cost. I’m speaking more about all the waxing poetic about it that I’ve seen here in the US - advertising and lobbying really and then people buying into it. There has been a lot of money spent trying to make people think gas is the best, and to actively invest in it - and it’s been done largely by utilities who just want to sell gas - the fossil fuel industry. 
 

@julian-wolf You're right though. We had to ditch our wok (which was also our only pan that lacked the magnetic properties needed). I do miss that a bit, but only when I’m reminded of it! There is a bit of an adjustment. 

[CSL]

Being in an off-grid situation we're on propane. Like KOTH Hank's barbeque except it's a 500 gallon tank. Used to be affordable. Now it costs a f'in fortune. 
I've been curious about induction cookers. I suspect they're a big current draw which is problematic for us.

 

 

[ATWM]

5 minutes ago, CSL said:

Being in an off-grid situation we're on propane. Like KOTH Hank's barbeque except it's a 500 gallon tank. Used to be affordable. Now it costs a f'in fortune. 
I've been curious about induction cookers. I suspect they're a big current draw which is problematic for us.

 

 

I can’t speak to the particulars, but whatever the additional draw is I can say we haven’t really noticed it on our electric bill. That might not be helpful as I’m not sure what sort of rationing you’d have to do. There was already a 220 line next to the gas line that was installed before we bought our house, that was lucky.

We did notice our bill change a little when switched to EV and a plug in hybrid (our mileage is generally fairly low, most miles total are electric) - maybe 12-13k a year for spread across two cars.

Edited Thursday at 08:14 PM by ATWM

[CSL]

^^^For us the problem is not the increased usage, rather that our system can't handle big current draws without turning on the generator. 

During the day, sun on the panels will handle most things, but from twilight on it's a different story...

Edited Thursday at 08:17 PM by CSL

[julian-wolf]

These days, pretty sure you can get induction (or electric) cookers with pretty big built-in batteries that are made to handle an hour or two of heavy draw per day without added stress to the system—could be worth looking into

[CSL]

^^^Good to know. I'll look into that.

[rodeo bill]

I've just got back from a week around Albuquerque New Mexico, which was totally made by extremely kind recommendations from @chicote. We're so grateful- thank you!

Most of my photos are of family, but here are a some solo/landscape highlights, some including Working slack jeans:

landscape just outside Corrales, where we were staying, on the way to a site of hundreds of Native American petroglyphs:

which appear on rocks where black 'glaze' of oxidised iron is scratched away to make a lighter mark of the rock beneath:

they were not easy to spot, here's a close up:

we also saw a coyote clambering over the rocks, and the rest of my family saw a thorny devil (aka hornytoad, squirts blood out of its eyes), and we saw lots of anole lizards and 5-line skinks.

Throwing a rock across the Rio Grande:

the riverbed is almost totally dry at this time of year, where we were:

best meals we had (we returned!) were at Itality in Albuquerque, on a plaza for indigenous-owned businesses, serving entirely vegetable local Native American food. It was fantastic, this photo doesn't really do the food justice but the stew was great (lentils, green chiles, summer squash), as were the 'pueblo tacos', and fry bread, which has a problematic history (devised from US-provided rations during enforced relocation), but seems to be a part of the NM culture now and tastes really good:

up nearer Santa Fe the altitude is seriously high, and the clarity of light is spectacular. It's also a lot less hot, and a lot greener:

Just outside the Jemez pueblo there's a calcium carbonate (chalk right?) 'frozen' waterfall:

inside we found a crystal clear pool of water coming from a drip in the ceiling. Don't judge me, I tasted it, tasted like Topo Chico no lie

Fenton lake, at the end of the same drive up into the mountains:

the best bit for me was our visit to Sky City, the Acoma people's Pueblo- it's a long drive through pretty much desert to get there, but the landscape changes so radically with the geology that the drive itself was one of the best bits. It's at the top of a mesa (flat top mountain) and we got a bus up, and a tour by a woman whose family have a home there. Here's the view from the top:

 

and the streets:

a stairway to the skies (the top horizontal is a cloud, the verticals are rain)

bread oven:

the walk down is on very steep steps cut into the rock, with scooped hand holds:

on our last day we went to Tinkertown, halfway up to Sandia Peak, which is the mountain that looks over Albuquerque. It's barely describable, but it's a gallery/workshop/home of Ross Ward, who was a sign painter and model maker. There are thousands of carved figures and scenes, a lot of them automata, mostly in the circus/fairground vernacular. Plus a boat that his brother built and sailed around the world, plus vast collections of pretty much anything you can imagine, all jammed into tight wooden corridors and rooms built out of concrete with thousands of glass bottles set into them, which act as windows, like this:

bonus picture, I thought it was really cool that construction workers had hard hats with clip-on wide brims and sun/insect nets:

Again, @chicote I'm just so grateful for all the time you took putting this itinerary for us together, I think we did all but one thing you suggested, which was too far of a drive. Best trip in ages.