Tinypliny's Journal

05/27/2011 18:56 #54357

Found any cool stores in downtown Buffalo recently?
Category: buffalo

I live in downtown Buffalo, but I don't think I know about many small useful stores within walking distance of my flat. What about you? Have you found some new useful stores around your neighbourhood recently? And no, restaurants and eateries don't classify as "small useful" stores. There are too many around anyway.

I found two:
1. Did you know that we have a full-scale upholstery store in downtown Buffalo that sells just about ANY upholstery fabric you need? It is called "Country Upholstery" and has slightly odd working hours: Monday thru Thursday: 6am - 3pm, not very much unlike the Amtrak station on Exchange Street. Country Upholstery also has a website:

It is located at: 475 Ellicott Street

2. There is a leather scrap store on the 700 block of Main Street a few doors north of Chow Chocolat. It sells small leather scraps and resoles shoes that are worn out from dancing. I forgot its name though... But I am sure it also has weird working hours.

I found these two because I was looking for somewhere to find microfiber fake suede for my shoes to silence the heels. I think I will find it at one of these stores, as soon as I make it to them in their weird business hours.

Now, do we have any thrift stores around at walking distance? Found any cool stores in downtown buffalo recently? This is a suggested title now. Start posting!

tinypliny - 05/28/11 13:10
I need to check this place out! Do you think they will be open on weekends?

paul - 05/28/11 12:33
Oh ya, that is totally the closet thrift store - I had forgotten about it. It is the St Vincent De Paul thrift store on Main near Ferry.

libertad - 05/28/11 12:32
I haven't been there in years, maybe it isn't the salvation army, actually come to think of it I think it is something else. I ride by it on my bike so it is somewhere between W. Ferry and RPCI. I'll check on Monday.

OK, I just remembered. Sorry for the misinformation!

This must be the address, you can call to verify.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul
Diocese of Buffalo, New York
1298 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14209
716-882-3360

tinypliny - 05/28/11 11:23
It houses the Buffalo Area Services, the Buffalo Citadel and the Buffalo Citadel Corps: :::link:::

tinypliny - 05/28/11 11:19
Do you mean the Salvation Army building? Do they really have a store there? I think it's only a Salvation Army drop-off and community centre for other activities that Salvation army is involved in. It is also a soup kitchen for the homeless. I don't think it's a regular store. Take a look: :::link:::

libertad - 05/28/11 08:46
There is a thrift store on 960 main street

tinypliny - 05/28/11 00:08
Grant and Ferry - that's a somewhat sketchy hood as I can recall from a couple years back. I felt people were carefully watching me as I walked down Grant towards Guercios. Has it improved? Are these shops across the street from La Nova? Are they new?

paul - 05/27/11 23:25
I think the hardware store called Dibbles and Mr. Seconds both near the corner of Grant and Ferry count as very useful. Its nice to be able to get some hardware stuff without having to travel so far north.

The salvation army on Elmwood near Hertel isn't such quick walking distance but its easily busable. I guess though if you go that far, Value is there as a hardware store too.

05/27/2011 18:38 #54356

Chef's opinions on Cast Iron Pans
Category: eating in

How many of you cook in cast iron pans and pots? What do you cook in them?

My parents have always made their flatbreads and dosais in cast iron skillets. I always thought they were too unwieldy, uncomfortably heavy and have never wanted them. But my mum pointed out recently that she has nice biceps and I don't, possibly because I cook in light cheap cookware. I don't think that is the sole reason though... but I want to give cast-iron a shot anyway.

If not rippling muscle-building, they might atleast help me brown vegetables and tofu more efficiently and give me some extra iron that I always need.

So what do you guys think? Do you have cast iron pots that you use in your kitchen frequently?

jbeatty - 05/29/11 14:25
We have WÃ¼sthof knives and All-Clad skillets and sauce pans and while were at it Chicago Metallic Sheet pans. I'm sure the copper makes some sort of difference, but what that difference is would probably be lost on me. I would really love one of those beautiful copper stock pots just because I think they look nice and I don't have a proper stock pot but they are well out of my price range and I imagine there are such diminishing returns on such a massive investment.

All of the all-clad stuff is bonded by some patented rolling process. They have a line of copper core now too. Like I said I doubt I would really see a huge difference with the copper core stuff to justify paying double for it. However cooking is such a huge hobby for me and necessity for my family that if I had the tons of disposable income you could be sure that I would own a set. Anyone who can cook, can cook with cheap cookware and knives. But the process is easier and end result are far better with good stuff.

tinypliny - 05/29/11 13:32
And since you are here...what kind of stainless steel kitchen stuff do you have? Do you think it's good to go the copper bottom or the aluminium encapsulated bottom route?

I have had all copper-bottom stuff thus far. All except one pan are from home and handmade in South India - where the steel is made and the copper is mined. But I am seeing more and more of the aluminium-encapsulated-bottom cookware now. Any thoughts?

tinypliny - 05/29/11 13:29
You said knives! Do you have one of the Shuns????

tinypliny - 05/29/11 13:29
That is very interesting - I think stainless steel isn't non-stick either and the occasional sticking accident does happen. I make resolutions to not be so stingy with oil the next time but after a couple months I am back to my "OMG, this is waay too greasy!" phase till something else suffers a sticking-disaster.

I am not even going to describe the flipping accidents I have had. One of the worst was when I decided that I was better than the chinatown chef and flipped an entire pan of singapore noodles off the pan onto the ground. I will admit that I did rescue around 75% from the kitchen floor because I am fairly confident that my kitchen floor was clean that day and was really starving!

I was making some crepes in my brother's kitchen earlier this year and got pretty excited about the results. But I completely burnt my palm off because I forgot about the handle being part of the body of the skillet and getting super-hot. I think it's somewhat uncomfortable to cook with kitchen mitts on all the time though. :)

When did you get your LC? I have heard that the lifetime now holds for only 20 years. (Admittedly, that is quite a swell lifetime though!)

jbeatty - 05/29/11 13:01
We have a couple of enameled cast iron dutch ovens and find them absolutely indispensable for all sorts of applications that I think an uncoated cast iron pan would absolutely suck for. Enameled pots aren't exactly non-stick but on the flip side I don't need a quart of oil to keep vegetables and meat from scorching. We have a regular cast iron skillet which only seems to get used for focaccia, bacon, and the odd apple cake/tatin my wife makes. It has utterly destroyed a mushroom potato cake that I attempted this winter presumably because I should have doubled the amount of oil I started with. The main reasons I don't use it much is it's way too heavy to flip food in and the handle heats up.

Although Le Crueset may be the "Apple" of the dutch oven world the truth is we will never have replace ours. Whereas my iBook G4 moves at snail speed and the power cord has been customized with electrical tape. Good cooking gear cost beaucoup bucks but will more than likely never need replacing as long as you take care of it. Apple's whole deal is to keep you coming back for more. Maybe I am a sheep for having brand name cookware and knives but I have owned no name pans and knives and can attest that you get what you pay for and eventually will need to buy more. As for lodge I can't comment on the price or quality of there enameled pots as I have never used them.

tinypliny - 05/29/11 10:46
haha, yes, Shun is the apple of the knife world. I was just talking about the knives scene with (e:Paul) yesterday!

metalpeter - 05/28/11 15:47
I don't really cook myself but find this interesting... I thought that there where something that Cast Iron where very good for and somethings cooked better in glass and the same with knives.......

tinypliny - 05/28/11 13:33
And please note that my comment about getting Lodge over Le Creuset was directed at (e:Paul) who remarked that Le Creuset is expensive. As far as I can see, you never mentioned Le Creuset in your comment before. How would I know you had a Le Creuset? You could have well had Lodge Or Mario Batali or Emmeriware or any of the zillion brands that Williams Sonoma retails.

tinypliny - 05/28/11 13:27
(e:Jason), calm down! This is a fun discussion and you can say whatever you want just because Julia Child is not watching. ;-)

I am sure Le Creuset is awesome cookware. I have cooked in it at several of my friend's homes during cooking parties. And the bread we made in those pots were phenomenal. So were breads made in "knock-offs".

I do make whatever statement I please here - which is why I also insist that you NEVER take me seriously here on (e:strip). In fact, I am sure if I made that particular comment on Chowhound or (e:gullet), I would get exactly the kind of response you posted and probably get banned for life. :)

jason - 05/28/11 13:17
Wow. That's an awfully ballsy thing to say. Instead of saving money and carefully choosing cookware based upon quality and durability, I must be a blind sheep because Tiny says so. Nobody is preventing you from buying a knock off and enjoying it. I regret contributing to this discussion.

tinypliny - 05/28/11 13:06
The enamel on Le Creuset-like pans is made of porcelain and blocks the iron from leaching into dishes. It is exactly like non-stick pans but the difference is that porcelain is not as toxic as teflon because it's basically organic mud, if you think about it. But then if I get the enameled ones I won't get any iron. It will be like all the other pots. The heat conductance qualities of iron is poorer than those of copper or aluminium. In fact, that is why cast iron pots heat up slower than copper and aluminium vessels.

Howver, they retain whatever temperature they achieve exactly because they are poor at conducting it away. So you get a pot that heats slowly but holds on to the temperature for a long time. No wonder, no knead home bread enthusiasts prefer cast iron big saucepans and dutch ovens for baking bread. The heat retention does wonders for a crispy hard home-made fragrant crust.

I toyed with the idea of getting a Le Creuset like pan but then after some research, I think Le Creuset is like Apple of enameled cookware. Tons of blind sheep who just empty their pockets because it has such a flashy froggy name and is promoted by cooking monsters such as Julia Childs and other widely marketed chefs. Lodge makes some cheaper decent enameled cast iron cookware which I am sure is just as good.

But enameled cast iron doesn't give me iron!!

libertad - 05/28/11 12:29
I use it like (e:jason) does, not for everything. I'm not too worried about getting too much iron. I usually don't use it for saucy things, I have another pan that works well for that kind of stuff. I love cookware. I inherited some from my mom's neighbor who died, very nice stuff from the QVC.

I think you should go for it (e:tinypliny)!

paul - 05/28/11 12:18
I think the enameled coating prevents the leaching. (e:matthew) wants one of the :::link::: Le Creuset ones so bad but they are so expensive.

jason - 05/28/11 11:55
I have an enameled cast iron skillet, and an enameled cast iron dutch oven. I use the skillet primarily for searing meat or making the odd frittata, and the dutch oven for stews/soups/one pot meals.

tinypliny - 05/28/11 11:39
I find the idea of getting extra iron from cast iron pots EXTREMELY attractive though. I take supplements every day, and even then worry that I am not absorbing much of the iron I consume. I have always been borderline anaemic and can use every single absorbable iron source I can get.

tinypliny - 05/28/11 11:37
Actually, my mum does use mild soap on her cast iron skillets but doesn't scrub in the maniacal way that I do. If you knew Indian flatbread and dosai (a sort of crepe/pancake combo), you would never wonder about the oil. There's an ABUNDANCE of oil used in all the dosai/adai/parantha recipes. In fact, you drip a tbsp or so of oil all around the pan for every single dosai in a traditional cast iron skillet. Partly the reason why I dreaded using that skillet and was never any good at making Indian flatbread/crepes/pancakes because I am always cutting the oil short.

libertad - 05/28/11 08:57
Looks like I commented on cast iron on the wrong post. Is your mother a vegetarian too? Cast iron is actually really cheap and if I could have only 1 piece of cookware it would be my cast iron pan. It's funny that you ask about this because I have thought about writing about how much I love mine. Like I said before you can't use SOAP!!!

05/27/2011 15:25 #54355

Freecycle@Work
Category: office

Thinking of starting a freecycle community at Roswell...

I wish Roswell were more responsible about throwing things away in general. I have heard all the arguments about IT security etc. etc. but apart from hard disks, there is really not much security risks in freecycling peripherals. The quantity of IT-related peripherals, non-IT-related reusable "garbage" and other furniture that Roswell throws away into WNY's landfills on a regular basis is ridiculous and environmentally unconscious, especially for a cancer centre.

tinypliny - 05/27/11 15:31
So I can count on you being the second member of freecycle@roswell? :-)

paul - 05/27/11 15:29
Ya, I wonder what the hold up is on a program for that. Maybe it just needs someone like you.

05/26/2011 18:46 #54348

An experience in logical illogicality
Category: the odes

Something about shuttling from NYC to Buffalo finally did my immune system in and I got some serious allergies earlier this week. I woke up with blood shot burning eyes, highly irritated upper airways and sneezed a million times. I had a meeting later in the day and I decided to take the most logical course - a scaled-up dose of benadryl.

25 mg hardly made a dent in clearing my bloody conjunctiva, so I somehow persuaded myself to go up to 50mg and then 75mg. An evil little voice kept telling me that it was important to not look murderous during the meeting and the drug was just blocking some unseen little histamine receptors somewhere on the surface; how bad could it possibly be?

It was bad.

In fact, it turned out to be the most colossally illogical trippy mistake of the year. I had to write a paragraph-long email to cancel the meeting - a feat that took nearly 1.5 hours to compose. Not only was I nauseous for 4 hours, I was convinced at some point that the everyone in Buffalo downtown was dying. A detail-oriented pedantic voice was telling me that it was important to note that ONLY people with a roof over their heads were dying. I went to the kitchen to wash my face and get rid of the voice, but I could see there was was some REALLY significant p-value to back up this argument in the plaster-cracks just above the sink on the walls...

It followed logically then that I should at least try and bail out of my window. Luckily for me I couldn't get the screen out in a coordinated fashion so I gave up after a while, drank as much water as I could and went back to a sleep-pee-drink-some-more-water-pee-sleep-drink-even-more-water-cycle till I was finally persuaded that everything was fine with my world (well, except for the missed meeting) late in the evening.

No more benadryl for me. I now know what to list under medications to avoid. (e:metalpeter) had a valid point when he pointed out that my low body weight could have had a role in the overdose... I don't think I was even paying attention to the whole body-weight overdose issue once I started on a single-minded mission to clear my bloodshot eyes.

This was probably the single most scary experience after the one where I was pinned immobile to my seat in an automobile collision on an extremely foggy day. I could clearly see my driver with his skull bashed-in by the windshield slumped right in front of me, but I couldn't do anything to help till the police/emergency folks arrived and wrenched me out.

metalpeter - 05/27/11 17:22
Well I hope the trip at least gave you a little bit of a good feeling to go with all the bad stuff... I have heard some medicine will cause you to see stuff but I have never taken enough to see anything....Have felt high though when sick it is almost I'm a not here kind of feeling not like I'm looking down at my body or anything... I think my mother took that once and had a bad reaction it was something and it was a pill called slow release so once something bad starts to happen it keeps going till all of it is in your system .... The point I was trying to get to is I wonder if there is a certain amount of time that it takes so you weren't at that time yet so you took more and then boom it all hit ya.....

tinypliny - 05/26/11 20:46
I need to get that eye drop!! I don't think Claritin would work for me because I have a mental block against taking pills for something so uncertain.. I haven't had the red-eye since Tuesday. I guess the benadryl cleared it all off after nearly killing me. lol

And I don't think I was suicidal. At least, at that time, it seemed like a carefully weighed statistically supported thing to do to climb out of the window!

I am washing dishes and that crack above the sink is making me laugh now. I could seriously see those sistine-chapel fingers and plenty of zeroes there!

libertad - 05/26/11 20:34
Wow, I can't believe benadryl made you try to jump out of your window! I wonder what percentage of people have suicidal tendencies while on it. I only pass out with it.

paul - 05/26/11 19:22
Also they have eye drops called opticon that make your eyes brilliant while and subdue eye allergies. Sometimes its easier to treat the direct symptom that taking a full body treatment.

paul - 05/26/11 19:19
Wow glad you didn't jump. Benedryl is like old fashioned allergy medicine. 75mg is a lot for your weight. You should try Claritin. It gives you no mind altering experience and it just make allergies go away. The downside is it doesn't really work after the fact like bendryl. You need to take it ahead of time. After like two days you have no allergies.

05/15/2011 21:59 #54295

Guess what?
Category: the odes

libertad - 05/16/11 17:55
I never would have guessed eggplant. It looks so spongy.

heidi - 05/16/11 03:43
Can I come over for dinner?

tinypliny - 05/15/11 23:02
lol, no They are eggplant cubes extreme closeup before they went into the oven for roasting. I prepped eggplant and caramelized onions for tomorrow's dinner.

paul - 05/15/11 22:56
Marshmallows with chocolate powder topping?

tinypliny - 05/15/11 22:01
Take a guess? ;-)

paul - 05/15/11 22:00
What is that?