Every time I look at a recipe I review the knife work and if I feel threatened I won't do it.

I'm sure you guys are very good and I am mediocre in comparison. But even past that point, I'm just lazy and scared. As far as I'm concerned, a project isn't over until I've hurt myself. That could be twisting a wrench and slamming my hand. Or that could be chopping a bit of my finger when cutting whatever. It's just part of life. So I'll avoid the knife when I can. I whined about the hands but of course there are times I just push past whatever and get stuff done. I don't want to touch raw meat so I glove up and I am careful with the cutting boards and it's all such a pain in the ass. Most of the time it's not worth it for me.

If I can do factory production like large sous-vide batches I will, because that's a good payback on investment. And I only do that once every 3 or 4 months. I just ate some 3-year-old lamb ribs. It was before I learned to label well and I thought it was a steak. Random 3-year-old bag from the deep freeze in the back. They were great. They worked very well frozen in the George Foreman grill and the bag juice made a great sauce.

The key issue is I crossed over into laziness outweighing hunger. So fancy prep of anything has to give me some phenomenal return on investment for me to get off my ass and start working on it.

It's going to be something emotional. It's going to be something that I do to make M happy on the occasion that she is hungry. It's going to be something that I can create and eat over the course of days but have it in two bite snacks like the eggs.

Other than that, I'll wait for M to cook and feed me. She's really good at it. And she does it even when she's not hungry. She's got this thing about being a dutiful wife. She sees me sit there and feels the need to feed me.

Works for me.

Today I ran up and down my inside steps. Maybe 50 times. I played House Tetris. There is one guest left in 2 weeks and we are closed for the winter. That means the downstairs is mine.

When I put that Airbnb together I played solidify Tetris. I gathered everything in the house and either I packed tight up in 700 square feet which is my top floor kitchen, living room and bedroom or I put it outside in a shed somewhere. And those sheds were packed.

But downstairs was perfect. Freshly constructed kitchen and bedroom with the Murphy bed and just the slightest hint of storage. Almost nothing. Let people come in and feel it's theirs for a few days and then move on.

So that means I have almost no storage to use right now anyway. But I'm going to use every spot I can. Like I have a phonograph, really, a record player in a box, that's still in the box, that fits perfectly above the fridge within a quarter inch of the cabinet that hangs above that. That box does not fit anywhere else on the entire floor. Score.

Pots and pans that I haven't used in a long time? They go to the downstairs kitchen. Now I have two of them to fill with gadgets.

Every bag and box and wire on my floor? No longer, coiled and zip tied tight and hung on the correct wire racks. I can finally see my floor. The bags hang nicely on hooks. I have heavy duty canvas bags with padded handles that are now hanging on the wire shelves that I now can organize irregular shaped things in. The knapsacks that we all need access to? Hanging on that wire shelf rack as well. The jackets that we toss. Hanging on the wire rack as well. I love baker's racks combined with a bunch of s-hooks on the sides.

I'm not moving anything that M has stored in this environment out of sight. It's all laid out so she can pick and choose and then I'll carry the rest down.

I've rewired the projector. It used to hang straight down in the middle of the room. It was horrible. But it was low on the list. Now it's nice and tight up the ceiling and then down the wall and I've got the channels to put over it. Right now it's white wire on a white ceiling so I'm okay with it.

That means I can move my massage chair at any location under the projector which is where I want it. That thing is 300 lb plus but it's on a wooden floor and I can shove it. That means I can move the side table on wheels easily. It used to be clamped in place with the wires. It was bad. It was at the wrong angle for the chair but it was correct for clamped wires.

I have been running around like crazy all day doing this, unpacking the packed stuff in the tight living room closet and shelves that we could never get to anyway unless I juggled and then repacking it, but in a far more organized fashion in the limited space downstairs.

You know when you leave a house and the final moments, you have to do a gather and it's kind of like filling a junk drawer. You don't want to throw that stuff out, but you really don't have any current use for it. But you know it's worth moving. At least you think so. I found three those boxes from three moves ago that it's time to rip apart and use what we can and throw away what we don't. Time to set up a real filing cabinet.

No more juggling.

This will be the final summer if I rent at all. So I got short timers syndrome. You want to show up and enjoy the place, you should be okay with the various cabinets packed. It won't be ugly on the outside, but it won't be the level of hotel room feel that it is now.

Prep work? Too lazy. Housework with a payback that I've been waiting for, for years? Yup.

It drives M insane. She can whip up some grilled cheese in 2 minutes. It takes me about a half an hour. But when it's done, each piece of bread has been slowly slowly crisped in butter for 10 minutes before I even start the cheese portion.

One of the best things about this Breville induction cooker is the temperature control. It is so perfectly exact that I can get the temperature of butter 2° under smoke. Which makes it perfect for frying.

Cooking is an art form to you. It requires skill and care and loving attention. Most importantly, it requires your stove. Nobody else's. And it requires years of you adjusting how you behave for the various things you cook and the temperatures you have to get them to. It requires you to be able to eyeball and smell and taste at various points. All of these are learned over years and many failures.

I don't accept the failure. I accept the possibility. I try to work with cheap ingredients to start off with when I'm learning a particular skill. But for the most part, there should be no skills involved.

It is science and technology to me. If I can't create a formula that anyone can follow given the right tools, the first time, then I don't want it.

How hot is a medium flame? Game over.

I want to add on the temperature/flame versus electric electric burner versus default induction without temperature control.

Every single one of them requires a thermometer probe hanging on the pot and hitting a point. And that point beeps and tells you to get off your lazy ass and do something. Each one has different ability to hit a point at a different speed and maintain it. None of them will actually maintain any temperature. They'll maintain a level of electricity or flame. You throw something in there, temperature changes. Potatoes go in, temperature changes. Again and again. There are adjustments to be made while cooking that are specific to your stove and none of them would work for me.

I bet they don't work for most people but they don't know any better. They just try again and again. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't and it's never consistent.

And they'd never be able to walk next door and do it there. Most people would not be able to walk next door and do 99% of what you would do on a stove by default on your next door neighbor's stove. Even if it was the same supposed type.

I carry this burner with me. Besides setting the pan to fry as hot as possible for the oil type, and not burning the herbs during the initial pass of pulling the oils, I can simultaneously have the probe inside the meat to turn it off when it hits temperature.

You'll approximate. You'll find something that works generically. You will pay close care and attention. But you won't be sure. You'll get it close enough.

Drook: Would you do your rib roast recipe on someone else's oven if you were paying for the meat? I love that recipe. I definitely screwed it up. I don't remember how. I got it right the first time so I was hooked. But then I think it was a different kitchen because I moved a lot. I did something differently I'm sure. That was an expensive failure.

In the case of oils, you're supposed to heat max to a smoke point? A bit less? Unacceptable. Dial it in. Every time you throw something in there that's a different temperature. The heat will turn on and get it there as fast as possible. But it won't overshoot.

Every oil has its own temperature.

It's perfect every time. No reading a thermometer, never adjusting, always being sure. As opposed to when I use any other method I am ending up with something undercooked and soggy or overcooked and burnt.

I'm the same way with pressure cooking. Futzing around on the stove with pressure cookers was very painful. I have a very large metal electric sterilizer that pressure cooks as well, but does it after you've just dialed in the pressure rather than screw around with that bouncing top or have to go watch the pressure dial and adjust the stove because it varies.