May the schwartz be with you!

Product I swear by? Hmmm. So many options. I do like Harney's Chocolate Tea. And my pan of awesome meatloaf pan. And my bench scraper. And a sort of spatula/spoon. I used to like Jeegen's soap but can't find it any longer.

First?

Better Than Bouillon seasoned vegetable broth. It is a paste that comes in a jar. Much better than any homemade veggie stock I've ever made. I suspect it is the yeast extract. I fantasize getting ahold of some Marmite and running some experiments.

When I eat wicked (e.g. not from scratch), Screamin' Sicilian frozen pizza is pretty good.

When I lived in Seattle, Tim's Chips had an alder smoked variety of potato chip. I decided to order a case of them to be shipped to Multibore a few years back and it turns out they don't make them any more.

Ten-year-old me would have said "Count Chocula".

May the schwartz be with you!

I see someone else is a big Mel Brooks/Spaceballs fan.

@Jodi First!

🏆🎉

@Cass

Garnier fructis fresh & clean shampoo conditioner

Yes! These days I shave my head with a #3 clippers attachment and get away with using bar soap - but back in the day when I had hair this was one of my preferred brands. :)

Formerly McCormick, now Morton, Season-All seasoned salt. Good on pretty much any kind of meat. It's safe/comfort food at this point. It took me many years to branch out into other flavors (lemon, cajun, etc.).

I also unexpectedly love Weiman stove top cleaner.

I'm sure I'll think of something else in the next ~22 hrs.

Not spices - but, rather, ingredients.

Barley malt syrup - I never knew it existed until I started making bagels. It's also great on ice cream.

Maltose - again, I never knew it existed until I saw it in a Char Shiu recipe and thought that might be a good base to revive a honey-lemon-pepper sauce I once had.

As for spices, I like picking (and eating) the red peppercorns straight off of the pepper trees that grow here in California - they are not as hot as the Indian black pepper corns, but more tasty. I hear that some people are allergic to 'em, so I am careful about using 'em.

Morning. We're now in the heat wave (was yesterday too) thats been affecting the middle of the country. Limiting computer use as it throws out a lot of heat.

Nothing to offer on products I swear by... all brands have betrayed me at one time or another, either by cheaping quality or just plain wearing out. I might get 20 years out of an appliance, but the replacement will always cost twice as much and last at best a quarter as long. Way too many seasonings and food products have failed me, either adding in stuff I couldn't eat or removing things I liked and changing the result badly.

I have outlived too much of the world as I knew it already. I am nostalgic for that which once was and has vanished in the last 20 years.

I am also a harissa fan. And my nephew loves the bagel stuff.

There’s a store here in NYC called Kalusyan’s that’s rows and rows of spices and sauces, and teas, and herbs, with some baklava and Indian potato chips thrown in. Every once in a while, I go a bit nuts in there.

The bagel stuff has spawned many knockoffs. Mr. Stranger has approved of all he has tried so far.

Disclaimer: He's not picky.

@Joseph Teller - My main Linux desktop died a few weeks back. It was a desktop case with an ASUS mini-itx motherboard and an Intel i5-11600 processor. It would draw about 25 to 30 watts at idle (peak was rather higher)

That machine died (motherboard went silent in all regards).

So I replaced it with an ASUS NUC Pro 14 (not the latest model) with in i7 in it. I slapped a couple of SODIMMs into it and a 1T M.2 SSD (we have a couple of file servers in the house, so a bigger SSD wasn't needed.) It's got Thunderbolt 4 in case I want to add an external drive (like the one on my Mac Mini.)

Wow, it is nice. It is tiny - really tiny - with an Core Ultra 7 155H processor. It is at least as fast as the dead box and draws very little power and thus adds not a great deal of heat to the room.

It was not inexpensive, however.

I would recommend it to anyone looking to replace a Windoz or Linux machine.

@Carsten Raddatz - I am looking at the NUC 15 as a new platform for our products - I can add Ethernets/10G via Thunderbolt.

On the NUC 14 that I have it took me a while to get the BIOS the way I wanted for things like Wake-on-Lan. And Fedora Linux/KDE had some trouble recognizing the video after a kernel update (they have fixed that in a later kernel.)

Apparently Intel sold its NUC line to ASUS.

By-the-way, when I popped open the case to add the M.2 SSD and memory I didn't mark the orientation of the cover plate. That added a bit of confusion as I tried to figure out which way to put it back on.

I've only got one monitor that can do video over USB-C. I really like using a USB-C or Thunderbolt 4/5 cable for video rather than a big klunky HDMI or Displayport cable. I do that on my Mac Mini and it really cleans up the wiring mess on my desk.

We make our own spice blends for things.

For chili: 8 parts Cumin
3 parts Black Pepper
3 parts Cayenne Pepper
3 parts Garlic Powder
2 parts Oregano
1 part Allspice
1 part Ginger

For mashed sweet potatoes: 12 parts ground cinnamon
4 parts ground ginger
2 parts ground cloves
1 part ground allspice
1 part ground mace
1 part ground nutmeg
pinch of black pepper

@Pedro Subrosa - There are two guitar companies here, but their names are easy to pronounce: "Hill" and "Santa Cruz"

But I paid $5 for my Yamaha (1970's era) - and got an album as part of the deal. The locally made ones are about 1000x that.

Too bad (for me) that my playing is so bad that my mandolin shudders and my guitar trembles in fear when I approach. (And now my aging fingers are unwilling to bend in the needed ways.)