
Tess
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Everything posted by Tess
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Not always and, you know, nobody wants to be Miss Manners all the time. I think you have to be married or live with someone and you have to pick your battles. If it's one of my partner's friends, or one of my constantly-complaining older relatives, a "Yeah, I know" smile to the server and an augmented tip is usually all I do.
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As a customer, when I hear things from the perspective of servers like Food Tutor, it makes me resolve to try a little harder to be considerate and not put a server in an awkward position. Some of my friends don't, shall we say, have perfect manners, so this can be hard. (I have finally trained my partner not to polish off a whole dish and then start complaining about it, though.)
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The fish taco is pretty good, but I like the one at La Salsa a lot better. I like them better overall. Unfortunately that's not a very widespread chain.
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not I .. I think it is such a "hot button" issue, that there will be even more discussion on this ... ← Yes, it is. I think my amazement is more along the lines of there being anyone on the side of the unrestrained cell phone use. Clearly, people's ideas of good manners vary but I don't understand the "get over it" attitude. Most of the cell phone use people find bothersome does not seem to me to be necessary at all.
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>>Frankly, I was dumbstruck. Here I was doing him a favor, and he was very clearly letting me know that I'm a good enough friend to ask a favor of, but not good enough to entertain him with my conversation on the ride back. Now, I know he didn't mean to be rude, but I was astounded that he simply didn't know what an affront this was, being somewhat younger than I am and growing up in some sort of strange culture where people apparantly ignore everything else the moment they feel like using their cell phones.>> That kind of thing amazes me too. Another thing that amazes me is the content of some of these conversations. I commute on a train, where you can't expect people not to talk on their cellphones, but it amazes me to hear doctors talking about their patients (by name) and that sort of thing.
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Let me ask you this, do you turn off the ringer on your home phones? If your home phone does ring during dinner, do you answer it? Is there a difference between the urgency in that call, and the urgency in a restaurant call? Do you exhibit bad manners when you answer your home phone during a meal? Is it the cellphone that makes you uncomfortable? Just curious ← This question wasn't directed at me, but it seems fairly obvious that some people don't mind cellphones, for all the reasons already listed, and some do. Most people probably don't mind *all* cellphone talk in restaurants, only the loud obnoxious stuff. In answer to your question about home phones: most people I know do not carry on extended conversations on their home phones when they have guests over. They may answer the phone bu tthey keep it short and/or tell the other person they'll call back. I don't think most people I know even expect to talk for a long time on the phone with anyone else in the room. As with the cellphone thing, I think you're not asking the right questions. The question should not be, "Why would anyone mind?" It should be "Why would anyone need to?" In how many cases do you really need to have a conversation with a bunch of people as your captive audience? And why would you want to?"
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When I met the man I was going to marry, he lived in a remote area and I would visit him from out of town. I soon discovered that he had what I thought of as very weird eating habits. He would eat only once a day. For a typical meal he would do something like cook a bunch of Weisswurst in a pan and then throw in a bunch of cooked spaghetti and put canned pesto on top of that. That may sound like it could be kind of good, if you like a lot of grease, but it really was incredibly greasy. Or he would just eat and entire carton of ice cream covered with maple syrup. He was getting to be an age where you cannot eat that way without gaining weight, so periodically he would go on starvation diets. I started cooking for him and he was amazed that he stopped gaining weight while eating more than one meal a day.
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As a customer-- never a waiter-- the behavior I find most annoying basically falls into the category of people who want a *lot* of attention when they dine out and seem to do everything possible to make the waiter spend the maximum amount of time on them. I had this one boss who did this routine where he would look like he was ready to order; the waiter would come over; he would say, oh sorry but he needed a few minutes more. This went on up to half a dozen times before we would succeed in ordering. It was annoying to his dining companions (we wanted to order some food already) and I can only imagine how it made the server feel. To their credit they were almost always tolerant. However if it was a woman he would also be flirtatious, doing things like sitting up exaggeratedly straight when she came over and saying, "ooh, I'm not being attentive" like she was the bloody schoolteacher or something. One waitress when he was being particularly bad turned to me and said, "Is he always like this?" He lapped that up; thought it meant he was cute. I was just annoyed that she seemed to think I was his wife.
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I didn't think he sounded too much like a stickler. Calling people "guys" is not what I expect in a medium-to-fancy place. You never know what's going to annoy people, but I think that staying away from too-cutesy speech is a pretty safe bet. I stopped going to one place with pretty good food because the waiters, who did not seem particularly inexperienced or uncouth in other ways, were very show-offy (but dumb) in the way they talked. They particularly liked to repeat our name several times loudly when we showed up. It's a long Mediterranean name (lots of vowels) and I guess they thought it sounded amusing. They would say things to rhyme with it and stuff. It got to be a crashing bore. On the other hand, I was just in a restaurant where the waiter seemed very nervous and kept saying things like "Excellent choice," but I forgave him because he wasn't trying to be cute or anything; he was just inexperienced.
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My Whole Foods carries a brand of instant espresso called Ferrarra, which I keep around for emergencies. It comes in convenient small jars. It's OK if you make a latte, adding a little water and then some hot milk. I don't think it's really good enough to drink plain, but you may feel differently. I had some better instant espresso from Italy that came in individual packets, but I can't remember the name and I don't see it around any more.
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I got Nigella Lawson's latest book, Feast, for a relative who follows her shows. I've done a number of her recipes and find them a little bit hit or miss, but this book seems pretty good for gift purposes. It's for a bunch of holidays throughout the year, so if you give it for Christmas there will not be a feeling that it's arriving too late. I gritted my teeth and stood in line to get the book signed at one of NL's appearance. I have to say, she is adorable. She was personalizing the books with any kind of message you wanted and chatting anyone who wanted to talk to her.
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The Brandied Apple sounds delicious. It reminds me of one of our autumn standards, the Stonewall. (Mix good apple cider with bourbon.) I'll have to try adding spices to that. I've been thinking about making up drink recipes with pomegranate juice, since I think of that fruit as a Christmas/solstice thing. The only one I've actually done is champagne with pomegranate juice.
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Whatever's happened with the baked goods, then, maybe it's not that centralized. I'm with the person who misses the espresso brownies. I could make some up, I guess, but they are too tasty for me to want to risk having a whole batch in the house.
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Did Starbucks change its provider of baked goods at some point? I only buy their hot coffee drinks in airports or similar, and don't care much for them. But I always used to think of them as having nice cookies, bars and brownies for sale, and now that stuff looks all different and not very appetizing.
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I had a member of my own party pick up some or all of the cash tip we had left. We found out only because the server followed us outdoors and asked if something was wrong. This woman admitted she'd taken the money but tried to pretend it was by accident. She seemed to have a whole routine down for covering her a** when she was caught and I got the feeling she did this kind of thing a lot. Needless to say, my association with her was not long.
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We often have something non-turkey for Thanksgiving. It used to be wild game birds but no one in the family is hunting these days. This year I may have pumpkin ravioli or some other pasta. If there is no non-turkey bird, though, I do generally cook a boneless breast of turkey, either marinated or rolled up with some kind of stuffing inside, so that no one expecting turkey is diappointed. I cook a lot of the boneless breasts anyway because they're good food for my diet.
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eGullet has made me much more accepting of what I have always thought of as a moderate case of OCD that I have with regard to shopping and cooking. Now I see that it's normal! Just recently (as in this summer) it made Weight Watchers much more fun for me.
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Crumbled blue cheese is nice in an egg salad dressing.
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Pizza cut into squares...a Chicago thing?
Tess replied to a topic in The Heartland: Cooking & Baking
We get our pizzas mainly at Malnati's and cut them at home. They suggest that so they stay hotter. I prefer the thin crust and find the squares much easier to handle. -
eG Foodblog: ronnie_suburban, redux - Adventures in the ordinary
Tess replied to a topic in Food Traditions & Culture
Oh, good! Ron, I enjoyed your last blog and look forward to this one. -
"Other people apparantly don't have such a strong association for this item. When I worked in a fine dining Italian place, I'd sometimes ask if people wanted to add a salad to their meal, and many times people would blithely say, "I'll just have a wedge."" Those people deserve to be given a wedgie.
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I think iceberg is good for making lettuce wraps. And although I'm not into the low-carb thing by any means, I don't usually want a bun with a veggie burger, which has a fair amount of carbohydrate already, so I'll put it between pieces of lettuce.
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I like the cooking suggestions at that site! I enjoy an eau de vie or grappa once in a while. It's nice to have if you want to sit for a while after dinner with a drink and perhaps an espresso. You sip it slowly and enjoy the scent, which seems to develop as you go. It's quite a lot of sensory bang for the buck without tempting you to drink too much of it.
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Thanks, Neil! I love the idea that if you like Rosemary's you might also like Buca di Beppo. I haven't tried the Bellagio buffet, but now I will.
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Is Rosemary's still open for lunch?