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Space 3/3/04

> Since you're in Chinatown look for a "Chinese herbal cooker" which I
> mentioned here in 95 and nobody else since. You're not going to find
> it using any URL only by shopping Chinatown. Get the clay version
> which is getting rarer and being replaced by electric versions. The
> interior has a thick glazed and designed for any subsequent herbal
> infusion. It has a parallel tubular horn handle and spout and the
> liquid to poured toward you and not away like a convential tea pot.
> You will have the most unique certified eclectic teapot of any of your
> surfing friends. It is designed for direct gas flame cooking or
> electric with trivet but I use it as a teapot and not cooking. So let
> your feet do the walking and let the keyboard kibitzers simmer with
> envy.
>
> Jim

to which I add that you'll find some really cool matching other pots and
cookers of similar type as well as real cheap cooking utensils, much neater
than ones you'd pay six times as much for. The things Jim refers to always
looked like rough giant kyusus to me. Wouldn't think of boiling up herbs in
anything else.

likewise, BTW, I'm the last on my block not to have an electric rice cooker.
I learned to cook rice in Denmark and then again in India. You don't need a
stupid rice cooker. But, from out main point we digress.

I'm drinking Fragrant Plum, a green oolong of David Hoffman's (Silk Road
Tea). This is a delightfully fragrant most vegetal tea I've ever drunk.
Squash, asparagas, cucumber, bean -- whatever the vegetable, this is not the
vegetal of over-the-hill. I like it. It's the fragrance that pulls it all
together, I think. And it's good for many steeps, bringing the price down
per cup if that's an issue.

Michael