chromedome

I'm sure all the pet people can relate...

For me it's less a feeling of "I've already eaten" than one of "I'm going to want something to eat eventually, but *not* what I've smelled for the last several hours while I prepped it." Back in December I made the staff Christmas meal for the supermarket where I teach cooking classes (and may I say, parenthetically, that prepping a lavish holiday meal for 150-170 people on the morning of, with no advance prep possible, no assistants and a rigid 5 hour time budget, is a non-trivial exercise even for a professional?) and they were all quite surprised when I was reluctant to join them at the end. I had a small serving of broccoli salad, and made the excuse that we were eating with family soon after...

Wow...even by the standards of my own family, that demonstrates a remarkable degree of talent.

Pretty much how I prioritize. Except I always plant a few potatoes, despite their year-round cheapness and availability, because I like new baby potatoes fresh from the garden (and those, of course, are also pricey by potato standards).

That'll be a lifelong memory. Well done, Auntie.

I used to occasionally do "millionaire fish & chips" at one of my restaurants...one piece halibut, one piece salmon, one lobster tail.

I'll second the recommendation of upgraded equipment, though I'm no chocolatier. If you can't do it all yourself your options are a piece of machinery or more staff...staff are cheaper up front but costlier in the long term, whereas machinery is the opposite (and doesn't need training, won't call in sick, won't leave once you've spent six months training it to do things the way you want, etc). When my parents had their bakery, my mother rolled the crust for tens of thousands of pies by hand (my father joked she could have arm-wrestled Popeye). When my cousin bought it from them, the first thing she brought in was a dough sheeter. She was able to make more pies than before, and (unlike my mom) didn't need to take muscle relaxants in order to sleep and avoid debilitating headaches. Different problem, but analogous.

McCain originated here in New Brunswick, which (like neighbouring Maine) is a major potato producer and therefore a natural home for a french fry manufacturer. You can't get anywhere near the town of Florenceville, where their plant is located, without smelling and craving french fries. We get a lot of McCain-branded product here in Canada, from tater tots to frozen cakes, but as the article says a lot of their profit comes from their role as an anonymous supplier to other food manufacturers and retailers (they supply McDonald's with fries, for example).

I've never had rivets actually fall out, but I've had the rivets get loose enough to make a couple of pots and pans more or less unusable. That's purely on the cheapest and lowest-end of cookware, of course, back in my impecunious bachelor days.

Here in Atlantic Canada - especially Newfoundland - we do that with molasses. Though in my family we'd do it right on the biscuit/piece of bread, so as not to dirty a plate. Or better yet, a touton (bread dough patted out flat, and fried in a cast-iron pan).

Interesting. In my neck of the woods chow chow is a relish made from green tomatoes, which we get much more reliably than fully ripened ones. No corn, though.

If it's garlic-infused oil stored at room temperature, you betcha. If it's basically just garlic, pulverized for freezer storage with a splash of oil to protect the flavor compounds from dissipating, that's a whole other thing. That's what I do with about half of my garden garlic, so it doesn't shrivel up and get leathery after a few months. The rest I eat fresh. My method (such as it is) is to peel the cloves and drop them into my food processor, then drip in a small quantity of oil until it makes a reasonably smooth paste (I don't worry about it being super-uniform). Then I portion it into small ziploc bags, and put them in turn into a larger one for a bit of added protection in the freezer. When I take one out I'll often use it all in one dish, otherwise I try to make a point of working through it within a few days. I use a neutral oil, but that's a question of personal preference. My reasoning is that a strongly-flavored oil would limit the garlic's versatility.

I'm also in the "always have a few cans" camp. Even with an IP, cooking beans from dry requires at least a modicum of forethought. That's not always forthcoming, and so I appreciate the convenience of having a can right to hand in my hour of need. (...also sometimes I'm just lazy....)

I feel your pain. One of my restaurants was never intended for year-round use, and I had to put things in my coolers to keep them from freezing. Needless to say, getting hot food out to the tables was also an interesting challenge.

When I lived in Vancouver, years ago, stores in Chinatown sold special coils for electric ranges that were bowl-shaped to accommodate a wok. I almost bought one, but decided against it on reflection, because it wouldn't have fit every range in every rental, and I moved a lot. I'd love to have a proper (ie, round bottom rather than flattened for the stovetop) wok again, but haven't been willing to invest the time or effort in searching one out. I have a couple of portable butane single-burner stoves, and would use one of those to cook on as needed.

On a semi-related note, the IEEE (the world body of electrical engineering) selected the original Zojirushi "fuzzy logic" rice cooker as one of its 25 greatest consumer electronics devices of the past 50 years. https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-zojirushi-micom-electric-rice-cookerwarmer

You can use the Persian name and call it a kuku...most people don't know enough about Iranian food to argue over it.

Yup, different beast entirely. Pretty much the same notion, though...all of the ingredients are pantry staples that are cheap and keep for a long time. Shoo-fly pie is another of the same breed.

I've seen recipes for "vinegar pie" that were very similar to what we call butter tarts here in Canada. The vinegar inverts the sugar and keeps the filling from crystallizing. Pecan pie uses corn syrup for the same reason.

My elderly Willow kitty was also my late wife's cat. We got her from a friend/neighbour several years ago, when our rental had a mouse problem. Willow fixed that in a hurry, but when we made overtures about returning her, my (now-late) wife told me that the original owner would prefer we kept her, since Willow'd been bullying the owner's other (older) cat. Well, in the fullness of time that friend/neighbour divorced her husband and my wife passed away, and she is now my GF. It turns out that, while telling me that Willow wasn't wanted in her previous home, my wife was telling the previous owner that I myself had gotten so attached I was upset at the thought of giving her back. So it turned out my late wife was...well, manipulating is a harsh word, but it fits...let's say "making expert use of spin" to achieve the desired end result of keeping Willow. The funny thing is that my GF never felt that Willow was her cat. Willow was her dog's cat. Her now-deceased Piper had fallen madly in love with this particular kitten within a day or two of her birth, and monopolized her to the point that little bitty Willow might have starved to death if they weren't vigilant about taking her back to Mama periodically to feed. They were inseparable for eight years until Willow came to live at my house, and even after that she'd go back most nights for a quick visit.

Overall quality is probably pretty similar, but Ganong's primarily makes chocolates with centers, rather than bars, so Whitman's or Russel Stover might be a better comparison. They do make a nougat bar studded with fruit gums, and a locally popular bar called Pal o' Mine (basically chocolate fudge with peanuts). For anyone who's interested in the Chicken Bones I'd mentioned upthread, here's an article from the CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/chicken-bones-candy-ganong-st-stephen-1.4454303

There was a landmark study done sometime in the last decade that roundly debunked the narrative that "90 percent of all new restaurants fail." Restaurants are neither more nor less likely to fail than other new startups, and a lot depends on capitalization, clarity of concept, and the rest of the usual suspects. One thing that was very pertinent, though, was that even restaurants that are successful on paper - profitable, busy, and generating good revenue - often close simply because the owners burn out. In my own case, my restaurant was thankfully seasonal. I worked 100-120 hours/week for 7 months, and 80-100 hours for the other 1.5 months of my season. At the restaurant where I worked while going to school, the owner had just gotten her average week down to 80 hours...and this was after being open for 20 years.

LOL "When you have a hammer..." (Not judging even a little bit. I remember using my first Swiss Army knife for everything, up to and including giving my friend a haircut with those tiny scissors.)

As long as the can remains sealed, its "food safety" date is essentially unlimited. Its "do you still want to eat this stuff?" date is variable, and subjective.

My mom's been collecting piggies for years, but has had to stop because her little apartment has only so much space. So this year I had an inspiration, and bought her a calendar with pictures of cute little teacup pigs from some farm down in the US. That way she gets her piggie fix, but doesn't have to use up one of the few remaining flat surfaces in her living space. This year I hope to take her out to the boar farm I used to buy from when my restaurant was open. The only thing cuter than an avalanche of happy, squealing, playing piglets is a that same avalanche made up of dappled, fuzzy boar piglets.