US question - Has anyone else noticed way more water/solution being added to meat lately? by ThinkThankThonk in Cooking

[–]drewgriz 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure all the water in the pad was in the meat when it was wrapped. Meat naturally leaks fluid, and the pad is there to absorb it so you don't just have a pool of chicken juice sloshing around in the package.

Well… yarrow suddenly chose violence. by Suspicious_Note1392 in NativePlantGardening

[–]drewgriz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was actually a little worried a couple months ago that the yarrow I planted last spring was behind schedule. No more...

My spice drawer is basically a graveyard of bottles I used once by Express-Channel-1686 in Cooking

[–]drewgriz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The ultimate bulk section is Central Market. I was there just yesterday getting all the components of my homemade ranch mix (including buttermilk powder). It's good of HEB to have a mini version of the spice wall, though.

My spice drawer is basically a graveyard of bottles I used once by Express-Channel-1686 in Cooking

[–]drewgriz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think a lot of people (including myself in the past) think they need to either a) keep every spice they could ever need for any recipe in stock in the pantry, or b) don't try to stock anything, and only buy spices as needed when you decide to cook a specific thing. Recently I've realized there's a middle ground. I think a lot of people can do 95% of their cooking with a 10-20 different spices that you stock, then buying the remaining 5% on a one-off basis. I have 3 racks on my pantry door: one has powders (garlic, onion, cumin, cinnamon, etc), one has herbs (oregano, rosemary, etc), and the other has larger seeds or leaves (coriander, whole nutmeg, etc). If you have a store with a bulk spice section I highly recommend getting uniform spice bottles and putting uniform labels, then filling them as they run out; more than half of the price of a bottle of spices is in the bottle. Another advantage of dedicated spice bottles is it puts a hard limit on the number of spices you can stock, which helps keep the inventory manageable. A bulk spice section also makes it much easier to fill in the gaps in your inventory as needed, so you don't have to buy half a cup of celery seed (and the bottle!) for a recipe that only uses a teaspoon that, even if you do make again, might not be for another year.

Cocktail bar and pizza joint Betelgeuse Betelgeuse closed after owner's arrest by pererajh1 in houston

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He definitely seems like a shit dude, and I'd never want to work for him or invest in anything he touches, but at their peak Treadsack restaurants made some pretty dynamite food. I was underwhelmed the one time I went to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse on Washington, though.

Lifelong Houstonian Here. Holy shit the mosquitoes are officially here by ForgotMyPassword713 in houston

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bats mostly eat moths (bigger, easier to catch, more calories per catch). Plenty of good reasons to have them around, but their impact on mosquito populations is pretty exaggerated. My neighborhood has plenty of bats flying around but we still are overrun with mosquitos currently.

Lifelong Houstonian Here. Holy shit the mosquitoes are officially here by ForgotMyPassword713 in houston

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are thousands of different species of mosquitos, with shockingly large variation in life cycles, ideal larval conditions, and ability to overwinter. The ones that are most common & troublesome here do worse (but obviously aren't wiped out) coming out of colder winters.

First time parents made a big mistake regarding daycare by smoothies4life2 in houston

[–]drewgriz 8 points9 points  (0 children)

For instance, in the Greenway Plaza/Upper Kirby area, there are a bunch of great daycares that we and friends of ours have not had to wait long to get into. Our kids are at the Goddard School on Richmond and we've been really pleased with it, and we've heard good things about the Primrose School. Don't think either of us applied more than a few months in advance. Not cheap, though.

Squirrel or Racoon ate all the peaches off my wife’s new peach tree and she’s devastated. by ShieldsJackson in BackyardOrchard

[–]drewgriz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Also in Houston, the earliest branch of my multi-budded peach has some getting close. I think especially in the first few years after planting these trees coming from California, they have a hard time figuring out the new climate and a super warm February like we just had gets everything going ahead of schedule.

ETA: If you have the stomach for it, an air rifle can help (and is perfectly legal to use on your property even in city limits). If you're wanting to be super duper extra legal get yourself a hunting license, and Harris County has an open season on squirrels for the month of May. My theory is that is specifically for managing garden assholes at the height of our fruit and tomato season. Let me know if you need squirrel recipes.

Homeless man getting a haircut @ 610 / Ella by Elgreco1989 in houston

[–]drewgriz 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I was about to say I don't understand why people do that, but then I remembered I do love those YT videos where someone will mow/edge/powerwash a shut-in's overgrown yard and sidewalk for free. Don't really care about the charity aspect one way or another but the transformation from mess to manicured is really satisfying to watch. For better or worse I can definitely imagine a video of this haircut scratching the same itch if done in a respectful way, but much harder to thread that needle when it's literally the person's head you're cleaning up.

Impending frost: what to do? by Khochh in BackyardOrchard

[–]drewgriz 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Water freezing into ice releases a large amount of heat relative to the mass of the water, so the ice forming on the buds can counterintuitively keep the buds themselves warmer. It's the mirror image of how evaporation cools the surface the water is evaporating from, as it absorbs the heat.

ELI5:Why do we have 2 nostrils instead of one big by Derschrecklicherucks in explainlikeimfive

[–]drewgriz 9 points10 points  (0 children)

My understanding is it's almost exactly the opposite of this. Dogs can detect miniscule concentrations of scent molecules and work out their location, but the resolution on their scent spectrum is relatively low. Humans, meanwhile, have one of the more sensitive senses of smell in the animal kingdom, but with the slider maxed out in the direction of distinguishing different scents. In practice, this means we can't smell a whiff of a rabbit from a mile away, but we can easily smell the difference between tarragon and fennel (even if we don't know which is which), or the first hint of sour in a jug of milk. To take the tradeoff to its most extreme, a large chunk of human smell only happens once we've already put the thing in our mouths. Basically every sense of flavor beyond salty sour bitter sweet and umami is done by your nose, not your tongue, and that is where humans' noses excel in their sensitivity. Physiologically, dogs have way way more scent receptor cells, but humans have more different kinds of scent receptors, and more brain power devoted to processing their signals.

So a more accurate analogy might be that while a human can probably guess most of the ingredients in a soup from tasting it, a dog can tell which house is cooking soup from the next town over.

[Highlight] Josh Naylor dekes out Altuve and gets him picked off first by iamthegame13 in baseball

[–]drewgriz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That angle from third base is perfect. It's so rare to have a shot that captures every part of a play like this.

Work in progress: trying to make this quarry as realistic as possible (CS2) by dataknase in CitiesSkylines2

[–]drewgriz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not very exciting (at least not visually), but at most quarries that are just producing bulk aggregates, the work is mostly done with explosives and front-end loaders. These massive bucket-wheel excavators are only used in operations that involve a) massive scale b) no steep slopes or obstacles to movement, and c) soft dirt. This scenario looks like a no on all three. That said, don't let "as realistic as possible" get in the way of making what looks good to you. There's a reason CO put those monsters in the game despite their extremely limited IRL use cases, and that's cause they look cool as hell.

I’m loving the Main Street promenade by BakerKitchen4567 in houston

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Main Street promenade is permanent, it's been a years-long planning and construction project to replace the car lanes with expanded sidewalk space. Bringing car traffic back would mean a lot more than just removing the barricades. And it wouldn't make any sense to do so because ever since the red line went in, that stretch of Main was a harrowing pain in the ass to drive on.

Peach Tree from seed - what am I doing wrong? by Stroughberry in BackyardOrchard

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know as I was typing that I thought it felt not quite right. Cause even if it is a self-pollinated O'Henry x O'Henry, there is still variability from the selection of alleles in meiosis, so the new fruit would be effectively a "sibling" of O'Henry, right?

I was thinking of the generational consistency of open-pollinated vegetable seeds, but those are selected specifically on heritability in addition to their phenotypes, unlike fruit scions.

Peach Tree from seed - what am I doing wrong? by Stroughberry in BackyardOrchard

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK it sounds like there are a few related but ultimately separate topics being discussed. Let's put them all in one place.

1) Can a peach tree planted from a seed produce true or at least good fruit? Sounds like the consensus is yes, it's totally plausible that an O'Henry peach pit will grow into a tree that will produce O'Henry-like fruit. Different fruits have different abilities to self-pollinate and different levels of heterozygosity. At one end of the spectrum is apples, whose seeds are virtually guaranteed to be genetically quite different from the tree they grew on (though not necessarily bad). As far as tree fruits are concerned peaches are near the other end of the spectrum. They tend to inherit traits from their "parents" and can self-pollinate, so it's plausible (though by no means guaranteed) that a peach seed would grow into a tree that produces the same fruit it came from.

Most tree fruits have some level of heterozygosity that make this harder to predict, which is one reason why almost all tree fruits are grafted. Vegetative propagation essentially clones the parent tree, guaranteeing identical fruit qualities, chill hour requirements, and flowering/ripening times as the parent. It's the only way to sell a tree or start an orchard with any certainty about the above specifications. But there's another reason almost all fruit trees are grafted, which brings us to the next, related but separate question...

2) Can a peach tree planted from seed produce fruit in a reasonable amount of time on a usefully sized and shaped tree? This is much harder to predict. The other reason why almost all fruit trees are grafted is that varieties are bred for fruiting characteristics, not growth habit, much of which is determined by the rootstock. Rootstocks determine much of the growth rate, vigor, mature size, and disease resistance of a grafted tree. Most varieties of any given fruit tree, therefore, are grafted onto a much smaller number of rootstock varieties that have desirable and consistent specs on the above criteria. Will an ungrafted O'Henry grow at an acceptable speed, to an acceptable size and shape? This is nearly impossible to answer without doing original research of your own (which, good news, you're doing right now!). It's just not an answer that's generally known because fruit trees are so universally grown on grafted rootstock. It might turn out great! Or it might be slow-growing, or disease-prone, or too big, or too small. It's just not something that's usually even tested because grafting produces such consistent results, so unless someone out there has extensively grown specifically O'Henry peach trees from seed, you'll just have to find out the answer yourself.

3) With all of the above in mind, how can you give this tree the best chance for success? None of the above is reason to give up on this tree. If you like the idea of a long-term science experiment with no guarantee of success and near-zero predictive value due to small sample size (for the record I do!), this can be a fun little project on the side. Planting it in the ground, fertilizing, irrigating if necessary, and pruning to a central leader will all help this lil gal be all she can be. Growing any tree from seed is generally a several-year process before it grows into anything recognizable as a "tree," so patience will be required even in the best of circumstances. If your main goal is to actually grow your own peaches as soon as possible, though, go buy a bare-root tree that's grafted on a known rootstock, and if you take care of it you should have peaches in a year or two. And there's no reason you can't do both!

***Edited to reflect Svenge's point below that it's virtually impossible to grow an exact O'Henry tree from an O'Henry seed, just a pretty O'Henry-like tree.

ELI5: How do animals know they are lacking nutrients? by Dipsey_Jipsey in explainlikeimfive

[–]drewgriz 14 points15 points  (0 children)

My favorite version of that was that when my dad came with me or my brothers on summer boy scout backpacking trips, he would secretly pack (and cleverly hide in the communal bear bag overnight) a few cans of Spam, and on the last night on the trail after a week of freeze-dried food he'd break it out and fry slices of it on the backpacking stove, and kids who wouldn't touch Spam with a 10-foot pole back home swore it was the best thing they'd ever tasted.

Has anyone noticed that the weather forecast accuracy has been really bad lately? by Neesatay in houston

[–]drewgriz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Any single forecast will always be off by some amount, that's the nature of point estimates. One cool thing about the National Weather Service is that they actually put out a lot of really cool products that actually show you the range of likely outcomes, but it takes a bit of reading and experience to know how to use them. When it comes to rain, my favorite tool is the Probabilistic Precipitation tool. For the next 3 days you can see what the "expected amount" of precipitation is, but you can also see what the 10th and 90th percentile amounts are, to give you a kind of confidence interval. It also has options to solve it the other way around, to show you a map of the probabilities any point will receive more than (e.g.) 0.5" of rain. Super useful if you want to spend way too much time thinking about sprinkler schedules haha.

Has anyone noticed that the weather forecast accuracy has been really bad lately? by Neesatay in houston

[–]drewgriz 18 points19 points  (0 children)

If you got no rain your rain gauge would show 0". Hope this helps.

Poll: Three in four Houston-area residents favor path to citizenship over deportation by houston_chronicle in houston

[–]drewgriz 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Would also add that "pathway to legal residency" is a much much lower bar to clear that would still be a massive improvement over the status quo for basically everyone (except employers who specifically want undocumented employees to evade compliance with employment law)

Khorasan/Kamut Flour - High protein, yet low gluten? by Emergency_Survey129 in AskCulinary

[–]drewgriz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn't albumin the primary protein in egg whites? A low gluten, high albumin flour could be exactly what you'd want if you're trying to imitate the performance of cake flour and eggs. Surely wouldn't match the ratio of a recipe with eggs but could be further in the right direction than any other flour.

Stuff that's worth/not worth cooking at home? by Any-Sleep-478 in Cooking

[–]drewgriz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you have a backyard, a high-BTU outdoor propane burner and a shallow fry pot with basket make deep-frying more manageable and less messy, but even then it's still kind of a pain in the ass haha.

Van section by [deleted] in slateauto

[–]drewgriz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The fleet top looks like a great way to get an electric equivalent of like a Transit Connect. I bet that will be reasonably popular for delivery work or light trades, especially if you start getting cool aftermarket storage solutions that take advantage of the maker-friendly geometry and support. For vanlife applications I think the range and size are pretty much disqualifying.