chromedome

Took me a minute. Now I'll have that song stuck in my head all morning.

Traditionally, gardeners here don't plant outside until the May long weekend, which is upon us now (ours isn't quite in sync with yours). We had our (hypothetically) last night of frost a couple of days ago, so tradition in this case is pretty much spot-on.

In the study several years ago that refuted the apocryphal assumption that "90% of restaurants fail..." the authors noted that many of the restaurants (and startups in general) that do close are successful and profitable, but their owners simply can't keep up the pace. In my own case my restaurants closed involuntarily, but there was little prospect for me to grow past the point of working 100 hours/week all season long and in retrospect I'm not sure how much longer I'd have continued to do it.

I wrote about growing it for some publication or other. I don't remember who it was, just that I had a hell of a time getting paid. It grows fine in temperate climates, but it's terribly temperamental. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29082091

Jeanne Calment, at 105 or so, told an interviewer "I only have one wrinkle...and I'm sitting on it!"

Seen on Facebook: "I was going to make a pun about herbs and fish, but there's a thyme and a plaice for everything."

I was never a fan of her vampire books, but if you have the chance by all means read Feast of All Saints. It's about the free people of color living in Louisiana before the war, and arguably the best thing she ever did.

Some things are sacrosanct.

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I eat soups in summer more than in winter (admittedly, summers here are probably more moderate than where you live). I find it a nice, light meal, not too burdensome when the weather is ghastly hot (which, by my standards, is anything beyond the high 20s C/70s F).

My old boss used to say "We eat with our eyes first, but we eat with out mouths MOST. Make it taste good before you start fussing over how it looks!" Plating is all good, and a useful skill, but I think most of us here are about the nom nom nom part.

The small-town Legion hall is the equivalent here in Canada, and often serves a similar purpose as the social hub. Membership is aging now, and some buildings are being sold off. Younger vets (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Rwanda) tend to feel the Legion is for the older generation, which of course rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There have been conflicting reports about the Seattle experience, with restaurateurs anecdotally reporting layoffs and price increases. On the other hand, in studies by outside academics, prices and employment within the industry in Seattle seem to be moving in lockstep with those outside of its salary bubble. In most cases, you'll find people picking the narrative that fits their preconceptions and going with that. In my case I paid above-average wages for my (admittedly minimal) staff, and also provided tip pooling for the back of the house (except me...that just would have been wrong). When I took my first job, 40 years ago (and yes, it gave me a twinge to write that) I earned a whopping $2.75 an hour. The minimum wage in most of Canada now is somewhere between $10 and $11, so I've seen a number of increases since then. Every time, it's been the END OF THE FREAKIN" WORLD!!! until it wasn't. In fact, the same arguments were made against minimum wages in the first place, so I've come to be a bit jaded on the subject. Remember when the smoking ban was going to be the end of the hospitality industry? And yet, oddly, people are still going out to eat and drink. Go figure. It'll certainly make things fairer for servers toiling at the low end of the market, where tips are the difference between starving and not starving (or at least, being able to starve slowly on one or two jobs, rather than two or three). In higher-end establishments, where servers already out-earn the cooks (my servers out-earned me, the owner), evening things out between FOH and BOH will be the big challenge. How things play out in your case, in your jurisdiction, I can't say.

...specifically, Bonaire? If so, please PM me. I have a couple of questions.

I remember thumbing through the Okanagan on my way to Vancouver for the first time, back in the early 80s. One of my rides gifted me with a box of the biggest, ripest, juiciest peaches I'd ever seen in my life. You couldn't eat one without juice up to your elbows, it was ridiculous (in a good way, I hasten to point out).

I'll be able to start planting in a few weeks' time, so I've got my seedlings started in the front porch. I was delighted to find that there's a variety of okra that grows well in our northerly climate (I can take their word for it, because the seed is grown locally as well). It's the Clemson Spineless 80, which I'm told produces lovely blossoms as a bonus. I wouldn't know, I've never seen okra growing. This will be the first time in many years that I've had a full-sized garden to work with (usually, if anything, I've had to content myself with a few herbs and lettuces artfully concealed in a flower bed). I'm rather looking forward to it.

Ours come in July and August. Some year I'll think ahead, and start some of my own indoors.

Ah...it would be "I've got you under my skin." (Yeah, I love Cole Porter)

It was the highlight of the funeral speeches, without question.

When I lived in Edmonton, horseradish grew thickly all up and down the alley behind the houses of my block. Whoever planted it initially didn't know or didn't care how persistent it is.

My parents lived with my grandmother and cared for her for many years as she sank into Alzheimer's. At one point in the disease's progression, her "filter" abruptly disappeared, and my mom was frequently mortified/wildly amused by the things that left her mouth during everyday errands to the store and suchlike ("Heavens, look at that! If my backside was that size, I certainly wouldn't wear stretchy pants!"). My uncle used to come and spell off my parents occasionally for a respite weekend, and on one of those visits she had one of her lucid intervals. For those who haven't had to interact regularly with an Alzheimer's sufferer, they'll occasionally be perfectly rational within the moment but be cut adrift from their own memories, much like an amnesia patient in a movie. During one of those moments, this exchange occurred: Her: Who are you again? Him: I'm your oldest son, mom. I'm David. Her, musing: So I must have gotten married, then. Who did I marry? Him: You married Wallace [X]. Her: Oh, little Wally! He was such a card, I always liked him. (pause) Is he still around? Him: No, mom. He was killed back in 1975.* Her, crestfallen: Oh. (sotto voce) Did I do it? *He died in a car accident on his way home from work.

My parents used to do meringue like that at their bakery. They discovered pretty early that the higher the meringue got (the first time they just added an extra couple of whites so as not to throw them out) the faster the pies sold. As business decisions go, a couple of extra egg whites/batch in exchange for a huge increase in sales wasn't that difficult.

For me one of the most interesting things, back in the day, was the watching the creation of Alinea from the ground up. As a recently graduated culinary student, that was pure gold. I also went back and re-read my own food blog from that time, with bittersweet nostalgia (I was sandbagged just a year later by the failure of my marriage). My earlier, unofficial blog - which chronicled my work/school life - apparently disappeared into the ether during one of the site's early upgrades.

I'm pretty sure the first thing I made for myself as a young 'un was porridge for breakfast, almost certainly from rolled oats (though porridge was a staple and we also had Cream of Wheat and the multigrain Red River and Vita-B brands as part of our regular rotation, so it might have been one of those). Frying my own small trout, fresh-caught from the local streams, was almost certainly the second thing. My mom was never fond of cooking, but executed simple, traditional meals well enough. My father was more adventurous - he'd read about something like polenta, and decide to play around with it - but he was at sea a lot when I was young. There were plenty of good cooks and bakers on both sides of my family, but they fell decidedly into the "homestyle traditional" category. My first real look at a more sophisticated approach to food came in 8th grade, when I met my lifelong best friend. His parents were both German, though his father was raised and educated in England during and after the war (they were part-Jewish). His mother was and is an exceptional cook and baker, though much slowed by arthritis, fused spine, hip transplants, scoliosis, etc. Coming from a household where "salad" was shredded iceberg with tomato wedges and bottled dressing, eating something totally left-field like her herring salad was a memorable experience. I also had my first experience of slow-cooked sauerkraut (with multiple pork products) at her house, which remains one of my favorite cold-weather meals and a staple in my house. My mom always baked bread when I was growing up, so I felt a real imperative to start baking my own when I left home at 15. I'd watched her often enough, so I just bought the ingredients and gave it a go. I knew she put shortening in the warm water before adding the flour, but I couldn't remember how much...so I threw in a cup of it. Let me tell you, that bread was well and truly shortened! It was dense but certainly edible, so after clearing up the amount of fat required on my next phone call home (a tablespoon or so...) my next batch turned out better. Over the intervening years I made pretty much every mistake it's possible to make while bread-baking, but never stopped. It feels strange to think it's been just about 40 years now.

I actually picked up a second dorm-sized fridge to keep condiments in. Now both of them look like that.

At our Thanksgiving, last October, I had a similar thing happen except it was a lavish meal for 12 as opposed to steaks for two (not to minimize your plight, please understand...your two gorgeous steaks and green peppercorns probably cost just as much). Since it was the big holiday meal I'd originally planned for arrivals at 2 and serving at 3, but thanks to a revolving comedy of errors and misunderstandings it was nearly 7 when we sat down to the meal. I was not a happy camper.