From a 2010 article in the WSJ (the numbers might have changed a bit since then):

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes...

So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps. In the four broadcasts The Journal studied, injured players got six more seconds of camera time than celebrating players. While the network announcers showed up on screen for just 30 seconds, shots of the head coaches and referees took up about 7% of the average show...

This is why the only way I watch football nowadays is by using a DVR and speeding through the game (and past the commercials).

Reposted from 2012 to add news of developments in 2017:

"It has been an effort for a long period of time. We've talked about the length of the game," [NFL Commissioner] Goodell said. "This effort's not as focused on the length of the game. This is focused on what's happening outside the plays -- how fast we get the ball set, the number of breaks, the number of intrusions -- so that fans can focus on the action."

With all this talk about making the game faster for fans, what would Goodell consider the ideal length of a broadcast?

"We (were at) 3:07 and change (last season), down about a minute," Goodell said. "We think we could probably get pretty close to five minutes of downtime out of the game, so that would bring you somewhere in the 3:02 range. That would be very successful if we could get to that point. But, again, not just the length. We want to make sure we are taking the right things out of the game -- the things that are not compelling to our fans."

Clueless.  The idea that cutting 5 minutes out of a 3-hour broadcast will satisfy fans' frustrations shows that viewer interests don't even begin to compete with advertiser's interests.

Specifically it's a structural component of the Bombay Sapphire Distillery in the United Kingdom.

...they use the excess heat from inside the distillery to be able to create a greenhouse environment outside and allow the distillery to grow tropical and Mediterranean herbs and spices directly on site. Herbs and spices that are then used in their gin products.

There are actually two greenhouses:

One of the greenhouses has the environment and climate necessary to grow tropical plants and other one grows mediterranean plants, using a different climatic environment.

The gardens are taken care of by a team of botanical garden experts who oversee the growth of hundreds of plants as well as herbs and spices that grow alongside the original 10 used in their recipe.

Kudos to the designers and developers for recycling the energy and for making the project esthetically appealing.

Trump had felt 'disappointed' that a 'number of people he thought were loyal to him that weren't,' said Reince Priebus

Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a video congratulating the winners of the Special Olympics World Games. Some dickhead troll responded -

“The Special Olympics make no sense.  The Olympics are for the best athletes in the entire world to compete against each other to determine who is the best,” the individual wrote. “Having retards competing is doing the opposite!”

I've embedded his response above.

"... no one will ever remember you."  More Terminator than Kindergarten Cop.

President Donald Trump thinks the press is being "rude" for literally just doing their job.

This is horrible!

A judge in Turin, Italy acquitted a man of sexual violence charges because the woman he allegedly attacked did not cry out or "[betray] emotion" during the assault.

Brad Henning, a Christian sex educator who has no business giving kids advice on that topic, said he would not speak to students in Washington's Kennewick School District after several community members complained about his fact-free, stereotype-heavy presentations.

It's amazing, isn't it, how believing in God is the only way any of us can be decent people?

When accepting an award over the weekend, singer Katy Perry gave an emotional speech denouncing the anti-gay beliefs of her former Christian life.

An anti-abortion legislator from Oklahoma was forced to reckon with the disturbing consequences of his beliefs... and ended up admitting something horrific: Rape and incest are the will of God.

Administrators at an Oklahoma public high school foolishly invited a Christian sex-ed lecturer to speak to the senior class, and now they're getting the inevitable backlash because the speech was a disaster.

The visit comes ahead of a planned showdown vote on the legislation later in the day Friday.

Disclaimer: Products are provided to Steamy Kitchen for a thorough, honest review. We do not receive payment for reviews. Each review takes 5-10 hours of hands-on testing, writing and editing.

This is a review of the Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker machine, with both PROs and CONs. We’ve been testing this machine out for the past 2 months, hosting 6 pizza parties, giving this machine heavy use each time!  Photo above from Williams Sonoma, you can purchase the Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker for $149.95.

Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker Review

If you don’t have a brick oven in your backyard, this machine will be the closest thing you can get to perfect pizza. I’m not saying this lightly, and am certainly not getting paid to rave about this machine. Yes, there are some complaints I do have about the appliance (detailed later), but I’ve never been able to consistently make fantastic pizza with bubbly, blistery crust until now. Pizzas are cooked in 6-8 minutes.

The Specs

Photo from Williams Sonoma

• Size: The machine is actually pretty small, it’s something that you can easily store in your small appliance pantry. Not heavy at all. 11″ x 18″ x 14″ high; 14 pounds
• Power: 1200 watts, heats up to 660F, though our measurement was higher
• Includes a pizza stone and recipe booklet

Using the Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker

We followed the recipe found in the booklet for pizza dough. I love that it called for 00 flour, which is the type of flour Italians use for pizza dough and hand made pastas. We make pastas and pizzas so often (even before we got this machine), that we purchase 00 flour in bulk from an Italian market. I’ve also seen it at Whole Foods and other fancy gourmet-type grocery stores. One time, in Florida, I was so desperate to buy 00 flour, that I asked, very kindly, my local pizzeria, if they’d sell me 5 pounds of their flour. Yes! They agreed.

If you don’t have 00 flour, or don’t care to look for it, you can just use regular, all-purpose flour.

Nathan’s new job at Steamy Kitchen is to help me test products and review. He made the dough (it’s easy) and decided that he wanted to roll out the pizza exactly 9 1/2 inches, so that it would fit the machine. He traced a template onto parchment.

…and rolled out the dough.

PRO: Breville’s specs say that the Crispy Crust Pizza Machine heats up to 660F, but we measured the stone to be almost 700F, certainly hotter than I could ever get my oven or BBQ grill!

Top the pizza sparingly, and make sure you leave plenty of space on the edges. If you over-fill the pizza, it won’t cook evenly and the ingredients will spill out on the pizza stone.

Slide the pizza with parchment and set timer for 1 minute.

If you leave the parchment in too long, it burns. So, after 1 minute, just yank out the paper.

Five minutes more, and the pizza is done.

This one is mine: ricotta, fresh mozzarella and basil. See the blistery crust? Absolutely beautiful.

More pizzas (sorry for photo quality, these were taken on different days, different pizza parties and on my phone).

Prosciutto, ricotta, artichokes, garlic olive oil.

Tomato sauce, mozzarella and salami.

Tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, beets and then topped with fresh baby arugula and drizzled with truffle oil.

PRO: On each pizza, crispy, blistery crust. Bottoms are all evenly cooked. It’s really hard to replicate this in any other home appliance!

Only Thin Crust Pizza

The Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Machine really shines with thin crust pizzas. You *can* make thicker crust pizzas, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

CON: The machine only gives you about 1 3/4″ of space between the pizza stone and the heating element. Even with thin crust pizza, if my dough happens to puff up too high, the dough will touch the heating element, smoke and the crust will burn in that spot.

But the pizza is stilllllll deeeeelicious.

Hard to clean machine

CON: While the Williams Sonoma pretty photos above show a shiny clean machine, after a few uses, the stone will naturally darken and the machine will discolor. The upper lid with heating element is really a pain in the butt to scrub. The heating element is not removeable, so you just have to do your best.

But a darkened stone is nothing to worry about – it’s “well seasoned!” Just use a metal spatula or pastry bench scraper to scrape off the charred bits. I don’t like using soap on my stones (I think porous stones absorb the soapy taste), so I just scrape and rinse.

My small gripes about the machine won’t deter me from enjoying phenomenal pizza. I whole-heartedly recommend the machine!

Host a Pizza Party

Invite friends over and have a pizza party. Each batch of dough from the included Breville booklet will make 4-6 pizzas. We double dough batch for a party for 8 adults. Have at the counter:

• Cheeses: shredded mozzarella, fresh mozzarella slices, ricotta, goat cheese
• Greens: Fresh baby arugula, baby spinach
• Herbs: Fresh basil leaves, fresh thyme sprigs, dried garlic/italian herb combo
• Veg from jar: Roasted bell peppers, marinated artichokes, roasted beets, pineapple chunks, olives, banana peppers, roasted garlic cloves, sun-dried tomatoes
• Anchovies
• Meats: prosciutto, ham, pepperoni, cooked shredded chicken, cooked sausage
• Sauce: Pizza sauce (we like Trader Joe’s), BBQ sauce, pesto (we like Trader Joe’s Quinoa Pesto), honey
• Fresh veg: sliced mushrooms, skinny asparagus (split fat asparagus lengthwise in half), red onion slices, tomato slices, roasted or sauteed wild mushrooms
• Fruit: sliced pears, sliced apples, sliced figs
• Olive oil
• Nuts – pine nuts, walnuts

On all pizzas, brush olive oil on edge of pizza dough. You can sprinkle come dried garlic/italian herb on crust as well.

Our favorite pizza combos:

BBQ Chicken Pizza – BBQ sauce, shredded chicken, red onion. After cooking, drizzle more BBQ sauce

Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese

Ricotta, Artichoke & Fresh Arugula – pile on the fresh arugula after cooking, sprinkle with a little sea salt and drizzle with good olive oil

Ricotta and Fig, drizzle with honey after cooking

Pear and Gorgonzola, drizzle with honey after cooking and top with walnuts

Tips for a Pizza Party:

• Remember that the pizzas cook in about 6 minutes, so you want all your ingredients thinly sliced or already cooked.
• Thinner pizza cook better – aim for 1/4″ thick when rolling out. Use your hands to stretch the dough – the more you use the rolling pin, the flatter your pizza will be. I handle the dough very gently, starting with a few rolls, then switching to hand stretching with knuckles. Spinning the pizza in the air is fun, but I’m not coordinated enough to pull that off without making it fly like a frisbee.
• Keep toppings spare. Overloaded pizzas will be soggy or will burn.
• Draw a 9 1/2″ circle on parchment paper and use that as your guide. You can slide the pizza from peel to the stone with the parchment, but pull out the parchment after 1 minute.
• Have a few salads to serve and other nibbles to eat – each pizza takes 6 minutes or so. If you are relying on only pizza to feed your guests, they’ll be hungrily waiting for their turn to cook their pizza.
• If your pizza dough starts rising too high in certain spots, open the machine, use a sharp paring knife and pop the dough bubble. If any dough or ingredients touches the heating element, use a spatula or back of butter knife to just scrape off the ingredient to prevent burning/smoking.

Thank you for supporting Steamy Kitchen!

Even if you don’t buy the product shown, starting your Amazon shopping here helps our small family business. We get a small commission from Amazon that helps keep this site running free!

Currently Amazon sells the machine (there are only a few left), and you can also go to any Williams Sonoma.

Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker Giveaway

 

The post Breville Crispy Crust Pizza Maker Review & Giveaway appeared first on Steamy Kitchen Recipes.

The vitamins were developed with the help of Dr. Alejandro Junger, the kind of guy who appears on Dr. Oz all the time and thinks cleanses cure pretty much everything.

"If you don't believe what everybody believes, this is like thirties Germany," Allen said.

A former Trump supporter whose son died of a heroin overdose says he now feels "betrayed" by the president

A 17-year-old girl in California created a website "where users click on Donald Trump’s face to punch him with tiny kitten paws."

But what was meant as nothing more than a jokey website for coding practice has turned into a legal nightmare. Now Lucy is facing the wrath of the big man himself.

Three weeks after the site went live, Lucy was served a cease and desist letter from Trump’s general counsel stationed in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in NYC.

The letter, confirmed by the Observer, reads exactly as you’d expect a Trump C&D would. It begins touting him as a “well-known businessman” and television star and boasts, “As I’m sure you’re aware, the Trump name is internationally known and famous.”

Guided by a family lawyer, Lucy changed the name of the site to KittenFeed.com

Ex-Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Vice President Gary Schultz pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor child endangerment charge for his role in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case

Mick Mulvaney says he has long thought the Obama administration framed data to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

Almonds are a delicious tree nut (they’re technically drupes, but culinarily they are considered nuts) that make a wonderful snack and ingredient to bake with. Almonds usually have a thin brown skin attached. The skin is edible and doesn’t impart too much flavor to the nuts, so most of the time we leave it on. That said, there are times when you may want to peel your almond for aesthetic reasons and the skin can seem quite difficult to get off at first. Macarons, for instance, typically start with blanched almonds. Some spiced nut recipes call for blanched almonds, as well. Fortunately, if you have a few minutes to spare, there is a trick to peeling almonds that will leave you with skin-free almonds in almost no time at all.

Step 1. Bring about 1-2-inches of water to a boil. Dump your almonds in the boiling water to blanch them for 55-60 seconds. Do not over-boil. Blanching the almonds in hot water shocks them just enough to loosen their skins and the short time frame keeps the nuts from getting soft.

Step 2. Strain the almonds into a colander and run under cold water. This will further loosen the skins and will stop the almonds from cooking due to residual heat.

Step 3. Transfer almonds to a paper towel-lined tray or counter top and remove the loose skins. You can peel back the skins with your fingers or squeeze the almonds out of them (my preferred method). Discard the skins.

Tips: Use a shallow skillet, rather than a deep saucepan. You don’t need much water and it will cut down on the boiling time to use a shallow pan. Plus, skillets are usually lighter and easier to maneuver than a deep saucepan.

When I’m peeling almonds, I’ll peel a large batch at once. Removing the peels is the most time consuming part of the process, so I simply sit with a bowl in front of my tv/computer and watch something while I work. It’s a lot like removing peas from their pods.

The almonds will need to dry once they have been blanched and peeled. If you are toasting them, you can do it right away. If you plan to store them, leave them on a paper towel-lined tray for a couple of hours before sealing them up.

For your essay today, class, you will compare and contrast two of the leaders of major countries in terms of their knowledge about nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump's comments (on the left) can be viewed in this video.  Fortunately, at the time he was not speaking to Angela Merkel, whose doctoral dissertation (on the right) translates as:

"Study of the mechanism of decomposition with single bond breaking and calculation of their rate constant on the basis of quantum mechanical and statistical methods." ("Dissertation to obtain the academic degree doctor in a branch of science - diploma physicist Angela Merkel...")

Sheesh.

From the archives of The New Yorker.

Wendy Lavarnia, 28, "described allowing the 2-year-old to practice pulling the trigger of this gun when empty on previous occasions," police said court records.

Lawyers for a Texas teenager who used an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving wreck have turned to the Texas Supreme Court in an effort to secure his release from jail.

Palmiers are one of the easiest pastries to make because they require just two ingredients: store-bought puff pastry and sugar. You can make puff pastry from scratch and end up with fantastic palmiers, but store bought pastries are consistent and convenient, so I usually reach for that. The trickiest part of making palmiers is shaping them, as you need to pack plenty of sugar between the layers, but still end up with pastry that sticks together neatly. Over on the Craftsy blog (it’s free!!), I’ll walk you through how to make Palmiers, Step-By-Step, with a post that is full of pictures that will guide you through the process of working with your puff pastry. Have plenty of sugar on hand, because you can never go wrong with more sugar in a palmier, and a clean, flat workspace to roll out your pastry. As long as your pastry is defrosted, it should take you less than 30 minutes to shape and bake!

'The last thing I remember was waking up two days later,' Michael Brown said.

Democrats are pushing a new bill that would create a statewide single-payer health care system.