@mom60:
If you have a professional level stove with high temp burners, it helps to dissapate the heat it generates, as well as carry off the vapors from cooking and the smells, too. I have a vent a hood with a 1500 cfm blower, but mine is mounted outside, not in the hood, and because of that it is a lot quieter. It should be possible to convert it, mount an external blower that “sucks” the air out rather than pushes it.
I don’t know where the blower is. I’ll have to look or ask my H.
D and I are generally fond of Ann Taylor. She wears a 0 or 00 there. I’m a Med or Lg in tops but 4 in bottoms. They have tons of larger sizes. The quality tends to be good and sizing pretty generous.
I use my vent All.The.Time. Basically, whenever I use the cooktop for anything more than boiling water. It gets rid of grease, steam, and smells. And I’d guess that five nights out of seven I’m frying onions for one thing or another. (I make a lot of “vegetable medleys” on the cooktop – sauteed diced potatoes, sliced onions, sliced carrots, and something green, with just a tablespoon of oil.) If whatever I’m broiling starts to smoke, I turn the vent on and it gets the smoke out of the house.
I have extremely sensitive, dry eyes, and all that smoke and stuff bothers them a lot.
Ever look at the top of your cabinets, the grease? You’ll use the exhaust.
My cabinets go to the ceiling so no grease. Underside of cabinets no grease.I looked up inside my hood and one of two things is happening. My cooking style generates no grease or my house cleaner is doing an awesome job and actually gets under the hood to clean. The stainless steel inside the hood is totally grease free. My tile behind the cooktop is also grease free. I’m assuming it’s the housekeeper.
I turn on the fan any time I do something beyond boiling water. Sure, the noise is annoying, but the smells and grease are worse. Ideally, I would go for an exterior mount strong enough to suck the fillings out of my teeth, lol.
I mostly steam-cook, roast, bake, or IP-cook. Meat goes on the grill, no venting needed. Filet mignon tastes so much better grilled! 
Just checked my cabinets… not a trace of grease, and I do not have a housecleaner. YMMV.
@consolation: My joke when we had the vent hood installed was that if I got too close, it would pull my hair up. I wanted a really really strong exhaust, and I got one. In my old house, I had a down draft thingie, and it was fairly useless.
Today’'s random question:
“Marinate (##) hours or overnight”
What does that mean? Can I marinate it for 20 hours…ie, can I put it in marinade before I got to bed, and leave it until I cook dinner tomorrow? Or what?
What are you marinating?
Yes, you can. And if you don’t feel like cooking it that evening, you can wait until the next.
Well …in this case pork tenderloins, but I have the same question about chicken, beef., pork…I see this in recipes all the time and never can decide if it’s “okay” to put it in the marinade (in the fridge of course), till tomorrow’s dinner.
Ok, just want to make sure you aren’t talking seafood.
Yeah, overnight even 24 hours is fine. Those butcher shops that sell the pre-marinated meats are leaving it there for awhile, as an example.
As long as it is fresh to start with and not seafood, you’re good.
I have a gas cooktop and a massive and effective hood over it, which I use every time I cook, because I don’t want the products of burning gas in my house air. I pull apart the hood every two months of so and I’m always stunned by the amount of grease in the traps–and I don’t deep fry.
Having a hood that vents to the outside was a must have for my house. It didn’t even need a working toilet, but if I couldn’t blow the smell of the nightly pyrotechnic display that is my cooking outside, I wasn’t buying the house.
I also soak the traps in grease-busting stuff every few months. I made a bunch of bacon this morning and i’m thinking it’s time again.
I set my gas grill on fire outside accidentally, so we do all our grilling now on an electric cuisinart griller, which is amazing. It also hasn’t caught fire (yet), so that’s a plus. I set it on top of the stove and run the vent full blast. We have an open concept house, so the smell goes everywhere if you don’t run it, and i normally cook with a lot of garlic and other aromatics, so it’s a must.
Taking apart my hood to clean it is a real PITA. I have to stand – actually, crouch – on my cooktop to access the various parts. And then I have to put things back together without being able to see what I’m doing. It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever done.
Sigh. It’s probably time.
My son has done it for his grandparents. Maybe I should hire him out.
Send him my way!! I’ve asked my cleaning lady to do it but it appears she doesn’t choose to.