Malawry

How's the texture of the finished produce, Katherine?

Skimming. I skim off foam and scum whenever I see them on food in a pot. It's made my soups clearer, my beans less gassy and my flavors purer.

FOH and BOH got along remarkably well in the kitchen where I worked. But the day people really hated the night people. They were sick of prepping for them. I'd mostly tune out these complaints on Monday morning (of COURSE we sold everything over the weekend, and what we didn't sell had to be trashed anyway) but I was progressively more sympathetic on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. It's not like they were slammed on all those weeknights. But then again, I did more deep cleaning and reorganizing on slow night shifts, and those are things I almost never saw day shifters do in their spare time. I tried to keep my mouth shut about it in general, since I was one of few non-salaried BOHers who worked both day and night shifts.

Went with Hjshorter to the Dupont Circle (DC) market this morning. I nabbed some fennel, early hothouse tomatoes, haricots verts, itty bitty baby zucchini, blueberries, the most perfect little carrots your eyes ever did see, and DUCK EGGS. I am a happy happy girl.

Asparagus risotto, chez Cesare Lanfranconi (second try, still not right but better) Seared spicy shrimp For dessert: fresh pineapple

Wow, I started this topic a long time ago. My husband/partner Erin bought me an iron for our first anniversary, a little over a year ago. It's the pricey Villaware iron sold by Williams-Sonoma. It's not Belgian-style, it has the more American-style sized pockets, and the plates don't reverse or come out, but I love it anyway. It cranks out four small square-shaped waffles at once, and I usually stock my freezer with waffles from it for weekday breakfasts. It features "Waffle-Tone," a chirrup that sounds when the iron reaches peak temperature. I'm waffle-rich now, not to mention a lucky lady.

I use an ordinary kitchen towel. I used to use potholders but after I started working in a kitchen I got used to working with towels. I'm afraid of pans that don't have metal handles. Moving pans between stovetop and oven has become so instinctive for me that I don't think about it before I do it. Fortunately, all my home pans have metal handles, so it's not an issue. One of these days I'm gonna torch somebody else's saute pan with a plastic handle, though.

The All-Time Best Cheap Gadget: Has to be the little U-shaped peelers that are plastic and cost $3.50 or so at Sur La Table. They peel easily, make beautiful parm-regg shavings, they're lightweight. I have one that's a cool purple color in my gadget drawer plus a white one in my knife kit. I also have a Good Grips U-shaped peeler that cost me $8 or so but it's harder to clean and not nearly as sharp, even though it is easy to hold. I have a cheap-ass sieve and no chinois or china cap. I don't make a lot of sauces but I have strained lots of stuff through my sieve with good results. Last time I visited the folks I used a similar sieve plus a coffee filter to strain turkey cooking liquid that Mom then turned into a gravy.

Tonight: Toasted bagel with thinly sliced red onion and homemade gravlox A thick-sliced farm market cucumber, sea salt, scrape of pepper Santa Barbara Olive Company Martini Olives I'm thinking ice cream for dessert.

This can be a major issue in private clubs, where service staff may stay for decades and become a part of the club culture. It's hard to fire some server who's been there for thirty-plus years if she becomes disgruntled or her performance slips...the members may know her, may have helped put her kids through school, may feel they directly hired her and are more equipped to make a decision than the club's manager. After all the members pay membership fees for the privilege of eating in the restaurant and being served by the employee in question. The bad feelings all around can last for years. I used to hear about this occasionally from club managers when I worked for an association representing private clubs in the past.

Xanthippe, I adapted the recipe on the back of the package. I tested a bunch of hushpuppy recipes for my final project at school, using both yellow and white cornmeal. The winning recipe used self-rising white cornmeal, which is pre-blended with flour and baking powder. I have so much cornmeal of various types leftover from these tests that I've been making a lot of cornbread to use it up. (Cornbread is more popular than polenta in my house.) This recipe is basically two cups of the self-rising meal, an egg, 1 1/3 cups milk (I used buttermilk) and some sugar. Pour into a preheated pan in which 2tbsp butter has been melted. Bake hot, 450 degrees, 20 minutes or so. It's all right, not amazing like the hushpuppies but not bad especially when you slather it with the jam. I think yellow cornmeal cornbread is better.

Ladybug, sometimes I eat cereal for dinner but I still post on this thread. You should too. Tonight: Vegetarian chili. White-cornmeal cornbread. I ate the crispy beurre-noisette corner pieces, my partner Erin ate the softer middle pieces. My homemade sour cherry jam.

Thanks for the recipe, Sandy, I was thinking of trying it when it gets colder and there aren't as many good fresh fruits for preserving. Your clear, concise posts on jam-making were part of what inspired me to give it a shot this summer. Thank you for demystifying the process.

I am so proud of myself. I just made my first-ever batch of jam. I made sour cherry jam. I started with a flat from the farmer's market yesterday. I washed, stemmed, and then pitted them while watching a DVD. This morning I chopped them down in the Cuisinart and added some sugar. I also pureed and strained some grapes we had laying around and threw that in to add some natural pectin. Several hours of cooking later I was ready to process my sterilized jars. All of them sealed on the first time through the boiling water bath. The resulting jam is a little thinner and sweeter than I'd like, but it's still quite good, fresh and fruity. Almost all the sour cherry jams I've tried have been less than satisfying in texture so this doesn't bother me too much...lack of natural pectin seems to be an issue, and I didn't want to use commercial pectin. Next week I hope to try out blackberry preserves. But first I'll have to buy more jars...a flat of cherries makes way more jam than I thought it would! I guess holiday gifts will be a no-brainer this year. Once I'm better with the basics I hope to branch out into infusing herbs and spices with my fruits. For now I just wanted to understand the underlying principles.

Oh hell yes, I always get one. And they are Hebrew Natl, the sort I grew up eating. Wotta bargain. Have you read the Costco thread? Today, I had blueberry pancakes with farm market bluebs for breakfast, with coffee and vegetarian soy sausage. Yesterday was more remarkable, brunch for 7: a crepe feast. Fillings: scrambled eggs sauteed spinach sauteed mushrooms farm market blueberries, raspberries and blackberries sauteed apples homemade gravlox, red onions, capers sour cream whipped cream pear preserve, bitter orange marmalade, thick Italian raspberry jam and sugar for sprinkling Plus a salad with mesclun mix, butter lettuce and cukes and shaved red onions in a lemony vinaigrette, cran-raspberry juice, and coffee. Mmmm. We ripped through the 50 or so crepes I'd cooked in record time.

I haven't heard of it either. But there's so many numeric restaurants around town lately...2941, Local 16, 15 ria, etc etc...that I figured I was just out of the loop.

From Takoma Park, Maryland: A flat of sour cherries, which I am about to clean and pit for my first shot at jam-making tomorrow A quart of blueberries A dozen eggs, "rainbow," jumbo size Fresh dill A middle-eastern, a regular, and a pickling cucumber Red leaf lettuce I eyed the fennel from Nina Planck's parents' farm for about 10 minutes before walking away. It looked excellent but I was feeling too focused on the cherries to play with the fennel.

National Restaurant Association publishes an annual survey report of all kinds of fascinating restaurant statistics including wages and salaries for various restaurant employees. You can probably buy it through their website. For that matter, if you are curious about what private club chefs, F&B managers, and catering managers earn and what benefits they generally get you can purchase National Club Association's Compensation and Benefits Report. It ain't cheap, but it's hard work putting these things together after all. Click here to look for more info. These surveys will break down by region, but may not provide solid numbers for specific municipal areas. For that I'd try to check out metropolitan restaurant associations, many of which survey their members on these sorts of questions.

I don't view the low pay as so much the issue as low pay combined with lack of benefits. Sick leave is an especially needed benefit along with health insurance; the fact that people can't get paid when they are sick is of course going to lead to sick people coming in, handling food, and selling it to the customer. Even with all the handwashing and other sanitation procedures it's scary to think about. Lots of people who work kitchen jobs live paycheck-to-paycheck on those low wages, and missing a day because you feel ill or, worse still, need to see a doctor without insurance can mean the difference between paying rent plus groceries or having to choose one over the other. I'd like to hear about sick leave and pay concerns impact kitchen workers in countries outside the US, particularly those with socialized health care.

Foam Pants, my camping style is more like yours. We almost always go vegetarian although we will cook fish sometimes. We usually carry bread, cheese, olives, pickles, PB and J and trail mix while we hike. Back at the campsite I always make a big batch of vegetarian chili which vanishes rapidly with more cheese and tortilla chips. I usually bring a bunch of relish tray type items...the olives and pickles, hearts of palm and artichoke hearts, celery and carrots...which we eat while waiting for the hot dinner to arrive. Late at night there's more chips and salsa, some M&Ms and s'mores for eating while we play card games by lamplight or sit around the fire chatting. Breakfasts are not involved, we usually want to hit the trail early so we just make oatmeal with dried fruit and eat one or two pieces of fresh fruit as we set out for the morning. Last time we camped, we packed up early and left the site for breakfast on the last day. Some of the best pork sausage I ever tasted came out of the kitchen where we stopped. It was somewhere in West Virginia and they had 14 or so types of pie on their dessert menu. A real local kind of place.

We've been invited to the farm owned by some friends' parents for an old fashioned cookout, volleyball, croquet, and badminton. The farm grows all kinds of fresh herbs and flowers and has some educational gardens we can explore, and it's very close to Gettysburg if there isn't enough to occupy us. The hosts and other guests are providing hot dogs, burgers, veggie burgers, slaw, lemonade, potato salad, a green salad, and a few assorted starters and desserts. (I bet there will be brownies. Everybody always brings brownies to these things. I love brownies, but there have to be other portable heat-resistant pastries besides these.) I made a huge pot of vegetarian baked beans and baked some peanut butter cupcakes. I'll make a chocolate frosting tomorrow and frost the cupcakes after we arrive. I think of the chocolate-peanut butter combination as quintessentially American though I have no real basis for this assumption. Baked beans seem very American but I believe they're not uncommon in the UK.

Herb-crusted salmon over caramelized onions and sauteed spinach, with a peppery-raspberry sauce veloute Three tomatoless pita pizzas: artichoke hearts and mozz, caramelized onions and parmegiano-reggiano, sauteed mushrooms and herbed goat cheese The sauce was inspired by an IM conversation with Jason Perlow, who asked me if I make more sauces now that I've gone through culinary school than I did before enrolling. I don't, but I do know how. The sauce itself was all right but nothing special.

Funny. He still looks exactly like that. Well, except all his teeth finally came in.

Frosted flakes with lowfat lactose-free milk Iced coffee Later, a chunk of sample rotisserie chicken from Costco. Lunch was a Costco hot dog.

Edemuth and I once made a "comfort food reinterpreted" dinner party for friends. I don't remember everything on the menu but I am sure we documented it here on eGullet. Wait, here's the thread: click. IIRC, when we came up with the idea we were alternately calling it "comfort food" and "white trash food." But then I think we veered towards calling it "comfort food" so as to not scare our guests.