SC - horseradish root

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> [2001.04.24] wrote:
> > Wonderful!  This is not a method that I feel confident trying.  I look
> > forward to your report.
> 
> I wonder if perhaps suitably cleaned and seasoned, large steel ball
> bearings might be good to experiment with. They might be somewhat less
> liable to crack and shatter suddenly than some river stones.

People have played around with heating stones for precicely this purpose
(cooking). The final jury is still out, but:

* Sedimentary rock has a higher tendency to crack than metamorphic ones, 
  at least according to some experiments.

* Rocks can fall apart in many ways, sometimes leaving pieces of
  gravel/sand in your food.

* To heat the food much -- I missed the start of the thread -- you would 
  need to get the rock *hot*. A maxed out oven will most likley not get
  the rock hot enough to get your dish to boiling[1]. 

Metal -- as Adamantius suggests -- or soapstone might be your best bets
for safe and manageable things to work with. <mcdonalds> And be
carefull, hot rocks are hot.</mcdonalds>

/UlfR

[1] Different substances have different heat capacities. Taking a 100 g
rock at 100 C and putting it in 100 g water at 0 C will not get you 100g
of water at 50 C. 

- -- 
UlfR                                                 parlei-sc at algonet.se
Believe it or not, there were Naturists who opposed the first flight to
old Earth's Moon as being unnatural and a despoiling of Nature.  
		-- Lazarus Long (R.A. Heinlein)