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[yogi]

Tumblr seems to be where all the college kids went when Facebook became overrun by their parents. I stayed away from that yet another social network until my oldest granddaughter left home to be educated at Fordham University. She didn't post much and therefore Tumblr was not very enlightening. I then discovered that my youngest daughter, Andrea, was into fan fiction, Elizabeth Banks' Effie Trinket from Hunger Games in particular. Her BFF, who took a liking to guinea pigs, was a Downton Abby fan. There came a time when I was asked to be a technical consultant for some fiction writing my daughter was doing for the children in her class. It was a fun project and the reason why I monitor Tumblr at all these days. I've acquired a few followers and subscribed to a few blogs from friends of friends. All in all, the circle of friends I have there is very small.

Because my circle of Tumblr friends was manageable, I would post things I knew would interest them. Almost all of what you see up there is an attempt to cater to their interests. When I discovered the watermelon eating guinea pig I simply had to post it for my friend to see and comment upon. This is a way of letting people know we are still in touch. The personal pictures, such as the deck shots, are for my oldest daughter in Florida, and anyone else who might have an interest in what is happening in my immediate surroundings. From your comments it looks like you only found the most recent page of my entire blog. The whole blog goes back several years where you can find bits and pieces of my interests placed in a public forum. Rummage through some of those "older blogs" to get an even broader perspective of my world, which I put into a 1's and 0's format -- of course.

[Kellemora]

Yogi reminds me of my grandmother. She had a gas range, and had a few things catch fire on her.
Spaghetti, like Yogi's, hi hi...
Wooden spoons, oven mitts, pot handles, her apron, even singed her hair a few times.

I preferred electric ranges, at least you could fry marbles on them without getting burned, hi hi...

[Icey]

Thank you Yogi. I'll take another look when I have more time to sit here. I don't know if you noticed what I happened to mention to Tomsk, but last night, a giant wood wasp landed on me. I won't go into the horror I felt, particularly as I'm allergic to any wasp or bee stings.

The thing is, after being paralysed with fear - literally - I managed to knock it off my arm, only for it to settle on my leg. OMG. I swatted it and kicked back my chair, with me in it. I sent a few things flying, but the result is, that I've had backache for a few days, and my action just set it off even more. It's quite uncomfortable sitting here for too long.

The photos which I DID see, were great. The more the merrier!

Gary - I've never cooked using gas, except for when using a camping stove. I left a pan of baked beans over one, and they all stuck to the bottom! : (

[pilvikki]

I don't like gas... it scares the living daylights out of me although the accidents are rare enough. they also seem to take very long to heat anything up. compared to our induction stove.

mind you, we have a stove that either turns itself on, or the blasted cat does a tap dance on it at night.

[Icey]

Ugh - that could be very dangerous!

The thing with gas is, that the heat's supposed to be instant and immediately controllable.

[yogi]

Take toast as an example. Toss some bread in the toaster and it takes several minutes for it to become brown and edible. Toss that same bread on a gas burner and you have instant charcoal. The electric cooker takes much longer to reach a usable temperature. To it's credit, unlike a gas flame, the electric burner evenly distributes the heat. This is the single advantage and what most people say is good about it. The down side is that the burner has a sensor that turns the heating element on and off automatically in order to maintain an approximately even temperature. When simmering something, this means it's either bubbling over or not bubbling at all. But, the average temperature is where you point the dial. Likewise, if the heat is too high and you turn it down, it takes many seconds (perhaps a minute or two) to stabilize. Gas stabilizes immediately. It could be the difference between well done and burnt eggs.

As you might expect, people prefer whatever it is that they have been using for most of their life. You do get used to it after gaining experience. In the Chicago area natural gas is about 1/4th the price of electricity so that deciding which to use is a no brainer. Down here in St Louis it seems as if they never heard of natural gas. I suppose with all the earthquakes they prefer nuclear power plants instead.

[Kellemora]

I've never lived anywhere in St. Louis or St. Louis County that did not have Natural Gas.
I was raised with gas ranges, but switched to electric.
We had a gas dryer that seemed to catch fire about once every three years, so I switched to electric there too.
My furnace, water heater, outdoor gas grill, and lighting was gas, until the price skyrocketed, then I converted the outdoor lights to low voltage electric. Every time someone bumped one of the gaslight poles, the mantles would break. So was glad to change them to electric, with dusk to dawn sensors.

My restaurants used 16 burner gas grills, but all the fryers were electric.
I switched the bun toaster from gas to electric when we had to replace ours.

A gas stovetop burner may provide instant heat, but an oven takes just as long to heat up whether gas or electric.
We had both types of ovens in our pizza shop.
Since we were in St. Louis, most of our customers preferred St. Louis style pizza crust, the electric oven was the best to produce this style pizza. If folks wanted a Chicago or New York style rock hard pizza crust, we use the gas oven.
Both were brick lined convection, so the only difference was the heating units.
We only turned our ovens down to around 250-300 at night, to save the thermocouples.
When we did turn them all the way off, it took a couple of hours for the bricks to reach proper baking temperature.
From overnight warm, it only took a half hour for them to reach baking temp.

[Icey]

I agree with Yogi that people tend to use what they're used to, and then there are some of us who have no choice anyway.

Wood-burning stoves and ranges're good for heating, but cooking with it takes a bit of getting used to.

In the UK, using gas's quite a lot cheaper than relying on electricity. Trying to run a house on the latter'd work out very expensive unless you covered your house in solar panels, which're still costly to install over here. On an average house, according to a friend of ours who deals in them, you'd be paying around £6000 (almost $7436) to provide roof space with a mere 21 sq. metres of panels. I'd say that most people'd need more than that to collect and store enough energy for possible 24-hour use.

[pilvikki]

well, the neighbours have gas and we have an induction glass top stove. ours is hugely faster than the gas stoves I've used here, the heat is instantly adjusted. but, of course, I don't know if it's just these particular gas models they have...?

[Icey]

A good friend of mine has the same type of stove as yours. The heat's adjustable up or down, and pretty quick, but a gas hob just pips it to the post for getting there when you first turn it on. Obviously, a gas flame's there immediately. Induction rings, albeit fast, still need a few seconds to reach the top heat, and can lose heat when the thermostat goes off.

The advantage, of course, is that this type of cooking facility's more pleasing on the eye than a gas hob. Kate thinks the glass tops're a pain to keep clean though?

[pilvikki]

the difference is the hear transfer: a gas flame will blow a lot of it away around the sides of the pot, while the glass will be right against the bottom and thus affect more heat directly to the bottom.

we could do a ... maybe someone has already done it?

of course they have! here's their results: http://blog.us.schott.com/boiling-point ... -the-test/

to me it still doesn't sound right, so i'll now go boil some water.

brb!

[pilvikki]

not much of a test kitchen, actually, "a little over 4 mins" doesn't sound very scientific. no mention of pot material, nor the original temp of the water.

well, I used tap water and a steel pot. mine came to a roiling boiling in 2 min 35 secs.

[Icey]

How much water did you boil up though?

I can only judge by my kettle - not a pan of water on the cooker. A half litre of water takes 2 minutes. I've no idea how that equates to using gas or a glass-topped cooker.

[pilvikki]

oh, I used 750ml, forgot to mention that. same as in their test. i'll check the electric kettle when I make tea.

[Icey]

They seem to differ as well, don't they? I have another kettle which seems to take ages in comparison to the newer one, so we just put enough water in it to make 2 cups at a time. Both of them have sealed elements.

[pilvikki]

figures... I forgot...

[Icey]

Wonder how long it takes to boil a small pan of water, suspended over a candle flame?!!!

[pilvikki]

you just let us know, k?

[Icey]

Where's Gary??? : )

[Kellemora]

I'm right here! I've boiled water in a playing card over a candle flame, but I don't think it has enough BTU's to get a pan hot enough to boil water. Heck, just the empty pan would act like a big heat sink.