exasperation

Please don't hawk tuah your pans while cooking

I don't know that it's even conditional. I think we owe society something just anyway. If my neighbor's house is on fire, I should help how I can: contribute to putting out the fire (actually fighting the fire, calling someone who can), and I should help my neighbor deal with the aftermath (clothes and food and shelter and maybe assistance with paperwork, rebuilding, etc.).

So it's not transactional, but an underlying permanent obligation to other humans to at least do a baseline amount of good.

Legally, no. Morally? Probably. I try to take care of my parents, and make their lives easier where I can, when I can, to try to at least somewhat alleviate how I've made their lives harder at earlier stages in life.

I don't really bother with the middle of the restaurant industry (and it's not just me, as chains like Chili's and Applebee's have complained about the trends hollowing out the middle). It's just not enough of an improvement over fast food or fast casual to be worth the higher cost, slower service, etc.

If I'm hungry and don't want to cook/clean, I'll grab fast food.

If I want to sit down at a full service restaurant, it'll probably be an expensive trendy place with recognition from James Beard or Michelin.

I have a fridge at work, so I just shop separately for groceries there. I usually make my own salads, but some weeks I shift to sandwiches or soups.

In an early episode where they're taking money from the till, and George Michael says his dad checks the banana inventory to make sure the money matches up, it's $1 per banana. Pretty cheap price in that context, but that's the in-universe price.

Luminol is a chemical that reacts with hemoglobin to glow where very small amounts of blood might have been. That's usually sprayed, for detecting much smaller concentrations than what would show up under a UV light. That might be what you're thinking of.

Next thing you're gonna tell me I'm not supposed to binge an entire 22-episode season of The Office in one sitting.

I appreciate compliments. I have a hard time accepting overly specific compliments.

The original note that started this thread was on the overly specific side.

I think banana production is also significantly less labor intensive than most other fresh fruits.

The trees grow in season-less climates where they can be planted and harvested at any time of year, so the steady work requirements can use a fixed number of workers rotating fields (contrast to seasonal harvests where a surge of workers need to be brought in for a few critical weeks, and not paid the rest of the year, so that the unavailability of year round work for the workers can turn exploitative, especially in employer-provided transportation and housing).

The actual characteristics of the plant grows a lot of fruit in bunches, where a single worker can cut off a single bunch containing 25-65 kg of fruit, and where the bunch can be subdivided easily into crates for shipping. So on a per-kilogram or per-fruit basis, the human labor tends to be much more efficient than other plants where each fruit might be picked by hand individually.

The fruit itself can ripen off the plant, and naturally comes in a tough protective exterior, which means they can be processed and shipped with minimal protections against rough handling or bruising, and don't need much in the way of washing or waxing or things like that.

And that's why advocates for fair wages in the banana industry correctly argue that increasing labor costs wouldn't make bananas all that much more expensive, either. Labor is just too small a proportion of the overall cost, because the workers are so productive.

I think this is a good scale.

Managing the relationship between interior temperature and outside sear (without burning) is a skill worth mastering first. Like you say, burgers, steaks, and other flat cuts are easier than irregular shapes.

Another skill to improve on is smoke management. Controlling both the temperature and the quality of smoke with fuel, heat, airflow is a balance: choking off burning wood to keep the temperature from rising too high tends to produce bad-tasting smoke, and giving enough oxygen for that thin blue smoke you want can sometimes cause the vessel to get a bit too hot.

Then, being able to control all of those things (internal temp, external temp, smoke quality) over a long enough period of time to cook tougher cuts is an increase in skill/difficulty. Smoking chicken might take an hour, while smoking ribs might take 3 hours, and smoking brisket might take 12+ hours. Some cooler cooks, like cold smoked salmon, can be challenging, too. Getting a feel for adding fuel to a cook and how to do that while maintaining the same steady stream of high quality smoke of the right temperature requires some experience.

Which also isn't to say that there isn't some room for a high level of skill on short cooks. Working with embers and wood and flame to make short cooks over high heat can be challenging, too. Smoked or wood fired vegetables are especially interesting, as some introduce moisture control as an element, over time frames short enough to precise timing starts to matter, too.

Yes, so if you look closer, the y axis is a logarithmic scale, indicating that straight lines are actually exponential growth.