chromedome

I would personally expect to be charged the regular price of the dish, if I requested something to be left out. If I've requested an actual change to the dish that would make more work for the kitchen, I would be open to paying a premium for that. It would depend how much of a surcharge, of course, and how they went about it. To me, if I've caused somebody extra work, it's only right that the price should reflect that.

As a matter of fact, I do. It's not quite as bad as copier/laser printer toner. That stuff diffuses everywhere in exactly the same way, but it's black and adheres stubbornly to everything.

It just means it's okay to be in contact with food, and won't impart any toxic substances, discoloration, off-flavors etc to the food products. I expect there are a number of surfaces and parts that use rubber or rubber-based compounds in various companies' manufacturing processes. There are similar distinctions made with plastics: The Ziploc bags you buy for sandwiches or freezer use are food-grade plastic, but your garbage bags aren't.

In Western Canada perogy pizza is a thing. Sour cream, potatoes, bacon, green onions and both mozza and cheddar. I didn't find it especially appealing, but it was okay I guess. I won't throw stones, because here on my side of the country we came up with donair pizza. Ontario gave birth to the Hawaiian pizza, and I've heard rumors of poutine-topped pies in Quebec, so I guess the Great White North has something to offend every purist.

Seasonal *and* food (-ish):

Tomorrow's the end of the line for The Paderno Store. Gotta remember to go pick over the bones and see if there's anything more I want.

I see them (very) occasionally at Superstore. It's possible you may be able to come to an understanding with the produce manager at your nearest Loblaw brand, and get a call as/if/when they're available.

One of my (American) colleagues shared this earlier today on FB:

I've seen Le Creuset at comparable clearance/liquidation stores here in Canada. It's never the enameled cast iron at that price, but some sort of stoneware or porcelain (I don't remember which).

I'll emphasize that while it is easy, you need to be really, really, really diligent about rinsing every bit of buttermilk out of the butter itself. Otherwise it gets inedibly funky within a day or two (or just freeze it immediately and only take out a pat or two as needed). Still not difficult, but it's easy to fall at that last hurdle. Adjusting recipes isn't rocket science, though there's a bit of "feel" to it. Mainstream butter runs about 85% fat (give or take) so if you're switching to lard or a low-fat butter you cut back the amount slightly and add a bit more moisture. Some recipes require a bit more trial and error than others, of course.

There's a moment in the movie Hollywood Homicide where Lena Olin's character ribs boyfriend Harrison Ford about being an old fart. His reply (I'm paraphrasing, it's been a while since I saw it) was "Hey, as long as I take my ginkgo I can still remember where I put the Viagra..."

https://www.fastcompany.com/90422553/the-first-map-of-americas-food-supply-chain-is-mind-boggling

At my place, I preemptively designed the menu so that most of the items either were naturally gluten-free or could be made gluten-free with a simple substitution. I also had a couple of vegetarian/vegan-friendly dishes. Turning out 30-odd covers a night at 3-5 courses per, mostly single-handed, with a battery consisting of two domestic ranges with electric coils, meant I couldn't afford to do things on the fly. My menu explained this, and also stated explicitly that (because of my limited resources) no other substitutions could be made at the time of order. Anyone else with special needs was invited to find me in the kitchen before mealtime and discuss options. If I could work with their needs I generally would, but we were out in the boonies and making a 2-hour round trip to town to pick up special ingredients was just not an option, with the best will in the world. There were only a few occasions when I couldn't oblige someone and it truly sucked, because my restaurant was at a small seaside inn and there was no alternative eating place except a gas station a few km away that did pizza and fried chicken (neither of them good options for anyone with dietary restrictions I couldn't meet).

That would be "Shoppe," not Shop. The brand was quite popular when I was a kid, and got revived a decade or so ago. Definitely, the beverage has always been "pop" in Canada (at least Atlantic Canada, I can't vouch for the rest) for at least my lifetime. The term "soda" only came into vogue in the 80s, and was reserved for the putatively Italian-style beverages made with plain soda water and a squirt of flavored syrup. Lately it is also applied (sometimes) to those unsweetened soda waters infused with fruit flavorings.

The listeria recall for Compliments brand sweet kale salad has been expanded to include a number of other cut-vegetable products. If you've bought any prepared-vegetable items from Sobey's, up to and including Thursday (Oct 31) then by all means click through and read the list. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/about-the-cfia/newsroom/food-recall-warnings/complete-listing/2019-11-01/eng/1572663865437/1572663871425?utm_source=r_listserv

It's been difficult here over the past decade. My former lamb supplier gave up and went back to her day job. Of the four artisan raw-cheese makers I used to buy from when my restaurant was open, two have folded and one sold out to a new owner. My boar supplier sold off his last livestock this past summer and converted his space into a wedding venue. An ambitious young family with a natural foods store in Fredericton went broke trying to establish a network to connect local growers and vendors with chefs and consumers. It's frustrating to see it happening all around us, and yet have it be such a struggle here. On the upside, the local craft beer and craft distilling scenes are booming and the local wine industry has gotten through its infancy. No startlingly good wines yet (it's a couple of decades behind NS), but many serviceable ones.

https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a29622461/anthony-bourdain-auction-bob-kramer-knife/

Even worse, they shoot themselves in the collective foot constantly. A few years ago they opened up a big new highway crossing point outside of St. Stephen/Calais, where the old crossings were. It's great...lots of lanes, and right away you're onto a broad, multi-lane highway that can take you straight through to NS or north to Quebec. Unfortunately, it also means that most tourists simply race past the entire southwestern corner of the province. That's where most of the Fundy coast is, with its fishing villages, the historic resort town of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea and some really prime food and drink. Of course, people could just pull into the nearest tourism information center to find out about all of those things, right? Wanna guess where the nearest one is? Well, technically it's in St. Stephen itself, but having bypassed the town and gone through the new crossing you wouldn't know that. Instead, most drivers zip 90 minutes up the road to Saint John before seeing a tourism center.* The Chamber of Commerce in the affected corner of NB even offered to foot the bill for constructing one near the border crossing, but the province refused. SMH... (*Which promotes a couple of local attractions, but mostly attempts to funnel people onwards to Fundy Park and Hopewell Rocks. Because that's how they've always done it.)

The part of Atlantic Canada where I live is something of a backwater. Although larger than neighbouring NS and Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick is small by the standards of Canadian provinces (roughly 28K square miles for you Americans, a titch smaller than Maine but bigger than Virginia; for Europeans our 72K square km would put us between Serbia and Iceland in size) and decidedly lags those two in promoting itself. Most of the province's tourism budget goes to promoting a handful of sites: a couple of living museums (Acadian Village, showing how the Francophones lived before most of them were deported to Louisiana; and King's Landing, representing the Loyalists who came here after the American Revolution, ie "Colonial Williamsburg...The Sequel") and mostly the high tides and Hopewell Rocks at Fundy National Park ("Walk on the Ocean Floor!"). A few local chefs and food writers are staging a symposium next week to host representatives of the tourism industry and drive home the message that food and drink can make a significant contribution to tourism. We do have some really high-quality talent here, and plenty for them to work with. Here's the writeup: https://huddle.today/nbs-chefs-will-gather-and-tell-the-provinces-food-story-at-tourism-symposium/

It's a Canadian brand, I don't know that you'd be able to find it where you live.

Okay, it makes more sense in the context.

I just picked up a few for table use. Shopper's usually has butter on for $2.99 on the weekends (house brand or whatever) so that's what I load up on for baking purposes. I keep a couple of pounds of unsalted in the freezer for when I make laminated doughs, but that's about all I use it for. It was always hard to find in my neck of the woods until this past decade or so, and always sold for about $1 more than salted, so I just always used salted. I guess that's what my palate is attuned to.

My mom made those, too. Though there was no Saran Wrap then, so they got wrapped in wax paper.

I generally have multiple brands on hand, but usually just because they've all been on sale for a really good price at some point in the recent past. I'll occasionally buy the butter from a local couple I know, if I happen to be near a store that carries it (it's hard to find, and I don't often drive out to Sussex to buy it in person). I also watch for sales on Lactantia, a quasi-premium supermarket brand which generally commands a higher price. It's "better enough" to be reserved for table use, while I use the regular stuff for baking or cooking with.

Truthfully, I don't see that it's an issue. Plopping bleu cheese on top of the burger requires no skill or artistry, in essence there's no difference between doing that or peeling the plastic from a slice of equally-plastic processed cheese. Is it a good burger? If so, then it doesn't need the cheese in order to shine. If it can't stand on its own without the bleu, then perhaps it needs tweaking. In fairness, I know zero of this restaurant or chef and if the bleu cheese somehow impacts on the other courses, then so be it. It's not in the same sphere as the customer I had one night in Edmonton, who wanted to order the seafood medley (a lobster tail's shell stuffed with rice cooked in shrimp-shell stock, topped with shrimp and scallops, with medallions of the tail placed around the plate)...without shellfish. (Disclosure: I don't care for bleu with beef, which to me just makes the beef taste like it's several days past its "serve-by" date, so obviously it's not a hill I would choose to die on)