Category: Fighting Dharma


  • I rode the Trek FX4 January to August. I bought a Cannondale Topstone gravel bike in August, and it became my main bike. I bought a Garmin Edge 130 GPS unit/computer and began to track the cumulative elevation gained during a ride and average speed (moving), as well as distance and time. My total distance…

  • Cooking Rice Any vessel that can hold rice and water can cook rice. A rice cooker appliance, a pot on a stove top, or a pressure cooker all cook rice. For steamed long grain white rice, including Basmati, I often use a normal pot on the stove. I use the Instant Pot for brown rice.…

  • Instant Pot

    The principals of Double Insight developed the Instant Pot pressure multi-cooker in 2008-9. It was on the market by 2012, and took off in 2015-6 with social media and presence in Amazon Market Place. “Instant Pot” is not a trade mark like Vacuum Cleaner or Bandaid. Instant Pot launched a sous-vide heater in 2018, and…

  • Endless This post was published in August 2019 but has been updated as I have given more thought to it or had interesting experiences. It is easier for me to edit the post than to write new posts. Devices A pressure cooker reaches cooking temperatures above the boiling point of water (212 F. or 100…

  • Slow Cookers

    I used a slow cooker for many years, and invested time and effort in learning that method of cooking. Slow cookers braise food in liquid at low heat. Most slow cookers made from the 1950s to the early 21st century used ceramic crocks heated by a single electric heating element- low powered and poorly insulated.…

  • Pots and Pans

    The hypothesis of Catching Fire is that cooking food was a learned cultural practice that affected the physiological evolution of human beings. It used “external” energy to make eating and digesting food take less time and liberated people to get on with life. Ceramic cooking vessels were the dominant technology in societies in which people…

  • Dry Hard

    Legumes Botany In the botanical classification system, dry beans are legumes, Fabaceae s.l. (or Leguminosae), a “family” of plants as defined by the APG System (III), which includes 730 genera of plants. Most dry beans are classified as being in one of these genera: Plants have moved or been moved from the original regions where…

  • My rides in 2018 were in Victoria. All my rides were on my Trek FX4. I was getting speed and distance on the Bontrager cycling computer. It was wireless – it had a magnet on a spoke, a sensor sending unit and the main unit mounted on the bars. I logged 2,283.6 Km. I rode…

  • Reasons a bread machine cannot be used, in the baking programs, to bake artisan bread: Gluten. The autolyze (a rest after mixing before kneading) and other rests during kneading allows gluten to form in a less structured way that produces the more open crumb of French bread and artisan loaves. Fermentation. Artisan loaves involve pre-ferments,…

  • Steamed Rice

    Steamed rice is rice cooked in water. Cooked rice can used in a dish, as an accompaniment to other dishes, fried or processed further, or added to other dishes e.g. Nasi Goreng is preparation of fried cooked white rice. All rice delivers carbohydrates, a source of glucose, an essential nutrient. White rice has been milled…