Jilli! Did you see Princess Ticky Box and the Queen Mother, yet?

No. We weren't able to get ahold of Paul to find out about visiting hours and suchlike. Hopefully Paul will return our voicemail message sometime today, and then we can go visit tonight.

Why do people wrap the potatoes in foil. Mine get scrubbed, forked, and put straight on the rack, which yields very crispy skins.

Add "lightly brushed with canola oil and kosher salt" before "put straight on the rack," and you have my method. Which, IIRC, I got from Alton Brown, my Secret Boyfriend (Culinary Division).

Why do people wrap the potatoes in foil

Keeps the heat and moisture in. It's good to heat tortillas in foil for the same reason.

"I would die for you.... I'd do time for you"?

Damn, Jilli beat me to it. Z used it as the opening song for the (added) Prelude in Measure For Measure - 5 couples in club gear grinding away to Garbage. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So are all deep-fried things made sort of crispy on the outside? And how does this process affect Mars bars? Also, how deep does the oil need to be? Must the thing being deep-fried be immersed in the oil, or can it float at the top?

1. More or less
2. The Snickers bars get kind of oogy
3. Depends on the size of the item being fried
4. It can float - don't Krispy Kremes float?

It'll be about three weeks before mine's done.

Honey, put down the magnifying glass and go turn on the oven. Really.

Thank you, Jilli (and juliana). Here I am looking for the song on-line when I happen to already have that soundtrack. Some people might think I have too many CDs.

5 couples in club gear grinding away to Garbage. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I like the song, and I like dancing to it, but at the local clubs it is one of the songs that will pack the dancefloor. Usually with people who don't normally dance but insist on grinding against each other (in clumps of three or four or five people) so they can feel naughty and transgressive. Not to mention their sexysexygrinding is badly off-beat.

I would much rather see the 5 couples from Z's production of Measure For Measure. Quick! Import them to Seattle!

Keeps the heat and moisture in.

But I don't WANT the moisture in my baked potato. If I wanted it moist, I'd have boiled it.

Also, the One True Potato is rubbed with butter and kosher salt.

Microwaved baked potatoes seem to me more chunky and less likely to disintegrate into cloud-like numminess.

This. While microwave potatoes still taste fairly good, they have a consistency somewhat like clay, whereas the oven-baked variety are like potato-flavored dandelion puffs. I think it may be that instead of evaporating away, all the moisture remains inside as the actual medium for heating up the potato.